50
Lomax stripped Mason’s story across page one on Sunday, and it caused an immediate sensation. Preachers denounced the governor and the state legislature from the pulpit. The governor, in turn, denounced the paper for spreading the lie that he’d taken money from a pornographer—and then promised to return it. The Sword of God, assault rifles at port arms, picketed the governor’s McMansion in Warwick, chanting, “Little Rhody is not for sale”—a slogan that couldn’t have been more inaccurate. Fiona announced a criminal investigation and demanded immediate passage of her bill outlawing prostitution. All the national TV networks trumpeted the story. CNN embellished its coverage with a hastily prepared feature on Rhode Island corruption through the ages, complete with video of a dozen mayors, judges, and state legislators being led away in handcuffs. FOX News dressed up its report with spy camera video of half-naked hookers cavorting inside the Tongue and Groove. And a good time was had by all.
On Tuesday, the judiciary committees sent Fiona’s bill to the floors of the house and senate. Wednesday morning, the house passed it by a vote of 72–2 with one abstention, and that afternoon, the senate approved it by a vote of 38–0. Thursday morning, the governor signed it into law. And that evening, Fiona went on television to crow that “the shameful era of legalized prostitution in Rhode Island is over” and to hint that she was considering a run for governor. I had to squint to be sure, but I think she was wearing makeup.
Next morning, the Dispatch’s editors huddled to discuss whether the newspaper should continue to refer to Fiona as “Attila the Nun.” Lomax was in favor, calling the appellation colorful and instantly recognizable. The fuddy-duddy copydesk chief was opposed, saying it was now technically inaccurate. As the debate heated up, I could hear their raised voices through the closed conference room door.
The new law made prostitution a misdemeanor punishable by six months in prison, a one-thousand-dollar fine, or both, and it applied equally to hookers and their Johns. The strip clubs were given just a week to clean up their act, and Mayor Carroza vowed that the Providence Police Department would be vigilant in enforcing it. So the night the law went live, I decided to check it out.
There were only a dozen cars in the parking lot at the Tongue and Groove. Inside, I found Joseph DeLucca chugging a beer at the bar. He wiped the foam from his upper lip with the tail of his Hawaiian shirt as I sat beside him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you got promoted.”
“That’s only for when the ex-SEALs are out of town.”
“Oh. Too bad.”
“Not really. I like this job better.”
“How come?”
“Free beer and pussy.”
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I spotted several bullet holes from slugs that had gone wide of King Felix’s nervous triggerman. I looked around and saw only six girls and a handful of customers in the place.
“Slow night?” I said.
“Thank God,” he said. “I need the breather.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s been fuckin’ nuts in here the last week. Guys in a panic about the new law showed up in droves. All the regulars, half the student bodies of URI and PC, busloads of horny bastards from Boston, Hartford, and Worcester. All of ’em desperate to legally screw a hooker one last time. And don’t even ask me about last night. It was un-fuckin’-believable!”
“Tell me more.”
“By nine o’clock I counted four hundred guys in here, which is fifty over the legal limit, and there were more outside trying to force their way in. I put the other bouncer on the door, told him not to let anyone else in until somebody came out. That left me alone on the inside, and it wasn’t pretty.”
“How so?”
“Four hundred horny guys and forty hookers? You do the fuckin’ math.”
“Fistfights?”
“A couple, yeah. And a whole lot of pushin’ and shovin’.”
“That how you got the shiner?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You got only ten private rooms here, right?”
“Right.”
“How’d that work out?”
“Would have had a fuckin’ riot, we hadn’t let the girls straddle guys reverse cowgirl at the cocktail tables. Shoulda been here, Mulligan. It was one hell of a party.”
“But it’s all over now,” I said.
“No, not really.”
“How do you mean?”
“Business will pick up again once word gets around.”
“What word?” I asked.
“Hang around for a while and you’ll see for yourself.” He waved the bartender over and asked him to bring us a couple of Buds.
“How’s the leg?” I asked.
“Healed up good as new.”
We were watching a Hispanic girl with a strawberry birthmark on her ass hump a stripper pole when a tall brunette in a G-string and nothing else pranced up and rubbed her palm against the front of my jeans.
“I’m Caramel. What’s your name?”
“They call me Mulligan.”
“Want to have some fun with Caramel tonight, Mulligan?”
What I thought was that Marical would be even more fun, but what I said was: “I heard all the fun ended last night.”
“You heard wrong.”
“Yeah?”
“Why don’t we find a dark corner where I can suck your cock? Or if you want, we can get a private room, and you can fuck me.”
The complimentary card for a trip around the world was still in my wallet. I wondered if I was the only one who heard it singing. It crooned the chorus to “Bad Girl” and segued into the opening verse of “Honky Tonk Women.”
