A Hell of a Dog

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  Well, let him, I thought. I wasn’t here to play cards.

  “Weird week, isn’t it?” I said, easing in slowly.

  Rhonda had gotten up on the bed. She was snoring even louder than Dashiell does.

  “In or out?” Woody asked.

  “A full house beats a flush, right?” I asked.

  Woody slapped his cards down on the table and picked up a cigar.

  “It’s just that it’s been a while,” I said, having too much fun now to stop. “I only wanted to be sure.”

  They were all staring.

  “Never mind,” I told them, dropping two chips into the pot without bothering to look at my cards again. Hell, with my love life, who had to check my cards in the first place? Anyway, my ploy worked. I had their attention. “So here’s what I was thinking—”

  “Broads,” Bucky said, holding the cards close to his chest. “Let one sit in on a poker game, and what do you have? A quilting bee. Yadda, yadda, yadda, all night long.” He dropped his free hand to his lap and was moving it rhythmically. I hoped he was petting Angelo, but there was always that other possibility.

  “Hasn’t it occurred to anyone but me that two fatal accidents mean this isn’t a coincidence?”

  “It is unusual,” Martyn said, “losing two of our major players like this. But the police said—”

  “No, listen,” I said, “think about dog training, you know, when a client calls you up with a string of coincidences, a shopping list of all the dog’s bad behavior, and they don’t see any connection between, say, the growling and the urinating on the arm of the sofa. But it’s always connected. It’s never a case of—” I stopped and looked around the table. Bucky was rearranging his cards. Boris was staring across the table. Chip had turned sideways to get a better view of me. Woody was doing the same, except from the other side. And Martyn, who a moment ago had seemed interested and concerned, now looked as if he had gone on an out-of-body trip, imagining himself, perhaps, in a better place, or with a less irritating group of people. I picked up my vodka and tossed it down in one gulp. “Coincidence,” I said.

  “It is a bit of a stretch,” Woody said, looking not at me now but at the others.

  “Call,” Chip said, tossing in two chips.

  “Heavy,” I said. “What do you have, Pressman, a pair of threes?”

  Bucky laid down his cards and pitched three chips into the pot. “See you and raise you,” he said. “Female hysteria is what it is. Always imagining more than there is.”

  “Maybe Bucky imagines more than there is in his hand,” Boris said. “I look at you. I raise you,” he said, picking up four chips and tossing them in.

  “Fold,” Martyn said, laying down his hand and taking one of the fat cigars Boris had put on the table. He slipped off the band, cut off the tip of the cigar, and reached across the table for matches.

  I didn’t care where this went now. I wanted them to know someone was looking at this differently than the police, that it wasn’t just going down as smoothly as ice-cold vodka. I thought maybe it needed one more touch to get the message across.

  “Think what you want, Bucky,” I said, “but who says you won’t be the next one to have an accident?”

  “Maybe Bucky causes accidents,” Boris said, and even though I’d felt like smacking him in the past, just then I could have kissed the man.

  “Oh, perfect, Boris. Good American thinking. So what’s the scenario, pally? Let me see if I can figure it out. I broke into Alan’s room, unplugged his radio, carried it into his bathroom, placed it on the shelf over the tub, plugged it in, and then pulled the shelf out of the wall. How am I doing so far?” But it was a rhetorical question, my favorite kind. He held up a hand. There was more to come. “So what was Alan doing while I allegedly did all this, soaping his genitals?”

  He looked around for support and found none.

  “Great. This is great. So what did I do next? Will someone please tell me how I made Rick choke?”

  When no one answered him, or came to his defense, he shot Boris a look and then picked up his cards again, rechecking them to see if his hand had improved in the interim.

  Boris looked at me and winked. Then he picked up his shot glass and downed the contents, taking the sweating bottle out of the ice bucket and refilling his glass and mine before putting it back. Fortunately, my mother wasn’t here to tsk-tsk about the drinking or tell my cohorts I’d always had an overactive imagination.

  Woody picked up four chips and dropped them in the pot.

