Dog Bites Man (6 page)

"But that's the first option. Disclose what happened, have the facts—with a little lip gloss—explained to Ms. Powwow about what happened to Wambli. What the hell does that name mean, anyway?"

The Hoaglands shrugged.

"Only one problem there. If I know Sue Nation Brandberg, she'll be one angry squaw after your scalp—no, change that. After your Swedish behind. She'll do a goddam rain dance and stir up every animal rights crazy around the world."

"There can't be that many," Eldon protested.

"Dear, have you been reading your
Princeton Alumni Weekly
lately?" Edna asked.

"Yes, yes," Eldon said impatiently. "They have that ethics—
ethics—
professor down there who says that animals are really people, in funny furry disguises."

"You'd be surprised, Eldon," Gullighy went on. "They're all over. Most of them would sell their mothers to ransom a stray cat."

"We've got one downstairs, I think," Edna said. "Amber. I
caught her making a vomiting face when she served Eldon a steak the other night."

"Exactly. They're everywhere. So let's go on to option two. But a question first. How much do you trust Fasco and Braddock? Will they keep quiet, or sell out to
The Enquirer
or even
The Sur
veyor?"

"Hell, don't forget Justin Boyd's my biggest fan."

"Today."

"As for Gene and Tommy, I trust them. I've felt no pain with Leaky before this, but I'm sure they haven't breathed a word about my drinking. Right, Edna?"

"I think so."

"Okay, option two is to bury this whole mess. To use a very dirty word, a cover-up. I don't need to tell you this is very risky and very dangerous. You've got at least three possible traps:

"
A.
A major scandal if it ever comes out that your two heavy suits didn't report this incident and no Firearms Discharge Report was filed and investigated. Police misfeasance, and right on your doorstep.

"
B
. That kid may not be the wetback Braddock thinks he is. He may have recognized you and he may talk.

"
C
. Somebody may have been looking out on the street, or come to the window when they heard shots.

"But there it is. Option two—
omertà,
and if anything comes out, we do a world-class stonewall."

"Is there an option three?" Edna asked.

"Yeah. Jump. From the top of the ASPCA headquarters."

"Then it's option two," Edna said. "Eldon?"

Eldon rubbed his still-throbbing head. "Yes, option two," he said quietly.

"All right. Let me talk nice to Fasco and Braddock. I'll do it. We want to preserve your deniability, Mr. Mayor."

Deniability, Eldon thought. A word he'd seen used only in exposés of Central Intelligence Agency hijinks. And now it was being applied to him.

.    .    .

"Okay, boys, let me make something perfectly clear," Gullighy said to Fasco and Braddock, in the adjoining anteroom, realizing too late he was using one of Richard Nixon's favorite phrases. "First off, I think—and the mayor agrees, despite what we said earlier—that you were absolutely right to deep-six Wambli. This was a stupid, silly, pissant incident and nobody has to be any the wiser about it. Silence is the order of the day.

"Now, of course, if anything ever comes to light and you're asked about it, you
must
tell the truth—that you were trying to protect your mayor, our mayor, from a lethal attack by that dog. Right?"

"Yes, Jack," Braddock replied, as Fasco nodded.

"Whatever else you say is up to you and your consciences, thinking of your duty to your families, your city and the man you have so loyally worked for. I personally would not think it necessary to add that the mayor may have been a bit tipsy, that he may have used some language that might be interpreted as threatening or that he accidentally mashed poor Wambli's leg. But as I say, that's entirely up to you. And your consciences. Okay?"

Two respectful nods this time.

"Case closed. Go home and get some sleep."

G
enc, who had been sleeping soundly, suddenly interrupted Sue's reveries by tossing violently and screaming,
"Shouesh! Shouesh!
Pusho! Pusho!"
over and over.

Poor, sweet boy, Sue thought. What dream was tormenting him? The secret police in Albania? The threat of deportation? She took him in her arms and stroked his back.

"Genc! Genc! What's the matter?"

"They kill him! They kill him!" he responded in a choked voice.

"Now, now, sweetie. That's all in the past. The long, long ago past," Sue cooed in hypnotic tones. "This is America. No one is killed here. You're with Miszu. Everything's all right. Miszu will take care of you." She squeezed him harder and kissed his cheek as she invoked the nickname Miszu—his corruption of "Miss Sue"—that he called her.