I met a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis …
“Sorry, Caramel. I think I’ll just sit here and watch the show.”
“You sure?”
“I am.”
“If you change your mind, just call out my name, okay?”
“Sure thing,” I said.
She spun on her stilettos and was gone.
“What’s up with that?” I asked Joseph.
“Just business as usual.”
“What about the law?”
“What about it?”
I thought about it for half a second. “When the governor and the state legislators stop taking your money,” I said, “you pay off the cops.”
“Mulligan,” he said, “you never heard that from me.”
51
Maybe it was because I’d gone so long without sex, but today Vanessa Maniella looked especially enticing in a tight cashmere sweater that showed off the swell of her breasts and a short gray skirt that displayed a fine pair of legs.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet me,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
“I thought it was time we got to know each other better.”
“Of course you did. My boyish charm is hard to resist.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“No?”
“I’m not into men.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“Don’t tell my achy breaky heart.”
“Billy Ray Cyrus?”
“Yeah, but he wrote it about me.”
We were seated at a table for two in the Cheesecake Factory at the Providence Place Mall. Outside the plate glass window, I could see Black Shirt, or maybe it was Gray Shirt, keeping an eye on us from a Hummer that was parked illegally on the street.
Before I could ask Vanessa what she really wanted, the waiter arrived to take our drink orders, a pineapple mojito for her and a club soda for me.
“On the wagon? I thought you’d be celebrating.”
“And why would I be doing that?”
“Your story about our campaign contributions is getting a lot of attention,” she said.
“It is, but my sidekick, Mason, did most of the work.”
“Bet the two of you are heroes at the Dispatch thes
e days.”
“Oh, yeah. They’re erecting a statue of us in the lobby.”
“Probably win one of those big journalism prizes, too,” she said.
“No way. They always go to long, boring five-part series that no one ever reads—except, of course, for the poor bastards who have to edit them. Dave Barry, the humor columnist, says newspapers should stop publishing them—that they should just write them up and submit them for prizes. He figures that would save enough trees for a new national park.”
“Maybe they could call it the Pulitzer Forest,” Vanessa said.
“That’s just what Dave Barry said.”
“Well, your story certainly impressed me,” she said. “I thought we’d done a pretty good job of covering our tracks.”
“You had.”
“That’s why my father and I want you to come to work for us. We need someone with your abilities.”
“And how would I be using them, exactly?”
“To find other people who are good at covering their tracks.”
“What people?”
“We can’t get into that until you agree to take the job.”
“Pig in a poke,” I said.
“You’d be digging up dirt on some bad people, Mulligan. And we can pay you a hundred K to start.”
“Would I have to wear a tie?”
“Wear whatever you want.”
No way I would ever work for the Maniellas, but I allowed myself a moment to dream on what a hundred grand a year would buy. More vintage blues records. A better sound system to play them on. An apartment with no cracks in the plaster. A Ford Mustang to replace Secretariat. Name it Citation, maybe. Or better yet, Seabiscuit.
“So what do you say?” she said.
“I’m thinking about it.” I wondered if the new Mustang came in yellow.
“I think you’d like the fringe benefits,” she said.
“Dental?”
“No, but the women at my clubs would be available to you whenever you wanted them.”
“Ah.”
“One of the girls at Shakehouse looks a lot like Yolanda,” she said. And then she winked.
“Yum,” I said.
“Use that complimentary card I sent you?”
“I haven’t.”
“Really?” she said, her eyes widening in surprise.
“Really.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got some scruples I didn’t realize I still had.”
“Need some more time to think about the job?”
“I do,” I said, hoping I could learn more by stringing her on.
“Okay, but don’t take too long. Our offer won’t last forever.”
The waiter arrived to replenish our drinks, rattle off the specials, and take our orders. She asked for the Chinese chicken salad. I ordered the club sandwich.
“So, Mulligan,” she said, “how long before the Dispatch goes out of business?”
“Don’t know. A couple of years, maybe.”
“Dad’s been reading your stuff online. He says you don’t write well enough to hook on with a slick magazine or make a living writing books.”
“I’m afraid he’s right about that.”
“What will you do if you don’t take our offer?”
“No idea.”
“Public relations?”
“Christ, I hope not. I’d rather dig graves than write press releases for Textron or flack for the governor.”
Vanessa shook her blond tresses and giggled. “Scruples suck, don’t they?”
“They do. I’ve tried to run them off, but they keep crawling back.”
The entrées arrived, and we both dug in.
“You said you wanted us to get to know each other,” I said. “Is that a two-way street?”
“Got some questions about me, do you?”
“I do.”
“So ask them.”
“How come you live with your parents?”
“I didn’t always. In my twenties, I was married for a couple of years, but that didn’t work out. For obvious reasons. I moved back home, and I’ve been living there ever since.”
