The Dogfather

by Conant, Susan

  “Basil,” I said. “It’s Italian. No one in your family cooks Italian?”

  “I don’t eat home much. I sleep there, but I’m out a lot.”

  “You live with your parents?”

  “My mother. My sister and her husband and their kids are upstairs.” As if he needed to apologize for living at home, he said, “Saves on rent.” Instead of letting the explanation stand, he added, “But don’t get me wrong. I got prospects. It might look to you like I’m an errand boy, but, hey, you gotta start somewhere, right? What are you buying that stuff for?” Zap pointed at the mesclun mix I was putting in a plastic bag.

  “For salad,” I said.

  “You know, that stuff, those little leaves, all that is, is just what they’re trying to get rid of. You ought to get yourself a head of lettuce and not let these people take advantage of you.”

  “I like this stuff. It might not look like much to you, but let’s say that it’s got prospects, okay?”

  My pleasantry didn’t go over big with Zap. His scrawny body stiffened, and he glared at me.

  “Hey, I was just joking,” I said. “This is fancy gourmet lettuce, and I’m sure that right now you’re serving a sort of apprenticeship. Before long you’ll be on your way up.”

  We were now at the meat counter, appropriately so, I thought, since the butchered steaks, roasts, and pieces of stew meat probably provided a vivid foreshadowing of Zap’s vocational future.

  “Take Joey,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Joey started out like me, you know, low level. And look where he ended up.”

  Unable to contain myself, I said, “Underground?”

  “Before that.”

  “Before that, Joey—” I gestured toward the rear of the store, beyond which lay the parking lot where Joey Cortiniglia had been killed.

  “Forget about that.”

  Impulsively, I said, “Mr. Guarini was not happy about it.” I came close to adding that Guarini had ordered his men to get him the name of Joey’s killer. Zap would know whether Guarini now had the name he’d sought. I stopped myself. For all I knew, the explosion that had destroyed my car was a reminder to keep my mouth shut about Joey’s death. For all I knew, my message, if it was one, had come from the same gangster who’d shot Joey.

  Having lost my taste for meat, I moved to the seafood department. If you’ve seen The Godfather, you’ll realize that the sight of the fish counter didn’t exactly rouse my appetite, mainly because the items arranged amidst the crushed ice and parsley included two whole salmon, which is to say, two whole fish, in other words, fishes, as in what Luca Brasi sleeps with.

  “Bean curd,” I said. Bean curd is flavorless and slimy. Ordinarily, I hated it. Now, I felt a sudden, sharp craving for it. To the best of my knowledge, tofu had never carried a Sicilian message.

  CHAPTER 21

  Zap, of course, limoed me home from Loaves and Fishes. Fishes! The damned Sicilian messages were everywhere. If we’d passed an establishment called the Horse’s Head, I’d’ve died of fright. We didn’t. But what awaited us at my house was worse than the imaginary, if ubiquitous, intrusion of sinister symbolism. It was real. It was the FBI.

  Parked in my driveway was a beige sedan so neutral and ordinary that its only distinguishing feature was its absolute blandness. Agent Deitz was standing next to it. Mazolla was with him. As Zap began to turn the limo into the driveway, I said, “Stop! Here is fine.”

  “In the street?”

  “Yes. Right here. Don’t get out. I’ll get the groceries.” Zap’s prospects for advancement in Guarini’s organization, or for that matter, any other, were looking worse every second. Deitz and Mazolla didn’t have FBI spelled out in big letters across their jackets, but an ambitious Mob apprentice should’ve been able to spots Feds without having them labeled as such. Or so it seemed to me. For their part, Deitz and Mazolla wouldn’t have any comparable difficulty in guessing Zap’s occupation; they wouldn’t even need to see him. They’d already seen quite enough. Guarini’s limo might as well have had Boston Mob professionally painted on both sides complete with Enzio Guarini’s phone number and a suitable logo, such as a pair of cement shoes or a horse’s head.

  “You don’t want to meet my company. Stay in the car" I told Zap. That’s stay as in “Sit. Stay.” When I speak to people as if they’re dogs, it’s sometimes a mark of respect. But not now. “The second I get the bags out, drive off.”

  My five brown paper Loaves and Fishes bags were on the floor in the rear of the limo. It took me about two seconds to get myself and my groceries out. As soon as I shut the rear door, Zap obediently took off, leaving me there at the curb. Instead of graciously rushing to carry my bags, the agents stayed by their car.

