The Dogfather

to a Mob boss who was reputed to have murdered so many people that he himself had probably lost count long ago.
    I translated my faith into works by training Guarini’s charming elkhound puppy, Frey, sometimes at Guarini’s house, sometimes at mine. When Frey was delivered to me in Cambridge, Zap drove him in the limousine, and when I went to Munford, Zap chauffeured me there. During those first two weeks, I continued to feel the fear, curiosity, and professional pride that had made me practically volunteer to help Guarini with Frey. A few times when I was sitting at home in my cozy kitchen in the company of no one but my dogs, I admitted to myself that I also felt titillated to play a small and blameless role in the life of so notorious a figure as Enzio Guarini. I was flattered by Guarini’s esteem for me; in an unpardonably callous way, I was starstruck.
    Guarini and I spoke regularly on the phone, and Frey was now housebroken, but until the evening I’m about to describe, Guarini had managed to avoid almost every training session. The results were predictable. When Frey and I worked alone together, the puppy was absolutely terrific. According to Guarini, however, the puppy wouldn’t listen to a word he said. Furthermore, because Guarini had forbidden me to take Frey out in public, the puppy had no experience with ordinary sights, scents, arid sounds. It’s a tribute to my love of dogs and my fear of Guarini that I’d dated to argue with the boss. In one of our phone consultations, I’d said, “Yes, there’s a slight health risk in taking him places, but it’s also risky to keep him isolated from the real world. The last time Frey was here, when I was taking him back to your car, someone rode by on a bicycle, and he was startled and scared. He needs to get used to bicycles and kids and crowds and so on. And I’m warning you. If I keep training him with food and you don’t, he’s going to watch me and obey me, and there’s nothing I can do to stop that except tell you what you already know, which is that if you want Frey to be your dog, you need to train him, too.”
    Guarini’s first response had been to ask who was riding the bicycle.
    “Some woman,” I’d said. “Cambridge type. She’s irrelevant. The point is that Frey needs to get used to bicycles and strangers and everything else. He needs socialization.”
    It’s a tribute to Guarini’s love of dogs that he listened to me at all. He rejected my advice that he take Frey to puppy kindergarten class. Offering no explanation, he refused to let me take Frey myself. Guarini did, however, submit to my badgering by agreeing to meet me where we were now, behind the mall at the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge. After Guarini and I had gone back and forth about locations, we’d settled on the area between Danehy Park and the rear of the mall, just behind Loaves and Fishes, which would be easy to mistake for a natural-foods supermarket, but is actually a religious institution whose followers subscribe to the belief that they’ll be poisoned if they eat anything from an ordinary supermarket. Danehy Park, in contrast, is no temple of purity. It used to be a dump. It still has no mature trees. The mall is surrounded by blacktop, and the main parking lot is in front of the stores. There was nothing along the side of the building except a laundromat. The openness of the spot was probably why Guarini had agreed to it. You may recall that in remarking on the absence of foundation plantings at Guarini’s house, Joey Cortiniglia had said, “So’s no one can’t hide nowhere.” Well, no one couldn’t hide nowhere here, either.
    Although the Loaves and Fishes mall and the park are an easy walk from my house, I’d used my car so I could take Rowdy and Kimi for a walk in the park and then have a safe place to stash them while I worked with Guarini and Frey. Just as planned, when the dogs and I returned to the Bronco, Guarini was arriving with what struck me as a small army and probably was one in the literal sense of being a company of armed men. The two bodyguards towered over Guarini, who wore a tweed coat and one of those stupid-looking tweed hats. The hat was anything but cool, but the ebony cane more than compensated. As a dog trainer rather than a connoisseur of cool, I was happy to note that the coat, probably chosen to disguise dog hair, had capacious pockets well suited to hold the cheese, meat, and other dog treats I’d instructed Guarini to