A Scourge of Vipers

by Bruce DeSilva

  We backed out without touching anything else, skipped down the stairs, and left the way we had come. I waited until we were half a mile down the road before I flicked on the headlights.

  “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “Could be anything,” McCracken said. “A simple break-in. A fight. Maybe he just threw a tantrum when his latest pickup wouldn’t sleep with him.”

  “Doesn’t feel like a housebreak,” I said. “The place wasn’t tossed.”

  “And you say he hasn’t been answering his phone?”

  “Yeah. For a couple of weeks.” My mind flashed on the still-unidentified floater. If it wasn’t Mario, then maybe—“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a burner phone,” McCracken said.

  “In the glove box.”

  “Smart,” he said. “It’s always good to have a cheap prepaid handy in case you need to make a call that can’t be traced back to you.”

  He popped open the box, grabbed the phone, and called the Lincoln PD.

  “I’d like to report a housebreak at number six Pace Court.… No, the intruder is no longer present.… No, you can’t have my name.”

  With that, he clicked off.

  * * *

  I dropped McCracken off at home and drove back to Providence in the rain. By the time I parked in front of my place, it was nearly ten P.M. I tromped up the stairs, walked down the short second-floor hallway, and stopped dead in front of my apartment.

  The door yawned wide open. I stole a quick glance and saw that the wood around the deadbolt was splintered.

  I slipped the pistol from my waistband, raised it, and stood six inches to the left of the doorframe for a minute, maybe two. I heard nothing but the hum from the refrigerator.

  Leading with the gun, I stepped inside and hit the switch for the overhead kitchen light. The refrigerator gaped open. The bottles of beer and jars of pickles and tomato sauce that had been inside were now a swamp of shards and goop on the linoleum floor. A heap of metal and plastic that used to be my microwave had been hurled into a corner. The kitchen chairs and table had been tipped over, shattering Tuukka’s aquarium.

  I stepped into the bedroom and snapped on the light. The bureau drawers had been dumped, the chest tipped over on top of them. The mattress was ripped to shreds, a butcher knife from my kitchen tossed onto the stuffing.

  In the sitting room, my battered sofa and stuffed chair had been given the same treatment. The TV lay in pieces between them. My books had been yanked from their shelves and thrown around the room. My turntable lay twisted and broken on the floor, and my treasured collection of vintage blues vinyl, which I’d been picking up at flea markets for years, had been stomped to pieces.

  I tucked my pistol back in my waistband and returned to the kitchen. My first thought was of Tuukka. I’d grown fond of the little guy, and now he was on the loose. I rushed to close the apartment door, just in case he was still inside.

  And there he was, hanging from the back of the door, his body still twitching. A steak knife from my kitchen drawer had been driven straight through his skull.

  Tuukka was just a snake. A cold-blooded reptile. He didn’t bark or purr. He didn’t greet me with a thumping tail when I came home. He didn’t even want to be petted. But I liked him. After years of living alone, I’d taken comfort in his company. He hadn’t deserved to be stabbed through the head—but whoever murdered him did. I yanked the knife out and gently laid his body on the counter.

  Suddenly I realized I was forgetting something. I sprinted back to the bedroom and threw open the footlocker. It was empty. My grandfather’s gun was gone.

  16

  Next morning, I curled Tuukka into a shoebox and buried him in the dirt in the narrow, grassless yard behind my building. A half hour later I was bent over my desk in the newsroom, sorting through the day’s press releases, when the security guard called from the lobby.

  “Mulligan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “A couple of Providence police detectives just came in looking for you. I asked them to wait till I called up, but they brushed past me and got on the elevator.”

  “It’s okay, Johnny. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  The homicide twins, Wargart and Freitas, were stepping off the elevator now. They scanned the newsroom, spotted me, and swaggered to my cubicle.

  “You need to come with us,” Wargart said.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Then you’re shit out of luck.”

  “You’ve got some questions to answer, asshole,” Freitas said.

  “Come with me,” I said.

  I led the detectives to a small, vacant meeting room where we sat at a round butcher-block table with a computer on it.

  “You reported a break-in at your apartment last night,” Freitas said.

  “I did.”

  “And you claimed that your forty-five was stolen,” she said.

  “It was.”

  “The same gun we asked you about the last time we paid you a visit,” Wargart said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How convenient,” he said.

  “Not for me. You must have read the incident report, so you know my place was completely trashed. The bastard even killed Tuukka.”

  “Who the hell is that?” Wargart said.

  “My snake. You must remember Tuukka. The one without the feathers.”

  “Nice cover story,” Freitas said.

  “You think I did all that to myself?”

  “Sure you did,” she said. “And then you lied to the responding officers and said you think Mario Zerilli did it. That would make him pretty lively for a corpse, don’tcha think?”

  “Maybe he’s a zombie,” I said. “From what I see on TV, lots of dead people are turning into zombies nowadays. It’s a goddamned pandemic.”

  Wargart reached across the table and grabbed the neck of my T-shirt with his left fist.

  “What did you do with the forty-five, dickhead?”

