This Dog for Hire

1
    Ordinary Secrets

    GREENWICH VILLAGE IS a place full of secrets, back cottages hidden from view behind wrought-iron gates and down long brick passageways and little Edens way up high, secret gardens growing not on the ground but on the roof, retreats concealed from the prying eyes of strangers.
    There are other secrets here as well, sexual secrets, passages across the gender lines that I thought , once upon a time, were immutable facts of life. But in this neighborhood of writers and artists, the facts of life were long ago rewritten, familiar images redesigned.
    And more and more of late, the secrets indigenous to this place, once visible only to willing participants, are coming out, out of the closet, out of the clubs, out in the open for all to see. Even those who’d rather not.
    Still, it’s usually a case of live and let live.
    But not always.
    We have our ordinary secrets, too, the kind every neighborhood has, envy, jealousy, greed, lust, anger, all seething unseen under the surface. And like the other secrets lying doggo among the twisty, tree-lined streets between Washington Square Park and the Hudson River, these too are invisible, until one day they fester up to the surface.
    Secrets are what interest me, particularly the ones that eventually compel seemingly normal people to start obsessing about murder.
    My name is Rachel Alexander. I’m the Alexander in Alexander and Dash, private investigation. I get first billing, but Dash, my partner, is the real teeth in the operation. He’s a pit bull.
    Before I got Dashiell, I worked as a sneaky, lying, low-life, underhanded undercover agent, betraying the confidences of people who befriended me in order to get the information I needed to solve cases. The work suited me, and I liked the odd hours, but after a couple of years I decided I was no longer willing to split the client’s check with an agency. That’s when I started my own business, doing all of the above and worse, but exploiting myself instead of having it done for me by strangers.
    I don’t know how to explain my occupation any more than I can explain anything else about my life. I just have always been more interested in what’s in the hamper than what’s neatly folded in the dresser drawer. It’s not that I don’t ask myself, particularly when Dash and I are out on an especially seedy stakeout, what’s a nice Jewish girl like you doing in a place like this? But I tend to think it wouldn’t be all that different had I gone to medical school. Only then I’d be asking it while delicately sticking a gloved finger up some poor guy’s ass.
    That’s one of the few places I haven ’t had to look for evidence. So far.
    It had finally stopped snowing, and I was getting ready to take my dog out for his afternoon constitutional. I had one of my Timberlands half on when the phone rang.
    “Get that, will you?” I told him, hopping in the direction of the phone.
    Dash took the phone off the receiver and walked toward me with it in his mouth.
    "For me?” I asked.
    He dropped it on my unlaced boot. Thank God for reinforced toe boxes.
    I cradled the phone in my neck, barked “Hello,” and kept struggling with my boot until I figured out the good news. It was work.
    The caller identified himself as Dennis Keaton. He was a pretty unhappy-sounding guy, which isn’t unusual: Happy people don’t usually hire detectives. He asked if he could see me right away about an urgent matter.
    I told him he could.
    I had an urgent matter myself. I was dead broke.
    I could never see the sense in wasting money on an office when most of the work I have to do is done elsewhere. In winter I meet new clients at James J. Walker Park, on Hudson Street. There’s a ball field there where the neighborhood dogs gather to play when it’s off-season. It seems to me the proper ambience for ray work, even when people do scoop.
    Dashiel was dancing impatiently at the door, so I told this Keaton fellow where to meet me, grabbed my coat, my camera, and a notepad, and headed downtown.

2
    It Began to Snow

    DENNIS KEATON ENTERED the park, carefully adjusted the gate so that a garbage can would keep it from blowing open, and looked around for a second, then, with a walk that announced his sexual orientation, headed in my direction.
    He was tall and reedy, but not your typical what-a-waste, gorgeous gay guy. First of all, his nose was much too big. His skin was okay, but pale, even for midwinter in New York. His eyes, which