Rogue Island

by Bruce DeSilva

  “Thanks. What do I owe you?”

  What does she owe me?

  “Nothing, Gloria. Whoosh had a carton of them lying around, and he wanted you to have it. He would have given you a revolver, but I didn’t think that was a good idea.”

  She raised her good hand, her thumb a cocked hammer and her index finger a gun barrel, mulling it over.

  “You survived, Gloria. You beat him.”

  “What if he comes back?”

  “He won’t. He’s running for his life now.”

  “Are they going to catch him?”

  “They will.” The police hadn’t found a match for the fingerprints, but Gloria didn’t need to hear that. She needed to think justice was coming.

  It started to rain as I cruised through Cranston on the interstate. When I flipped on the wipers, Gloria tensed. Then she began to moan.

  “Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.”

  “What’s wrong, Gloria?”

  “The rain!” Screaming now. “MAKE IT STOP!” She beat her good hand on the dash.

  There was no place to pull over and nothing I could do to comfort her.

  “Make it stop!”

  As I turned onto the East Avenue exit in Warwick, it did. Gloria’s scream turned to a whimper as I drove a few miles to Vera Street and parked at the curb in front of the little yellow ranch house where she grew up. Her mother was waiting on the sidewalk to help me take her daughter into the house.

  55

  The lawyers who’d filed the incorporation papers had each signed their names with a self-important flourish of swirls and curlicues. It was easier to read the type below the signatures: Beth J. Harpaz, Irwin M. Fletcher, Patrick R. Connelly III, Yolanda Mosley-Jones, and Daniel Q. Haney.

  I’d hoped to find that the same lawyer had filed for all five companies. That would have tied them together, given me something to go on. Instead, all my return trip to the secretary of state’s office had gotten me was five more names I’d never heard of. But I knew somebody who might recognize them.

  I got to the newsroom shortly after noon and found Veronica sitting in her cubicle nibbling something green and leafy. I flipped my notebook open to the right page and dropped it on her desk.

  “Take a look at these names and tell me if you know any of them.”

  She stared at the page for a moment. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t have the time for this. I’ve got to get to the courthouse. Word is the Arena indictment could be handed up today.”

  She pushed herself up from her ergonomically correct desk chair, gave me a peck on the cheek, and headed for the elevators.

  An investigative reporter must be resourceful. When the first source fails, he must find another. I opened my desk drawer and pulled out my secret file. Beth J. Harpaz, attorney at law, was listed in the Providence telephone directory.

  “McDougall, Young, Coyle, and Limone. How may I direct your call?”

  “Beth Harpaz, please,”

  “May I ask your name and what this is regarding?”

  “My name is Jeb Stuart Magruder. My wife of twenty-two years has taken a lesbian lover, and I wish to initiate divorce proceedings immediately.”

  “I am sorry, sir, but Ms. Harpaz doesn’t handle divorce work. I suggest you try a smaller firm.”

  I thanked her, hung up, opened the phone book, and started to look up the number for Daniel Q. Haney. Then I thought better of it and hit the redial button.

  “McDougall, Young, Coyle, and Limone. How may I direct your call?”

  “How ya doin’, sweetheart. I’m wondering if my good buddy Dan Haney is in this afternoon.”

  “May I ask your name and what this is regarding?”

  “Tell Danny that Chuck Colson is calling to make sure he’s not thinking of chickening out of our Saturday-morning golf date. He bet a grand that he can beat me, and I’ve already spent the money.”

  “I see,” she said. “Hold a moment, please, and let me see if he’ll take your call.”

  She put me on hold, and I hung up. I spent a couple of minutes practicing another telephone voice and hit redial.

  “McDougall, Young, Coyle, and Limone. How may I direct your call?”

  “Irwin M. Fletcher, please.”

  “May I ask your name and what this is regarding?”

  “This is James W. McCord. I need to speak with Mr. Fletcher immediately on a matter of some urgency.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Fletcher is out of town on business. Perhaps someone else can assist you.”

  “The prick’s never around when I need him,” I said, and hung up.

  Ten minutes later, the redial button again.

  “McDougall, Young, Coyle, and Limone. How may I direct your call?”

  “Patrick Connelly, please.”

  “Would that be Patrick R. Connelly Junior or Patrick R. Connelly the Third?”

  “Damn! I didn’t know the old man was still alive.”

  “The elder Mr. Connelly is only fifty-five, sir.”

  “So the antibiotics have his syphilis under control, then?”

  “Excuse me, sir?” she said, and I hung up.

  I was fresh out of telephone voices, and I figured the disembodied voice on the other end would be checking caller ID now. I got up and wandered over to Mason’s desk.

  “I need a favor.”

  “So do I.”

  “Me first,” I said, and told him what I needed him to do.

  * * *

  “Yolanda Mosley-Jones, please.”

