Dog Bites Man

by James Duffy

  A painful quiver circumnavigated Gullighy's middle.

  "Did he recognize the mayor? Did he recognize you?"

  "I'm pretty sure he did. We ran into him head-on out there on the lawn."

  "Jesus. Well, thanks for the good news, Gene. I'm outside the mayor's office now and I'll tell him. But not a word of this to anyone else, understand? And that goes for Braddock, too."

  "No problem."

  "My best to your family, Gene. I'll be in touch."

  . . .

  Eldon was all business when he arrived. "Listen, Jack, you've got to help me draft a statement. I've got to put this damn-fool animal thing to rest. It's the worst misquotation since I was elected. Totally irresponsible. Absolutely wrong. I want a statement saying I have no sympathy for the ALA or whatever the hell that outfit's called and that I fully support responsible medical experiments on animals. As far as I'm concerned the docs can use their damn embryos any way they please. Period. Full stop."

  "Until ten minutes ago I would have agreed with you."

  "What happened then? Your stomach get upset from drinking coffee from that slop machine outside?"

  "No sir. Not that simple." He reported what Fasco had told him.

  "Holy shit."

  "Well put, Mr. Mayor. I'm afraid the holy shit is about to hit the blessed fan. But remember what I said right from the beginning—you might have to resort to a first-class stonewall if the cover-up comes apart."

  As Eldon recalled their earlier conversations, Gullighy had said that we might have to stonewall, but he let the thought pass.

  "You're not in stonewall mode yet, but you'd better be prepared for it. Prepared to deny, deny, deny. Which shouldn't be hard since you were so drunk your memory wasn't functioning at the time of the Incident anyway."

  Eldon looked hurt and defeated.

  "But stonewalling may not be so difficult. Remember, we thought he was an illegal, and when he wouldn't even give his name to The Surveyor that sort of confirmed it. He may disappear. And even if he doesn't, it'll be your word, and Fasco's and Braddock's, against his."

  "Well, first things first. Let's get started on my animal rights statement," the mayor said.

  "Hold on a minute, Eldon. You remember the purpose of the festival was to establish your great love for animals, just in case. Just in case. A harsh statement right now would not be the best idea."

  "But I've got to say something," Eldon protested.

  "Okay. Say that you were misquoted, that you didn't endorse the ALA's antiresearch stand. But don't say outright that they're wrong—or crazy. Just say that you're not a scientist, the issue's very complex, blah, blah, blah."

  "You're the master here, Jack. If you say so."

  . . .

  The mayor's statement, following Gullighy's approach, was given out before noon to the press and put on the mayor's Web site. Meanwhile, he called Rabbi Friedman and Cardinal Lazaro to smooth their ruffled clerical feathers.

  Rabbi Friedman was highly critical of the ALA's presence at the festival. "These are ignorant people who probably don't appreciate how grossly offensive their rhetoric is," he told the mayor. "They're free to express their hateful views, but that doesn't mean you have to give them a platform."

  Eldon explained that they had tricked their way into the party and the rabbi accepted his explanation.

  Cardinal Lazaro downplayed the Liberationists' presence and also accepted Eldon's version of what had happened. But then he commented on the mayor's position in the embryology controversy.

  "If I may be very frank, Mr. Mayor, your support for their position on animal embryos is very misguided."

  "I didn't—don't—have a position, Your Eminence. That was totally fabricated by New York One and The Post-News."

  "I accept what you say. But what you must do is unequivocally condemn their position. It is wrong and without moral justification."

  Eldon paraphrased his statement, which had already gone out.

  "Not strong enough, Mr. Mayor. Don't you understand the implications of condemning research with animal embryos?"

  "Perhaps I don't."

  "Embryological research, the doctors tell me, is important—breakthroughs in treating leukemia, et cetera. And if they can't use animal embryos, they will use human ones."

  "You obviously have given some thought to this matter, Your Eminence."

  "I certainly have. You must know my position. A human embryo is a living being. To kill it is murder, pure and simple."

  "You mean it's like abortion?"

  "Precisely."

