All Shots

open the option of showing her and maybe breeding her.”
    “Rare blue malamutes,” Kevin said.
    “I don’t think there’d be much market for them. Color doesn’t matter, really. It’s just a matter of personal preference. Someone out to make money might be able to create a market for all-white malamutes. But not blue. Most people don’t even know what it is when they see it. A naive puppy buyer who wants a supposedly rare malamute is going to want one that basically deviates a lot from the standard. A giant malamute. Or a long-haired malamute. A woolly, those are called. They crop up in careful breedings, but good breeders don’t deliberately breed them. Blue just isn’t different enough from gray to be a major selling point to the general public. No, her color wouldn’t be a reason to breed her. Her quality might. Her ears are a little big, but that’s trivial. Her lines, whatever they are. Someone might want to breed for that. If her hips are good. Her eyes. But I’m guessing. I still don’t know who she is.”
    “Stolen?”
    “Probably not. If she were stolen, I’d probably have heard by now. There’d probably have been something on one of the malamute lists. But I can’t rule that out. And I’m waiting to hear from a few people. Anyway, that’s all I know. Or all I can guess. Do you know any more about Adam? The Harley rider.”
    “No, but I’ve been thinking about him. She was more his type than you are.”
    “I’m flattered. Except that he wasn’t exactly... the stereotype of bikers? There are a lot of bikers who don’t fit it. And the Harley must’ve been far from cheap. Look, Kevin, just in Cambridge there are probably plenty of doctors and lawyers who’ve spent their lives doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do and who’ve made a lot of money and who decide that deep in their souls lurks James Dean or the young Marlon Brando. Che Guevara. So, they buy Harleys. Or classic Nortons. Triumphs. Not that Adam struck me as that type. J3ut if what you’re thinking is some stereotype of motorcycle gangs, he didn’t fit that, either. No tattoos that I saw. No—” I broke off. Contemplating the remains of the fries and onion rings and savoring the miasma of Bartley’s, I reluctantly said, “No grease.”
    “I got a job for you,” Kevin said. “Homework. Look on the Web and see if you can find a picture of the bike. If you do, print it out. Get me the model.”
    “I’ll try. I think I’ll recognize it.” I paused. “Kevin, one other thing about the woman. And the dog. That ID tag? Kevin, she had that made, and she put it on the dog.”
    “Someone did.”
    “Okay, someone did. But the point is the same. Whoever put my name and my contact information on the tag wanted to make sure that if the dog got lost, as she did, or got in some kind of trouble, I’d be the person who was called about her. If you just wanted a tag, any old tag, you could invent a name and an address and a phone number. Or use your own, of course. Or pick a person at random. But when it comes to malamutes, I’m not just anyone. I’m active in malamute rescue, I belong to our national breed club, I’m on all the e-mail lists about malamutes, I show my dogs, and so on. In my column and in my articles, I write about malamutes all the time, my malamutes, other people’s malamutes, rescue malamutes, malamute history, malamute health, you name it. Do a Web search looking for me, and half of what you’ll find will be about malamutes. So, what I think is that whoever had that tag made and put it on the dog, on Miss Blue, was someone who knew about me and who cared about the dog. Yes, in a way, the tags were canine identity theft, but Kimi doesn’t have credit cards to steal or bank accounts to empty. She doesn’t have a Social Security number. The point wasn’t Kimi. The point was that I’m someone you could count on to do everything possible to help that dog. Why choose me? Because someone loved Miss Blue. And that’s the real point of the canine identity theft. Someone loved her. Someone loved her enough to pass her off, even briefly, as my dog.”
     

CHAPTER 21
     
    Holly Winter and her mother make their way along Quincy Street, reach the intersection with Mass. Ave., pause to wait for a break in the traffic, and cross at the mother’s pace, which is slow. The mother, who is short and plump, is not, of course, my mother, Marissa, who was tallish, athletic, and notably swift of foot.