Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (23 page)

“Not as good as you.”

“Of course not,” Mulligan said, and they both chuckled.

“Still friends?” Mulligan asked.

“Always,” Mason said.

“So what’s going on with the paper that you couldn’t talk about in front of Pugliese?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about it at all,” Mason said. “Can I trust you not to repeat this?”

“I promise, Thanks-Dad.”

“Will you
please
stop calling me that?”

“Sorry, Thanks-Dad, but some habits are hard to break.”

Mason shot Mulligan an annoyed look, then said, “The board has decided to put the paper on the market. They’re hoping to get an offer from one of the major chains like Belo or Media General.”

“They won’t.”

“Probably not, but General Communications Holdings International has expressed interest.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“Not anybody either of us would want to work for, even if they didn’t lay us off, which I’m pretty sure they would.”

“Guess I need to start looking for another line of work,” Mulligan said.

“Yeah,” Mason said. “Me too.”

41

By the time Mulligan left the diner, the sky was dark. A quarter moon hung low over the city.

It was months since his last talk with Rosie. He used to visit her once or twice a week, but lately he’d fallen out of the habit. Tonight, he needed his best friend.

He climbed into Secretariat, crossed the bridge over the Providence River, stopped at Gilmore’s Flower Shop in East Providence, and sprang for a bunch of cut daffodils. Then he cruised back across the river, drove to Swan Point Cemetery, rolled slowly through the gate, and parked at the edge of the grass.

He rummaged through the Bronco’s storage compartment for his flashlight but couldn’t find it. It didn’t matter. Off to his left, the silhouette of Pastor’s Rest Monument, marking the final resting place of Providence’s leading nineteenth-century ministers, stood pitch black against a charcoal sky. With the obelisk as his guide, he would have no trouble finding his way.

He clutched the daffodils in his right fist, tucked an autographed Manny Ramirez Red Sox jersey under his left arm, and trudged blindly through the vast graveyard. He was nearly there when he cracked his knee against a grave marker that leaped at him out of the darkness.

Over the decades, he and Rosie had told each other almost everything. That’s what best friends forever were for. He knelt in the damp grass beside her granite gravestone and ran his fingers over the words he knew by heart:

Rosella Isabelle Morelli. First Woman Battalion Chief of the Providence Fire Department. Beloved Daughter. Faithful Friend. True Hero. February 12, 1968—August 27, 2008.

She’d been racing to a house fire on a foggy night when her command car crashed and burned. The fire had been deliberately set. The arsonist had never been caught. Mulligan had never stopped hunting for the bastard.

After clearing away some withered flowers, he placed the fresh ones on her grave. Then he draped the jersey over the shoulders of her tombstone, just as he did every time he came.

Manny Ramirez had been Rosie’s favorite player. She was gone before he started bitching about his paltry hundred-and-sixty-million-dollar contract, before he knocked the team’s sixty-four-year-old traveling secretary to the ground, before the Sox traded him to the Dodgers, before he was suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs. Mulligan figured she didn’t need to hear about all that. He wrapped his arms around the granite and gave her a hug.

“It’s a beautiful night, Rosie. A sliver of moon is hanging over the Seekonk River, and I can hear the Canada geese honking as they forage in the grass.… No, I’m not seeing anyone just now.… Last I heard, Yolanda was planning to marry that Brown chemistry professor. After her, nobody seems to measure up.”

They sat together in silence, peering up at stars barely visible through the spill of the city’s lights. Somewhere up there, an American spaceship was carrying a rover named
Curiosity
on a 350-million-mile journey to the surface of Mars. Mulligan hoped Rosie could see it as it sped through the firmament.

“Rosie, I’m confused. All my working life, I’ve lived by a simple code: The truth will set you free. But lately I’ve been trying to conceal it.… Why? Because if the truth comes out, a serial killer will be set free.… Yeah, I remember that old song. ‘There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.’

“Tonight, Thanks-Dad said some things that made me wonder if maybe I’m on the wrong side of this thing. He talked about the First Amendment and what being a reporter is all about. Fact is, he sounded an awful lot like I used to, Rosie.… Yes, I remember that part of the song, too. ‘Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.’”

