The Dogfather

backfiring. Regrettably, I am only half malamute. At three A.M. a thunderous BOOM not only jolted me awake, but terrified me. When I threw on jeans, a sweatshirt, and running shoes, the dogs finally got interested. They tagged after me as I dashed to the cellar, where everything there was normal. Neither the hot water heater nor the oil burner had exploded. But as I discovered when I finally looked outdoors, something of mine had blown up.
    My Bronco.
    I had good insurance. The car was worth more dead than alive. And it was now definitely dead.
     

CHAPTER 18
     
    After running to the cellar to make sure that the house wasn’t on the verge of petrochemical detonation, I left the dogs indoors and sprinted outside, where I nearly collided with Kevin Dennehy. When the boom had jolted me awake, I’d experienced what I suspect is the almost universal impulse to react to unidentified blasts, roars, and smells of smoke by focusing on dangers affecting my loved ones and my own property. But asleep or awake, Kevin was all cop. Awakened by the same thunderous bang, Kevin had assumed that its source was an external threat, against which it was his duty to protect not only his mother, his house, and himself, but all the rest of us, too, including, if need be, the City of Cambridge, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the entire United States of America. In brief, by the time I’d finished investigating my cellar, Kevin had already gone outdoors, found the smoldering wreck of my car, and summoned what he casually called “backup.”
    The minute I opened the back door, the stench hit me, and my own outside lights and the streetlights let me catch a glimpse of smoke coming from my car. Kevin refused to let me near it. I protested.
    “You could’ve been in it,” he said.
    “In the middle of the night? Kevin, really. It’s my car. I want to see what happened to it.”
    “It blew up.”
    “Kevin, I can smell what happened. I want to see it. Where was it?”
    “On the street. And the first thing I want to know—”
    “I know where I parked my car. Where in the car was the explosion?”
    “Where?”
    “What part of it?”
    “The car part of it. The vehicle.”
    The wail of a fire truck drowned me out. It was the first of three. Kevin had also summoned many of his brothers in blue and, for no reason at all, an ambulance and, ridiculously, I thought at first, a truck that appeared to be hauling a cement mixer. I soon abandoned the fantasy that the spontaneous combustion of dog hair had delivered the coup de grace to my car. Malamute undercoat had killed a succession of my vacuum cleaners. When my stove had broken, the repairman had removed its top to reveal an inch-thick layer of fluff. But dog hair, even powerful malamute hair, was innocent of this destruction. As the reality hit me, I was frightened. Learning that the apparent cement mixer belonged to the bomb squad, I was glad to have the contraption there. I also felt grateful that Kevin had the clout to muster a massive amount of official help. An ordinary citizen might’ve screamed at the 911 operator to send every cop, firefighter, and EMT in the city; Kevin actually succeeded in jamming our narrow street with an amazing number of emergency vehicles and a slew of wonderfully calm, capable emergency professionals.
    Residents were there, too. Kevin ordered the immediate evacuation of my house, his own, and the two across the street. I obeyed the order and, as probably goes without saying, imposed it on my animals. A uniformed officer carrying Tracker’s carrier shepherded the dogs and me out my back door and down the driveway. As the officer tried to hustle Rowdy, Kimi, and me down Appleton Street, we passed close enough to the Bronco’s earthly remains for me to get a good look. Ignorant though I was about all things automotive, I did know that the Bronco’s engine was in the front. My view of the car was pretty good, albeit somewhat weird and melodramatic. In addition to the ambient brightness in any city, illumination now came from the windows of the houses along Appleton Street, and from the headlights and the flashing red lights of the emergency vehicles. Oddly enough, although Rowdy and Kimi often answer the call of sirens with malamute howls, the dogs remained silent m the midst of the cacophony, perhaps because they could see that its sources, although big and noisy, were noncanine and, indeed, inanimate.
    I’ve drifted from the point, which isn’t