  “Mr. Deitz,” I said. “Mr. Mazolla. How kind of you to go out of your way to help me with my groceries. I’m deeply moved. It’s always so gratifying to make new friends.”

  “You’ve got a lot of friends,” Deitz said.

  “Be nice to people, and people will be nice to you,” I said. “I learned that training dogs—the power of positive reinforcement.” To give myself something to do, I shifted the bags to the sidewalk. I thought about carrying them indoors, but I didn’t want Deitz and Mazolla inside my house.

  “Too bad about your car,” Deitz said.

  “A heartfelt loss.”

  “Could’ve been worse. A lot worse.”

  “I’m told it was a professional job. Come to think of it, you’re a professional yourself, aren’t you?”

  “So’s your friend Guarini.”

  “So is Blackie Lanigan,” I said.

  “Is Blackie among your acquaintances, too?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone in Boston knows that Blackie Lanigan’s best friends were in your office. And maybe still are. A lot of people assume that’s why he’s never been caught. And if I had the vaguest idea where Blackie is, I’d be the first person to speak up. For one thing, he belongs in jail. For another, I could use a million dollars. But you aren’t eligible for the reward, are you? Catching Blackie is supposed to be a routine part of your job.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Deitz said. “Catching bad guys. This job would be a lot easier with a little cooperation.”

  “If I knew where Blackie Lanigan was, I’d tell you and everyone else. Or do you mean Mr. Mazolla? Has he been having problems with cooperation lately?”

  “I’m talking about Enzio Guarini.”

  “You know where he is. That’s no mystery.”

  “All I’m asking for is a little cooperation in putting him back where he belongs.”

  “Repeat! I am Mr. Guarini’s dog trainer. I’m happy to tell you anything you want to know about his puppy. Name: Frey. Breed: Norwegian elkhound. Progress: excellent. Knows sit, down, stay. Lovely puppy. Recall is remarkably reliable for his age. He heels decently for me, not so well for his owner. No longer jumps on people. Owner is grateful to me. Therefore, when he heard about my car, he sent someone to take me out for groceries. So there you have the case against him: coming to the aid of a carless dog trainer. You better go grab him and charge him and lock him up before he gets away.”

  “We can offer you protection.”

  “I am a dog trainer and a dog writer. I don’t see how that makes me a candidate for the Witness Protection Program.”

  “You ride in Guarini’s limo. You frequent his house.”

  “I don’t frequent it. I’ve gone there to train his dog." “Bad things happen to Guarini’s friends, Miss Winter. And to his employees. Take Joey Cortiniglia.”

  “I attended Joey Cortiniglia’s funeral so there’d be a dog trainer handy in case there was a problem with his wife’s dog. There was a problem. I solved it.”

  “Some problems aren’t all that easy to solve. Your car situation, for instance.”

  “I’ll get another one. In the meantime, I can walk. I like to walk. I walk my dogs all the time.”

  “So far.”

&nbs
p; “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Like I said, bad things happen. To people. To cars. What happened to that Bronco of yours could’ve been a whole lot worse.” He paused. “Think about cooperating.”

  “I am cooperating.”

  “Your dogs could’ve been in that car.”

  “Leave my dogs out of this.”

  “Rowdy and Kimi.”

  “They are none of your business.”

  “Let’s keep it that way,” Deitz said.

  CHAPTER 22

  “That corrupt son of a bitch threatened my dogs,” I said to Kevin Dennehy, who was impaling an artichoke heart on his fork. We were sharing a serves-six antipasto platter at a small Italian restaurant that had just opened. The proprietor was a cousin of Kevin’s girlfriend, Jennifer Pasquarelli. The place was in Watertown, just over the line from Cambridge, and occupied a storefront between an Armenian bakery and an Armenian greengrocery. The restaurant was called the Bella Vista. Our table by the window gave a view of the shops across the street and some light traffic. The vista was thus not precisely bella, but the food was great. Once true foodies discovered the Bella Vista, it would, I predicted, be packed with happy eaters. That night, only two other tables were occupied, both at the back of the room. As Jennifer’s boyfriend, Kevin had been given the best seat in the house.

  I went on. “And as you know, I do not use the word bitch lightly. Kevin, I know I should’ve asked for help before, but—”

  “You wanted to keep Guarini happy.”

