The Dogfather (23 page)

When I unlocked and opened my back door, I found Enzio Guarini seated at my kitchen table. By now, it probably goes without saying that his bodyguards were there, too. His trademark hat and walking stick lay on the table. Rowdy and Kimi were still in the van. Sammy was in my arms. I lowered him to the floor and watched him run to Guarini, who bent to give the puppy a gentle rubbing and then welcomed me home as graciously as if the house were his and I were an eagerly awaited guest.

“Miss Winter,” Guarini said, “it is always a pleasure.” His eyes crackled with life.

“Mr. Guarini. Good evening. Could I ask a favor?”

“I can hardly refuse. I’m here to ask one myself.”

“Could you hang on to Sammy for a minute? I need to get Rowdy and Kimi, and I don’t want Sammy shoving himself in Rowdy’s face.”

The presence of Guarini’s limo felt like protection against Deitz’s threat against Rowdy and Kimi, but when it comes to dogs, I hate to take chances. In that regard, it’s interesting to note that I had no hesitation about entrusting Sammy to Guarini. At the same time, it never occurred to me to report Zap’s theft of Sammy to his boss. Neither in that way nor in any other did I intend to enlist Enzio Guarini as my hit man.

As I made the brief trip to the van and especially as I passed through the kitchen with Rowdy and Kimi, I was hideously aware of Sammy’s paper treasure, which was still in my pocket and, indeed, seemed to burn a hole there, as money is said to do. When I reached my bedroom, where I intended to leave Rowdy and Kimi, I stowed the Smith & Wesson on a high shelf in the closet, but I left the papers in my pocket and kept the jacket on.

I returned to the kitchen to find Sammy on the floor at Guarini’s feet, where he was entertaining himself and the Dogfather by pulling at Guarini’s shoelaces. The better to play with the puppy, Guarini had turned his chair away from the table. His bodyguards had turned with him. The foursome could have been posing for a surrealist photograph: Guarini, flanked by the frozen-faced men, with Sammy the puppy in weird contrast as he played riotous tug-of-war with the Mob boss’s footwear.

“Could I offer you something?” I did not, of course, refer to a discourse about the allegory of Life and Death I was watching. “Wine? Coffee?”

After politely declining, Guarini said, “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to something you told me. About Frey. About dogs. It’s something you been telling me all along about places.”

“Places,” I repeated.

“Dogs got close ties to places. Closer than us. If I learn a dance step”—he picked up the cane and twirled it— “once I got it, I can do it anywhere. But a dog, he’s different. He learns heel here and now. Then he’s in a different place, he’s got to learn it all over again.”

“Yes. Up to a point.”

Guarini had let himself into my locked house to discuss canine generalization?

“So you got to wonder,” he went on, “if the tricks, the dance steps, the behaviors, like you always say, are the part of it we notice because they’re the things that interest us. Sit, stay, down, heel. But for a dog, maybe it’s all like that, all wrapped up in places.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“Like memories.”

“Probably. Yes, at a guess, a dog’s whole consciousness, including memory, is fairly context specific, sort of glued to particular settings, objects, and so on.”

“So like my favorite dog writer says, if you want to have a good shot at eliciting a behavior, go to the place the dog’s used to showing it.”

I smiled. “Both of my dogs are Obedience Trial Champions in our own backyard.”

“Supposing you want to tap a dog’s memory.”

“Of a behavior?”

“Of something that happened. With people.”

Still lost, I said, “The way you’d know that you’d tapped a memory would still be behavior. In other words, you’d read your dog.”

Picking up his hat and his walking stick, Guarini rose. “I’m going to try a little experiment. Down behind that fancy health food store.” With a sly narrowing of his eyes, he added, “Like in the movies, you know? A reenactment. You. Your dogs.” Looking left and right, he said, “My associates here. A few other people.”

“I don’t have the same car. I’m borrowing a friend’s van.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, it’s just a little experiment.” From the moment Guarini proposed the reenactment, I found the idea ridiculous. It occurred to me that prison had not only gotten to him, but gotten to him via a particular route: It had given him the chance to watch too many bad movies. But I didn’t argue with him.