  "Oh."

  Eldon graciously thanked the cardinal for sharing his thinking and ended the conversation as quickly as possible.

  Abortion? Oh my, the mayor thought to himself as he put down the phone; so far in his public career he had managed to avoid that black pit of an issue. Should he revise his statement? Too late. Put out a new one, then? No, matters were quite confused enough already.

  . . .

  Dr. Englund, whom the mayor had known slightly over the years, was frosty. He, too, did not blame the mayor for the presence of the ALAers but, like the cardinal, asked Eldon to make a strong statement criticizing their position. The mayor responded with what was becoming a litany, his lack of enough scientific knowledge to get on either side of the controversy.

  "That may be, sir, but you are an important public figure. Equivocation on your part can only lend credence to a very wrongheaded view of what our research is all about. You must speak out."

  Eldon dimly recalled that the professor had been quoted on New York One as saying that he, as a layman, should simply shut up. But he did not raise the point.

  "What's the alternative to animal research?" Eldon asked.

  "Human embryos, of course," Dr. Englund replied, as if addressing a not terribly bright student. "There's no reason you should know it, but that's a red-hot issue down in Washington. Congressmen go crazy over using human embryos in research. That's why we try to avoid it.

  "I've got a tank full of fish here at the lab—zebra fish, medaka fish from Japan. I've even got eggs in incubators, on their way to becoming chicks. What am I supposed to do? Kill the fish? Eat the eggs for breakfast? Your cockamamy statement would suggest that I should. You've got to hit those Liberationists and hit them hard."

  . . .

  While City Hall was ablaze, Amber Sweetwater sat fuming in her makeshift bedroom back at the mansion, bent on revenge. Edna, without a great deal of tact and with a certain amount of zest, had fired her after breakfast and told her to move out before the day was over.

  No legitimate reason had been assigned for her dismissal, just what she regarded as petty, middle-class gripes one might expect from a professor's wife—her bare feet, the nude sunbathing, the fraternizing with her ALA friends. She had pointed out that it would be expensive to replace her—no one else would work for her substandard wages—but the city's first lady was not moved.

  Amber idly flipped through her diary; Edna had been quite right that the idea of an upstairs-downstairs exposé had not escaped her. She was made even angrier when she realized that her employers, as far as she knew, had led a pretty dull existence, and she had observed very little behavior of the sort that sold confessional books. (A city councilman's groping of a minor screen star might have qualified, but the fingered actress's career was already in decline and she was likely to be dimly remembered history by the time a book appeared.) And no one, probably, would really care that she disliked Edna.

  Maybe she should get some more expert advice. A writer more clever than she ought to be able to shape her raw material into a book, or at least a magazine article. What about that hotshot reporter she'd met at Squiggles? Had a funny name. Scrooge. Scope. No, Scoop. And who did he work for? The Inspector, The Examiner, something like that. She would have to track it down and give him a call, but first she had to let her friend Gretchen know that she was moving in, at least temporarily.

  . . .

 
; Later that morning Dr. Englund placed a call to Governor Foote, to caution her about the tack her health commissioner had been recently taking regarding greater accountability for the expenditure of medical research funds provided by the state. The previous winter there had been a minor scandal at a medical school upstate, where skiing equipment had been purchased out of moneys ear-marked for an obesity study. The hapless director of the project had defended the purchase on the grounds that (a) the equipment was for cross-country and not downhill skiing, (b) his team was interested in finding out if cross-country skiing, one of the few non-fat-inducing activities available in the rural areas, could help in weight reduction and (c) his overworked and underpaid staff could use the equipment, thus improving their morale, when their corpulent subjects were not.

  The upshot of this embarrassing comedy, when it was revealed, had been a declaration by the health commissioner that supervision of grants under his jurisdiction would be tightened. Dr. Englund, like every other research doctor in New York, believed with confident arrogance that he was pushing forward the frontiers of science and that he should be funded in this remarkable work with few, if any, questions asked; his televised admonition to the mayor to shut up pretty much summed up his attitude toward any potential critic or inquisitor.

