This Dog for Hire

boy on the right, the older of the two, a ten- or eleven-year-old, had a lewd expression on his face. In the usual spot, it said les and mor.
    Cliff’s work was more intellectual than emotional, more Magritte than Matisse. Even the disturbing pieces had a coldness to them; they were either fascinating or clever but kept the viewer at a distance rather than embracing him, rather than bringing him into the painting or into the heart of the artist. Whatever emotion was visible was well controlled, as if the hurt could be displayed visually but without the accompanying feeling. I wondered how the work reflected the man, but it’s not possible to put together a person from the pieces of his life. You can’t even come close.
    At the side of the bed there was another Magritte, the Clifford kind, the chestnut-and-white dog flying over the rooftops of what appeared to be Paris, a basenji angel with creamy, feathered wings. I wondered if Louis had seen good boy, and if he had indeed been jealous of his demanding, adored rival.
    I opened the drawers of the nightstands and pawed through the dead man’s personal stuff— condoms, K-Y jelly, handcuffs, nothing unusual.
    I opened the closet and looked at the clothes, good-quality pants and jackets and lots of them, not the kind of clothes I’d expect to find in a poor artist’s closet. Jack, who dressed like a peacock when he wasn’t filling cavities (no pun intended, the man a dentist), had introduced me to designer clothes, and now I could tell without even checking the labels. Cliff was apparently slight; his butterscotch-colored suede jacket fit me perfectly.
    When I heard the kettle, I put Cliff’s jacket away and went back to the kitchen, adding up in my head the cost of what I had seen in the closet, then opening the cabinets and toting up how much Clifford had spent to outfit his kitchen. Poor artist indeed. Perhaps the man had a patron.
    Louis Lane?
    I took my tea over to a desk that sat in a little in-between area, open, of course, because it had no window. It was a cozy nook with a desk, a rich, red oriental rug, red walls, and a red velvet chair, someplace to read, listen to music, watch videos, pay the bills.
    There were two drawings and a painting in the den that were not Cliff’s—a lovely pencil sketch of Magritte, signed “Jan Bella,” a pen-and-ink nude, male, signed “D. K.” (the D. K. who was helping me pay my bills?), and a smallish watercolor head study of a sweetly handsome young man with a halo of curly hair, signed “john.”
    I sat at the desk and began to open drawers, and what I found told me that there were some pretty important things that Dennis Keaton did not know about his friend.
    The first file I found was the one for Clifford’s Fidelity Corporate Bond Fund. His current investment was in the neighborhood of $200,000, give or take a few thou.
    The next file was an IRA, with Dreyfus. That was only valued at $22,611.16, but hell, the man had only been thirty-two.
    His checkbook—Chemical Bank Select Checking, which, according to the brochure of bank costs in the file, required a minimum balance of $25,000, entitling Cliff to free checking, free telephone transfers, the privilege of larger ATM withdrawals, and a shorter line when he had to show up at the bank in person—had a balance of $44,682.13 in savings and only $132.1I in checking after a cash withdrawal of $1,000 made January 18, the day before he died. Clifford had neatly recorded the withdrawal both in his checkbook and on the bottom of the previous bank statement. But I hadn’t needed to see that to know he was an obsessive-compulsive personality type. I had seen his pots.
    I had also found money in many of his pockets, along with small sandwich bags for picking up after Magritte. As with every other New York City dog owner, every pocket, including the ones in his tux jacket, had plastic bags in it, because even if you’ve been out to a black-tie event, you still have to walk your dog and scoop when you get home.
    Magritte’s papers were in the desk, too, neatly filed like everything else. He was four and a half. His health was protected by the Murray Hill Animal Hospital on East Thirtieth Street. He had, I noticed, been vaccinated against Lyme disease, which probably meant he was taken out of the city regularly, perhaps to outdoor dog shows, and his rabies shot was up to date. He was indeed a champion of record, American, Canadian Ch. Ceci N’Est Pas un Chien.