The Long Good Boy (11 page)

Clint made a rumbling sound in his throat, and he was off. He hit the toilet seat with a loud thump and pushed off again immediately. I caught him in midair, pulling him close to my chest, zipping my jacket around him. I didn't want him barking until I was absolutely sure what species was making the noise.

There it was again. Louder. Clint's motor started, prelude to a bark. It felt like a vibrator against my chest. I put one finger over his muzzle to calm him, shut off the flashlight, and backed into the corner, holding my breath and listening.

For a moment there was nothing. Then it was back. Only, it wasn't coming from inside the walls. It was coming from above. Someone was walking across the roof.

14

We Needed Time, and There Wasn't Any

Holding on to Clint, I waited, listening to the creaking of the roof, realizing with a flash of heat in my gut that the skylight was propped up because I'd seen no reason to close it. No one could see it from inside the building, since I was the only one here. And it wasn't visible from the street. Nonetheless, someone was up on the roof, and from that vantage point, you couldn't miss it.

The creaking sound was heading across the roof, from front to back, the exact route I'd taken with Clint. And now, added to that, there was the sound of air coming out of a person more rapidly than normal, the way it does when you get socked in the stomach, or you fall, which is what had happened above me, since the
oof
was accompanied by a thump. And then a creaking sound moving toward where the thump came from. Two people on the roof. I zipped my jacket higher, hoping it would keep Clint from barking.

The creaking continued, a subtle sound. The people on the roof had taken off their shoes so that they wouldn't be heard. Did that mean they knew someone was already in the building? As if they could miss that fact with the skylight gaping open.

Clint began to whine, his feet pushing against me as he tried to get free. The sound kept moving toward the back of the roof. I wondered if there was a closet I could hide in, or if I should go downstairs, if whoever was coming wouldn't think to look in what used to be a refrigerator.

Didn't that depend on who they were? And on why they'd come?

And then I heard something else, something familiar.

“Yoo-hoo, Rachel. You down there?” Loud.

And then not as loud, but certainly audible: “Shit, I ripped my panty hose. This no place for a lady to be crawling around. Where is that bitch? Chi Chi said she wasn't home, she'd be here.”

Then loud: “Rachel, honey, it's LaDonna and Jazzy. You down there? I ain't jumping down there in the dark, you don't say somethin'.” And more quietly: “What she doing in this hole, anyway? She lost her mind?”

“I'm here,” I shouted. I let Clint out of my jacket, turned on the flashlight, and walked to the back of the building, standing under the open skylight. “What are you doing here?”

“It's Chi Chi,” Jasmine said, her dark hair falling over her face as she leaned down into the hole.

“What about Chi Chi?”

“Devon beat the shit out of her is what,” LaDonna said. “She home, and she need her dog.”

“How bad is it?”

“Bad. She need that dog now. He cut her off, she not getting much else.”

“Shit. He's almost ready to get me into Keller's. Can't she manage without him for one more day?”

Jasmine rolled her eyes. “You wouldn't even ask if you saw her, honey.”

“Yes,” I said. “I would.”

She exhaled now, looking back at LaDonna.

“Back up, bitch. I'm coming down.” LaDonna swung her long legs over the side, her big feet shoeless, her stockings black and torn. I did as I was told, and there she was, looming over me, Clint at my side, barking.

“She way bad. Don't you go giving me no lip, woman. She need her dog.” She bent to scoop up Clint, but he slipped away, barking at her from behind me now.

“She's alive, isn't she?” Me barking back, too.

“Shit.” From above. We both looked up.

“Our fault. Hire some wiseass, bigmouth private eye, thinks she knows everything, what'd we expect?”

“No. I don't know nearly enough. That's why I need Clint. Didn't Chi Chi tell you what I'm doing with him?”

LaDonna shook her head. “She just said you took him and ran into Devon or something, then he comes and beats the crap out of her because you had the dog.”

“Why? Didn't she tell him I was going to groom him?”

“You a groomer now?” LaDonna said. “What all don't you do, girl?”

