Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (17 page)

“Shoot.”

“Tell me about the assaults.”

“Never happened,” Ty said.

“No?”

“No way.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s an open secret. Everybody knows they’re just fuckin’ with the dude.”

“Can you prove it?”

“How do you prove a negative, man?”

Mason had been wondering the same thing.

“According to court records,” he said, “Diggs assaulted a guard named Robert Araujo on March twelve, 2005. What do you know about that?”

“The asshole made it up.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because the warden asked him to.”

“You know this how?”

“Heard Araujo talkin’ about it in the break room one time.”

“What did he say?”

“That the warden wanted to make sure Diggs stayed locked up. Araujo said he faked the assault charge to help out.”

“Do you remember his exact words?”

“Hell, no. It was seven years ago, dude.”

“Who else was there?”

Ty thought about it a moment.

“I don’t remember, but I
do
remember they were acting like Araujo was a big fuckin’ hero. High-fiving him, patting him on the back, and shit.”

“Close your eyes,” Mason said. “It will help your recall.”

“You’re shittin’ me, right?”

“Just try it. Close your eyes and visualize the break room. Araujo is there, bragging about what he’d done. Others are patting him on the back. Who are they?”

“Chuckie Shaad,” Ty said. “Oh, and Frank Horrocks.”

“Anybody else?”

“Yeah, but I don’t remember who.”

“Look around the room,” Mason said. “Who do you see?”

“Uh. The new guy, John Pugliese, is playing cards at a table by the vending machines. I can’t see who with, though.”

“Now look at Araujo. Does he have any sort of visible injury?”

“No.”

“Okay,” Mason said, and Ty opened his eyes.

“Damn,” he said. “That actually works, huh?”

“Sometimes,” Mason said.

“Think it would help me remember the words to ‘Symphony of Destruction’?”

“What’s that?”

“Only Megadeth’s biggest hit ever, dude.”

“You’d probably be better off writing them on your wrist,” Mason said. “Diggs was also charged with assaulting a guard named Joseph Galloway last fall. What can you tell me about that?”

“I was out of there by then.”

“Oh. Right. So you never saw Diggs hit anybody?”

“Never. And they gave him plenty of reason to, believe me.”

“Tell me about that.”

“The guards were always trying to provoke him into doin’ something. Trashing his cell. Calling him names. Nigger, nigger, nigger, whenever he was close enough to hear.”

“And what did Diggs do?”

“Didn’t do nothing. Just turned the other cheek. He’s a goddamned political prisoner, dude.”

“How do you mean?”

“They wouldn’t be doing none of this if he was white.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Come on. It’s
sooo
obvious. I mean, you don’t see them fuckin’ with Eric Kessler this way, do you?”

“I see your point,” Mason said, and jotted the quote in his notebook. “So, you worked as a guard for six years, is that right?”

“About that, yeah.”

“Why did you quit?”

“I didn’t. They fired me, man.”

“Why?”

“They said I was coming to work stoned.”

“Were you?”

“It was just a couple of times. They coulda let it slide. But no. They had to make a big fuckin’ deal out of it.”

“Stoned on what?”

“Cocaine.”

Mason hadn’t asked Ty about the drugs supposedly found in Diggs’s cell, but he saw no point in going into that now. A guard who had been fired for drug use had zero credibility.

30

Charlie, the fry cook at Mulligan’s favorite diner, had the radio tuned to Iggy Rock’s drive-time talk show on WTOP. The only thing the callers wanted to talk about was Eric Kessler’s looming release from Supermax. Most of them sounded angry. Iggy assured them that they should be.

Mulligan listened for a few minutes, then tuned it out and folded the
Dispatch
to the opinion page. The lead editorial demanded that the state find a way to keep Kessler in prison. Just how this was to be done, the writer didn’t say. The op-ed page was filled with letters to the editor, all of them about Kessler. They sounded pretty much like the radio callers. The Kessler story was heating up.

Charlie turned from the grill to top off Mulligan’s coffee.

