This Dog for Hire

dollars, separate from the rest of his money. And left on the body. Not taken. The bottom line is, I need to know who did this. And I need to find Magritte,” he said.
    He looked away. Maybe to watch the Jack Russell trying to get even.
    I waited.
    “The longer he’s missing, the less chance there is we’ll find him alive.”
    “Hadn’t we better get moving?”
    He turned around, looking like a deer caught in the headlights.
    “You’ll take the case?”
    I nodded.
    “Oh, shit. I didn’t ask what you charge.”
    “It’s five hundred a day plus expenses for me and a straight fifty for the dog.”
    “Fifty a day extra for finding Magritte?”
    “No. Fifty a day extra for Dashiell. And I absorb his expenses.”
    A line appeared between Dennis's gray eyes.
    “You mean if I hire you without the dog it’s only five, plus expenses, of course?”
    “Right. But I don’t work without him. It’s a jungle out there, and I need to know at least one of the animals is on my side. Do you know what I mean?”
    “I do,” he said, making a sound with his nose that would have gotten a tsk-tsk from my mother, the late but, if possible, still perfect Beatrice Markowitz Kaminsky. “Precisely. Okay—let’s do this. When do we begin?”
    “How about now?” I slipped off a glove, put two fingers in my mouth, and blew hard, making the sound of air coming out of a balloon.
    “Needs work,” he said. He whistled loud enough to wake the dead.
    It must be a sex-linked trait. And, Lord knows, I haven’t had any of that in a while.
    “Thanks. Anyway, I’ll need access to Cliff’s studio, if possible. I’d like to spend some time there with Dashiell. I have lots more to ask you, but we can do that on the way.”
    “Does Dashiell actually ... do things, I mean, besides protecting you?”
    I looked down at my dog. The top of his head had been slimed by one of the other dogs. His big meaty mouth was agape and panting, a loop of drool draped delicately over his worm-colored lower lip. And he was covered with dirt.
    “You thought he was just a pretty face?”
    Dennis Keaton’s smile was nervous and lopsided, the left side of his mouth moving up at the corner, the right side staying where it was. I got a good close-up view of those crooked teeth.
    “Let’s go,” he said, pushing off the chain-link fence. “We can stop at my place for the keys, and I guess you’ll be wanting an advance, or do I see too many movies?”
    “I have no idea how many movies you see, but I see too many bills. I require a thousand-dollar advance.”
    Now he nodded.
    He seemed like an admirable fellow, my new client, taking on responsibility in a world where most people prefer to shirk it. It appeared he wanted to do right by his friend, a friend whose murderer he wanted found at any cost. And in the midst of his grief, he was even worried about a little basenji.
    I wondered what the real story was.
    “Suppose we find Magritte, what then?” I asked while opening the loop of Dashiell’s nylon slip collar. “W ho would he belong to now that Clifford is gone:
    “Why, me, of course. I thought I made it clear that he’s always been sort of my dog, too.”
    “I see,” I said.
    So it wasn’t quite as noble as it appeared, I thought. Then again, it hardly ever is.
    I slipped the collar onto Dash, and when I looked up, Dennis was holding the gate for me. What next, I thought, is he going to place his hand in the center of my back and steer me across the street? How does anyone know how to behave nowadays!
    It began to snow. Huge white flakes were falling on and around us as slowly as if we were in a dream, and suddenly all the sounds were muted. Even the Hudson Street traffic sounded far away.
    I wondered if it had been snowing the night Clifford Cole had died.
    “Can we make a detour?“ I asked.
    “Where to?”
    “I need you to show me where Clifford’s body was found.”
    I had a stack of bills waiting on my desk at home. A case was exactly what I needed, and now, thanks to Dennis Keaton, a case was what I had. If I had a normal occupation, I’d be happy. But I don’t. And I wasn’t. I’d have been a fool not to think that the homely man with the goofy smile walking quietly at my side might himself be the killer I was hired to find.
    Hiring the PI to throw everyone off the track is not unheard of, particularly when someone hires a woman in what’s clearly a man’s profession. Sometimes it’s because they think a woman will fail,