“No—that's what Chi Chi told the other hookers. That was the cover story.”

“You don't do no cover story with Devon. Devon don't want no stories. He wants money.”

“Money? What does this have to do with money? You mean he thinks she gave me what should have been his to groom Clint?”

Jasmine sighed. “You slow as some of these old guys, come to the stroll because they can't get it up at home, expect us to wave a wand, make them as hard as a sixteen-year-old again. They think my name is Vi-agra. Shit. Didn't you look in his coat pocket? I thought you were a de-tec-tive.” She was pointing down at Clint with nails so long they curled back toward her palm.

Now it was my turn. “Shit.” I'd pulled the coat off him and tossed it onto a chair or the couch. I'd never even thought about checking the pocket.

“You can say that again, and not only that, Devon don't want us talking to no outsiders.” Jasmine pointed down at me for emphasis, in case I hadn't figured out exactly which outsider Devon was referring to. “He don't want us getting any ideas. This girl Opal, she got her teeth knocked out for talking to a counselor.”

“It's for our own good,” LaDonna said. “He take care of us. We listen to you, you going to see to our needs?”

I shook my head. “Look, can we call Chi Chi? I need two more days.”

“Impossible.”

“Okay,” I told Jasmine, “one more day. I'll go in tomorrow night.”

“I mean impossible to call her. Her cell phone's dead.”

“You mean another stolen cell phone got shut off?”

Jasmine swung her legs over the side. LaDonna reached up and helped her down. “You have no call to talk like that.” She stood on her toes so that her face was close enough to mine that I could smell what she ate two weeks ago. Then she turned to LaDonna. “I told you we shouldn't be hiring a
white
bitch. But you wouldn't listen.” Hands on hips. “Not
her
fault. She just grew up that way, feeling entitled to talk down to people of color, because she is a superior being and we are nothing, zero, nada.”

“Oh, cut the—”

“Devon gives us phones so he can call us, make sure we're okay.” In my face.

“Impressive,” I said. “A regular Mother Teresa. Now, will you two get the hell out of here so that I can finish training this dog? If I have to go in tomorrow, I have lots to do.”

“She say she want—”

“No. Tell her I said no. I'm trying to keep you three alive, do you understand? I'm trying to find out what you asked me to, who killed your friend Rosalinda, and in order to do my job, I have to get into Keller's when they're closed and see if I can find a connection between the two murders, Rosalinda and the butcher who was killed the same night.”

“Mulrooney,” LaDonna said.

“Yes.”

“You think that'll help, finding out who killed him?”

“It might.”

“You think it's the same person, killed Rosalinda and this Mulrooney?”

“It's a good possibility.”

Jasmine reached down for Clint. LaDonna put her big hand in the way.

“Thank you. And be sure to tell Chi Chi I understand completely and I'll work as fast as I can.”

LaDonna had turned the other way, but Jasmine was staring at me. Neither of them said a word.

“Unless you've changed your minds. Unless you want your money back. Unless you want to take your chances, bank on the fact that the two deaths were unconnected and that Rosalinda's murder was something random, something that won't happen again, not for maybe weeks, or even months.”

LaDonna opened her mouth, but it was Jasmine's voice I heard.

“We didn't say that. A deal's a deal.”

“Can she get around?” I asked.

LaDonna nodded. “But she in pain.”

“Suppose we take Clint to her for an hour or two, bring him back to you?” Jasmine said.

I shook my head. “If he sees her now, all this work might go right down the drain. Chi Chi asks different things of him, and he could fall back into that pattern too easily. You understand? I'd be back to square one. Or worse.”

Jasmine pointed to Clint. “He helps her,” she whispered. “He knows when she's hurting.”

“I understand. I really do. But she's going to have to give me one more day.”

“I don't know.”

LaDonna pulled the chair I'd used to climb back out into position and stood on it, hoisting herself back up to the roof, a powerhouse of a woman. “Get up there, Jazz,” she said. “We hire this woman to do a job, let's get out of here and let her do it.”

“Thank you.”

