Providence Rag

by Bruce DeSilva

“Others who were present,” Mason said, exaggerating a little because his only source for this was the cokehead.

  “Maybe I was.”

  “What do you remember about that?”

  “Not much.”

  “The way the others who were there tell it, Araujo admitted the assault never happened. He said he faked it on orders of the warden, isn’t that right?”

  “Look,” Shaad said, “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I don’t want any part of it.”

  “You look,” Mason said. “Diggs is a bad guy. We both know that. But if prison officials are faking charges against him, they’re bad guys too. They laid you off, Chuck. It’s not like you owe them anything.”

  Shaad didn’t reply. He picked up his Guinness and drained it. Mason figured he was about to leave. Instead, the ex-guard hailed the barkeep and ordered another.

  “Okay,” Mason said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “The time Diggs was charged with having marijuana in his cell.”

  “What about it?”

  “I think it’s bullshit,” Mason said.

  “Because?”

  “Because I’ve seen the security at Supermax. I don’t see any way he could get marijuana in there.”

  Shaad studied the head on his beer for a moment, then said, “Neither do I.”

  “There are no drugs in the state prison?”

  “The other units are loaded with them. Weed. Coke. Meth. Oxy. But Supermax? No way.”

  “So the drug charges must have been faked, then, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “Okay,” Mason said. “Let’s go back to that day in the break room.”

  “Let’s not.”

  “You already told me you were there,” Mason said. “So were Frank Horrocks, Ty Robinson, and John Pugliese. They all heard Araujo admit the assault charge was faked.”

  Mason hadn’t talked to Pugliese yet, and Horrocks had refused to talk to him, but Shaad didn’t know that.

  “If those guys already told you about this, why are you asking me?”

  “I’m just being thorough.”

  Shaad took another sip of his beer, stalling for time.

  “I don’t want my name in the paper,” he finally said.

  “Not for attribution, then,” Mason said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that when I write the story, I’ll identify you as a former Supermax guard but won’t use your name.”

  “How can I be sure of that?”

  “Because you have my word.”

  Shaad studied Mason for a moment.

  “You know,” he finally said, “I’m surprised Horrocks and Pugliese told you about this.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because they thought Araujo was some big fuckin’ hero.”

  He paused, and once again Mason waited for the ex-guard to fill the silence between them.

  “It was supposed to be me,” Shaad said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “Warden Matos came to me first. He wanted me to swear out an assault complaint against Diggs. I told him I wouldn’t do it.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He tried to talk me into it. Said I’d be performing a public service. I told him I didn’t want Diggs running around loose, either. He shoulda got the needle for killing all those people. Three of ’em were just little girls, for chrissake. But no way I was gonna go to court and lie.”

  “What did the warden do then?”

  “He said not to worry about it. Told me he’d find somebody else. Oh, and he asked me to keep my mouth shut about our conversation.”

  “And the somebody else was Araujo?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Tell me about that day in the break room.”

  “Araujo was sitting at one of the tables when I came in. Some of the other guards were shaking his hand, patting him on the back. I thought maybe he’d just had a baby or hit the lottery or something, so I asked what was up. And he told me.”

  “Told you what, exactly?”

  “That he’d sworn out a phony complaint about Diggs. Seemed real proud of himself, like he’d just hit a grand slam to win the World Series.”

  “Do you remember his exact words?”

  “No.”

  “Who else was there that day?”

  “Other than the guys you already talked to?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let me think … I’m pretty sure Paul Delvecchio was there, too.”

  Mason had heard that name before, but at first he couldn’t place it.

  “Delvecchio?” he finally said. “Doesn’t he work in the prison library now?”

  38

  Felicia Freyer wore her blond hair down today. She’d applied lipstick the color of pink carnations and just a hint of eyeliner and mascara. Diggs gave her an appraising look as she picked up the phone to talk to him through the glass. Mason saw the look and felt a brief flicker of anger.

  “We’re making some progress, Kwame. It’s not enough to get you out yet, but we have reason to be hopeful.… Yes, I understand you’re frustrated, but these things take time.… Why don’t I let Mason tell you what he’s found out so far?”

  She reached up and handed the phone to Mason, who was standing beside her chair.

  “So, cuz,” Diggs said, “you fuckin’ her yet?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Come on. You can tell me.”

  “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because she’s totally sweatin’ you, cuz. I mean, the bitch never put on makeup for me, so it’s gotta be for you, right?”

  He smirked and arched his left eyebrow.

  “I don’t think so,” Mason said, although the thought had crossed his mind.

  From anyone else, Mason would have passed this off as crude but harmless banter, but Diggs was giving him the creeps.

  “You want to know what I’ve got so far or not?” the reporter asked.

  “Shoot,” Diggs said.

  “First off, you’re right about the drugs. I don’t see any way of getting a bag of marijuana through all this security.”

  “I already told you that, cuz. What else you got?”

