Katie Up and Down the Hall: The True Story of How One Dog Turned Five Neighbors Into a Family (10 page)

Right up to the end, she remained asleep. “I can’t believe this dog,” said Bette, in parting. “She’s so sweet, so calm. I’ve
got to get one. Can you please give me the name of the breeder?”

Katie opened her sleepy eyes and reluctantly got off Bette’s lap, wagging her tail, having made a new friend. (Gratefully,
there were no accidents.)

Katie got quite a different reception a few weeks later from Leona Helmsley, one of my favorite interview subjects, the hotel
queen who had been dubbed by the press the “Queen of Mean.”

I can tell you that she was never mean to me. (After we became friends, I told her about my grandmother, Nana, who
was diagnosed with bone cancer in 1990 and was being treated in a Buffalo hospital. The next day, three dozen white roses
were delivered to Nana, with a note signed “Love, Leona.”)

Her legal problems aside, Helmsley had unbelievable charm and intelligence and I liked her immensely. After being introduced
by the New York public relations legend Howard Rubenstein, we struck up an immediate rapport in both of our
Daily News
interviews and in an extended
Playboy
magazine interview.

As I wrote in
Playboy
, “Part brass-horn comedienne, Jewish mother and tragic heroine, Helmsley was soon pouring out her heart to me…. She was also
quick with the solo one-liners. To wit: when Harry entered the breakfast room, zipping his pants: ‘Don’t brag, darling!’”

One hot summer day, I was having lunch with Leona and her husband Harry at their 200-acre Connecticut estate Dunnellen Hall,
enjoying mushroom soup and a salmon fillet. I was telling them both all about Katie. Back then, Leona didn’t yet own her beloved
dog “Trouble,” a white Maltese to whom she would later leave $12 million in her will.

“She sounds like a savvy dog… I’d like to meet her,” Leona said gamely.

“Well, I guess not today,” I told her. “Katie is back in Manhattan. Next time.”

“Oh, no, no, darling,” she insisted. “I want to meet her
today
. I’m going to send my driver to get her—
now
.” She then picked up the phone, and instructed the chauffeur to pick up my dog thirty miles away.

“What’s her address?” she asked.

I quickly telephoned Pearl, told her that a limo was coming for Katie, and asked her to put Katie into the car for the trip.

“Are you kidding?” Pearl gasped in disbelief.

“Pack her up!”

And so it was, just a few hours later, my dog arrived at the Helmsley estate in high style, her head poking out of the back
window of a black Lincoln limousine, her ears blowing in the wind as the car pulled into a long tree-lined driveway and up
to the gigantic portico.

As I opened the car door and scooped her into my arms, Leona came up to us, and looked her up and down, stroking her head.
“She’d make a nice coat!”

Harry came out, tipped his cap to Katie, and offered to take us all for a ride on his electric golf cart. This was surreal.

In an instant, there I was, sitting next to Manhattan’s legendary real estate billionaire, being driven around with the notorious
Leona and my dog. When we got back to the house, I picked Katie up, intending for her to join us inside.

“Oh, no, darling,” said Leona with a warning in her voice. “I don’t want the marble floors scratched. Leave her in the car.”

It must have been 90 degrees that day. “We’ll leave on the air-conditioning,” she offered.

Surveying the sculpted hedges, exquisite gardens, and manicured lawns, I wondered what would happen when Katie would eventually
need to relieve herself. It didn’t take me long to find out.

An hour later, when I was bidding farewell, we went outside and Katie was gone! She had jumped out of the open window of the
limo and escaped into the vegetable patch, where she had relieved herself and was munching on something edible.

“What?!” exclaimed Leona, her face turning red. I feared I was about to see the dark side of the hotel queen. But then, a
good sport, she smiled and had the car turned around.

“Time for you both to hit the road,” she laughed, bidding Katie farewell.

I leave the best for last. My favorite interview subject of all time was the incomparable Katharine Hepburn, who had little
need for publicists, instead setting up interviews at her East 49th Street townhouse
herself
, giving terse commands before hanging up the phone.

“Ham and cheese. Twelve-thirty.”

Click.

Those were the instructions I always received when being invited over for lunch by “Madame,” as Miss Hepburn was nicknamed
by one lifelong friend.

Before and during my
Daily News
years, I interviewed Miss Hepburn many times (such as for her eightieth birthday, for her autobiography
Me
, and for a TV movie,
The Man Upstairs
, costarring Ryan O’Neal). But the pattern never varied and the menu never changed: homemade zucchini soup and melted ham
and cheese, followed by something chocolate, which I usually brought along. (I’d often pick up her favorite dark chocolate
“turtles” with pecans from Mondel Chocolates.)

One time, I presented her with a truly magnificent truffle cake, which I was looking forward to tasting. “Ah, fascinating,”
she uttered, looking into the box. “Norah!” she hollered down to her cook. “Come up and take this away.”

Then, turning to me, she remarked, “It’s much too good for lunch—I’ll eat it for dinner!” and it disappeared into the kitchen.

That same day, I asked her whether she ever thought about death. “Death,” she answered sweetly, “will be a great relief. No
more
interviews
. Now pass the peanuts.”

After eight years of knowing Madame, we became friendly
enough to chat off the record as well, so I occasionally went over to her townhouse for purely social lunches.

I also, from time to time, acted as a conduit, introducing her to people she was interested in, most notably Calvin Klein,
whom I had previously interviewed for
Playboy
. The king of American fashion had, of course, met just about every celebrity in the world he’d ever wanted to—
almost
everyone, that is, except for Miss Hepburn. I felt honored to be able to bring these two legends together.

