Dog Bites Man (19 page)

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Eldon picked up a new security detail as he rushed out of his office. Fasco and Braddock, who normally would have been starting their afternoon tour, were gone. Their replacements, who introduced themselves as Adam Polanski and Rick Leiter, were roughly the size of the tallest member of the Addams family.

The trio got acquainted on the way to Mario Procaccino Elementary School in Queens. Both were married, lived outside the city in Nesconset and came to their new assignments from the NYPD's SWAT team. Eldon knew this was the elite force that protected visiting foreign dignitaries from assassination. He was gratified by this but hoped it did not mean that some new threats on his life had been withheld from him.

The mayor's visit to the school was another attempt at business as usual, despite the distractions of the Incident. It was also a pay-back to Wendy Halstead. One of her favorite charities was an outfit called SchoolArt, which attempted to supplement the pathetic Board of Education appropriations for art education in the public schools by paying young artists to give classes. This was the 25th anniversary year of the project and Eldon was to visit a class to commemorate and publicize the milestone.

At Procaccino Elementary he was met by Wendy. "Eldon, dear, it was so good of you to come. I know this must be a very trying time for you."

"Yes. And if I'd never gone to that dinner party of yours, I might not have a care in the world."

"Come. I know you'll be impressed with the work we're doing. We're going to see a third-grade drawing class. It's being given by a sweet young artist named Audrey Fine. You'll love her and you'll love it."

Ms. Fine was a delight, at least to the eye. Pert, with long brown hair tied back, she shook hands with Eldon and gave him a dazzling smile. Her fifteen wiggly charges looked on with interest.

"Today we're having a free-form-drawing session. The students have all been thinking about what they might draw for you." Crayons were at the ready before blank pages in the drawing pads. "Go ahead and ask any of them to draw something."

Eldon selected a pigtailed sprout at the front of the classroom. "What is your name?"

"Esther."

"Well, Esther, what are you going to draw for me?"

"My house."

"Wonderful."

The girl set diligently to work and soon had produced a sketch of a housing development high-rise.

"I live
there,"
she said, putting an "X" midway up the building.

"Splendid." In short order Eldon had not only a house but a fire engine, a new baby sister and an apple tree rendered for him.

"One more," the teacher said.

"How about you?" Eldon pointed to a ruddy-faced boy with an old-fashioned brush cut. "What are you going to draw?"

"You'll see."

The mayor looked over his shoulder as he began making the outline of an animal. As the sketch developed, Eldon asked if it was the boy's dog.

"No, no. It's Wambli. Can't you tell?"

Ms. Fine obviously did not read the newspapers, as she congratulated the budding artist on his effort. "How nice. A dog named Wambli. How do you spell that?"

"I don't know. I heard it on television. He's the dog that got shot."

Eldon sucked in his breath and managed a tight, very tight, smile. "Good, young man."

Wendy, at Eldon's side, drew him away. "I'm afraid that's all we have time for," she said. Fortunately she was quick enough that the pool photographer accompanying them did not get a picture with the artist and his subject.

"My apologies, Ms. Fine, but I'm running late and must go. But thank you for a delightful time. And good luck to you."

"I'm sorry, Eldon," Wendy whispered as they left the classroom.

"That's all right, my dear. I've got to reconcile myself to the fact that that dog has taken over my life."

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Coverage of and editorializing about the Incident ceased for the next couple of days. It was clear, however, that the staff of
The
Post-News
had been told to keep the issue alive wherever possible, with a tenacity befitting a Staffordshire terrier biting into a human leg. Thus a sports columnist, writing about the glories of attending an autumn game at Yankee Stadium, slipped in, "unless, of course, you'd rather be out shooting innocent dogs." And one
of their several self-righteous preacher-columnists, writing as he often did about moral degeneration, managed to make a reference to the evils of "relativism," which would allow one to slay a sentient animal.

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The mayor's e-mail had not improved. One bullet was addressed to "You Speciesist Shit" and another wondered if the mayor "would slaughter his pig wife."

