The Dogfather

by Conant, Susan

  CHAPTER 12

  So, here we are—my cousin Leah, my friend Mary Wood, and I—and it’s Saturday at what feels like four o’clock in the morning, but is actually a bit after dawn. Although we’ve been up for hours and are perfectly used to refusing the pleas of beds that beg us to linger, we’re nonetheless a little puffy eyed and a lot overcaffeinated. But who cares about us? We’re mere human beings, and this is dog show! The creatures who matter are Rowdy and Kimi and Mr. Wookie, and they’re bright-eyed and eager and gorgeous. And, well they should be having fun because they’re not the ones lugging grooming tables, tack boxes, and Vari-Kennels out of my disreputable Bronco and Mary’s spiffy rental van, are they? The dogs aren’t swearing. Far from it. Mr. Wookie, in particular, is addressing Mary in what resemble animated English sentences minus only the trivia of identifiable words. I’m the one who’s cursing, and the reason is that I’ve just discovered that the worn spot on the floor behind the driver’s seat of my car has become a hole through which I can see blacktop.

  Mr. Wookie has as much reason to voice joyful self-confidence about his chances in the ring as I do to mutter obscenities about my car. Indeed, I share Mr. Wookie’s expectations. Harry Howland, our judge, has never yet overlooked this stunning seal-and-white boy. “Seal” means a black guard coat over a light undercoat. Mr. Wookie is thus dark and handsome, elegantly reminiscent of a high-society gentleman in a tuxedo. He’s exactly as tall as he’s supposed to be, twenty five and three-eighths inches at the withers, to be precise, the withers being the highest point of the back, where the neck begins, above the forelegs. He is a superbly correct malamute and a superb showman. A single hair from Mr. Wookie’s undercoat has enough vibrant personality for a thousand ordinary dogs. Lest I sound disloyal to Rowdy, let me state the obvious: My own boy is himself no ordinary dog and no ordinary show dog, and even under Harry Howland, Rowdy might give Mr. Wookie some serious competition. Rowdy, too, is all a malamute should be, and he, too, is a show-offy show dog. Today, however, he is at a great disadvantage. The disadvantage is named Holly Winter. Mr. Wookie is always owner-handled by Mary, who is slim, pretty, and feminine, the perfect foil for her ruggedly handsome dog. What Mary and Mr. Wookie share, however, besides the superficial trait of dark hair, is an attitude toward life in general and dog shows in particular that’s outgoing, friendly, likeable, and contagious. They both talk a lot, especially to each other. Their rapport in the ring is legendary.

  As usual, Mr. Wookie will be owner-handled today. As is anything but usual, and for good reason, it looks as though Rowdy, too, may be owner-handled. In the short time since we arrived in the parking lot, five people with cell phones have come running up to me with the same message from Faith Barlow, Rowdy’s handler, who wants me to know that in the middle of the night, she tripped over a dog toy, landed in a whelping box, and broke her left arm. Faith is still stuck at the hospital and has been unable to find me a substitute handler.

  “Handle him yourself,” says Mary.

  “I am a dreadful breed handler,” I say. Breed, I should mention, is conformation, the show part of a dog show, the competition succinctly, if incorrectly, described as a beauty contest. “Ask Leah!”

  “She’s terrible,” says my cousin, who must be believed because she’s a Harvard undergraduate and therefore knows everything. “Her hands shake.” Although Leah does not look her best at this ghastly hour, she is still strikingly lovely. Her best is spectacular. She has masses of red-gold curls and looks altogether like an anomalously athletic and all-American version of those otherworldly young women depicted in the paintings of Burne-Jones. She enunciates clearly and has an authoritative, educated voice that carries with hideous effectiveness even when she whispers. “Holly hates handling breed,” she says. “It makes her throw up.”

  “The risk,” I say truthfully, “isn’t vomiting. It’s fainting.”

  Mary laughs off the truth. “Holly, you handle in obedience! In breed, Rowdy can practically show himself.”

  As I didn’t bother to say, almost no one uses a professional handler in obedience. Besides, with malamutes, it’s hard enough to get the dog to obey you, never mind someone else. As to Rowdy, considering his history of hijinks in the obedience ring, if he weren’t my dog, I wouldn’t handle him in so-called obedience for a million dollars. Leah handled Kimi in both breed and obedience. That’s Harvard for you: omnicompetence all over.

