Dog Bites Man

by James Duffy

  Mr. and Mrs. Stuyvesant Duncan and Spotty (a Dalmatian)

  Mr. Emerson Brown and Trixie (a calico)

  Mr. and Mrs. Max Gunther and Horace (a Pekinese)

  Mrs. Henrietta Pelton Tomkins with Flossie (a Maltese in a Vuitton carryall)

  Dr. George Englund with Pepsi (a dachshund)

  Mr. Carlyle Dawson (unaccompanied)

  Mr. and Mrs. Northrup Jaspers with MacBeth (a collie)

  And so it went.

  Bearers of old New York names and possessors of old money, they were the sort who made it a practice to be prompt. Not being members of more vocal and conspicuous minorities (though the city's demographics had actually made them a minority) regularly asked to Gracie Mansion functions, they were glad to have been invited. Many had not met the mayor and they were pleased to do that, too.

  The men mostly wore flannel slacks and tweed jackets, the women unpretentious woolens and single strands of pearls. If it was not an English garden party it was a tailgate picnic at a Harvard or Yale football game.

  Eldon greeted the guests politely, air-kissing the ladies he knew but shying away from the pets, which, to his surprise, were behaving in an exemplary manner. Edna was more forthcoming and remarked on the cuteness or size or other redeeming qualities of the animals.

  The decorum was broken for a few moments when Commissioner Lucille Barnes made her entrance, a brightly colored parrot, called Manfred, perched on her shoulder. The dogs yipped and the lone cat then present arched its back, but the owners succeeded in shushing them.

  A cordon of three press photographers and as many reporters, plus a single television crew, came to life when 90-year-old Victoria Lawrence, the acknowledged doyenne of New York society, came around the corner with Stephen, her Airedale. Wearing gloves and a hat (the only woman so attired), she had some trouble controlling Stephen as she crossed the lawn—in part because the dog was on a long, retractable leash, in part because of her mature and slightly unsteady gait. (Her limousine driver had helped her get a grip on the handle of the leash and propelled her forward in the direction of the party, hoping for the best.)

  In midfield, Stephen pulled on his leash and lunged for the single cat, the fat calico, Trixie. A waiter tripped over the dog's leash as he tried to separate the two brawling animals. Order was restored and the hapless Samaritan was helped to his feet—and Mrs. Lawrence was kept on hers—by the timely intervention of three of the guests. As this mishap occurred, Jack Gullighy passed by the mayor, who gave him an I-told-you-so look.

  The crowd gradually expanded, with more colorfully and less conservatively dressed arrivals. Gullighy, surveying the crowd, correctly sized up the latecomers as the likely money supporters of animal-related charity events, rather than the more traditional trustees and directors. The differences were reflected in the women's dress—chic designer versus Smith College—and in the sometimes flamboyant garb of the accompanying pets: leads and collars decorated with flowers and ribbons, even a tiny jacket or two (despite the Indian summer weather).

  An even more amazing splash was made by a young man, apparently under the misapprehension that the event was a costume party, who came dressed as an organ-grinder with a small rhesus monkey on a chain. The fellow didn't have a hand organ, but he did have an accordion, which it turned out he was quite adept at playing, as the monkey dutifully sought contributions (unsuccessfully in this crowd) with a tin cup.

  A much needed racial seeding came when Estes Broadwood, a black assemblyman from Queens, came in with his black rottweiler. Broadwood was that rarity, a Republican legislator from the city, and had been asked in accordance with Eldon's nonpartisan, nonvindictive invitation policy for Gracie events. He embraced the mayor—the two genuinely liked each other—and the photographers snapped the bipartisan hug. (Eldon was especially pleased at this. After Eldon's vaporizing of Otis Townsend in the mayoralty race, Broadwood was conceded to be the ranking Republican in the metropolitan area. The picture, if it ran, would surely spoil Randilynn Foote's breakfast the next day.)

  At this point another young man, sanely dressed in a shirt and unstructured jacket and carrying what appeared to be a violin case, passed the sentry booth. Once inside, he stripped off his jacket and shirt, opened the violin case, and produced a good-sized boa. He draped the snake around his heavily tattooed chest and plunged into the party. The assembled quadrupeds were properly intimidated, as were most of the bipeds.