"These people are deranged," Eldon remarked to Gullighy, who read the computer's disgorging with him.

The e-mail also included a copy of the ALA's posting to animal rights sympathizers, announcing the Wambli Memorial Rally and urging one and all to attend.

"Well, at least Barbra Streisand isn't going to sing."

"Don't bank on it."

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At lunchtime, Gullighy burst into his boss's office.

"I'm afraid there's something out here you ought to see."

Fearing the worst, Eldon followed his press secretary to a front window in the Blue Room. Outside, at the edge of City Hall Park, was an inflated balloon some 18 feet high in the shape of a dog, albeit a spotted one, probably a Dalmatian. Nonetheless it had a large sign around its neck saying WAMBLI and was festooned with black ribbons. It was one of the ALA's guerilla tactics, the guy ropes held by Stacey, Conrad and Alfred, with Amber Sweetwater in front, passing out flyers for the October 20th rally. (Gullighy and Hoagland did not know that Conrad had once worked in the promotion department at Macy's; he had located the New Jersey
balloon maker for the Macy's parade and rented out the retreaded Dalmatian.)

"Remember that girl, the one with the leaflets?" Eldon asked.

"Vaguely."

"She used to work at Gracie until Edna fired her."

"Hell hath no fury—"

"Oh, shut up."

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Eldon decided to pack things in early that day. One of the prerogatives of being mayor was that he could set his own schedule; he did not have to work the nine-to-five day of a bank teller or an ordinary civil servant. He was free to do as he pleased, except for the inexorable demands of appearances at events scheduled by Betsy Twinsett and Gullighy. For two nights in a row he had been at benefit dinners she had committed him to attend. Their banal sameness was predictable: an execrable dinner in a badly ventilated hotel ballroom, hackneyed and overlong speeches extolling the honoree of the evening (read: a successful CEO whose corporation had taken two or three pricey tables to support the sponsoring charity), with graceful and appropriate remarks by the mayor at the beginning, middle or end of the dreary affair. It was the exceptional case when anyone enjoyed being at such a dinner; it was mostly you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours reciprocity—I'll take a table at yours if you take a table at mine. It was a tedious way to raise money for charities, however worthy they might be, but no one had come up with a better method.

Two nights before, he had attended a gala benefitting a Bronx orphanage at which a Silicon Valley hotshot, aged 28, had been feted. (Hope springs eternal—perhaps the attention would lead
the nerd executive to turn some of his paper profits to account for the orphans.) Then last night there had been something called a "super supper," prepared by a bevy of New York's hottest chefs, in honor of the nonagenarian Victoria Lawrence, owner of the Airedale, Stephen, who had created a minor disruption at the St. Francis Festival. She, long gloves intact, was being celebrated for still another beneficence from her late husband's fortune, this time to a bilingual literacy program ("
Uno, no. Dos, sí!"
). Eldon, on the defensive, thought there had been a smirk or two when he shook hands with the organizers of these events, but mercifully there had been no cheap jokes at his expense or references to the Incident. (The one exception had come at the Lawrence supper when he had encountered Governor Foote as they found their places on the dais. He gave her the obligatory air kiss—the media would have babbled about a slight or a snub had he not done so—and she whispered, "Bowwow!" as he pressed against her rough cheek.)

No, tonight he and Edna were going to dine at Gracie, quite possibly on one of Julio's greasy olla podridas. So he picked up his security detail and was driven north to the mansion.

"Holy Hannah!" Polanski exclaimed as he drove up York Avenue and approached the mayor's residence.

There on the sidewalk near the entrance was the inflated spotted dog, transported uptown from City Hall. It suddenly became clear that this apparition was going to follow Eldon wherever he might go, as it did for the next few days.

The ALAers jeered as his car entered the driveway, but otherwise there was no trouble. As predicted, dinner was olla podrida. He and Edna choked it down and tried to remain oblivious to the boisterous noise outside.