  I threw in five more chips, raising it again, and waited.

  “Are you going to call, or aren’t you?” I asked when nothing happened.

  “I fold,” Chip said.

  Bucky slapped his cards onto the table and folded.

  “Rachel has big hand,” Boris said. “Boris folds, too.”

  I turned and looked at Woody.

  “Fold,” he said.

  “Cool,” I said, gathering in the chips and adding them to the pile in front of me.

  “Starter’s luck,” Boris said.

  I picked up the cards and began shuffling, fanning them out left and then right to the melodious sound of chips hitting each other.

  Suddenly Bucky gave me a concerned look, his face as wrinkled as a shar-pei’s. “I meant to tell you, Rachel,” he said, picking up the cards as I dealt and slipping one between two others, “I’ve been hearing rumors about you for the past few years, since you dropped out of sight.”

  He looked up at me now, to make sure he had my attention.

  “They say you quit the business because you took a bite, and it scared you off.”

  “Really? I heard the same story about you,” I told him, picking up my cards, giving them a look-see, then looking up at Bucky, grinning.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Yeah, it’s what everyone is saying, that you do all those commercials instead of working with clients because you lost your—”

  “What a bunch of crap,” he said.

  I looked down at my queens and grinned some more. I’ve always felt the concept of a poker face was a guy thing. I prefer the grin to the deadpan gaze, Julia Roberts rather than Robert Mitchum, rest his soul. It’s better for the immune system.

  “Who? Who said that?” Bucky shouted.

  “Who do you think?” I asked him. There’d been too many years of Bucky’s game, inventing some hideously damaging insult, then passing it on in front of other people as if he were your best friend shouldering an important but difficult message.

  Beware the messenger.

  Bucky looked back at his hand, quiet for the moment.

  “Of course,” I added, “I tell anybody who bad-mouths you, whatever they are saying just isn’t so. I tell them that you’re a wonderful trainer, absolutely fearless, one of the best in the business, past, present, and future. And that you have huge balls.”

  Even before Bucky looked up, surprised, Chip had kicked me in the foot.

  “Isn’t that what you told them about me?”

  “Especially the part about the balls,” Chip muttered.

  “Of course, I—”

  “So, that’s settled.” I flashed him the Kaminsky grin, a watt or two brighter than Julia’s. “Let’s play cards. In or out, suckers?”

  Chip picked up a five-dollar chip and tossed it into the pot.

  “Fold.” Bucky picked up his vodka, swallowed it, and slammed his glass down on the table. At the loud sound, Dashiell stood and barked, his tail straight out behind him. Then Betty stood, too. She gave him the eye. Dashiell’s shoulders seemed to lift as his tail dropped. He went around to the far side of the bed and lay down with a sigh. There’s nothing like the efficiency of an alpha bitch. I hoped I had just proven that, along with Betty.

  I looked at Boris. “In or out?” I asked him. “Let’s go, people. Are we playing cards here or quilting?”

  I heard the ping of three chips, but I wasn’t looking. I had just thought of another irri
tating coincidence. Maybe it was nothing, but at this point, I wanted to check out everything. I knocked back a second vodka, feeling it burn all the way down, and reached for a handful of potato chips. I had to do something to keep my strength up for all the running around I’d have to do the next day. In addition to everything else, I was on a panel in the afternoon.

  I looked up in time to see Bucky trying to see my cards in the mirror on the wall behind me.

  “Close to the vest, gentlemen,” I said as I got up and walked over to the bathroom. I came back with a bath sheet and draped it over the mirror. “My error. We should be sitting shivah. Haven’t two of our colleagues just passed on?”

  When I sat down again and looked around the table, Bucky no longer had a poker face. He was scowling as he studied his cards. What was he going to do next, the slime, send Angelo to steal chips from the rest of us? Just how far would he go, I wondered, to make himself feel he was winning?

  It was going to be a long night, but that was precisely the point. I’d promised myself I’d do whatever I could to keep the game going until morning.

  21

  THIS IS SO SUDDEN, HE SAID

  “We need more ice,” Boris said. “Wodka not cold enough.”

