A Dangerous Fiction (10 page)

“But I'm not his master,” I said.

“He's a professional. He'll work for you.”

“I've never owned a dog in my life.”

“I won't leave until I'm satisfied you can handle him. You're not afraid, and that's a start.”

•   •   •

We left the office and walked to Central Park. Gordon made me hold the leash, and I began to enjoy the way the rush-hour crowd parted before us. Clearly Mingus had the Moses touch. Nevertheless, I still intended to refuse Gordon's generous but impractical offer. I wasn't Mingus's mistress and thus had no authority or control over him. That he walked so calmly beside me, sitting when we stopped for lights, I put down to Gordon's presence at my side . . . his silent presence. Gordon didn't speak once the whole way to the park. Like many writers I'd known (Hugo having been the great exception, he was as shy and taciturn in speech as he was eloquent on paper.

In the quiet, enclosed haven of Strawberry Fields, Gordon took the leash and put Mingus through his paces. Then he taught me the command words and hand signals and gave the leash to me. We practiced sit, down, stay, come, and heel over and over while Gordon called out corrections, not to the dog but to me. At first I felt overmatched. Mingus was not only big but muscular, an armored tank on legs. He obeyed me, I felt, on sufferance only, or by way of obeying Gordon. And yet the longer we practiced, the more responsive he became, until he seemed almost to anticipate my commands. When I walked, he kept pace; when I stopped he sat by my side; when I called him he came. He clearly enjoyed the routine, throwing himself into it so that his movements seemed to flow from my will and extend its reach.

Gordon's instructions grew less and less frequent. After an hour or so, he said, “Not bad. I'm getting hungry.”

“Me too,” I said. “How about you, Mingus? Are you hungry?”

“He's a dog; he's always hungry. Come on, I'll buy you a hot dog.”

We headed back toward the ball fields. I offered Gordon the leash. He shook his head. “German shepherds need to bond with their handlers to work for them. Normally that's a process that takes weeks or months. We don't have that, so we're going to take some shortcuts. From now on, this dog is attached to you at the hip. Where you go, he goes. Every necessity of his life—food, water, shelter, affection—has to come from you alone.”

“But I have to work. I have to go into the office every day.”

“Of course. He goes with you. What good would he do sitting at home?”

We reached the hot dog cart and stood on line behind a couple of young boys in baseball uniforms. “Wow,” said one of them, “cool dog! Can I pet him?”

I looked at Gordon, who nodded.

“Say hi, Mingus,” I said, and the big dog wagged his tail and licked the sticky hand held out to him.

“He's great with kids,” Gordon said with paternal pride.

“I can't believe he was a police dog. He seems so gentle.”

“A well-trained dog turns it on and off like a switch. Mingus was one of the elite, a SWAT team dog.”

“How did he come to be with you?”

“His handler got sick and had to retire. Mingus was six, too old to reassign, and the handler couldn't keep him. So he came back to me.” Seeing my puzzlement, he added, “He's one of mine. I bred this fellow out of the best bitch and stud I ever owned.”

“I'm not sure I want a dog with a pedigree better than my own.”

Gordon laughed. “It's just a loan, till this thing gets sorted out. After that, Mingus comes back home to his well-earned retirement in the country.”

Now was the time to tell him that Mingus couldn't stay. But we'd reached the front of the line, and Gordon was ordering: five hot dogs, two with the works, and three bottles of water. The vendor gave us a cardboard tray. We sat on a nearby bench to eat, and Mingus sat beside me, eyes politely averted from the food.

“Shouldn't we feed him?” I asked Gordon.

“You will, but not yet. Alphas eat first.”

I ate quickly, not just for Mingus's sake but because I was hungry; and that hot dog with sauerkraut tasted better than the fancy dinner I'd just had with Teddy Pendragon. When I finished, Gordon had me break off a piece of meat and offer it to Mingus. The dog ignored the food and looked intently at Gordon.

“Chow time,” he said, and suddenly the meat was gone, swallowed whole. “Chow time's the release phrase. Dog's trained not to eat without it. Protects him from poisoning.”

