The Dogfather (5 page)

So, maybe thirty minutes after I’d left Rowdy and Kimi with Joey, when the training session was over, Guarini, Frey, the bodyguards, and I rounded the corner of the mall at the liquor store. “Now,” I was saying, “if Frey is about to jump on you or someone else, you tell him, ‘Frey, sit,’ and when he does, click and... WHERE THE HELL ARE MY DOGS?”

CHAPTER 4

Even before I’d finished shouting, the bodyguards had formed a human barricade around Guarini. They sensed danger; their response was correct. My own first— and, I should note, incorrect—response was anger at Joey. My second was guilt. Rowdy and Kimi were the better half of myself. Why had I entrusted them to a Neanderthal, even a Neanderthal who worked for Enzio Guarini?

Joey Cortiniglia was nowhere in sight. My Bronco and the silver Suburban were where we’d left them, facing away from us, my Bronco on the right, the Texas Cadillac on the left. The limo, which had been parked between the cars, was gone, as it was supposed to be; Guarini had told Zap to cruise around. Al Favuzza, who’d been assigned to foot patrol, was nowhere to be seen. Believe me, I looked, not for Favuzza, of course, but for my dogs. Joey, the big dope, must’ve decided to take them for a walk. He’d probably decided to let them make friends with some miniature canine fiend that they were now disemboweling. Damn it! Joey knew that my car was unlocked. If anything had happened, he should’ve put the dogs in the car.

Maybe he had. I pounded across the blacktop. The bodyguards made no effort to stop me. They were, after all, Guarini’s guards and not mine. Guarini could’ve called out a warning to me. He didn’t. I might not have heeded it, anyway. I made directly for the Bronco and was running so fast when I reached it that I slammed my open palms against the rear window while simultaneously peering in at the dogs’ empty crates. If Rowdy had been loose in the car, he’d have put himself where, in his opinion, he naturally belonged in life as well as in vehicles: in the driver’s seat. But the entire damned car was filled with the absence of dogs.

Listening for the distant, dreaded roar of a dog fight, I was startled when a low-pitched grinding noise drew my gaze to the passenger-side front bumper. Sticking out from under the car was a softly wagging malamute tail. I traced it to the rest of Kimi’s body. The grinding emanated from her jaws and from Rowdy’s. Kimi’s tail, the one I’d spotted first, was executing a lackadaisical wave instead of a vigorous thump because she was concentrating most of her energy on gnawing the hunk of bone she held between her forepaws. Still safely attached to her collar, her leather leash had been looped around a thick section of the undercarriage and snapped to her collar. Rowdy was identically hitched to the other side of the car. He, too, was occupied in chewing a large, fresh-looking bone. My dogs live a deprived life; they almost never get bones. Malamutes have tremendously powerful jaws. I’m always afraid that even comparatively safe bones like frozen raw knucklebones will break or splinter and that what’s intended to be a dog’s treat will result in intestinal surgery and a stay in a critical care unit.

I stooped down near Rowdy and was about to ask him what the hell was going on when I finally noticed Joey Cortiniglia. And the gore. Joey’s caveman body was stretched out lengthwise just under the silver Suburban, feet toward the front of the big car. He lay on his back with his right arm visible—and visibly limp. Death hadn’t softened the prognathous thrust of his jaw. He’d been shot in the head. I have a strong stomach. I’ve whelped puppies, cleaned deep wounds, and mopped up reeking canine messes of every sort—liquid, semiformed, and solid. Enough said, except that I found myself sitting on the blacktop feeling not only queasy but disoriented, as if the dogs and I were trapped in a surrealist painting entitled
Gangland Slaying with Woman and Malamutes.
For a moment, I imagined that the bones Rowdy and Kimi were chewing had come from human legs.

The next thing I knew, Enzio Guarini was talking to me. He informed me that I wasn’t here. “You tie up the dogs like that?”

“Of course not. And I don’t give them bones. Malamutes—”

Guarini interrupted. In a gentle voice that commanded obedience, he said very slowly, “Take them and go home. This didn’t happen.”