“Doesn’t cramp your style?”
“I’ve got my own entrance. My lifestyle isn’t an issue with Mom and Dad. And our main office is in the house, so my daily commute is a ten-second walk down the stairs.”
“What’s it like being a woman who runs a business that exploits women?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Come again?”
“I know you’ve been in our clubs, Mulligan. Have you watched the girls interact with the customers?”
“Sure.”
“The way they flirt to get the men to spend money on them?”
“I’ve watched them grind on laps and stick boobs in faces. Had it done to me once or twice, too, but it didn’t occur to me to call it ‘flirting.’”
“And who do you think is being exploited in these situations?”
“Ah,” I said. “I see what you mean.”
“There’s always gonna be prostitution, Mulligan. As long as men have cash and women have pussies. Some of the girls do it because it’s easier than working for a living. Some do it because it’s the only way they have of making a living. We give them a safe, clean place to work. They get free medical checkups once a month. And we protect them from street pimps who would abuse them, hook them on heroin, and take most of their money.”
“You make it sound like a public service.”
Vanessa sighed and ran her finger around the rim of her empty cocktail glass.
“Dad and I talked about closing the clubs after Attila the Nun’s bill passed,” she said. “The money they bring in really isn’t worth the hassle. But then we thought about what would happen to the girls if we closed up shop.”
“King Felix would happen,” I said.
“And a dozen more like him, yeah. So we decided to stay open.”
“By paying off the cops,” I said.
“Can you prove that?”
“Not yet, but I bet I could if I tried.”
“Then don’t try,” she said.
“What about the pornography business?” I said. “Nobody being exploited there, either?”
“It’s pretty much the same as with the clubs, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“With porn, the men aren’t exploited, either. They get laid and paid.”
“A perfect world,” I said.
“Smart-ass.”
“I can’t help it. It’s genetic.”
“Then I’ll try to make allowances.”
“So how does child porn fit into this perfect world?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Never dabbled in that?”
“Of course not. It’s an abomination.”
“Never cut up any little kids and fed them to Cosmo Scalici’s pigs?”
“And we were having such a nice conversation up till now, Mulligan. I can’t believe you would ask me that.”
The waiter cleared away our plates and took our dessert orders. Vanessa ordered the chocolate tower truffle cake. I asked for another club soda.
“While you’re mulling our job offer,” Vanessa said, “do you think you could refrain from poking into my family’s business?”
“Hard to say.”
“I could have the ex-SEALs pay you another visit.”
“Wouldn’t do any good,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I kinda figured that.”
52
“The Maniellas offered me a job,” I said.
“Doing what?” Lomax said.
“They were a little vague about that.”
“I’ve seen you in the shower at the Y, so it can’t be on-camera work.”
“Fuck you.”
“What’s it pay?”
“A hundred grand to start.”
“Then if you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”
“This could b
e our chance to find out what the hell is going on,” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“I take the job undercover, see what I can learn from the inside.”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t do things that way. You know that.”
“Maybe we should reconsider.”
“Uh-uh. These things always go badly. ABC’s undercover investigation of the Food Lion grocery chain ended up costing them a fortune in legal bills. We don’t tell lies in order to report the truth, Mulligan.”
53
A mystery that began with a single murder more than five months ago now had tentacles that stretched from Newport’s scenic Cliff Walk to a bloody bedroom in the Chad Brown housing project, from a Pascoag pig farm to a bullet-riddled strip club in Providence. It had taken the lives of an ex–navy SEAL, three snuff film producers, a Brown University dean, a New Jersey child porn aficionado, and a pedophile priest in Michigan. I didn’t give a shit about any of them, but it had also snuffed out an uncertain number of children.
I’d gotten some page one stories out of it, but I still didn’t know what the hell was going on. I decided to take another stab in the dark.
A half hour on Google turned up several dozen charities dedicated to finding missing children and protecting them from sexual predators: the Polly Klaas, Amber Watch, Bring Sean Home, Child Alert, Tommy, and Molly Bish Foundations, the National Child Safety Council, and a bunch more. Most were organized as 501(c)(3) charities. That meant the names of their benefactors were a matter of public record.
As it turned out, Sal Maniella had donated money to five of them—more than three million dollars over the last ten years. His daughter, Vanessa, had contributed another quarter of a million. I wondered why. I figured the easiest way to find out would be to ask them, so I called the lake house and got them both on speaker.
“Your numbers are correct,” Sal said, “but is it necessary to put this in the paper? We understand that it’s public information, but we prefer to keep a low profile.”
“That’s right,” Vanessa said. “We don’t want every bleeding heart on the planet hitting us up for a donation.”
“I understand that,” I said, “but can’t help wondering why you are so generous with this particular cause.”
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