Dog Bites Man (11 page)

"And I'm afraid even soliciting campaign contributions sometimes, for me or Eldon," McTavish added.

"Yes, I suppose that's right. But most of these calls are just plain asinine. Why, the other night some damn fool called from that gossip sheet,
The Surveyor.
I told him I had a subscription already, but he tried to keep me on the line with some cock-and-bull story about a dog murder. Couldn't make any sense of it at all. But these people will try anything!"

"We have it in the country," Carol added. "Chimney sweeps. They call all summer long."

Neither Edna nor Eldon really heard what was said about chimney sweeps. Or any of the rest of the talk around the table as the evening wound down. Their thoughts were elsewhere as they somehow got through the rest of the dinner on automatic pilot.

.    .    .

The next morning, at breakfast with Gullighy, their friend did not even get a chance to specify how he wanted his eggs done before the first couple brought up the Incident.

"I knew it, I knew it. Operation Blockhead is going to collapse. That has to have been a reporter who called Leaky."

"Yep. You're probably right," Gullighy said. "But what's he going
to find out? Nothing from your friend Swansea, and I'll bet nothing from anybody else."

"I hope not. I hope not," the mayor kept saying, almost as a mantra.

"We're doing all we can, Eldon. Just have to play it cool. We'll stonewall if it comes to that. Meanwhile, our little P.P. project seems to be right on course. Betsy Twinsett's got the guest list almost ready. We're going to have a festival the likes of which St. Francis himself couldn't have put on."

.    .    .

Betsy had solicited the names of guests from each of the Coalition for Animal Welfare organizations and had duly collated them into a master invitation list. As a formality, she presented a preliminary, annotated version, giving everyone's affiliation, to the mayor in his office the next afternoon. Four hundred people in all, with a flexible policy about allowing invitees to bring a guest. A whiskey distributor who had recently branched out into wines was providing the spirits for free. And Eatable Edibles, a new catering outfit owned by a confirmed cat lover, was donating the food. The only expense would be the wages of the wait staff, which Betsy assured the mayor would not make a very substantial dent in the mayoral entertainment budget.

"Four hundred people, God almighty," Eldon had said, groaning. "Are there really that many animal nuts around?"

"It's the best we could do, Mr. Mayor," Betsy informed him. "We had to invite all the board members from the seventeen CAW organizations, and we had to do some incentivizing by letting them add more names. We want to be welcoming, don't we?"

"Bosh. Let me look at that list." He picked it up impatiently and scanned down it, until he came to Randilynn Foote's name.

"What's this, Betsy? The governor's being invited? Christ, she'll take over a bedroom in my house while she's at it. The answer's no. Take her off."

Twinsett protested, saying that the Humane Society was adamant about inviting her. It seems she had appeared in one of their adopt-a-pet ads, holding a small Labrador puppy to which she had allegedly given a home.

"Poor creature," Eldon said. "It would be better off living out its life at the pound. But you're going to have to tell the Humane Society no. Explain to them that this is a city, not a state, event. This whole festival is horrendous enough without having that woman jumping in to take credit. Okay?"

"You're the boss, Mr. Mayor," she said dejectedly.

Eldon got to the fourth page before he spotted Sue Nation Brandberg's name. He was trapped. What reason could he give for not inviting her? (Unlike some of his predecessors, who vetoed invitations to Gracie for those who had dared to give as much as $50 to an opponent, he had a sense that, within reason, he had to act on occasions like this as the mayor of all the city and not just as the titular head of the Democratic Party.)

He hesitated, took off his black-rimmed glasses and looked out the window. But he simply could not cook up an excuse for crossing off Sue's name. He handed the list back with a sigh. Maybe she'll be back visiting the reservation or in Italy or something, he thought, though he didn't really believe it.

.    .    .

Governor Foote was in residence in her new City Hall quarters that afternoon. At the very moment she was being excised on the floor below, she sat thumbing the latest issue of
Time,
with Eldon's milk picture staring back at her from the "People" page.

"That crazy egghead bastard wants my job," she muttered to Pedro Raifeartaigh. "Milking an effing cow, for God's sake. Well, all I can say is he'll have a fight on his hands if he fools around upstate again. I'm going to get him. I don't know how yet, but I'm really going to get him."