By now, Favuzza was on the scene, Zap and the limo had returned, and two more men had appeared, gigantic twins so gargantuan and so identical that I had to wonder whether I was hallucinating double. As I followed orders by undoing the hard knots in the leather leads, unhitching the dogs, and putting them in their crates in the car, Guarini’s men went about the gruesome task of encasing Joey’s body in heavy green trash bags and loading it into the Suburban. The bodyguards, as always, remained silent. Zap, Favuzza, and the monstrous twins didn’t exactly whistle while they worked, but they did talk, and although I avoided the area between my Bronco and the Suburban, snatches of conversation reached me. Favuzza made his adenoidal snorting noise. “Blackie wouldn’t’ve hurt a dog. Somebody else would’ve shot them. And giving them bones is Blackie all over.” He then asked Zap a question I didn’t hear, and Zap replied that he’d looked everywhere. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the twins raise Joey’s body. After that, they seemed to concentrate on searching the Suburban. I heard one of them report to Guarini: “Nothing.”

“Blackie must’ve been running low on cash,” Favuzza said.

“Don’t take nothing for granted,” Guarini said. “You get me a name. You got that? Could’ve been Blackie. Could’ve been someone else. This is a message to me, and I want to know who the fuck sent it. Get me that name.”

When I’d finally transferred both dogs to my Bronco, I did exactly what Guarini had ordered. I got into my car and drove home. When I got there, instead of going next door to ring Lieutenant Kevin Dennehy’s bell, I led Rowdy and Kimi directly to our own house. Once inside, I thought about calling Kevin. I didn’t do it. In one respect, I did, however, disobey Enzio Guarini: I remembered what had happened; I did not forget the sight of Joey Cortiniglia’s body. I told myself that my mind, at least, was free.

CHAPTER 5

Sex and death. About a hundred and thirty-three days before Joey Cortiniglia took a fatal bullet in the brain, Rowdy had reveled in the delusion that he’d died and gone to heaven, which is to say that he’d been bred to CH Jazzland’s Embraceable You. Emma, as she was called, had flown from the state of Washington for the carefully planned tryst. In case you are unfamiliar with the reproductive rites of the Exalted Order of the Purebred Pooch, I should mention that creating new lives from Rowdy and Emma had undoubtedly involved more forethought than had gone into eradicating life from Joey Cortiniglia. Here in dogs, the breeder of a litter is the owner of the bitch—a technical term, not a slur, and certainly not a derogation of Emma, who even before finishing her championship had gone Reserve Winners Bitch—technical term, see?—at the Alaskan Malamute National Specialty, an honor roughly translatable from dogspeak to Standard English as Next to the Top Female Who Hasn’t Finished Her Championship as Judged at the Annual Ritual Gathering of Persons Infatuated with Alaskan Malamutes. In other words, Emma had been singled out as excellent against heavy national competition. Furthermore, after finishing, she’d won an Award of Merit at the National, too.

Rowdy, too, had finished his championship and had acquired an impressive list of titles after his name for achievements in... well, if I start on Rowdy, I’ll never get back to Joey Cortiniglia. Emma’s owner, Cindy Neely, and I had exchanged and pored over pedigrees and health information. Emma and Rowdy were free of hip dysplasia, eye disease, hypothyroidism, and other afflictions. As to safe sex, neither was infected with brucellosis. Temperament? Each was as sweet as the other. My own Kimi, I might mention, had a streak of single-minded intensity that in my opinion made her an iffy candidate for breeding. The trait suited me perfectly. I adored Kimi for it. I drew on her strength. But she was just too much dog for most people, even for most malamute people. So, I didn’t want to breed her.

As to Joey’s murder, what forethought had gone into that? Any? Grab a gun. Pull the trigger. Well, a bit more. Joey’s killer had also been armed with bones for my dogs. Big deal.

One final point of comparison. Cindy Neely and I had signed a stud contract that spelled out the terms of the breeding. Had Joey’s killer also had a contract? My contract had given me a choice of a stud fee for Rowdy’s services or a puppy in lieu of cash. I’d wanted a puppy. But Rowdy, Kimi, Tracker, and I live on the first floor of my three-story house. The bank and I own the place, and without the rents from the two apartments, the bank would soon own the whole thing. The yard is fenced, but it’s small; near Harvard Square, I’m lucky to have a yard at all. It would be impossible for me to toss a third malamute into my existing pack because Rowdy wouldn’t accept another male, and Kimi wouldn’t tolerate another female. I had no room for an outdoor kennel. Still, having to settle for a stud fee almost broke my heart.

