The Dogfather

reason to look pleased. According to the voice-over, he was arriving home following his release from prison, his convictions having been thrown out at the prosecutors’ request. Specifically, investigators from the Justice Department had come upon evidence in the Boston office of the FBI to suggest that Guarini had been framed by corrupt Boston agents acting in conjunction with former FBI informant James “Blackie” Lanigan. Guarini’s conviction had rested heavily on the testimony of one of Blackie’s underlings, a hit man named John O’Brian, whose body had subsequently been unearthed from the banks of the Neponset River. The testimony of another of Blackie’s associates, a man now in the Witness Protection Program, implicated Blackie Lanigan as O’Brian’s killer.
    “Old news,” Steve said. “Blackie got O’Brian to frame Guarini, and then Blackie killed O’Brian to make sure O’Brian couldn’t turn around and testify about it.”
    “Corruption in the Boston FBI office isn’t exactly news, either,” I said. “Everyone knows that Blackie was a so-called informant for years, meaning that he kept doing everything he’d always done, only he never got prosecuted, and he had the wonderful opportunity to inform on his competition.”
    But the “Where’s Blackie” program finally explained its recap of old news by suggesting that the answer to the ubiquitous question of Blackie Lanigan’s whereabouts was right here in Boston. The show switched to an interview with a reporter for one of the Boston papers, a guy who specialized in the Mob and had written a book about organized crime and its ties to Boston FBI agents. According to the reporter, Enzio Guarini was bitter about his incarceration, which he correctly blamed on Blackie Lanigan. By alluding to La Cosa Nostra’s reputation for vendettas, the reporter managed to avoid claiming outright that the first thought on Guarini’s mind when he’d been released from prison had been to revenge himself on Blackie. As to Blackie Lanigan’s probable response to Guarini’s liberation, the reporter put a question to the viewers: “Who’d you rather have after you? The FBI? Or Enzio Guarini?” He gave his own answer. “Me, I’d take the FBI any day.”
    Me, too, I thought.
    “So Blackie’s in Boston to get in a preemptive strike,” Steve said. “If Guarini doesn’t kill him first.”
    “Makes sense,” I said, without adding that what now made perfect sense to me was Enzio Guarini’s evident paranoia. No wonder Guarini traveled with those bodyguards. And Joey’s killing? No wonder Guarini had seen it as a message to himself. When he’d ordered his men to get him the name of the shooter, he’d probably been asking them to find out who was working for Blackie Lanigan.
    My eyes darted to Zap, who was still at the bar. He was hunched over a plate of fried food and sipping a beer. His face was without expression. You couldn’t even tell whether he liked or disliked the food and drink. Zap’s emotional deadness, though, was no concern of mine. I worried about Zap not for his sake but for the sake of my fragile relationship with Steve. If Zap turned and saw me, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to stroll over to our table to chitchat about the bullet hole in Joey Cortiniglia’s head. But he might be stupid enough to mention Enzio Guarini, his boss. The boss. Our boss.
    “So,” I said to Steve, “what do you feel like doing now, handsome? Any plans for the rest of the evening? How about popping into the nearest baggage claim and picking up a dog?”
     

CHAPTER 6
     
    “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” You know the poem? T. S. Eliot. Well, if you haven’t read it, take my advice and don’t, because it’s just line after horribly depressing line about the bleak existence of a man who is probably best remembered for having measured out his life with coffee spoons. And there you have what was wrong with J. Alfred Prufrock. I, in contrast, was blessed to have measured out my life with dogs. So was Steve Delaney.
    All this is by way of saying that in Steve Delaney’s life, as in mine, the arrival of the puppy was not the mere acquisition of a pet, but an Advent, a spiritual milestone, a reference point that would henceforth divide the calendar of his years into Before and After. Consequently, although the signs directing us to the baggage claim bore no resemblance to stars, I nonetheless felt like one of the Three Wise Men and, in fact,