Dog Bites Man (7 page)

S
ome people called Freddie "Scoop" Rice brilliant, while others thought him only glib. Some thought his ever so slightly chubby boyish features sexy, others that he resembled an overgrown choirboy who had eaten too many Hershey bars. But the words that almost always occurred in any conversational description of Freddie were "brash" and "dogged." (Whether "dogged" had flashed through Justin Boyd's mind before assigning him to the Wambli affair is uncertain.)

Freddie, at 22, was too young to remember Watergate, but as a teenager back in Columbus, Ohio, he had seen a video of
All the
President
'
s Men
and decided, then and there, as some youngsters make the career choice to become firemen when they see the flashing hook and ladder go by, that he would be an investigative journalist.

His practical father, an architect, pointed out that outlets for reporters were shrinking in number and that hundreds of young folk had already followed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into a crowded field. Freddie was undeterred and finally a bargain was struck: he would go to college and then could do whatever he wanted.

He was accepted at Harvard and his parents paid the not inconsiderable tuition without complaint. In Cambridge he immediately became immersed in the affairs of
The Crimson,
the campus daily. As a general rule, freshman candidates on the
Crime
were meant to be seen but not heard; Freddie was both, although he
never really blew the lid off a major scandal. He was best remembered for an exposé of blurbs, those quotes designed to sell books, for works by members of the faculty. He discovered, for example, that the warmest encomium for a certain law professor's tome was from the woman he was living with and about to marry (as soon as his divorce was final), while praise for a volume of history came from the author's college roommate, and so on. It was all good fun (except for those he had fingered), the faculty loved it and Rice became a minor campus legend.

Unfortunately what befitted a legend most did not include serious attention to studies—reporting really had become an obsession with him—and at the end of his sophomore year, he flunked out.

Unlike at least 85 percent of his classmates, Freddie did not have a desire to go to Los Angeles and write screenplays, so he headed instead for New York. His father, feeling that the bargain he had made had been broken, cut off his allowance, so it was imperative that he find work. Most of the alternatives seemed distasteful: an apprenticeship at
The Times
seemed daunting, the rewards uncertain and in any event a long stretch away. He studied the newsmagazines intently and decided that they were not really any longer purveying news. Reporting on a starlet's struggle at the Betty Ford Clinic or the man in the street's reaction to the latest serial killing; covering for one journal what other publications were doing; writing about the least debilitating laxative—these were not the sort of assignments he had in mind. And the thought of working at
The Post-News
was just too laughable to contemplate.

On pure spec, he wrote a letter to Justin Boyd. Called in for an interview, the Harvard reject impressed Boyd with his brashness, and the baby Bernstein was hired.

Boyd counseled him to "hang out," to make friends at police headquarters and City Hall and the journalists' watering holes around town. "I'm new here myself, I'm feeling my way," the editor explained. "So are you, so I suggest you do the same. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth pretty much shut and the stories will come."

At once Freddie started going to Elaine's, the uptown saloon where journalists and writers of all sorts nested. He made friends there fast, even though the old-timers laughed at his high-energy eagerness and, behind his back, started calling him "Scoop."

One of Elaine's regulars, a well-known criminal defense lawyer, gave Scoop his first break. He leaked to him sordid details of early incestuous child abuse to build sympathy for a client, a brutal murderer of his actress-fiancée. Rice was not much taken with the headline Boyd put on his story, "Aunts in His Pants," but the bold front-page byline—"By FREDERICK P. RICE"—he thought looked quite nice.

Then Rice came up with an idea for an article that pleased both Boyd and Ethan Meyner greatly. To the great surprise of Wall Street, Meredith, Mead & Co., one of the country's most distinguished investment banking houses, merged with Canby, Schnell & Co., a wire house with a wide network of retail customers and a déclassé reputation. Rice, like every other phone user living in Manhattan's more affluent zip codes, received frequent cold calls from stockbrokers promising untold riches to those wise enough to open accounts with them. None were more ubiquitous or persistent than the phone jockeys for Canby, Schnell (which had continued to use its household-word name after the merger). Rice, who had roomed at Harvard with a son of a Meredith, Mead partner, could not believe that that old-line, not to say stuffy, firm had any
thing to do with the churning, hard-sell tactics of its newly acquired Canby, Schnell division.

With the cooperation of Meyner, he put his suspicion to the test. Meyner found a friend who was a long-standing investment client of Meredith, Mead and persuaded him to furnish a list of his holdings. The publisher turned these over to Rice, who posed as a new customer to Canby, Schnell and submitted the list of Meredith, Mead–approved investments for evaluation. Needless to say, the Canby, Schnell assessment was that the customer had not been served well; allocations between debt and equity and among industry sectors were wrongheaded; decisions to buy and sell were ill timed. In other words, Canby, Schnell could do better by this customer than his sleepy existing broker, whosoever that might be.

Faces in the affected shops were crimson when Freddie's story appeared. Meyner and Boyd were jubilant. That jubilation increased a week later when the head of the Canby, Schnell division resigned "to pursue other interests" and the establishment dailies covering the story had to make begrudging reference to Rice's
Sur
veyor
piece when speculating on the reasons for the resignation.

Scoop was roundly congratulated by his new friends at Elaine's on the Meredith story. To them it was a perfect job—an original idea, a devastating conclusion arrived at by clever legwork, a tweak (actually a purpling, hard pinch) to an iconic institution.

As the weeks went by, the irregulars at the restaurant kept asking Scoop (they now called him that to his face) what he was going to do for an encore. He tried to act appropriately mysterious, but the truth was he had not come close to sniffing out a new opportunity.

