The Dog Who Knew Too Much (14 page)

“He has fabulous legs,” I said.

“Takes after me.” Ceil pulled up her skirt and stuck one long gam out from under the table for me to admire.

After lunch she went rummaging around in a closet and came up with a lace and velvet shawl wrapped in tissue paper. “This was your mother's,” she said. “She gave it to me once when she came to visit. I'd like you to have it now.”

“Ceil, I can't take it from you. It's too beautiful.”

“Of course you can. It should be with you.” She handed me the shawl. “You know, darling, your mother was just a human being. One day, it would be nice for you if you let go of some of your disappointment.”

“I—”

She lifted one long-fingered, bony hand to silence me. “Do you remember the summer you stayed with me for a month, when you were eleven?” I nodded. “And do you remember Margaret?”

“Of course,” I said. “How could I forget? That was my first job.”

“I'd met her late one afternoon, the week before you came. I was admiring the ocean, talking out loud to myself. You know how I am. She asked if, as long as I was looking anyway, I'd watch her swim. At first I thought, What chutzpah, what a loony request. And then I saw the white cane folded up and lying on the corner of her towel, so I said yes, I'd watch. Stand on the shore, she said, and shout to me if I'm headed in the wrong direction. So I watched her swim. And when she came out—”

“You said, I have a very responsible young woman coming to stay with me next week, for the whole month of August, my niece Rachel, and she'd be delighted to meet you here every afternoon at five and watch you swim.”

“We all need that,” Ceil said, “someone to shout and tell us if we're headed out to sea. But when you can see,” she said, picking up her coffee cup, “well, most of us don't have someone responsible standing on the shore to make sure we stay headed in the right direction. Now, come, I know why you're here.”

I was truly amazed. I hadn't said a word about Lillian and Ted, not even on the phone.

“So let's take that adorable creature of yours to the beach.” She turned to Dashiell, his big mouth agape in adoration as she spoke. “Aunt Ceil knows why you came to visit. For the same reason your mommy used to come when she was little. She loved the beach, just the way you do,” she said to him. “Marsha told me you showed up
wet
for your meeting with them,” she said to me. “That's the girl I remember, I thought when she said it. Come,” she said, talking to Dashiell again, “we'll take our walk.”

“You have to give him what he needs,” Ceil said later, as we watched Dashiell running along the sand. “You're responsible for him.”

Of course, I didn't for a minute think she was talking about Dashiell.

“He always loved dress-up,” she said, walking next to me but with her thoughts far away. “He liked to pretend he was something he wasn't. Some
one
he wasn't. He enjoyed that He still does. I never told him to try to be anything different. People are who they are. I never tried to tell him what to do or not do, how to live his life. It's harmless, what he does. It gives him pleasure. He's my son, and I love him. That's all there is to it. That's what I told your mother, too. She thought I ought to
do
something. Do what? I asked her. Beatrice, I said, all I can
do
is alienate my son. No one wants to be told what to do. People have to handle their own lives, their own way.”

I had come to talk about Lillian.

“Do you believe in fate, Rachel?”

“I don't know,” I told her.

What do you suggest? I'd meant to ask. But what with one thing and another, I never did get around to it.

18

Follow That Cab

I was nearly dry by the time I arrived at the Club. Paul wasn't out front, but as I got out of the car to go get him, he appeared in the doorway. I winced. He was wearing a black T-shirt, a black jacket, and black slacks. As soon as the car began to move again, it would be aswirl with white fur. Dashiell, who was sitting behind the driver's seat, was shedding.

Without saying a word, I walked around to the passenger side, and Paul got in on the driver's side. Some things are easy to arrange with men. You never have to ask them to hold the remote either.

He got in, fastened his seat belt, then checked to make sure I'd fastened mine. “I thought we'd be alone,” he said, looking toward the backseat, “so we could talk.”

“You can talk in front of him. He's tight-lipped.”

“Where to?” he asked.

“Forty-fourth, between Fifth and Sixth.”

