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//-->A Buzzard Named Rabinowitzby Mike ResnickJustin O'Toole had it made.It took him a while. He'd started by illustrating the Continental Lingerie catalog ("for the oomph girl!").Then he'd worked on the daily War King Sky Killers strip. From there he'd jumped to the editorial pagein Hackensack, then to Dayton, and finally, the big time—chief editorial cartoonist for the ChicagoBeacon.He had wit, he had talent, and now that he was in Chicago, he had more subject matter than he could usein half a dozen lifetimes.At first he'd gone the normal route, caricaturing everyone from the President to the Mayor, but then a fansent him one of Walt Kelly's old Pogo books, the one in which Senator Joe McCarthy had been drawnas a wildcat (and which subsequently made Kelly's reputation as a political satirist), and he realized thatno one had done anything like that for years.So the President became a bellicose rhino, and the Mayor became a sly weasel, and Alderman Berlinskibecame a skunk, and Senator Neiderman became a cockroach, and Police Commissioner Ryan becamea sloth, and within two years O'Toole had won a Pulitzer Prize and published his first book of politicalcartoons, which became an instant bestseller, not just locally but nationally.Of course, not everyone was pleased with his approach. The President was above it all (or at leastpretended to be), but the Mayor actually took a swing at him when they met outside the opera.Commissioner Ryan kept a 24-hour watch on him, and if he went one mile over the speed limit he couldcount on a ticket. Alderman Berlinski actually sued him for defamation, though the case was laughed outof court. As for Senator Neiderman, he mailed O'Toole a box of dead cockroaches on his birthday.But no one—repeat: no one—was more outraged that Saul Rabinowitz.Saul lived in Glencoe on Chicago's posh North Shore. He wasn't a politician himself, but he owned morethan his share of them. He had no party affiliation; he'd buy any politician of any political stripe. Andsuddenly farms would be condemned, to be replaced by Saul Rabinowitz Developments, complete withgolf courses and recreation centers. Public parks would vanish, to be replaced by modern new SaulRabinowitz Office Buildings. Old city blocks would be replaced by brand-new improved SaulRabinowitz City Blocks.It wasn't long before O'Toole began looking into Rabinowitz's dealings, and found, to his surprise, thatthe Catholic Church was no longer the biggest land-owner in Chicago. Rabinowitz was. He owned 3,016apartment buildings, 82 office buildings, 3 shopping malls, 4 local airports, and the word was that he wasthe real reason the Chicago Bulls had been able to afford Michael Jordan's salary.It was when O'Toole discovered that in addition to his real estate empire, Rabinowitz also controlledmost of the prostitution and drug traffic in the Chicago area, that he began incorporating him into theeditorial cartoons—as a buzzard, an ugly eater of the city's carrion.Rabinowitz was on the phone the next morning, the soul of reason, suggesting they have dinner anddiscuss the situation before his lawyers were forced to sue. O'Toole agreed, met Rabinowitz at anupscale steak house on the Gold Coast, started listing what he had found out about the drugs and theprostitutes and the bought politicians, and left before dessert when Rabinowitz threw his main courseagainst a wall in a fit of rage and began threatening O'Toole's life.The subpoena arrived after the third cartoon appeared. A black Lincoln tried to run him down after thefifth. A wild shot came through his bedroom window after the eighth.O'Toole kept drawing, and the people kept reading, and before long the Mayor was serving 15 years forfraud, and Commissioner Ryan had been fired for incompetence, and Alderman Berlinski was sitting inthe cell right next to the Mayor, and Senator Neiderman was censured by a vote of 92-7 in the Senate(the only abstention was Illinois’ other Senator)—and Saul Rabinowitz was serving six consecutive30-year terms with no hope of parole.O'Toole soon accepted an offer, at double his current salary, from the New York Globe, and spent thenext couple of years happily turning the New York city government into a new batch of animals. Thenone day he got a phone call from the Cook County Jail.“Yes?” said O'Toole.“Do you know who this is?” demanded a familiar voice.“Hi, Saul. How are you doing?”“I'm dying, that's how I'm doing!” grated Rabinowitz. “And it's all your fault!”“I'm not responsible for your bleeding ulcer or whatever the hell you've got,” said O'Toole calmly.“It's your fault,” repeated Rabinowitz, “and I'm going to get you for it!”“I thought you were dying.”“I'll come back from the grave if I have to.”“Give my regards to Hitler and Caligula and that whole crowd,” said O'Toole, hanging up the phone.And that was that. He saw on the wire that Rabinowitz had died the next week, and a few weeks laterthe Mayor committed suicide and Alderman Berlinski contracted cancer, and within a year everyone he'dgone after back in Chicago was dead.He didn't give it another thought, until one fall day when he was walking through Central Park on hislunch hour. There was a flash of motion off to his left, and he turned and saw a weasel, which waspassing strange, since there aren't any weasels in Central Park.This wasn't just any ordinary weasel, either. It looked exactly like his rendering of the Mayor in theChicago Beacon. Curious, he approached it. It snarled and bared its teeth.He walked a little farther and suddenly came to a skunk. Not any skunk, but an Alderman Berlinskiskunk. It glared at him with red little eyes.Frowning, he passed under a tree, and suddenly felt a heavy weight fall onto the back of his neck. Clawsdug into the flesh, and as he reached up and tried to disengage whatever it was, his foot hit something andhe fell heavily to the ground.It was a sloth—the very image of Commissioner Ryan—that was tearing at his neck, and as he tried toget to his feet he found the weasel holding one arm to the ground and the skunk gripping the other.Then he heard a rustling sound above him and looked up. It was a buzzard, a huge black creature withSaul Rabinowitz's face, diving down toward him, claws extended to rip out his eyes, beak razor sharp totear open his belly, hooded eyes filled with hatred.Just before the raptor reached him, Justin O'Toole heard a familiar voice say, “I told you there wasnothing funny about a buzzard!”In the moment of life remaining to him, O'Toole found himself agreeing. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]