  He was followed, more sedately, by the cardinal, utilizing the invitation exacted from Jack Gullighy as a condition for his episcopal acquiescence to the festival.

  New Yorkers were still getting to know Virgilio Cardinal Lazaro, named archbishop of New York by the pope two years earlier and a prince of the church a year later. In contrast to the tall, serious Irish prelates the city had become used to, Lazaro was more compact and had been born in the Philippines. Brought to the States by his parents, he had later become a priest and spent his entire career within the archdiocese.

  His appointment to a post that Irish-Americans thought belonged to them by entitlement had caused many resentments, not only among the Irish but among the Italians as well, who thought it was about time they had an archbishop, too. (The cultural cross-currents were confounded by the fact that Cardinal Lazaro spoke with what could only be described as a brogue; he had learned English in a Philippine missionary school where the teachers were Irish Christian Brothers.) But despite the mild discord his appointment had caused, he was becoming more and more a popular figure: jolly and outgoing yet gentle, manifestly intelligent and tolerant.

  The prelate was dressed in simple black clerical garb, though one of his more ostentatious predecessors might have worn full regalia, given the St. Francis connection. His round gold-filled glasses and his pectoral cross gleamed as he approached the mayor, accompanied by his secretary and Gullighy's friend, Monsignor McGinty.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor, Mrs. Hoagland," he said, eschewing the first-name informality common to his predecessors. "Beautiful day you have."

  "I assume you prayed for it," the mayor replied, smiling.

  "You don't have a pet," Edna remarked.

  "No, only Monsignor McGinty." The secretary gave a tight smile and the First Couple laughed.

  "You don't have a pet, you have a flock," Eldon noted.

  "Quite true, my son. But I do have pets. As I believe St. Francis himself said 'all creatures great and small.'"

  The group was joined by Rabbi Harlan Friedman, who presided over a Reform Jewish synagogue in Manhattan. Middle-aged and as affable as the cardinal, he was widely respected in the Jewish community—he somehow managed to avoid the internecine rancor that often beset his rabbinical colleagues—and in wider circles as well. His straightforward liberalism, articulated splendidly but not stridently, appealed to New Yorkers.

  A confidant of the mayor's and a friend of Cardinal Lazaro, he was greeted enthusiastically.

  "Your Eminence, St. Francis was a Jew, you know," he said to his fellow cleric. The two men had an easy rapport, as became two powerful figures of goodwill in a highly pluralistic city.

  "Yes, Harlan. If you say so. And Jesus Christ was a Filipino, I suppose," the cardinal retorted.

  "I'd always understood they were both Buddhists," the mayor added. "But I went to a very strange Sunday school."

  Busily conversing with the two clergymen, Eldon did not notice the entrance of Sue Nation Brandberg with an Armanied Genc, but no animal, at her side. The knowing in the crowd, having read The Surveyor, took this to mean that her dog had indeed been murdered. And speculated whether the buff stud at her side had taken its place as her pet.

  Genc had not wanted to come—too public an exposure for an illegal. Sue had assured him that her lawyers were well on the way to a solution of his problem and also indicated, by the tone of her voice, that it was a command performance. So there he was, surfaced in polite society for the first time. To those she talked with she introduced him very properly as Genc Serreqi.
She used no identifying description other than "my friend," but one or two deduced that he might be the mysterious "G."

  At this point the organ-grinder/accordionist was playing "O Sole Mio" and several of the bystanders, having drunk heartily of the barely palatable (but free) Long Island wine—Ronkonkoma red and Whalebone white—and eaten copiously of the much more flavorsome Eatable Edibles hors d'oeuvres, joined in singing. The animals by and large were quiet and content. It was shaping up as a merry afternoon.

  Then, like the appearance of the wicked fairy in Sleeping Beauty, the tone suddenly changed. The catalyst was the approach of six seemingly innocuous twenty- and thirty-somethings, neat in button-downs and khakis, except for one girl in what appeared to be farmer's overalls. Their names were on the list, under the aegis of Friends of Animals, and the guards had thought nothing of their attaché cases and what they took to be an advertising portfolio, innocent accoutrements to the uniforms of young professionals. They were wrong. Before one could say abracadabra, they had moved to a corner of the lawn and set up a visual display of photographs and leaflets. The pictures were provocative: vivid depictions of vivisections, hunting traps and other beastly cruelties. A large sign screamed MEAT IS MURDER, the letters red and dripping with blood-red paint. And a poster board headed NO MORE ANIMAL EMBRYO EXPERIMENTS contained a lengthy text.