Jasmine stood on the chair, and LaDonna reached for her with her long arm, grasping her wrist and pulling. I stood and watched as Jasmine disappeared up into the dark, like a circus act, costumes and all.

“So you going into Keller's,” LaDonna said, leaning back down the hole, “have yourself a look-see?”

I nodded, but in the dark, the flashlight pointed away from me, I don't know if she saw me. “I am,” I said.

“Good. I tell Chi Chi you doing the right thing. I get her something to tide her over.”

I waited, listening to them make their way over the roof in their stocking feet, waited while they climbed down the tree, retrieved their shoes, and went to work. Clint and I did, too. We needed time, and there wasn't any. I didn't know if I could string all the commands together in only one night, but one night was all I had.

15

I Still Had a Couple of Hours

I'd slept all day, waking up when most people are getting home from work. About fourteen hours earlier, during that cusp of time after the knackers have picked up the bones set out in oversize trash cans along the dark, greasy streets of the meat district and the hookers, denuded of most of their night's earnings, have headed home to doze in front of their TV sets, but before the butchers arrive to don their white coats, hairnets, and hard hats and the refrigerated trucks turn south on Fourteenth Street and roar into the market, I led Clint to the approximate place in the closed market where he'd be when he went through the port at Keller's, whispered, “Take it,” and waited in the old refrigerator, wishing I could actually hear the hook that locked the bathroom window being pulled out of the old rusty eye, a soft, scraping sound, knowing I couldn't, which is why I'd added one more link to the chain, a single, small bark indicating that the job had been successfully completed.

He only did it once, but we'd run out of time. If I tried even one more run, I might be climbing down the tree out front with trucks of pork pulling up next door, with butchers arriving, carrying take-out coffee, unlocking their shops, ready to begin work. We'd done it all, the run through the once-refrigerated first floor, the stainless-steel walls creating eerie pictures of the little dog, as if they were fun-house mirrors. He'd poked his way past the ribbons of translucent plastic, thick and wide, that separated the cold downstairs from the offices above. He'd gone up the worn, wooden steps, game and eager, pleased finally to have a job. This last time, I didn't run along behind him, repeating his command. This time he did his run alone. It was good, he got the job done, but it wasn't great, he took too long. And until the real trial, I wouldn't know two things: if Clint could do it in the strange building, in a place where the room he entered would be cold as a killer's heart; and, an even bigger question, if I could get into the bathroom from the roof, given the distance between the two and my inconvenient fear of heights.

I'd been worried there might be a padded, swinging door separating the downstairs, where the meat hung, from the staircase to the offices, a door the butchers could open with their shoulders when their arms were full. Clint was a very small dog. Even with the grit and stubbornness the breed is famous for, no way could a ten-pound dog nose open a door that heavy. But Chi Chi had described Keller's in detail. And Keller's, too, used strips of plastic to contain the cold. There was no door at the foot of the stairs. But there was a problem all the same. I'd counted on Chi Chi to be there the night before, which was out of the question now. It
was
the night before, and Chi Chi was home, in pain. I had hoped she would be able to push a nail partway into the worn wooden floor right in front of the bathroom door so that it couldn't close all the way, but would close enough so that no one would be apt to notice the difference. But Chi Chi couldn't help me, and it was now or never.

On my way to Keller's with Clint for our one go at getting in there, I knew there was a chance the bathroom door would be closed, and all our work would be for nothing. If that happened, if he didn't show in ten minutes, more than enough time for him to make the trip and open the lock, I'd have to get back off the roof, go down the tree next door, push open the port, and whistle him back. This we'd never practiced. Nor had I practiced getting from the roof into the small window he was supposed to open for me. Necessity was once again going to have to be the mother of invention, but all I could think as we approached Little West Twelfth Street was that, more often than not, necessity was simply a mutha.

It was nearly ten. The markets were closed, the hookers in their customary places. Like family members at the dinner table, they returned to the same spots every night. A few cars were cruising by, checking out the merchandise. Some would go around the block three times before stopping. Newbies. Or old pros, afraid the cops were nearby.