The Dogfather

intended contents, and the pseudo-grass carpet masked the gap between the earth and the box. No matter how effectively disguised, the gap had to be there. And the dog was as small as a kitten.
    Drama queen no more, Carla was in a panic. “No! No! Anthony! He’ll be buried alive! He’ll fall six feet under! No!”
    Guarini caught my eye and pointed a finger at me.
    You see? Good help isn’t hard to find. Without pausing to beg anyone’s pardon, I pushed my way to Carla and in a Don Corleone tone spoke to the men who restrained her. “Take her far away.”
    My black corduroy dress was one I’d never liked. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn it. The dog treats in the pockets had held up well; the liver had been freeze-dried to begin with. I crushed a couple of morsels and rubbed my hands together to coat them with what I hoped would be the irresistible scent of meat. As Guarini’s men led Carla away, the little dog, Anthony, quit his prancing to watch her departure. Calmly and quietly, I managed to block his view of his retreating mistress. Anthony stood on his four tiny paws in the exact center of the coffin. If I’d tried to grab him, he’d probably have evaded my grasp, run, and ended up falling underground. Still, I had to suppress the impulse to snatch at him as well as the urge to look him straight in the eye and try to boss him around. Instead, I slowly reached out and placed a bit of liver about a foot from the end of the coffin. I kept my hand there, palm up, motionless, as if I’d forgotten to remove it. Murmuring to myself in happy, almost inaudible, tones, I fixed my gaze on the liver. Old trainer’s trick: To get a dog to move from one place to another, instead of staring at the dog, stare at the place you want him to go. Never having had the opportunity to wise up to dog trainer wiles, Anthony danced across the coffin and lowered his nose to the liver. The hand I’d so carefully and so casually left there wrapped itself firmly around Anthony’s belly. “Gotcha,” I said. “Good dog.”
    Thus ended both my capture of Anthony and the funeral rites of Joseph Cortiniglia. I didn’t wait to watch as the Last of the Cave People—except one, his sister Jeannine—was lowered into the earth. Joey’s widow, Carla, probably should’ve seen her husband out, but she was busy getting her dog back. Carla was gratifyingly profuse in her thanks. She said that whenever Anthony got away from her, all he did was run away; never once had she been able to catch him. “Have I, Anthony? You’re too fast for Mummy, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Anthony doesn’t like to come when Mummy calls...”
    My stomach turned. I like dogs: great and small, including really small. The one who made me queasy was Carla, who was holding Anthony out in front of her and babbling at him as if he were a stuffed animal or a figurine. The poor dog was lucky that Carla hadn’t made him wear a dress.
    “We’ve been a naughty boy today, haven’t we? We got our lovely new velvet suit all wet and messy, so we couldn’t wear it.”
    In the hope of being rescued from Carla, I looked toward the tombstone behind which Al Favuzza had taken shelter from the discussion of bodies and ground. But Guarini appeared at my elbow. “Good,” he said.
    “I aim to please.”
    Carla cut me off by bursting into tears and wailing self-evident truths about Joey: He was gone. He was really gone. We’d never see him again. Then she switched to bawling about her gratitude to Enzio. She didn’t know what she’d do without him. He was a good man. He was a wonderful man. He was a man with a sense of family.
    Then she did a rear-choked encore of her song about me. “This lady’s a genius! If she hadn’t’ve been there, Anthony... well, it would’ve been awful. Anthony won’t listen to a word I say.”
    Guarini’s response horrified me. “Holly can fix that,” he assured Carla. He eyed me.
    “Oh, yes,” I said. “I’d be delighted.”
     

CHAPTER 8
     
    “Where’ve you been? A Mafia funeral?” Rita thought she was joking.
    As my dear friend as well as my second-floor tenant, Rita knew all about my phobia. Come to think of it, as a clinical psychologist, Rita undoubtedly knew my whole inner life better than I did. She’d been walking down Appleton Street toward our shared driveway when Guarini’s limo had dropped me off. For once, I’d been anything but happy to see her, mainly because psychotherapy was not just her