Dog Bites Man

by James Duffy

  She looked over at her muscled captive now, peacefully at rest. Soon contentment gave way to more restless stirrings and she wished he would wake, erect as he always was in the morning, and excitedly scream, OOOH! SHPIRT! as he invariably did as he came to orgasm. (She had never dared ask him what this Albanian phrase meant, fearful that it might refer to his mother or a past lover, or mean "whore" or something equally disconcerting. Not knowing, it only served to excite her in ways that Harry's squeals had never done.)

  Yes, why doesn't he wake up? (She had put out of her mind his temporary impotence.) They could have sex and then a satisfying breakfast with Wambli at their feet.

  SIX

  The mayor of the city of New York woke up confronting the cumulative pain of a massive headache and a painful leg. The pounding in his head he understood, but what was the throbbing below? He looked down and saw the bandage his wife had applied and gingerly felt it, sending sharp pains up through his body.

  Edna entered and saw that her husband was awake. "Well, you did it again," she greeted him.

  "What's this all about?" he said, pointing to the bandage.

  "You were bitten by a dog."

  "What?"

  "Bitten by a dog when you staggered out of Leaky Swansea's apartment house."

  Eldon tried hard to restart his memory cells. Without success. "How's the dog?" he asked after this attempt, managing a weak smile.

  "Very funny. I haven't the faintest idea. You'll have to ask Gene and Tommy."

  "See if they're still around," he said, as he started to get out of bed.

  Fasco and Braddock had both gone home. Once he was dressed and sitting in the dining room waiting for breakfast, he called the security gate and asked the guard to locate his rescuers from the night before. They reached Fasco and transferred the call to the mayor.

  "How you feeling, Mr. Mayor?" the officer asked.

  "Fine, fine. Gene, what happened last night?"

  "You stepped on a dog who was taking a pee."

  "Oh?"

  "And he bit you."

  "Yes, I know that. What happened then?"

  "Tommy and I shot him, sir."

  "You shot him?"

  "Yessir."

  "Was that necessary?"

  "It was your orders, sir."

  "My orders?"

  "Yessir. You told us to off him."

  Could he have given such a command, Eldon wondered. He could hardly believe it, but such were the evils of drink. So the boys had an Eichmann defense: only carrying out orders.

  "So there's a dead dog full of bullets putrefying over on Fifth Avenue?" Eldon queried.

  "No, no, Mr. Mayor. Tommy and me got rid of the body. Dumped it in the East River."

  "Oh my God. What are you going to tell the owner?"

  "I think that's up to you, Mr. Mayor."

  "Who was the owner by the way? Do you know?"

  "Yeah. Woman named Sue Brandberg. Sue Nation Brandberg."

  "Holy God. Are you sure?"

  "It's what the tag said. Know her?"

  "Know her? She's one of the biggest lady bountifuls in the city. Don't you ever read the papers?"

  "Don't recall the name, sir."

  "Look, Gene, I think you better get hold of Tommy Braddock and come over here. Right away."

  Eldon hung up the phone and turned to Edna, who, though having heard only one side of the conversation, realized there was trouble. He recapped the conversation.

  "Excessive drinking can be dangerous to your health," Edna said.

  "Please, dear. Skip the medical advice. We need Gullighy."

  . . .

  Eldon Hoagland, in his years in New York before becoming mayor, had moved comfortably in a wide maze of concentric circles that together encompassed the city's power centers. The first circle was, of course, academia, which overlapped with publishing and the media, banking and finance, politics (principally through his association and friendship with Senator McTavish), the vast network of foundations and not-for-profits and, glancingly, entertainment and the arts.

  If intelligence was defined as the ability to connect things up, he did a good job, sensing the political ambitions of certain actors, for example, or the secret dreams of artistic hegemony of at least one foundation head, or a real estate mogul's deep-seated desire to be considered an intellectual.

  If Eldon was good at this sort of connecting up, Jack Gullighy was a genius. He knew absolutely everyone, and everything about them. His father, an old-line Democrat from Brooklyn, had revered Jim Farley, Franklin Roosevelt's political right-hand man, and had passed on to his son the importance of knowing and remembering everyone's name, as the legendary Farley had done.

