Bloodlines

by Susan Conant

  “Then he must have leased her,” I said. “He leased her to Walter Simms.”

  Have I lost you? According to Section 1 of the AKC rules on registration, breeder means the person who owned the puppy’s dam when she was bred, unless the dam was leased at the time of breeding. In that case, breeder means the lessee.

  My father continued. “Princess Melissa Sievers. The breeder is this Walter Simms you asked me about. The owner is Edgar Sievers. No transfers, nothing else.”

  “And Simms? Did you find out …?”

  “I had a hard time prying this much out of her. They’re getting more close-mouthed down there than they used to be.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “This is a lot. It’s a big help. Thank you.”

  When I hung up, those tall New England trees finally took root. The horizon narrowed and rose behind fat-bellied Walter Simms. A breeder like Lois Metzler or Betty Burley might well ship a bitch across the country to be bred to the perfect stud. Leasing might be part of the arrangement. But Rinehart? Although he lived nearby, Lois and I had never heard of him; in the world of malamutes, he was no one. I finally got it. People like that don’t lease their bitches to breeders halfway across the country. Why would they? If Rinehart had leased Icekist Sissy, then the lessee, the sow-faced, female-breasted Walter Simms, wasn’t some puppy farmer in the Midwest. Toto was a Cairn, of course, not a malamute, but I spoke Dorothy’s words aloud to Rowdy and Kimi: “Guys,” I said sadly, “something tells me we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

  20

  If you’ve ever consulted the USDA list of puppy mill operators and brokers—pardon me once again, Class A and B animal dealers—you’ll understand why I rechecked the damned thing. There are so many thousands of people listed that any one name is easy to miss. Last time, I’d started with the nearby states. If Walter Simms’s name had been there, my fresh eyes and brain should have caught it, but, then again, I’d expected to find it, if at all, in the notorious Big Six—Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma—or possibly in Illinois, Indiana, Colorado, Minnesota, the Dakotas, or Pennsylvania, anywhere but right here in New England. This time, I began with Class A dealers in Massachusetts. Simms wasn’t listed. Then I turned to Massachusetts A dealers. Walter Simms wasn’t one. But Rinehart was. Like a lot of other dealers, Rinehart had a blank to the right of his name, under the heading “Doing business as,” but an address is evidently mandatory. Rinehart’s was 688 Boston Road, Westbrook. Westbrook? Coakley. Your Local Breeder. The same. How had I missed it the first time? By scanning five or six thousand names. By ignoring addresses.

  NYNEX information for Westbrook had no listing for a Joseph Rinehart. In an effort to spare myself the drive out there, I also tried the Boston yellow pages under pet shops, kennels, kennel supplies, animal transportation, and a couple of other headings, but neither Rinehart’s name nor the address in Westbrook appeared. I wanted to stay home with Rowdy and Kimi, and, to tell the truth, I didn’t want to groom them, train, or even write about them. I was halfway through Donald McCaig’s Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland for a Border Collie. I ached to lie in bed with the book in my hands and my dogs at my feet.

  Reluctant and tired, I went anyway. Enthusiastic and energetic, so did Rowdy and Kimi. Afraid to drive alone at night on dark country roads? Get a dog! Better yet, get two! The song says that you’ll never walk alone. As it neglects to point out, you’ll never drive alone, either. Anyway, dark it was. By the time we crossed into Westbrook, the night was so black that I had trouble shaking the perception that my headlights were failing. Whenever a car approached and I courteously switched from high to low beams, the road ahead looked like an unilluminated tunnel with invisible walls. Then, as soon as the car passed, I’d put on the high beams again, not just to see where I was going but to reassure myself that the headlamp bulbs hadn’t suddenly burned out.

  Before leaving home, I’d consulted the map of Westbrook in the Universal Atlas and discovered that Boston Road was the same one I’d followed to the turnoff for Bill Coakley’s just the day before, the pretty-here, ugly-there route that the stagecoaches between Westbrook and Boston must have taken two hundred years ago. Now, though, the night hid yesterday’s low hills and stretches of woods, and the tiny windows of the gentrified farms shone like penlight beams in an endless cavern. It seemed to take hours to reach that bright strip of fast-food joints. Except maybe in the eyes of the CEO of McDonald’s, arches have never shone more golden than they did that night.

