The Dogfather

by Conant, Susan

  “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 hit
ch 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.

  “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 f
irst 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?”