Providence Rag

by Bruce DeSilva

  “What about Susan Ashcroft?” Gloria asked.

  “Another older woman,” Schutter said. “But she’s the one who got away, so he probably still fantasizes about her. Anybody else?”

  “Diggs’s lawyer is a pretty thirty-year-old blonde,” Mason said. The dread was like a stone in his chest. He’d had vivid, horrifying dreams about Kwame’s hands on her. “She visited him at least a dozen times in the last few months. Sometimes we went together, and I didn’t like the way he looked at her.”

  “Tell me about that,” Schutter said.

  “He looked her up and down. Commented on her hair and makeup. A couple of times, when I visited him by myself, he said she liked me and asked if I was, as he put it, ‘getting any.’ He pressed for details. Kept saying, ‘Come on, you can tell me.’”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Schutter said.

  Mason didn’t either. He wondered if he should have challenged Kwame, warned him to stay away from Felicia. Instantly, he realized why he hadn’t. Because Kwame had threatened him, too.

  “Freyer was there when Diggs got out,” Gloria said. “He told her she looked hot and said something about seeing her around sometime.”

  “I really don’t like the sound of that,” Schutter said.

  And I didn’t say anything, Mason thought. Out loud he said, “Jesus!”

  “Let’s not overreact,” Mulligan said. “Diggs was fifteen when he went to prison. He’s never driven a car. How would he even get back to Rhode Island?”

  “He could hitch a ride or take public transportation,” Schutter said, “but he probably won’t. He’s a marked man in Rhode Island. Besides, he’s got plenty of blondes to choose from in Brockton.”

  The agent paused, then said, “What about you, Gloria?”

  “He’s only seen me a couple of times. Last year when I took his picture outside the courthouse and this week when I photographed his release. I don’t think he even knows my name.”

  74

  A late summer bug hit the newsroom hard. Mulligan spent the next two weeks working nights on the copy desk, filling in for a sick-in-bed slot man whose respiratory infection had turned into pneumonia. Mulligan wrote headlines, edited city hall and statehouse copy, and did whatever else was necessary to get the daily paper out.

  Each evening, he stole a few minutes to scan the Associated Press’s Massachusetts wire, checking for murders in Brockton, Massachusetts. He found plenty of them: A high school football star stabbed to death in a bar fight. A clerk shot three times in the chest in a botched convenience store holdup. A teenager kicked and beaten to death in a street gang initiation. A ten-year-old with a toy pistol gunned down by a nervous cop. But no blonde stabbed to death by a sex maniac.

  After finishing his Friday shift, he downed a couple of Killian’s at Hopes, drove home, went to bed, and drifted off into a …

  Rushing to catch a flight to somewhere, he sprinted to the gate and dashed into the airplane seconds before the door closed. He started down the aisle and froze. Every seat was occupied by a naked blonde. Their bodies, faces, makeup, and hairdos were identical. Stab wounds blossomed like roses on their torsos. Each one, Mulligan somehow knew, had been stabbed fifty-two times.

  Kwame Diggs’s voice burst from the intercom: “This is your captain speaking.”

  At three A.M. Mulligan startled awake, exhausted and drenched in sweat. His cell was playing “Dirty Laundry,” his ring tone for Lomax.

  “Mulligan.”

  “You awake?”

  “I am now.”

  “Marvin from Barrington just won a hundred bucks for calling the WTOP tip line to report he saw two white males throwing Molotov cocktails through criminal-coddling Judge Needham’s windows.”

  “You listen to WTOP in the middle of the night?”

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Okay, I’m on it.”

  “Thanks. I’ll call Gloria and have her meet you there.”

  Less than twenty minutes later, Mulligan pulled onto Nyatt Road, just a short stroll from the Rhode Island Country Club in the upscale bedroom community of Barrington. The judge’s two-story Tudor-style brick home was fully involved. Flames curled from the eaves and jitterbugged in the blown-out windows.

