Free The Black Marble by Joseph Wambaugh

home if they expect to win important dog shows!”
    â€œBut, Chester, I just can’t bear parting with Vickie. She’s never spent a night away from me since I got her.”
    â€œMrs. Whitfield, do you want a pet or a champion? This dog is the finest miniature schnauzer bitch I’ve ever seen. She can win it all , do you understand? And I’m not talking about the best of breed, or best of terrier group. I’m talking about the best in show!”
    â€œChester, I’m sorry,” Madeline Whitfield said. “You just … well, it’s hard to say what Vickie means to me. She’s like my child, silly as that sounds.”
    â€œIt’s not silly, Mrs. Whitfield. I’ve been a handler for a long time. I know how you feel about your Vickie. But you’re so fortunate to possess a thing of rare beauty like Victoria Regina of Pasadena.” He touched her hand in a gesture of understanding when he said it, thinking how that dumb name made him want to puke. “And you’re a generous woman who would want to share Victoria with dog lovers everywhere, like Norton Simon and Armand Hammer share their art. Vickie will never be as beautiful as she can be, never show her true perfection, if you don’t let me keep her for you. You owe it to dog lovers and to Vickie and to yourself and …”
    But to no avail. Victoria Regina of Pasadena would sleep between her mother’s pearly sheets even the Saturday night before the big show. There was nothing Chester Biggs could do about it but come to the Whitfield home to groom and train the gorgeous little bitch and try to reason with the dowdy big bitch, and try his best to win it all with this little schnauzer and build the reputation of his kennel to where even his stupid brother-in-law could run it and Chester Biggs could get his ass into real estate where he belonged.

    Chester often said as much during the twelve months he was Vickie’s handler. He had said it the night before the Santa Barbara Show last summer. He had said it in the bar of the hotel while drinking with three other dog handlers who discuss dog exhibitors the way thoroughbred trainers discuss horse owners. The conversation generally centered around the richest exhibitors, how much of a bonus had been laid on a handler for winning best of breed, how high the tariff would be if a client was really wealthy and competitive and you won him five major points.
    Most handlers got only $35-40 a day per dog even when showing a tough breed like a German shepherd. Perhaps $100 a point as a winning bonus. You had to own a kennel to make enough to live on. Handling and showing a few dogs for rich clients simply wasn’t enough, unless your client was a crazy Persian like the one who reportedly gave his New York handler a bonus of $10,000 for bringing him a win with his Great Pyrenees bitch.
    There were some, like Buck Hickman, who found other ways to collect rich bonuses. Hickman had married a Beverly Hills client and now he was an exhibitor and hired his own handlers, and came to dog shows in blue blazers, his silver hair rinsed and back-combed and sprayed just like his dogs, with a rich man’s winter suntan, as though born to the purple. That was a secret dream of many handlers who had rich lonely female clients. Women who doted and pampered and spent up to $40,000 a year to show their dogs. Reasonably young and willing dog handlers could hope. There was always a chance, since women exhibitors outnumbered men four to one.
    When Chester Biggs sat in the bar that night in Santa Barbara, and talked about the potential of the great young schnauzer bitch who slept in the same bed as her lonely screwed-up owner in Pasadena, there was a handler present who paid more than passing attention, especially when he heard that the owner was rich and available. But he went back to more pressing problems, such as how to convince the cocktail waitress that they might be able to find