  Gullighy went further. Names were not enough. He had to know the vital statistics, the personality quirks and the buried secrets as well: the true age of the many-times-made-over charity queen, the closeted (homosexual) sex life of a married Wall Street banker, the usurious organized crime loans that had enabled a prominent and now upright developer to get his start.

  He brought to the task the discipline of a Jesuit education, from Regis High and Fordham, and the natural inquisitiveness of a diligent newspaper reporter, which he had been before setting up shop as a political consultant.

  Hypocrisy did not bother him, as long as he understood the real truth being obscured. Attempts at larceny, in small doses, didn't either, though he was of the general view that they were usually unrewarding, as well as foolhardy.

  Jack Gullighy was a familiar name to readers of the gossip columns—he was adept at promoting himself as well as his clients—and his public image was that of the jolly Irishman, red haired, bearded, of medium height and heavyset. He was also skillful at adapting that persona as circumstances required. With the cardinal or the clergy he was the former altar boy, deferential and dutiful. In a meeting of tough-talking pols he was the toughest of all, with a longshoreman's vocabulary. He could even hold his own with a group of New Agers, his beard giving him a gurulike appearance as he spoke of "closure" and "issues" and "self-esteem."

  In his personal life, Gullighy had taken seriously the Ten Commandments, so carefully inculcated by the Jesuits—seriously, that is, as a guide for disobedience. Married and divorced twice—the Gaelic charm apparently stopped at the domestic threshold—his personal relationships with women were as awkward as his professional maneuvers were deft. If he ever spoke bitterly, it was about how his two greedy ex-wives had left him impoverished.

  Impoverishment was a gross exaggeration, as Jack had become a highly successful political operative. His freelance fees were high, but those paying them were more often than not rewarded with success. Eldon had been so grateful for his help in navigating the dangerous shoals of city politics that he had invited him to be his press secretary. Gullighy did not want to take the hit to his income, but he finally gave in to Eldon's relentless pressure, promising only to stay in the job for two years.

  Now he wondered what disaster had occurred, for surely it was not good news for which he was being summoned to Gracie Mansion at eight o'clock in the morning (he usually began the day at City Hall at nine). Edna, who had called him at home, had simply said that there was a "serious problem" and, in passing, that drinking with Leaky Swansea was involved.

  Gullighy knew that Eldon's drinking evenings with Swansea were a potential time bomb. Before he had signed on to Hoagland's campaign he had conducted the two-tier private interrogation that he always made a prerequisite to accepting any political assignment. First there was an interview with the candidate, looking him straight in the eye and asking if there was anything—anything—in his past life that could prove embarrassing in the campaign. Eldon had said there was nothing, but after prodding acknowledged that as a young instructor at the University of Minnesota he had fallen behind on his car payments and been threatened with repossession. Not a problem.

  Phase two was an interview with the candidate and his wife. Same question. Eldon repeated that there was no
thing, but Edna quietly prompted him. "Your outings with Leaky Swansea, dear." Whereupon Eldon acknowledged his "occasional" nights out with his old roommate but pointed out, rightly, that they had never resulted in scandal or trouble, drunkenly boisterous as they sometimes had become. And that they were not, at least in his view, all that frequent.

  Gullighy was a master of what he chose to call "Preemptive Prophylaxis," and had spread the word among his reporter cronies that Eldon "was not adverse to having a good time"—and was himself relieved that there were no furtive abortions, adorable illegitimate offspring, talkative mistresses, seduced and abandoned graduate students, secret S&M practices or other delectable truffles for the press to root out and feed on.

  . . .

  Gullighy found the First Couple a portrait in dejection when he joined them in the dining room at Gracie, Eldon with his leg awkwardly propped up on a chair, Edna finishing a cigarette and coffee. (Aside from actively practicing pedophilia, being a smoker in Manhattan was the surest way to social ostracism. So she smoked only in private, resenting mightily the fact that the self-appointed tobacco police demanded that she not smoke elsewhere or, for that matter, at public functions at the mansion. It was, after all, her home, she argued, and as a physician she was fully aware of the foolish risks she was taking, but she had been overruled by her husband's staff.)