I went on feeding Mingus by hand, piece by piece. I never felt his teeth touch my hand; he used his lips to pluck the pieces from my palm. When the food was gone, he licked my hand clean, then nosed one of the water bottles.

“He's thirsty,” I said. “But we don't have a bowl.”

“Cup your hands.” Gordon poured water into my hands and Mingus lapped it up. We continued until one of the bottles was empty. I wiped my hands on his ruff.

“Nice job,” Gordon said, “You're a natural, Jo.”

“Funny—that's what I told you, remember?”

“I'm not likely to forget it. You sure you never had a dog, maybe as a kid?”

“I brought a stray home once,” I said incautiously.

“What happened?”

What happened was that she'd taken the leash to me, dear old Grandma, buckle end flailing. That was a bad one, and the reason that I can't wear low-backed gowns or bathing suits.

“It didn't work out,” I said. “Look, Gordon, as much as I appreciate the offer—”

“We're not done yet. Ready?” Without waiting for an answer, he gathered up the wrappers and bottles and carried them back to the cart. I watched him take a cell phone from his pocket and make a call. Mingus stayed by my side but never took his eyes off his master. When Gordon came back, he took the leash.

We started back the way we'd come. It was dusk now, and a breeze carried the scent of grass and honeysuckle. Gordon said, “Any German shepherd is going to have a deterrent effect, but Mingus is trained to do a lot more than that. Chances are you'll never have to deploy him, but you need to know how.”

We'd reached the lake abutting Strawberry Fields. Gordon looked around, and I followed his gaze. There was no one nearby except a bearded man, homeless, I presumed, because he seemed to be wearing everything he owned. He trailed us by twenty yards, moving stiffly, like a zombie in a horror flick. I sensed movement and glanced down. Mingus had stiffened to attention and was staring at the stranger.

Gordon unsnapped the dog's leash and pointed at the bearded man. “Watch!”

Mingus tore through space like a bullet. Inches before colliding with the man, he stopped short and barked fiercely up at his face.

The man froze. Mingus continued to bark, sharp staccato barks that clearly said how much he'd like to take this confrontation to the next level.

“Out!” Gordon yelled. “Mingus, come.” Instantly the dog turned and ran back to us. “Well done, dog.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I said, my heart racing. “Please tell me that guy's with you.”

Gordon just smiled. “Let's keep walking.” He ordered Mingus to heel but didn't reattach the leash. After a few steps, I heard a loud cry behind us and spun around. The bearded man was lumbering toward us, waving a stick and shouting incoherently.

“Pack in!” Gordon said, pointing, and Mingus disappeared in a blur of silent motion. When I saw him next he was leaping on the bearded man, clamping his jaws on the arm with the stick. I heard the impact, a solid
whomp
. The man spun around and fell to the ground, Mingus still attached to his arm.

“Out!” Gordon called, trotting toward them. I stayed where I was, watching. Mingus released his grip but stood guard until Gordon reached them. Gordon reached out a hand and hauled the bearded man to his feet. They shook hands, and the victim patted his mauler on the head.

They came back to me, and Gordon introduced his helper, who I then saw was wearing a heavily padded jacket.

“This dog's out of my league,” I said.

“He's powerful,” Gordon said. “A German shepherd has a bite force of two hundred and forty pounds, more than most sharks. He can immobilize any attacker, armed or not. The dogs are trained to go for the gun arm, and at the speed they move, ninety-nine times out of a hundred the perp never even gets a shot off. But Mingus will never attack on his own, only on command or if you are attacked. Imagine Fred here had been your stalker, coming at you with a weapon.”

I imagined it without difficulty. I pictured Mingus flying through the air and nailing Sam Spade to the sidewalk; I pictured him sinking his fangs into the stalker's arm, and I tested for guilt. None came. As Huck Finn said, there's folks you can sivilize, and folks you just can't.

“I'll take him,” I said.

