Either way, he was the key. If I didn’t stop snooping around, he’d be back. That’s what he’d promised. All I had to do to lay my hands on him was provoke him into coming for me again.
50
That evening, Veronica and I shared a pepperoni pizza at Casserta’s, and I told her my plan. She didn’t think it was as brilliant as I did.
“That’s crazy,” she said. “No story’s worth getting beaten up.”
“Some stories are.”
“I’ll bet Gloria doesn’t think so.”
I didn’t have a response to that.
“Please, baby,” she said, her voice thick with worry. “He might really hurt you this time.”
“He’s the one who’s going to get hurt.”
“Well, count me out,” she said. “I don’t plan on being there when he shows up. Sorry, cowboy, but you’ll be sleeping alone until this blows over.”
“I could come over to your place for a few hours, then go back to mine,” I said.
“I’d like that, but not tonight. I’m busy.”
Busy? I didn’t like the sound of that, but I decided not to make an issue of it. I paid the tab, leaned across the table for a kiss, and slid out of the booth.
“Be careful, baby,” she said. “Providence would be a lonely place without you.”
When I got home, I snapped on the TV to catch the Red Sox’ third game against the Tigers. Wakefield pitched Boston to a 4–2 lead after six, and Sox hitters mauled a trio of Tigers relief pitchers. Final score, 12–6. I grinned and shut the TV off.
I fidgeted with my cell, changing the ring tone to “Am I Losing You?” by the Cate Brothers, my favorite tune by that great Arkansas blues band. Then I took the shadow box down from the wall, pried the back open, and removed my grandfather’s Colt .45. I sat cross-legged on the floor and spent a half hour cleaning it and thinking about him.
“Bust ’em or dust ’em.” That’s what Grandpa used to say.
Wiping away the excess gun oil, I idly thought about buying some bullets. But the little thug was, well, little. What did I need with bullets?
51
Next morning I visited Gloria in the hospital. Her voice was stronger, but she still seemed defeated somehow. She kept whispering, “Thank you, Mulligan,” as if I’d done something besides let her wander Mount Hope’s streets alone.
An hour later I was wheeling Secretariat through the old neighborhood, with Jimmy Thackery’s “Blue Dog Prowl” growling from my CD player. It made me feel like prowling. I found Joseph DeLucca in front of his place, loading cardboard boxes onto the bed of a Bondo-patched Ford pickup.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, Joseph. Can I give you a hand?”
“Nah. I’m about done. I borrowed the truck ’cause I thought there’d be more, but all that’s left is what’s in them fuckin’ boxes.”
It wasn’t much—silverware, a few pots and pans, some mismatched dishes, a few hand tools, a couple of framed photos, a dozen water-stained books in matching leather bindings that smelled of smoke.
Out of curiosity, I reached in and pulled out a volume. Bleak House by Charles Dickens.
“You oughta read that, you get a chance,” Joseph said. “This guy can fuckin’ write!”
Joseph reads Dickens? Joseph can read? Mark Twain and I had been wrong about him. It was his bright side that he never showed to anybody.
“When I talked to you last week, you said something about wishing you’d sold the place when you had the chance. Did you have it on the market?”
“Nah. But there was this girl who come knocking on our door, asking about buyin’ it.”
“Just knocked on the door and made an offer out of the blue?”
“Right out of the fuckin’ blue.”
“When was this?”
“January. No, February, ’cause all them Nigger History Month specials was screwing with my TV shows.”
I winced at his choice of words and asked, “Who was this girl?”
“Don’t remember her name, but she gave me her fuckin’ card.”
He pulled a warped leather wallet out of his hip pocket, extracted a dog-eared business card, and shoved it at me. Raised navy blue letters printed on good stock read “Cheryl Scibelli, Registered Agent, Little Rhody Realty Co.” Below it, a phone number but no address.
Little Rhody. One of the mystery real estate companies.
“Mind if I keep this?
“Knock yourself out.”
I stabled Secretariat in front of Joseph’s house and walked around the neighborhood knocking on the doors of single-family homes, the buildings most likely to be owner-occupied. That got me three slammed doors, four nobody-homes, two renters, and six homeowners. Turned out I knew them all—a former gym teacher, three old classmates from Hope High, Annie’s mom, and Jack Hart, the guy who took over Dad’s milk route when his eyesight failed. Five of the six said they’d been approached about selling. Two already had and were about to move out. Four of them still had business cards from Cheryl Scibelli of Little Rhody Realty.
I crossed Camp Street, leaving the fire-plagued southeast quadrant of the neighborhood behind, and knocked on more doors. That turned up five more home owners, none of whom had ever heard of Cheryl Scibelli or Little Rhody Realty.
On my way back to the Bronco, I cut up Catalpa Street and passed a crew from Dio Construction loading what was left of the rooming house into a dump truck. That’s when it hit me. Why was Johnny Dio’s company the only one I’d seen knocking down torched buildings in Mount Hope?
52
“Little Rhody Realty!” The voice was perky and eager to be helpful.
“May I speak with Mr. Dio, please?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but there is no one here by that name.”