  “Which I’ve done, at least until today. Zap is practically simpleminded, but by now, he’s got to have told Guarini about what happened when we got to my house, and Guarini is anything but simpleminded. He’ll definitely have worked it out. And he won’t necessarily blame me. He likes me. Among other things, he’s read my column and my articles for years. He’s a fan. Guarini’s not the one I’m most afraid of, anyway. I know who Enzio Guarini is, Kevin. I get it. But he would never hurt my dogs. The one who scares me now is Deitz.”

  “That asshole,” said Kevin. “Pardon my French.”

  “There’s nothing to pardon. I’m glad to have my opinion confirmed. And I have to tell you that it’s a relief to talk about this. Rita is easy to talk to, but in her own way she’s very judgmental. And Steve, well, just when we were starting to begin to get back together, I didn’t want him to know anything about any of this. I should’ve told you, but the last thing I wanted Guarini to think was that I’d...”

  “Gone to the cops. Start at the beginning. Take your time. There’s no hurry.”

  I ate some marinated mushrooms and a fat pepperoncini. “It started when the dogs and I got abducted in Enzio Guarini’s limousine. My best guess is that Guarini just told his thugs to pick me up and give me a ride or something, but that’s not how it felt at the time. Anyway, all Guarini wanted from me was help with his puppy. He really loves dogs.”

  “And Mama Mia and apple cannoli. Have these thugs got names?”

  “Zap. I mentioned him. The driver. Zappardino, his name is. He thinks he’s on his way up in the organization, but it’s a miracle that he ever learned to operate a motor vehicle. No one’s ever going to promote him beyond that. The other ones were Al Favuzza—he looks honest to God like Dracula—and Joey Cortiniglia.”

  “The late.”

  “I’m getting to that.”

  The waiter cleared away our plates and the antipasto platter, now empty. He returned with two orders of lin-guini with white clam sauce. The pasta was fresh, and the sauce had tons of garlic and olive oil.

  “Favuzza’s some kind of distant cousin of Guarini’s,” Kevin said. “His specialty’s the dirty work."

  “With these people, that’s everyone’s specialty.”

  “Not like it’s his. Holly, you don’t want to hear about it. Especially not while you’re eating. Anyone else?”

  “There are these colossal twins. Monstrous. Gargantuan. Timmy and Tommy. When we got to Guarini’s house, they were there.”

  “Triplets.”

  “Twins.”

  “Triplets. Bellano. Timmy, Tommy, and Teddy, except that what happened to Teddy was that he spent some time under a railroad bridge near the Neponset River. And after that, he didn’t look as much like Timmy and Tommy as he did before. Hey, speaking of which, where’s that picture you were going to get for me?”

  The promised picture was a photo of Blackie Lanigan. Months earlier, I’d explained to Kevin that it was possible not simply to print web pages but to download images, edit them, and print them out. Choosing an example I’d thought would interest him, I’d said that I could go to the FBI web site, capture one of the pictures of Blackie Lanigan, enlarge it, and print him a copy. Kevin had asked me to do just that. What now prompted Kevin to remind me about the photo was the notorious link between Blackie Lanigan and the Neponset River, the banks of which served as graveyard for Blackie’s victims. TV shows and newspaper and magazine articles of the “Where’s Blackie?” genre invariably included accounts of bodies unearthed in Quincy from the shores of the Neponset River and in Dorchester at Tenean Beach. In case you’re unfamiliar with Massachusetts, let me warn you that if you visit here and feel like going to the beach, Tenean—otherwise known as Tincan Beach—is conveniently close to Boston, but it’s not a place where you want to encourage your dog to dig for bones or where you want to provide your children with pails and shovels so they can have fun in the sand.

  “I’ll do the photo for you, Kevin. Sorry. I forgot.”

  “Let’s get to Joey C.”

  “Okay. Well, let’s really back up. When Guarini got out of prison, there was a lot of speculation in the news that Blackie Lanigan was going to welcome the opportunity to get rid of Guarini—that Blackie’d come back to Boston. It seemed to me that the media were probably using Guarini’s release as an excuse to do more “Where’s Blackie?” stories. But Guarini seemed to take the idea seriously. At any rate, he was fairly paranoid about being in public. He refused to take Frey, his puppy, to classes, and he wouldn’t even let me take Frey to puppy kindergarten. But it’s impossible to get a dog used to people and noise and so on without exposing him to public places. And Frey really needed that exposure. He was nervous about ordinary stimuli. Bicycles.” I took a break to eat. “Also, the point was to have Frey listen to his owner and not just to me. Guarini understood all this. He agreed to meet me near Loaves and Fishes so he could work with Frey in back of the mall, without a lot of distractions, and in front, where there were shopping carts and people. He showed up with his two bodyguards—not the twins, the other two—and Zap, Favuzza, and Joey. So, the dog training went very well.”