  He had been deputized because of his lofty reputation to give the governor an early warning that her commissioner might stir up unnecessary contention if he tried to breach the protective walls of the city's preeminent research institutions.

  He had met the governor socially on a number of occasions, but not nearly often enough to call her Randilynn. He had asked at an earlier lunch at the common table of his club whether she was "Madame Governor" or simply "Governor" and had been advised that "Governor" would do.

  The conversation, actually a short monologue by the Nobelist, was proper and polite. At the end the governor said she had seen him on television the night before and agreed with him completely.

  "They tell me I shoot my mouth off all the time," she said, "but I certainly wouldn't stick my hand in that bucket of worms, if I can use that phrase. What do you suppose got into the mayor?"

  "I am at a total loss, Governor. He called me this morning and said he was misquoted, but it was not a satisfactory conversation."

  "Is he losing his mind?" she asked hopefully.

  "That's a trifle strong, Governor, but he certainly showed bad judgment."

  When the conversation ended, she turned to Pedro Raifeartaigh with a cackle. "Listen to this, Raifeartaigh. The most eminent scientist in the Empire State thinks Eldon's losing it. I felt like saying, 'Fuckin'-A right he is,' but you know I only talk that way to you, sweetie."

  "Yes, Governor." (And, "Three bags full, Governor," he murmured to himself.)

  EIGHTEEN

  After she had moved her things to her friend Gretchen's, Amber Sweetwater went to the nearest newsstand and looked over the display of front pages, seeking the name of Scoop's publication. There it was. The Surveyor.

  She called the paper's number, wondering if the operator would know who Scoop was. Fortunately the nickname had been in sufficiently wide use that she did and Amber was put through.

  Scoop had been tempted to tell the operator that he was on deadline and to refuse the call, but when he was told it was Amber calling he instantly changed his mind; he remembered that she was the girl from Gracie Mansion.

  "Hello."

  "This is Amber."

  "Yes. You work for the mayor, right?"

  "Hmm. Yes."

  Before Scoop could ask if he could see her—might not she be the second source he wanted?—she requested a meeting with him.

  "I need some advice," she explained.

  Scoop had a dilemma. His Wambli story was not going well and was due at noon the next day. But he thought he'd better spare the time to see the girl, just in case she could reveal something that might help him.

  They met at Humpty Dumpty's, a bar on Second Avenue. It was deserted at three o'clock in the afternoon, so they could talk freely. Amber told the story of being fired and her desire for revenge.

  "Were you mistreated?"

  "No, not exactly. She was a real bitch to me but no, I wasn't."

  Scoop thought a bit, sipping on a beer. "You a city employee? Civil service? I don't know anything about it, but can't you bring a grievance?"

  "I dunno. I wasn't a member of the union. Julio, the chef, joined but I didn't. Couldn't afford the dues on what I was paid."

  "Which was?"

  "Room and board and a hundred and fifty dollars a week."

  "Slave labor! There may be an angle there if you want to go public."

  "I'll carry a banner through the street. Naked. If I can get back at them. Specially her."

  "Let me think about it."

  Amber tentatively brought up the matter of her diary. "You know anything about publishing?" she asked.

  "Not much, but I can find out. Why?"

  "Well, I did, like, keep a diary of what went on at the mansion."

  "You did?" Scoop asked, a light suddenly going on. "Like what happened the night of August sixteenth?"

  "Sure. But I don't know anything went on that day."

  "Late that night—did the mayor come home with a dog bite on his leg?"

  "Gee, I don't remember anything like that. But I'd have to look to see what I wrote."

  The pair hurried off to Gretchen's, several blocks away, where the diary was stashed in a box of Amber's meager possessions.

  "What was the date again?" she asked, once she had retrieved her bound notebook.

  "August sixteenth. A Monday."

  "Let's see . . . lunch for Mrs. Hoagland and some people from Ronald McDonald House. We'd been told no hamburgers, so had some kind of tortillas instead. . . . Then she had dinner alone. Ate the rest of the awful chicken gizzards from the night before, I remember. . . . Wait, let's see . . . 'That black jerk Tommy Braddock came down to the kitchen after midnight and woke me up while he searched around for first aid supplies. Said the mayor had a cut on his leg. Very unfriendly. Mayor may have been drunk. . . .'"

