Dog Bites Man

by James Duffy

  "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."

  EIGHT

  Everyone 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."

  NINE

  Some people called Freddie "Scoop" Rice brilliant, while others thought him only glib. Some thought his ever so slightly chubby boyish features sexy, others that he resembled an overgrown choirboy who had eaten too many Hershey bars. But the words that almost always occurred in any conversational description of Freddie were "brash" and "dogged." (Whether "dogged" had flashed through Justin Boyd's mind before assigning him to the Wambli affair is uncertain.)

  Freddie, at 22, was too young to remember Watergate, but as a teenager back in Columbus, Ohio, he had seen a video of All the President's Men and decided, then and there, as some youngsters make the career choice to become firemen when they see the flashing hook and ladder go by, that he would be an investigative journalist.

  His practical father, an architect, pointed out that outlets for reporters were shrinking in number and that hundreds of young folk had already followed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into a crowded field. Freddie was undeterred and finally a bargain was struck: he would go to college and then could do whatever he wanted.

  He was accepted at Harvard and his parents paid the not inconsiderable tuition without complaint. In Cambridge he immediately became immersed in the affairs of The Crimson, the campus daily. As a general rule, freshman candidates on the Crime were meant to be seen but not heard; Freddie was both, although he never really blew the lid off a major scandal. He was best remembered for an exposé of blurbs, those quotes designed to sell books, for works by members of the faculty. He discovered, for example, that the warmest encomium for a certain law professor's tome was from the woman he was living with and about to marry (as soon as his divorce was final), whil
e praise for a volume of history came from the author's college roommate, and so on. It was all good fun (except for those he had fingered), the faculty loved it and Rice became a minor campus legend.

  Unfortunately what befitted a legend most did not include serious attention to studies—reporting really had become an obsession with him—and at the end of his sophomore year, he flunked out.

  Unlike at least 85 percent of his classmates, Freddie did not have a desire to go to Los Angeles and write screenplays, so he headed instead for New York. His father, feeling that the bargain he had made had been broken, cut off his allowance, so it was imperative that he find work. Most of the alternatives seemed distasteful: an apprenticeship at The Times seemed daunting, the rewards uncertain and in any event a long stretch away. He studied the newsmagazines intently and decided that they were not really any longer purveying news. Reporting on a starlet's struggle at the Betty Ford Clinic or the man in the street's reaction to the latest serial killing; covering for one journal what other publications were doing; writing about the least debilitating laxative—these were not the sort of assignments he had in mind. And the thought of working at The Post-News was just too laughable to contemplate.

  On pure spec, he wrote a letter to Justin Boyd. Called in for an interview, the Harvard reject impressed Boyd with his brashness, and the baby Bernstein was hired.

  Boyd counseled him to "hang out," to make friends at police headquarters and City Hall and the journalists' watering holes around town. "I'm new here myself, I'm feeling my way," the editor explained. "So are you, so I suggest you do the same. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth pretty much shut and the stories will come."

  At once Freddie started going to Elaine's, the uptown saloon where journalists and writers of all sorts nested. He made friends there fast, even though the old-timers laughed at his high-energy eagerness and, behind his back, started calling him "Scoop."

  One of Elaine's regulars, a well-known criminal defense lawyer, gave Scoop his first break. He leaked to him sordid details of early incestuous child abuse to build sympathy for a client, a brutal murderer of his actress-fiancée. Rice was not much taken with the headline Boyd put on his story, "Aunts in His Pants," but the bold front-page byline—"By FREDERICK P. RICE"—he thought looked quite nice.