He gave me a funny look and began to drive. I looked out the side window to avoid obsessing about his strong, beautiful hands.

When we got to Forty-fourth, I told him where to pull over.

“We can't park here,” he said. “Not unless you want to get towed.”

“We're not parking,” I told him. “We're waiting.”

“For another couple?” he asked, looking disappointed.

“Sort of.”

He nodded, watching me as I slid down a little in my seat, my eyes glued to the door of 17 West Forty-fourth. Perhaps it was the expression on my face that kept Paul Wilcox waiting in silence. As we sat there, I had murder on my mind.

He wasn't even there yet, but already I could almost feel my hands around his throat, choking the life out of him.

I could push my gun into his chest, tell him why, make him beg, then pull the trigger anyway.

Or I could poison him, slowly, painfully, with something impossible to detect.

Fuck it, I thought. As soon as he steps out the door, I'll have the driver gun the engine and run him down. My sister looks stunning in black. Come to think of it, who doesn't?

When he finally appeared,
she
was hanging on to his arm, smiling up at his face. He
had
lost weight. Even scrunched down in the seat, looking past Paul, I could see he was thinner. And wasn't that a new sport coat the bastard had on?

He leaned over and kissed the blond on the mouth, then his arm went up, and a cab pulled over to the curb for them.

“Follow that cab,” I told my driver. But he did nothing. Unless you call staring something. “Follow that cab,” I repeated. “And don't spare the horses.”

“Ah, so,” he said, nodding. He pulled out and caught up to the cab, which was waiting at the corner for the light to change.

“Good
job
,” I told him.

Dashiell's tail beat against the backseat.

“I'm quite experienced at covert pursuits,” he said.

“Is that right?”

“Exactly. My grandmother is dying to know where her neighbor, Mrs. Chiang, buys fish. She always finds the freshest fish for the least money, but she refuses to tell my grandmother where.”

“How frustrating,” I said as the light changed. We followed the cab onto Fifth Avenue and began weaving in and out of traffic to stay behind it as it turned east, then south, heading downtown. “So you and your grandmother follow Mrs. Chiang's cab?”

I thought we were going to lose Ted and the blond when their cab went through a changing light, but Paul zipped right after it, risking a ticket.

“Not exactly,” he said.

“Meaning?”

“We follow her rickshaw.”

“Ah, so,” I said as we careened toward the Manhattan Bridge. And me without my passport, I thought, but the cab kept heading downtown, turning a few blocks later into Chinatown. After an impossible final few minutes trailing behind the cab through the crowded, twisty, narrow, one-way streets, it stopped at 63 Mott Street, outside of Hong Fat. I ducked way down as the cab door opened.

“You can get up. They're inside now,” my driver said.

He was a fast study.

“Thanks,” I said, as casually as if, instead of going through a red light and driving like a maniac, he'd just held a door for me or lit my cigarette.

“Do you have anything to tell me?” he said, turning sideways to face me, an inscrutable expression on his face.

“Yeah,” I said. “Pull in as much as you can and cut the engine.”

“That's it?” He waited patiently, his eyebrows raised.

“We're eating Chinese,” I told him.

“Let me guess. At Hong Fat?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” I said, unzipping my teddy bear backpack and pulling out my cell phone. “We'd be towed in a nanosecond if we parked here.” I called information for the number of Hong Fat and, before dialing it, smiled at Paul and in my sweetest voice asked him what he'd like for dinner. He laughed so hard tears came to his eyes.

“Surprise me,” he said when he'd regained his composure.

“No problem.”

I dialed Hong Fat.

“I'd like an order to go, please. No, delivery. Well, it's not exactly an address. I'm parked across the street in a black Ford Taurus.
T
as in
to go, A
as in
appetizer
. Taurus. A car. Car.
C
as in
chow mein
. Yes. An order of steamed dumplings with oyster sauce. Do you want soup?” I asked Paul. He shook his head. “We'll skip the soup tonight. One order of kung po chicken and one crab with ginger and scallions. White rice or brown?” I asked Paul, but he just waved his hand at me. “White rice,” I said into the phone. “And chopsticks, please. Thank you.”