  “If you want to keep that hand,” I said, “you better remove it right now.”

  “Are you threatening a police officer?”

  “Bet your ass.”

  Wargart gave me his best hard look, then let go of me.

  “He probably threw the gun in the river,” Freitas said.

  “Or down a storm drain, maybe,” Wargart said.

  “I didn’t,” I said, “but if I had, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you two hard cases about it.”

  “You know, Mulligan,” Freitas said, her voice softer now, “Mario was a women-beating, gay-bashing punk who will not be missed. He threatened your life, for godsakes. I bet you shot him in self-defense. Nobody could blame you for that. Why don’t you calm down and tell us what happened so we can all wrap this up and go home early.”

  “Really?” I said. “Does anybody ever fall for that?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Wargart said.

  “Where’s that other gun you own?” Freitas asked.

  “None of your business.”

  With that, they pulled themselves to their feet and stomped out.

  Once they were gone, I returned to my desk and rushed through the rest of the press releases. I needed to clear the decks, because this was going to be a big news day. The circus was coming to town.

  * * *

  The NCAA and the four major sports leagues had scheduled a joint press conference for three in the afternoon, giving local TV plenty of time to chop the speechifying down to a half minute of out-of-context sound bites for the five o’clock news. But just before one o’clock, Chuckie-boy shoved some empty Chinese food cartons aside, perched on the corner of my desk, and announced that he had something more pressing for me to do first.

  “Wait till you hear this,” he said. “The police just busted some mall cop they found living in an unused utility shed inside the Providence Place Mall parking structure. He’d actually set up housekeeping in
there. Had a sectional sofa, a dinette set, lamps, a microwave, a space heater, a TV. They say he was even stealing electricity and cable from the mall.”

  “Okay, I’m on it.”

  “Try to wrap this one up before the press conference starts, okay? It should make a hilarious page-one bright.”

  I didn’t think it was funny.

  According to the police report, thirty-one-year-old Joseph DeLucca had been arrested and charged with trespassing and theft of services, namely an estimated fifteen hundred bucks’ worth of the mall’s electricity. He’d already been arraigned and was being held in lockup in lieu of three hundred dollars bail.

  After scribbling the details in my notepad, I went to the bank, got a cash advance on my Visa, and got him sprung. Fifteen minutes later we were sitting in a booth at the diner near city hall waiting for Charlie to finish scorching our burgers.

  “Well,” Joseph said, “the fuckers finally caught me.”

  He’d moved into the shed eighteen months ago because he couldn’t afford both beer and rent on the pittance the mall paid him to strut around in a uniform and discourage theft. Given the thousands of bucks in cosmetics, running shoes, and small electronics he liberated from the loose-fitting clothes and oversize handbags the shoplifters favored, Joseph figured he was entitled. I thought he had a point.

  I’d first met Joseph about five years ago when the cottage he was living in with his elderly mother got burned down in the Mount Hope arson spree. Back then, he’d been nearly as wide as he was tall, but he’d dropped a hundred pounds the year he took a job as a bouncer at the Tongue & Groove. There, he got into a dispute over employee benefits. The manager accused him of abusing the strip club’s free-beer-and-blowjobs perk. Joseph insisted he’d been practicing admirable self-restraint. So they agreed to part ways, Joseph moving on to the mall cop job and the club manager to months of painful physical therapy. The manager made a sensible decision not to whine about it to the authorities.

  I’d visited Joseph occasionally in his illicit mall digs to guzzle Narragansett, eat pizza, and watch the Patriots and the Red Sox on TV.

  “So what are you going to do now, Joseph?”

  “Go to jail, I guess.”

  “This is your first offense, right?”

  “Second. Got busted with a quarter-ounce of weed a coupla years ago.”

  “You’ll get off with a lecture and fine. Probably less than a grand. But you’ll have to make restitution for the stolen electricity.”

  “And if I can’t pay?”

  “That could be a problem,” I said.

  “Shit.”

  “Maybe I can find a way to help you with that by the time your court date comes around. But first things first. Do you have a place to crash?”

  “If I did, you think I woulda been squattin’ in a fuckin’ shed?”

  “Tell you what. Why don’t you bunk down at my apartment for now?”

  “You’d do that for me?”

  “When we’re done eating, I’ll drop you there.”

  “Thanks, Mulligan. I owe you big time.”

  “I’ll get a key made for you tomorrow. Meanwhile, the place is wide open. Somebody broke in and trashed it last night. I’m afraid it’s an awful mess right now.”

  “Aw, hell. Did they catch the guy who done it?”

  “No, but I’ve got a pretty good idea who it was. If I find him, maybe you can hold him down for me while I break all his fingers and toes.”

  “You bet. Meanwhile, the least I can do is help you clean up.”

  “That would be great, Joseph. There’s some cleaning supplies under the sink. I’ll let the landlord know I’ve got a guest so he won’t be surprised when he comes by to fix the door.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you still driving that piece-of-crap pickup truck?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s trash day on the East Side, and wealthy people there tend to throw out a lot of good stuff. Think you could cruise around and see if you can salvage a few things we need?”

