Stud Rites

breakfast.
     

 
     
    AS I STOOD at the take-out counter at the Liliu Grill handing over what felt like an awful lot of money for three sandwiches, Duke Sylvia showed up looking as confident as if Ironman had just gone Best of Breed. Duke nodded agreeably to me and asked for a pastrami on a bulky roll with extra mustard and a side of fries, not exactly what I think of as a remedy for a jittery stomach. For a few paranoid moments, I wondered whether Duke assumed that I was handling Rowdy myself. Was he trying to rattle the competition by ordering a lunch that wouldn’t have made it past my uvula? Of course, I could have ordered pastrami myself. I just couldn’t have forced it down.
    ”How’d you make out this morning?” I asked.
    Duke momentarily looked as if he’d already forgotten the Kotzebue bitch. ”She took her class,” he said, as if it almost went without saying. ”Sherri Ann took Winners,” he added in the parlance of the fancy, which glosses over distinctions between dogs and their breeder-handlers, beings assumed to share a merged identity.
    Almost as soon as Duke had finished paying, a white-coated waiter emerged through a swinging door with Duke’s food and mine. To get to the exhibition hall and the grooming tent, we cut through the lobby together and circled around outdoors. Although the rain had stopped, the sky was still gray, and pools of water remained on the blacktop. How Faith intended to keep Rowdy’s feet clean, I didn’t know, but I hoped she’d take advantage of the lull in the rain to get him from the tent to the exhibition hall. I checked my watch: twelve-fifty.
    ”Ten to one,” I told Duke. Rowdy’s chances? Were they that good? I mentally reviewed the competition, top-winning dogs so famous that I knew their call names: Ironman, Bear, Casey, and lots of others, especially Casey, who was supposed to be utterly gorgeous.
    Clustered near the entrance to the hall were at least a dozen people, a few standing alone, the others in twos and threes. A man I didn’t know detached himself from one of the little clusters to approach Duke and mutter something I didn’t catch.
    ”Thanks. I’ll take care of it,” Duke replied. Giving me his usual low-key smile, he said, ”Sometimes it doesn’t pay to do favors.”
    ”Is this about Ironman?” I asked.
    Duke shook his head. ”That bitch of Timmy Oliver’s. Z-Rocks. The thing is, Mikki’s not going to look at her twice.”
    ”Timmy’s telling everyone that under Hunnewell—”
    Uncharacteristically, Duke cut me off. As close to exasperated as I’d ever seen him, he said, ”In Timmy’s dreams. Besides, James’d never’ve lasted to now. He was sicker than anyone knew. He was supposed to be on oxygen. He told Karl so on the way from the airport. No way James’d’ve held out. Even if he had—like I said, in Timmy’s dreams.”
    ”Z-Rocks goes back to Comet,” I said. ”Besides, she’s pretty.”
    With scorn, Duke said, ”Comet was bone and muscle. He was all grit. Comet was not pretty .”
    Short on time, driven by nerves, I asked an abrupt question that Leah had asked me last night when she’d read the centerfold piece in the old Malamute Quarterly. ”Duke, what did Comet die of?”
    Duke spoke quickly and quietly. ”Hit by a car.” Duke’s face and his whole body were stolid. ”Most of the time, Comet was with me, but he was out of coat, and I was on the circuit, so James had him for a month.” His voice was bitter. ”James lived right by a major highway. And James loved to watch the dog run.”
    Someone told me later that Duke never discussed Comet’s death and that I shouldn’t have asked. I disagree. Duke, I think, told me about it because he knew I’d understand that Comet had been Duke’s and that James Hunnewell had murdered Duke’s great dog.
    Before I could say anything, however, Duke excused himself and headed toward the grooming tent, where I intended to go myself to check on Rowdy and to give Kimi her unofficial prize as soon as I’d delivered lunch to Leah and Betty. Clutching the sandwiches, I dashed into the exhibition hall, where Leah was supposed to be helping Betty at the rescue booth, but was mainly devoting herself to fooling around with what I would immediately have recognized as a Poker Flat dog even if Robin Haggard hadn’t been right nearby. This one turned out to be Joe—properly, Ch. Poker Flat’s Rainman, C.D.X., T.D., W.W.P.D., W.T.D., C.G.C.— who, to judge from the