Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (18 page)

“And if they’re not interested?”

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve had several inquiries from General Communications Holdings International,” his father said. “If no alternatives present themselves, we might be compelled to work something out with them.”

Mason was familiar with that company’s track record. For a decade, it had been buying up struggling newspapers and television stations at rock-bottom prices, stripping their newsrooms bare of staff, filling their news holes with wire copy, running them into the ground, and then selling off their equipment and real estate.

For
The Providence Dispatch,
one of the finest small-city newspapers in America for 150 years, it would be an ignoble end.

Mason nodded, indicating that he understood.

“Why don’t we drive in together this morning?” his father said. “We can talk about this some more on the way.”

“I’d like that,” Mason said, “but I’m not going straight in. I have an interview scheduled this morning.”

After his father left, Mason asked the maid to refill his coffee. He lingered over it as he read the morning paper, starting with Mulligan’s front-page update on the Kessler case. State officials were scheduled to appear before Superior Court judge Clifford Needham on Thursday to ask that Kessler be ordered to submit to a psychiatric evaluation, which he had declined to take voluntarily.

“It is our position,” Governor McNerney was quoted as saying, “that Eric Kessler is suffering from a severe mental disorder that would make him an imminent danger to the public if he were to be released, as scheduled, next week. If this can be confirmed by a mental health professional, we will then ask the court to order that he be confined indefinitely in a secure facility until such time as his condition no longer presents a serious risk to the community.”

Kessler’s court-appointed defense attorney, Austin Donahue, declared that he would oppose the petition.

“This is a naked attempt to subvert the law and violate my client’s rights,” he was quoted as saying. “He has paid his debt to society, and under the laws of our state, he is entitled to his freedom.”

Mulligan had given the governor the last word: “Kessler’s debt to society is not something that can ever be repaid.”

Huh, Mason thought. Maybe Mulligan and Fiona have finally made up.

*   *   *

An hour later, Mason sat in a cubicle at Supermax and watched Diggs drop into the chair on the other side of the thick glass partition.

Diggs’s lawyer hadn’t come along this time, but she’d arranged for Mason’s name to be placed on the inmate’s approved visitors list. Mason should have been pleased to have Diggs all to himself. But he wasn’t. He missed Felicia.

Since they’d met, his nighttime ritual of reviewing his notes and sipping his whiskey had taken a disturbing turn. He’d been imagining
her
there, curled up beside him on the Belgravia leather sofa, intent on her legal work. Every once in a while, still engrossed, she’d reach out and touch his arm. Mason was amazed, and a little flustered, about how that imaginary contact made him feel.

The killer plucked the telephone receiver from the wall and said, “’Sup, cuz?”

“Did you get the books I sent you?” Mason asked.

“Yeah. I’m already a hundred pages into the first one. Didn’t realize there was so much stuff I didn’t know about Dr. King.”

“You’re welcome.”

“So what we be talkin’ about today, cuz?”

Not the phony charges that had been brought against him, Mason decided. Their first conversation had convinced him that Diggs didn’t have much light to shed on that. But in his eighteen years of incarceration, Diggs had never been interviewed by a reporter. If Mason could coax him into talking about his life, he could write a kick-ass profile of the killer. Mason envisioned the page-one headline:
KWAME DIGGS IN HIS OWN WORDS
. It would be a solid scoop—enough to justify the time he’d been putting in, even if his investigation of the bogus charges flamed out.

As it happened, getting Diggs to talk about himself was not difficult. He was his favorite subject.

“How old were you,” Mason asked, “when your family moved to Warwick?”

“I was seven.”

“Before that, you lived in Providence?”

“Yeah. In an apartment on Willard Avenue.”

“Where did you go to school?”

“Flynn Elementary.”

“That’s on Blackstone Street, right?”

“Yeah. Right around the corner.”

“Did you like it there?”

“It was cool. Lots of neighborhood shorties to hang with. Stickball games in the street every afternoon. My moms worked the overnight at Miriam Hospital, so she was always there when I got home from school.”

“Who took care of you at night?”

“My dad, when he wasn’t workin’ a double shift.”

“And when he was?”

