I fed Dashiell, got dressed, and headed downtown to Clifford Cole’s loft.
Where Dennis had warmed the cavernous space with color, Cliff’s studio area was white—tin ceiling, walls, and wooden floor all done in a shiny enamel so that when I arrived, the sun was bouncing off whatever surface it hit, except of course the paintings, where the light seemed to become absorbed into the canvas. The paintings apparently had not been touched since the murder, and I made a note to find out who owned them now. Then I took some photographs of the studio.
All the paintings in the large room were Cliff’s, all huge, some telling their story in three or even four canvases. There was one set of three canvases, hung so that there were only inches between where one stopped and the next began, that took up the entire north wall of the huge space. The first canvas showed a pale blue wall with a window. Out the window was a single branch with buds, a March branch, and on the pale wooden floor a yellow and black ball, the kind that squeaks when squeezed. The second canvas showed more of the same place, blue wall, no window this time, a single wooden chair with a black baseball cap with a red B on it hanging over the left-hand corner of the ladderback, a green frog under the chair, the same kind Henri had gotten for his Jimmy dog and then kept “for memories.” The third canvas showed the blue wall, the pickled whitish wooden floor, and the back end of Magritte, as if he had been caught walking out of the picture. In the lower right-hand corner of the last panel of the triptych, Clifford had printed the title of the painting in small, neat letters, all lowercase: out, damned spot.
There was another painting of Magritte on the south wall, this one called rising son. It showed another underfurnished room. Even the paint was used starkly in these portraits. The color was rich, but the brush strokes were very even, and you could see the texture of the canvas as part of the painting. At the top of the portrait, you could see the white-socked feet of the basenji, as if this time Magritte were floating up out of his own portrait.
There were two paintings standing against that wall, both done at the beach. In one, an oversize close-up of part of a wooden beach house, painted in shades of gray: you could see through the large window that it was raining indoors. The small printed title read home, sweet home. The other painting showed Magritte leaning out the window, elbows on the sill, a cigarette dangling from his tight lips, like the lonely men you see looking out of tenement windows in the city. Even Magritte was done in gray, so that the painting resembled a black-and-white photograph. It was called he never read the surgeon general’s report.
I began to wander around the loft, just to get a feel for the space and to see where things were. I wanted Dashiell to take a look at things, too, the way dogs do, with their noses. So as I walked and he sniffed, every once in a while, I told him, “Smell it, good boy!” to let him know he wasn’t just being nosy, he was working. I never know what Dash will come up with, but I always know that it will be very different from what I can “see.” I put the kettle up, took out a big white mug, and found a box of Earl Grey tea bags. It was a cook’s kitchen—good equipment, lots of expensive, shiny copper-bottomed pots hanging above. There was no microwave, but there was a Cuisinart and a professional-size mixer.
Dash and I continued wandering while the kettle heated. Cliff’s bedroom, facing west, was high enough to get good light even though it faced the back of a building on Wooster Street. There was enough space for the light to filter down, enough to give the room a lovely cast, but not enough to blind you when you were trying to sleep. The bed, unmade, was a double, and the sheets and quilt were white, as were the walls, the floor, the rug, and the long, low painted dresser.
There was a four-panel painting hanging over the bed, titled up. In the first three panels there was a man asleep in a bed, in the very bed beneath the portrait, down to the last detail. Those three pictures were identical but for one detail, a slight change in the position of the head on the pillow, a dark head of hair poking out from the white quilt, the face not visible. In the last panel, the bed was rumpled and empty. Somehow I was sure the mysterious man was Louis Lane, that in this way, he did indeed sleep over.
Above the dresser there was a smaller painting with a dark, brooding, and sexually suggestive look, a Diane Arbus-y portrait of two young boys, one on each side of the canvas. The empty space between the boys gave the portrait a palpable tension. Both boys looked ahead, at the viewer, as if unaware of each other. They were nude. The boy on the left was a cherubic-looking six- or seven-year-old, with large, apprehensive hazel eyes. The boy on the right, the older of the two, a ten- or eleven-year-old, had a lewd expression on his face. In the usual spot, it said les and mor.
