The Dogfather

and the Dogfather by pulling at Guarini’s shoelaces. The better to play with the puppy, Guarini had turned his chair away from the table. His bodyguards had turned with him. The foursome could have been posing for a surrealist photograph: Guarini, flanked by the frozen-faced men, with Sammy the puppy in weird contrast as he played riotous tug-of-war with the Mob boss’s footwear.
    “Could I offer you something?” I did not, of course, refer to a discourse about the allegory of Life and Death I was watching. “Wine? Coffee?”
    After politely declining, Guarini said, “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to something you told me. About Frey. About dogs. It’s something you been telling me all along about places.”
    “Places,” I repeated.
    “Dogs got close ties to places. Closer than us. If I learn a dance step”—he picked up the cane and twirled it— “once I got it, I can do it anywhere. But a dog, he’s different. He learns heel here and now. Then he’s in a different place, he’s got to learn it all over again.”
    “Yes. Up to a point.”
    Guarini had let himself into my locked house to discuss canine generalization?
    “So you got to wonder,” he went on, “if the tricks, the dance steps, the behaviors, like you always say, are the part of it we notice because they’re the things that interest us. Sit, stay, down, heel. But for a dog, maybe it’s all like that, all wrapped up in places.”
    “You’ve lost me.”
    “Like memories.”
    “Probably. Yes, at a guess, a dog’s whole consciousness, including memory, is fairly context specific, sort of glued to particular settings, objects, and so on.”
    “So like my favorite dog writer says, if you want to have a good shot at eliciting a behavior, go to the place the dog’s used to showing it.”
    I smiled. “Both of my dogs are Obedience Trial Champions in our own backyard.”
    “Supposing you want to tap a dog’s memory.”
    “Of a behavior?”
    “Of something that happened. With people.”
    Still lost, I said, “The way you’d know that you’d tapped a memory would still be behavior. In other words, you’d read your dog.”
    Picking up his hat and his walking stick, Guarini rose. “I’m going to try a little experiment. Down behind that fancy health food store.” With a sly narrowing of his eyes, he added, “Like in the movies, you know? A reenactment. You. Your dogs.” Looking left and right, he said, “My associates here. A few other people.”
    “I don’t have the same car. I’m borrowing a friend’s van.”
    He shrugged. “Like I said, it’s just a little experiment.” From the moment Guarini proposed the reenactment, I found the idea ridiculous. It occurred to me that prison had not only gotten to him, but gotten to him via a particular route: It had given him the chance to watch too many bad movies. But I didn’t argue with him.
    Consequently, the passage of only fifteen minutes found Rowdy, Kimi, and me at the scene of Joey Cortiniglia’s murder, the parking lot behind Loaves and Fishes. Steve’s van stood in for my defunct Bronco, and even though Sammy hadn’t arrived in Boston at the time of the killing, he was now crated in it. Also, Joey Cortiniglia, being dead, obviously wasn’t there. Still, Guarini seemed satisfied, and as I’ve already demonstrated all too fully, keeping Guarini happy was my principal, if unprincipled, goal throughout this affair. Somewhat to my surprise, Zap drove up in the Suburban with Al Favuzza, vampirish as ever, in the passenger seat. Finally, Carla Cortiniglia swept in behind the wheel of a pink Cadillac convertible so new looking that you could practically see the ghosts of dealer plates. Yes, a pink Caddy convertible. You see? No sign of Mob consciousness. If you happen to know an out-of-work political organizer, I know of a group that could use some serious help. Anyway, to protect her hairdo or to prevent Anthony from leaping out, Carla had the top up, and only after she’d emerged did I see her passengers, the gargantuan twins, Timmy and Tommy Bellano, who climbed out of the backseat with all the animation you’d expect from crash-test dummies who’d survived one nonaccidental accident and were about to be belted into another car to repeat the experience.
    Carla’s hair was big, and she wore a spray-on pink V-neck over white spray-on pants. Her heels were high, and she wore hoop earrings, gold bracelets, and her favorite fashion accessory, Anthony, whom she