Free Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin

didn’t go that way. We headed straight out. The guy from the leather-goods store was closing up, pulling down the metal gate that covers the front of most small stores when they’re not open for business. I asked him if he’d ever met Sophie. He said no. His English wasn’t very good. At that point, neither was mine. I said it was the lady with the two white dogs. He nodded. Two white dogs, yes, yes, he said. So you knew her? I asked. He said, no, he didn’t know her, but he’d seen her, and that she had had a nice bag, a green sling, good-quality leather, but that she hadn’t bought it from him. He said he probably would have given her a better price. Then he shrugged and closed the four padlocks that held the gate in place.
    We walked around the far corner but we didn’t go into the park. By ten at night, the park belonged to the drug dealers and the dog run was closed anyway. We headed back on West Fourth Street where Dashiell suddenly began marking everything in sight. No wonder. West Fourth led directly to Washington Square Park. Lots of other males, hurrying to the dog run, had taken time out of their busy schedules to leave their stats. Dashiell did the same.
    When I got home, instead of letting Blanche out and getting to work on the tapes, I surprised myself again. I hadn’t really learned that much, so this time, taking Blanche along, I headed for the meatpacking district. If there was a veterinary office there where samples of Blanche’s DNA had been harvested, perhaps that was the place to begin. I kept the notebook in my pocket, hoping I could add to the copious notes I’d taken at Sophie’s building.

Chapter 7
    What Brings You Here?

    Blanche and I walked slowly north, passing the little shops, the ethnic restaurants, the pocket parks filled with flowers that tourists loved to come and see. With everything lit up, and couples walking arm in arm, heading for Da Andrea or La Ripaille, we might have been in Rome or Paris.
    We turned west on Jane, the sort of street the neighborhood is best known for—Greek revival town houses, with high stoops and tall parlor-floor windows, set in two neat rows across a cobblestone street. When we got to Washington Street, we were at the cusp of the wholesale meatpacking district, now dotted with new or newly renovated luxury condos. Later in the evening, the neighborhood would also be dotted with black and Hispanic transvestite hookers with legs as long as flamingos, wide shoulders and narrow hips, and in case you still didn’t get it, voices so deep the sound would reverberate in your stomach.
    The indoor/outdoor contraptions on which carcasses of animals were hung on sharp, heavy hooks and moved into the buildings were no longer used this far south, perhaps in deference to the new residential buildings on the west side of the street. I was glad that Dashiell wasn’t with me this time because the smell of the place bothered him; he took the plight of all those dead animals personally. Passing a trash can full of bones or even those ominous empty hooks outside each wholesaler’s place of business made the hair on his back stand up and put a wary look in his eyes.
    One block north was the place where Sophie had met Loma West for the second and next-to-last time. Walking toward the empty comer, I wondered if before hiring me Sophie had checked the phone book to see if Loma was listed. Once in a blue moon, all it took to find someone was trying the simplest and most obvious thing. But not this time.
    When I got to the redbrick building on the northeast corner of Horatio and Washington, Blanche pulled to go in. But the building was locked up for the night. All the windows were dark, and if there was a cleaning staff that worked at night, after everyone else had gone home, they’d either not yet come or had already left. I let Blanche pull me up the steps so that I could check the names next to the bells. I went over all of them, even though Sophie had said the