This Dog for Hire

pier at that hour?”
    “You mean he took Magritte out to help him hit 0 n someone and then tied him up while he was having sex? That’s so cheap.”
    “It’s done all the time, Dennis. Let’s get real here. Well, it may not be done all that often with a dog in tow, but guys are out there fucking in all kinds of weather and at just about any hour after-dark. Am I right?”
    “Okay, okay, I hear you. You’re right. The police are right. So he had Magritte with him, and Magritte carried on while Clifford had sex. Magritte wouldn’t have taken this lying down, you know. He had this thing about not being stopped from what he was doing. So if you took him out to walk, you better keep walking, not tie him up and fuck. That wouldn’t have been part of his agenda.”
    “Dennis, I didn’t say Magritte was happy to be tied up on the pier. And I know you're not happy to hear this.”
    “Never mind that. We’re after the truth, aren’t we? So, the way I figure it, why take the dog? He only would have made a racket. He’d have sounded like he was being murdered. That’s just the way he was when he was thwarted. People think these dogs are quiet because they don’t bark. Trust me, they’re not quiet.”
    “Dennis, I can’t say for sure why Cliff took Magritte with him, but you have to admit, a dog is ;l great icebreaker. No pun intended.”
    “Okay, okay, I understand, but what about the money, the thousand dollars?”
    “Clifford wasn’t quite as poor as you thought he was, Dennis. There’s apparently money in the family. ”
    “And the thousand?”
    “Maybe he was just careless about money, since he never had to worry about it. Or maybe, like a lot of guys, he liked to carry a lot of cash. I read once that women will walk around with twenty bucks on them and feel fine, but that a majority of men don’t feel right unless they’ve got at least a hundred bucks in their pockets. Maybe he needed the money for something the next day and forgot it was in his pocket. Re left cash in lots of his jacket pockets, Dennis, not a thousand dollars, but cash. There was a fifty in his jean jacket. He seems to have been careless with money. Not irresponsible, but careless. Again, maybe because it wasn’t in short supply when he was growing up.”
    “None of this makes any sense.”
    “It will. Give it time.”
    “But we know Magritte was there. That’s definite. And that he was left there. We know that, too,” he said, trying to take comfort in the fact that we had learned something about the night Cliff was killed.
    “Apparently. The money was left. The dog was left. Maybe something went wrong. Who knows? We don’t know the point of this, do we? But it’s my guess that Magritte was there at the time of the murder. From the looks of the leash, he jumped around and couldn’t break it, but finally backed out of the collar. What if, let’s say, Cliff had had a ro w with Louis, a big one, and maybe he went out to find someone for spite. It happens.”
    “Rachel, I—”
    “Dennis, you know how people driving by always stare at the pier when they’re waiting for the light to change. They hate what they’re going to see, but they’re compelled to look, like when you pass a car accident. Okay, suppose some nut job was driving by on West Street, no one’s around, and he sees a couple of guys in flagrante on the pier and loses it. He turns his car around, shoots back uptown, drives onto the waterfront area and back to the pier. Maybe by then, the other guy has left. Cliff is on the way to untie Magritte, and this poor excuse for a human being drives onto the pier and runs him down. He wouldn’t take the chance of getting out of the vehicle and checking his pockets. He wouldn’t expect to find so much money. Money isn’t the point, is it? He probably got the hell away as fast as he could. He probably never even saw Magritte tied up at the far end or heard him over the car’s engine.”
    For the second time he made that sound with his nose that would have caused Beatrice, the perfect one, to hand him a clean, ironed handkerchief.
    “I’m not ready to give up yet,” he said. “Are you?”
    “Of course not. I mean, even if it turns out to 1,% that it is what it looks like now, maybe we can catch the bastard. Maybe I can find a witness. The opening is tomorrow night. Let’s see what we learn there, okay? By the way, has the gallery been in touch with you about getting the paintings?”
    “No. They’re