The Dogfather

my left, murmured something. The only word I caught was disrespect.
    After summoning the obsequious funeral director with one pointed glance, Guarini apparently gave the go-ahead for the service to begin. The funeral director whispered in the priest’s ear. Fumbling with a small black book, the priest found his page and began to move his lips, but I couldn’t hear him over the renewed yapping and screaming of Carla’s little dog, Anthony. The other people all seemed to follow the service, despite Anthony’s mockery of choir music; people crossed themselves in unison and showed no difficulty in responding whenever the inaudible priest paused. I kept my head respectfully bowed, while simultaneously watching Guarini in case he wanted me to do something about the dog. Indeed, it occurred to me that the obnoxious dog might be the real reason Guarini had wanted me here, possibly because I was one of the few people on earth capable of calmly removing the dog from Joey’s last rites instead of strangling the damned thing.
    Guarini didn’t so much as look at me. The dog kept barking. Just in back of me, two women I didn’t know conducted an off-again, on-again criticism of the proceedings.
    “No viewing! No wake! What kind of crummy idea of a funeral is that?”
    “Mavis, shut up,” her companion said. “It’s a beautiful day for a funeral, and the flowers are beautiful. Carla loves flowers, you know.”
    "Well, if Carla hadn’t been in such a hurry to get him in the ground,” Mavis said, “there’d be a decent crowd of people here to look at them.”
    “Would you not say ground ?” the first woman said. “Who wants to think about it?”
    Al Favuzza grunted in apparent agreement. Turning my head, I saw that the Count’s face was green. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead.
    Feeling like the funeral director, I asked, “Are you all right?”
    Mavis, meanwhile, was saying, “Fact are facts! I mean, your soul goes to heaven or wherever, but your body—” Without saying a word, Favuzza sidled away from me, ran a short distance, and took refuge behind a tombstone. At that precise moment, Carla’s tiny dog, Anthony, finally fell silent, his screams replaced by the sounds of Favuzza’s retching. The priest seemed to be reaching the end of the brief service. The undertaker had moved toward the coffin. The widow, Carla, had removed the dog from her bosom and was now clutching him in her hands. Suddenly, with a wail, she took up the lament she’d begun earlier. “Joey, Joey, Joey, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna live without you?”
    Behind me, Mavis or her companion whispered, “Drama queen. She rents too many videos.”
    “Joey, I should’ve never let you eat like that,” Carla went on. “I should’ve taken better care of you. What am I gonna do now?”
    One of the funeral reviewers behind me murmured an answer. “Run a flower shop. Enzio’s buying Carla a flower shop, you know that? She’s going to be a florist.”
    “Joey!” Carla persisted. “I can’t live without you!” With that, still clinging to the little dog, Carla made as if to throw herself onto Joey’s coffin and thus presumably into the ground with him. Before actually hurling herself forward, however, she flashed her eyes left and right. Only after having verified the presence of Guarini’s troops did she launch herself coffinward. Guarini’s bodyguards made no move to stop her. Who says it’s hard to get good help these days? If you’re a Mob boss, it can still be done. The bodyguards concentrated on Guarini and left it to the gargantuan twins to prevent Carla from committing suttee. With the same big, capable hands they’d so recently used to wrap Joey in plastic and raise his corpse, they grabbed Carla’s bare arms, thus triggering a fit of screaming and sobbing. They probably didn’t mean to hurt her. Still, Carla’s cries suddenly conveyed genuine pain, and— involuntarily, I’m sure—she released her grip on Anthony.
    Fanciers of toy breeds are convinced that these little guys are exceptionally attuned to their owners. More than Rowdy and Kimi are to me? I doubt it. Still, it’s true that when the bruisers put the brakes on Carla’s rush to Joey’s coffin, her toy dog gave every appearance of acting on her wishes by rocketing through the air and landing in the blossoms in the center of Joey’s coffin. The gravediggers had cleverly sized the opening in the ground to be just a bit longer and wider than its