Consequently, the passage of only fifteen minutes found Rowdy, Kimi, and me at the scene of Joey Cortiniglia’s murder, the parking lot behind Loaves and Fishes. Steve’s van stood in for my defunct Bronco, and even though Sammy hadn’t arrived in Boston at the time of the killing, he was now crated in it. Also, Joey Cortiniglia, being dead, obviously wasn’t there. Still, Guarini seemed satisfied, and as I’ve already demonstrated all too fully, keeping Guarini happy was my principal, if unprincipled, goal throughout this affair. Somewhat to my surprise, Zap drove up in the Suburban with Al Favuzza, vampirish as ever, in the passenger seat. Finally, Carla Cortiniglia swept in behind the wheel of a pink Cadillac convertible so new looking that you could practically see the ghosts of dealer plates. Yes, a pink Caddy convertible. You see? No sign of Mob consciousness. If you happen to know an out-of-work political organizer, I know of a group that could use some serious help. Anyway, to protect her hairdo or to prevent Anthony from leaping out, Carla had the top up, and only after she’d emerged did I see her passengers, the gargantuan twins, Timmy and Tommy Bellano, who climbed out of the backseat with all the animation you’d expect from crash-test dummies who’d survived one nonaccidental accident and were about to be belted into another car to repeat the experience.

Carla’s hair was big, and she wore a spray-on pink V-neck over white spray-on pants. Her heels were high, and she wore hoop earrings, gold bracelets, and her favorite fashion accessory, Anthony, whom she clutched in both hands as if he were a purse someone was trying to snatch. In the parking-lot lights, she and Anthony practically glowed in the dark. “Hi, there!” she greeted all of us. “You like my new car? Hey, Holly, I got to tell you, Anthony’s doing great. You hear him? No barking. Silent as the grave. Oh, Jesus, what did I say? I need a zipper for my fat mouth.”

Guarini nodded at Carla and then set about organizing the evening’s event by directing the placement of the cars. Obedience-minded as I am, I’d already parked the van exactly where my Bronco had been, so I simply waited as Guarini had Favuzza moved the Suburban to the spot it had occupied. Meanwhile Zap drove the limo eight or ten spaces away and, as directed, parked it facing the front of the lot. Guarini asked Carla to park her convertible next to it. “Carla," Guarini said, “I got to ask you to leave Anthony in your car for a couple of minutes.” As if he needed to soften or justify the request, he added, “I got Frey with me. He’s going to stay in the car. Miss Winter, you’re going to leave Sammy where he is, in your van, and you’re going to act like he’s not here.”

Once Zap and Carla had carried out the instructions, I saw the point, which was to move both vehicles away from the area. Gesturing to Zap and Carla, Guarini gathered the whole group in a circle in the space between Steve’s van and the Suburban. Although Joey Cortiniglia’s bodily fluids and tissues were no longer visible on the blacktop, I could sense their traces underfoot and found myself shuffling and keeping the dogs on tight leads to shield my feet and their paws from contact with the dead. No one else showed a sign of sharing my superstition. Guarini and his guards stood where Joey’s corpse had lain, and to their left, the Bellano twins leaned against the Suburban. Carla faced Guarini. She rested her weight on her right foot and, flexing her left ankle, tapped a slim heel in what struck me as a rhythm of courtship. To Carla’s left was Zap, his arms folded across his scrawny chest. For once, his prematurely aged face bore an expression: He looked sullen. My dogs and I completed the circle, Rowdy on my left, Kimi on my right. Acknowledging Guarini as the alpha figure in the pack, the dogs watched his face in what I read as the vigilant expectation of a signal. We human beings silently waited for Guarini to speak. Remarkably, even Carla kept quiet.

It was typical of Guarini that he left unspoken what would have been a silly preamble about our wondering why he’d gathered us all together here. We knew why. Or everyone except Rowdy and Kimi did. Instead of wasting time voicing the obvious, that he wanted the name of Joey’s killer, Guarini began by talking about dogs. Truly, the man was a mobster after my own heart. Pointing to Rowdy and Kimi, he said, “I got a lot of respect for malamutes. Smart. Strong. Natural. Beautiful. A lot like my elkhounds. But quieter.”

Carla giggled. “Not like my Anthony!”

