The Dogfather

exchange with an air that I recognized from the canine world. It was the air of a dog with an agenda that eluded me, a dog who intended to steal a steak accidentally left on the counter, perhaps, but who was apparently paying attention to something else. Studying Guarini, I was hit by the sense that in staging this mini reenactment, this lineup, he had a purpose beyond the identification of Joey’s killer. Worse, I had a tip-of-the-brain experience of almost being able to remember something crucial, something I knew and could all but retrieve, something amiss, although I had no idea of what, where, or when.
    As Carla reluctantly took her place next to Al Favuzza, I wondered whether Guarini and his inseparable bodyguards would join her—or maybe should join her. How long had I been in Loaves and Fishes on the night of Joey’s killing? Kevin had pressed me for an answer. It seemed to me that I’d been inside long enough for Guarini or one of his escorts to have shot Joey and returned to the front of the store. But why would Guarini have surreptitiously killed one his own men and stolen his own money? I could think of a single reason: to lend credibility to his paranoia about Blackie Lanigan. If that were the case, though, why was he putting on tonight’s performance?
    Guarini did not take a place in the lineup. Instead, he told me to hitch my dogs to the front of the van exactly as they’d been hitched to my Bronco. I'd never before leashed a dog to an undercarriage, but I had no difficulty in getting Rowdy and Kimi to cooperate. In less than a minute, the dogs were just as I’d found them, with Kimi attached to the right front, Rowdy to the left. Without beef bones to occupy them, the dogs were now on their feet in front of the van, not lying on the blacktop as they’d been when Joey’s body had lain only a few feet away.
    Guarini nodded approval. “Just watch them. Move so you’re not that close to them. And then, like you always say, read them.”
    Guarini’s somewhat cryptic style of communication didn’t bother me; I was used to creatures who didn’t spell things out. His meaning was clear: Having positioned Rowdy and Kimi where they’d been when someone had given them beef bones, I was supposed to watch them for what might be subtle signs of expecting a repetition of that memorable act. Specifically, I was to look for any hint that my dogs’ expectations centered on one of the five people in the lineup: Zap, Tommy, Timmy, Favuzza, and Carla. All five still faced away from the van, hence away from Rowdy and Kimi.
    Guarini addressed his suspects: “What you’re going to do in a minute, when I tell you, is you’re going to turn around, and then you’re going to take one step toward the dogs. And you’re going to reach in your pockets, or make like you’re reaching in your pockets, and you’re going to bend a little and hold your hands out. And you’re going to walk toward the dogs.”
    This rear parking lot was unpopular and almost deserted. A few people passed by and glanced at the odd scene, the row of people and the two beautiful dogs. No one approached. Oddity is so typical of Cambridge that it’s practically the norm. The strangers probably thought that we were rehearsing an avant-garde play. I stopped looking around to concentrate on Rowdy and Kimi. Both dogs looked optimistic; they almost always did. As was usually the case, their ears were up, their eyes sparkled, their tails waved plumelike over their backs. The dogs’ minds were easy to read. In their malamute lexicon, optimism didn’t denote a globally sunny outlook; it meant the specific conviction that all human beings were here-and-now possessed of tremendous quantities of high-protein, high-fat delicacies destined for immediate delivery to the closest Alaskan malamutes. How do you read the happy expectation of food in dogs who perpetually expect it?
    Guarini gave the order. “Turn around and move. Pretend like you got—”
    Before he’d finished, Rowdy and Kimi hit the ends of their leads so hard that I was afraid they’d set the van in motion. Overjoyed, they hurled themselves toward Al Fa-vuzza, who didn’t bother to pretend that they’d picked out someone else.
    “Who you going to believe?” Favuzza protested. “They’re just dogs, for Christ’s sake. Who you going to believe? Me or some goddamned dogs?”
    World’s stupidest question. Guarini answered by pointing his walking stick at Tommy and Timmy Bel-lano,