Bloodlines

left its base color an open question to which Coakley himself, not having bathed for years, might not even know the answer. I mean, how does someone like that apply for a driver’s license or a fishing license or any other ID? (Color of hair, sir? the clerk asks. Geez, ma’am, he replies, your guess is as good as mine.) Anyway, eye color was obvious—red—and it probably goes without saying that his hands and nails were... well, let’s let it go. Suffice it to say that if Bill Coakley had been found dead, the coroner wouldn’t have needed to open him up and examine his stomach contents to discover what he’d eaten lately. Dried egg coated his mouth. A long strand of spaghetti clung like a stray hair to one shoulder of his army-surplus khaki shirt.
    “Mr. Coakley,” I said firmly over the din of the jogs, “I’m Holly Winter. I called about the malamute. Betty Burley did not pick her up, and neither did Enid Sievers, the owner. Now I want to know—”
    Coakley didn’t wait for me to finish. “Found that little lady a good home,” he said. Then he moved purposefully toward the pen in the far corner of the room. The light was dim. A brown haze hung in the air. Maybe once, a long time ago, this had been a living room. A battered couch remained. Like everything else in the house, including the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the air, Coakley, his clothing, the dogs, and a large, ugly cat asleep on top of a stack of crates, the couch was dirt tan. “Woman sees my usual ad in the paper, calls, stops in about a dog. One of my pups.” His tone was indefinably inventive. “And she says, ‘Ain’t that a pretty husky you got out there,’ and I says, ‘Sure is.’ ”
    “Meaning the malamute,” I said. “Missy.” Coakley bent over to retrieve a large plastic bowl from the cardboard pen. Inside the enclosure swarmed about two dozen tiny puppies, Yorkies, Poms, and what I think were Pom-a-poos. “Got my chores to do here,” he said. “Breeding dogs ain’t easy. It’s a lot of work.” Shall I spare you the food dish? Let’s make a deal. I’ll skip Coakley’s ears, but you have to hear about the dish, which was a big avocado green spill-proof plastic bowl thickly lined with a hardened brown substance that I hope—but won’t promise—was old dog food. Solidified dribbles clung to the outer sides. Coakley handled the thing with no evident revulsion or even reluctance and—this is the really disgusting part— plunged it unhesitatingly into an open bag of dog food unprepossessingly labeled Generic. The clunk and rattle of the kibble against the dish touched off a renewed frenzy of little-dog yapping and yelping. Four or five dirt brown food moths rose lazily from the bag of dog food and hovered in the dusty air. Their larvae probably had a higher protein content than the food did.
    The clamor eventually subsided enough for me to speak. “ Where is the dog now?” I demanded. “That dog belongs—”
    I never heard Bill Coakley sound anything but cheerful. He did now. “Don’t have to do nothing but turn around, and there’s some woman’s hollering at me.” Happy sounding as ever, he launched into the details. “Lady from the IRS. They’re after me. The wife, she’s still after me, and that old battle-ax from the Humane. You ever get in tax trouble, let me tell you, there’s one thing you gotta—”
    When he lowered the dish into the puppy pen, the noise of the dogs cut him off. The little ones in the pen scrambled and fought for their foul dinner. There were so many of them that it was hard to distinguish one from the other. I wondered why anyone would buy a dog from a place like this. Kind, ignorant people must look around and think, “My God, I’ve got to get this puppy out of here.” Or did people imagine that filth promised a bargain? But the puppies were cute, of course. Damn, they were adorable. You wanted to scoop one up, take it home, clean it up, and give it the first decent meal of its life. You did? No, I did. Yes, even me. They were almost irresistible.
    “I’m in a hurry,” I said. “I’m here for that dog, and I want her—”
    “I’m telling you, ain’t I? The lady come and took a look at her, and I says that the lady that owns her can’t keep her no more and if you want her, she’s yours, and the lady says, sure. I didn’t even get nothing out of it. I done it for the dog.” He looked me directly in the eyes. Bill Coakley, canine benefactor?
    “Okay,” I