  “Leah,” I say with happy inspiration, “maybe Harry Howland won’t look twice at Kimi, and you can take Rowdy in.”

  If I start explaining all about the judging of dog shows, we’ll never get back to Joey Cortiniglia and the Mob, so let me just say that Kimi was entered in a class of female malamutes (“Open Bitches”) who were competing for championship points, whereas Rowdy and Mr. Wookie had already finished their championships and wouldn’t enter the ring until the last part of the malamute judging, Best of Breed. Judging is a process of selective elimination. The judge starts with the dog classes and then does the bitch classes and finally does Best of Breed. Consequently, if today’s malamute judge, Harry Howland, failed to appreciate Kimi when he judged Open Bitches, Kimi would be eliminated from further competition for the day. In that case, Leah would be available to handle Rowdy in Best of Breed. And I wouldn’t have to.

  “Leah,” says Mary, glaring at me, “Harry Howland’s going to love Kimi. Don’t listen to Holly. You’re going to go in there and win. Holly’s going to have to find someone else for Rowdy or take him in herself, because you’re going to be back in the ring.”

  “I’ll find someone,” I say. In fact, I’ve already asked all the people who’ve relayed Faith’s messages, and I’ve had no luck at all.

  As we head across the blacktop toward the trade center that serves as the show site, Mary is quietly taking me to task for expressing a discouraging attitude to Leah and Kimi, and somewhat less quietly is asking me whether I really throw up or faint in the ring. I’m feeling guilty about my negative attitude and change the topic by grumbling loudly about the hole in the floor of my car and my desire to have the wreck vaporize, when all of a sudden I’m startled by a lugubrious, adenoidal male voice that says, “You want some help?”

  To my embarrassment, the speaker is the mafioso Dracula himself, Al Favuzza, and with him are scrawny, greasy little Zap the Driver and the hulking monster-twin corpse movers. Committed as I am to the abhorrent policy of making nice to the Mob until I can sever my connection, I resist the urge to tell Favuzza to climb back into his coffin. As I’m trying to dream up an alternative greeting, I nod to Al, Zap, and the twins, and Mary, who’s noticed my nod of recognition, says, “Thanks. We’d love some help.” As I’ve said, that’s Mary: friendly. Also, intelligent. Why should we haul all this gear when we can get someone else to do it? She goes on to introduce herself. “I’m Mary Wood.” She smiles. So does Leah, who says, “I’m Leah Whitcomb, Holly’s cousin.”

  To my horror, Favuzza’s eyes are fixed on Leah: the masses of curls, the voluptuousness that accentuates the baby-perfection of her fair skin. I struggle to collect myself. For all that Mary and Leah know, the mobsters are purebred dogsters of an admittedly thuggish sort. After a glance at the young, old, fat, skinny, garish, conservative, noisy, and silent exhibitors making their way toward the trade center with their giant, toy, hairy, hairless, brawny, bony, yappy, and barkless dogs, I see that what marks the members of the dog fancy as such is nothing more complicated than animation: Our eyes are alive. By comparison, Guarini’s henchmen are the living dead.

  A benign explanation for the mobsters’ presence finally occurs to me: Guarini’s underlings are an advance force charged with the job of checking out the show before the boss arrives. Specifically, they’re on the lookout for another dog lover, namely, Blackie Lanigan.

  “Is Mr. Guarini coming?” I ask brightly.

  Favuzza’s eyes move from Leah to me and back again. If you looked in the seafood case at a market and saw a fish with eyes like that, you wouldn
’t buy it. “No,” he says.

  As we enter the trade center, I’m hoping that the hoodlums will be told that this entrance is for exhibitors only and that spectators are required to use a different entrance, preferably one located ten thousand miles away. As it is, Mary, Leah, and I show our entry forms, the gangsters pay to enter, and all of us get the backs of our hands stamped in purple ink. Zap humiliates me by refusing to hold out his grubby hands for the rubber stamp, but the gargantuan twins surround him, and Favuzza says, “So’s you can go out and go back in without paying, you moron.”

