Cliff Walk

by Bruce DeSilva

  “Big plans for Thanksgiving?” she asked.

  “No. It’s just another workday for me.”

  “Oh. Well, the kids and I are having our turkey dinner around seven,” she said. “Would you like to join us?”

  “That’s sweet of you, but I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “You sure? I cook a mean turkey, and I could use a man to carve the bird and help wash all the dishes.”

  “I’m working a double shift, Angela. I won’t be home till eleven.”

  And so two days later I was sitting in Lomax’s chair, editing a lame feature on cranberry bogs and watching the Cowboys bully the Raiders, when the desk phone rang.

  “City desk, Mulligan.”

  “I’ve got an Angela Anselmo and her two kids down here,” the guard in the lobby said. “They’re asking can they come up.”

  “They look dangerous to you?” I asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  A minute later, Angela, Marta, and her fifteen-year-old brother, Nico, stepped off the elevator. Marta was carrying her violin case. Angela and Nico hefted plastic grocery bags.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” Angela and Marta cried in unison while Nico looked sullen and embarrassed to be in their company. Angela unpacked the bags, covering the city desk with Tupperware containers filled with what turned out to be roasted turkey, pomegranate-and-giblet gravy, sausage-and-mozzarella stuffing, sweet potatoes flavored with lime and ginger, and an assortment of Italian pastries. They’d also brought paper plates, plastic utensils, and a ten-cup Dunkin’ Donuts Box ’O Joe.

  “You didn’t need to do this,” I said.

  “We wanted to!” Marta said.

  “It was Marta’s idea,” said her proud mama.

  The little girl beamed, opened her violin case, tucked the instrument under her chin, and began to play “We Plow the Fields and Scatter.” The holiday skeleton crew, a half-dozen reporters and copy editors, stopped tapping their keyboards to listen. When she was done, everyone in the room except Nico, who looked even more uncomfortable than before, applauded the performance.

  “Enjoy your meal,” Angela said as Marta packed up her violin. She and Marta both hugged me and then turned for the elevator, Nico slouching along behind them. I picked up a plastic fork and dug in. The food was as good as it looked, tasty but mild enough to soothe the gnawing pain in my stomach.

  Late that night, I cracked open a fresh pint of Bushmills, collapsed on my mattress, and sipped from the bottle. The Irish whiskey did its job, keeping the little girl with no arms at bay. But in the morning, I woke up with a hot poker in my gut. I shuffled to the bathroom, felt the bile rise to my throat, and threw up in the sink. The vomit looked like bloody coffee grounds.

  I drove myself to the hospital, where an emergency room doctor gave me a quick going-over and promptly admitted me. I spent the rest of the day getting studied, stabbed, and prodded.

  * * *

  Next morning, I awoke to find Brian Israel sitting by my hospital bed, a stethoscope draped over his Hugo Boss suit jacket so the hot young nurses would know he’s a doctor.

  “How long have you had pain in your abdomen?” he asked.

  “Couple of years.”

  “And you didn’t think it was worth seeing me about it?”

  “I’ve been a little busy.”

  “So you’ve been self-medicating.”

  “I have.”

  “With what?”

  “Rolaids and Maalox.”

  “And about a month ago that stopped working, right?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And still you didn’t come see me?”

  “I was going to, soon as I could make the time.”

  “When did your clothes stop fitting right?”

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “Couple of weeks ago, I guess. Figured I’d just gained a little weight.”

  “More likely you were bloating.”

  “Because of what I’ve got?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And what I’ve got is an ulcer,” I said.

  “Looked up your symptoms on WebMD, did you?”

  “Matter of fact, I did.”

  “The EGD—the tube with the little camera on it that we stuck down your throat—told us you’ve got a one-centimeter gastric ulcer.”

  “How big is that in English?”

  “About the size of a dime.”

  “Okay.”

  “Because you didn’t get it treated, it perforated your stomach lining.”

  “That explains the bloody vomit?”

  “Exactly. When we did the EGD, we cauterized the wound. We also biopsied your stomach lining and found Helicobacter pylori.”

  “I’d heard he was missing.”

  The doc didn’t crack a smile. “It’s a bacteria,” he said. “It’s what caused your problem, but there were probably contributing factors.”

  “Such as?”

  “Still smoking cigars?”

  “One or two a day, yeah.”

  “Drink a lot of coffee?”

  “Gallons.”

  “Skip meals? Eat at odd times?”

  “Goes with the job.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  “So now what?”

  He pulled some drug samples from the side pocket of his jacket and dropped them on the bedside table. “Amoxicillin to kill the bacteria and omeprazole to suppress stomach acid. I’ll give you a prescription for the amoxicillin, which I want you to take twice a day for two weeks. You can buy omeprazole over the counter, and you’ll be on that for life. Rolaids or Tums several times a day are a good idea, too. They protect the stomach lining.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Stop smoking, eat regular meals, and stick to a bland diet. No fried food, spices, cheese, caffeine, carbonated beverages, or alcohol.”

  “Aw, shit. You just described my entire diet,” I said, and he chuckled like he thought I was kidding.