He imagined he could hear her singing that old Buffalo Springfield tune, her crystal voice drifting on the muggy night air.

42

The morning mail was light-a couple of press releases, a subscription renewal form for the
American Journalism Review,
a funds solicitation from the Columbia University alumni office, and a single legal-size white envelope with Mason’s name and the newspaper’s address hand-printed in neat block letters. There was no return address.

Mason didn’t like the look of it, so he walked the envelope over to the newsroom’s east-facing windows and held it up to the sunlight. As far as he could tell, it contained only a piece of paper with something written on it. He returned to his desk, slit the top of the envelope with a letter opener, and slid out a sheet of typing paper. On it were two lines hand-printed in the same block letters:

WE KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING, RICHIE RICH.

IF YOU KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR YOU, YOU’LL STOP.

Mason stood and handed the threat and the envelope it came in over the top of the cubicle divider.

“Hey, Mulligan,” he said. “What do you make of this?”

Mulligan checked the postmark on the envelope, looked the letter over, and handed it back. “Well, it’s got two grammatical errors,” he said, “so it’s probably not from a copy editor.”

“I think we can rule out English teachers, too,” Mason said.

“The paper is cheap stock you can buy anywhere,” Mulligan said. “Other than that, all we know is that it was mailed yesterday from the 02886-7157 ZIP code. Hold on a sec.”

He logged on to the USPS ZIP code finder and typed the number in.

“That’s the post office on Post Road in Warwick, the one near the airport.”

“How worried do you think I should be?”

“Not very.”

“I guess word of what I’m working on is starting to get around.”

“How many people have you interviewed so far?”

“Let’s see. There’s Diggs’s former lawyer, his new one, the heads of the ACLU and the NAACP, and more than two dozen guards and former guards.”

“And all of them probably told their husbands and wives, who told their friends, who then passed it on to
their
friends,” Mulligan said.

“So you’re saying this could have come from anybody.”

“Yeah, but most likely it’s from someone with something to lose.”

“One of the guards who lied in court?” Mason said.

“Or a family member of one of Diggs’s victims,” Mulligan added.

“It’s a bit unsettling. I’ve never been threatened like this before.”

“Get used to it. It goes with the job. The more the word spreads, the more people are going to be pissed off at you. And some of them are going to find creative ways to let you know about it.”

Mason fretted about the threat all afternoon as he tried to line up more interviews with former prison guards. Most of them hung up on him, but a couple agreed to meet. By the time he was done for the day, he’d finally stopped thinking about the letter.

He stepped out of the
Dispatch
’s front door, crossed the street to the parking lot where he’d left his car, and stopped dead. On the driver’s-side door of the Prius, someone had left him a message in red, yellow, blue, and green refrigerator magnets.

B SMART MASON

WE C U

43

Mulligan and Mason sat in the red leather chairs across from their boss’s desk and waited for him to explain why they’d been summoned.

“Iggy Rock called this morning,” Lomax said. “He informed me that he’s got three sources telling him our publisher’s son here is trying to get Kwame Diggs sprung from prison.”

“Aw, hell,” Mulligan said.

“It was bound to leak out eventually,” Lomax said.

“Yeah,” Mulligan said, “but you can count on Iggy to put the worst possible spin on it.”

“Who are his sources?” Mason asked.

“He declined to say,” Lomax said.

“Probably some of the guards I’ve been talking to,” Mason said.

“Most likely,” Lomax said. “He wanted me to send you over to WTOP tomorrow morning to answer questions on the air. I said no way. Then he asked if
I
would do it. I said no to that too.”

“You probably need to release a statement,” Mulligan said.

“Already have.”

Lomax snatched a sheet of paper from his desk and read from it.

“At any one time,
The Providence Dispatch
is working on dozens of stories, some of which never advance to the point of meeting our high standards for publication. It is our policy, therefore, never to comment on work in progress. I can assure you, however, that the editors of this newspaper have no desire to see Kwame Diggs released from prison.”

“Sounds about right,” Mason said.

