This Dog for Hire

almond, I smelled the comforting odor of dog.
    I was able to roll away, and as I picked myself up, I saw Peter Cole, his face gray with terror, a gray not unlike the one his brother used to paint him as the revolting pervert he was, holding his arm now not around my aching throat but up in front of his own face.
    Dashiell was standing over him, the sound of an outboard motor coming from somewhere deep in his massive chest. Then, his face inches from Peter Cole’s, be barked twice. His tail was wagging. He was triumphant.
    “Get him off me,” he cried. But I ignored him. I turned to look at Magritte, and he was licking his lips. I panicked.
    “Where’s the liver?” I shouted.
    Peter tried to move his arm, and Dashiell grabbed it in his jaws, stopping the movement.
    “Don’t move. Is it still in your hand?”
    I could barely hear him. “No.”
    I turned back to Magritte, who was just sitting in the snow, watching us. Then I saw it, grayish brown, lying in the snow. I picked it up and walked over to where Peter Cole was lying on his back, terrified, under Dashiell, who never once took his eyes off his prey.
    I wondered if he was as scared as he could possibly be. Or if there was room for improvement.
    “Open wide, asshole,” I said, holding the liver over his mouth.
    For a moment, I saw what I had wanted to see. I could leave the rest up to the police. I pulled a plastic bag from my pocket and dropped the liver in, knotting it securely on top.
    “Excuse me,” I said to Peter. “I hope you won’t consider me rude, but I have to use the john.”
    I turned and headed for the cottage and, after making the phone call I had to make, grabbed my sheepskin coat and went back out to the yard to wait for the police.

35
    Up to Scratch

    IT WAS SNOWING lightly on Saturday. In the morning Dashiell and I walked over to Bailey House to see Billy Pittsburgh and tell him the white man he’d seen commit murder was in jail. We saw Ronald, too, and we got to meet Jimmy McEllroy, who was only twenty-two and loved Dashiell, but we never did get to see Sivonia LeBlanc. She had died early on Thursday morning.
    In the afternoon Dashiell and I went over to Dennis’s loft to take Magritte home and collect our check.
    “I still can’t believe it was his own brother who killed him,” he said after I’d caught him up on all he’d missed.
    “Why not? It’s the second-oldest crime. Right after stealing fruit.”
    If ever I’d heard an exit line, that was it. I stood and picked up my coat.
    “Wait up,” he said. “You never told me how Dashiell got out of the house.”
    “Dashiell,” I said, and when he looked up from wrestling with Magritte, I pointed to the door.
    He was up in a flash. He grasped the knob, turned his head, and, carefully keeping his grip, backed up.
    “Only their door opens out, so he had to push instead of pull.”
    “Brilliant!” he k’velled.
    “Yeah, yeah,” I said modestly.
    I had known Dennis less than two weeks, but it seemed I’d known him ages. I sometimes think detective work is like summer camp. You make friends and enemies in record time.
    “I was at the Sixth yesterday,” I told him as I put on my coat. “They have the tapes, the slides, and the piece of tainted liver Peter tried to shove into my mouth.”
    “We did so well , didn’t we?” he said, sharing the credit as he leaned to kiss me good-bye. “We could be partners, Rachel, you know, a politically correct Nick and Nora Charles. And Dashiell—”
    “Yeah, yeah. Dashiell could be fucking Asta.”
    “Exactly,” he said with a grin, those lovely crooked teeth looking like piano keys after an earthquake.
    But I already had a partner, I thought as I followed him down the stairs, his ears bobbing as he descended toward the street. One who had proven himself up to scratch.
    Once upon a time I had saved his life. He had recently returned the favor.