Flawed Dogs (18 page)

This is also when Mrs. Nutbush awoke to find what she believed to be a baby rat on her upper lip. She screamed and leapt to her feet as though stuck by an electric cattle prod while Wee Willy grabbed the string again and made a swan dive into the bottomless mine shaft of her cleavage. This sent the president of the Vermont Dachshund Club into a windmilling frenzy of self body-slapping and high kicks. As Wee Willy’s movements below the clothing grew even more athletic, Mrs. Nutbush began to tear her clothes completely off.

This was the plan.

Mr. Toodles sat motionless on the sidewalk, chewing his snacks and watching with keen interest as his female human—now stripped down once again to her natural birthday suit—ran off shrieking for a pest exterminator. As she did so, the quite naked Mrs. Nutbush flapped her limbs and jogged toward the lake looking, thought Mr. Toodles, like a thawed Christmas turkey trying to fly.

The little dachshund turned back and saw that the tiny spotted mutt had run into the hedge with the end of the string, now looped through every item that was formerly on Mrs. Nutbush. The indigo blue and purple head of a much larger pit bull-crayon mix dog emerged from the plants to take the string in its green teeth and pull the tangle of clothes and accessories into the bushes.

Mr. Toodles then watched as a three-legged dachshund and another smaller, curly-haired black mutt approached him through the plants. Sam pointed to the collar and leash around Mr. Toodles’s neck. “I’ll take that, pal.”

Mr. Toodles was too stunned to move.

Sam sighed and nudged Pooft. He spat a flame from his afterburner, charring a tulip six feet behind them.

Mr. Toodles quickly slipped out of the jeweled collar. “Don’t kill me,” he said, shaking.

Sam and Pooft grabbed the leash in their mouths, turned and ran off down the path along the lake, headed uptown. They were joined by the other depository escapees, Mrs. Nutbush’s belongings tumbling behind them on the string like the day’s catch of fresh trout.

Then the freshly robbed long-haired little dachshund called out the three most welcome words ever heard during the scrambling raiders’ lost, forgotten lives:

“Are you pirates?”

Dog Day.

Throngs of people, reporters, TV trucks and police milled about outside of the Madison Square Garden arena, deep in the concrete recesses of Manhattan.

The secretary of the Westminster Kennel Club stood stiffly at the rear entrance, holding a clipboard and staring in horror at a woman in fur walking toward him.

Walking
actually isn’t a technically accurate term in this case.

Nor
woman.

If he could have seen below the Peruvian blue vole hat, the leopard fur coat, scarf, glasses, gloves and baby seal boots, he would have seen most of the nervous renegades from the National Last-Ditch Dog Depository clinging to each other like rats on a piece of floating cork.

All were piled atop Fabio, whose spindly legs drove the teetering assembly toward the terrified man.

Bug’s face poked up from the fur collar but was largely, gratefully hidden behind the scarf, hat and glasses.

Tied to the woman’s empty glove and sleeve was a leash leading down to Sam, trotting nervously in front of her.

But this wasn’t the old Sam. Madam had done her makeover magic.

Gone was any evidence of the last three terrible years. The scars and nicks and rips were covered up with the help of bits of fur, glue and the other assorted wonders found in Mrs. Nutbush’s makeup kit. Sam’s reddish brown coat shone and glistened from the aerosol canola oil found in the trash behind a Waffle House.

And most astounding of all: Sam had four legs again. The steel soup ladle was gone, replaced by a leg made of leather, plastic foam, fur, and the leg bone from a discarded bag of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sam was again the stunning show dog from his former life.

He had to be. He was the key to getting into this fortress of dog fabulousness.

“I’d wish ya luck, lad . . .”
said a familiar Scottish voice. Sam turned to see Peaches in the shadows behind a stall selling Westminster T-shirts.
“I’d wish ya luck if what you was doin’ was what a dog should be doin’. But it’s not. So I won’t.”

Sam pulled his stumbling “human” toward Peaches.

“I’m setting things right,”
said Sam.

Peaches sighed.
“Sam the Lion they called ya before. But yer not. Yer a dog. A dog’s got twice the heart of a worthless smelly snorin’ lion. Yer heart, Sammy. Set
that
thing right.”

