The Dogfather (6 page)

“Fried oysters,” I finally said, and then suddenly realized, to my horror, that oysters were a legendary aphrodisiac.

Happily, what I’d overlooked throughout all this obsessing was Steve’s entirely scientific, completely unpsychological mind-set. Without a trace of self-consciousness, he chose fish chowder followed by finnan haddie, and persuaded me to get the fried oysters as an appetizer, followed by a baked stuffed lobster.

“Wine?” he asked.

Out of the corner of my eye, I was aghast to spot an all-too-familiar young man taking a seat on a bar stool. What was Guarini's driver, Zap,
doing
here?

“Nothing Italian!” I blurted out.

Naturally, Steve was startled. “You have something against Italy all of a sudden?”

“No, not at all. I’m just not in a mood for... never mind. I’d like a glass of white wine.”

Relieved to have uttered a few words without wifely or gangland associations, I managed to get through the ordering of food and drink in moderate comfort. I couldn’t help sneaking in glances at Zap, but Steve didn't seem to notice. Indeed, it occurred to me that one of Steve’s many virtues was a relaxing tendency not to scrutinize everything I did. Also, since we’d been seeing very little of each other, we had plenty of catching up to do. Over drinks and appetizers, we talked about friends and about Rowdy and Kimi and about Lady, his pointer, and India, his shepherd, and neither of us said a word about disbarred lawyer ex-wives-to-be, Italy, or racketeers. Zap continued to sit alone at the bar and gave no sign of noticing my presence. All went well until just as Steve’s finnan haddie and my lobster were served, the bartender turned up the volume on the television, and onto the screen flashed a photo of Blackie Lanigan with the superimposed caption “Where’s Blackie?”

In turning our attention to the televison, Steve and I were no different from everyone else in its range, and the smile that crossed Steve’s face was just a particularly attractive version of those that appeared on the faces of the entire population of Greater Boston whenever this famous question was asked. In Boston,
everyone
recognized Blackie Lanigan’s picture and loved wondering where he was. Why? Because Blackie headed the FBI’s list of Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, and Blackie was a Boston crook. Around here, it’s not every day that a local boy makes bad. My buddy Kevin Dennehy took a particular interest in Blackie because their backgrounds were somewhat similar. Although Kevin had grown up in Cambridge and was part Italian, he liked to claim that he and Blackie were both Boston Irish and had had the same occupational choices: cop, robber, or priest. In espousing this bigoted view, Kevin always wore a wry expression. His eyes glimmered. Cop that he was, he rationalized his Blackie mania as professional duty. Still, I felt convinced that Kevin the Cop saw Blackie the Crook as the shadow side of himself, or, as Kevin phrased it, “there but for fortune.” Anyway, everyone in Boston who read the papers or the local magazines or who watched televison or listened to the radio or just hung around with other people knew all about Blackie Lanigan, but I knew even more than most other people because of listening to Kevin Dennehy.

“No one ever gets tired of it,” Steve remarked without moving his eyes from the monitor. “Here’s a guy who’s been on the lam for... what is it? Five years? And there hasn’t been any real news about him in all that time, but, hey, it’s Boston, so Blackie’s permanent news.”

The narrator of this latest Blackie TV special was now reading the list of crimes for which Blackie was wanted by the FBI: racketeering influenced and corrupt organizations—RICO—eighteen counts of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit extortion, money laundering, narcotics distribution, and so on. If it was bad, Blackie had either done it or conspired to do it or both, and the FBI wanted him for all these deeds and conspiracies. Just how eager was the FBI to catch Blackie? The reward for information leading directly to his arrest was a million dollars.

“I hope you’re remembering to keep your eyes out for Blackie,” I said to Steve, “because he loves animals, you know. You can never tell when he might show up in your waiting room.”

Steve laughed.

“I’m serious. Kevin knows everything about Blackie, and he’s always talking about him, and he says that Blackie is crazy about dogs.” The television displayed one of the close-ups of Blackie that the local papers kept printing. In this one, he wore glasses. “Steve, you really should watch for him. We all know what he looks like. We’ve seen this picture hundreds of times. I’ll bet that there are more people in Boston who’d recognize that picture than a picture of the mayor or the governor.”