“My sister,” Diggs said. “She’s two years older than me.”

“When you were seven, she was only nine, Kwame.”

“Yeah, but our nana lived right upstairs.”

“Why did you move?”

“It was a bad neighborhood, cuz. Run-down houses. Gangs. Rats big enough to saddle up and ride. I didn’t realize how shitty it was when we was livin’ there ’cause I didn’t have nothin’ to compare it to. But my moms, she hated it. Always talkin’ about how she wanted her kids to grow up in the ’burbs. Told me later she was scared Amina, Sekou, and me would end up smokin’ crack or hooked on skag if she didn’t get us the hell outta there.” And then he laughed. “I mean, shit. Like there’s no fuckin’ drugs in Warwick.”

“How did you feel about moving?”

“I was happy at first. When I saw that new house, it was like a dream, cuz. Our own flower garden out front. Big backyard to play in. Trees to climb. A swing set with a slide. I even got my own room.”

Diggs fell quiet for a moment, giving Mason time to catch up with his notes. A guard had confiscated the reporter’s tape recorder at the door, informing him that electronic devices were not permitted.

“My papa,” Diggs finally said. “He worked a lot of overtime at the Narragansett bottling plant to save the down payment for that place.”

“He’s gone now?” Mason asked.

“Yeah. Died of a bad heart five years after I hit the bin. Moms still blames it on my conviction. She says Papa never got over it. Bastards wouldn’t even let me out for the funeral.”

“Hit the bin?”

“Went to prison.”

“You said you were happy about the move at first. Did something change after a while?”

“Yeah.”

“What was that?”

“I looked around the neighborhood and saw it was full of nothin’ but white folks.”

“No other black kids?”

“Just me and my brother and sister.”

“What was that like for you?”

“What the fuck do you think it’s like when there ain’t nobody else looks like you?”

“I don’t know,” Mason said. “Tell me.”

Diggs took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. “Lonely. You’re an outsider. You don’t belong there. Everybody be burnin’ you off all the time.”

“Burning you off?”

“Giving you the eye.”

“That’s how your neighbors treated you? Like an outsider?”

“Most of ’em, yeah. Lookin’ down their noses at us. Callin’ us
nigger
behind our backs. Tellin’ their kids not to play with the porch monkeys.”

“How did that make you feel?”

Diggs focused on the ceiling, as if the answer were written up there.

“Maya Angelou said, ‘Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.’”

“So you were angry.”

“What the fuck do you think?”

“What about school? Any black kids there?”

“Just a handful. We always sat together in the lunchroom. Hung out in a group near the school steps at recess.”

“Why?”

“Self-defense, cuz.”

“Because the white kids picked on you?”

“Hell, yeah, they did. Catch one of us alone and they’d whack us up.”

“That ever happen to you?”

“A couple of times, sure.”

“Tell me about that.”

“One time five or six of ’em caught me walkin’ home from school alone. Snatched the
Indiana Jones
lunch box my moms had just bought me and threw it down a storm drain. Socked me in the grill, knocked me down in the street, and whupped my natural ass. It was a serious bang-out, cuz. When they got done with me, I limped home cryin’.”

“Were you hurt bad?”

“Split lip. Bloody nose. Black eye. My damn ribs ached for a month.”

“What did your parents do?”

“Told me to turn the other cheek like Jesus said.”

“What
did
you do?” Mason asked.

“Time’s up,” the guard hollered. “Phones down. Form a line at the door.”

“Didn’t do nothin’ at first,” Diggs said as he rose to leave. “I was just a scared little kid. But then, the next year, I got bigger.”

32

Chief Angelo Ricci stepped in front of a squadron of uniformed Providence police guarding the doors to the Superior Court building on Benefit Street and spoke calmly into his bullhorn.

“Your attention for a moment, please,” he said. “I want you to know that we’re on your side. We agree with what’s written on your picket signs. We agree with everything you’ve been saying. Just remain orderly, okay? We don’t want to have to arrest anyone today.”

Below him, protesters carrying signs with Kessler’s picture on them swarmed over the wide courthouse steps. Gloria mingled with them, snapping photos with her Nikon. Mulligan stood near the cops on the top step and did a rough count, putting the crowd at just over a hundred.

