Providence Rag

by Bruce DeSilva

  “Do you recall any other Rhode Island defendant getting such a lengthy sentence for contempt?”

  “No.”

  “As I understand it,” Mason said, “Diggs subsequently agreed to the evaluation.”

  “He did.”

  “Isn’t a contempt sentence usually vacated when the offender agrees to comply?”

  “In most instances, yes.”

  “But it wasn’t in this case.”

  “No.”

  “Why was that?”

  “The prosecutor presented evidence that Diggs’s responses during the evaluation were evasive.”

  “Were they?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Sure.”

  “The prick lied his ass off.”

  “I see,” Mason said, and scrawled something in his notebook. “While Diggs was serving the sentence for contempt, he didn’t get into any additional trouble in prison, is that right?”

  “Correct.”

  “But as that sentence was running out, he suddenly started smoking marijuana and assaulting prison guards?”

  “Apparently so, yes.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “You’d have to ask him.”

  “So over the last nine years, he’s been convicted of two assaults on prison guards and one count of possession of a controlled substance?”

  “That is correct.”

  “And in each instance, he received the maximum?”

  “He did.”

  “Together, those charges added more than forty years to his original sentence, is that right?”

  “It is.”

  “Mr. Haggerty, do you have any reason to believe that the state concocted these charges to keep Mr. Diggs in prison?”

  “I have seen no evidence to support such an allegation.”

  “Have you looked for any?”

  “Mr. Mason, do you have a law degree?”

  “No.”

  “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”

  “I’m just asking a question.”

  Haggerty narrowed his eyes and gave Mason a hard look. “I think we’re done here.”

  “Before I go, would you mind providing me with the name of Diggs’s new attorney?”

  Haggerty shook his head again. More dandruff.

  “That’s something you can find out for yourself.”

  Mason exited Haggerty’s office, pulled the door closed, approached the secretary, and waited patiently until she finished speaking on the telephone.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “I forgot to ask Mr. Haggerty one question, and I don’t want to intrude on him again. Perhaps you could tell me who Kwame Diggs’s new lawyer is.”

  “Felicia Freyer,” the secretary said. She was actually smacking gum. “That was just her on the phone, asking us to send over our case files. Wait a sec and I’ll give you her number.”

  “If you like,” Mason said, “I’d be happy to bring the files to her.”

  “Oh please,” she said. “Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

  Not even close, Mason thought.

  She handed him a Post-it note with a phone number and a downtown Pawtucket address on it. He thanked her, tucked it in his shirt pocket, walked out into the parking lot, and found himself a tad disappointed that his new silver-metallic Prius was right where he’d left it.

  * * *

  Mason pegged Felicia Freyer at no more than thirty. She wore enormous horn-rimmed glasses, a boxy green dress that looked a half size too big, and, as best he could tell, absolutely no makeup. Her long blond hair, bound with a yellow scrunchie, was pulled back so tightly that her eyes lifted a little at the corners. She struck him as a woman who was working hard, and failing, to disguise her beauty.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” he said.

  “I had nothing better to do this afternoon. This is a new practice. I don’t have many clients as yet.”

  “But one of them is Kwame Diggs,” he said.

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  There was a smokiness in her voice that Mason could get used to. It made “Yes, that’s correct” sound like a jazz lyric. He glanced at her left hand. No ring.

  “Do you mind telling me how you came to represent him?”

  “His mother came to see me last month and begged me to take over his case.”

  “Last month? The way I heard it, he didn’t dismiss Jerome Haggerty until last week.”

  “I needed some time to think it over. Defending such a notorious client is not something to be taken lightly.”

  “So why are you doing it?”

  Freyer leaned back in her chair and slowly crossed her legs. Mason couldn’t help taking it in.

  “Have you met his mother?” she said.

  “I have.”

  “Feel sorry for her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Me too. So that’s reason number one.”

  “What else?”

  “The scuttlebutt around the courthouse is that the state has been fabricating charges to keep Kwame in prison.”

  “That’s what I hear, too,” Mason said. “A lot of people seem to think it’s the right thing to do.”

  “They have a point,” Freyer said.

  “Maybe so.”

  “But it’s still wrong,” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “If they can do it to him, they can do it to anybody.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Mason said.

  “If prosecutors and prison officials have been conspiring to concoct phony charges, they are guilty of suborning perjury and obstructing justice,” she said. “I think they should be held to account for it.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “First I’m going to review all the case files. After that, I don’t know. To pursue this properly, I need to hire a private investigator, but Mrs. Diggs can’t afford it. That bastard Haggerty has been bleeding her dry for years.”

  “I’m an investigative reporter,” Mason said. “Maybe not a real good one yet. I’m still learning. But I might be able to help.”

  Freyer gave him a searching look. Mason held her gaze and noticed that the eyes behind those glasses were a startling shade of green. They stared at each other until she blinked.

  “Would you like to meet Kwame?” she said.

  “I would.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Give me a little time to set it up.”

