Bloodlines

even entered Puppy Luv until I’d practically been ordered there by someone who didn’t even have malamutes; so deeply concerned that whenever I’d read Janice Coakley’s offer of “any AKC breed,” I’d never even bothered to call and inquire. When I’d seen Missy’s Papers, I’d conjured an image of the breeder, Walter Simms, against a convenient horizon of Iowa corn or Kansas wheat. The golden fields were so clear in my mind that, even now, I found it impossible to force Maine pines or Vermont maples to take root in the rich topsoil and raise the skyline. “What we can do is probably very limited,” I said sternly, “but it’s not going to work at all unless you do exactly what I tell you to do. And nothing else. Okay?”
    The plan I outlined to Gloria was that she apply for the unenterprising Ronald’s job at Your Local Breeder. She was to call Janice Coakley and explain that one of her neighbors, someone looking for a dog, had heard she was job-hunting, knew she liked animals, and mentioned the possible opening at Your Local Breeder. The scheme had several potential hitches, of course. One was that Ronald might have kept his job after all. Another was that I had no spare car to offer Gloria and was completely unwilling to encourage her to thumb her way back and forth to Westbrook. A final problem was that Gloria’s appearance wasn’t exactly what any employer looks for in a salesperson; even if Janice Coakley had made good on her threat to fire Ronald, and even if Gloria got an interview, Janice Coakley might still take one look and decide not to hire her. In fact, the repellent thought came to me, unbidden and unwelcome, that dog... well, never mind. I was raised in the cult of dog worship. Some names I won’t speak in vain.
    The transportation problem was easy to solve. When I presented it to Gloria, she said, “My mom’s away for two weeks. She left yesterday. I can use the car.” Gloria went on to explain: “She’s in New Mexico on a personal journey.”
    A personal journey. A pilgrimage to meet her birth mother, right? Or reverse the roles: her first reunion with the child she’d given up at age sixteen. Or maybe a trip to the only clinic in the U.S. that even tried to treat her rare, painful, embarrassing, degenerative, and ultimately fatal disease. But the truth, it turned out, was a whole lot worse than I imagined. In fact, Gloria’s mother had signed up and actually paid an incredible amount of money to spend two weeks alone in the des-eft with nothing but an ample supply of drinking water and one large plastic trash bag. Cambridge.
    “I hope it’s at least puncture proof,” I said frivolously-
    “What?”
    “All those cacti? Never mind. Anyway, speaking of —Gloria, if you get an interview, it’d probably be a good idea not to look too, uh, Cambridge. The image they’re after is probably more sort of...” I fished for words. “Not, uh, academic? Not ethnic. Sort of more all-American.”
    “Pigtails?”
    “Yes! Great idea. Exactly. Unsophisticated. Anyway, we might not even get that far, so let’s not worry about it yet, okay? But if it works out, all I want you to do is collect information. I want to know where their puppies come from, okay? And Janice Coakley, the woman who runs the place, told me she could get malamutes. If you can, I want you to find out where. And who the breeders are. The names of the breeders will be on the puppies’ papers. There’s a name I want you to look out for: Walter Simms. And who her suppliers are. But for now, just call her. Maybe that’s as far as we’ll get.”
    When I hung up, I felt guilty about that puncture-proof crack. I’m in no position to make fun of personal journeys that seem ridiculous to other people.
     

17
     

     
    My research for the Sally Brand article had revealed the startling fact that between sixty and seventy percent of the members of the Yakuza, Japan’s Cosa Nostra, are irezumi. Stunned, aren’t you? Or maybe your Japanese is a little rusty. Ire-zumi means “insertion of ink.” The irezumi are those who bear what the Japanese consider to be an externalization of inner reality. Well, I guess Americans think the same thing. Just look how many guys wear their hearts on their sleeves. I wondered whether Enzio Guarini had a tattoo and, if so, what it depicted, but the inner reality of a jailed racketeer fell outside my experience. Clasped hands? A Mini-Uzi? For all I knew, though, Guarini had popped