  I’d eaten an entire Emma’s pizza, minus a few bits of crust; when I slowed down and peered at the McDonald’s on my right, I wasn’t trying to decide between a Quarter Pounder and a fish sandwich. Rather, I was looking for a street number. The McDonald’s had none, but its next-door neighbor, Cap Heaven—truck caps, what else?—was number 670. Rinehart was 688. His place must also be on the right, not far ahead.

  But I didn’t need a street number. I’d passed the place on my way to and from Bill Coakley’s. Its signs were so big and obvious that I almost missed them. Both were fastened to the same two tall, thick posts at the edge of Boston Road. The top sign read:

  RINEHART MOTOR MART

  Quality Pre-Owned Cars and Trucks

  Sales, Service, Parts

  The sign beneath had slightly smaller lettering:

  Rinehart Auto Body

  Expert Collision Repairs

  Refinishing Specialists

  Down Draft Spray Oven—

  Modern Baking Facilities

  Baking facilities? Don’t ask me. Cars aren’t my specialty. Dogs are. But even after I realized that spraying and baking must have something to do with repainting automobiles, that bottom line felt sinister, especially the word oven. The situation made me vaguely sick. I’d found a dealer in used cars. A body shop. That word ate at me, too. Body. I kept rereading the sign, as if repeated exposure would somehow make everything fall into place, but the words became increasingly absurd and ludicrous. Collision. Parts. And Pre-Owned. My God, I thought, when you read between the lines, it’s not about used and smashed-up cars at all. It’s about secondhand dogs. Parts and service.

  After a minute or two, I came to my senses, looked beyond the sign, and realized that Rinehart Motor Mart was exactly what it claimed to be: an auto body shop and used-car lot, and a big one at that. The sign by the road was like a goal post at the end of a football field so jammed with late-model cars, vans, and pickups that I almost expected college kids to pile out for the post-game party. But the white numbers chalked on the windshields spoiled the effect. A big orange sticker on a Bronco much newer than mine advertised it as a special of the week. Another special was a long black limo that even I was able to identify as a Cadillac. In the brilliant, theft-deterring floodlights, I also picked out a few of the cozy house-on-wheels vans I always envy when I see them in the parking lots at dog shows: a Ford Aerostar, a Plymouth Voyager, and a luxurious Toyota something-or-other that looked showroom new and big enough to sleep six or eight malamutes, one lean woman, and her ardent vet in perfect comfort and near privacy.

  I’d pulled to the side of the road. Now I got out and stared, and the anomaly hit me again: I wasn’t here to gather daydream material about the perfect dog-show van, which I could, in any case, customize in my sleep with no help from Joe Rinehart. I was here because I’d found Rinehart’s name and this address in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s list of Class A animal dealers in Massachusetts. This address? Beyond the car lot was an ugly brick two-story flat-roofed building that obviously housed the auto body shop and the car-lot business office, but I was too far away to see whether there was a number on the door. But this had to be the right address. The name Rinehart? Not far beyond Cap Haven, definitely number 670? After this was a Pizza Hut. Anything beyond the Pizza Hut would certainly have a number higher than 688.

  I could have clambered over the metal barrier and crossed the car lot to check out the building, but the floodlights deterred me.
I didn’t intend to steal a car, even the enviable Toyota van, and I didn’t intend to be mistaken for a car thief, either. I looked around and spotted a service road that ran between the car lot and the Pizza Hut. I returned to the Bronco, pulled ahead, and turned down the service road, a roughly paved drive that took me past the auto body shop and beyond the reach of the fast-food and car-lot floodlights. Once again, the low beam of my headlights was too faint to penetrate the darkness. I switched to high beam and made out a scrubby, rutted field ahead, a few rusted oil drums, a dented blue dumpster, and, around the rear of the auto body shop, a high fence of heavy wire mesh. I pulled into the field, turned the Bronco around, and was just starting to jolt back in the direction of Boston Road when a loud engine started up and a set of bright headlights came on in the fenced-in area behind Rinehart’s. I stopped the car and watched. A section of the wire fence turned out to be a gate. Someone must have opened it while I was turning the Bronco around. An oversize dark van with no rear windows—a panel truck, I guess it’s called—backed out. The driver’s door opened. My high beams caught the tight jeans of a young guy with a good body. Parts and service, I thought. Truth in advertising. I watched him swagger to the gate, close it, and start back to the van. He wore a baseball cap on backward and a denim jacket with fleece around the collar. He moved well, and his face was old-movie handsome. He looked a little like a definitely oily James Dean—not that I have anything against greasy vitality, of course.

