by Jerold Last
As I saw the waiter heading towards our table it seemed a good idea to give Suzanne a preview of coming attractions. I spoke quietly, directly to her. "And, let me give you a fair warning. The authentic New York City delicatessen experience consists of the food, which is unique and just doesn't taste as good anywhere else even if they pretend it's exactly the same food prepared in exactly the same way. But, it comes at a price. The waiters are incredibly rude. They don't give you time to think about what you're going to order. The waiter will expect you to order the second he gets here, he won’t wait around while you decide, and they almost throw the plates at you. And we have to order the pastrami 'extra lean'. You get exactly the same stuff whether you order 'extra lean' or just plain pastrami, or even 'fat pastrami', but if you want to sound like an authentic New Yorker you have to insist on the 'extra lean'."
“Wadda ya want? I don’t have all day.” The waiter reminded us that his time was precious and we’d been given all our allotted time to decide what we wanted. We both ordered the hot pastrami sandwiches on rye bread and beer.
“Ya coitanly took yer time deciding,” he chided us as he exited stage left to get our orders.
The meat actually took days to prepare, first being soaked in brine to remove excess fat, then slow cooked for hours. This part takes place out of sight of the customers. Three butchers were working full time to keep up with the demand slicing the meat to order behind a glass counter. The deli did a huge take-out trade as well as serving their standing-room only crowd waiting to be fed at the tables. Each huge sandwich had more than a half of a pound of the tender, juicy meat sliced ultra-thin and heaped on a slice of fresh rye bread. A second slice of bread to complete the sandwich rests several inches above the first slice. The huge sandwich is then carefully sliced in half and placed on its plate without dropping a shred of meat during the entire process from assembly to serving. Delicatessen mustard sits in jars brought to the table and you are expected to slather a bunch on the bread. The large dinner plate also contains a big dollop of cole slaw and the whole pickle you ordered, which you are expected to slice before eating. The green tomatoes come in a side dish and, like the pickles, have been marinating in a specially formulated brine recipe for days or weeks to develop each delicatessen’s vision of the perfect flavor.
The gnome returned staggering under the weight of a tray balanced in his left hand containing our two sandwich plates, a jar of mustard, two bottles of beer, two glasses for the beer, and a dish of green tomatoes. He slammed the plates, bottles, and glasses on the table with his other hand as he ran by the table en route to who knows where. I told Suzanne she had to “paw her own”.
Our resident restaurant critic, Suzanne, went through four napkins and had little to say until she had inhaled her first half sandwich. "That's yummy and you're right. It's totally better than the same deli sandwich in Los Angeles would taste. It must be fresher or something here since they sell so much. Or maybe it's the ambiance that makes the meal? Somehow it wouldn’t be the same if a tuxedoed maître-de came by to ask if we were enjoying our dinner, which would be de rigueur in Beverly Hills."
Those two sandwiches, one for me and one for Suzanne, plus cole slaw, pickled green tomatoes, half-sour dill pickles, and two beers cost the gross domestic product of a small South American country, but worth every cent of it. We went back to our hotel for some TV and quiet romantic time while we tried to get sleepy three hours earlier than usual.
Chapter4.The AKC
The next morning after a shower, shave, and room service breakfast charged to the AKC, I walked a few blocks over to the office building where I was to spend the day meeting my prospective new clients. Suzanne had to go across town, a half-hour ride on two buses, for her scheduled meeting with several scientists on the faculty of Rockefeller University. We walked together as far as her bus stop and said good-bye on the corner of Madison Avenue and 42nd Street, one of the wider streets that featured west to east bus service between the Hudson River and the East River along the width of midtown Manhattan.
I looked around me and was struck by the differences between a wide, heavily traveled avenue in New York City and its counterpart, where we lived, in the western part of Los Angeles. In New York, the high-rise buildings dominate, even on the broad avenues and cross-town streets. The impression everywhere was like being in an urban canyon with glass and concrete walls. Traffic is dog-eat-dog and parking is impossible. Not even worth bringing a car, it’s a city for walkers and subway riders. In Westwood or L.A., a city where everyone drives everywhere, we have plenty of high-rise buildings but there is space between them. The wide streets and avenues become an urban river of vehicles of different shapes and sizes. I definitely prefer the California lifestyle.
The remainder of my walk along Madison Avenue to the AKC Building felt like I was participating in semi-organized chaos. Unlike Los Angeles, where we are all in our cars, here in The Big Apple it seemed like the entire city was on the sidewalk. Strolling and sight seeing was not for the faint of heart. The synchronized mob moved with focused purpose, not walking at a familiar pace, but more like a communal trot. If you didn’t get out of the flow of people hurrying to work, or keep up with the frenetic pace of the mob, you risked drowning in the flood of people who would trample anybody moving too slowly who were blocking their way.