  Although we’ve arrived early, the exhibition hall gives off the rich mix of odors that define a dog show, the fragrances of grooming spray, liver treats, cedar shavings, women’s perfume, men’s cologne, nervous human sweat, premium dog food, soggy sandwiches, stale doughnuts, burned coffee, and hot competition. The grooming area is conveniently near the entrance. It’s already lined with rows of crates, coolers, folding chairs, and grooming tables. Underfoot are heavy-duty extension cords. Here and there, patterned area rugs add a homey touch. Trailed by our mobster helpers, Mary, Leah, and I find space to set up. As one of the monstrous twins effortlessly lifts my heavy grooming table, I can’t help thinking of the millions of times my muscles have screamed under the weight of the damned thing. My conscience may object to racketeer assistance, but my body is grateful. Still, now that Al, Zap, and the big-lug twins have finished providing the help they offered, I’m hoping they’ll depart, but out of nowhere, Leah turns to Favuzza and says, “I know where I met you! At the Museum of Fine Arts.”

  I think, but don’t say, “Oh, sure. Or was it at Symphony Hall?”

  Leah adds, “You asked me for directions. I knew I’d met you before.”

  Favuzza makes a squeaky grunt. The merest hint of something resembling human feeling crosses his face, but it passes so swiftly that I cannot begin to guess what emotion, if any, it reflects.

  “Kimi, table!” Leah says, and my lovely Kimi leaps and plants her four big paws on the rubber-matted surface, wags her tail, and looks around to make sure that people are watching her. No one is. The other exhibitors are socializing with one another and working on their dogs. Mary now has Mr. Wookie up on the table she has borrowed from me. Mary and Leah are both wearing white lab coats over the dressy clothes that are de rigueur in the conformation ring. Al Favuzza is ogling Leah. Zap is staring at Mr. Wookie, who is so eye catching that he’d be used to stares if he were just a family pet who got routinely walked around the block. As it is, he’s an experienced player in the dog show game and understands that drawing attention to himself is an essential move. Watching Zap watching Mr. Wookie, I just know what’s coming next. Before I can forestall it, Zap sidles up to Mary and says, “How much you want for him?”

  Mr. Wookie is BISS International/American CH Malko’s Wookie of Kunek, WPD, CGC. Mary is used to people who fail to realize that he is her dog. When they aren’t asking to buy him, they’re informing her that they’re going to use him at stud. Hah! No one breathes near Mr. Wookie without Mary’s consent.

  Belatedly, I say to Zap, “Mary is very definitely not interested in selling him, and it happens to be against the rules of the American Kennel club to buy or sell a dog at a show.”

  “Zap, you moron,” Favuzza says, “the boss told you that, and he told you to shut up, so shut up.”

  Enzio Guarini has instructed Zap on dog show etiquette? Why? What are these horrible men doing here? The only answer that comes to mind is: embarrassing me.

  My watch reads 8:30. Malamute judging is scheduled for 9:00 in Ring 7. My brain is bouncing up and down, and turning somersaults trying to think up a way to ditch Guarini’s men. I know a lot of people in dogs, I know everyone in malamutes, and I do not want to be seen with this entourage of goons.

  “How’d you like to do me a favor?” I ask Zap. “Could you go buy me a show catalog?” And to the massive twins, I say, “I could sure use some coffee, and Mary and Leah could, too.” I’ve starting to hand out money, but Favuzza stops me by saying it’s all his treat. What I’ve hoping in assigning the errands is that Zap and the twins will get lost and won’t find us again until the judging is over. Zap and the twins depart. Three thugs down, one to go. Also, of course, I need to find a handler for Rowdy. But before I can concoct a mission for Favuzza, he draws me aside and says, “I hear you got a problem today.”

  Blood rushes to my face as I think, “Yes, you!” Blood. How appropriate! I sneak a glance at his teeth to see whether his canines are elongating. “No, no problem at all, certainly not, everything’s just fine, it’s wonderful. Things could not be better except that my car has a hole in the floor, and I wish the damned thing would vaporize, and I’ve got to find someone to take Rowdy for me. His handler broke her arm, and if I don’t find someone else, I’ll have to take him in the ring myself, and I’m not even dressed for it.”