  But he veered to face my headlights and broke the spell. Even over the Bronco’s engine and the loud roar of the van, his voice was loud, metallic, and inexplicably enraged: “Get the fuck out of here!”

  Alaskan malamutes love people, of course, but every once in a while, their hackles rise at a tone of voice, a gesture, or maybe only a faint scent of something evil in the air. In the back of my car, Rowdy stirred. I could almost hear the hair rise along his back. To my amazement, he gave a single deep, soft growl. Rowdy is the friendliest dog I’ve ever known. He absolutely never growls at strangers. Even so, I kept the windows closed, the doors locked, and my mouth shut. I tore down that rutted service road, headed home, and didn’t look back. Rowdy hadn’t been growling at a stranger. He’d been talking to me. He never speaks unless he has something to say. And he never lies.

  21

  When I arrived home, the burly, shrouded figure of Kevin Dennehy was pacing the sidewalk. Although Kevin considers our neighborhood his responsibility, he doesn’t actually walk a beat along Appleton and Concord, and if he did, he wouldn’t wear a torn sweatshirt and a pair of worn-out summer shorts over a set of Lifa polypropylene long underwear topped by a ragged scarf and a half-unraveled watchman’s cap and bottomed by a pair of million-dollar athletic shoes. Should you happen to notice him there, don’t be alarmed—he’s just cooling down after a long run.

  As I was opening the tailgate, Kevin lumbered up and said, “Dog training?”

  “No, for once,” I said. “I’ve been, uh, looking at vans. A Toyota van.”

  “Yeah? That’ll cost you.”

  “It’s used,” I said.

  “Toyota, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “You got something against Ford all of a sudden? Or Chevy?”

  “Since you mention it,” I said, “I do have something against General Motors. Crash tests with dogs. You want the details?”

  Rowdy and Kimi bounded onto the driveway and began sniffing around to find out who’d done what where while we’d been gone.

  “You know,” Kevin told me solemnly, “if you’re not careful, one of these days you’re going to turn into one of these animal rights nuts.”

  “Kevin, you know something? In China, they eat live newborn baby mice. By their standards, you’re an animal rights nut, okay?”

  “You’re in a great mood tonight.” He kicked one of the rear tires of the Bronco. “Car trouble?”

  “No, not really. It’s, uh, the mileage is getting up, and the interior …”

  “Yeah,” Kevin agreed. “Smells like dogs.”

  I corrected him. “Only in wet weather.”

  “Hey, what’d they offer you for it? On a trade?”

  “No one looked at it,” I said. “Rowdy, get your nose out of that this minute! Leave it!”

  “Well, watch out,” Kevin said. “Before you let ‘em look at it, get it cleaned up, and don’t bring up the mileage. Some of these sharks … Hey, where you been looking?”

  “In Westbrook,” I said slowly and deliberately. “Rinehart Motor Mart. Joe Rinehart.”

  I was playing a hunch. Missy had come from Puppy Luv. Missy’s dam, Icekist Sissy, belonged to Rinehart, who had evidently leased her to the breeder, Walter Simms. Rinehart was a USDA-licensed puppy broker. If Kevin had been going over the paperwork at Puppy Luv, he’d probably seen Rinehart’s name. Kevin certainly wouldn’t volunteer any information about Puppy Luv’s sources of dogs, but if I dropped a name, he might show some response.

  Some response? Kevin hollered, swore, apologized, and then turned cold. “What did I tell you, Holly? These aren’t nice people.”

  I rested my back against the Bronco. “No one needed to tell me that. I knew it already. You’re the one who just discovered it, I guess.”

  “Do you know who Rinehart is?”

  “A guy who can’t tell the difference between a dog and a used car,” I said. “He’s a USDA-licensed puppy broker. I even know where he lives. As a matter of fact, I was at his house today. He lives in Burlington.”

  “So you know everything there is to know about him, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” I said arrogantly. “Everything that counts. Except where he is now and what he’s doing with—”

  Kevin interrupted me. “You know who his wife was?”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t even know he had one.”