  “I found two former guards who overheard Araujo admit he faked one of the assault charges against you.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, but the problem is one of them got fired for coming to work high, so he doesn’t have any credibility. And the other one won’t let me use his name. It’s not anywhere near enough to get you released. It’s not even enough to put in the paper.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m still working on it, though. I got a lead on a couple more guards who might know the truth about the assault charges.”

  “You’re giving me hope, cuz. That’s all I got to live for in here.”

  “Tell me, Kwame. What do you think you’d do if you got out?”

  “I dunno. Wouldn’t go back to the old neighborhood, that’s for damn sure. If I did, I’d probably get lynched. I guess I’d have to change my name and move out of state. Maybe find a place in Brockton near my moms. Or go down to Alabama so I could be close to my brother.”

  “How would you make a living?”

  “Been thinking about that for a while. At first, I figured I could learn about computers. So I could fix ’em, maybe, or work someplace that makes ’em. But then I decided what I really want to do is go back to school and get a degree so I can teach black history to kids.”

  Was Diggs’s grasp on reality that tenuous? Mason considered explaining why someone convicted of murdering two kids wasn’t ever going to get hired to teach them, but he decided to let Diggs find that out for himself.

  “Do you think you’d ever hurt anybody again, Kwame?”

  Felicia glanced up at Mason, frustrated that she could hear only his side of the conversation. Diggs rubbed his face and
studied the ceiling, where he always looked for the answers to difficult questions.

  “Tell me, cuz,” the prisoner finally said. “You ever think about killing somebody?”

  “No.”

  “What about fucking somebody up. Ever want to do that?”

  “A few times, I guess.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they were giving me a hard time.”

  “About what?”

  “Let’s see.… Last winter, I was in a bar in Newport, and a couple of drunks started making crude remarks to my date. When I asked them to stop, one of them pushed me.”

  “I bet you wanted to shove a beer bottle up his ass. Am I right?”

  “Not quite, but I did have an urge to punch him in the nose.”

  “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was afraid he and his buddy would gang up on me and beat me up. And I didn’t want to get arrested.”

  “You controlled your anger and considered the consequences,” Diggs said, sounding like a parent administering a lesson.

  “That’s right.”

  “When I was a kid, I didn’t know how to do that. Whenever somebody disrespected me, I’d feel this rage boil up inside, and it wouldn’t go away until I hurt them back. But I’m a grown man now, cuz. I still get mad sometimes, but I’ve learned to control it. I understand now that there are better ways than killing to get even with the racists.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like educating people about black history, and voting for Obama, and giving money to the NAACP. When I was a kid, I thought like a young Malcolm X. Brother Malcolm said, ‘If someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.’ He also said, ‘When you drop violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane; and I’m not responsible for what I do.’ Now I’m down with Dr. King, who said, ‘Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.’ That was in one of them books you got me. When I get angry now, I just listen to those words inside my head.”

  “What are you angry about now, Kwame?”

  “I’m angry that the state of Rhode Island thinks it’s okay to make up shit to keep a black man locked up. If they was following the law, I’d have got out when I was twenty-one. I coulda had a life. A job. An education. Maybe a wife and kids. But when justice is perverted, tyranny prevails.”

  Mason marveled that the same man who called him “cuz” could say things like “tyranny prevails.” He figured it was something else Diggs had read in one of his books.

  “What the state is doing to you is illegal,” Mason said, “but if you’d gotten out at twenty-one, you would have done only six years for killing five people. Does that sound like justice to you?”

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

  Diggs fixed Mason with an angry glare, but it quickly vanished. His mouth curled into a sly smile.

  “The bitch wants you, cuz. I been watching the way she keeps eyein’ you. If I was you, I would be so hitting that.”

  * * *

  In the prison parking lot, Felicia touched Mason on the arm and said, “Want to go for coffee?”

  The touch, maddeningly brief, was better than the ones he’d imagined.

  “Mason? Coffee?” Her hand brushed his arm again.

  “I’d love to,” he said, hoping he hadn’t answered with an exclamation point.

  “Caffe-Bon-Ami on Park Avenue?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Meet me there in ten minutes, and you can fill me in on Diggs’s side of the conversation.”

  Mason climbed in behind the wheel of the Prius and watched Felicia walk away in a black skirt that swung and swept her knees. When she disappeared around a corner, he flipped the visor down and checked his hair in the vanity mirror.

  Then he opened his notebook and flipped to a page he’d starred in his notes: “I understand now that there are better ways than killing to get even with the racists.”

  A slip of the tongue? A confession with an explanation? Next time, Mason thought, he’d have to ask Diggs about it.

  * * *

  At the coffee shop, Mason knew he was supposed to talk to Felicia about Diggs, but he was distracted by her perfume, a blend of wildflowers and spice. Every time she moved, the scent rose from her skin. And it had his name on it.

