This Dog for Hire

according to the rest of his coloring should have been a to-die-for blue, were an unrevealing steely gray. His uncombed mop of curls reminded me of an apricot-colored standard poodle I had trained for a lady rabbi, the Reverend Janet, back when I was the Kaminsky of Kaminsky and Son Dog Academy. Bernie, the Golden I had then, was the son. That was before I got married, before I got divorced, and before
    I decided to go from getting growled at to getting shot at, escalating what my shrink called my rabid counterphobia.
    “Rachel Alexander?”
    As soon as he opened his mouth, I saw that his teeth were crooked, too.
    I was leaning against the back fence and patted the spot next to me in response.
    He wore a brown leather bomber jacket, a small loop of red ribbon, carelessly attached with a safety pin, a long white aviator scarf around his skinny neck, and, despite a temperature in the low thirties, no hat. The rest of his ensemble deviated from code—shapeless corduroy overalls and ancient brown oxfords, both dappled with spots of black paint.
    He took a deep breath and let it go. “A friend of mine, Clifford Cole, has been murdered,” he said. “I was told you might be able to help me find out who did it.”
    He looked to be in his mid-thirties, but who knows. In this neighborhood, there’s more illusion than reality. For all I knew, I was looking at the aftermath of a face-lift, a dye job, a perm, and liposuction.
    “That’s police business,” I said. “Why would you want to pay for something you can get done free?”
    I glanced at Dash, who was doing the doggy two-step with a flirtatious husky bitch.
    “It’s been two weeks since Cliff was killed— perhaps you saw it in the paper, if you had a magnifying glass. There’s been virtually no interest and no progress.”
    I nodded. Most people talk more freely if they have evidence that someone’s actually listening. The more information I can get before I start asking a lot of questions, the more revealing it tends to be, though it could take a while to figure out precisely what has been revealed.
    “Since . . . the body was found on the Christopher Street pier, the police are treating it as a gay bashing.”
    “And you say?”
    “Cliffie never cruised the waterfront. He has, God, I’m still having a lot of trouble with tense, he had a lover, but even before Louie, he didn’t. It just wasn’t his style. Besides, there are other things that signal it wasn’t a random killing. The hour, for one thing. The estimated time of death was between four and six in the morning. Cliff was a painter. He has the loft above mine. He was a day person, up with the sun and right to work. It always floored me, because I’m up early trying my best to avoid working for as long as possible. And I quit as soon as I can manage to without excessive guilt. But Cliff was one of those people who could go on and on. His stamina was phenomenal. The energy in his work was just enormous, but well controlled. After he worked, he’d get cleaned up and then he’d go out with Magritte, they’d go out for hours. That’s the other thing,” he said, his voice suddenly sounding as if he were in a movie on television from which off-color words had been bleeped. “Magritte is missing. He wasn’t at the loft, and he wasn’t with Cliff when he was found.”
    He took out a handkerchief and blew his big nose.
    “Magritte? The train coming out of the fireplace? And the pipe? Cecin’est pas un pipe, right?”
    “Yes, but this Magritte is a basenji. The barkless dog?”
    I nodded. Anyone who’d worked as a dog trainer would know basenjis, one of the two quintessential brat dog breeds. Until rottweilers got so popular, basenjis and fox terriers were two of the mainstays of the industry.
    “I’ve been at the loft, of course. We had each other’s keys since Magritte was a puppy. I had him a lot of the time. You couldn’t leave him alone for more than an hour or two. He’d get really destructive, and he’d make an awful racket.”
    Tell me about it, I thought. But I let him keep on talking.
    “Louie couldn’t stand him. So Cliff never took him to Louie’s. And Louie never stayed at the loft. He was so pissed when Cliff began talking about getting a dog, and it only got worse. I think he was jealous. So Magritte stayed with me whenever Cliff stayed over at Louie’s. He’s always been sort of my dog, too. Anyway, it was only natural, when the police came—they spoke to everyone