  Pause.

  “My name is Gordon Liddy, and I am calling in regard to a criminal case she is handling for me.”

  Pause.

  “But it’s urgent I speak with her this afternoon.”

  Pause.

  “I see. No, no. I’m on the road. I’ll call back later this afternoon.” he said, and hung up.

  “So?”

  “So Ms. Mosley-Jones is currently assisting Brady Coyle in a criminal matter at the federal courthouse and won’t be available till this afternoon.”

  “You did good, Thanks-Dad.”

  “Who the hell is Gordon Liddy?”

  “Never mind that. What is it I can do for you?”

  “I found out what they’re doing with the manhole covers.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I asked around and found out that a lot of the guys from the highway department like to hang out after work at a strip joint called Good Time Charlie’s on Broad Street.”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “So I started hanging out there, too, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt so I wouldn’t look out of place. At first, my plan was to try to talk to them, but they’re probably not going to tell me anything, right? So I just sat at the bar and eavesdropped, which wasn’t all that easy because of the loud music. The first two nights, it was just a bunch of guys pawing the dancers and crowing about the Celtics and Red Sox. But on the third night, three men in work clothes came in, sat at the bar, and started complaining about this job they were supposed to do the next morning. I didn’t catch it all, but it had something to do with loading a truck, and I caught the words manhole covers. They were pretty worked up about it. One of them wanted to file a grievance.”

  “Those things are heavy,” I said.

  “A hundred and fifty pounds each. I looked it up.”

  “So then what?”

  “So early the next morning, I drove over to the highway department, parked on the street, and found a spot over by the railroad tracks where I could stay out of sight and watch the loading dock. About ten o’clock a truck pulled up and three guys, who looked like the same ones I’d seen at the bar, started loading it with manhole covers.”

  “You followed the truck?”

  “I did. They turned right on Ernest and right again on Eddy Street, then jumped on I-95 going north. At the Lonsdale Avenue exit in Pawtucket, they got off, drove east for a mile or so, and stopped in front of a chain-link gate. They honked the horn, the gate roll
ed open, and they pulled in and backed up to a loading dock.”

  He grinned, wanting me to beg for the rest.

  “What was this place?”

  “The sign on the gate said Weeden Scrap Metal Company.”

  We both laughed.

  “How much is Weeden paying for manhole covers these days?”

  “Sixteen dollars apiece,” he said. “I checked.”

  “Let me get this straight. The highway department is buying manhole covers for fifty-five dollars each from one of the mayor’s biggest campaign contributors, and Baldelli and Grieco are turning around and scrapping them for sixteen dollars each.”

  “That’s what they’re doing. So far, they’ve pocketed fourteen thousand five hundred and sixty dollars. I did the math.”

  “Have you written your lead yet?”

  “I’ve got one more interview first. I’m seeing the mayor this afternoon. I thought I should tell him what’s been going on and give him a chance to comment.”

  “Be sure to ask him what he thought was going to happen when he appointed guys named Knuckles and Blackjack to run the highway department.”

  “Lomax said I can break the story in the online edition,” he said, “and then write a longer version for the paper.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got yourself your first page-one byline, Thanks-Dad.”

  * * *

  I went back to my desk, found the business card Joseph had given me, and dialed Little Rhody Realty. Cheryl Scibelli still wasn’t in, so I left my name and number. I opened my secret file and found that her home number was listed.

  No answer.

  The directory gave her address as 22 Nelson Street, over by Providence College. I drove there and knocked on the door of an immaculate white cottage.

  Nobody home.

  56

  By five o’clock McCracken’s secretary was gone for the day, so I let myself in. After I told him what I’d learned about the lawyers, we sat quietly for a while and thought about it.

  “You realize it doesn’t prove anything,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “A big law firm like that handles a lot of incorporation papers.”

  “It does.”

  “But it’s a hell of a coincidence.

  “It is.”

  We sat and thought about it some more.

  “Be good if we could find out who owns the five companies,” he said.

  “It would.”

  “But there’s no way to find that out.”

  “None that I know of, unless one of the lawyers decides to risk disbarment and betray a confidence.”

  “Which isn’t goddamned likely.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  He opened the inlaid cherrywood humidor on his desk, took out two maduro torpedoes, clipped the ends, and offered me one. He lit his with a wooden match, and I torched mine with the Colibri. We sat and smoked for a while.

  “Did you remember to broadcast the description of the little thug?” I asked.

  “To every insurance investigator I know,” he said. “Didn’t ring any bells.”

  “He said he’d come back for me if I didn’t stop poking around.”

  “And you haven’t.”

  “Of course not.”

  “What are you going to do when he comes?”

  “Interview him.”

  “Would that be before or after you kick his ass?”

  “That’ll be up to him.”