I arrived at my destination about five minutes early for my appointment and walked into an elegant broad lobby with granite tiles on the floor. A security arrangement dominated by an elaborate gate and turnstile arrangement running most of the width of the lobby corralled me just inside the entrance. Two security guards stood behind the only gap in the gate between where people entered the building through the Madison Avenue entrance and the bank of elevators in the center of the lobby.
Most of the people entering the building went through a gate with several turnstiles activated by the I.D. cards hanging from their necks containing the AKC corporate logo. An entrance without a turnstile at the north end was a gated area labeled “Visitors” beckoning to the common riff-raff like me. The two guards stood vigil just on the other side of this entrance, one on each side of the passageway.
"Do you have an appointment?" snarled one of the guards, hitching up his heavy belt containing a can of Mace and a wooden baton. I'd have been a lot more impressed with the security if he hadn't been about 5 foot two and 70-something years old, especially since he was the younger of the two guards. I'm 6'2" and 190 pounds, so he was even less physically impressive by comparison. I'm also 36 years old with blue eyes, but didn’t have the Mace or the baton.
"Yes, I'm supposed to meet some people in the AKC offices."
Shorty continued his tough guy act. "I'll need to see your I.D."
I showed him my driver's license. He didn't need to know I was a private detective. He checked my I.D. against a list of names, checked off a name, and handed me back the license and a visitor's badge to attach to my jacket. "From California, eh? I guess that makes you a nut, a flake, or a fruit." He laughed at his butchered rendition of the old joke. "You'll have to wait right here a minute or two while we get someone downstairs to the lobby to escort you to the AKC offices"
He picked up a phone, dialed a number, and mumbled something into the mouthpiece.
He hung up the phone and snarled, "Someone will be here for you real quick."
And someone was. A beautiful 20-something woman in a business suit that did little to hide her qualifications for the escort job materialized next to me and introduced herself. "Mr. Bowman, I'm Candy. If you will please follow me."
She led me to the elevators, entered the nearest one, and punched the button for the 30th floor. We had the compartment to ourselves, so the trip was non-stop. The elevator ascended rapidly, while Candy briefed me on the essentials.
In a sultry voice she told me, "You'll be meeting several of our top executives, Mr. Bowman. The man in charge is Harold Carswell. He'll introduce you to the others. I have a copy of your itinerary
for you to review when you get a chance. The initial meeting will be in the conference room just to the left of the elevator. If you need to take a break, the men's room is about three doors further down the corridor to the left. Your first appointment is with Mr. Carswell. He'll probably take you back to his office after you've met everyone you'll be seeing today. Do you have any questions?"
The timing was perfect. A bell dinged, the elevator stopped and the door opened. Candy led me to the conference room, which was exactly where she promised it would be, rapped on the door, opened it, and delivered me. She introduced me to the distinguished looking gentleman at the head of the large cherry wood conference table who stood up as we entered the room. He was tall, about 6 feet, and looked to be in good shape for a man in his 60s, neither fat nor thin. His most notable features were his full head of expensively barbered white hair and his eyes, a piercing shade of blue, deeply recessed beneath bushy brows. I shook hands with Harold Carswell while Candy exited. Carswell, in turn, introduced me to the rest of the people in the room, all men as I noticed immediately. They remained seated at the table so I assumed I was expected to skip the handshakes and attempt to memorize the names.
In rapid succession I was introduced clockwise around the table to Misters Forrest, Burnett-Smythe, Cabot, Rosswell, Lodge, and Stanley. Then I was invited to help myself to a cup of coffee, served in fine China, and the empty seat at the conference table. Carswell told us a little bit about the history of the AKC before he smoothly segued to the nature of the job at hand.
He stood up straighter, if that was possible, cleared his throat, and orated. "This is an old and respected organization," he intoned, "chartered here in New York City in 1884. The first offices in New York were rented in 1887, and the Stud Book, which became the register of pedigrees, came into being about then. The AKC Gazette began publishing two years later. Since then we've been here as an organization to foster pure bred dog health and breeding certification. We oversee the rules that govern the dog shows and the clubs that sponsor the shows, which currently feature a wide range of competitions including Field Trials, Hunting Tests, Conformation, Agility, Obedience, Tracking, Lure Coursing, Herding, Canine Good Citizen, Earthdog and Coonhound events."
He segued seamlessly and effortlessly into the pitch for the job. The job itself was simple as he described it: something (or things) was dreadfully wrong on the western conformation show circuit. The wrong dogs were winning too often. Several of the insiders could sense that things weren't right, although nobody could put their finger on exactly what bothered them, and profits were down because expenses were higher than had been budgeted. He assured us the track record of their computer models was excellent at predicting expenses and profits within a variance of a few percent. Yet the western shows were experiencing a large deviation from predicted values, which had never happened before. The AKC has its own investigative branch, staffed with retired FBI agents. Their best efforts to solve the mystery of what was wrong had come up with nothing thus far except data indicating the problem was real.