Both
The Times
and
The Post-News
ran pictures of the inflatable
Wambli the next morning. The latter also had extensive coverage of the ALAers' planned rally, peppered with quotes from Ralph Bernardo about the rightness of their cause and their hopes for bringing the mayor down. The weekly "Critters" column (one of several desperate attempts to attract a more upscale readership, on the theory that pet owners were by and large affluent) ran a feature on the psychology of dog murder; a number of therapists were interviewed, each one with a different theory of motivation for the canine-killing act (examples of actual executions being notably lacking).

And the inflatable Wambli was back outside City Hall.

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Brother Aloysius, the chief dog breeder at the Order of St. Eustache monastery, called George McGinty in the Chancery Office that morning.

"Monsignor, we need the cardinal's help. I don't know how familiar you are with our operation, but we are very dependent on sales of the dogs we breed."

"Yes, I know about what you do. Pit bulls, isn't it?"

"We prefer not to call them that. The, um, connotations of that term are not felicitous. We prefer to say American Staffordshire terriers. Which brings me to the reason for my call. This controversy that's going on about your mayor. It has not helped us at all. People are canceling orders for our newly bred dogs right and left because your mayor has characterized our terriers as brutal and vicious."

"Yes. I'm familiar with the issue."

"Could not His Eminence call him? Ask him perhaps to make a statement that however blameworthy the dog that bit him was, he
did not mean to criticize all American Staffies as a breed? You know, sort of the sins of the father being visited upon the sons—the puppies we are trying to sell? Otherwise we may very well have to disband."

"Brother, I will convey your request to His Eminence, but I can't promise anything."

"God bless you."

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It was well that Monsignor McGinty had not made a promise to Brother Aloysius. Cardinal Lazaro found the idea "preposterous."

"Why are they breeding dogs anyway? Why don't they make jam? Or invent a new liqueur? No, I take that back. Better stick to jam."

"So I should tell him no?"

"Tell him I am very sympathetic to his plight. I shall pray for the monks. But the mayor, poor man, needs my prayers, too. This whole controversy is so petty—blown up out of all proportion. You don't need to tell Brother Aloysius that, but it's true."

"I'll simply say you don't think it would be prudent to intervene."

"Exactly." Then, a tiny smile on his face, he added, "George, just one other thing."

"Yes, Your Eminence?"

"Cave canem."

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When Monsignor McGinty relayed the cardinal's gentle rejection to Brother Aloysius, this did not end the matter. Years before, the monk had been in Catholic high school with Francis Xavier
O'Noone, the founder and one of several dozen members of something called the St. Sebastian Society, ready to take the sharp arrows pointed at Catholics by an unfriendly secular world. Anything more radical than a Roman-collared Bing Crosby singing "Swinging on a Star" set O'Noone off; he could find blasphemy lurking in the most innocent artistic expression. His strident charges of anti-Catholic bigotry, often leveled at the most hapless targets, were a constant embarrassment to Cardinal Lazaro, who was not a supporter but nonetheless felt constrained from denouncing him because of his evidently sincere religiosity. As the cardinal once said, paraphrasing Alexander Pope, the worst madman is a saint run mad.

By way of illustration, the SSS's most recent campaign had been against the common appellation for a vodkaless Bloody Mary—a "Virgin Mary." O'Noone had railed against this label as being an undignified evocation of the Blessed Virgin, though it was not clear whether this was merely because the Blessed Mother's name was invoked or because her name was associated with a nonalcoholic drink (O'Noone having some knowledge of spirits himself). In any event, the SSS staged a campaign to eliminate the Virgin Mary name from drink menus in the city's cocktail lounges, the suggestion being that "Bloody Shame" would be a more fitting identifier. This of course quite overlooked the vulgar connotation of "bloody" in O'Noone's ancestral land, but the SSS pressed the matter to the point of scraggly picket lines outside the Plaza Hotel and the Four Seasons restaurant.