  I looked out the open window and saw the first glimmers of pink in the sky.

  “Ice, Rachel, ice.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, wanting everyone to be happy so they’d stay at my party, “I’ll go down the hall to the ice machine.”

  When I picked up the ice bucket, Dashiell got up and went to the door. I checked my pocket for the key. None of these guys looked sober enough by now to get up and unlock the door for me when I came back.

  “Don’t any of you touch my chips. I counted them.”

  “Ice,” Boris said, clearly a man in need.

  “Ice, ice, I’m going.”

  I didn’t bother with my shoes. The hall carpeting was thick and soft, and the maids vacuumed it every day. They were always there, cleaning the hallways, early in the morning when I was going out with Dashiell. Anyway, at that point, I wasn’t sure where my shoes were.

  When I got to the end of the corridor, there was a candy machine and an ice machine. But the ice machine wasn’t working. Someone had taped a sign on it saying there was one on four. So I took the stairs, found the working ice machine, and scooped up a bucket full of ice so that Boris could chill the rest of the vodka properly. Next thing they’d be sending out to an all-night deli for more snack food.

  I headed back to my room, swinging the ice bucket at my side as if I were Jill coming down the hill, and when I got to my door, Dashiell immediately welded his nose to the doorstop, hoping for a preview of Betty. I fished the key out of my pocket, blew the lint off it, and attempted to slip it into the lock. But it didn’t seem to fit. I figure I must have had more to drink than I thought I did, because it wasn’t until after my third try that I looked at the number on the door and saw that I was at 405. I heard a dog sniffing and sneezing near the saddle from the other side of the door, and though I clearly was not as sharp as I could have been, I knew it was a little dog, not a German shepherd.

  I turned to go back to the stairs I’d come up, though I could just as well have used the stairs near the elevator. Just as I rounded the corner where the hallway dog-legged in another direction, I heard a door open behind me. But when I walked back to see who it was and to reassure whomever it was that it was only me, I found all the doors closed.

  Downstairs, I headed back toward my room, padding quietly around the turn and then straight along the empty hall. My key still in my hand, I checked first to make sure it was the right room, then slipped it into my lock and opened the door.

  Boris was out for the count. Stretched across the foot of my bed, snoring, he resembled a hibernating bear. Bucky had moved to the one upholstered chair, where he was asleep with Angelo curled on his lap. Chip had apparently stood up from where he’d been sitting on the window seat and was walking toward me. I heard the toilet flush, and Woody came out, barely looked at me, and lay down on the bed perpendicular to Boris, his head on one of the pillows, curled like spoons with Rhonda.

  “Where’s Martyn?” I whispered. “Are we playing cards or what?”

  “It’s nearly dawn, Rachel. Martyn’s the only one here with any sense. He left shortly after you did. He said he was still jet-lagged and had to get some sleep. I’m going to do the same thing.”

  I felt a flutter of panic over Martyn, but if everyone else was here asleep, he’d be perfectly safe. I looked at my bed. Then at the chair. Then I looked at Chip. What if that weren’t so? What if by separating, the men weren’t safe? Wasn’t the whole point of this to keep them together?

  I grabbed Chip’s shirt. “You can’t leave me here like this.” Joan Crawford, minus the shoulder pads.

  He looked at me as if I were talking some foreign language he hadn’t gotten around to learning. I thought I better try again.

  “I thought maybe I could sleep in your room,” I whispered, even though I probably wouldn’t have been able to wake the others had I begun demolishing the room with a jackhammer. “It’s a little crowded in here.”

  I watched him trying to figure out what it was I really wanted. Finally, he thought he had.

  “Okay, Rachel, sure. Betty and I will stay here, and you can—”

  “No. I wouldn’t ask you to do that. It’s bad enough we spent all these hours breathing smoke. Neither of us should—”

  “You weren’t merely breathing it, Kaminsky. As I recall, you were smoking.”

  “Don’t get technical.” It was a favorite line of my mother’s when she’d been backed into a corner of her own making.

