This Dog for Hire (28 page)

Difficult to rent a car without a credit card. Difficult to use a fake name when you need the credit card and driver's license.

Still, he'd planned so carefully. He knew he couldn't use his own car. Clifford would have recognized it. Had to think it out, think it through, find a way to stop the little shit-eating sissy from destroying his life. He had his name to think about, his reputation, his job. He had sons to protect.

His sons. How he missed them. There was another one who took things the wrong way, Linda, that cow, making a big deal over everything, couldn't even let him love his own kids in his own way, seeing faults in every little thing. Forcing him out.

The way his brother had forced him into
this
. Threatened him.

Both
of them. Family! Well, fuck that noise.

It wasn't that he
liked
the idea of killing his brother, shit, he was no pervert, he wouldn't
enjoy
doing this, it just had to be done, Clifford running amok like he was, painting him as some old faggot, some helen, in a fucking dress, for God's sake, what would people think, and how would he earn a living, right, great, working with adolescent boys after
those
pictures were in everyone's face, his luck, the shit would end up in some museum, and then he looked up, and saw that his brother had passed the car, he was on the pier now, running, running toward that stupid dog of his, damn thing would be the death of him, and you know, he couldn't help it, he had to laugh at his own joke.

It's his own damn fault, the little shit, he just wouldn't let it go. I told him, Drop it already, I told him, that's how boys play, crying in the restaurant, his eyes all red, as if he were some girl, what would people think.

After the impact, he hit the brake.

Safe, he thought. I'm safe. Then, looking over his shoulder, he backed off the pier and was gone.

The car was coming out backward, quick as it went in, and Billy Pittsburgh ducked down, down, down, under his blanket and lay still as snow, stayed that way so long, maybe he fell back to sleep again.

When dawn broke, the gulls woke Billy, and, wrapped in his blanket, dragging his bag of bottles and cans, he walked partway out onto the pier, saw the dog was gone, saw the young white man lying on his back; and he turned around fast as he could, knew just where he could take what he knew, trade it for some coffee, a place to sit and drink it out of the weather.

Turning his back to the wind, he headed for Tenth Street, for the Sixth Precinct, passing on his way the wrought-iron gate that led down the passageway that opened into the garden in which my cottage sat and in which I lay warm as the coffee cup he'd soon be holding in his hands, sleeping like spoons with my dog.

I don't know how long I sat there brooding, but it was dark out, time to go. I had seen a leather backpack in Clifford's bedroom closet. I took the significant audio- and videotapes and the box of slides I had picked up at B & H, put them in the backpack, and locked up the dark loft.

Walking home from Clifford Cole's sad, empty loft to my own cozy cottage, I kept trying to figure out exactly how I could make sure that Peter Cole would get his just reward. I had to get him. Had to.

Though I did not want to be the one to have to tell Adrienne Wynton Cole that she had lost
both
her sons.

Still, it had to be done.

That he deserved to be got, I had little doubt. But so far all the evidence was circumstantial, none of it conclusive. I had to be sure that if he was charged, the charges would stick, because nowadays people got away with all kinds of murder.

34

I Know Your Secret

Magritte began to whine, anxious to run free in the garden. The lock on the gate seemed stuck—all these gates were so old—but I wiggled the key, and finally it clicked open. I unhooked the leads, and both dogs dashed on ahead down the narrow, unlit passageway. I locked the gate behind me and noticed how relieved and safe I always felt to be home.

Except for the path, where it had been worn down by our feet, the garden was still covered with thick layers of snow, crusted hard on top so that there was a sound like crinkling cellophane when the dogs ran. It was a clear night. I stood still for a moment, looking up at the stars.

It was quiet in the garden, the way it rarely is in New York. Even that hum that newcomers to the city are so conscious of, that unexplainable constant din of background noise, seemed to have abated. When Dashiell sneezed, it seemed as loud as a thunderclap.

Inside, I toweled off the dogs, filled their water bowl, and made a fire. I thought about calling Dennis, but it was after eleven and I decided against it. It would be better to call him when I knew for sure what I was going to do.

I thought about calling Peter Cole, too, but not then. I could call late the next morning, after he'd left for work, and leave a message on his answering machine. I could even use my own voice-changing telephone, if I could figure out which box in the basement it was in.