"They kill Wambli!" he blurted out.

"Oh Genc, dearest, you're having a horrible dream. Just be calm and come to Miszu." She gently stroked his belly and blew in his ear. The small zephyr she created brought him fully awake; he rose up on his elbows and looked straight at her.

"No, no, Miszu, they kill Wambli. Last night."

"Oh, darling, how silly. Who killed Wambli?"

"The three men. Gangsters. Made many shots. Killed him."

"Sweetie, everything's all right. Be calm. I'll show you." She got up, put on her shiny crimson dressing gown and went out to Wambli's quarters behind the kitchen. The baby gate that penned
in the animal was open. No Wambli. In a panic she returned to her bed, where Genc was stroking his hair and prodding himself fully awake.

"Where is he?" she shrieked. "Where is my eagle, my Wambli?"

"I told you, Miszu, he is killed. The men in black suits."

"What men? Where? What happened?" She was hysterical.

"Miszu, I was walking Wambli last night. On Fifth Avenue. And three men shoot him."

"Oh my God. Wambli! Wambli!" She was screaming still, and shook Genc by the shoulders. Sobbing, she collapsed on the bed. It was now the boy's turn to do the calming and he stroked Sue's shoulders and bent over and kissed her breasts. Such techniques had worked marvels in the past, but now she brushed his face away.

"How could you let that happen?" she shouted amid sobs. "Oh, Wambli! Wambli!"

"Let me tell you the story, Miszu," Genc said sternly. He held her down on the bed by her shoulders as he described the massacre, speaking loudly over the woman's moans: Wambli urinating, the two men appearing, one telling him to move on, the other drunk and smashing into the dog's leg. Then the volley of shots, joined in by the third black suit.

"I ran, Miszu. I was in much fear they would shoot me," he concluded.

"You coward! You coward! You lily-livered coward!"

"Lily liv-er-ed?"

"Genc, it's no time for an English lesson. You failed me, you failed Wambli."

"It was not my fault, Miszu. Not my fault."

"Who
were
these men?"

"Gangsters."

"Gangsters! Ridiculous. We don't have gangsters in New York that go around shooting dogs in the middle of the night!"

"I'm sure of it. Black suits. Guns. Black car. I know, Miszu. I know." He did not say that he had seen a drunken band of his countrymen—gangsters—shoot a dog, and its owner as well, outside a Tirana bar for the sport of it.

"I want the police. Right now. Call them." She pointed to the phone beside the bed. "Nine-one-one. Dial it."

Genc hesitated.

"I said dial it. Right now! NINE-ONE-ONE!"

He did not do so, but instead leaned back on the pillows, his body now unsheathed after his wrestling with Sue.

"No, Miszu. I cannot do it."

"What! What are you saying?"

"We cannot call police. They will make questions and take me away. Send me back to Albania. I cannot."

Genc brought the situation into perspective: "You call police, they take me off. You not call, I stay with you. It is simple, Miszu—my deek or your dog. And the dog is dead and I am alive." To emphasize the point, he shook his penis vigorously.

Mrs. Brandberg calmed down and considered her options. Her beloved Wambli was dead and she wanted to find his killers, to avenge his murder. Yet she also realized that Genc was probably right. If the police became involved she might lose him. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, OOOH! SHPIRT! reverberating inside her head.

"I'll call the mayor. What kind of a city is he running?"
she said. The mayor had recently been eager to channel Brandberg Foundation resources into cultural programs for the city's schools.

"Same problem, Miszu. I'm the only one who can tell anybody the facts, and I must be the nonseeable man."

"Oh, God. Oh, God. I need to think. Have Jennie bring coffee to the den."

Sue became calmer and asked Genc, as they drank coffee, to repeat over and over the details of the previous night's incident. By the third repetition, she realized there was nothing Genc could have done and ceased blaming him. Though she was utterly mystified as to why three strange men would kill her dog.

"Wambli was so perfect, Genc. A gentle Staffordshire terrier bred by monks. You know that."

"Yes. Good dog."

"He was the head of his class in obedience school. First on the American Kennel behavior test. Everyone loved him. Never hurt anyone. Did he, Genc?"

"No, Miszu," Genc said dutifully, though remembering episodes in Central Park where it had taken all his considerable strength to keep Wambli from fighting and biting other dogs.