“What the fuck are they going to do about this?” he said. There was no need to define “this.” It was all anyone was talking about.

“I don’t know, Charlie.”

“Well, then maybe you oughta find out,” the fry cook said.

Mulligan nodded, sipped his coffee, and scanned the sports section, finding nothing but bad news about his favorite teams. Then he flipped to the metro page, spotted the headline on Billy Hardcastle’s metro column, and gasped. Everybody already knew that Providence’s fifteen city councilmen never paid their parking tickets, so why did
this
jerk find it necessary to write about it? It didn’t qualify as news. According to the column, every councilman had at least forty outstanding tickets. Shirley Iannuzzo, who represented the seventh ward, was in first place with 246.

Printing this, Mulligan figured, was asking for trouble.

He finished his eggs, drained his mug dry, strolled two blocks to the paper, and saw that he was right. The Providence police were out in force, slapping Denver boots on the cars parked at the fifteen-minute parking meters in front of the newspaper building. Most of them belonged to reporters and copy editors who never paid
their
parking tickets either. Mulligan was glad he’d walked to work today. The tab for
his
unpaid tickets was more than Secretariat was worth.

He took the elevator to the third floor, settled into his desk chair, checked his computer messages, and found one from Lomax:
See me.
So he strolled into the managing editor’s glass-walled office, dropped into a leather chair, and said, “What’s up, boss?”

“Give me an update on Mason.”

“He’s hiding his cards, not telling me much.”

“How do you
think
he’s doing?”

“Far as I can tell, he’s not getting anywhere.”

“I hear he’s been interviewing prison guards,” Lomax said.

“Yeah. I’ve been steering him to the ones I know aren’t going to tell him anything.”

“Good. Think he’s getting discouraged?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hear
you’ve
been poking into the Diggs case, too,” Lomax said.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“From an ex-cop I know.”

Mulligan wasn’t all that surprised. It was hard to keep secrets in a state as small as Rhode Island.

“So, what are you after?” Lomax asked.

“I’m hoping to tie Diggs to something that can keep him locked up legally.”

“Getting anywhere?”

“Not yet.”

“I don’t like it when you go off the reservation, Mulligan. Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“I’ve been working it on my own time. Didn’t want to bother you with it unless I came up with something.”

“Gonna stay on it?”

“I am.”

“Fine, but it will still have to be on your own time. We’re too short-staffed for me to spare you while you’re off tilting at windmills.”

“I understand. Something else you should know. Gloria Costa’s been giving me a hand with it.”

“What? After everything she’s been through?”

“I tried to talk her out of it, but she was insistent. The whole thing was her idea, actually.”

Lomax sighed and shook his head.

“Look,” Mulligan said. “She’s a journalist. A darned good one. We can’t keep protecting her.”

“Okay, Mulligan. But can I count on you to keep a close eye on her?”

“I promise.”

“Meanwhile, we’ve still got a daily paper to put out. I need you to do another follow on Kessler today.”

“Far as I know,” Mulligan said, “there’s nothing new to write about that.”

“Come up with something. That story is selling papers. I want to keep it on the front page.”

“Any suggestions?”

“How about talking to the governor? You’re old friends, right? Maybe she’ll spill something we can use.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Mulligan walked back to his cubicle and stared at his desk phone. He and Fiona McNerney
had
been close once. A quarter of a century ago, they’d been high school classmates, sometimes studying together and often partying at Hopes, where the bartenders rarely bothered to glance at their fake IDs. Later, when Fiona agonized over whether to take her vows as a Little Sisters of the Poor nun, it was Mulligan she’d poured her heart out to. For decades, they’d remained friends; and she’d been one of his best sources during her one term as state attorney general. It was then that a
Dispatch
headline writer, impressed by her tenacity, had dubbed her “Attila the Nun,” and she’d reveled in the name. When the Vatican finally demanded she choose between politics and the church, she’d given Mulligan the scoop that she would stick with politics and run for governor.