  “So what is it you want, Rachel?”

  Smooth, I thought. It’s a good thing this guy was back with his Mrs., because God knows how he’d function as a single man. Maybe, unlike the rest of this motley crew, he was out of practice. One way or another, I had to get through to him, because if I couldn’t protect them all, he was the one I couldn’t afford to lose. It didn’t matter that I was saving him for another woman, as long as I was saving him. I decided to do whatever it would take to not let Chip out of my sight. And then I knew exactly what it was I had to do. But I couldn’t do it where we were.

  “Come on,” I said. I took his hand and pulled him with me toward the door. Out in the hall, the dogs began to run back and forth, Dash chasing Betty, then Betty chasing Dashiell. I held out my hand for Chip’s key.

  Inside his room, I put my hands on his shoulders. “Sit down.” I backed him up to the bed and pushed him onto it.

  “This is so sudden,” he said. He pulled me onto him and was reaching for my face. Even before I became a detective, I knew where a move like that was going.

  I shoved his hand away. “I need you to listen to me, very carefully. You can’t do that with me lying on top of you. And I won’t be able to speak if you’re kissing me. I have to speak to you right now. And you have to listen.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you’re beautiful when you’re angry?” he said. “Come on.” He rolled me off him, and we both sat up.

  The dogs were nowhere in sight. Apparently they had gone into the bathroom to see if there was any food left in Betty’s dish. A moment later Dashiell emerged from the bathroom backward. As soon as he was back in the bedroom, the growling stopped, and I could hear Betty’s tags hitting rhythmically against the feed pan.

  Chip got up and walked over to the nightstand to turn on the light. I noticed that there wasn’t a picture of Ellen and the children there. Nor was there one on the dresser.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  I heard Betty’s tags hit the tile floor. I couldn’t see Dashiell, but I could hear him snoring.

  “You want to talk in the dark?”

  “It might be easier.”

  “Anything to please you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. Or was he just hoarse from hanging out in a smoke-filled room for most of the night
? My throat was sore, too, and I couldn’t stand the smell of the stale cigar smoke coming from my hair and clothes.

  “May I use your shower?” I asked.

  “That’s the urgent thing you had to say?”

  “No—I had too much to drink, and I can’t stand the smell of smoke on myself. I’d like to take a shower and wake myself up, and then I have something important to say to you. Okay?”

  Chip nodded. Without saying a word, he walked over to his dresser, opened the second drawer, took out a clean shirt, and handed it to me. “You might feel fresher in this. I’m going to stretch out my back and close my eyes until you’re finished, then I’ll do the same. Afterward, we can do whatever you like.”

  I didn’t like the look in his eyes.

  Well, I did. But I had something completely different in mind.

  “Talk,” I told him.

  “Talk,” he repeated, trying to keep a poker face.

  Everything was aching. I decided on a bath instead of a shower. The radio was in the other room, where it belonged. I could hear it playing.

  I emptied the complimentary bubble bath into the tub. I didn’t think Chip would mind. Sliding into the hot water, I thought about what I wanted to say to him and how I’d put it. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in chilly water, the bubbles all gone, my mouth tasting like a sewer, complete with alligators.

  I washed my hair, rinsed off, brushed my teeth with Chip’s toothbrush, and got dressed.

  The radio was still on, and Chip was lying on his side, his head on the pillow, both dogs up on the bed, mine pressed up against his back. They were all sleeping.

  Apparently Betty had changed her tune again. She’d not only allowed Dashiell up on the bed but her head was lying across Chip’s legs so that her muzzle was against Dashiell’s ear, whispering sweet nothings as he slept blissfully.

  I looked at the clock radio. It was morning—six-twenty-two, to be exact. We’d been asleep for nearly two hours.

  I woke Chip and walked over to the window seat, moved the drape back, and sat against the wall on one side. I listened to the water running, then heard the faucet squeak again as Chip turned the water off. A few minutes later, wearing a navy blue T-shirt and khaki pants now, his feet bare, he came over and sat on the other side, facing me.