“Holly, it’s that same old black-and-white photo from six or eight years ago. They use the same three pictures all the time. This one. The one without glasses. And then there’s that same shot with a moustache drawn on it.”

“That one really is stupid. It looks as if a kid had scribbled on it.”

“Probably doesn’t matter,” Steve said, “because there’s nothing distinctive about him. Average guy. Medium height. Medium build. How old is he now? Late sixties? Gray hair.”

“Blue eyes.”

“Right. The next time I walk into the waiting room and see a gray-haired man with blue eyes, I’ll call the FBI.”

But he was amused. As I was feeling happy about flirting with him, however, a new segment of the Blackie special appeared on the screen. It opened with footage of my client and kidnapper, Enzio Guarini, as he walked toward the front door of his vegetation-free house in Munford. When he reached the door, he turned to the camera, smiled, and waved. He had good reason to look pleased. According to the voice-over, he was arriving home following his release from prison, his convictions having been thrown out at the prosecutors’ request. Specifically, investigators from the Justice Department had come upon evidence in the Boston office of the FBI to suggest that Guarini had been framed by corrupt Boston agents acting in conjunction with former FBI informant James “Blackie” Lanigan. Guarini’s conviction had rested heavily on the testimony of one of Blackie’s underlings, a hit man named John O’Brian, whose body had subsequently been unearthed from the banks of the Neponset River. The testimony of another of Blackie’s associates, a man now in the Witness Protection Program, implicated Blackie Lanigan as O’Brian’s killer.

“Old news,” Steve said. “Blackie got O’Brian to frame Guarini, and then Blackie killed O’Brian to make sure O’Brian couldn’t turn around and testify about it.”

“Corruption in the Boston FBI office isn’t exactly news, either,” I said. “Everyone knows that Blackie was a so-called informant for years, meaning that he kept doing everything he’d always done, only he never got prosecuted, and he had the wonderful opportunity to inform on his competition.”

But the “Where’s Blackie” program finally explained its recap of old news by suggesting that the answer to the ubiquitous question of Blackie Lanigan’s whereabouts was right here in Boston. The show switched to an interview with a reporter for one of the Boston papers, a guy who specialized in the Mob and had written a book about organized crime and its ties to Boston FBI agents. According to the reporter, Enzio Guarini was bitter about his incarceration, which he correctly blamed on Blackie Lanigan. By alluding to La Cosa Nostra’s reputation for vendettas, the reporter managed to avoid claiming outright that the first thought on Guarini’s mind when he’d been released from prison had been to revenge himself on Blackie. As to Blackie Lanigan’s probable response to Guarini’s liberation, the reporter put a question to the viewers: “Who’d you rather have after you? The FBI? Or Enzio Guarini?” He gave his own answer. “Me, I’d take the FBI any day.”

Me, too, I thought.

“So Blackie’s in Boston to get in a preemptive strike,” Steve said. “If Guarini doesn’t kill him first.”

“Makes sense,” I said, without adding that what now made perfect sense to me was Enzio Guarini’s evident paranoia. No wonder Guarini traveled with those bodyguards. And Joey’s killing? No wonder Guarini had seen it as a message to himself. When he’d ordered his men to get him the name of the shooter, he’d probably been asking them to find out who was working for Blackie Lanigan.

My eyes darted to Zap, who was still at the bar. He was hunched over a plate of fried food and sipping a beer. His face was without expression. You couldn’t even tell whether he liked or disliked the food and drink. Zap’s emotional deadness, though, was no concern of mine. I worried about Zap not for his sake but for the sake of my fragile relationship with Steve. If Zap turned and saw me, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to stroll over to our table to chitchat about the bullet hole in Joey Cortiniglia’s head. But he might be stupid enough to mention Enzio Guarini, his boss.
The
boss.
Our
boss.

“So,” I said to Steve, “what do you feel like doing now, handsome? Any plans for the rest of the evening? How about popping into the nearest baggage claim and picking up a dog?”