On the day of the lunch, Calvin came up the stairs into her drawing room holding in his arms exquisitely tailored wool and
cashmere sweaters and pants, all wrapped in tissue paper, one-of-a-kind pieces he had made especially for her. He held them
out to her as a gift.

In a teasing mood, she looked gamely at Calvin, at first not willing to accept them. Then, with her chin in the air, she teased,
“Are they
free
?!”

“Of course they are,” he smiled. She then handily lifted them out of his arms and disappeared upstairs into her bedroom to
examine them. Later, the twosome sat side by side, engrossed in their discussion of fashion in the thirties and forties.

A few months after that stellar introduction, I figured I’d try another, which is where Katie came into the picture.

So one day, I asked Miss Hepburn, “Would you like to meet Peter Jennings?”

“Peter WHO?” she inquired, chin again jutting into the air. “Who
is
he?”

“You know, the ABC news anchor. He’s on TV every night.”

“Mmmm,” she sniffed, “I don’t watch the show. All right, bring him by.”

Peter was a bit more thrilled about the upcoming lunch than Miss Hepburn, and promised to bring along, as a gift,
what he described as his wife’s incomparable brownies, prewarned about Miss Hepburn’s passion for chocolate.

The day of the lunch I decided to bring Katie along so Miss Hepburn could finally meet her namesake. But I only wanted Katie
to stay for the introductions, not for lunch, as I knew my treat-hungry dog would be begging for food.

To manage the logistics, a friend of mine, Dean, came along in the car with Katie, me, and Peter. Dean would take Katie home
after her cameo.

On the car ride up to East 49th Street in the Turtle Bay neighborhood, Katie sat snugly on Peter’s lap, her paw on his arm,
unimpressed with the legendary news anchor, but never taking her eyes off his foil-wrapped package of brownies.

“Katie, relax,” admonished Peter, who was a dog lover and owned a Wheaten terrier named Bogart. “These aren’t good for dogs,”
he told her in his distinctive baritone. Katie then took her right paw and slapped it against his arm, begging him, with no
success.

Miss Hepburn greeted us outfitted, as always, in well-worn pants, a white turtleneck, red sweater, and a heavily frayed long-sleeved
shirt.

I was surprised by how shy she seemed meeting Peter—maybe it was because he was someone outside her regular sphere. And Peter
also seemed uncharacteristically reserved, almost as if this patrician actress intimidated him more than the legions of dictators
he’d interviewed. As for Katie, she was oblivious to this exceptional company, her tail wagging as she ran up the wooden stairs
into the drawing room, circled it once, and then lay down near the fireplace.

“Who’s
this
?!” asked Hepburn, glaring down at Katie. My dog’s tail immediately went down and she drew closer to the fireplace.

“I wanted you to meet my dog, Katie….”

“Mmmm. How’d you come up with that name?”

“I named her after you!”

“Small compliment. A midget me.”

“Now,” dismissing my dog with a look of total disinterest, “Mr. Jennings, we’re having ham and cheese.”

I felt really embarrassed, as this was the first and only time I’d ever brought Katie along to an interview when she bombed,
so to speak. You can’t win them all.

I scooped my dog up and handed her off to Dean, waiting outside. The rest of the lunch was uneventful, until dessert.

“Glenn told me how much you love chocolate, and these are the best, made by my wife,” Peter said, handing over his offering.

“Let’s have a bake-off,” replied Miss Hepburn, all ready for this, as I had told her Peter was bringing brownies. “Norah!”
she commanded, hollering down the staircase, “bring up the brownies.”

Miss Hepburn then set one of Peter’s brownies and one of her own side by side on a white china plate, munching into one at
a time. After a moment of careful consideration, she proclaimed, “
Mine are much better!
”

Peter was a great sport, laughing uproariously, promising not to relay that information to his wife.

And that was it for lunch. Peter had met a legend. Miss Hepburn had won the bake-off. And Katie had met her match.

T
he next four years flew by in a flash, a blur of celebrity interviews, trips to California (with my “hearing” dog in tow),
and countless runs up and down our red-carpeted hallway.

Katie was now at her energetic best, practically defying gravity as she jumped and skipped behind me to Pearl’s, carrying
in her mouth chew bones, rattles, rubber balls, and a noisy pink rabbit—which she shook furiously from side to side in order
to make it squeak.

Scratching at Pearl’s door with her paws, Katie would drop her toys onto the carpet as precious offerings. She’d then try
to slip craftily between Pearl’s legs into the apartment for a snack. To tease her, Pearl would purposely block Katie from
entering, as if playing soccer. The game would continue until Katie slinked around Pearl, her true goal being the dining table
to snatch a piece of crispy toast, which she would then munch on loudly.

Although Katie loved being indoors, she also relished exploring our neighborhood. Often, as she was lazing on my bedspread,
I’d ask, in a rather soft voice, “Want to go OUT?”

And in one long leap, she was off the bed, running toward the door. She’d pull the leash off the knob, sit down waiting to
be hitched up, then race down the hallway to the elevator and patiently wait for it to open. In cold months, I’d ask, “Where’s
your COAT?!” And using her mouth, she’d pull a coat off a shelf and push it toward me.

As we came off the elevator, she’d expertly navigate from the front lobby door out to the Hudson River. First, trotting briskly
through our garden on the way to the water, she’d typically spot a bird and twirl into the air attempting to catch it.