This Dog for Hire

Louis.” I took a card from my pocket. “Here’s my number, in case you think of anything else you want to tell me, anything at all.
    “Research. Interesting. I can’t imagine how you do whatever it is you do do,” he said. “I don’t know what happened that night, and I wouldn't know where to begin to find out.”
    “What do you do?” I asked him.
    “I teach high school Spanish.”
    Unless he had a relativorico , there was no way Louis Lane could afford his Gucci loafers on a tea C her’s salary. No fucking way.
    “Well, I can’t imagine how you—or anyone— does that. So I guess we’re even.”
    He smiled and showed me his perfect, even white teeth.
    “Dennis doesn’t want to believe that this is a hate crime,” he said. “But what else could it be?”
    “That’s what he hired me to find out,” I said, looking up into Louis’s fathomless dark eyes. “I was hoping to find a witness, actually.”
    He raised his lovely eyebrows. “Really?” he said.
    As far as I was concerned, it was definitely a hate crime. The question was, personal hate or random hate?
    At the foot of the stairs I stepped aside, and Louis walked ahead of me into the gallery, head high, posture perfect, his hair looking as if he had never even heard of a sandstorm.
    I began to walk around and look at the paintings. I passed several of the ones I had seen at the loft. There were a few pieces of sculpture, too, painted wooden pieces. I stopped to look at one, a life-size Magritte, and found myself walking circles around it in the company of a woman my sister would describe as perky and a short-waisted, stocky man wearing gray sweats, red-faced and moist, as if he had just stopped in after a long run.
    “Isn’t this divine ,” the woman said. “God, it’s sold!” I looked at the title card and saw she was right. Next to the price of $8,000 there was a red dot.
    “Eight thousand,” I said aloud, to no one in Particular.
    The guy in sweats whistled, one long, bright, clear note, and shook his head.
    I turned to look at him, but all I saw were his broad shoulders and his back as he moved off into the crowd. Eight thousand, I thought, watching him disappear. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.
    I looked back at the price and the red dot. Clifford must be rolling over in his grave. Actually, Dennis had said the body was cremated, and I wasn’t sure one could still do that under those circumstance,
    “What’s your breed?” the perky woman asked. “Are you in basenjis?” And then she sort of squealed. She had apparently just noticed Dashiell. The funny thing about pit bulls is that sometimes they sort of disappear. Dashiell, who went everywhere with me, had a way of blending in so that, despite his formidable size, he often wasn’t even seen, for example, lying next to the table at a restaurant. Until we got up to leave.
    “I’m a collector,” I told her.
    I lied quickly and easily. Frank always assured me it was a useful skill, not a character flaw.
    “Oh, I am too, in a way. I collect basenjis. I have eleven. Four are Magritte get,” she said with great pride.
    If I were a dog, my brow would have wrinkled and my ears would have gone up. A dog’s get are his offspring. I had been told that Magritte had never been bred.
    “Really,” I said. “Did you get the dogs from Cliff?”
    “Oh, I didn’t buy the dogs. My Tiffany was bred to Magritte. She had a dog and three bitches.’
    «I see. Is this recently? I mean, are the puppies for sale now?”
    “Oh, no. Are you looking for a basenji?” She looked down at Dashiell. Actually, she didn’t have that far down to look. She was about five feet tall, sort of tightly packed, with the kind of hair and makeup I used to see on my Upper East Side dog-training clients. “They’re wonderful with other breeds,” she said, hoping to make a sale. Who’s lying now? I thought. Most basenjis aren’t even good with themselves. Magritte was a miracle of good temperament, partly good breeding and partly because Cliff had trained and socialized him so well. “Melisand is due in heat soon,” she said, “and I was thinking of breeding her back to Magritte. She’s his daughter, out of Windy Moment. That’s Tiffany. I could put you on the wait list,” she said, arching her neat eyebrows.
    Exactly what I needed, an inbred basenji.
    “Um, who have you dealt with for the breedings?” I asked.
    “Gil, of course. I’ve known Gil for, what, seven