“You almost hit me,” she said when she got out of her VW. “You’re certainly not much of a driver. Are you just learning?”
“I’ve learned quite a lot in the last fifteen minutes.”
“I like to set a good example to young people,” Mrs. Griswold said virtuously. “I’ll be up front in the office if you need me. Mr. North’s is number ten, at the far end. You may have to pound pretty hard. He’s a bit deaf, being exposed to all that loud music night after night.” She turned to go, then suddenly wheeled around to face Aragon again. “What about my reward?”
“Mr. North hired you. I expect he’ll pay you.”
“He bloody well better or I’ll double his rent.”
The apartment house was more like a motel, a series of small pink stucco buildings with a carport separating each pair. The inner courtyard contained a live oak tree that looked dead, and a fountain with a bronze dolphin prepared to spout water when someone remembered to turn it on. Number ten was at the rear of the courtyard. Its windows were open and music was playing inside, not the kind of loud rock or disco that Mrs. Griswold had referred to but a soft, melancholy Russian nocturne.
Mr. North’s quick response was also unexpected. The door opened before Aragon had a chance to knock.
“Mr. Timothy North?”
“You know it. I saw you out back with Griswold.”
The young man’s eyes went with the music. They were sad and grey and remote. But he had the body of a weight lifter, overdeveloped chest and biceps that looked ready to burst through his skin as well as his T-shirt. His voice seemed, like his muscles, to have been overused.
He said hoarsely, “The basset was yours, huh?”
“I’m prepared to pay the reward.”
“Fine. I’m prepared to accept it.” He turned off the music. “I hope it’s in cash. What did you say your name was?”
“Tom Aragon.”
“And I’m Tim. Tom and Tim. Cute. We could be twins. How about that?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. North.”
“Tim.”
“Tim.”
“Questions weren’t part of the deal, Tom,” North said reproachfully. “But you’re calling the shots, amigo. You got the dog, you got the money. All I got is egg on my face. Or what might look like egg to somebody suspicious.”
“I don’t see any egg.”
“Okay, come in.”
About half of the small room was taken up by an expensive-looking exercise machine. The cologne North had sprayed on himself wasn’t quite strong enough to cover the smell of sweat that hung in the air.
North gazed at the machine with parental pride. “Some little contraption, huh? It’s a killer. You wouldn’t last a minute on it.”
“Probably not,” Aragon said. “What’s the name of the bar where you work, Mr. North?”
“Phileo’s. Phileo, that’s the Greek word for I love. Cute, huh?”
“Real cute.”
“It’s not the kind of place where you’d bring your mother, but we got plenty of action. You ought to drop in sometime.”
“Sorry, my mother never lets me go anywhere without her.”
“We might make an exception in her case.”
“Neither does my wife.”
“So you have a wife. You’re not wearing a wedding band.”
“When we were married we couldn’t afford two wedding bands, so we flipped for it. She won. Cute, huh?”
North’s shrug indicated that other people’s cutes weren’t as amusing as his own. Leaning against the exercise machine, he waved his hand in the direction of the couch. “Sit down.”
The couch needed cleaning and reupholstering but Aragon sat. “When did you acquire the dog, Mr. North?”
“Night before last. This man comes into Phileo’s with a basset hound on a leash. He wasn’t one of our regulars. As far as I know I never saw him before. Or since.”
There was something bitter in North’s voice that puzzled Aragon. “Would you describe him?”
“Medium height, a bit paunchy around the middle. Wavy brown hair thinning on top. I’d guess he was in his middle thirties. Not bad-looking but he had a bad case of the glooms. Nothing like the glooms to kill off a guy’s looks. Me, when I feel them coming on I mount Baby here and sweat them away.” He patted the machine on what was more or less its rear end. “Anyway, the guy sits down at the table nearest the door and he and the dog are real quiet, minding their own business. As far as I was concerned they could have stayed there. But the boss spotted them right away and sends me right over. I had to tell the guy that dogs weren’t allowed in there. He apologized. He said dogs didn’t seem to be welcome anyplace anymore, that his landlord had told him to get rid of it or else, and he was looking for someone to take it off his hands. The fact is, I’ve always been a pushover for dogs and I think he guessed this. I said I’d consider it. I went back to the bar and made some customer a margarita — I distinctly remember it was a margarita — and went back and told the guy okay, I’d take it. It was a real cute dog. I kidded myself that Griswold’s little heart would melt at the sight of it. It didn’t.”
“You said the dog was on a leash?”
“A thin brown leather leash and collar with metal tags.”
“It was on a rope when Mrs. Griswold delivered it.”
“That was a funny thing. When he gave me the dog he removed its collar with the leash attached, said he wanted something to remember it by. It didn’t occur to me until I read the ad in the paper that he didn’t want me to see the dog’s tags because it was stolen. Was it?”
“Yes, but not by him — by a young woman.”
“You can bet the rent it wasn’t his woman,” North said with a sardonic smile. “Ordinary people don’t just drop by Phileo’s for a drink. We’re out of the way. You have to come looking for us and know what you’re looking for. This guy belonged there. He didn’t look happy about it. Maybe he was still in the closet or just coming out because he’d discovered closets have glass doors. No matter. He belonged at Phileo’s. Taking the dog there with him, that part was unusual. We don’t run any far-out joint that involves animals. Besides, he wasn’t the type.”
“How could you tell?”
“I got X-ray eyes when it comes to people’s weaknesses. This guy was depressed, real depressed. I don’t say he was sick. He probably had plenty to be depressed about.” Once again there was a curiously bitter note in his voice: so the guy was depressed — serves him right.
“Would you recognize the man if you saw him again?”
“Bet the rent I would. Faces are my business.” North’s own face was beginning to show signs of impatience. “Now I think I’ve answered enough questions for five hundred dollars minus fifty for Griswold. I could slit my throat for offering her fifty. She’d probably have taken twenty. Well, next time I’ll know better. Not much chance of that, though, is there?”
“No.”
The envelope changed hands. North folded the five crisp new hundred-dollar bills and put them in the back pocket of his jeans. Then he picked up the morning newspaper opened to the want-ad section and kissed it vigorously. “Thank you, Daily Press... Maybe I should have it framed. On second thought, maybe I should give it to you for good luck. Here you are, Tom. Good luck.”
It didn’t turn out that way.