  * * *

  Cruising back down the interstate toward Providence, Mason couldn’t get those green eyes out of his head.

  Other women he’d met in Providence, fresh from boob jobs and collagen lip enhancements, offered themselves to him as trophies. He could almost feel their claws on his wallet. The Newport socialites introduced to him by family friends at art openings, museum galas, or country club functions were stiff and moneyed. They offered impeccable pedigrees, but no real-world intelligence. No fires burned anywhere near them. No jazz lurked in their voices.

  So he’d focused on work, intent on wriggling out from under his father’s shadow. Ending the day with a review of his notes and a tumbler of thirty-year-old single-malt had become his ritual. He’d been telling himself that a woman would just complicate things. That a woman would be a drain on his time and energy.

  Felicia’s green eyes made him realize how lonely he’d become.

  Before he knew it, Mason was nearing his exit, the marble dome of the statehouse looming in his windshield. He swerved across two lanes and switched on the radio, hoping a blast of Mozart or Beethoven would drown out the smoky voice that looped like a wrong song inside his head. Getting involved with someone is a bad idea right now, he told himself. And a reporter getting involved with a source would be folly.

  Halfway to Newport, the radio station faded to static. Mason flashed through the dial in search of more classical music. He was about to give up when he stumbled onto WTOP, where talk show host Iggy Rock was interviewing Chief Mate
a of the Hopkinton police. Matea was deflecting a question about Eric Kessler’s secret journal when Iggy interrupted:

  “Joining us now, just calling in, is Brian Freeman’s father, Gordon. Mr. Freeman, you are on the air.”

  There was a moment of dead air. A cough. Then, “Chief?”

  “Yes, Mr. Freeman. I’m here.”

  “Chief, I want to read that journal.” Each word was stressed like the punch of a fist.

  “As I’ve told you before, I can’t let you do that, Mr. Freeman. It’s been sealed by court order. Besides, what’s in it is something no father should ever see.”

  “But I have to, Chief. Eric Kessler destroyed my family. He killed my wife too. She died of a broken heart. And I’ve been drinking since they found my boy.” His voice quavered a little. “I need to know what that monster did to Brian, so when he gets out I can do the same thing to him.”

  “Damn!” Mason thought. Or maybe he said it out loud.

  Until now, he hadn’t considered how the families of Diggs’s victims were going to feel when they found out his investigation could result in the killer’s release from prison. The thought made him shudder.

  18

  Mulligan pushed open the door to Hopes and shrugged off his dripping raincoat. He draped it over a rickety bar stool, slid onto an adjoining one, and grabbed a handful of cocktail napkins to sop the rain from his hair.

  It was a little after four in the afternoon, and the local press hangout was nearly deserted. Since Lee Dykas’s death, the place had fallen into new hands, but otherwise it hadn’t changed much since Mulligan and Rosie started drinking there more than twenty years ago.

  Annie, the leggy Rhode Island School of Design teaching assistant who moonlighted as barmaid, was just starting her shift. She poured a club soda, plopped in a lemon wedge, and clunked the drink in front of Mulligan on the scarred mahogany bar.

  “Thanks, but I was going to order Bushmills straight up and a bottle of Killian’s Irish Red.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “I am.”

  “What about your ulcer?”

  “Doc Israel says it’s healed up good.”

  Annie dumped the glass and filled his order. Mulligan downed the shot and sipped from his beer. Then he slid an illegal Cuban out of his shirt pocket, clipped the end, and fired it up. Rhode Island prohibited smoking in public accommodations, but nobody at the local press hangout gave a shit about the nanny-state law. Tobacco-phobes had plenty of other places to drink.

  Mulligan was on his second beer, watching Boston Bruins highlights on the TV over the bar, when Gloria came through the door and unfurled her umbrella. She stripped off her raincoat, laid it on top of his, and climbed onto a bar stool. He studied her reflection in the mirror as she did her breathing exercise, thinking she must have had a pressing reason to walk all the way over here through the rain. She was still at it when Annie swung by and dropped Gloria’s usual, a bottle of Bud, on the bar.

  Gloria opened her eyes, turned to Mulligan, and said, “You’re drinking again.”

  “Thanks to God, I am.”

  “In defiance of doctor’s orders?”

  “Not this time, no. He cleared me to get back in the game.”

  “You should probably still go easy.”

  “I’ll try,” Mulligan said.

  Gloria’s breathing had not yet completely calmed. Mulligan fought the urge to pull her into a bear hug and tell her everything was all right. The platitude would sound empty, and he wasn’t sure how much he believed it with people like Kwame Diggs in the world. Besides, he knew how much Gloria hated being coddled, how determined she was not to let dread rule her life. Except for his old friend Rosie, she was the most fearless woman he knew. That was just one of the reasons he admired her. She was a fine news photographer, too—better than any of the paper’s two-eyed shooters.

  “So, Gloria,” he said, “what brings you out on this godforsaken afternoon?”

  “I needed to talk to you, but I never saw you come in today. I thought I might find you here.”