B
y ten I was in my pajamas, reading in bed with Mingus snoozing on the rug beside me. Hugo had slept naked, and I did as well while we were married. It hadn't come naturally at first, for I'd been raised by a woman who got dressed under her nightgown and taught me to do the same. But I grew to enjoy the caress of fine cotton sheets and the freedom from restraint, which spilled over into our lovemaking. Many mornings I woke to find Hugo propped on an elbow, gazing at me, tracing the line from hip to shoulder first with his fingertips, then with his lips. When he died I bought flannel pajamas, the bulkier the better.

The intercom buzzed. “It's a Detective Cullen,” the doorman said.

“Wait ten minutes, then send him up.” I threw on jeans and a T-shirt and checked myself in a mirror. Then I did a quick run-through of the living room, gathering up as many photos of Hugo as I could and tossing them into my bedroom. “Daunting,” Jean-Paul had called them, but that wasn't the reason. The photos were personal, and with Tommy there needed to be boundaries.

The doorbell rang. I opened the door with Mingus at my side. Tommy, dressed in a blue suit and holding my laptop, took a quick step back. “You have a dog.”

“On loan from a client. Name's Mingus.”

They eyed each other; then the man extended a cautious hand, and the dog sniffed it in the same spirit. “Can we talk?” Tommy asked.

“Come on in.” I led him into the living room. He stopped in the center and looked around. I saw the room through his eyes: spacious and high-ceilinged, with tall bookshelves full of first editions and treasures from our travels, a massive fireplace, windows overlooking the park, and French doors to the terrace. “Nice digs,” he said. “I see you landed on your feet.”

“Better than on my ass.” It was meant as a joke, but it fell flat. What was he doing here, anyway? Without Max to buffer the encounter, Tommy's presence in my home felt disturbing and incongruous. Mingus's, on the other hand, was comforting. Before he left, Gordon Hayes had insisted that I practice siccing the dog on his assistant. At first I'd resisted. When I finally gave the command, Mingus flew like an arrow and brought the man down. It should have felt bad, loosing a dog on a fellow human being; it should have felt wrong. What I felt instead was pure elation. All that power, all that strength at my command! The feeling was illogical, of course. I couldn't deploy the dog against the sort of invisible online stalker Sam Spade had evolved into. I couldn't even sic him on Teddy Pendragon, much as I'd like to. But at least, with Mingus by my side, no one was going to lay hands on me.

“I brought your laptop,” Tommy said, handing it over. “Figured you could use it.”

“That was nice of you.” I gestured to the couch and took a facing seat. Mingus positioned himself between us, watching Tommy. “What did you find?”

“No spyware. Clean as a whistle.”

His knees were jiggling. He's nervous too, I thought, and somehow that made me calmer. “He wouldn't have needed spyware if he grabbed my laptop in Santa Fe. He could have copied the whole hard drive.”

“Sam Spade?”

“Who else?”

Tommy shrugged. “Someone who knew about your stalker and saw an opportunity to get away with some shit.”

“What a devious mind you have, Detective.”

“Tell me something, Jo. What would happen if you quit the agency?”

“That's never going to happen.”

“But if you did,” he insisted.

“The agency's mine. I could sell it, but it's more likely that I'd come to some arrangement with the agents who work for me.”

“That would be Harriet Peagoody?”

“At the moment she's the only other agent. But Harriet would never—”

“Why not? You stole the business out from under her, isn't that how she sees it?”

“Yes, but—”

“Why do you think none of her clients got hit?”

“Because whoever did this was targeting me. Do you have any reason to accuse Harriet?”

“Apart from motive and opportunity?” Tommy asked. I didn't answer. He sighed. “We're looking for Sam Spade. Your secretary gave us a long list of rejected writers, and we're working our way through it. But you have to consider the possibility that whoever sent those e-mails is someone close to you, personally or professionally. Someone with a grudge who lacks the guts to confront you head-on.”

Charlie came to mind. After I fired him, he'd launched a campaign of nasty rumors and attacks on industry websites. But there was a big difference between coming after me and striking at my clients, and I still couldn't believe he'd cross that line.