  “Look, you need to take this seriously, Mulligan. If you don’t, we might have to remove a piece of your stomach. Worst case, it could even be fatal.”

  “Okay, okay. So when do I get out of here?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said, so twenty-four hours later I walked out the door of Rhode Island Hospital, found Secretariat where I’d left him in the emergency room parking lot, took a Partagás from the glove box, and fired it up. I knew I’d have to cut back, but one or two a week probably wouldn’t kill me.

  28

  It was getting dark when I swung the Bronco left onto Route 6, glanced in my side mirror, and saw a white Hummer lurch across two lines of traffic to make the same turn. It was three cars back when I turned north onto Route 295 and still behind me when I took the exit for Hartford Avenue in Johnston. I turned into a gas station, pulled up to the pumps, and watched the Hummer slowly roll by and keep on going. I couldn’t see anything through its tinted windows.

  Johnston Town Hall marked the halfway point between the Dispatch and state police headquarters in Scituate. When I turned into the parking lot, Parisi was already there. I nosed in beside his Crown Vic, and we both slid our windows down.

  “Can’t believe you’re still driving that heap,” he said.

  “Shhh! You’re going to hurt Secretariat’s feelings.”

  “You named your car?”

  “I did, but don’t let it fool you. He’s slower than he looks.”

  “Doesn’t seem possible,” he said. “So tell me, did you ever talk to the Maniellas’ lawyer?”

  “I did.”

  “She tell you anything?”

  “She told me she doesn’t date white guys.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I don’t give a shit about your love life, Mulligan. Did she tell you anything that would interest me?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether your interests
include chitlins, the Chicago Cubs, and the blues.”

  “They don’t.”

  “Well then, no.”

  He looked at me hard for a moment, then said, “We finally got a formal ID on Sal.”

  “How’d you manage that?” I asked, the question triggering Parisi’s trademark five-second time delay.

  “I did a little digging and found out the Maniellas illegally filled a thousand square yards of wetlands when they put their dock in last spring. If the state Environmental Protection Agency gets wind of it, they’ll have to rip the whole thing out. I told Vanessa it could be our little secret if she agreed to cooperate.”

  “So she made the ID?”

  “At the morgue, she claimed she couldn’t bear to look at the body, so she had her sixty-two-year-old mother do it.”

  “That’s cold,” I said.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Anything else on Sal?”

  Five seconds of silence, and then: “Not that I can tell you.”

  “What about the body parts at the pig farm?”

  “Still a dead end,” he said. “Now your turn.”

  “I hear that a prominent citizen is worried his name might surface in the Providence PD’s child porn case.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Right now it’s just a rumor, so I’d rather not say.”

  “Are you suggesting a connection between that case and the Maniellas?” Parisi asked.

  “Do you think there could be one?”

  “As far as I know, Sal has never stooped to child porn, so I doubt it,” he said, “but I’ll keep an open mind. What else you got?”

  “I dropped in on King Felix a few days before the shooting at the Tongue and Groove.”

  “And?”

  “He was still popping Vicodin from the beating DeLucca gave him.”

  “Meet his baby hit squad?”

  “I did,” I said. “Got to see Jamal before the Providence cops shot him full of holes.”

  “What about the other one?”

  “Felix called him Marcus. A couple of inches taller and maybe a year or two older than Jamal.”

  “How’d he strike you?”

  “Like a snake coiled to strike.”

  “His full name is Marcus Washington and he’s sixteen,” Parisi said. “We’ve got surveillance video of him shooting beer cans at twenty feet behind the Calvary Baptist Church.”

  “With a little nickel pistol?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He hit any of them?”

  “About a quarter of the time, yeah.”

  “That’s pretty good shooting.”

  “It is,” Parisi said. “If Felix sent him after DeLucca, things might have turned out different.”

  “Wonder why he didn’t.”

  “Maybe he’s saving him for something else.”

  “Think Felix had Sal whacked?” I asked.

  Parisi took longer than usual to consider his answer. “I doubt it. His beef is with DeLucca. The dumb shit probably doesn’t even know who Sal is. So what else you got?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Then you got jack shit.”

  “No disrespect, Captain, but so do you.”

  “Unless I know more than I’m telling.”

  “You usually do,” I said.

  “You gonna stay on this?”

  “Whenever I can break away from the routine crap.”

  “Let’s compare notes again in a week or so,” he said. “And get that muffler replaced, or next time I’m writing you up.” With that, he cranked the engine of his Crown Vic and fishtailed out of the lot.

  As I pulled onto Hartford Avenue, I didn’t see the Hummer lurking. I drove less than a mile to the Subway on Atwood Avenue, ordered a veggie sandwich, and ate the vile thing standing up. Then I walked out of the place into a light rain and found the white monstrosity parked beside my Bronco. The Hummer’s front doors swung open, and Black Shirt and Gray Shirt climbed out. This time, though, they wore matching XXXL Patriots jerseys. That made it hard to tell them apart. They leaned against the back of the Bronco and slowly shook their heads, letting me know I’d disappointed them.

  “You and your pal Mason have been asking questions again,” said the one on the left.

  “Which we asked you nicely not to do,” said the one on the right.