E
than Meyner had been so pleased with Justin Boyd's debut year at
The Surveyor
that he had presented him with a new maroon Bentley sedan (complete with driver) on the first anniversary of his editorship. The mix of scandal and innuendo that Justin had concocted, coupled in some instances with some genuinely solid and tough reporting, had pleased Meyner, even though the weekly was still losing money at an astounding rate.

Boyd loved his Bentley and often, when riding in it alone in the backseat, he thought of his former colleagues in London, using the Underground and chivvying their expense accounts to cover up five-pound taxi rides. Life in the New World (at least in a Bentley) was good. So good that Justin took to doing much of his editing and phoning while in the car. It had become an extension of his office, and perhaps even of himself.

Thus it was that the editorial conference about Scoop Rice's first crack at the Wambli story took place in the Bentley (the glass partition closed to prevent Boyd's driver from hearing the conversation).

Scoop thought he had hyped the story as much as possible, having sweated over it for three days, almost without sleep and sustained with large doses of Snapple lemonade. It was a "
The
Sur
veyor
has learned" piece, that being the only way Scoop could figure out to handle the factual roadblocks he confronted—the inability to name his source and the "No comment" from the owner of Wambli. (The "No comment" had come in a phone call he had made to Mrs. Brandberg. This had been his only contact
with her, and as a result of Boyd's coaching, she had limited herself to that terse response, eager though she was to tell Scoop the whole terrible narrative, the details of which he, of course, knew already.)

This was Scoop's first excursion in the Bentley and he was awed by the array of communications equipment aboard—a phone (with three lines), a small TV, a notebook computer permanently affixed to the back of the front seat and even a small printer. Air Force One had nothing on this, he thought.

While Scoop was examining the gadgets, Boyd read the story, peering through his Ben Franklin half-spectacles. Using the car's reading light was not necessary. It was a sunny morning and the glass in the Bentley's windows was clear. (This had not originally been the case; the car had come equipped with one-way windows that shielded the privacy of the occupant. Justin had decided that if he was going to have this magnificent chariot, the masses should be able to see him as he rode past. The Darth Vader windows had been replaced at great cost, the expense hidden somewhere in
The
Surveyor
accounts, where Boyd hoped the generous Meyner would not discover it.)

Boyd made little noises in his throat as he read, Scoop listening carefully as he tried to interpret their significance. Finished, the editor rustled the copy pages with a flourish and pronounced the product "very good."

Scoop was relieved and rose up just a trifle—not quite puffed up with pride—from his deep, plush seat.

"You've got some good stuff here—the monks, the dope dealer angle. Just a few things. First, you've got a little syntax problem in that dope-dealing graph. Possibly implying Sue is a dope dealer
herself. Can't have that or I'll never be invited back." He laughed dryly at his miniscule joke.

"Then, your man 'G.' Albanian. Not much sex appeal there. No one cares about Albania. What about Kosovo? Isn't there a Kosovo angle?"

Scoop allowed as how Genc had said he did have relatives in Kosovo. And didn't like Serbs.

"Excellent! Was he in the army over there by any chance?"

"He said he was. Drafted."

"That's it! Kosovo freedom fighter . . . flees bloodshed in his native land only to find it on the streets of New York. . . .
A-
number-one perfect!"

"What else?" Scoop asked.

"A minor detail. You quote your freedom fighter as saying the dog was urinating. You can't use that word in
The Surveyor."

Can't say "urinate" in print? What kind of prudery was this? Scoop wondered. What the hell was he supposed to say, "micturate"?

"Scoop, you have to understand that
The Surveyor
is a family newspaper. We want to appeal to all ages, all members of the family, and we have to keep that in mind with everything we write. 'Urinating' is a turnoff for the twenty- and thirty-something readers. 'Pissing' is the word you want. 'Pissing,' 'shitting,' 'fucking.' It's the only language they're comfortable with. You have to sully the breakfast table if you want to keep ahead in this business, my boy."

Scoop absorbed this new wisdom, or at least tried to.

"One last thing. We have all this stuff about Sue's dog. Nothing about her. I think we have to work around her, get quotes from
those she may have talked to. No—maybe not. Don't want to offend her, as I said. Let's go with the blind story and see if it stirs the pot. Fix it up and we'll run it."

.    .    .

The fixes were easy, and by the end of the day Scoop had turned in a revised version, which appeared the following Thursday:

HUSH-HUSH PARK AVENUE MYSTERY:
WHO SHOT SOCIETY QUEEN'S DOG?