  The judge and his family, Mulligan knew, were not at home. After his ruling on Diggs, they’d hightailed it to their vacation place on Sanibel Island in Florida. Good thing, because the Barrington Fire Department was not on scene yet. That was odd, because two of the town’s fire stations were less than three miles away.

  Five minutes later, TV vans from Channel 10 in Cranston and Channel 12 in East Providence came tearing down the street. Two minutes after that, Gloria pulled up, jumped out of her car, and started snapping pictures.

  Another ten minutes passed before two pumper trucks and a rescue vehicle unhurriedly rolled up and turned into the long, tree-lined gravel driveway. The firemen climbed out of the pumpers and took their time unspooling hoses, connecting them to a fire hydrant, and dragging them across the wide, chemical-green lawn.

  They waited until the roof collapsed in a shower of sparks before they sprang into action, spraying streams of water into the wreckage.

  75

  On Saturday afternoon, Chief Hernandez of the Warwick PD sported a blue baseball cap and a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo “Mercer Hardware Lions,” the name of the preteen girls’ soccer team he coached. He had his feet up on his desk and was sipping from a “World’s Best Dad” coffee cup.

  “What I’m about to tell you has to remain absolutely secret for now. Can I count on you to keep your mouths shut?”

  “Yes,” Jennings said.

  “Sure thing,” Mulligan said.

  “The state crime lab completed the DNA testing on Thursday, and we’ve got a match.”

  “All right!” Jennings said.

  “The results were sent to the New York State Police that afternoon. Yesterday, New York’s Criminal Prosecutions Division drafted a warrant for Diggs’s arrest for the murder of Allison Foley. At first, the judge they approached declined to sign it. He insisted that the DNA test be replicated by the New York crime lab. But when the urgency of the situation was explained to him, he relented.”

  “What happens now?” Mulligan asked.

  “At five A.M. tomorrow, the Massachusetts State Police STOP team, which is what they call their SWAT unit, will hit the Diggs house in Brockton. Two New York State Police detectives will be present as observers, as will I.”

  “I want to be there,” Mulligan said.

  “You and Andy have both earned it,” Hernandez said. “You’ll ride with me, but you’ve got to promise to remain in the car until they drag Diggs out.”

  “Will do,” Mulligan said. “Can I bring a photographer?”

  “No, but you can bring a camera. Once they clear the house, take all the pictures you want.”

  * * *

  At four thirty Sunday morning, the assault team assembled in the Cardinal Spellman High School parking lot two blocks from the Diggs house. Mulligan counted twelve state cops in body armor. One carried a breaching shotgun designed to blow dead bolts and hinges from exterior doors. The rest were armed with assault rifles. At four fifty-five, they jumped into their vehicles and raced toward the Diggs house, their bar lights dark and sirens silent. A New York State Police cruiser followed. Hernandez’s car, with Jennings riding shotgun and Mulligan in the backseat, took up the rear.

  The vehicles screeched to a stop in front of the one-story cottage on Ruth Road. Four STOP team members sprinted toward the backyard to cover the rear door. Four more raced to cover the side windows. The last four rushed the front entrance, tromping through Esther Diggs’s petunia bed.

  The breaching shotgun boomed, blowing the lock through the front door. The cops charged in, shouting, “State Police! Down on the floor! Down on the floor!”

  And then … silence.

  Hernandez, Jennings, and Mulligan waited in the car. They did not spe
ak. Twenty minutes later, the cops walked through the front door and trudged down the front walk.

  Alone.

  Hernandez, Jennings, and Mulligan got out of the car and joined them on the sidewalk.

  “He’s not here,” said the lieutenant in charge. “His mother says she hasn’t seen him since Friday night.”

  “Aw, fuck,” Hernandez said.

  “Yeah,” the lieutenant said. “And now he probably knows we’re after him.”

  * * *

  Early that afternoon, the Massachusetts State Police released Diggs’s mug shot to the media, hoping the public could help with the manhunt. Hernandez, Jennings, and Mulligan met Gloria and Mason for a late lunch at Charlie’s diner in Providence to talk things over.

  “He could be anywhere now,” Hernandez said.