  “So one of us is going to have to teach you a lesson,” said the one on the left. He flexed and added, “You get to choose.”

  “What if I win?”

  “If you pick him,” said the one on the right, “you might have a one-in-a-thousand shot, but then you’ll just have to fight me.”

  “Are you two carrying?” I asked, and they burst out laughing. The idea that they’d need a weapon to deal with me struck them as hilarious.

  “Well, I am,” I said, and I showed them the Colt. They didn’t wet their pants, but they didn’t come for me, either.

  “You told us it wasn’t in working condition,” said the one on the right.

  “I lied.”

  “Know how to use it?”

  I thumbed the safety off and assumed a shooter’s stance.

  They shrugged, got back in the Hummer, and drove away. I wondered if they were going home to fetch their guns.

  29

  Nighttime at Swan Point Cemetery was the perfect spot for a gunfight—plenty of cover and no one around to hear the shots—but I probably hadn’t irritated Vanessa enough to provoke anything more than a savage beating. I had no trouble finding Rosie in the dark. I unfolded the Manny Ramirez jersey and draped it over her headstone.

  “Rosie, I’m horny,” I said. But she was in no position to help me with that.

  “No, I’m still not getting any from that hot lawyer. She seems to be warming up to me, but not in that way. The good news is she hasn’t said, ‘Let’s just be friends,’ yet. Think I might still have a chance?”

  I sat beside Rosie in the wet grass, and together we looked at the sky. A light rain was falling, so there were no stars to wish on.

  “The little girl with no arms visits my dreams every night,” I said. “Yes, it is hard on me. Probably hard on her, too.”

  With that, my imagination failed me. I could no longer hear Rosie’s voice. I sat with her in the dark, my hand resting on the shoulder of her gravestone, until the rain turned to snow. By the time I got home, it was coming down hard.

  30

  Tuesday afternoon, I was dashing off a fender bender wrap-up for Lomax when “Confused” by a San Francisco punk band called the Nuns began playing in my pants pocket.

  “Afternoon, Fiona.”

  “Let’s talk.”

  “Hopes?”

  “In ten minutes,” she said, and hung up.

  Except for a couple of alkies hunched over boilermakers at the bar, Hopes was nearly deserted, the snow keeping the regulars away. I asked the barkeep for a club soda. It probably wasn’t the best thing for my ulcer, but I figured it was better than beer. I carried the drink to Fiona’s table, draped my hooded army surplus parka over the back of a chair, and sat across from her. The gold wedding band God had given her gleamed on her ring finger.

  “So what’s up?” I asked.

  “Frank Drebin and Police Squad! still aren’t getting anywhere with the Maniella murder,” she said.

  “Same story with the body parts at Scalici’s pig farm,” I said.

  “Problem with the body parts is we got no suspects,” she said. “Problem with the Maniella murder is we got too many.”

  “Think Vanessa had Sal whacked so she could take over the family business?”

  “No evidence to support it,” Fiona said, “but she’s got a hell of a motive.”

  “She’s not the only one,” I said, and told her about the rival porn producers boogying on Sal’s grave.

  “There’s also the Mob,” Fiona said. “Maybe Arena and Grasso whacked Sal to settle their old
strip club beef.”

  “Could be,” I said.

  “What about your old pal King Felix? How does he fit into this?”

  “I don’t think he does,” I said. “His beef is with DeLucca.”

  “Can’t rule him out, though,” she said. She took another swallow of Bud, picked her box of Marlboro 100’s off the table, shook one out, and stuck it between her lips. I whipped out my lighter, and she leaned into the flame.

  “Families of porn actresses?” I said.

  “Parisi’s working that angle. He’s interrogated a bunch of them who are angry enough to have done it, but so far their alibis are holding up.”

  “What about vigilantes?” I said.

  “Like who?”

  “A radical feminist group, maybe. Or right-wing religious zealots like the Sword of God. Did you know they’ve been picketing the Maniellas’ strip clubs?”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “I made Reverend Crenson’s acquaintance the other day,” I said. “That’s one scary dude. Looks just like Reverend Kane in Poltergeist II.”

  “Really? I think he looks more like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.”

  “Yeah, I can see that, too.”

  “We’ve had our eye on him since last winter,” she said, “when his parishioners started sending hate mail to Sheldon Whitehouse and Patrick Kennedy.”

  “About what?”

  “Their votes for Obama’s ‘death panels,’ their support for our ‘coon’ president’s ‘socialist agenda,’ and their secret plan to take everyone’s guns away.”

  “The church has been around for what, a couple of years?”

  “More like ten, but they kept a low profile until last year.”

  “Before he got canned,” I said, “our religion writer told me the church took its name from a Roger Williams quote. I don’t remember it word for word, but I don’t think our gentle founder was advocating the use of firearms.”

  History preserved a lot of Williams’s words, but no portrait—not even a description of him—has been handed down to us. The fourteen-foot-tall granite Roger Williams who stares down from Prospect Park, arms outstretched to bless the city he founded, is entirely made up. Leo Friedlander’s statue has been up there since it was dedicated in 1939. Several years ago, vandals whacked the thumb and all five fingers from his right hand. I doubt they even knew who he was.