  After they ordered—she liked her coffee sweet and black, the same way he did—Felicia reached across the booth and touched his arm again.

  “Mason, what do you do when you’re not working?”

  “I think about working.”

  Felicia laughed.

  “Oh, God, I’m the same way. Lately, I…” She hesitated, sipped from her cup. “You’re going to think this is really weird.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve caught myself pacing around my condo having full-fledged conversations about work … with myself … out loud.”

  Mason chuckled.

  “I’m not sure this is funny,” Felicia said. “It can’t be healthy.”

  “In that case, I’m really in trouble,” Mason said. “I’ve been having late night conversations with another person … who’s not there.”

  They were both laughing now.

  “I hope it’s at least someone interesting. Bill Gates? Andrew Sullivan, maybe? Michelle Obama?”

  “Actually, it’s you.”

  She looked down and ran her fingers around the edge of her coffee cup.

  “Mason?”

  “Um?”

  “That’s what I was hoping you were going to say.”

  She raised her eyes and tossed a look that caused a warm glow to wash over him, a glow he hadn’t felt since Darcy Ames, the prettiest girl in the ninth grade, asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have time for a woman in my life right now. I’ve tried to stop thinking about you. But I can’t. I love how sensational you look when you dress down and don’t bother with makeup. I obsess about your green eyes and that ski-slope nose and that long neck I’ve been wanting to kiss. I love the way you sneak a look at me when you don’t think I notice. And the way my arm tingles when you touch me. Like you’re doing right now.”

  Felicia leaned in, and they locked eyes.

  “But we can’t get involved right now,” she said.

  “No, we can’t. Not until Kwame’s situation is resolved. It would be a conflict of interest.”

  “For both of us,” Felicia said.

  Mason drew a deep breath and then sighed audibly.

  “If you’re going to keep me at arm’s length,” he said, “I advise you never to wear that perfume again.”

  She laughed and squeezed his arm, trying to make him smile. Mason just stared and stared.

  39

  Mulligan parked Secretariat beside Andy Jennings’s Ford pickup in the Warwick police station parking lot. He found the ex-cop waiting for him on the front steps. They entered the building together, passed through the metal detector, and tromped upstairs for their morning appointment with Chief Oscar Hernandez.

  The first thing Mulligan noticed as Hernandez rose to greet them was that he’d grown a potbelly since his promotion to chief last year. The second thing Mulligan noticed was a ten-by-twelve-inch color photo of Joe Arpaio, the jowly sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who was notorious for his harassment of Mexican immigrants. It was pinned to a bulletin board with thumbtacks, and it had several dozen small holes in it. Mulligan guessed they were made by the five darts that rested beside the blotter on Hernandez’s big mahogany desk.

  “How’s retirement treating you, Andy?” the chief asked.

  “I miss the action,” Jennings said. “Some days I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  “Maybe you need a hobby.”

  “Yeah, right. Like I could get into scrapbooking or collecting sta
mps.”

  “How’s Mary?”

  “She’s good, Oscar. I’ll tell her you asked after her.”

  “Mulligan, I see you’ve survived the layoffs.”

  “So far, but one of these days my luck’s gonna run out.”

  The looming truth of that led to an uncomfortable pause. Finally, Hernandez cleared his throat.

  “So what can I do for you gentlemen this morning?”

  “You can give us access to the evidence from a cold case,” Jennings said.

  “What case?”

  “The Susan Ashcroft stabbing.”

  Hernandez folded his hands on his desk blotter, looked Jennings in the eye, and said, “What for?”

  “We want to take another run at nailing Kwame Diggs for it.”

  “And by we, you mean you and Mulligan?”

  “Yup.”

  Hernandez shook his head vigorously.

  “Last time I checked, newspaper reporters were not considered law enforcement officers in the state of Rhode Island. And you don’t carry a badge anymore, Andy. When I said you need a hobby, this isn’t what I had in mind.”

  “You owe me this, Oscar,” Jennings said. “If I hadn’t insisted on promoting you to detective twelve years ago, when Chief Bennett thought Hispanics weren’t fit for anything but patrol…”

  “I might still be riding shotgun in a squad car,” Hernandez said.

  He clasped his hands on his blotter and studied the two men for a moment.

  “I can see this is important to both of you,” he said. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  “We’re worried that Diggs is going to get out,” Jennings said.

  “You kidding me?”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “What the hell makes you think that?”

  “The charges the state has brought against him since he turned twenty-one were all concocted,” Mulligan said.

  “So I’ve heard,” Hernandez said.

  “Now somebody’s poking into that, and if they can prove it, he’ll have to be released.”

  “You must be shitting me.”

  “Wish I were,” Mulligan said.

  “Who the hell would want to do that?”

  “He’s got an aggressive new lawyer,” Mulligan said. “I hear she’s good, and she’s getting some outside help.”

  “From whom?”