“Chopsticks okay?” I asked him.

He merely stared at me.

“How about a drink before dinner?”

I didn't wait for a response. I reached back to the floor behind his seat and pulled out a plastic shopping bag. I handed him a bottle of merlot and a corkscrew, and I held the two plastic glasses.

As if he ate dinner in a car every night of his life, he anchored the bottle between his legs, peeled off the foil that surrounded the cork, and began to twist the corkscrew carefully into the center of the cork, which a moment later came out with a satisfying pop.

He filled the glasses and took one for himself.

“To you, Dog Paddle,” he said, touching his plastic glass to mine.

We sat back and sipped our wine. I thought about music, but Dashiell was asleep and I didn't want to drown out the sounds of his snoring. I had thought about candlelight, too, but there really wasn't anyplace safe to put candles. I'd checked it out.

When the confused-looking little man in the white jacket came out of Hong Fat and looked around, Paul rolled down his window and motioned him over to the Taurus. I leaned over with the money, but Paul brushed my hand away, taking some folded bills from his pants pocket and paying for the food himself. The waiter said something I couldn't understand, and then Paul nodded and laughed. He pulled the bag in through the open window and turned back to me. “So, how do you want to do this?” he asked.

“One course at a time, starting with the appetizer,” I said, opening the bag and pulling out the dumplings and the little clear plastic container of dipping sauce.

“Would you like to tell me what this is all about?”

My mouth was full of dumpling. I shook my head no. “I thought we were going to talk about Lisa,” I said around the dumpling. “You promised.”

He took a bite of dumpling. “You want to talk about your
cousin
?”

“I do.”

“This is delicious. How did you find this place?”

“It was recommended, so to speak, by someone I thought I knew.”

He refilled our wineglasses.

“Seriously, Paul, I—”

“She wanted to marry,” he said, leaning back and gazing out the windshield. “She said it was time to formalize our commitment to each other. I told her I wasn't ready.” He turned toward the food, hoisting the final dumpling with his chopsticks. Then, chopsticks poised, as if he were about to conduct an orchestra, he looked at me. “Okay?” he asked. There was a flash of white between us. I could hear Dashiell swallowing the dumpling behind me.

“You said
okay
. It's his release word.”

“The chicken next?” he asked, as if nothing untoward had happened.

“But you loved her, didn't you?” I asked, thinking about the jasper heart necklace and the heart bracelet, thinking about all those roses.

Paul turned away from me and looked out the side window. Sitting on the sidewalk, to the right of Hong Fat, there was an unshaven, disheveled-looking man leaning against the wall, a cigarette dangling from his crusty lips. He wore a purple sweater that was too big for him and was frayed at the bottom, stained, wide-legged brown pants, shoes without laces. In one hand he held a live crab.

He put the crab down on the sidewalk.

“Come here, Donny,” he said in his gravelly voice.

The crab didn't budge.

“Goddamn you to hell, Donny,” he shouted at the crab. “I said
come
. When the fuck're you gonna learn to mind me?”

He took the cigarette from his mouth and, holding it between two stained fingers, touched it to the rear end of the crab. I grabbed Paul's arm and squeezed it.

“Tha's a good boy, Donny,” he said as the crab moved forward. “See,” he said, leaning down into the crab's face, “it ain't so hard to be a good boy.”

He picked up Donny by one claw and quickly dumped him into a paper bag that he had anchored under his legs, struggled to his feet, and holding the bag out in front of him, staggered down the block.

I didn't feel hungry anymore, and apparently neither did Paul, because neither of us picked up the bag to take out any more of the food.

“What did she say?” I asked. “My cousin Lisa?”

“That she had wanted to bring me into her family, to have my children, for us to grow old together.”

“And when you told her you weren't ready, she didn't want to see you anymore?”

“No,” he said, looking straight ahead again, as if he were driving instead of parked. “I didn't want to see her after that.”