  “Like what?”

  “Anything but a refrigerator, bookshelves, and a kitchen table. Everything else in the place is wrecked.”

  * * *

  No bigwigs stood behind the microphone-spiked lectern that had been placed on the statehouse steps. No Roger Goodell, Adam Silver, Gary Bettman, Rob Manfred, or Mark Emmert. Instead, the commissioners of the four major sports leagues and the president of the NCAA had dispatched their press flunkies, all of them schooled in the art of manipulating the media.

  As the local TV affiliates, a half-dozen radio reporters, an AP reporter, and stringers for The Boston Globe and ESPN recorded the action, I roamed through the sparse crowd. Three members of the governor’s staff, the assistant director of the state Lottery Commission, and more than a dozen Rhode Island legislators had shown up to hear the speakers spout the same crap they’d spoon-fed me on the phone last week. I didn’t take many notes.

  I was chatting with Mason, who was covering the proceedings for his Ocean State Rag, when I spotted a middle-aged woman in a gray business suit working the crowd. She flitted from one legislator to another, shaking their hands and whispering furtively into their ears. The woman looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her at first. Then it came to me. I raised my Nikon and snapped a few shots of her before I made my approach.

  “Excuse me. My name is Mulligan. I’m a reporter for The Providence Dispatch.”

  “I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Mulligan.”

  “Can you tell me your name and who you represent?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Look, lady. I already took your picture. I can always show it around until I find someone who knows who you are. Why not save me the time?”

  “You photographed me?”

  “I did.”

  “Who authorized you to do that?”

  “The same person who authorized you to take pictures of me and the governor at Hopes the other night.”

  “Oh. You noticed that, huh?”

  “I did.”

  She narrowed her eyes and tried to stare me down. It didn’t work.

  “Why not be civil and introduce yourself?” I said.

  “Fine. My name is Cheryl Grandison. I’m the vice president of Stop Sports Gambling Now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A super PAC.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “We formed last year to oppose Governor Christie’s plan to legalize sports betting in New Jersey.”

  “Where’s your funding come from?”

  “Good luck figuring that out,” she said. Then she turned her back on me and stalked off.

  Federal law allowed super PACs to raise unlimited amounts of money. It also permitted them to spend it on lobbying, political advertising, or just about anything else as long as they didn’t contribute directly to political candidates. They were supposed to publicly disclose the names of their contributors, but they could accept donations from other organizations that didn’t have to say where their money came from. Regulators called it the Russian doll loophole. As a result, big donors could remain anonymous, and usually did.

  I took out my phone, punched in the number for the Campaign Finance Division of the State Board of Elections, and asked for Bud Henry.

  “I’ve got a question about a super PAC that just showed up in town to influence the pending sports gambling legislation,” I said.

  “Sorry, I but I don’t think I can give you much help on that,” he said. “Super PACs aren’t required to register with the state.”

  “You don’t regulate them at all?”

  “We haven’t dealt with them much,” he said. “Most of them are only active in federal elections. Sometimes they get involved in big-state gubernatorial races, but until now they haven’t bothered with Little Rhody.”

  “Are there any state rules they have to follow?”

  “Well, yeah. Whenever they spend at least a thousand dollars advocating for
a political candidate, they have to report that to us within seven days.”

  “What about money spent to advocate on a public issue?”

  “If we’re talking about a ballot initiative, they would have to comply with the same reporting requirement,” he said. “But if they just launch a media campaign to advocate on an issue like sports gambling, they don’t have to disclose their spending.”

  “Aw, crap,” I said. “That’s what I thought, but I wanted to make sure.”

  “Hey, Mulligan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Off the record, I don’t like it any more than you do.”

  * * *

  Back in the newsroom, I wrote up the mall-guy story and then banged out a column of copy about the press conference, mentioning the super PAC high up and hinting that big out-of-state money would soon be flooding in to influence the legislative process.

  An hour after I turned the copy in, Chuckie-boy called me into his office.

  “Did you get the woman’s phone number?” he asked.

  “What woman?”

  “The super PAC woman. What was it, again? Grandison?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You should have.”

  “I don’t see why,” I said. “She wasn’t that hot.”

  “Well, we need it. Our ad director wants to give her a call. The super PAC’s probably got a huge advertising budget. Most of it will be spent on TV spots, but we want to get a piece.”

  “Oh.”

  “You should be alert to opportunities like this, Mulligan. Where do you think your paycheck comes from?”

  “The tooth fairy?”

  “Can the jokes and track her down for us.”

  “Can’t advertising do that?”

  “Just call the area hotels and find out where she’s staying, okay?”

  “What about the Chinese wall between news and advertising?” I said.

  “Didn’t you hear? We tore that sucker down.”

  17

  After informing Chuckie-boy that Grandison was staying at the Omni, I needed beer to wash the bile from my throat. I figured it was going to take more than one.

  Ten minutes later, I pushed through the door to Hopes and was greeted by heartbreak on the jukebox and dark the way alcoholics crave it. I waited by the entrance until my eyes adjusted, took one step forward, and froze.