Free Dog Bites Man by James Duffy

lady Indian. Or female Native American."
    "Native American?"
    "That's the PC term for 'Indian.'"
    "PC? Personal computer?" Genc asked brightly, trying to comprehend.
    "No. Forget it. 'Native American' and 'Indian' mean the same thing. And 'squaw' is the female of the species. Why?"
    "Oh, a deliveryman came yesterday and I guess Miszu"—then he corrected himself quickly—"I mean Mrs. Brandberg, gave him too small a tip. I heard him say, 'That damn squaw,' when he went out the door."
    "She is that technically, I guess. A squaw. Indian. Native American."
    "Indian. Means red-blooded, no?" Genc said with a grin.
    "Yeah, that's what they say."

TEN
    J ack Gullighy broke his 9 a.m. routine twice a week and had breakfast with the Hoaglands at the mansion. After Wambli's murder, the subject was raised gingerly each time.
    "Anything new about the Incident?" Jack usually would ask. (The "Incident" had become their neutral shorthand for the shooting, though Edna had wanted to call it "Operation Blockhead.") For three weeks the answer came back "No," and finally one morning Gullighy cautiously told Eldon, "Looks like you're in the clear."
    That same day, at City Hall, Gullighy, as was his usual practice, held a meeting with Betsy Twinsett, the mayor's principal scheduler. Betsy was what would have been called, in a less sensitive time, a sweet young thing. Pretty, pert and blonde, she had been recommended to Eldon by her father (a campaign contributor), and since she had asked for only a modest salary (which appealed to the mayor's sense of thrift), he had hired her.
    Betsy had a small office at City Hall, just big enough for a desk and one file cabinet, and was charged with processing the invitations, requests for appearances by the mayor and other claims on his time that arrived by the score each day. Conscientious to a fault, she toiled through the mounds of correspondence and, as she worked, gently dislodged blonde hair from her face with a little blow that sounded as if she were exhaling cigarette smoke (a cute tick that was much admired). The only problem was that, only three years out of Smith, she was not as sophisticated as she might be; she was not suspicious or cynical by nature, and for her to smell a rat it had to be very dead and very pungent.
    Eldon had asked Jack, the great connecter-upper, informally to oversee her performance. He did this in a friendly meeting each Wednesday morning. His supervision had paid off. Betsy, for example, had been thrilled when the manager for Vito Mombelli, the internationally renowned tenor, had proposed that his client receive the Handel Medallion, the city's highest award for cultural achievement. As a quid pro quo, Mombelli would be willing to give a recital at Gracie Mansion.
    Gullighy had had to dampen his young charge's enthusiasm by pointing out that the rakish Mombelli had been pursued for years, in court and out, by a young woman calling herself Vera Mombelli who claimed that he was her father. (Met security had started years before to keep an eye out for her, as she was known to stand and scream "Papa!" during ovations for her putative father.) The paternity rap had never been pinned on the tenor, but Jack had visions of a blazing
Post-News
headline along the lines of "Opera Buffa at Gracie: Vito Sings, Vera Squawks." Receiving this information, Betsy had blown her hair back, and Mombelli's chances for a medallion along with it.
    This morning, as Gullighy shuffled through the stack of invitations and proposals Betsy had assembled for him, one in particular caught his eye. A letter from something called the Coalition for Animal Welfare requested that Eldon host a celebration on the upcoming feast of St. Francis of Assisi, October 4, to focus attention on "the need for continuing vigilance in the battle for animal rights." The leaders of the organizations making up the coalition would attend the event, on the lawn of the mansion, each bringing along his or her own pet or an