This Dog for Hire

in the building— to go upstairs and get Magritte. That’s when I saw he was gone, and his collar and leash weren’t hanging on the hook where Cliff and I always put them. I thought maybe Cliff had taken him with him. Maybe he ran away after Cliff was hit. Maybe he was stolen. He’s an immensely valuable dog, a champion and a son of the top-winning basenji in the country.”
    I nodded, careful not to interrupt.
    “It was never an issue for Cliff, the money, I mean. He kept turning down requests to use the dog at stud. He always talked about it ruining his temperament, you know, making him aggressive with other males. But honestly, I think he just didn’t want the dog to love anyone but him. He got a gigantic kick about Magritte winning in the ring, so he’d let Gil handle him at the shows. Morgan Gilmore, he’s the handler who’s always shown Magritte, he’s fabulous with the breed. But that was it. I mean, I don’t think he thought about the dog loving me, because he had to have someone to take care of him when he couldn’t. So I think he just accepted that. But no one else could get in there, could get between them. God, he just loved that little dog to death.”
    He began to talk faster, as if he needed to relieve himself of the burden of carrying this information all by himself.
    “He didn’t care about making money hiring him out at stud. He used to fight with his handler about it all the time, because he, Gil, said he’d take care of it, and Cliff wouldn’t have to mess with it or worry about it. He said it wouldn’t change him, Magritte, that he’d be the same. But Cliff was adamant. What I’m trying to say is that if someone stole the dog on purpose, like if that were the point, that would mean whoever killed Cliff knew about Magritte. Gay bashing, you live in this neighborhood, you know a lot about gay bashing, it’s random. The event may be planned—after all, you have to remember to put the baseball bats in the car before you leave Jersey—but the victim isn’t preselected. Anyway, if the dog were with Cliff, wouldn’t he have been hit, too?”
    “You mean beaten to death?”
    “I’m sorry. I’m doing this ass backwards. I didn’t tell you one of the most important things. Clifford wasn’t beaten. This was vehicular homicide.”
    “He was run over?”
    “Hit at high speed from behind about two-thirds of the way out onto the pier. At least, that’s where he was found.”
    “Do the police think he was actually hit there or that the body was dumped there?”
    “Oh, no, they found enough evidence, they said, at the scene to be sure it happened there.”
    “Well, I guess we can rule out your garden-variety hit-and-run. Cars aren’t allowed on the pier or, for that matter, except for official vehicles, in that whole waterfront area. Did he have any enemies, that you know of? More apropos, do you know of anyone who might stand to gain from his death?”
    “I don’t know of any specific enemies, not someone who’d want to kill him. Are we talking sane or crazy here? As for money, he plain didn’t have much, not that I know of. His art was barely selling. He would trade pieces sometimes, you know, with artist friends. But he didn’t actually sell much, and when he did, the prices were really low, a thousand or fifteen hundred at most. Ironically, his first break was about to happen. I guess you’d have to say, maybe about to happen. He had just signed his first contract with a gallery weeks before, not a great contract, but still a contract. He was getting his work ready to be in his first group show when he was killed. As far as I know, the loft is mortgaged to the hilt. It’s not as if he owned anything worth killing for. Except Magritte, I guess. But now he’s gone,too.”
    I took the notepad out of my pocket and began to write down the things he was telling me. When I finished writing, I looked up at the dogs. Dashiell was humping a little Jack Russell who kept turning around and snarling at him. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
    “Look,” Dennis finally said, “the case is open, but I’m as sure as I can be that nothing much is being done, because of the location of the crime, the hour, and the sexual orientation of the victim. But this just doesn’t fit the pattern of a bias crime. Well, perhaps there was bias involved—when isn’t there?—but I can’t accept the conclusion that it was a random crime. Even the money in his pocket was peculiar. A thousand