“To Iggy,” Mulligan said, “it will smell like red meat.”

“All right, then,” Lomax said. “Time for you both to put your cards on the table. Mason, while you’ve been trying to prove that Diggs was framed, Mulligan and Gloria Costa have been trying to connect him to something that could keep him in prison legally.”

“Good,” Mason said. He turned to Mulligan and asked, “What progress have you made?”

“You first, Edward,” Lomax said. “What have you got so far?”

“First off, it’s obvious the drug charge against Diggs was bogus.”

“How do you know that?”

“There’s no way a visitor could have smuggled marijuana past Supermax security,” Mason said, giving a quick rundown on the guards, the thick glass, and the drug-sniffing dog.

“Was the security that tight back in 2005, when the drug charge was filed?” Lomax asked.

“It was. I checked. The guards I talked to all say sneaking drugs in there would have been impossible.”

“Bullshit,” Mulligan said.

“What do you mean?”

“A guard easily could have done it.”

“Oh,” Mason said. “I should have thought of that.”

“So your case that Diggs was innocent of the drug charge completely falls apart,” Lomax said.

“Maybe not,” Mason said. “I did some research and learned that Diggs is the only prisoner in the history of Supermax who has ever been charged with having drugs in his cell. That’s pretty odd, don’t you think?”

“Odd, yes,” Lomax said. “But it doesn’t
prove
anything.”

“I suppose not.”

“What about the assaults on the guards?” Lomax asked. “What are your sources telling you about that?”

“That they were both faked.”

“Let’s start with the assault on Galloway,” Mulligan said. “How many sources have you got on that?”

“Just Pugliese.”

Mulligan smirked.

“You believe him, don’t you?” Mason said.

“I do. He’s a straight shooter. But I’m not the one you have to convince.”

“You’re saying I need another source?” Mason said.

“Of course you do,” Lomax said.

“But who is that going to be?” Mulligan asked. “There were only two other witnesses, Quinn and Galloway himself, and they both swore under oath that the assault happened.”

“Maybe they bragged to their friends about setting Diggs up,” Mason said. “That’s what Araujo did after he faked the 2005 assault charge.”

“Tell me about that,” Lomax said.

“A day after the charge was filed, Araujo talked about it with other guards in their break room. He said the warden had asked him to file a false complaint to keep Diggs in prison. The other guards treated him like a hero, backslaps and fist bumps all around.”

“Who are your sources for this?” Lomax asked.

“Two former guards, Chuckie Shaad and Tyrone Robinson. The warden came to Shaad first and asked him to file a false complaint against Diggs. Shaad told me he thought Diggs deserved to stay in prison forever but that he wasn’t willing to lie in court to make it happen.”

“Did he and Robinson both go on the record?” Lomax asked.

“Robinson did, but I don’t think I can quote him.”

“Why not?”

“The warden fired him for coming to work high on cocaine.”

“You’re right. You can’t,” Lomax said. “What about Shaad?”

“I can use what he gave me, but he doesn’t want to be named.”

“Okay,” Lomax said. “What else have you got?”

“Robinson and Shaad both said guards were always trying to provoke Diggs into taking a swing at them.”

“How?”

“By calling him names. Pervert, child killer, the n-word.”

“Did they tell you how Diggs reacted?”

“They said he just smiled at them. Diggs told me the same thing. He claims he’s too smart to give them what they want.”

“You’ve been talking to
Diggs
?” Lomax asked.

“I have. His new lawyer set it up. I’ve interviewed him three times already, and I’m going back again Wednesday.”

“You should have told me about this before, Edward,” Lomax said.

“I suppose I should have.”

“What else has Diggs been saying?”

“He insists the drug and assault charges were fabricated, but he hasn’t been any help proving it.”

“So why are you going to see him again?”

“I’ve been interviewing him about his life. Moving to Warwick when he was seven, how hard it was being the only black kid in the neighborhood, his interest in black history. Stuff like that.”

“Sounds boring as shit,” Lomax said.

“It’s not, actually,” Mason said. “I was thinking that if my investigation washed out, I could always write a profile.”