“Maybe Charlie,” I said reluctantly, “but I know you already talked to him. He called my office, pissed as hell. Said you guys gave him a hard time.”

“Yeah,” said Tommy, stone-faced, “we took turns water-boarding him. Who else is mad at you? Who've you hurt?”

“No one.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Come on, now, darlin'. We both know that's not true.”

Who's talking, I wondered, Detective Cullen or my old friend Tommy? He had a way of sliding from one to the other that kept me a step behind, struggling to adjust. A tactic, I thought, and hardened my heart against him. “Do not call me darling,” I said coldly. “And isn't it time you eighty-sixed the drawl? You've lived here as long as I have.”

“There's some might say you've overcompensated.”

“Tell me something, Tommy. How did it happen that of all the detectives in New York City, you were the one assigned to my case?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“No, really: isn't it an amazing coincidence?”

“You're suspecting me now? That's good; you're getting the mind-set. It's time to take off the rose-tinted glasses, Jo, and use those gorgeous eyes for something other than flirting.”

“Flirting?”
I said, outraged. “Is that what you think I've been doing?”

“Can't help yourself, can you?” he said. “But don't worry about me. Once bitten, twice shy.”

•   •   •

“You look chipper,” my secretary said as I entered the office the next morning. Her face fell as the dog followed me in. “Don't tell me you're keeping that thing.”

“Just for a while.”

Mouth pursed, she busied herself squaring a batch of message slips.

“Do you not like dogs, Lorna?”

“Filthy animals. If it makes you feel safer, fine by me. Just don't expect me to walk it.”

“Morning, Jo,” Jean-Paul said. “Hey, buddy,” he said to Mingus, who nosed him as thoroughly as a cop patting down a suspect.

Chloe emerged from Harriet's office and said, “I see you've been replaced, Jean-Paul.” There was an edge to her voice and a look on her face that made me wonder if something had happened between them. But if it had, Jean-Paul seemed clueless.

“Supplemented,” he answered cheerily. “Dogs can't go everywhere. I'm still available anytime Jo needs me.”

“She's already got an Alsatian; why would she want a lapdog?”

He stared at her, looking more surprised than hurt. Chloe clapped a hand over her mouth and rushed back to her cubicle. The awkward silence that followed was broken by Harriet's arrival. She wore an ivory silk blouse, a smart, high-waisted black skirt, and heels in place of her usual sensible pumps.

“Morning, Harriet,” I said. “You look swell.”

“Lunch at La Jolie today.” There was a little pause where the name of her lunch date should have come, but didn't. Harriet stared at Mingus. “Is that Gordon's dog? Are you keeping it?”

“For a while.”

“But bringing it to the office—is that wise, Jo? A big dog like that . . . think of your liability if it hurt someone.”

I wished they would quit calling him “it.” “He's trained. He'd never attack except on command.”

“A trained attack dog? That's like bringing a loaded gun to work!”

“Guns can be turned against you,” I quoted Gordon. “Dogs can't.”

She raised a plucked eyebrow and said, “It's your neck, my dear. Better introduce us, then.”

“Say hi, Mingus.”

He got up, wagging his tail, and accepted a proficient scratch behind the ear. Harriet might have been disapproving, but she wasn't intimidated. “Comes from a musical family, does he?”

“Apparently. His brothers are named Satchmo and Miles.”

She sketched a smile and walked past us to her office. I watched her go. Tommy's words lingered like poison dripped in my ear.
Stole the agency out from under her . . . motive and opportunity . . . none of her clients hit
.

“Who's she meeting for lunch today?” I asked Lorna, who shrugged. “Where am I lunching?”

“The Union Square Cafe at one with Marisa Deighton,” she said promptly.

“Give her a call—see if we can switch it to La Jolie.”

Lorna didn't ask why, just turned to her computer. I poured myself a cup of coffee and filled a plastic bowl with water for Mingus. Then I hurried down the hall to my office and, without stopping to think about it, dialed Molly's number.

She answered on the first ring, as if she'd been waiting. “Hey, kiddo.”