  Before people realized the import of the incursion, one myopic young man with a small goatee began leafleting the crowd on behalf of the group's organization, the Animal Liberation Army. The gist of his handout was the brutality and cruelty of keeping a pet—or a companion animal, as he put it. As the recipients of the pamphlet, mostly owners with their leashed beloveds beside them, realized its import, they turned on the crusader and a shouting match ensued. Cries of "Moron" and "Creep" were met with ripostes of "Neuter your dog!" and "Slaveholder!" The last brought an outraged Assemblyman Broadwood into the fray, and at least for a moment, it seemed as if his rottweiler—his presumed slave—would take an emancipated chunk from the ALA proselytizer. The TV crew recorded the increasingly angry exchanges, which ended only when the young man, perhaps thinking (rightly) that he was in danger of grievous bodily harm, retreated to the company of his comrades.

  At the same time this confrontation was taking place, one of his colleagues, the girl in the rustic farmer's getup, accosted a petite blonde waitress and asked her what was in the canapés on the tray she was passing.

  "Delicious foie gras," she replied innocently. "On slices of apples. Try one."

  "Are you kidding?" the ALAer shrieked. "Do you know how they make foie gras? How they force huge tubes of food down geese's throats to enlarge their livers? Sister, I pity you." She seemed about to upend the waitress's tray when an irate gent came between them. He conspicuously picked up a canapé and stuffed it down, followed quickly by a second, glaring at the protester the whole time. "Delicious!" he proclaimed loudly, through a mouthful of the offending substance. His adversary moved off in disgust.

  The mayor, some distance away, was unaware of these scuffles. He was busy working the crowd, flanked by his omnipresent bodyguards, and actually seemed to be relaxing. Approaching Commissioner Barnes, her parrot perched on her shoulder, he asked, "Polly want a cracker?" in the artificial high voice he might have used to speak to an infant. They were the first words he had uttered to a nonhuman all afternoon.

  For his pains, the parrot cackled back, "Noaw . . . Polly want crack! Crack! Crack!"

  Ms. Barnes explained with amusement that it was believed that her Manfred had once belonged to a narcotics peddler.

  Meanwhile Dr. Englund, a research professor at Rockefeller University, led his dachshund, Pepsi, to a bush at the end of the property so that the dog could take what the professor discreetly called a "pee." (No Boydisms for him.) Returning, he passed the ALA's setup and, as a world-class, Noble Prize–winning embryologist, fixed on the embryology display. Having been the recipient of hate mail—and a couple of ugly threats—for his own animal research, he was irate; he also knew the cost to the university of the increased security such threats required. Mild mannered by nature, he had kept his laboratory work and his abiding love for Pepsi in separate compartments of his formidable brain. But now he exploded, forcefully informing the army members that their protest was wrongheaded, that advances in his field required animal experimentation and that the animals under his care—more often mice than dogs—were treated humanely.

  His listeners now included Amber Sweetwater, who had joined the ALAers and was apparently their friend. They would hear none of the embryologist's arguments. He was a speciesist (a word he had not heard before) and just possibly a criminal. As he spoke, Cardinal Lazaro and Rabbi Friedman, in an ecumenical stroll through the crowds, came up behind him. They were confronted by another army member whose particular specialty seemed to be an antimeat crusade.

  "I suppose you gentlemen eat meat," he accused. Slightly over-weight, it was clear that he ate something in some quantity, but evidently not animal flesh. The prelate and the rabbi looked at each other and smiled, ignoring the youth's hectoring tone.

  "It's not funny!" he said. "Have you ever been to a slaughter-house? Ever seen conditions there?"

  Rabbi Friedman, for some years after his ordination, had done so in connection with kosher inspections, and now said that he had.

  His accuser ignored his response and ranted on. "Animal Auschwitzes, that's what they are! An animal Holocaust!"