Cliff’s work was more intellectual than emotional, more Magritte than Matisse. Even the disturbing pieces had a coldness to them; they were either fascinating or clever but kept the viewer at a distance rather than embracing him, rather than bringing him into the painting or into the heart of the artist. Whatever emotion was visible was well controlled, as if the hurt could be displayed visually but without the accompanying feeling. I wondered how the work reflected the man, but it’s not possible to put together a person from the pieces of his life. You can’t even come close.
At the side of the bed there was another Magritte, the Clifford kind, the chestnut-and-white dog flying over the rooftops of what appeared to be Paris, a basenji angel with creamy, feathered wings. I wondered if Louis had seen good boy, and if he had indeed been jealous of his demanding, adored rival.
I opened the drawers of the nightstands and pawed through the dead man’s personal stuff—condoms, K-Y jelly, handcuffs, nothing unusual.
I opened the closet and looked at the clothes, good-quality pants and jackets and lots of them, not the kind of clothes I’d expect to find in a poor artist’s closet. Jack, who dressed like a peacock when he wasn’t filling cavities (no pun intended, the man is a dentist), had introduced me to designer clothes, and now I could tell without even checking the labels. Cliff was apparently slight; his butterscotch-colored suede jacket fit me perfectly.
When I heard the kettle, I put Cliff’s jacket away and went back to the kitchen, adding up in my head the cost of what I had seen in the closet, then opening the cabinets and toting up how much Clifford had spent to outfit his kitchen. Poor artist indeed. Perhaps the man had a patron.
Louis Lane?
I took my tea over to a desk that sat in a little in-between area, open, of course, because it had no window. It was a cozy nook with a desk, a rich, red oriental rug, red walls, and a red velvet chair, someplace to read, listen to music, watch videos, pay the bills.
There were two drawings and a painting in the den that were not Cliff’s—a lovely pencil sketch of Magritte, signed “Jan Bella,” a pen-and-ink nude, male, signed “D. K.” (the D. K. who was helping me pay my bills?), and a smallish watercolor head study of a sweetly handsome young man with a halo of curly hair, signed “john.”
I sat at the desk and began to open drawers, and what I found told me that there were some pretty important things that Dennis Keaton did not know about his friend.
The first file I found was the one for Clifford’s Fidelity Corporate Bond Fund. His current investment was in the neighborhood of $200,000, give or take a few thou.
The next file was an IRA, with Dreyfus. That was only valued at $22,611.16, but hell, the man had only been thirty-two.
His checkbook—Chemical Bank Select Checking, which, according to the brochure of bank costs in the file, required a minimum balance of $25,000, entitling Cliff to free checking, free telephone transfers, the privilege of larger ATM withdrawals, and a shorter line when he had to show up at the bank in person—had a balance of $44,682.13 in savings and only $132.11 in checking after a cash withdrawal of $1,000 made January 18, the day before he died. Clifford had neatly recorded the withdrawal both in his checkbook and on the bottom of the previous bank statement. But I hadn’t needed to see that to know he was an obsessive-compulsive personality type. I ha
d seen his pots.
I had also found money in many of his pockets, along with small sandwich bags for picking up after Magritte. As with every other New York City dog owner, every pocket, including the ones in his tux jacket, had plastic bags in it, because even if you’ve been out to a black-tie event, you still have to walk your dog and scoop when you get home.
Magritte’s papers were in the desk, too, neatly filed like everything else. He was four and a half. His health was protected by the Murray Hill Animal Hospital on East Thirtieth Street. He had, I noticed, been vaccinated against Lyme disease, which probably meant he was taken out of the city regularly, perhaps to outdoor dog shows, and his rabies shot was up to date. He was indeed a champion of record, American, Canadian Ch. Ceci N’Est Pas un Chien. Clever, Clifford, mighty clever, I thought, and then, when the next certificate was in my hand, I was filled with admiration. It seems Magritte had a C.D., a Companion Dog degree, which meant he had satisfactorily performed all the basic commands off lead at three different AKC obedience trials and under three different judges, no small feat for a basenji.