Carswell played briefly with a fountain pen before turning in my direction to talk directly to me. "And that brings us to what we are doing now. We're hoping an outsider will have some new and different ideas, and we're open to a proposal from you as to how we should proceed from here. This group has been empowered to hear your suggestions and make a decision whether to hire you to correct this situation." Six expensively barbered corporate heads nodded solemnly in agreement.
Carswell picked up the pen again and played with it for a moment while I digested his words, then continued. "If you look at your itinerary you'll see you are scheduled to be spending about half an hour with each of us in turn. We should be done by the end of the morning. Feel free to ask any of us anything you wish. This will give us all a chance to get to know you one-on-one. We'll meet back as a group for lunch and ask you to tell us your impressions and suggestions for approaching the task. After lunch this group will meet in executive session. You can take a well-earned break, while we decide whether you are the right man for the job. Assuming we decide to hire you, I’ll spend as much time with you as we need for the remainder of the afternoon, working out the details of how you will proceed and how you will interact with us. Is that satisfactory to you?”
I didn’t have a pen to play with. The best I could come up with was a nod of approval. "It sounds reasonable to me."
Carswell picked up the pen once again. "OK, there's no time like the present to begin. You and I will start in my office, Mr. Bowman, and then you'll make the rounds of the other offices."
We walked a few miles up the corridor to his office at the northeast corner of the building. My first impression was Wow! There were large windows looking north and east. From 30 stories up we had an unblocked and spectacular view of midtown Manhattan and Central Park to the north, and the Borough of Queens beyond the East River to the east. The office was huge, thickly carpeted, and dominated by a huge oak desk strategically placed in front of the southern wall so the views from both windows were available at all times. The office smelled like money. Hanging on the walls were framed pictures of champion show dogs, usually with a smiling owner and serious looking handler receiving an opulent rosette ribbon or a silver trophy cup at a dog show.
Carswell sat down in a huge leather chair behind his desk. I was offered a comfortable leather chair alongside the desk facing him. "I assume Sherry Wyne filled you in on why you are here, at least as far as I discussed in the conference room."
I nodded again.
Some more playing with the pen preceded his, "Since our investigators weren't able to find out what's going on, we thought a stranger to the western dog show world might be able to learn more by slipping in under our perpetrator’s radar. That could take a long time. You would need a solid excuse to hang around the dog shows getting to know the people and the atmosphere without posing a threat to anyone who might be leery of a detective. Did Sherry discuss that with you?"
When in doubt, tell the truth. Not necessarily the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but don’t go with a complicated lie if it can be checked out easily. She might have already told him what we had discussed. "Yes, she did. She suggested I act the role of a well off, but inexperienced and none too bright sponsor. We’d need a dog to show and a handler who could show it for us as a cover identity."
Carswell mulled my answer over for a perceptible pause, fidgeted with the pen, and leaned toward me. "What did you think of that idea?"
I almost asked him to loan me a pen so I could kill a few seconds fidgeting with it while I formulated my answer, too. "It made a lot of sense to me. There's no other way to become one of the group quickly, and I'm sure the breeders and the handlers are close knit groups that don't open up to strangers they see as possible intruders."
Somehow, with little change in his posture or bearing, Carswell looked and sounded pompous. "Am I correct in assuming Sherry suggested she could sell you an expensive dog with show potential and handle it in the ring for you at AKC expense?"
I sensed that how I answered this rhetorical question would define what, if any, kind of relationship I'd have with Carswell, and by extension the entire AKC leadership staff if they decided to hire me, so I thought very carefully about the exact words I chose for my response.
"I don't know if you meant it to sound that way, but your question and how you phrased it implies a very cynical attitude on your part towards your staff and their motivation. You just suggested that Sherry was not necessarily acting in the best interests of the AKC when she approached me. I don't know either you or Sherry well enough to know whether your implication has any basis in truth, but if it does I shouldn't be hearing about it in this way. In my experience it’s a bad idea to work for someone who doesn't trust his employees. You may demand as a condition of employment that the people you work with spend most of their time kissing your ass, rather than speaking the truth. If that's the case, I think I've heard enough to
know I'm not interested in this job. And just for the record, no, your assumption of what Sherry suggested to me is not correct."
Surprisingly, Carswell sat back in his fancy chair behind his fancy desk, visibly relaxed, and even smiled. "Well, I guess I'd give you a grade of F as an ass-kisser, but I wasn't looking for one on this job. I do want to find someone who is their own person, gives me honest reports, and who I can trust. I am giving you a tentative score of A+ for honesty and speaking your mind. Whoever we hire would have to work pretty much on their own, with little or no direct supervision by the AKC staff. Obviously, if our best investigators weren’t able to find anything, our perpetrators must know quite a bit about how the AKC works and who our investigators are. Whoever we hire would have to have little contact with us and be convincing in their undercover role. That means I need to be able to trust them to always be working for the AKC's best interests, without constantly looking over their shoulder. It sounds like you could be that person. Let's start over. What ideas for your cover story did you and Sherry come up with during and after your discussion?"