  “Anywhere includes here,” Mason said.

  “Think Susan Ashcroft is safe?” Gloria asked.

  “Her husband has a gun, and he knows how to use it,” Hernandez said. “And the Coventry police promised me they’d have a patrol car go by her place every hour from dusk till dawn until the bastard’s in custody.”

  “What about Mary?” Mulligan asked.

  “She’s got me,” Jennings said. “I almost hope the bastard comes for her so I can empty my revolver into him.”

  “What about Felicia?” Mason asked. He shouldn’t be asking about her, he thought. He should be with her.

  “I asked the Providence cops to watch out for her,” Hernandez said. “They say all they can do is have a patrol car drive by her place a couple of times during the night.”

  “Then I better sleep there until he’s caught,” Mason said.

  “Diggs is twice your size,” Mulligan said. “What good will you be if he breaks in?”

  “He won’t,” Mason said. “He’s a coward. He’s never attacked a woman when there’s a man around.”

  “There’s always a first time,” Jennings said.

  “Do you have a gun, Thanks-Dad?” Mulligan asked

  “No.”

  “Do you know how to use one?”

  “No.”

  “I do,” Mulligan said. “I’m still stuck working nights on the copy desk, but I usually get off around midnight. Get me a key to her place and I’ll let myself in, spend the night dozing on the couch.”

  Mason pulled out his cell and called Felicia.

  “Is this really necessary?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Mason said.

  “I’m his lawyer. Why would he want to hurt me?”

  “He probably doesn’t,” Mason said, “but let’s not take any chances, okay? I mean, the guy is a homicidal maniac. Who knows what he’ll do?” He took a deep breath and half whispered, “I need to know that you’re safe.”

  They agreed that Mason would stay at her place until the danger passed. Reluctantly, Felicia agreed to give Mulligan a spare key.

  As Mulligan strolled out of the diner, he was in desperate need of sleep. He’d worked the night shift on Saturday, then risen well before dawn for the abortive raid. But it would be hours before he could get any.

  First he had to write a news story about the raid. Then he had to put the finishing touches on an account of the newspaper’s investigation into the old New York killing and how it led to the new murder charge against Diggs. Lomax planned to start that one on page one, with a full page inside.

  When he was done with that, it would be time for his evening copy desk shift again.

  * * *

  At midnight, nineteen hours after the raid on the Diggs house, Mulligan finished work and drove to Freyer’s place in Newberry Village, a condo development in the Providence suburb of Cranston. The street was well lighted, and some of the front yards, including Freyer’s, were bright with floods.

  Fighting to keep his eyes open, he drove down the street past her place and kept going, studying both sides of the street. Then he turned around and made another pass. When he was satisfied that no one was lurking, he parked on the street, pulled his .45 from its hiding place under the front passenger seat, tucked it in his waistband, and trudged up the front walk. He climbed the steps to the front stoop and inserted his key in the lock.

  He found Mason dozing in the living room on a tan leather sofa, a pen in his hand and a yellow legal pad open in his lap. Beside him on the cushions, an aluminum baseball bat.

  “Whatcha doin’?” Mulligan asked as Mason stirred awake.

  “Working on the lyrics for a song I’m writing,” Mason said.

  “Want to sing it for me?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Tell me the layout.”

  “Living room, kitchen, dining room, and half-bath on this floor. Two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.”

  “Checked the locks on all the doors and windows?”

  “Of course.”

  “Where’s Felicia?”

  “Asleep upstairs.”

  Mulligan stifled a yawn.

  “Why don’t you head up, too? I’ve got this now.”

  “You can have the other bedroom,” Mason said.

  Oh? Mason was sleeping with Felicia now? That was news. No bragging. No bravado. The publisher’s son was a class act.

  “No thanks,” Mulligan said. “Better if I stay down here.”

  Mason wished him good night, picked up the baseball bat, and trudged upstairs. Mulligan watched him go, then rechecked the locks on the front door and the downstairs windows. Off the kitchen, he unlocked a sliding glass door and stepped onto a small deck that looked over a treeless backyard. It was not fenced.