—————

Mysterious Kosovo Freedom Fighter

Reveals Midnight Shooting of Pit Bull

—————

Owner Not Talking; A Gangster Error?

By Frederick P. Rice

The Surveyor has learned that a prize Staffordshire bull terrier,
owned by heiress and charity maven Sue Nation Brandberg, was
shot and killed gangland style around midnight on August 16th.

The 18-month-old dog, named Wambli, was killed in a hail of
bullets outside the posh apartment building at 818 Fifth Avenue.
The alleged assailants were three men in black suits, who pumped
several bullets into the animal before speeding off in their black car.

At the time, Wambli was being walked by a 26-year-old Albanian
refugee for its mistress, the well-known hostess and former Native
American beauty queen.

The circumstances of the cold-blooded murder were related to
this reporter by the dog's walker, who would identify himself only
as "G."

G stated that he was walking Wambli at midnight when two men
emerged from the front door of 818 Fifth. One ordered him to get
out of the way as they headed for an unidentified black car parked
at the curb, its motor running. This was impossible, G reports,
because the dog was pissing at the time.

As the men approached the dog, one lost his balance and stepped
on its leg, possibly breaking it. The dog reacted violently and bit
the man, whereupon his companion opened fire. He was joined
by the driver of the car, who also began firing at the animal, which
was writhing in pain and moaning in the piss-and-blood-stained
gutter.

G, fearful for his life, fled across the street into the bushes in
Central Park. He looked back and saw that the men were still
firing.

Nothing else is known of the incident. Cornelius Barry, the
doorman on duty at 818 Fifth the night of the shooting, was appar
ently on a break when the incident occurred. He denies any knowl
edge of it.

None of the prominent owners of expensive cooperative apart
ments in the building (including three CEOs of Fortune 500 com
panies, Mayor Eldon Hoagland's wealthy friend Milford Swansea
and the actress Myrtle Weston) has come forward to acknowledge
hearing or seeing any sign of a disturbance at the crucial hour. Po
lice at the 17th Precinct, which covers the neighborhood, have no
record of the incident.

Mrs. Brandberg herself offered only a terse "No comment" when
contacted about the matter, although she sounded tense and grief-
stricken before she hung up on this reporter's call.

The young G was reluctant to discuss his personal background.
He did say that he had served in the Albanian army and had rela
tives in Kosovo. While he did not acknowledge it directly, it is
thought that he was a freedom fighter in the Kosovo Liberation
Army who possibly fled to the United States to avoid the violence in
that troubled province—only to encounter a bloody melee on the
streets of New York.

There has been no sign of the dog's body, which was presumably
carried off by his assailants. Staffordshire bull terriers, commonly
known as pit bulls, are frequently trained as fighting dogs, although
dogfights are illegal in New York.

The principal breeder of this species of pit bulls is, bizarrely, a
small community of monks, the Order of St. Eustache, based in Ar
monk. It was originally a French order, and dog breeding and pro
cessing honey provide the income to support their community.

When contacted by telephone, Brother Aloysius, who is in
charge of the dog-breeding operations, objected strongly to use of
the term "pit bull" in reference to Staffordshire terriers, though they
are commonly known as such among most breeders.

"Staffies are courageous, dependable animals.They are not street
fighters and I've never heard of a case where one bit a human," he
said. "Although in the odd circumstances you describe, it is possible
that one did so.

"All I can say to the killers of that dog is, God have mercy on
them," Brother Aloysius added.

He refused to confirm whether Mrs. Brandberg had purchased
her Staffie from the monks, as G believed.

Two theories have been advanced to explain last week's bloody
event. Quite possibly G, the exiled freedom fighter, was suffering
from combat-related trauma and imagined the whole incident. (He
told this reporter that he had seen gangsters kill a dog in his native
Tirana merely for the sport of it.) Until Mrs. Brandberg confirms or
denies the death of her pet, this conjecture cannot be dismissed.

The other is that the incident was a case of mistaken identity and
that the three assassins were drug dealers intent on sending a warn
ing to a competitor by shooting his dog. Credence for this theory is
the known fact that pit bulls are the dogs of choice of drug traffick
ers, pimps and street thugs.

The mystery may never be solved. But if G's story is to be be
lieved, there's a man somewhere in the metropolitan area walking
around with a severe bite mark on his right calf.