“Molly, I am so sorry.” I didn't know what I was apologizing for, but I felt better for saying it. Nothing was worth being at odds with her.

“Fuggedaboutit. That was me sticking my nose where it doesn't belong. Old habit. Hard to break.”

We went on in that vein for a while, each of us taking the blame on herself, but after we hung up I realized that Molly never recanted those nonsensical things she'd said about Hugo. I thought about that for a while. If Teddy Pendragon had already signed with Random, then Molly was right: he would write the biography with my help or without it. If I didn't cooperate, skewed stories like Molly's would be all he'd have to go on.

That couldn't be allowed to happen. I pulled up an e-mail I'd received from Teddy the morning after our dinner. In it he'd asked for a letter addressed “To Whom It May Concern,” stating that he was writing a biography of Hugo with my approval and cooperation, and encouraging Hugo's friends to speak with him “so that the resulting book will do justice to its subject in all his splendid complexity.”

I'd written back, thanking him for dinner but ignoring his request, which seemed to me presumptuous and even dangerous: endorsements sent to individuals could easily be withdrawn later, if the biographer proved untrustworthy, while this blanket statement could not. But once again the balance of power had shifted. If there were to be sides, I needed him on mine.

I typed up the letter myself. Normally I'd have had Lorna do it, but it wasn't strictly agency business, and given the dog situation, I was wary of provoking her. Prickly as she was, Lorna was valuable to me. I'd given her two raises already, but in the back of my mind I was always braced for an announcement that she'd found a better-paying job and was leaving us. But this was unjust to her, for like the German shepherds in Gordon's book, Lorna was a loyal soul, and she'd attached herself to me. She certainly didn't stay for love of literature. If the girl read at all, I'd never caught her at it. I'd asked her, when she first applied for the job, why she wanted to work in publishing. It was a standard question, and I'd expected the usual English-major twaddle in response, but Lorna's answer had been memorable.

“It's clean work,” she'd said. “Books are clean.”

I looked at Mingus, lying beneath my desk with his head resting on his front paws. He didn't seem to me the least bit filthy, but I supposed that filth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

•   •   •

New Yorkers, like denizens of all great cities, cope with its unfathomable vastness by carving out small communities. Some are based on location, others on affiliation. Lawyers have their hangouts, stockbrokers have theirs, and we publishing professionals have ours. Some restaurants are perennials: the Union Square Cafe, Michael's, and the Four Seasons. Among the fashionable newcomers were Maison D'être, where Rowena had had her book launch, and the current favorite, La Jolie. The chef was a young Frenchwoman who'd been a sous-chef at Le Cirque. La Jolie was her nickname, a dismissive one in the male-dominated world of haute cuisine, so there was a pleasing sassiness in her adopting the name for her first restaurant.

It was a charming little place on East Fifty-Fifth, not far from Michael's, with a small but comfortable bar and a dozen well-spaced tables in the dining room. The décor was French rustic, as was the menu; only the prices referenced Manhattan. I found Marisa waiting in the bar, radiant with secret knowledge. Either she's pregnant, I thought, or she's got an offer for me, and judging by the wineglass in her hand, she wasn't pregnant.

The maître d' led us into the dining room. The moment we entered, I spotted Harriet at a table in the center of the room. Opposite her sat a man I recognized at once, though his back was to me. They leaned across the table with the quiet intensity of lovers or conspirators.

I let Marisa go ahead and paused beside their table. Harriet glanced up, smile in place, and did a double take. Her companion, seeing her reaction, turned to discover its cause. Charlie Malvino didn't blink an eye. “Hello, Jo,” he said, sketching an ironic little bow.

“Charlie,” I said coolly, “Harriet. Catching up on old times?”

She stared at me. “What are you doing here?”

“Isn't it obvious?” Charlie said. “She's checking up on the help.”

“Enjoy your lunch,” I said, and went back to Marisa. I ordered the goat-cheese salad and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, and she said she'd have the same. Definitely not pregnant, I thought. Then she broke the news.

“Marty read the Keyshawn Grimes and he loved it. We're prepared to make an offer.”