But I was rescued by sex and death, or at least by sex-gone-by and the death of... well, maybe I’d better explain. Early that past autumn, the man in my life and the vet in Rowdy’s and Kimi’s lives, Steve Delaney, had done the unthinkable by getting married. Not to me, I should add. Steve had asked me first. Second. Third.... I’d refused. Why? In retrospect, I think that the true answer is that it never occurred to me that he’d marry someone else. It certainly never occurred to me that Steve, the most honest, ethical person in the world, would marry a crook. Specifically, an embezzler. But that’s a whole other story. He was now getting divorced. And that’s yet another story. What’s relevant to this one, besides Steve’s upright character and touchiness about violations of the law, is that totally out of the blue—actually, totally out of the wolf gray and white—when he and I hadn’t spoken for months, he called to say that he was interested in a malamute puppy and had heard that Rowdy had been bred. Even if Steve had been a stranger, I’d have thought it was an excellent idea to replace his horrible about-to-be ex-wife with a wonderful dog. As it was, Steve was anything but a stranger, and he wasn’t proposing to replace the dreadful Anita with any old fantastic dog of any old splendid breed, either, but with a puppy of
my
breed sired by
my
dog. So, sex: Rowdy and Emma’s, death: the demise of Steve’s marriage.

Careful breeder that she was, Cindy interviewed Steve at great length to make sure he was good enough to own one of Emma’s puppies, and let me just mention as a little aside that if Steve had been half as thorough about screening a wife as Cindy was about screening a puppy buyer... well, let me not add that after all, but jump to Logan Airport, where Steve and I arrived at eight o’clock in the evening on the day after Joey Cortiniglia’s murder. We were at Logan to meet the plane carrying Rowdy’s son, Emma’s son, Cindy’s puppy, Steve’s puppy, and therefore almost my puppy. The plane wasn’t due until 9:14. We were early because a certain impatient person was exuberantly excited at the prospect of getting her hands on Rowdy’s, Emma’s, Cindy’s, and Steve’s puppy. Since we were going to pick him up at the passenger baggage claim, we weren’t stuck waiting way out in the cargo area, which lacked the amenity of passionate interest to anyone genetically predisposed to develop malamute fever, namely, restaurants.

After checking the arrivals monitor, Steve said, “On time. You hungry?”

“I’m half malamute,” I said. Then I wondered whether it had somehow been the wrong thing to say. Maybe I should just have said yes. Or lied and said no.

Steve didn’t seem to object. On the contrary, he said, “I’m joining the clan myself in an hour and fifteen minutes.” His voice was as deep and rumbly as ever, and in most ways, he looked the same as always, tall and sinewy, with incredible blue-green eyes. His hair was wavy and brown, and was looking like itself again now that he’d had it professionally clipped by one of his vet techs rather than by a Newbury Street stylist chosen by his almost ex-wife. I’d’ve bet that Anita had picked out the wool turtleneck he was wearing. Its sleeves had an odd shape that somehow looked expensively trendy, but I felt confident that he was wearing it now only because of its color, which was dark wolf gray.

I pointed to a nearby cafeteria and said, “Is this okay?” The appealing alternative was the airport branch of a chain of seafood restaurants. A year ago, it would have gone without saying that we’d have a civilized meal instead of loading up two oily-feeling trays and then gobbling burgers and fries; in those days, we’d both have assumed that Steve would pay the bill. He had a successful veterinary practice in Cambridge, whereas my career in dog writing, otherwise known as my Noble Sacrifice to the Arts, left me chronically broke, in part, of course, because most of the pittance I earned went literally and immediately to the dogs.

“Madame,” said Steve, “in celebration of the arrival of Jazzland’s As Time Goes By, please do me the honor of accepting my humble invitation.” He swept his arm fish-ward, so to speak.
Jazzland
was Cindy’s kennel name. The puppy was to be called Sammy.

So, we ended up in the seafood restaurant at a table for two near the bar. Mounted above the bar was a big televison with the volume turned blessedly low. At this point, we weren’t watching television, but studying our menus. It was taking me an atypically long time to decide what to order, especially considering that there was lobster on the menu and someone else was paying. The hitch was that I’d first met Steve’s wife at a clambake that had included lobster. Steve had been there, and I was now afraid of reviving best-forgotten memories. On the other hand, my
not
ordering lobster might remind him of that occasion, too. The pasta dishes and the steamed mussels had delectable-sounding Italian names, but I was so determined to keep Steve ignorant of my relationship with Enzio Guarini that I wanted to avoid even the most oblique reference to Italy. Pondering the haddock, swordfish, and halibut, I kept thinking of that famous line from
The Godfather
about Luca Brasi, a ridiculous association, I admit, since it’s obviously possible to request and devour vertebrate sea creatures without so much as hinting at underworld figures who sleep with the fishes.