Peaches turned and walked farther into the shadows. Sam was going to call after him, but it was almost noon. Showtime.

Sam held his head high and led the pile of dogs disguised as Mrs. Corinthian Nutbush toward the club secretary at a table covered in white linen, atop which were the badges and numbers that the registered competitors would wear. They stood before the table, the crowd suddenly growing silent around them. Below the coat, the dogs froze, trying not to breathe, burp, whine, itch an ear or break wind.

Which didn’t stop Pooft from losing his grip on Ol’ Blue’s chest and sliding earthward. As the small curly-haired dog tried to regain traction, he slid around toward the rear, giving the full appearance to the observing crowd that below the coat, Mrs. Nutbush’s left bosom had gone rogue and begun a migration to better shores.

The club secretary watched this without expression beyond a single perfectly arched eyebrow.

“Madam,” he said. “Your bits are restless.”

Sam stood up on his rear legs, placed his front paws on the table and offered the Westminster official an ID card, gripped in his teeth. In this case, one from the Vermont Dachshund Club. The man looked at it.

“Mrs. Corinthian Nutbush,” he read out loud.

“YES?!” responded another voice from behind the dogs.

Sam, to his horror, turned to see the real Mrs. Nutbush standing several people back in the line. She stomped forward, giving the impression of an irritated refrigerator. “I’M MRS. CORINTHIAN NUTBUSH. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?”

The real Mrs. Nutbush suddenly recognized her clothes standing next to her. She yelped. “M-m-my coat! My blue vole hat! These are my clothes! I was robbed yesterday! This thief is an imposter! She’s got my boots on backward.”

The official turned to the disguised dogs. “I’m terribly sorry to bother you, dear lady . . . but is there any truth to this person’s claims?”

Sam froze. The dogs under the clothes began shaking. Sam worried that Pooft would spontaneously erupt with a nervous blast and they would explode like a fireworks display.

“Madam. Are you ill?” the official asked the fake Nutbush. “Can you take your glasses off, please?”

The suspicious man began to reach for the huge sunglasses sitting atop Bug’s snout. Behind them, the mutt’s huge eyeballs were actually growing even larger and threatened to pop out entirely.

The man glanced down and suddenly froze.

“The Duüglitz tuft!” he whispered. The official reached a shaking hand down and touched the wisp of hair curling up from where Madam had glued it atop Sam’s perfect dachshund head.

The official cupped his mouth with a hand and grew pale. He seemed to wilt at the sight of dog greatness, as a church deacon might before the robe of Jesus.

“TH . . . TH-TH-THAT’S MY DUÜGLITZ TUFT!” screamed Mrs. Nutbush.

“Yours?”

“YES!! THAT’S MINE!”

The man sighed with disbelief. “Yes. I’m sure. And so is the Taj Mahal.” He snapped his fingers toward some burly men. “Security,” he said. The men took Mrs. Nutbush by her arms and began dragging her toward the street. She continued to scream,
“MY DUÜGLITZ!”
even as she was loaded into the back of a police cruiser and driven away for what Sam desperately hoped was the final time. It occurred to Sam that this could only be guaranteed if she were to be shot into space.

“Madam,” said the man, turning back to the artificial Mrs. Nutbush and slipping a number 46 around her sleeve, “welcome to the Westminster Dog Show. And may I personally offer you my best wishes for your success.”

He bowed.

Fabio—at the bottom of the dog pile and ever the proper one—reflexively did the same.

Bug, atop his shoulders,
did not.

The hushed crowd watched the northern half of the fake Mrs. Nutbush move in the opposite direction as the southern half as she staggered into the great arena, her various bits again restless and on the move below the leopard coat.

In this fashion did Sam lead his pirate commandos into the greatest dog show on earth in order to destroy it.

Turning back to face the arena hall ahead, Sam immediately smelled Cassius.

Sam hurriedly led the swaying pile of dogs around the arena’s perimeter passage to an isolated, latched side exit. Pushing on the door opened it to the alley behind, where the enormous Tusk waited. The huge dog ambled in. Madam jumped on his back.