  “I was out working on something.”

  “What?”

  “A follow on Kessler.”

  “Are they going to find a way to keep him in prison?”

  “Doesn’t look like it.” He swigged from his longneck and asked, “So what’s on your mind?”

  “Mason,” she said.

  “What about him?”

  “Did you hear what he’s working on?”

  “He told me.”

  “What the hell is he thinking?”

  “He’s thinking that a whole bunch of our public servants have been conspiring to break the law.”

  “If he can prove it, will they have to let Diggs out, too?”

  “Probably.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Gloria. Mason’s not that good.”

  “He may be better than you think. He learned a lot working with you on that pornography investigation.”

  “Um.”

  “Can’t you talk him out of this?”

  “I tried. Lomax tried, too.”

  Gloria picked up her beer and took a long swallow.

  “We’ve got to do something,” she said.

  “I already have.”

  “What?”

  “Mason asked me to help him.”

  “And?”

  “And he thinks that I am.”

  Gloria smiled at that.

  “What did you do?”

  “I suggested he go through all the transcripts of Diggs’s trials, find the names of the witnesses who testified about the drug charge and the prison assaults, and interview them.”

  “Ha! When he talks to them, they aren’t going to tell him anything, are they?”

  “They’ll swear that their lies were the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “So help them God,” Gloria said.

  “You bet.”

  “That should slow him down,” she said, “but it probably won’t stop him.”

  “Maybe he’ll get discouraged and give up.”

  “Does he strike you as the kind who gives up?”

  “No,” Mulligan said.

  Gloria shook her head, then pushed damp strands of hair back from her good eye.

  “We’ve got to make sure Diggs doesn’t get out,” she said.

  “We?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re a photographer, Gloria.”

  “I’m a journalist. Mostly I use a camera; but I know how to ask questions, and I know how to take notes.”

  Mulligan gave her a searching look.

  “Don’t take this wrong,” he said, “but after what you’ve been through, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to get involved in this.”

  “It’s because of what I’ve been through that I have to get involved in this.”

  Mulligan puffed on his cigar, drained his beer, and asked Annie for another.

  “Okay, Gloria,” he said. “What do you have in mind?”

  February 2000

  The worst thing is the boredom, every day the same as the last.

  Wake up at seven A.M. Three tasteless meals a day shoved through the bars. A half hour of exercise in the yard every afternoon. Lights out at ten P.M. The asshole in the next cell howling the same off-key Motown song, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” for what seems like an hour every night. The Mob hit man three cells down screaming at him to shut the fuck up.

  It’s so bad that he actually looks forward to the weekly visits from his mother, even though the only thing she ever talks about is Jesus.

  He pulls the thin blanket up to his chin, rolls over to face the cinder-block wall, and closes his eyes. Tonight, he chooses A Nightmare on Elm Street, the opening scene playing on the inside of his eyelids.

  But in his version, Freddy Krueger isn’t the one flashing the knife-bladed finger-glove. In his version, all of his
victims are blondes.

  19

  April 2012

  It had taken three weeks for the Superior Court clerk to print out all the trial transcripts, nearly eight thousand pages counting legal briefs. No way Lomax was going to approve the seven-hundred-and-eighty-five-dollar processing fee. Even if he’d agreed with what Mason was doing, he’d have trouble squeezing the payment out of the dwindling newsroom budget. Mason didn’t even ask. He just shelled out the money himself.

  He began by reading the transcripts of the two murder trials. The physical evidence tying Diggs to the killings was overwhelming, but Mason found it curious that the prosecution had never established a motive. Then he quickly read through Diggs’s contempt, drug, and assault cases. His first run through all the documents consumed the best part of a week.

  Setting aside the murder cases, he combed through the other four transcripts again, underlining key points and jotting down the names of every judge, lawyer, and witness. He saw right off that there was no point in interviewing them. At least not yet. Not until he came up with something to challenge their stories.

  Come on, Mulligan, Mason said to himself, did you really think I’d fall for that? But there had to be somebody out there who would tell him the truth.

  Mason dropped the transcripts in his file drawer, locked it, pulled his iPhone from his jacket pocket, and called the new source he was developing. A guy who moonlighted at an automobile dealership to supplement his meager wages as a clerk for the State Department of Corrections.

  “Bristol Toyota. How may we serve you?”

  “Don Sockol, please.”

  “May I tell him who is calling?”

  “Edward Mason.”

  “One moment, please.…”

  “Hi, Edward! How are you enjoying the Prius?”

  “I love it,” Mason lied.

  “So how can I help you today?”

  “I was hoping you could do me a favor.”

  “Anything for a great customer.”

  “I’d like to get a list of the guards who worked at the Department of Corrections between 1994 and 2011.”

  “Oh, jeez. That would be a lot of people. Can you narrow it down any?”

  “I’m looking for guards who would have had contact with Kwame Diggs.”

  “Okay, then. That would be guys who worked Supermax. Probably still be a few hundred names, though. We have a lot of turnover.”