There were photos in the file, too. In all three, Magritte was stacked, meaning he was standing in show pose, and a handler, a tall man with a ponytail, presumably Morgan Gilmore, was holding the show lead taut and beaming. The judge was in the photos, too, holding the blue ribbon and whatever bowl or platter Magritte had won at each of the three shows.
I found Cliff’s gallery contract, signed by Veronica Cahill. Most interesting, there was even a copy of his will in the file drawer, with a note saying the original copy was filed with George Rich, his lawyer.
The most recent check register showed regular monthly payments to a Dr. Bertram Kleinman. I checked the medicine cabinet. There was no AZT, DDI, Bactrim, or even Flagyl. It didn’t appear Cliff had active AIDS. There was no Prednisone or allergy medication.
Was Dr. Kleinman a chiropractor or a shrink?
From the amount of the checks, and the little drawings on them, two men emoting in kind, my guess was that Clifford Cole was in some sort of interactive therapy.
A gay man in therapy—what a surprise.
After another thirty or forty minutes of poking around, I took Cliff’s will, the gallery contract, his address book, and Dashiell and headed for the closest copy shop, returning everything to where we found it before heading back for another look at the Christopher Street pier. But when we left the loft, I decided to walk over to the gallery first, just to take a look around and see what I might find out.
The Veronica Cahill Gallery was on the fifth floor of a wide ten-story brick building on West Broadway between Prince and Spring. To get to the gallery, you take one of those elevators that open on either side, depending upon which side you push the button, which depends upon which of the two galleries on each floor you are going to. The elevator opened right into the gallery spaces, which, like most of the West Broadway spaces, were large and bright.
The current installation at Cahill was called Dots, and the most enigmatic dot for me was the single sculpture placed in the middle of the gallery’s white floor. It looked like an enormous bowling ball, but without the holes. It was titled Black Dot. The price on the title card was $25,000, and amazingly, there was a red dot on the card, signifying that this lucky dot had found a home. The paintings were also fairly large, although there were a few small ones toward the back of the gallery. They consisted of various canvases painted either white with one or more black circles or, for variety, black with one or several white circles. Prices were all in the ten- to twelve-thousand range. Several of those were sold as well. To each his own.
Dashiell and I had been welcomed by a short young blond with the proportions of a twelve-year-old, no hips, no tits, dressed all in black but, happily, without a dot on her outfit. He was offered a dog biscuit, and I was told about how fabulously well this young artist was doing, asked if I knew “Tess,” if I had been at the opening, which was fabulous, if I was a collector, and then followed around as I looked at paintings, as if I might, if not watched carefully, slip one into my pocket.
The more I looked, the more I began to wonder if the red dots signifying sales were all real or if perhaps the gallery put out a few to make people think their current installation was hot and start a buying frenzy.
“This is nice,” I said, trying to look sincere, “but what I really love are paintings of dogs. I sort of, you know, collect them.”
I gave her the perfect opportunity to hard sell me a Clifford Cole painting. She fumbled the dot, but made a slight recovery.
“I don’t know what’s going to be in the next show. But would you like to be on our mailing list?”
I signed a false name in the book, thanked the young woman profusely, turned down a second Snausage for Dashiell, and headed back to the Christopher Street pier.
7
I Began to Dig Carefully
I wanted Dashiell in a work mode, so I kept him on leash until we were on the pier. Then I pointed down the pier, told him, “Find it,” and let him go.
I pulled up my scarf so that it covered my nose and mouth and walked back to the Punk’s Not Dead sign, the one closest to where Clifford had been struck. The sad face with spiked hair was still watching over the place where he had lain until the police came to zip him into a body bag and take him away.
