This Dog for Hire

Clever, Clifford, mighty clever, I thought, and then, when the next certificate was in my hand, I was filled with admiration. It seems Magritte had a C.D., a Companion Dog degree, which meant he had satisfactorily performed all the basic commands off lead at three different AKC obedience trials and under three different judges, no small feat for a basenji.
    There were photos in the file, too. In all three, Magritte was stacked, meaning he was standing in show pose, and a handler, a tail man with a ponytail, presumably Morgan Gilmore, was holding the show lead taut and beaming. The judge was in the photos, too, holding the blue ribbon and whatever bowl or platter Magritte had won at each of the three shows.
    I found Cliff’s gallery contract, signed by Veronica Cahill. Most interesting, there was even a copy of his will in the file drawer, with a note saying the original copy was filed with George Rich, his lawyer.
    The most recent check register showed regular monthly payments to a Dr. Bertram Kleinman. I checked the medicine cabinet. There was no AZT, DDL Bactrim, or even Flagyl. It didn’t appear Cliff had active AIDS. There was no Prednisone or allergy medication.
    Was Dr. Kleinman a chiropractor or a shrink?
    From the amount of the checks, and the little drawings on them, two men emoting in kind, my guess was that Clifford Cole was in some sort of interactive therapy.
    A gay man in therapy—what a surprise.
    After another thirty or forty minutes of poking around, I took Cliff’s will, the gallery contract, his -address book, and Dashiell and headed for the closest copy shop, returning everything to where we found it before heading back for another look at the Christopher Street pier. But when we left the loft, I decided to walk over to the gallery first, just to take a look around and see what I might find out.
    The Veronica Cahill Gallery was on the fifth floor of a wide ten-story brick building on West Broadway between Prince and Spring. To get to the gallery, you take one of those elevators that open on either side, depending upon which side you push the button, which depends upon which of the two galleries on each floor you are going to. The elevator opened right into the gallery spaces, which, like most of the West Broadway spaces, were large and bright.
    The current installation at Cahill was called Dots, and the most enigmatic dot for me was the single sculpture placed in the middle of the gallery’s white floor. It looked like an enormous bowling ball, but without the holes. It was titled Black Dot. The price on the title card was $25,000, and amazingly, there was a red dot on the card, signifying that this lucky dot had found a home. The paintings were also fairly large, although there were a few small ones toward the back of the gallery. They consisted of various canvases painted either white with one or more black circles or, for variety, black with one or several white circles. Prices were all in the ten-to twelve-thousand range. Several of those were sold as well. To each his own.
    Dashiell and I had been welcomed by a short young blond with the proportions of a twelve-year-old, no hips, no tits, dressed all in black but, happily, without a dot on her outfit. He was offered a dog biscuit, and I was told about how fabulously Well this young artist was doing, asked if I knew “Tess,” if I had been at the opening, which was fabulous, if I was a collector, and then followed around as I looked at paintings, as if I might, if not watched carefully, slip one into my pocket.
    The more I looked, the more I began to wonder if the red dots signifying sales were all real or if perhaps the gallery put out a few to make people think their current installation was hot and start a buying frenzy.
    “This is nice,” I said, trying to look sincere, “but what I really love are paintings of dogs. I sort of, you know, collect them.”
    I gave her the perfect opportunity to hard sell me a Clifford Cole painting. She fumbled the dot, but made a slight recovery.
    “I don’t know what’s going to be in the next show. But would you like to be on our mailing list?” I signed a false name in the book, thanked the young woman profusely, turned down a second Sausage for Dashiell, and headed back to the Christopher Street pier.

7
    I Began to Dig Carefully

    I WANTED DASHIELL in a work mode, so I kept him on leash until we were on the pier. Then I pointed down the pier, told him, “Find it,” and let him go.
    I