The Dogfather (18 page)

“Anthony is a challenge.” I said. “Retraining him is going to be slow. I hope Carla understands that.”

“Carla’s got a big heart,” he said. “She’s just got to learn to say no.”

“That’s hard with a cute little dog.”

It’s hard with a notorious crime boss, too. As I didn’t add, but wanted to: “No, don’t send food! No, don’t send wine! And don’t you ever again try to influence an AKC judge!”

After hanging up, I gathered the supplies I thought I’d need to clean up the area where the Bronco had been parked. As I did so, I wondered, as I’d done before, whether Guarini’s men had carried out his orders in trying to influence Harry Howland or whether they’d acted on their own. Many years earlier, Guarini had finished two elkhounds. He hadn’t handled the dogs himself, but he’d owned them, and he understood the rules of the dog show game. The clumsiness—the plain stupidity—of the effort to sway the judge pointed toward Guarini’s underlings; one thing no one ever called Guarini was
stupid.
At a guess, Guarini had told his thugs to help me out at the show, and they’d interpreted the order in a way Guarini hadn’t intended. Had Guarini ordered his henchmen to “help” me with my car, too? I liked the possibility, mainly because it let me read the explosion as a message of thanks rather than as a threat of worse to come.

“But we don’t know, do we?” I said to the dogs. “All we know is that I’ve got a mess to clean up.”

The firefighters had sprayed my car with chemicals. I intended to hose down the street and sidewalk and to sweep up any auto glass that might remain. To my amazement, there was nothing to clean up. As I stood gaping at the tidy, clean, and wet space on Appleton where my car had been, Mrs. Dennehy backed out of her driveway, lowered her window, and called out, “My Kevin sent them.” Before I had the chance to tell Kevin’s mother to thank him, she drove off. When Mrs. Dennehy speaks of
they
and
them
in reference to Kevin, she means city employees, whom she views as her son’s employees. I’ve never had any reason to think that Mrs. Dennehy overestimates Kevin’s power in this city. Anyway, as I was standing there with a dopey, appreciative smile on my face, along came the ever-so-Cantabrigian owner of Kimi’s attacking dust mop. Today, the dog wasn’t with her, and she was riding a bicycle. I’d seen her on it a few times before. It was an old black three-speed women’s bike with a basket in front that at the moment held three hardcover books in plastic jackets. The Observatory Hill branch of the Cambridge Public Library was right around the corner on Concord Avenue, directly across from the front door of my house. The books weren’t the volumes of poetry I’d have expected, but they weren’t a surprise either: novels by Mameve Medwed, Stephen McCauley, and Elinor Lipman, all of whom are, I think, literary descendants of Jane Austen by way of Barbara Pym, and somehow deeply Cambridge even though Lipman neither lives in Cambridge nor sets her novels here.

Pointing to the books, I smiled and said, “I loved every one of those.”

To my disappointment, the woman just nodded and kept on pedaling instead of stopping to play the great Cambridge game of exchanging book recommendations and information about which authors were signing when at nearby bookstores. Even so, the little encounter, combined with the unexpected absence of broken glass and chemical foam, left me happy with everything about Cambridge, everything being town and gown. In this instance, Gown, in the person of the dust mop woman, hadn’t supplied me with the title of a book or the name of an author I just
had
to read, but Town, in the person of Kevin Dennehy, had more than compensated for Gown’s lapse by sparing me a nasty clean-up. And if I wanted recommendations for novels, I could stop any stranger on the street. In the vicinity of Harvard Square,
Read any good books lately?
is recognized as the urgent question it is and always receives the thoughtful, enthusiastic answer it deserves.

I did not, however, go back inside to cozy up with a good book. Rather, I phoned Steve’s clinic to cancel Sammy’s visit, and accepted condolences on the loss of my car from the vet tech who took the message. After hearing that I needed groceries, she offered me the use of Steve’s van. I said no thanks. Next, I called Leah. My emotions were bouncing back and forth between relief and fear. Fear was now on the rise. In spite of the professional skill that had gone into blowing up the Bronco, Leah might have been maimed or killed. Even before last night, my Mob connections had crept disquietingly close to my cousin. At the show, the creepy, vampirish Favuzza had ogled Leah. The memory made me queasy.