But shortly after that, she’d betrayed him, leaking something he’d told her in confidence. And the leak had gotten somebody killed. The somebody deserved it, Mulligan had to admit. Still, he wasn’t ready to forgive.

He picked up the phone, called her office, and waited on hold for five minutes before he was put through.

“Hi, Mulligan.”

“Hello, Governor.”

“Long time,” she said.

“More than a year.”

“I’ve missed you.”

He’d missed her, too, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

“The reason I’m calling,” he said. “Lomax is bugging me for a follow on Kessler. Wants to keep the story alive in the paper. I was hoping you could give me something that will get him off my back.”

“I can do that.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I’m a little busy right now. Why don’t we get together later at the Trinity Brewhouse?”

“Not Hopes?”

“I don’t go there anymore. My press secretary says the governor should patronize a better class of gin joint.”

“The Brewhouse can get loud,” Mulligan said. “It’s not the best place for a conversation.”

“Happy hour starts at four. If we get there at three, we’ll have the place pretty much to ourselves.”

So when Mulligan walked through the door ten minutes early, Fiona was already there, sitting alone by a window overlooking the Providence Public Library. She was a small woman whose chopped-short hair had gone prematurely gray. A pint of amber microbrew sat on the table in front of her. On the street outside the window, the governor’s official limo idled at the curb, a state trooper behind the wheel.

Before Mulligan could seat himself on the stool across from her, Fiona sprang up and gave him an awkward hug.

A waitress materialized and said, “Menu?”

“No thanks,” Mulligan said. “Just bring me some chips and salsa and a glass of Tommy’s Red.”

Fiona and Mulligan sat uncomfortably for a moment, eyes averted, each hoping the other would speak first.

“It’s good to see you,” she finally said.

“Wish I could say the same.”

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you.”

“Guess not. We Irish know how to hold a grudge.”

“Better than anybody,” Fiona said.

“You’re looking well,” Mulligan said. He decided not to mention the new lines at the corners of her eyes. “Running the state must agree with you.”

“Since the election, it’s been one disaster after another,” she said. “The state pension system is collapsing. Tax revenues have plummeted. Unemployment is over ten percent. Half our cities and towns are on the brink of bankruptcy. And we might have to set a child killer loose. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I fuckin’ love it.”

Not the choice of words you’d expect from a governor, let alone a former nun, but Fiona had always been herself around Mulligan.

“So what about you?” she said.

“What
about
me?”

“Judging from all your page-one bylines, I gather the job is going well.”

“I’m doing okay.”

“Seeing anybody?”

“No.”

“Cooled off on that hot lawyer, did you?”

“She cooled off on me,” Mulligan said.

“Oh. Too bad.”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Meaning you haven’t yet?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure. Think the Red Sox have a shot at the playoffs?”

“No.”

“
No?
That’s all you’ve got to say about that?”

“It is.”

She scowled.

“I probably should tell you to go to hell and walk out the door,” she said. “But I’m not going to do that. I’m still your friend, even if you don’t want to think so. So I’m going to give you what you came for.”

“Shoot,” Mulligan said, and slid a notebook from his jacket pocket.

31

Mason sat at the dining room table, sipped his morning coffee, and listened patiently to his father.

“The older members of the board are not eager to sell,” the old man said. “They have always valued the influence the newspaper gives them in the affairs of the community, and they are willing to preserve that influence, even at a substantial financial loss.”

“Meaning Uncle Arthur, Aunt Charlotte, and Aunt Mildred?”

“And my brother Bradford as well.”

“How very noblesse oblige of them,” Mason said.

“Quite so,” his father said.

“And the younger members?”

“Except for Cameron, who sided with his father, all of your cousins voted to sell.”

“So that’s it, then,” Mason said.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve been directed to engage the services of Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, the leading brokerage firm for newspaper mergers and acquisitions, to negotiate the sale of the
Dispatch
.”

“To whom?”

“The board would prefer to reach an agreement with one of the respectable newspaper groups: Belo, Media General. The New York Times Company, perhaps.”