The wind was cold and stinging. Loose snow swirled in circles, rose up momentarily, and fell back to the surface of the pier. On a summer weekend, dozens and dozens of gay men would come here to lie in the sun. In winter, it was a lonely place.
Dashiell was working the southern side of the pier. He would work the perimeter first, then quarter the pier and work each quadrant separately, in each case looking for something that didn’t belong. That meant he would not alert if he found a condom. The pier was littered with them, both over and under the snow. Nor would he stand and bark for me, his front feet popping up off the ground with each woof, his ears flapping up and down in the wind he himself would create in his excitement, for beer cans, broken glass, cigarette butts, even underwear. These were all local weeds to him, things indigenous to the area.
Two types of things would get him to “call me.” He’d signal for anything out of place, like a button, a wallet, or, say, a gun. In this case, it was unlikely he’d find anything of value. It had been too long since the murder, and the pier was too open and too populated. But Dash would also be looking for anything that had a smell reminiscent of anything at the loft. He had nosed around Cliff’s clothing and his shoes. I had even dumped the hamper for him, letting him smell crotches and arm holes, places where the scent would be the most powerful. He had picked up other scents as well, those he would find personally interesting.
I didn’t really expect there’d be anything on the pier after all this time, but Dashiell had made some wonderful finds on previous cases, things too well hidden, intentionally or by accident, or too small for me to have discovered. After glancing back at him, now rounding the corner to work the far end of the barricade, I stood at the south fence and looked out over the Hudson.
I could see the Statue of Liberty, far to the south, and Jersey farther west. The water surrounding the pier where you first walk onto it was frozen, but out here the Hudson was flowing, the light giving it a lovely silver cast.
I began wondering about the money, all that money, and where it came from, and why Clifford’s friend Dennis didn’t know about it.
Well, as my sister would say, hands on her hips, if your friend was busting his butt to make it, unable to have the freedom to paint, as you did, would you rub it in his face that you didn’t have to be concerned about expenses?
When I heard Dash signal, I began to run. He had made a find. It was probably nothing of significance to the case, a cigarette lighter or an old shoe someone had left on the pier. But I needed to get to him quickly and to praise him to the sky. He couldn’t discern what would be important and what wouldn’t. Sometimes I couldn’t at first. The onl
y way to motivate him was to praise for every find, and hope like hell, if there was something there of significance, eventually he’d see that, too.
He was at the most westerly point of the pier he could reach, the last few feet blocked off by the chain-link fence. The sign there, this one official, warned of danger—Area Unsafe, Keep Off—but I could see where the fence was cut. This was New York, where warnings went unheeded.
Dashiell was sitting now, facing a snowdrift that had accumulated against the fence, just to the right of the warning sign on the other side. He always waited for me, never trying to bring me what he found. If he retrieved the item, were there prints, he’d blur them. In a different setting, a field or woods, if he brought me what he found, I’d never see the site to be able to look for other signs and clues. Most important, because I loved my dog, if I allowed him to pick up what he found on a search, he might get hurt. He could pick up—and drop—a gun, which might go off. He could find something toxic, something sharp, something that, when disturbed, would leave nothing in its wake but a huge hole and the smell of smoke.
When he saw me running toward him, he stopped barking. As soon as I reached him, he was on his feet, dancing excitedly as he looked from me into the snow piled against the fence and back, again and again.
I began to dig carefully, cracking through the crust, then brushing away the snow, a little at a time, with my gloved hands.
I felt it before I saw it, and the moment I touched it, I knew. As I lifted a piece of it carefully free of the snow, I could hear it, too, a faint, metallic tinkle. I cleared the rest of the snow more quickly, and there, tied to the very bottom of the fence, was a red leather leash, now wet, stretched, and twisted. Still attached to the leash clip was a red leather collar, complete with a small bell, fairly intact, and in my estimation, just about the perfect size to fit around the neck of a twenty-pound dog.
This Dog for Hire Page 4