Insert Law & Order Donk-Donk Here

I can almost hear Jerry Orbach say it — “Some strange characters hang out in this neck of the woods”*:

The body of a man clad in a kinky black leather mask and decked out head to toe in S&M gear was hanging from a chain-link fence on Hudson Street yesterday — as many passers-by ignored it, thinking it was a Halloween display.

The slightly built, fair-skinned mystery man may have been choked to death by a dog collar around his neck, it’s other end strapped around a 3-foot-tall fence post, police sources said.

The 40ish, tattooed man was found kneeling, braced face-first against the fence in front of 424 Hudson St. at around 6:45 a.m.

In a bizarre twist, the body had been there for at least an hour, dismissed by some who walked past as a quirky seasonal display in an area scattered with S&M and gay bars.

“The body was covered with a black suit and he had a mask on his face,” said deli owner Indra Patel, who first spotted the strangely posed corpse when he opened next door around 5:30 a.m.

“I thought it was a dummy. It looked like a dummy, because every year they do decorations like that. I was wondering why they put up the [Halloween] decorations early.”

Patel said at least an hour went by before a woman walking her dog realized the sidewalk exhibit of a man wearing a pair of leather spiked gloves, chaps and a vest was a real person and called police.

Cops were investigating if the man had committed suicide or died during some sort of bizarre auto-erotic sex game.

. . .

Another witness, Kevin Samuel, 50, a porter for a building across the street, said he had looked at the body several times but it just never clicked that it might be a real person.

“I’m staring at him and I think, ‘Is that a prop or a real person?’ His legs looked like he was twisted on an angle and that he fell in it [the fence]. It looked like he was stuck there and couldn’t get up, like he lost his balance,” Samuel said.

*OK, OK — being Jerry Orbach is harder than it looks!

Brave New Fur

The Manhattan Cat, whose entire existence is informed by dank, cramped apartments they never leave, gets much, much freakier:

Josh is a $4,000 cat, bred to keep from setting off allergic reactions like sniffles, teary eyes and hives in people like me — who until now could never have a meaningful relationship with a feline.

The 3-year-old male was bred by a company called Allerca, which set up our meeting yesterday at the W Hotel.

After hiding under the bed, then behind a pillow, he let me cradle him in my arms.

I waited and . . . nothing. No sneezing. No tears.

. . .

The special cats won’t be available to the general public until early next year. Already, there’s a long waiting list. New Yorkers are actually paying an extra $2,000 to be bumped to the front of the line.

Allerca developed the pets by selectively breeding cats that had a “changed” glycoprotein, the genetic property that triggers an allergy, said Bernadine Cruz, Josh’s vet. One in 50,000 cats has this altered protein.

“Joshua is second generation and there’s many more to come,” Cruz said, adding that he’s the result of three years of research.

Just say no to genetically modified cats!

Hey, I Thought You Were Dead!

The patient who received “last rites” from the priest who then got a traffic ticket calls on authorities to show some mercy:

Nelly Munoz, 65, is so grateful to the Rev. Cletus Forson of St. Andrew the Apostle for rushing to her bedside at Maimonides Medical Center following emergency intestinal surgery she wants to find a way to pay for the ticket.

“The operation was very bad, but when he came to visit me it made me feel very good,” said Munoz, who is originally from Colombia and worked in a laundry before becoming ill last month.

“I’m really upset. When I heard what happened, I wanted to pay the ticket if I could,” added Munoz, who has no source of income and is recovering at a friend’s house in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. “I feel very grateful that he came to give me prayers.”

. . .

Yesterday, The News found four private cars parked illegally in the same zone without tickets — including vehicles apparently belonging to a doctor, two EMS workers and a cop.

Yes, A CIA Angle!

Does this partially explain that convoluted Yalta reference in his suicide e-mail? Let the conspiracy theories begin:

The four-story Upper East Side town house that was destroyed in a gas explosion yesterday once served as a clandestine meeting place for a circle of prominent New Yorkers who informally gathered intelligence for President Franklin D. Roosevelt before and during World War II, according to several published histories.

Known simply as “the Room,” the covert network held monthly meetings to exchange gossip and tips in a bland rented apartment in the building at 34 East 62nd Street, as early as 1927.

No one lived in the apartment, and the phone number was unlisted. It is not clear where the apartment was in the building, which was completed in 1882. The meetings apparently continued until the early 1940’s.

. . .

The covert group, founded in 1917, included the real estate heir Vincent Astor, a close friend of Roosevelt; the book publisher Nelson Doubleday; Winthrop W. Aldrich, the president of the Chase National Bank; Kermit Roosevelt, a son of Theodore Roosevelt; David K. E. Bruce, a son-in-law of Andrew W. Mellon and a future ambassador to France, West Germany and Britain; the philanthropist William Rhinelander Stewart; and Marshall Field III, a newspaper publisher and heir to the Chicago department store fortune.

Members of the Room, which had close ties with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, reported on their conversations with world leaders and gathered to hear speakers like the polar explorer Richard E. Byrd and the writer W. Somerset Maugham, who had been a secret agent in World War I.

. . .

After World War II began in Europe in 1939, the group shifted its efforts to counterespionage; at President Roosevelt’s request, it drew up plans to guard arms factories against sabotage and tighten border controls to prevent foreign spies from entering the United States, according to Mr. [Phillip] Knightley’s “Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the 20th Century” (Norton, 1987).

The Room used its contacts to examine bank accounts suspected of being used by foreign spies; monitor Japanese naval activities in the South Pacific; and report on conditions in the Canal Zone, the Caribbean and Peru.

The group was eventually supplanted by the more formal intelligence-gathering efforts that resulted in the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947.

Hey Buddy — Leave The Heavy Lifting To Spiderman, Superman Or Even That Character In The Ben Affleck Vehicle

Am I reading this correctly? The second time in a week this guy plays good samaritan and this time he creams the thief with his car? Too weird:

A serial purse-snatcher was critically injured last night when he was struck by a passing car moments after he stole a woman’s pocketbook on a Chelsea street, authorities said.

The thief, who was not identified, was riding a bike when he was struck at 17th Street and 11th Avenue after he had dashed off with the woman’s handbag.

The driver, Peter Welsh, said he heard a woman scream, “He’s got my purse! Someone help!”

That’s when Welsh barreled into the thief as he tried to get off his bike.

“I tried to get in front of him and intercept him,” Welsh said. “I didn’t mean to hit him.”

The thief, wanted for a string of purse-snatchings in Manhattan, was taken to St. Vincents Hospital in critical condition.

The incident comes a week after Welsh said he chased down a carjacker who crashed into four cars and hit a pedestrian June 14 near a Brooklyn movie set where Welsh was working.

It turns out that this is for real:

He goes by Peter Parker but says he’s no hero.

The good Samaritan movie-set worker who ran down a purse snatcher in Chelsea said he just likes to help.

“I don’t feel like a hero, but I felt like ‘I’ve got to help out,'” said Peter “Parker” Welsh, 33, who carries the moniker of the web-slinging “Spider-Man” character. The real-life Peter used his van to knock the thief off his bike late Friday.

And it’s not the first time this month alone that Welsh has done a good deed. On June 14, he chased down a fleeing carjacker who ran off after crashing into four vehicles at a Brooklyn movie set where Welsh was working. He brought the vehicular villain down and into the arms of law enforcement.

He’s known as Peter Parker because he co-runs Location Parking Security Services, which handles parking for movie shoots around town.

Get it? “Parker” . . . as in parking . . . cars . . . get it?