Read Online The Long Good Boy by Carol Lea Benjamin - Free Book Online
Authors: Carol Lea Benjamin
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particular, what I would need to take with me. Of course, this was New York City. I could carry an aluminum ladder through the streets without getting a second glance. A ladder would be nice. I could climb up to the second story, break the bathroom window with a rock, open it, crawl in, and plot out the path Clint would have to take to open the latch at Kellerâs.
For a moment, stopping while Dashiell found something particularly interesting to investigate, I wondered how much Iâd have to teach the little dog before I started his work in the empty building. If he was only housebroken and hadnât even been taught to sit on command, he wouldnât know how to listen to human language, let alone how to work.
Not only that, Chi Chi might not want to give him up for a few days. But no way, if she didnât, was Dashiell going to fit through that cat door. If Chi Chi turned me down, Iâd have to come up with a whole new plan.
We headed north again, and as we got closer to the meat district, I thought about my nightâs work again. The door to the closed plant had been padlocked. Even if I could cut the padlock, that wouldnât be a good idea. It would be too visible. A broken window, that happened in a deserted building, especially in cold weather, but a cut padlock could bring police to check out the building. Iâd been cavalier with Chip, but I surely didnât want to get arrested. Nor did I care to explain that I was there preparing a dog to help me break into the market next door so that I could look through their files.
The small window seemed my best bet. I hadnât checked the back of the building, but since the lower floor of all the markets were refrigerated, there surely wasnât going to be a window there. The next question was, short of carrying a ladder to Little West Twelfth Street, how was I going to get up to the second floor?
We crossed the highway at Gansevoort Street, running to avoid getting mowed down by traffic. Even starting out as soon as the light turns green, you need to move pretty fast to get all the way across before the light changes and the traffic peels out. Once safely on the other side, we headed north again, then east when we got to Little West Twelfth Street.
In the fading light of afternoon, I noticed something I hadnât seen before. The name of the business had been painted across the top part of the building, over the second-floor windows. It was faded almost to nothing by now, and in fact, I had to stand slightly to the side to see the wordsâJeffreyâs Fine Poultry, established 19-something-something, the last two numbers of the date gone completely, as was Jeffrey himself. Of course, this wasnât Jeffrey Kalinsky, who owned the fabulously expensive shop on Fourteenth Street. This place wasnât for the sensibility of folks who went to his shop for two-hundred-dollar T-shirts and twenty-two-hundred-dollar Gucci leather jackets. Even in its heyday, this Jeffreyâs wasnât a place for the overly sensitive. While the animals werenât slaughtered here, the scent of fear and the rank odor of blood permeated the buildings, despite the high-pressure hoses and steam-cleaning machines that were used daily. Fourteenth Street was fast becoming a place for people who didnât contemplate the source of the sauce-covered delicacy on their plates, at least not what happened prior to the time when their own butcher took a delicate, pink piece of veal, pounded it flat, and wrapped it carefully in brown paper. They didnât imagine the food they were eating when it was part of a living, breathing creature. Who does? But on Little West Twelfth Street, you couldnât escape the knowledge that what you were eating for dinner had once eaten dinner itself.
The small window Iâd assumed was a bathroom was off to the right. On the left side of the building there was a tree, one of those hardy plants that survives against all
For a moment, stopping while Dashiell found something particularly interesting to investigate, I wondered how much Iâd have to teach the little dog before I started his work in the empty building. If he was only housebroken and hadnât even been taught to sit on command, he wouldnât know how to listen to human language, let alone how to work.
Not only that, Chi Chi might not want to give him up for a few days. But no way, if she didnât, was Dashiell going to fit through that cat door. If Chi Chi turned me down, Iâd have to come up with a whole new plan.
We headed north again, and as we got closer to the meat district, I thought about my nightâs work again. The door to the closed plant had been padlocked. Even if I could cut the padlock, that wouldnât be a good idea. It would be too visible. A broken window, that happened in a deserted building, especially in cold weather, but a cut padlock could bring police to check out the building. Iâd been cavalier with Chip, but I surely didnât want to get arrested. Nor did I care to explain that I was there preparing a dog to help me break into the market next door so that I could look through their files.
The small window seemed my best bet. I hadnât checked the back of the building, but since the lower floor of all the markets were refrigerated, there surely wasnât going to be a window there. The next question was, short of carrying a ladder to Little West Twelfth Street, how was I going to get up to the second floor?
We crossed the highway at Gansevoort Street, running to avoid getting mowed down by traffic. Even starting out as soon as the light turns green, you need to move pretty fast to get all the way across before the light changes and the traffic peels out. Once safely on the other side, we headed north again, then east when we got to Little West Twelfth Street.
In the fading light of afternoon, I noticed something I hadnât seen before. The name of the business had been painted across the top part of the building, over the second-floor windows. It was faded almost to nothing by now, and in fact, I had to stand slightly to the side to see the wordsâJeffreyâs Fine Poultry, established 19-something-something, the last two numbers of the date gone completely, as was Jeffrey himself. Of course, this wasnât Jeffrey Kalinsky, who owned the fabulously expensive shop on Fourteenth Street. This place wasnât for the sensibility of folks who went to his shop for two-hundred-dollar T-shirts and twenty-two-hundred-dollar Gucci leather jackets. Even in its heyday, this Jeffreyâs wasnât a place for the overly sensitive. While the animals werenât slaughtered here, the scent of fear and the rank odor of blood permeated the buildings, despite the high-pressure hoses and steam-cleaning machines that were used daily. Fourteenth Street was fast becoming a place for people who didnât contemplate the source of the sauce-covered delicacy on their plates, at least not what happened prior to the time when their own butcher took a delicate, pink piece of veal, pounded it flat, and wrapped it carefully in brown paper. They didnât imagine the food they were eating when it was part of a living, breathing creature. Who does? But on Little West Twelfth Street, you couldnât escape the knowledge that what you were eating for dinner had once eaten dinner itself.
The small window Iâd assumed was a bathroom was off to the right. On the left side of the building there was a tree, one of those hardy plants that survives against all
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