“Well, may I speak to Mr. Giordano then?”
“I’m sorry”—the voice colder now—“but there is no one here by that name, either.”
“How about Charlie Radbourn or Barney Gilligan? Actually, any dead member of the Providence Grays will do.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“Is Cheryl Scibelli available?”
“I’m afraid she’s gone for the day, sir.”
“Do me a favor, then. Next time Johnny Dio or Vinnie Giordano come in, tell them Mulligan called looking for them.”
She told me again that she’d never heard of them, and maybe she hadn’t. I said good-bye and hung up.
If Little Rhody had anything to do with the fires …
And if Dio or Giordano had anything to do with Little Rhody …
And if the receptionist gave one of them my message …
And if the little thug worked for one of them …
Well, then maybe I’d be getting another visit from him soon.
53
That night I picked up Chinese takeout and drove to Veronica’s place in Fox Point. We ate chicken with garlic sauce and shrimp lo mein straight from the cartons as she talked about her day. The evening was a blur of food and chat until we got naked and tumbled into bed.
Again, Veronica guided my head to her chest, but not so I could relax. I took my time exploring, and by the time our bodies locked in rhythm, the woman had become a full-blown addiction.
When my breathing returned to normal I twisted away from her, snatched my jeans off the carpet, and fumbled for something in the side pocket.
“Here. I want you to have this.”
She sat up in bed, opened the little blue box, and lifted the necklace out on a finger. It wasn’t much, but it managed to glisten a little. A tiny sterling Underwood typewriter on a silver chain.
“It’s beautiful. L. S. A. Mulligan showing his sweet side?”
I shrugged and lifted her hair as she fastened the clasp behind her neck. And then she kissed me.
Later, there was a new kind of pillow talk. Veronica wanted to discuss the future.
“What’s next for you, Mulligan?”
“I’ve got so
me incorporation papers to recheck.”
“No, no, not that. What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”
“Oh. First off, I want to get my divorce finalized.”
“That would be good place to start.”
“Then I want to sit in the center-field bleachers at Fenway Park with my best girl and watch the Red Sox win the World Series again.”
“Your best girl? Would that be me?”
“It would.”
“Then what?”
“Then I can die happy.”
“Hey, be serious for a minute, okay?”
I thought I was being serious, but what I said was, “Okay.”
“You’ve been in Rhode Island for a long time, Mulligan.”
“All my life.”
“Isn’t it time you moved on to something better?”
“Like what?”
“The Washington Post? The New York Times? The Wall Street Journal, maybe?”
“Move someplace where I can’t get the Red Sox on free TV? Besides, you know what the newspaper job market is like. Those rags aren’t hiring; they’re laying off.”
“Yeah, but they always have room for an investigative reporter with a drawer full of awards.”
“Nobody wants to hear about a ten-year-old Pulitzer, Veronica.”
“Yes, they do,” she said. “And your Polk was just two years ago.”
“Um.”
“What about television news? CNN, maybe.”
“With my face?”
I waited for her to protest, but she didn’t. Instead she said, “Wolf Blitzer is no prize either.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Think about it, baby? What would you be doing with your life if you could do anything you wanted?”
“I’m doing it,” I said.
“You actually like it here?”
“Naked next to you? Are you kidding?”
“Be serious!”
I grinned. “Do you know how Rhode Island got its name, Veronica?”
“No, but I bet you’re going to tell me.”
“Actually, I’m not. Fact is, nobody knows for sure. Historians have poked into it for years, but all they’ve come up with are a few half-baked theories.”
“So?”
“So one of them goes like this: Rhode Island is a bastardization of Rogue Island, a name the sturdy farmers of colonial Massachusetts bestowed upon the swarm of heretics, smugglers, and cutthroats who first settled the shores of Narragansett Bay.”
Veronica snickered and tossed her hair. I liked it when she did that.
“They ought to change the name back,” she said. “Rhode Island is boring. Rogue Island has pizzazz.”
It’s also apt. For more than a hundred years, pirates slipped from Narragansett Bay’s hidden coves to prey on merchant shipping. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Rhode Island shipmasters dominated the American slave trade. During the French and Indian War and again during the Revolution, heavily armed privateers skulked out of Providence and Newport to seize prizes with little regard for the flags they flew. After the Civil War, Boss Anthony, a co-owner of The Providence Journal, kept his Republican machine in power for decades by buying votes at the going rate of two bucks apiece. Around the turn of the century, Nelson Aldrich, a former Providence grocery clerk immortalized in David Graham Phillips’s “The Treason of the Senate,” helped robber barons plunder the country. In the 1950s and 1960s, a Providence mobster named Raymond L. S. Patriarca was the most powerful man in New England, deciding everything from what records got played on the radio to who lived and who died. And Mayor Carroza’s predecessor, the honorable Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr., recently did federal time for conspiring to run a criminal enterprise, also known as the city of Providence.
“Of course, we do know how Providence got its name,” I said. “Roger Williams christened his city in thanksgiving for God’s divine guidance. Cotton Mather’s suggestions, ‘the fag end of creation’ and ‘the sewer of New England,’ mercifully didn’t stick.”