  "You wrote that? Let me see!" Scoop shouted.

  He read the passage and pulled out his own notebook.

  "Can I copy this?"

  "I guess so," Amber said, puzzled at his excitement.

  "Anything else you can tell me about that night?"

  "Let me think. Braddock came back later, I remember, with that other creep, Gene Fasco. They sat and drank coffee and had a long conversation. I could hear them, but not much of what they were saying. Except Braddock did raise his voice once, shouting about garbage bags, I think it was."

  Scoop wrote this down; were they looking for a garbage bag to dispose of Wambli's body, perhaps?

  "Any mention of a dog?"

  "Dog? No, I don't think so."

  "I've got to go, Amber. I'm on deadline. But let's do Squiggles some night. Can I call you here?"

  "Sure. And you will find out about publishing for me, won't you?"

  . . .

  Publishing, indeed. He was about to break the story of the year. He returned to the newspaper office and began phoning. Leaky Swansea. Was the mayor at your apartment on August 16th? ("I don't remember.") Did he get drunk? Slam went the phone.

  Gene Fasco and Tommy Braddock (if Amber had their names right). "I'm sorry, it's against department rules for members of the mayor's security guard to talk to the press," the Police Department press officer told him. "But I'll be happy to try and get an answer to any question you may have."

  Scoop decided not to pursue the Police Department lead. No point in having the NYPD up in arms before the story ran. Instead he called a press corps buddy from Elaine's, a reporter for The Post-News, and asked him if he could find out Fasco's and Braddock's full names. It took his more experienced colleague one phone call to get the information; little did he know he was helping put together a news beat that would acutely embarrass his own paper.

&nb
sp; Working through the night, Scoop had a draft ready for Justin Boyd when he appeared in the morning. Boyd scanned it eagerly and announced that it "really kicks Hoagland in the achers."

  "Achers?"

  "Sorry. Britspeak for 'balls.' Or as I suppose you'd prefer to say, 'testicles.' Be that as it may, I have a few quibbles.

  "Park Avenue Pit Bull, the freedom fighter angle, thunder from Jack Gullighy—all that's fine. And that girl, Sweetwater, excellent. But you're too fond of 'appears' and 'apparently,' my boy. Step up to the plate. The mystery doesn't appear to be solved, it is solved. And the mayor didn't apparently tell his men to shoot the dog, he did tell them.

  "Then, later, you have him emerging from the apartment building. How about emerging 'unsteadily'? I think we can get away with that."

  "By the way," Scoop asked, "you want me to work in something about the animal rights thing?"

  "No, no. We'll put a graph or two about that inside, to cover ourselves. But no point in touting the competition's story."

  "Don't you have a problem with that? Mine says the mayor ordered his men to shoot Wambli, the other will say he so loves animals that he sided with the ALA."

  "That's for him to puzzle out, not me. Isn't it just possible he's a hypocrite?"

  . . .

  Scoop's story went to press that night, but before The Surveyor appeared on the newsstand the following noon, The Times was heard from. Contrary to Eldon's belief that the "Public Lives" item would be the end of its coverage, the editors did a full-court press on the ALA controversy, obviously miffed at The Post-News's purple reporting. Under a front-page headline, "Mayor in Bitter Animal Rights Dispute," The Times story began: "Mayor Eldon Hoagland yesterday was between the Scylla of the support he gave the militant Animal Liberation Army's position against research involving animal embryos and the Charybdis of the city's medical establishment, vocally opposed to the mayor's stand."

  The story, which was restrained and fair, recounted the details. Then it ran quotes from a dozen diverse, and polarized, sources, including Cardinal Lazaro, Dr. Englund, the heads of the National Institutes of Health and the National Right to Life Committee, Barbra Streisand, a spokesman for the National Abortion Rights League and two congressmen embroiled in the embryology-funding controversy in Washington.