I caught Leah as she was about to leave for a class. “I’ll be quick," I said. “I just wanted you to know that my car’s dead. It, uh, blew up, more or less. In the middle of the night.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. It’s just that I can’t stand to think how close everyone was to it last night. You, your friends, Rita, Steve, Sammy. I feel unnerved. I just wanted to touch base with you. That’s all.”

“Well, I’m fine. I wasn’t in your car.”

“Also, Leah, I wanted to mention... those, uh, people who were at the show...”

“The ones you were so unfair about?”

“I was not! Leah, you haven’t heard from...?”

“No, but if I do, I won’t be a snob like you.”

“Leah! That is—”

“Holly, the first time I met that man—what’s his name? You know. The one with the widow’s peak. When I met him was outside the Museum of Fine Arts, you know what he really wanted?”

“You,” I said.

“He wanted to know whether there were real mummies in the museum, and he wanted to know what you had to do to get in. I told you before. He did not understand that he could just walk in. Holly, it’s a terrible thing that anyone should feel so marginalized, so excluded from society! Can you imagine that? And here you are—! Incredible! Not everyone has had your advantages, you know.”

There ended the conversation. Leah went off to her class. The subject, it so happened, was sociology.

CHAPTER 20

Edward Zappardino possessed multiple disadvantages. For once I’ve not referring to dogs. It’s true, however, that he’d never owned one. Too bad, because a dog wouldn’t have minded his lack of such physical and mental attributes as a handsome face, a fine physique, high intelligence, and a charming personality. Zap’s dog, had he ever been blessed with one, would have seen him as altogether admirable in body and mind. As proof that my psyche has not gone entirely to the dogs, let me say that unlike the proud canine Zap might have owned, I was embarrassed to be seen with him, especially in so public a place as Loaves and Fishes.

You will recall that Loaves and Fishes was the natural foods supermarket in back of which Joey Cortiniglia had been murdered. Zap and I were not, however, on a sentimental revisit to the scene of the crime. I was doing my grocery shopping. Zap had driven me because Enzio Guarini, taking pity on my earless state, had insisted on sending me his limo and, with it, his driver. When Zap had pulled into the supermarket parking lot, I’d assumed that he’d wait behind the wheel while I shopped. Unfortunately, he’d said, “You mind if I come along?”

I’d lied in saying, “Not at all.”

By way of thanks, he’d said, “It gets boring as shit being stuck in the car all the time.”

As I’ve mentioned in passing, Loaves and Fishes is a temple devoted to the worship of wholesome holistic organic purity in all things: food, vitamin supplements, cosmetics, detergents, paper products, and esoteric personal-care devices, such as peculiarly shaped toothbrushes and spiked wooden implements designed to clean and massage your feet while moving you toward Oneness with the Infinite. As Zap remarked while we strolled amidst the fruits and vegetables, “This shit’s friggin’ weird.”

Actually, he was referring to avocados. He’d never seen them before and had no idea what they were.

Sounding ludicrously like Julia Child, I said, “They’re perfectly delicious.” I felt entitled to sound at least a little bit like Julia because once my new book was released, I’d be a cookbook author, too, although granted,
101 Ways to Cook Liver
wasn’t exactly
Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
For a start, the recipes weren’t French. There were other trivial differences as well. Still, in researching the book, I’d finally learned to cook and on occasion did so for myself as well as for the dogs. Liver was no longer in my repertoire. Julia was probably tired of coq au vin, too.

Zap didn’t recognize fresh ginger, either. I managed to silence him when he started to say what it looked like. It was easy to understand why Al Favuzza was always telling Zap to shut up. I did, however, see Leah’s point about marginalization and disenfranchisement. When I put a bunch of fresh basil in my cart, Zap asked me what it was. This from a guy named Zappardino!

“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.”