"My poor, dear Staffy. My poor Wambli."

Sue sighed and then stared off in the distance, focusing on the Jasper Johns on the wall. Except that now she could barely make out the hazy numerals in the painting; it was like failing an eye examination. Then she spoke again to Genc.

"You're right, my dearest. I don't want to endanger you. I don't want to lose you. But I'm going to find those monsters who killed my dog. I don't know how, but I will."

Then she had an inspiration. On the top of a pile of newspapers on the coffee table was a copy of the latest
Surveyor.

"That's it!" she exclaimed, pinching Genc's thigh. "Justin Boyd can get to the bottom of this. And you'll be strictly off the record."

"Off the record?"

"Never mind. Justin will get me the answers I want."

E
veryone agreed that Justin Boyd was an interesting specimen. He had made his reputation as the swashbuckling editor of one of London's steamy tabloids, credited with bringing down three cabinet ministers, both Labour and Conservative. In no case did the downfall have anything to do with the competence of the official involved—bigamy, buggery and wife bashing had been the fatal charges, all detailed and proclaimed in screaming headlines in his crudely irresponsible daily.

A short man, he perspired a lot, but even through the softening sweat one could see a hard face. He usually wore a brown suit (despite Lord Chesterfield's admonition that no gentleman wore a garment of that color) of a mysterious shiny fabric, with cuffless trousers, which had been modish in London a generation earlier. Despite the Oxbridge overlay to his cockney accent, he was, deep inside, a bounder.

Appearances were deceiving; Justin had a razor-sharp mind, the razor honed to slit the throats of any who challenged him. And his stubby but spidery hands at least figuratively had a clawlike quality, with which they calculatedly ratcheted their owner upward in the business and social circles that mattered to him.

Finding friends in his new home had not been difficult; there were plenty of other strivers who understood and protected him (in exchange for approving stories or mentions planted by him in
The Surveyor
)
.

Justin had been lured to the colonies by an obscure New Jersey millionaire (or probably, billionaire) named Ethan Meyner. The
latter had made a fortune selling replacement automobile mufflers throughout America (and later much of the world) and in his dotage—he was 82—decided that he wanted to own a newspaper, and a muckraking, scandalmongering one at that.

Most people who followed the rise of
The Surveyor
were mystified by the muffler king's motive. He copiously bankrolled the paper, a weekly, set it up in lavish uptown quarters and permitted the payment of salaries and freelance fees at the very least competitive with those at the most established publications. He had done this not, as some thought, as a sounding board for his political views (he really had none). Nor was it a matter of inflating his ego. It was, at bottom, a bridge-and-tunneler's revenge.

Meyner and his wife, Lola, had both been born in New Jersey and had lived there all their lives, most recently in a stupendous penthouse in Jersey City overlooking the Hudson River and Manhattan. Their experience of New York had been as infrequent visitors until Lola, deciding that she was becoming bored as a senior citizen, persuaded her husband to support a variety of New York City institutions, with an eye to becoming part of the New York cultural scene.

They had not received a warm welcome. While they had money, they did not have the youth, the good looks (Ethan, unfortunately, resembled a desiccated cross between John D. Rockefeller and John Paul Getty) or the witty small talk that appealed to Gotham's beautiful people. Despite large donations to the New York City Opera—thought to be more receptive than the more established Metropolitan—no invitations to join its board, or even the committees for its benefits, were forthcoming. Nor did the Whitney Museum of American Art prove any more accessible, though
Ethan and Lola were significant, and intelligent, collectors of modern and contemporary work.

After enduring jokes about the bridge-and-tunnel crowd from Manhattanites who did not realize where the Meyners came from, and overhearing a prominent socialite remark that a particular benefit seemed to be "overrun with dentists from New Jersey," they retreated back to the Garden State, deciding to spend their charity dollars on the new Newark Arts Center and to bequeath their art collection to the Newark Museum.

The unhappy attempt to break into the New York whirl had left Ethan embittered. It was out of these negative feelings that the idea for
The Surveyor
grew. It was to be a journal exposing the pretensions and corruptions of New York's movers and shakers.

Ethan himself had no journalistic experience and had no desire either to direct the editorial process or even to influence it. His only directive to Justin Boyd, whom he had recruited after being assured by London friends of the editor's scrappy bona fides, was to expose mercilessly scandal and perfidy wherever he found it, preferably in the precincts of Manhattan that had shunned him. Causing as much embarrassment and discomfort as possible were Boyd's marching orders.

