This Dog for Hire

out. Loss: one best friend with whom he was possibly (hopelessly?) in love.
    Louis Lane, aka Leonard Polski.
    Inherits a previously worthless, now valuable art collection. Could there have been a long-term plan at work here? After all, Louis had hooked Cliff up with Veronica. Were there hard feelings, oops, between the lovers? A desire for revenge? A need lor money? Loss: the love of his life? Or not.
    Veronica Cahill.
    Lots of SoHo galleries had closed and lots of others were in financial difficulties, so . . . Did Louis and Veronica, old buddies, team up? If yes, how could this connect with where the murder took place? If they planned to kill Cliff together, then use the murder to increase the value of his work, how did they know he’d be on the pier that night?
    Why was I doing this? The man was killed at four in the morning on the Christopher Street pier, where he had gone with his dog to get lucky. Boy, did he not get lucky! The best I could hope for was a witness—talk about getting lucky—and one who was sane and sober enough to have gotten the license plate number. Fat fucking chance, as my grandmother would have said if there had been a Yiddish equivalent. Like on top of everything else, the guy would have had to have a pencil and paper.
    I added the next name.
    Morgan Gilmore, Magritte’s handler.
    Gil and Cliff argued about whether or not to breed Magritte, but what could Gil gain from Cliff’s death? He didn’t inherit M. Did he think he would? Is there more to this picture? Would Dennis keep up M’s career, or was Gil now out of a job?
    Adrienne Wynton Cole, Cliff’s mother.
    She gets the dough. But it was probably hers in the first place, and she probably has a ton more. Mothers don’t usually murder their children by running them over. They do it slowly, using guilt and disappointment. Even if she didn’t accept her son or really know him (what else is new?), she lost her son.
    Peter David Cole, Cliff’s brother.
    He would have gotten the dough if Adrienne had kicked off first. If Cliff was in his early thirties, his mother was probably somewhere in her fifties or sixties. Even if she would now leave everything she had to Peter, he’d have a pretty long wait. Not a terrific investment, killing your brother and waiting twenty-plus years for the payoff, unless she prefers a charity of some sort, other than her own son. That probably depends whether she approves of Peter David. Have to meet him. Maybe at the opening? Loss: his brother.
    I began to think about Lillian and all the times I felt like strangling her. But I’d never actually do it. Even though you probably get angrier at your family than at anyone else, they’re your history, too, the people who know every stupid story about you since day one.
    Okay. Check out the lover. And the gallery owner. Hey, what they do is exploit artists, isn’t it? Maybe murder comes under the heading of exploitation, furthering his career. After all, his stuff wasn't worth much when he was alive, was it? Check prices.
    I tacked the photos onto the wall, lonely shots of the pier, Cliff’s art, even his unmade bed, images to haunt me as I tried to make sense of what appeared to be a senseless crime.
    I decided to check the main house before getting ready for the opening. Not bothering with a coat, I grabbed the keys off a hook in the kitchen and ran across the snow-covered garden, Dashiell leading the way straight to the Siegals’ back door.
    I unlocked both locks, stomped the snow off my boots, pulled the door open, and followed Dashiell inside. Once indoors, I signalled Dashiell to sit and watch me, then gave him the hand signal for go find, a flat, open hand first touching my right eye, then sweeping out forward as far as I could reach.
    Dashiell headed for the front room. We always started downstairs and worked our way up. I followed along behind, making sure the doors were still locked, no windows had been broken, no gas was leaking, no pipes had burst. Dash made sure no one else was in the house.
    Downstairs was where a burglar would be most likely to break in, even though some preferred access from above, coming from the roof of another building. In some places in the city, you could travel an entire block by running across the roofs.
    In New York City, most accessible windows had bars on them. But Norma wouldn’t hear of it. “They’re ugly,” she’d said when I suggested that window guards would help safeguard the house. “I will not