The Dogfather

spine pressed against mine. She was on top of the covers, not between the sheets. Steve wasn’t between my sheets, either, but he was presumably between his own. I tried to take comfort in the thought that he and I were both between unspecified sheets and tried not to dwell on the separateness of our beds.
    Kimi and the Dust Mop with Teeth.
    What was the moral?
     

CHAPTER 11
     
    It’s hard being a mobster. You’re always in danger of being shot, strangled, knifed, drowned, blown up, or imprisoned. Before my affiliation with the Mob, I’d heard about all those concrete perils. Household phrase: Concrete boots. What had escaped me was the weighty psycho-vocational burden of worrying about respect, disrespect, and the rest of that macho crap, all of which I already understood in depth: When it comes to machismo, a male human being can’t hold even the most phallic candle to a male malamute and shouldn’t try. Given the opportunity, Rowdy would probably wear flashy rings and get chauffeured around and rule over a pack of capos, advisors, and hit men. Come to think of it, as it is now, I supply Rowdy’s expensive collars and leashes, I drive him around, I serve as his trusted advisor, and I act as his bodyguard. A big chunk of my money goes to him. Never, ever would I betray him. Omerta: the code of silence about Rowdy’s misdeeds. Holly Winter: capo, consigliere, and all the rest in one. Rowdy: capo di tutti capi.
    What leads me to Mob angst and machismo, isn’t, for once, my dogs, but a series of phone calls I received in the days following the dust mop’s assault on Kimi’s underbelly. I got the first of these calls the next morning. Rowdy and Kimi were in their crates, and the puppy boys, Frey the elkhound and Sammy the malamute, were studying a required subject in the puppy curriculum: aggression management via play. When the phone rang, Sammy was winning in tug-of-war with a long fleece snake. The thought crossed my mind that if I heard Guarini’s voice, I probably shouldn’t mention that Frey was losing to another pup. But the caller was a stranger, a man who said, with no preamble, “You the dog lady?”
    I said yes.
    “Mr. Guarini told me to call you. I got a problem with my dog.”
    In one of those abrupt shifts of interest to which puppies are given, Sammy and Frey had dropped the toy snake and were lapping noisily out of the same big water bowl.
    Keeping an eye on the puppies, I grabbed a pen and paper. “Maybe I can help. Let’s start with what kind of dog this is.”
    “He’s a Doberman. But he don’t act like one.”
    “How old is he?” I asked.
    “A male,” I said. Ordinarily, my next question would’ve been, “And is he neutered?” Intuition told me to hold off. “And what’s his name?”
    “Durango.”
    “And what’s up with Durango?”
    “Like I said, he don’t act like a Doberman.”
    “Could you, uh, be a little more specific? What is it that he does?”
    “It ain’t what he does. It’s what he don’t do. Except there’s one thing, and I gotta tell you, this’s driving me nuts. He lays down.”
    “And?”
    “I put him in the car, and he just lays down.”
    “I’m sorry if I’m being dense, but I don’t see what the problem is. A lot of dogs sleep in the car. If someone else is driving, I might sleep in the car. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
    “But you ain’t a Doberman!” The caller chuckled at his own wit.
    “Don’t be too sure of that. Look, let me take a guess. When you’ve driving around with Durango, what you’d like is to have him sit up and look around and generally behave like a guard dog. But he doesn’t. He curls up and goes to sleep. Is that right?”
    “Yeah, but it ain’t only that. It’s everything.”
    “He’s friendly.”
    “Yeah.”
    “He doesn’t threaten people. He acts sweet.”
    “Yuh, the big dope. That’s what he is. He’s a big dope.”
    “Let’s not leap to conclusions here,” I said. “Have you ever heard the term alpha male ?” After a moment of silence, I explained. “In packs of wolves and dogs, the alpha male is the top-ranking animal of the pack, okay? And the true alpha, the established leader who knows he’s top dog, is a calm, self-confident animal. What he doesn’t do is go around snarling at everybody else or starting trouble or picking fights. Why should he? Everyone else already respects him. He’s not some wannabe little scrapper. He’s the boss.”
    “You don’t