I know your secret, I could say.

Yeah.

Meet me at the pier. You know which one, and you know when. Don't tell anyone about this call, asshole, and bring five thousand dollars with you.

The price has gone up, I could say.

Right. I should wait alone on the Christopher Street pier at four in the morning for a guy who had already killed his own brother, like he'd have some compunction about eighty-sixing me.

He'd probably just rent a car and drive over me a few dozen times, just to make sure I didn't bother him again.

Growing up is murder. I'm glad I never tried it.

I decided to go to bed and figure it out in the morning, when I'd be seven or eight hours more mature.

But when I got upstairs and was taking off my snow boots, Dashiell began to pace and whine, going over to the window, pushing his nose against the shutters so that they rattled, then coming back to me and catching my eye.

I shut off the light, went over to the window, and, leaving the shutters closed, opened the slats so that I could see out. My bedroom window faced the main house, and as I looked across the deserted white garden, for just a moment I saw a flash of light.

It could have been from a car passing on Tenth Street, the headlights momentarily lighting up the dark house. Except that this light didn't flash across the house, appearing first in one room and then almost instantly the next, moving left to right from where I was, the way the one-way traffic did on Tenth Street. This light was only in the kitchen, nowhere else. It was an intense beam. The kind of light a flashlight makes.

I looked down at Dashiell and saw that his hackles were up, so I relaced my Timberlands and, keeping the lights off and not bothering with a coat, left the cottage and headed for the Siegal house to see what was going on.

I had only planned on taking Dashiell. Magritte was sleeping on my bed, and I had no reason to disturb him, but as usual he had ideas of his own. I felt him brush by me on the stairs, and he was first out the door, turning back toward us with his eyes afire, then play-bowing to Dashiell to start a game.

But Dashiell wasn't having any. His mind was elsewhere.

I followed him across the winter yard, the elongated shadow of the big oak flat on the snow in front of us, then crawling up the bricks of Norma and Sheldon's house.

There was light on the third floor now. I saw it swing across the back bedroom Norma used as a study.

I unlocked the back door as quietly as I could, pulled it open, and left it slightly ajar, going first, while I had the chance, toward the front of the house to find out where someone had gotten in. I signaled Dash to stay by me, but he kept looking toward the stairs. Still, he obeyed, and Magritte trotted alongside, stopping here and there to sniff the strange territory.

It didn't take a detective to see what had happened. One of the front ground-floor windows had been broken. But this time someone had used a glass cutter and a suction cup, silently cutting a circle near the lock rather than noisily smashing the whole window. Someone had planned this, had cased the house and returned with the necessary tools to do the job.

My heart picked up its pace, knees high, arms pumping. If a heart could sweat, mine was sweating. I had thought I'd find another homeless person, some hapless creature just trying to find shelter from the cold. A homeless person with a glass cutter?

Had Big Foot's cab followed close enough to my own to see approximately where I had disappeared after getting out of my cab? Not knowing the Village, Peter Cole wouldn't be likely to guess the secret of what lay beyond the wrought-iron gate. He would naturally assume I lived in the main house. Or had he tried the gate? Was that why I'd had trouble with the lock?

I decided to go back to the cottage and call the precinct. I didn't think it was a great idea to take chances when my gun was in its shoe box in the closet rather than tucked into my waist and there were a bunch of lovely policemen just across the street waiting for a little excitement to enter their lives.

I gestured to the dogs and headed for the open back door. But when I stepped out the door, Dashiell was nowhere in sight. He must have misunderstood; whenever we had come in the past, he had gotten to search the whole house. And this time, his efforts would actually pay off. Apparently he was on his way upstairs; when I stepped out onto the small back porch, there I was alone with Magritte.

I turned to go back and call him. After all, Peter's choice of weapons was pretty eclectic. This time around
he
might have a gun. But before I got the chance to take a step, the breath was squeezed out of me, a powerful arm around my throat, choking me, taking me off balance, and dragging me backward. I could smell the foulness of stale cigar smoke on his breath and 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 was 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 the 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 CD., 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 almond, I smelled the comforting odor of dog.