  Rabbi Friedman looked dumbfounded, but the tirade continued. "Yes, Holocaust. Worse than the Holocaust! Six million Jews were killed in that, but slaughterhouses kill six billion chickens in a single year!"

  "My son, that's very strong language and I'm sure offensive to Rabbi Friedman," Cardinal Lazaro said gently but firmly, nodding at his colleague, who was too astonished to speak. "I'm sure you can make a more acceptable argument for your case than that."

  The ALA soldier did seem cowed at this, but his sidekick, a pig-tailed, freckle-faced girl, sought to bail him out by attacking the cardinal, whom she recognized.

  "Bishop, isn't this the St. Francis Festival?" she asked accusingly.

  "I believe so, yes."

  "Didn't St. Francis preach to the birds?"

  "Oh, yes. Or so tradition has it."

  "Doesn't that mean that birds—animals—have, like, souls?"

  "My child, I'm afraid that's a mite extreme. The love of God knows no bounds, and it surely extends to animals. But immortal souls? I'm afraid not." Vatican II had wrought many changes in his church, but not that one.

  The girl wanted to continue the argument but Rabbi Friedman cut her off.

  "Virgilio, I think we should be going," he said.

  "Yes. Can I give you a ride downtown?"

  They turned to leave and as they did so Rabbi Friedman muttered, "These children are crazy."

  "No, just misguided, Harlan. Like most of the world. It's fun to go to events like this in New York, isn't it?"

  The two clergymen found Monsignor McGinty, talking with a former parishioner, and made a hasty exit after thanking Edna and apologizing for not waiting to hear Eldon's remarks. Jack Gullighy, drinking with an acquaintance, an indecently rich and not very smart young whelp who wanted to be, for reasons that eluded Gullighy, a city councilman, saw the retreat in progress. His instincts told him something was amiss, but the men of the cloth had departed before he could reach them.

  Dr. Englund was still engaged in spirited conversation. "What about insulin? Wouldn't have it without animal research. And AIDS—probably started in monkeys, you know, and primate research is absolutely essential if we're ever going to find a cure."

  Eldon, escaping from Manfred, the crack-loving parrot, came up beside him and did not realize the ferocity of the debate going on. In fact, when he saw Amber in the assemblage he did not suspect he was confronting the ALA's guerilla tactics.

  "Mr. Mayor, what do you think about embryology experiments involving animals?" Dr. Englund's adversary
asked.

  Here was a question that the mayor, well versed as he was in most public policy issues, had never confronted. But in keeping with what he thought was the pacific tone of the festival, and to give at least some answer to the question, he made what he thought was a light remark, that "we must watch out for all God's creatures, great and small," repeating the words the cardinal had used earlier. The reporters, hoping for a confrontation, crowded beside him and his protectors and strained to hear what he was saying. And the TV crew recorded his words.

  "You tell 'em, Mr. Mayor!" one of the ALAers shouted, raising his fist. Dr. Englund listened incredulously and then, stony faced, walked away.

  Eldon did, too. As he and his little entourage strode along, they came face-to-face with Sue and Genc. Eldon maintained his equilibrium and air-kissed her.

  "I've read horrible things about your dog," he told her, with a deviousness he had not employed since smoothing over petty faculty disputes as a Columbia department chairman. "Was that Surveyor story correct?"

  "Yes, Eldon, the story's true. And I'll tell you straight out that I've been going to call you to give you a piece of my mind about the things that go on in this city."

  He sighed. "It's part of urban life, I'm afraid."

  "Part of urban life? To have dogs murdered in the street? To terrorize poor innocent foreigners like my friend Genc?" She turned to her companion for support, but he had fled. Angry and annoyed, she scanned the crowd to spot him, but he had hurriedly penetrated as deep as he could into a cluster of people around one of the bars.

  Concentrating on handling his delicate encounter with Sue, the mayor had not noticed the astounded and flabbergasted looks of recognition that had simultaneously appeared on the faces of Genc (before he bolted), Fasco and Braddock.

  Gullighy signaled the two detectives that it was time for the mayor to speak. They relayed the message by physically propelling Eldon away from the irate Mrs. Brandberg and toward the mansion steps. Over his shoulder, Eldon said he hoped to talk to Sue again later on. He was glad of the excuse, but no more so than his escorts.