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through his body.
    Edna entered and saw that her husband was awake. "Well, you did it again," she greeted him.
    "What's this all about?" he said, pointing to the bandage.
    "You were bitten by a dog."
    "What?"
    "Bitten by a dog when you staggered out of Leaky Swansea's apartment house."
    Eldon tried hard to restart his memory cells. Without success. "How's the dog?" he asked after this attempt, managing a weak smile.
    "Very funny. I haven't the faintest idea. You'll have to ask Gene and Tommy."
    "See if they're still around," he said, as he started to get out of bed.
    Fasco and Braddock had both gone home. Once he was dressed and sitting in the dining room waiting for breakfast, he called the security gate and asked the guard to locate his rescuers from the night before. They reached Fasco and transferred the call to the mayor.
    "How you feeling, Mr. Mayor?" the officer asked.
    "Fine, fine. Gene, what happened last night?"
    "You stepped on a dog who was taking a pee."
    "Oh?"
    "And he bit you."
    "Yes, I know that. What happened then?"
    "Tommy and I shot him, sir."
    "You
shot
him?"
    "Yessir."
    "Was that necessary?"
    "It was your orders, sir."
    "My orders?"
    "Yessir. You told us to
off
him."
    Could he have given such a command, Eldon wondered. He could hardly believe it, but such were the evils of drink. So the boys had an Eichmann defense: only carrying out orders.
    "So there's a dead dog full of bullets putrefying over on Fifth Avenue?" Eldon queried.
    "No, no, Mr. Mayor. Tommy and me got rid of the body. Dumped it in the East River."
    "Oh my God. What are you going to tell the owner?"
    "I think that's up to you, Mr. Mayor."
    "Who was the owner by the way? Do you know?"
    "Yeah. Woman named Sue Brandberg. Sue Nation Brandberg."
    "Holy God. Are you sure?"
    "It's what the tag said. Know her?"
    "Know her? She's one of the biggest lady bountifuls in the city. Don't you ever read the papers?"
    "Don't recall the name, sir."
    "Look, Gene, I think you better get hold of Tommy Braddock and come over here. Right away."
    Eldon hung up the phone and turned to Edna, who, thoughhaving heard only one side of the conversation, realized there was trouble. He recapped the conversation.
    "Excessive drinking can be dangerous to your health," Edna said.
    "Please, dear. Skip the medical advice. We need Gullighy."
    .    .    .
    Eldon Hoagland, in his years in New York before becoming mayor, had moved comfortably in a wide maze of concentric circles that together encompassed the city's power centers. The first circle was, of course, academia, which overlapped with publishing and the media, banking and finance, politics (principally through his association and friendship with Senator McTavish), the vast network of foundations and not-for-profits and, glancingly, entertainment and the arts.
    If intelligence was defined as the ability to connect things up, he did a good job, sensing the political ambitions of certain actors, for example, or the secret dreams of artistic hegemony of at least one foundation head, or a real estate mogul's deep-seated desire to be considered an intellectual.
    If Eldon was good at this sort of connecting up, Jack Gullighy was a genius. He knew absolutely everyone, and everything about them. His father, an old-line Democrat from Brooklyn, had revered Jim Farley, Franklin Roosevelt's political right-hand man, and had passed on to his son the importance of knowing and remembering everyone's name, as the legendary Farley had done.
    Gullighy went further. Names were not enough. He had to know the vital statistics, the personality quirks and the buried secrets as well: the true age of the many-times-made-over charity queen, the closeted (homosexual) sex life of a married Wall Streetbanker, the usurious organized crime loans that had enabled a prominent and now upright developer to get his start.
    He brought to the task the discipline of a Jesuit education, from Regis High and Fordham, and the natural inquisitiveness