  The American Kennel Club expects handlers to be properly attired. Men wear suits or sport coats. Women wear dresses or pants outfits. For once, I’m not in jeans and a T-shirt, but my navy cords and white cotton sweater are too informal for the breed ring. Beneath Mary’s lab coat is a black dress that matches her dog’s dark coat. The red-piped jacket that goes with the dress is in a dry cleaner’s bag on top of Mr. Wookie’s crate. Leah has on a white silk blouse and a short navy blue pleated skirt. Her red blazer will remain in its plastic bag until the last minute. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of two professional handlers, Derek Slate and Rob Leist, and I dash after them, but neither is free to handle Rowdy, and neither knows anyone who is. I return to find that Leah, bless her, has Rowdy on the table and is spritzing him with water and fluffing him with a Mason-Pearson brush and a powerful stream of air from our dryer. Mary, meanwhile, is misting Mr. Wookie with water and touching up his already perfect coat with a metal comb.

  Eager for a few grooming tips, are you? I’d spill all the secrets, but sooner or later I’d still have to get to the matter of my moral compromise. I am deeply ashamed to have had any part in what happened in the ring. I accept full responsibility. I am heartily sorry.

  CHAPTER 13

  That day’s malamute judge, Harry Howland, was the head of a family business that manufactured and distributed the kinds of cardboard containers used for takeout pizza and pastry. Ironically, it’s possible that Harry Howland’s company was the very one that had made the pastry box containing Enzio Guarini’s Kimi-filched cannoli. But for once, these so-called coincidences (dog spelled backward) are irrelevant. What you need to know about Harry Howland is, first, that he was an AKC judge and, second, that he knew my father and had known my late mother, who bred top-winning golden retrievers and was a Power in the Dog Fancy. In case you don’t show dogs, let me briefly explain that the American Kennel Club not only expects its judges to be treated with the utmost in courtesy and respect, but with the goal of seeing these happy expectations fulfilled, publishes disciplinary guidelines that spell out the nasty consequences of displaying rudeness, disrespect, or worse toward an AKC judge. For example, aggravated physical abuse of a judge can get you a fine of $5,000 and the suspension of AKC privileges for ten years. More to the point—the point toward which we are, alas, heading—the offense of attempting to influence a judge carries a standard penalty of a $500 fine and an 18-month suspension of privileges. Suspension of AKC privileges: For the duration, you can’t show a dog or do much else that counts in life, especially in my life. As to Harry Howland’s acquaintance with my parents, Mr. Howland... well, we’re about to get to that.

  But let’s start at the beginning of Harry Howland’s judging of my breed, the Alaskan malamute, which took place as scheduled in Ring 7 and was about to begin only about ten minutes late, which is to say, at about 9:10. Within the sacred precincts of the baby-gated ring, Harry Howland and his stewards were busy with paperwork, and at the judge’s table, a few handlers were still picking up armbands. Harry Howland was a tall, silver-haired man of distinguished appearance who
so thoroughly looked the part of an AKC judge that his photograph appeared in educational materials about the judging of dog shows distributed by the AKC. I did not look distinguished. Having failed to find someone else to handle Rowdy for me, I’d not only picked up his armband, but fastened it on my left upper arm over the sleeve of my red blazer, which was actually Leah’s. In a doomed effort to look properly dressed, I’d convinced her that she’d be fine in her white silk blouse and navy-blue pleated skirt and that I needed the blazer more than she did. “You hate red,” I’d pointed out. “You never wear it. You think it looks awful with your hair.”

  “It looks beautiful with her hair,” Mary had said.

  “True,” I’d said. “But Leah doesn’t think so.”

  I'd brushed my hair, applied blush and lipstick, donned the blazer, and reconciled myself to handling Rowdy myself if my ringside efforts to find a handler failed, as they had. As to the armband, maybe I need to note the sportsmanlike fiction that the judge has no idea of the identities of dogs and handlers, each dog being identified only by the number on the handler’s armband and the judge being prohibited from looking at the show catalog, which publishes the names of the dogs together with their corresponding numbers. In reality, even as small worlds go, this one is minuscule. Judges recognize dogs and handlers because they’ve seen them everywhere, in the ring and in ads in dog magazines.

  Now, as Leah, Kimi, Mary, Mr. Wookie, Rowdy, and I stood outside Ring 7 with a lot of other handlers and malamutes, as well as a small crowd of spectators, I said, mainly to myself, “After all, I am an experienced handler. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  Leah said, “You could faint or throw up.”

  "I’m not woozy, and my stomach is okay.”

  Leah continued. “Rowdy could get in a fight, or you could trip and fall on your face.”