It was while he was in the doldrums that Boyd called him in. "You know who Sue Nation Brandberg is?" he asked.

"Yeah," Freddie replied. He had done his homework on the local celebrities, and besides, as an aficionado of the ballet, he had noticed in the programs a reference to the Harry and Sue Brandberg Toe Shoe Fund (little realizing that its genesis was a
real
story of the sort Justin Boyd would relish).

"Good. Her dog is dead. There may be a story in it."

Scoop's heart sank. He had heard his new friends at Elaine's scoffing at journalism "out there," where one might be relegated to covering the story of a cat stranded up a tree.

Boyd saw the look of disappointment on his young reporter's face and quickly added that "the dog was shot."

More like it, Rice thought. But as his editor recounted the details, "about Wombat, or Woo-woo or some such name," he found himself wondering how on earth he could track down the three black-suited killers. Again, his doubt showed in his expression.

"It's a tricky business, too. I promised Sue we wouldn't blow the cover of her alien houseboy. I've been mulling that over and I think the best approach is for you to interview the fellow, let him tell you what he knows. We'll peg him as an anonymous source who came to you out of the blue. I'll get Sue to give you a big 'No comment' and we'll go with the mysterious-anonymous-source story. His name is Gink, or some such, but we'll just call him 'G.'"

Scoop still looked dubious. It seemed to him that his boss was being a trifle manipulative. Was this what hardheaded editors did?

"I'll call Sue and set you up with the immigrant."

.    .    .

It was arranged that Scoop would call at 62nd Street the next afternoon. Sue would be conveniently out, but Genc would meet him there. When he rang the bell, a young man slightly older than
he opened the door. They shook hands stiffly, and Genc led him to the drawing room upstairs.

Rice took in the scene: highly tasteful modern and contemporary art all around, except for a perfectly ghastly oil painting of a black dog over the mantel.

"That the deceased?" Scoop asked, pointing to the picture.

"Deceased?"

"The dead dog."

"Ya, that's him. There, too," Genc said, indicating two silver frames on a side table. Freddie picked up one and noted that "Wambli" was engraved in script across the top.

"Mrs. Brandberg thought he is beautiful," Genc offered. Scoop tried to detect whether he agreed, but could not. As far as he could tell, the dog had not been beautiful at all. The picture in the silver frame showed a medium-sized jet-black animal with an ugly pug face and a white streak down his chest. He had seen more attractive skunks.

"What kind is he?"

"She tell me, but I probably not have it right. I think maybe Staffordshire?"

"Got me."

"She buy from the monks."

"Monks?"

"Ya. Upstate somewhere."

"Can we go to the scene of the crime?" Freddie asked.

"Okay."

.    .    .

"Your name is Genc, right?"

Genc nodded.

"But I'm supposed to call you 'G.'"

"G?"

"To preserve your anonymity. You're an immigrant, right? Without a green card?"

Genc nodded again, this time warily.

"Where you from?"

"Albania."

"Albania! Not Kosovo?"

"I have cousins in Kosovo, or did have. But I lived in Tirana. In Albania."

"You in the army over there?"

"Sure. Eighteen months. Every guy is unless you buy your way out."

"Pretty tough over there, right?"

"Ya. Not good situation."

Genc stopped outside 818 Fifth. "Here we are. Wambli was pissing right here," Genc explained, pointing down at the curb. "Beside a black car parked there. Then this guy came out the door. There. 'Move! Move!' he said to me, or something like that. But I couldn't pull the dog away while he was pissing, you know?

"Then this other guy, who stagger, stagger, and step on Wambli's leg. So he turned around and bit the guy. I would do that, too. Then the first guy pulls gun and starts shooting. Bam! Bam! I get the hell out."

"I was told there was a third man."

"Ya. He was shooting, too. I turned around and saw him just before I jump the fence."

While they had been conversing at the curb, a doorman had been watching from inside the front door. Scoop approached him.

"We were just talking about the shooting that took place out here on Monday. What do you know about it?" Scoop said.

"I'm sorry, sir, I don't know what you're talking about," the doorman said icily.

Scoop persisted. "A shooting. It happened about midnight last Monday. A dog was killed."

"I know nothing about such a thing, sir."

"What about the night doorman? He must have known about it and talked it over with the rest of you."

"Sir, I'm sorry. We do not have shootings here."

It was clear no information, if the man had any, was going to be forthcoming. But before he left, Scoop foisted his
Surveyor
business card on the recalcitrant.

.    .    .

Scoop walked back to Sue's with Genc.

"What made you think it was gangsters who shot Wambli?" Scoop asked.

Genc took his hands out of his jeans pockets and shrugged.

"That's what gangsters do."

"Shoot dogs?"

"Sure. In my country. Shoot dogs, people, horses, anything."

"Maybe they were policemen. Policemen have guns," Scoop offered.

"Nah. No uniforms. No badges. No sign on their car."

They were stumped.

"Say, Mr. Rice—"

"Scoop."

"Scoop. Okay. So, Scoop, what means word 'squaw'?"

"Squaw? That's a lady Indian. Or female Native American."

"Native American?"

"That's the PC term for 'Indian.'"

"PC? Personal computer?" Genc asked brightly, trying to comprehend.

"No. Forget it. 'Native American' and 'Indian' mean the same thing. And 'squaw' is the female of the species. Why?"

"Oh, a deliveryman came yesterday and I guess Miszu"—then he corrected himself quickly—"I mean Mrs. Brandberg, gave him too small a tip. I heard him say, 'That damn squaw,' when he went out the door."

"She is that technically, I guess. A squaw. Indian. Native American."