Attorney General Roberts arrived shortly before ten
A.M.,
trailed by an entourage of assistant prosecutors lugging briefcases. The crowd greeted them with chants and boos but parted so they could climb the stairs and enter the building.

Gloria joined Mulligan on the top step and snapped a few wide-angle shots. Then Mulligan squeezed through the police line, pushed through the doors, and made his way through the metal detectors.

The spectator benches in Judge Needham’s third-floor courtroom were jammed. Gordon Freeman was seated in the first row, just behind the prosecutor’s table. Eric Kessler, Mulligan noted, was absent, his presence apparently not required. Mulligan walked down the center aisle to the jury box, which had been reserved for press, and took a seat just in time for the bailiff’s cry:

“Hear ye, hear ye. The Superior Court of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, County of Providence, is now in session, the Honorable Judge Clifford H. Needham presiding. Please rise.”

The rotund little judge, nicknamed “Taxi” because of his resemblance to the star of a 1980s sitcom, bustled in. He climbed onto the booster seat, which he needed to see and be seen over the top of the judicial bench, and asked everyone to be seated.

“I am aware that emotions are running high today,” he said, “but I will not tolerate outbursts of any kind. Anyone attempting to disrupt these proceedings will be removed. There will be no second chances. Do I make myself clear?”

He swept the courtroom with a stern gaze and then said, “Are the attorneys present?”

“Attorney General Malcolm Roberts for the People, Your Honor.”

“Austin Donahue representing Eric Kessler, Your Honor.”

“Very well. Mr. Roberts, you may proceed.”

The attorney general rose to address the court: “Your Honor, the State of Rhode Island hereby withdraws its petition that the court order Eric Kessler to be examined by a psychiatrist.”

Donahue spun, cocked an eyebrow, and stared at Roberts. Spectators gasped and grumbled. Then several of them began to shout.

“No!”

“What the hell are you doing?”

Then three men in the back row picked up the familiar chant: “Impeach Roberts! Impeach Roberts!”

“Order!” the judge bellowed, slamming his gavel on the bench. “Bailiff, please escort those gentlemen in the back row from my courtroom.”

It took ten minutes before decorum was restored.

“Mr. Roberts, please continue.”

“Your Honor, Eric Kessler has been suffering from a heart condition for several years. Late last night, he suffered a severe cardiac episode and was transported to the intensive care unit of Rhode Island Hospital. According to the chief cardiologist, his condition is grave.”

“I see,” the judge said. “What is his prognosis?”

“I am told that he could linger for six months or so, but he is not expected to recover. Therefore, the State has decided that justice would be served if Mr. Kessler were to be released from custody as scheduled on Friday. He will remain at Rhode Island Hospital until his condition stabilizes and then be transferred to a skilled nursing facility.”

“Very well. Mr. Donohue, do you have anything to add?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Case dismissed.”

May 2012

The man sprawls on his back in his prison bunk and curses to himself. The old fantasies aren’t working.

For eighteen years, all he had to do to get a raging hard-on was close his eyes and pretend he was climbing through a bathroom window. Imagine a knife in his hand and he could come without touching himself.

Some nights, he’d relive one of his murders. Other times, he’d pretend he was Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. Tonight he tries it all, but his cock remains flaccid. Perhaps it’s because his release from prison seems close now. He hungers for a new victim.

He thinks about the blondes he has known: Jenny, the skinny bitch who thought she could play football with the boys. Mrs. Montgomery, the eighth-grade math teacher who taunted him with her short skirts. Connie Stuart’s twin sister, Mary, who glared at him through wet eyes at his trial. Susan Ashcroft, the one that got away. Maybe, if he gets out, he could track her down and finish her off.

He pictures them naked one at a time, then in a group, cowering before his godlike power. The sheet rises, his penis a tent pole.

33

June 2012

Mulligan parked Secretariat at the curb in front of Jennings’s barn-red ranch-style house in Warwick and watched the ex-cop trot down the sidewalk with his two Irish wolfhound–size mutts, Smith and Wesson.