“And this is why you like it here?”
“I grew up here. I know the cops and the robbers, the barbers and the bartenders, the judges and the hit men, the whores and the priests. I know the state legislature and the Mafia inside out, and they’re pretty much the same thing. When I write about a politician buying votes or a cop on the pad, the jaded citizenry just chuckles and shrugs its shoulders. That used to bother me. It doesn’t anymore. Rogue Island is a theme park for investigative reporters. It never closes, and I can ride the roller coaster free all day.
“Besides, if I tried to write about some place I don’t know, I could never do it as well.”
“Sure you could,” she said. “Think of how much fun you’d have going after all the crooks in Washington.”
Washington? That was the second time she mentioned Washington.
“You’ve applied to The Post, haven’t you?”
“Let me tell you something about my family, Mulligan. My sister Lucy? She starts Harvard Medical School in the fall. My brother Charles? At thirty he’s already a VP at Price Waterhouse. Me? I bust my ass covering ‘the fag end of creation’ for a third-rate newspaper that pays me six hundred dollars a week. Daddy feels so sorry for me that he sends me five hundred a month, and I’d be living like you if I had the pride to send it back.
“My parents are ambitious people. When I told them I was going to be a reporter, they sat me down and told me I was making a big mistake. When I wouldn’t listen, they didn’t nag or threaten. After I graduated from Princeton, they paid the whole bill for Columbia J-School and never once complained. But I think they’re a little ashamed of me. I want them to be as proud of me as they are of Charles and Lucy. I want to be proud of myself. I’m my parents’ daughter, Mulligan. I’m ambitious, too.”
The speech was nice, but I was more concerned about when I’d be sleeping alone again.
“So what did The Post say?”
“I sent them my résumé and clips a month ago. Last week, Bob Woodward called me. Bob Fucking Woodward! I flew down yesterday for an interview. Bob says he loves my instincts, loves my writing, loves my reporting, especially the Arena stories. And with the pressure he’s under to hire minorities, you know damned well he loves it that I’m Asian. From the way he stared at me, I could tell he also likes the way I look.”
This was all happening too fast. I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice. “So when do you start?”
“He said he’ll have an opening for a federal-courts reporter in a month or two. I’d write daily news briefs for the Web site and news analysis pieces for the paper. It’s a great job, and it’s mine if I want it.”
“Now you’re going to say you told him about me.”
“Better than that. I wrote a kick-ass résumé for you and gave it to him with a package of your best clips.”
“Did you also tell him that I’m Chinese?”
“Mulligan!”
“Would it help if we got married and I took your name?”
“Please stop with the jokes. He wants you to call him. Will you at least think about it? I love you, baby. I don’t want to lose you.”
I pulled her into my arms and nuzzled her hair. “I don’t want to lose you either,” I said. I almost said, “I love you, too,” but the last time I’d said that was during the last month of my marriage, and it had been a lie. The words didn’t feel right in my mouth anymore.
“Have you thought about The Globe?” I asked. “If they hear The Post wants you, they’ll grab you in a second. Boston’s just fifty miles up the interstate. I could drive up every weekend. Maybe we could pool our money and get a box at Fenway.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “If you promise to think about The Post, I’ll promise to think about The Globe. Deal?”
“Yeah, okay.” I felt myself about to say something that wasn’t very romantic. “But if it ends up that you leave town and I stay, how about giving me your source as a going-awa
y present?”
She sighed. “The one leaking me those grand-jury transcripts?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“He’ll never talk to you. He hates your guts.”
Aha! Her source was a he who hated my guts. On the other hand, that didn’t exactly narrow it down.
When I got back to my apartment, it was nearly midnight. I tried to read a Dennis Lehane novel, but the words kept blurring on the page. I couldn’t stop thinking about Veronica. Was there anything I could say to make her stay? I sat up wondering about that until four in the morning, but the little thug didn’t show. He didn’t come the next night either.
54
An attendant helped Gloria out of the wheelchair, wished her good luck, and wheeled it back through the electric doors. I took her good arm as she tottered a few feet to Secretariat. Off to our left, a man with his right arm in a cast raised his left to hail a cab. Gloria saw the arm come up and cowered, burying her face in my chest. Her physical wounds were healing, but the damage cut much deeper.
I held her for a moment, my hand cradling the back of her head. Then I helped her into the front passenger seat. She yelped as I drew the seat belt across her broken ribs. I walked around the front of the Bronco, got in the other side, and cranked the starter.
“You’re looking better.”
“No, I’m not.”
“It must feel good to get out of the hospital.”
“I have to go back.”
“I know.”
There would be another operation to repair the tendon and two plastic surgeries on her nose and right cheek. There was nothing more they could do for her right eye.
I pulled onto I-95 heading south, and we drove silently for a few miles, Gloria squinting through the windshield at an overcast Rhode Island morning.
“Mulligan?”
“Um?”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was.”
“Did you get it?”
“I did. It’s in the glove box.”
She leaned forward, and the pressure from the seat belt made her yelp again. She opened the box and pulled out a canister of pepper spray.
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