This Dog for Hire

clothing and smell the sourness of his sweat, even though it was below twenty and we were out-of-doors. I clawed at his arm and kicked back, but his grip only tightened, and when I opened my mouth, he clamped his other hand, in a leather glove, over it.
    Suddenly he was dragging me closer to the house. I thought he was going to take me back inside where no one would have heard anything and he could have done whatever his beady black heart desired to me, but he didn’t.
    He did something far worse. He kicked the door shut, separating me from Dashiell. Once again, I was in danger and the only one there to help me was a twenty-pound basenji.
    With the door closed and me under control, Peter began to whistle, that eerie little tune, four notes, a pause, the same four notes again.
    That’s when I remembered who it was that Peter Cole was out to get.
    If I got it too, well, that would only mean he may being careful.
    I could see Magritte in the center of the garden, keeping his distance.
    Peter whistled again.
    Magritte wasn’t having any.
    The choke hold tightened. Here was clearly a man who could do more than one thing at a time.
    Maybe someone else had heard the whistle. I thought, but wasn’t that just me whistling in the dark, so to speak? True, another garden backed up to mine, and beyond it was another house, one, you entered from Christopher Street, one block south of Tenth. But those windows were so far away. And there was a wall at the back of the property, separating the gardens. What I loved about this place was privacy, but just then I was thinking maybe I had too much of a good thing.
    I was shivering.
    I tried to tell myself it was because I hadn’t taken my coat when I ran out.
    Suddenly the hand on my mouth loosened and I heard his raspy voice, a guttural whisper right at my ear.
    “If you scream. I’ll hurt you. Will you be quiet?"
    I nodded enthusiastically, and the hand slipped off my mouth but the arm around my throat held tight. It was then I had a hopeful thought. He didn’t know I knew who he was. He was behind me, whispering. Maybe he didn’t intend to kill me. Maybe I could get out of this.
    “Who are you?” I whispered, not wanting him to think I was crying for help and cover my mouth again. “What do you want here?”
    “Shut up” he growled. I could feel him moving behind me, but I didn’t know what he was doing. Then he spoke again, but this time that rough voice was up in pitch. Because it wasn’t me he was addressing.
    “Here, boy,” he said. He whistled again. Four notes. A pause. The same four notes, only an octave higher.
    Magritte cocked his head and lifted one front paw. But he didn’t come closer. Instead, he began to whine.
    Even a basenji, not exactly my number-one choice as a protection dog, knew something was wrong. Magritte had grown attached to me, and he could smell my fear as well as he could sense Peter’s malice.
    Again, “Here, boy.” Then I could see his hand moving, waving about. He had something for Magritte, and he was trying to tease him closer. The hand moved where I could see it, thumb and pointer holding something small, something hard, something grayish brown.
    Liver!
    Magritte took a tentative step closer.
    I didn’t know how far Clifford had gone with Magritte beyond the C.D., but if he had, it was my only hope.
    I screamed at the top of my lungs, “Go out! Magritte, go out!”
    And as I did that, I realized I might have just traded Magritte’s life for my own. I could literally feel the rage surge in Peter Cole. A hideous sound came from me as the arm around my neck jerked back. My knees buckled, and I thought I was going to pass out. But two things changed all that.
    One was Peter trying to force the piece of liver into my mouth. I never ate it as a kid, and I sure as hell didn’t want to start now, not with the smell of bitter almond filling my nostrils.
    The second thing that happened was that I saw something move off to the side. And realizing what it was gave me courage.
    I jerked my head violently from side to side. You don’t grow up with a Jewish mother without knowing how to refuse food. At the same time, I lifted one two-ton Timberland boot and kicked back as hard as I could. It felt as if I only glanced off his shin, but I heard an oof, so I knew I’d hurt him, and before he got the chance to get even, and then some—this was surely a vindictive man—we were both pitched sideways into the snow. Now instead of bitter