This Dog for Hire

craving for Glatt kosher take-out for a long, hungry stakeout or you’re dying to see a Broadway show you can’t afford and don’t mind missing the first act, you’d really appreciate this town.
    For the first yen, try Lou Siegal’s Glatt Kosher Restaurant on West Thirty-eighth Street. They deliver, but for a stakeout you should pick up. Law number four says, Don’t call undue attention to yourself.
    You used to be able to get kosher Chinese at Bernstein on Essex on the Lower East Side or Moishe Peking in the thirties, and kosher Japanese, yet, at Shalom Japan in SoHo, except of course on Shabbos, but they’re all gone now. Like it or not. things change.
    Anyway, as to the play, simply walk in with the smokers after the intermission. The stories aren’t that complicated, and they always save the best stuff for the second half.
    You can also crash almost any large celebratory dinner, such as the Ken-L Ration award banquet, which I was now planning to crash, by waiting until it begins and entering as if you belong after the invitation collectors have closed up shop. You have to figure that with two to three hundred people there, someone didn’t make it. So there will be an empty seat for you. But be sure you dress as if you’ve been invited, or you’ll stick out like a Great Dane at a cat show.
    If this method would make you so tense you’ll feel as if you were digesting a piano, opt for the second one.
    Don’t go an hour late. Go an hour early. Begin the evening by crashing the press hour that precedes the cocktail hour. Simply walk in carrying an expensive camera—I use my Nikon—and be prepared with the name of a magazine or newspaper, particularly one that usually doesn’t cover dog events. In that way, you’re less likely to run into the reporter or photographer the magazine actually sent, and you won’t be questioned, because who would want to offend, say, the New Yorker' You can even disarm them by complaining that you just heard about their event yesterday and would they kindly give you a little more notice in the future. Using this method, you don’t miss the free drinks, and there’s much more chance to circulate a nd eavesdrop.
    I heard the familiar nasal twang the moment I entered the cocktail hour for the winners and the press.
    “Kaminsky, you bitch, where have you been keeping yourself?”
    I turned around to see Susan Samuelson, who writes about the fancy for Dog World magazine. The fancy refers not to people who fancy dogs, such as myself, but to people who show dogs, such as the people being honored at the Ken-L Ration dinner. “On the coast,” I lied.
    “Miss New York?” she asked, raising her plucked eyebrows. She was a sixtyish elf in velvet leggings, ballet slippers, and a tux jacket, her hair in a pixie cut.
    “For sure.”
    “Back to stay?”
    “Think so. I missed the humidity.”
    “Yeah. So where can I reach you when I need a quote? Are you listed or un?”
    I wrote my number on the back of her press notes. Susan used to call me all the time for quotes when I was working as a trainer, which helped my reputation and the accuracy of her articles, making for a very serendipitous symbiosis.
    “Susan, I need a little info. A client of mine got an unbeatable offer, sort of a half-price deal, for breeding to a top show dog—for cash. From the handler .”
    “Naughty, naughty. Who?”
    “Confidential?”
    “Always. Unless you tell me otherwise. Cough it up, kiddo.”
    “Morgan Gilmore.”
    “Uh—no surprise.”
    “How come?”'
    “You don’t read the secretary’s pages anymore?” She scraped her pointers at me, just like in grade school. “Reprimanded by the AKC, once for disorderly conduct, twice that I know of for registration violations.”
    “And he’s still handling? He wasn’t suspended: How the hell does he get away with it?”
    “Grow up, my dear. They don’t call him the Teflon handler for nothing. And anyway, if we tossed out the people who cheat, there might not be enough people left to run a dog show, and I’d be out of a job. We’ll talk?”
    “Definitely.”
    “Great. Hey, Kaminsk, where’s your tan?”
    “Sunblock. I used a shitload of sunblock.”
    She nodded and turned away. A moment later, there was a hand on my shoulder.
    “Where have you been , bitch?”
    It was Mike Chapman, a dog trainer who wrote a newspaper column for the Bergen Record , a Jersey paper. I guess I should explain that, as a dog trainer, I never considered