  "Whassup?" Gullighy asked.

  "My memory's a little hazy, but apparently I was bitten by a dog last night," Eldon explained.

  "Apparently."

  "Outside Leaky Swansea's building," Edna added.

  "And what am I supposed to do about it? Send you a get-well card?"

  "There's more to it than that. My bodyguards, Gene Fasco and Tommy Braddock, shot the dog."

  "Oh."

  "The monster attacked me. It was a pit bull, they tell me."

  "Pit bull, that's good. Better than a lovable collie or, God forbid, a Pekinese. Clearly self-defense, right?"

  "I guess so."

  Braddock, out of breath, joined the trio and colored in the details.

  "Why the hell did you have to shoot the damn creature?" Gullighy asked.

  Braddock hesitated, looked at Eldon, and finally said, "The mayor told us to."

  "You sure?" Gullighy asked sharply. "What did he say?"

  "He told us to off the son of a bitch."

  Gullighy turned red and stroked his beard. Edna lit another cigarette.

  "You sure he told you that?" Jack asked.

  "Pretty sure, yes."

  Eldon himself offered no elucidation; he simply could not remember what he may have said.

  "But the mayor was in danger, right? From an unprovoked and vicious attack by a pit bull," Gullighy persisted.

  "Well, the mayor did step on his leg," Braddock said reluctantly.

  Eldon winced and stroked his wound.

  "The dog was, ah, urinating, sir."

  Silence. Then Edna turned to Gullighy. "I'm afraid, Jack, we haven't reached the beauty part yet."

  "I can't wait. Make my day."

  "The dog's owner was Sue Nation Brandberg," Eldon told him.

  Gullighy swallowed hard, then said hoarsely, "Well, I guess that's better than a quadriplegic blind man. Seeing Eye dog, you know. Or Yoko Ono . . . Jesus God in heaven, Eldon!"

  "Dog's name was Wambli," Braddock interjected, trying to be helpful.

  "Wambli, Schwambli. Poor dead little Schwambli. Where's the body, by the way? Gonna lie in state at City Hall?"

  "We dumped it. In the East River."

  "Whose brilliant idea was that?" Gullighy asked.

  "Gene's, actually."

  "Damn. Just what you'd expect from a guinea bastard. Sorry, Tommy. Didn't mean that."

  Fasco arrived, expecting to be congratulated on his clever waste-disposal scheme. Then Gullighy, all business, ran the two officers through their story again and completed his grasp of the incident, including the flight of the mysterious dog walker.

  "Aside from this guy, did anybody see or hear you?"

  Both officers agreed that they had not been seen or heard, as far as they could tell.

  "Leaky wasn't waving bye-bye out the window? A bus didn't go down Fifth? Kitty Genovese's neighbors weren't peeking through their curtains?"

  "Don't think so, Jack," Fasco said.

  "You tell anybody about this? Make a report? You notify the bereaved widow—I mean the owner, Mrs. Brandberg?"

  The officers said that they had not.

  "What about the bullets?"

  "We picked up all four shells. I've got 'em."

  "Four! You guys are real sharpshooters."

  "That dog was real wild, Jack," Braddock said.

  "Yeah, I'm sure. Now, boys, let me talk to Edna and Eldon alone for a few minutes. But stick around."

  . . .

  The portrait in dejection now had three subjects. Gullighy, fortified by a cup of coffee that Amber brought (and some silent reflection until she had left the room), began speaking. Lecturing, really, to an untutored but eager student body of two. His mind had been racing. He did not want to see his boss and friend in trouble.

  "When your Keystones first started talking, I thought the answer was self-defense, or at least the tale of two cops doing their best to protect their mayor. Everybody understands what a menace pit bulls are. But then they turned it into the St. Valentine's Day massacre. So, I dunno.

  "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 Surveyor?"

  "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."

  SEVEN

  Genc, 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.