  “Hey, so what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is, was, became evident when Guarini and I got back to where we’d parked the cars, and there was Joey Cortiniglia’s dead body. He’d been shot in the head. That’s when the horrible twins turned up. They moved Joey’s body into a car. A Suburban. Someone mentioned Blackie. And Guarini said he wanted a name. Why, I don’t know. Why would he care which hit man Blackie had used? Or maybe he thought the killer wasn’t Blackie at all. He didn’t confide in me. But everyone did seem to assume that the real target was Guarini, that killing Joey was a way of getting to him. Anyway, Guarini told me that none of it had happened, and he sent me home. Next thing I knew, Joey had died of a heart attack, and there I was at his funeral.”

  “Guarini maybe didn’t want to take the credit himself?”

  “That’s what Deitz thinks. Or what he hints at. I’ll get to him. So after Joey’s funeral, I thought I had things under control. Not everything. But my involvement. I’d train Guarini’s dog, he’d be happy, and he’d disappear from my life. Meanwhile, he was sending people to me for help with their dogs. Joey’s widow, among others. Carla. She and Guarini have something going. She’d always wanted to be a florist, and Guarini bought her a flower shop, and not just as a way of taking care of a gangland war widow, either. But I did a good
job with the dog problems. I’m good at that.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “And when I’m that motivated, I’m really good. Then on Saturday, this past Saturday, my plan went to pieces.” I fortified myself for confessing my shame by digging into the linguine. Italian food honestly is comfort food. “You may not think that this is any big deal, Kevin, but it is to me.” Between bites and swallows, I told him about the show: the attempt to influence the judge and my horror at my betrayal of sportsmanship and friendship. “I’ll never know whether Kimi won fairly or not. It makes me sick to think that because of me, Mary and Leah had contact with these... criminals. I feel as if I’ve infected so many good people with this disease of mine—Harry Howland, Mary Wood, Mr. Wookie, Leah, Kimi, Rowdy. At the show, it was absolutely clear that Favuzza intended to do me a favor—making sure my dog won. I think that it was his idea and not Guarini’s, but—”

  “Guarini didn’t send you any presents?”

  “Oh, yes he did. Kevin, I infected you, too! The steak you ate at my party on Saturday, the wine you drank, those were presents from Enzio Guarini. I should’ve asked him to pay me to begin with. But not me! I didn’t want to touch his dirty money. I was too noble.” I practically buried my face in my pasta.

  “He didn’t send cold cuts? That’s his usual.”

  “He’s more grateful to me than that. For training Frey. And also I’m helping Carla Cortiniglia with her dog, Anthony, and let me tell you, Anthony acts like a little monster. Or did. Guarini could never put up with a dog like that for long. I think that his agenda is that I get Carla’s dog shaped up, and then the romance can proceed.”

  “She interested in him?”

  “Very, I’d say.”

  “Convenient that her husband’s out of the picture. Like they say, God helps those who help themselves.”

  “Carla? If she was in the Loaves and Fishes parking lot or anywhere near there, I didn’t see her. And she’d have been hard to miss. Carla’s quite flamboyant. Or convenient for Guarini? I started to tell you before. That’s what Deitz seems to think. On the one hand, Guarini can obviously hire anyone to do anything, so it’s possible that he arranged to have Joey killed. On the other hand, Deitz is out to get Guarini, and my guess is that as far as Joey’s murder goes, what Deitz has on Guarini is just his own bias. But I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve had two visits from this guy Deitz and his partner, Mazolla, and Kevin, I don’t trust Deitz at all. What he wanted from me, and what he stills wants, is to have me plant listening devices. The first time, I said no. Then my car blew up. And today, there was Deitz again, only this time, he was more vague about what he wanted, and he was making not-so-veiled threats. Against my dogs. And I will not tolerate that. Kevin, you and I are good friends. I know how law enforcement works. Legitimate law enforcement. Trying to intimidate innocent dog trainers is not part of the process. Do I strike you as a likely informant? Of course not. The likely informant against Guarini was Blackie Lanigan. Another gangster. He was an FBI informant for years. But me? Do I look to you like Blackie Lanigan?”