While Carla was still displaying the hysteria never observed in Alaskan malamutes or Norwegian elkhounds, Guarini turned to the bodyguard on his left. In expecting a signal, Rowdy and Kimi had been correct. As usual. Anyway, the designated guard, who’d always seemed surgically attached to Guarini, separated himself, stepped forward, and, within seconds, was pressing an automatic to Zap’s chest. The guard’s actions had been so smooth, so professional, that I hadn’t even seen him reach for the weapon. Kimi, to my right, was next to Zap. She transferred her gaze from Guarini to me. Rowdy began to watch her. Zap’s face turned from a yellowish sallow to a waxy green.

Guarini was smiling. “Miss Winter, supposing this was you.”

“Would my dogs protect me?”

He nodded.

“They’d have blocked access to me. Rowdy would definitely have done that.”

“And supposing it was Joey.”

“No. They probably wouldn’t have done anything. They wouldn’t have barked or growled.” Following Guarini’s lead, I didn’t bother to say that we weren’t speaking hypothetically. When Joey had been shot, my dogs hadn’t done a thing to protect him.

“So,” said Guarini, “supposing Joey’s here, and he’s got your dogs on leash, and somebody walks up to him.”

“You know this already,” I said. “It isn’t that mala-mutes are bad guard dogs. What they are is non-guard dogs. They take care of themselves. Rowdy and Kimi will protect each other because in some ways they see each other as one and the same, and for the same reason, they’ll watch out for me. But they’re malamutes. They’re never going to act like mastiffs or Dobermans or shepherds... or even like Anthony. Almost all the time, they love everyone, and they don’t pretend otherwise.”

“So Joey’s here with two big dogs. These dogs, they look tough. And they’re acting nice to Joey. And you don’t know them and maybe you don’t know Joey. And you see Joey and the dogs. What’re you going to think?” Carla answered. “Jesus! That they’re Joey’s dogs.”

“If you’re a stranger,” I said, “you assume they’d defend him. Dogs this big and this tough can take bullets and keep going. And there are
two
dogs.”

“This name I been hunting for,” Guarini said. “It’s the name of someone who knows something about dogs.”

“It’d’ve been just like Blackie Lanigan to throw the dogs a bone,” Favuzza said.

“How would he have known they weren’t Joey’s? How would he have known about my dogs?” I asked. “My particular dogs. I know this breed pretty well. Not every malamute is like mine. But every malamute has powerful jaws. I wouldn’t take a chance with a malamute I didn’t know.”

“What else?” Guarini asked.

“Food,” I answered. “Beef bones would be worth a try with most dogs and most breeds, but with Rowdy and Kimi, the bones were a guarantee of quiet, happy dogs.”

“This name I been looking for,” Guarini said, “I put the word out that I wanted the name. What I wanted was, I wanted to be wrong. I didn’t want it to be one of the family. I didn’t want it to be the name of one of you.”

CHAPTER 29

Never take the word of a Mob boss. What Guarini staged wasn’t a reenactment of Joey Cortiniglia’s murder but a lineup of suspects before the only eyewitnesses to the crime, namely, Rowdy and Kimi. As a dog professional, I must comment that Guarini did an admirable job of seeing the killing from the dogs’ point of view. He ignored the shooting to focus exclusively on the delectable beef bones that had been presented to my ever-ravenous dogs.

“We’re going to reenact a little something here,” said Guarini, referring, as I’ve just explained, to the dog-memorable event of the night Joey was slain rather than to the shooting itself. “Miss Winter here and me and Frey are over in front of the mall, and Zap, you, you’re driving around like I told you.” Guarini stared at Zap. “Maybe you are. We’re going to find out.” Pointing at Zap, Guarini said, “You knew what Joey was delivering to me. Did you get greedy? And with Joey out of the way, there’s more room for you to move up in the business. So, you see this van here? You’re going to move ten feet in front of it. Turn your back to it. And stay there.”

Zap obeyed. “Move to the right,” Guarini directed.

“That’s your left, you moron,” Favuzza said. “Anyways it was Blackie Lanigan.”

Ignoring him, Guarini turned to the monster twins, Tommy and Timmy Bellano. “You two. Same applies to you. Greed’s an awful thing. And like Miss Winter just said about her dogs, there are two of you. You’re out patrolling the perimeter.” Guarini swung his walking stick in an arc. “Maybe. Go stand next to Zap. Stand just like him.”