Justin was delighted for the chance to leave London; unhorsing the prime minister's cabinet had become something of a bore. The timing was right. Boyd had recently gone through a bitter divorce with his wife, a powerful and successful literary agent. And the personal salary and budget Meyner offered, plus the free editorial hand, were too tempting to refuse.

In the two years he had edited
The Surveyor,
Boyd had engaged in a delicate balancing act. On the one hand he needed to print
enough scandal and dirt to keep his publisher-owner happy. On the other, there was his desire to be loved and accepted by the very people he was supposed to be trashing. So far, he had served up enough red meat to satisfy Meyner's appetite, without slaughtering too many sacred cows in the process. His specialty was weekly lists, always catnip for the prurient and curious: the 50 most charming dinner guests, the 50 most boring dinner guests, the 50 richest widows and widowers, the 50 largest personal bankruptcies in the Southern District of New York and so on. (The publication's lawyers had stopped "the 50 most prominent closeted gays" and "New York's 50 most prominent bastards"—as in illegitimate—but inexplicably allowed "the 50 most famous couples living in sin.")

Although his tenure had been brief,
The Columbia Journalism
Review
had already been on his case, accusing him of paying cash to sources, using pieces about composite characters and including both fact and fancy in his editorial mix, in what
The Review
called "faction." These accusations the editor blithely ignored. The reader was the ultimate judge, he argued, not a bunch of jealous failed journalists up on Morningside Heights. And so far, despite the scabrous copy he printed,
The Surveyor
had not been faced with a libel suit.

Boyd had been at his barber when his cell phone rang and his secretary told him that Sue Nation Brandberg wanted to see him urgently. Thinking that she must have a scandal to reveal, he left without his customary blow-dry, omitted his normal paltry (5 percent) tip and arrived at 62nd Street with still-wet hair, sweating as usual.

Sue answered the door herself. Judging from her appearance, Justin was sure there must have been a death in the family; her eyes were puffy and red, her tight-fitting pants-and-blouse outfit jet-
black (though that, of course, could merely have reflected contemporary chic). And he noticed traces of runny mascara as he stretched up on tiptoes to air-kiss her. This was a woman in deep grief (deeper, if truth be known, than she had either felt or displayed when her beloved Harry died).

"Sue, what's wrong?" he asked as they headed to the sitting room upstairs.

"It's too terrible," she said. "My dog, Wambli, was
shot
last night."

"Migawd, Sue, how perfectly awful," Boyd responded, in his plummiest accent.

"I was supposed to have a play date with him this morning," she said, after which Hoover Dam broke and the flood of tears was fearsome.

Boyd tried to console her and then asked what had happened. It might or might not be a story; the gunshot angle was intriguing, but a mere dead dog was less so. He listened attentively as Sue recounted the sorry epic she had been told, identifying Genc as her houseboy.

"What do the police say?" Boyd asked.

"I haven't talked to them," she said.

"Good Lord, woman, why not?"

She explained Genc's illegal status and how she did not want to risk exposing him.

"I see," Justin said, though he really didn't. If she was so wrought up about her dog, as she obviously was, why would she care what happened to a household servant? That Genc had a more special role did not at that moment occur to the editor.

"I need you, Justin. You're clever and you have the resources to pursue this. Find out who those three bastards were."

"I admit it's pleasantly puzzling. And for you, dear, I'll try to
help." She had been one of Justin's numerous smart-set dates, but no lasting relationship had developed. (One too-short lover in a lifetime was enough, Sue had concluded.)

She reached over and patted his knee, cooing, "Oh, Justin, I knew you would."

"I've got a young reporter who came to work for me not long ago. Worked so hard on the newspaper at Harvard he flunked out. He's smart, and God, is he eager. I'll put him on the case."

"Just one thing," Sue said. "Genc must be totally, totally off the record."

"Even if it should mean the difference between getting to the bottom of this mystery or not?"

Once again, there were echoes of OOOH! SHPIRT! in her head. "Yes," she replied. "Yes. Genc must not be compromised."

"Okay, I'll figure how to play this and I'll tell my man. His name is Frederick Rice, by the way, though he's usually known as Scoop."