CHAPTER 6

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” You know the poem? T. S. Eliot. Well, if you haven’t read it, take my advice and don’t, because it’s just line after horribly depressing line about the bleak existence of a man who is probably best remembered for having measured out his life with coffee spoons. And there you have what was wrong with J. Alfred Prufrock. I, in contrast, was blessed to have measured out my life with dogs. So was Steve Delaney.

All this is by way of saying that in Steve Delaney’s life, as in mine, the arrival of the puppy was not the mere acquisition of a pet, but an Advent, a spiritual milestone, a reference point that would henceforth divide the calendar of his years into Before and After. Consequently, although the signs directing us to the baggage claim bore no resemblance to stars, I nonetheless felt like one of the Three Wise Men and, in fact, bore a gift. There were differences, certainly. For one thing, I’m a woman, and for another,
wise
was a bit of an exaggeration. If asked, I’d’ve settled for
knowledgeable.
My gift was a small hunk of roast beef. When it comes to dogs, I really am knowledgeable. Case in point: In a life spent in the company of canines, I had yet to meet a puppy who gave a sweet dog damn about gold, myrrh, or frankincense. Come to think of it, had the infant Jesus been all that crazy about such wildly inappropriate baby presents? Jesus, I’m sure, had been more than capable of remembering that it’s the thought that counts. Steve’s puppy would take beef over intentions any day.

When I say that Steve and I waited at the baggage claim, I don’t mean that we watched for a puppy-size airline crate to drop down onto a conveyor belt among suitcases twice its size. Rather, we waited nearby until a rolling metal door surged upward to reveal a small shipping crate plastered with Live Animal stickers, This Way Up arrows, a small transparent envelope of airline paperwork, and, sealed under clear tape, a sheet of paper with information about who was sending the puppy to whom and instructions about what to do if the puppy got marooned somewhere.

Although auras are invisible to me, I nonetheless saw a glow of happiness radiate all around Steve as he took slow, deliberate steps forward, hunkered down, peered thoughtfully through the wire mesh door of the crate, and finally unlatched the little door. After the long hours alone in a crate in the cacophonous belly of an airliner, any small animal could have been excused for shyness, anxiety, or even outright post-traumatic stress. Not this little guy! When Steve eased the wire door open a scant two inches, a black nose thrust its eager way out, and immediately, catching Steve entirely off guard, the rest of the baby malamute followed. With the confidence built over years of handling wiggly little creatures, Steve enveloped Rowdy’s young son in a bear hug and then sank his face into the soft coat on top of the puppy’s head. Caught between an overwhelming urge to get my hands on the puppy and an absolute unwillingness to intrude on the bonding, I compromised by reaching out a hand and resting it on the pup’s back. Under his soft puppy coat were hard bone and muscle that foretold the power he’d pack as an adult. His ribs rose and fell under my hand. Then, as if responding in kind to Steve’s ursine hug, he scrambled up Steve’s chest like a little bear climbing a big tree. When his face reached Steve’s, he nibbled and licked, and his miniature tail whipped back and forth. He had Rowdy’s blocky muzzle and Rowdy’s perfect pigment and Rowdy’s bittersweet-chocolate eyes. When Steve carefully lowered him to the floor, I could see that this miniature Rowdy was going to have his father’s excellent bone as well.

Admiringly, Steve said, “Even better than your pictures, aren’t you, big boy?”

“It’s amazing,” I said. “He already looks exactly like—” For once, Steve interrupted. “Cindy didn’t tell you? She told me. Little male version of Emma. Perfect pigment, blocky muzzle, heavy bone. Just like his mother.”

“May I point out that Rowdy has perfect pigment? Not to mention a blocky muzzle, heavy bone... but, of course, Emma does go back to the same lines Rowdy does, on her mother’s side. That’s one reason Cindy wanted to use him.”

With a shy smile, Steve said, “The universal affliction.”

“Are you suggesting that I of all people am
kennel blind?
Objectively speaking, this puppy is a carbon copy of Rowdy.”

Sensibly changing the subject, the duplicate little Rowdy began to sniff and circle in the universal manner of puppies who may not yet realize that they need to go out, but who certainly do.