  Thirty yards away, the back sides of a string of matching condos were dark, save for the blue light from a television flickering in one upstairs window. He dropped his hand to his waistband, felt the grip of his pistol, and stared into the darkness, looking for the glow of a cigarette or any sign of movement.

  He stood there for a good ten minutes, then went back through the sliding doors and locked them. He turned off the lights, placed his .45 on the coffee table by the couch, pulled off his Reeboks, and stretched out on the leather.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the house. He heard nothing but the hum of the air conditioner, not liking the way it muffled the sound of a car gliding by on the street. He got up, found the temperature controls on the living room wall, and shut off the A/C. Then he returned to the couch, dozed off, and found himself on the death plane again.

  * * *

  A week crawled by. Updates on the manhunt appeared daily in the Rhode Island and Massachusetts newspapers and every morning, noon, and night on New England TV news broadcasts.

  Late every afternoon, Mason met Felicia at her law office and drove her home. Every day after midnight, Mulligan drove to the condo, studied the street, let himself in with his key, checked the backyard and the locks, and settled down to sleep on the couch.

  The daily manhunt updates never had anything new to report. Diggs had either fled the area or was lying low.

  76

  Tuesday afternoon, Mulligan ambled down the sidewalk past the governor’s limo and shoved open the door to Hopes. Fiona was waiting for him at a table in back. He grabbed a shot of Bushmills and a Killian’s chaser at the bar, took the seat across from her, and said, “What’s up?”

  “Thought you might want a scoop on the obstruction of justice investigation.”

  “I would.”

  “The A.G.’s office negotiated a plea bargain with Galloway and Quinn. They’ll both admit to one count of perjury and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. They’ll be sentenced to ten years in prison and be ordered to pay five-thousand-dollar fines. After the sentences are handed down, I’m going to pardon both of them.”

  “What about Warden Matos?”

  “He won’t be charged, but he’s agreed to take early retirement.”

  “With full pension?”

  “Yes.”

  “My tax money at work,” Mulligan said. “How about the prosecutors who handled the as
sault case? They were in on it, too.”

  “The attorney general has found no evidence to proceed against them.”

  “Did he look for any?”

  “Off the record?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then, no.”

  “That all of it?”

  “One more thing. Another guard, Paul Delvecchio, will plead guilty to one count of vandalism for destroying Mason’s car. He’ll be fined a thousand dollars and get a year, suspended. And he’ll have to pay Mason twenty-eight thousand in restitution. I’m told the guards’ union plans to take care of that for him.”

  “Swell,” Mulligan said.

  77

  Tuesday night was a bitch. Statehouse reporters flooded the copy desk with political news, some of it so clumsily done that Mulligan felt compelled to rewrite it. Five people, one of them a local bank president, died in the rain in a three-car collision on Providence’s treacherous Thurbers Avenue curve. And Sammy “Snake Eyes” Tardio, a Mob enforcer rumored to have turned rat, was shotgunned in a Federal Hill bar. Mulligan juggled copy with no time for a dinner break, surviving the evening on Cheetos and lots of weak coffee from the newsroom vending machines.

  At midnight, just as the paper was about to be put to bed, a four-alarm fire broke out in an abandoned jewelry factory in the city’s dilapidated Olneyville section. Fifteen minutes later, the police radio on the city desk screamed the news that the roof had collapsed, trapping half a dozen firemen inside.

  Kit Murphy, the night city editor, held page one to get the story in the paper, then cursed a blue streak when the reporter at the scene called in to say he couldn’t get back to file because his car wouldn’t start.

  “Have Gloria give you a lift,” she said.

  “No can do. She’s already on the way back with her fire photos.”

  Murphy ordered him to call the copy desk and dictate the details over the phone. Mulligan spent twenty minutes pumping the reporter for facts and writing a hurried but passable story for the final edition. The last press run started an hour late, which meant overtime pay for the pressmen, the mailroom crew, and the delivery truck drivers.