  “Maria Guarini,” Kevin said. “Maria Guarini Rinehart. The late. Died of cancer a couple of years ago.”

  The frigid air suddenly penetrated my parka and gloves. “Guarini,” I repeated flatly.

  “Guarini. Enzio’s son-in-law.”

  “Kevin, I’m freezing,” I said. “Come inside.”

  “Hey, I’m all—”

  “I don’t care if you’re sweaty! Come inside. Kevin, I’m not fooling around. Come in with me. You wanted to scare me, right? Okay, I’m scared. In fact, I’m scared off. I swear, I will never so much as set foot in Burlington again, all right? But you can’t take off now.”

  If you ever share the confines of your kitchen with a large human male who’s cooling down after a long-distance run, you may find yourself remembering, as I did, that dogs sweat principally through their tongues and the pads of their feet.

  “Hey, I’m stinking up your kitchen,” Kevin apologized. “Let me go—”

  “No. I want to know what’s going on. Sit down, would you?” When I’d settled him at the table with a cold Bud I said, “Kevin, I need to know what’s going on. I’m not deep into this, and, believe me, Guarini’s son-in-law? I’m a dog writer, okay? I don’t know anything about people like that, and I’m not exactly eager to meet them. So don’t turn paternal. I just need to know, uh, where I am. First of all, is Rinehart … Is he a sort of slim guy, early twenties, maybe? Good-looking in a kind of greasy way? Drives a dark van, and—”

  “Where’d you run into him?” Kevin plunked the beer can onto the table and eyed me belligerently.

  “Rinehart Motor Mart. So that’s Joe Rinehart?”

  “Naw,” Kevin said. “Rinehart’s a long drink of water, and he’s probably pushing sixty. Sickly-looking guy, white hair with a lot of yellow in it, combed straight back and kind of, what do you call it, crimped. You know, with these rows of waves across the top like he’s been to the hairdresser.”

  “Well, that’s definitely not … Kevin, tell me something. If Rinehart … Kevin, just how involved is the mob in this stuff? I mean, is this puppy mill and pet shop business one of their, uh, sidelines?”

  K
evin flexed his shoulder muscles, gave a sly little grin, and said, “Course, this is supposed to be a deep dark secret, but the next time there’s an opening for special agent in charge of the organized crime squad, you better keep your ears open, ‘cause you’re going to hear the phone ringing next door, and then, if I’m not home, you’re going to hear them beating down my door.”

  “Okay! Yeah, I guess the FBI or whatever doesn’t exactly delegate this stuff, but, Kevin, you do have some idea of what is and isn’t run by the mob. And you obviously have some idea of who these people are. So do they …? I mean, could it be some kind of money-laundering thing? Rinehart is a puppy broker, and if Guarini …”

  Kevin shook his head. “There’s nothing these people won’t touch, but Joe and Enzio aren’t pals. What you hear is that when Joe married Maria, he was expecting Enzio to open up his arms and welcome him into the bosom of the family.” Kevin gave what I took to be a Don Corleone locked-jaw grin, embraced the air in front of him, and swooped it to his chest. “Only Enzio’s no dummy, and he decided Joe was marrying his daughter for her family connections. It might’ve worked out all right if Joe and Maria had given Enzio some grandchildren.” Kevin paused.

  “But they didn’t,” I said.

  “No kids, and according to Enzio, it’s on account of Joe, and then when his daughter dies, that’s on account of Joe, too.” He tilted his head back and emptied the can of Bud.

  As I got him another, I said the obvious, namely, “That’s totally senseless.”

  “Tell that to Enzio,” Kevin said. “Take that back. Don’t tell that to Enzio.”

  “So Joe doesn’t work for Enzio?”

  “Like I said, they aren’t pals. But, of course, Enzio’s had a little trouble in his life lately. Maybe Joe doesn’t work for Enzio. Maybe he doesn’t exactly not work for him, either. To a guy like Enzio? So maybe Joe was a bastard, but he was Maria’s husband, and … These Italians are like that.” In case you happen to be a militant member of the Cambridge Committee on Political Correctness, let me implore you not to get Kevin fired. For one thing, Kevin’s best friend, Mickey De Franco, is also his cousin, and, like most other Irish people in Greater Boston, Kevin is part Italian himself.