  The Cate Brothers riffed from my pants pocket. I checked caller ID, saw it was Dorcas, and let it go to voice mail. I was stuffing the phone back in my pocket when the band came back for an encore.

  “Hi baby. Just wanted to let you know I can’t see you tonight. I’m meeting a source for dinner, and it could go late.”

  “Tomorrow, then?”

  “Definitely tomorrow. Miss you like crazy. Gotta run. Bye.”

  Note to self: Change the ring tone to a song that doesn’t have the words losing you in the title.

  “So,” I said. “Want to catch the Sox-Yankees game tonight?”

  “You have tickets?” McCracken said.

  “Yeah. Box seats at Hopes. I’ll call Rosie, see if she wants to join us.”

  “Chief Lesbo?”

  “Hey, I warned you about that.”

  “But she is a lesbian, Mulligan. I know for sure now.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I asked her out, and she turned me down flat.”

  “That’s how you can tell?”

  “Of course.”

  “You must meet a lot of lesbians.”

  * * *

  Rosie settled onto a bar stool between me and McCracken just as Derek Jeter dug in against our ace, Josh Beckett. Mike Mussina matched him pitch for pitch until Ramirez homered in the bottom of the fifth. A long rain delay provided plenty of time for beer and for McCracken to give it another try with Rosie.

  “Sorry,” she said, “but you’re not my type.”

  “What is your type?”

  “That’s my type right there,” she said, pointing to the TV over the bar. The rain had finally stopped, and Manny Ramirez was running through the wet grass to take his position in front of the Green Monster. “Oh, my God, he’s so hot.”

  Papelbon slammed the door on the Pinstripes in the ninth, Hopes erupted in the traditional “Yankees Suck” chant, somebody dumped a beer on an asshole in a Jeter jersey, and Annie grabbed the remote, switching the TV to the Channel 10 News. Then she made the rounds of the tables, snatching dollar bills and hiking her skirt up those long legs. A good time was had by all. Except the guy in the Jeter jersey.

  That night, I stayed up late with a Tim Dorsey novel, hoping the little thug would finally make an appearance. About three in the morning, he did.

  57

  He announced his presence with the sound of splintering wood.

  I rushed my shattered front door, looked down at the top of the little thug’s head, and threw a left. He blocked it effortlessly with his right and kicked me square in the groin, an area he seemed to favor. Then he slammed into me, bulled me across the room into the kitchen wall, and went to work on my ribs.

  My counter-punches bounced harmlessly off the top of his skull. I tried to shove him off to get punching room, but it was like trying to move a boxcar. His arms were jackhammers, pounding lefts and rights to my body. Why didn’t he go for my jaw? Maybe it was too high for him to reach. When his fists finally tired of me, he took a step back, and I discovered he’d been the only thing holding me up.

  I slid down the wall to the floor. He swung his short right arm and backhanded me across the face.

  “Asshole,” he said. “I warned you to stop snooping around the manhole covers.”

  Manhole covers? I felt like I’d been hit with one. That’s what this was about?

  I tried to form the question, but the little thug was gone, taking my dignity with him.

  58

  In the morning, there wasn’t much blood in my urine, but my ribs hurt when I moved and even when I didn’t. I walked stiffly into the newsroom and went straight to Mason’s desk.

  “What happened to you?” he said. “You look terrible.”

  “Never mind that, Thanks-Dad. Just tell me this. Is there any reason someone might think I was working on the manhole-covers story?”

  “Heck, Mulligan. I’ve been telling everybody I’ve been working with you.”

  Great.

  “Mulligan!” Lomax beckoned me over to the city desk. “Some squawk on the police scanner about a body at a construction site near Rhode Island Hospital.”

  Then he raised his eyes from his computer and looked me up and down. “Looks like somebody had a rough night. Are you up to this?”

  “Sure,” I said, but I really wasn’t. Still, the assignment was convenient. I could stop by the emergency room and see about my ribs.

  * * *

  The corpse was sprawled on its belly near an idle Dio Construction front-end loader.
Judging by the mess she’d left in the dirt, the victim had crawled five yards toward the hospital before her pump quit. The three big holes in her back looked like exit wounds.

  A detective rolled the body over. A yellow logo was sewn over the breast pocket of her dark green blazer. “Little Rhody Realty.” A few feet away, a uniformed cop rummaged in her purse and pulled out a driver’s license.

  “Hey, Eddie. Got an ID?”

  “Come on, Mulligan. You know we can’t release that till we notify next of kin.”

  “Suppose I tell you?”

  He just looked at me.

  “Cheryl Scibelli of 22 Nelson Street.”

  “You recognize her?”

  “Something like that.”

  * * *

  I spent two hours in the emergency room waiting my turn behind five traffic-accident victims, a dozen squalling kids with high fevers, three middle-aged men with chest pains, and a couple of elderly slip-and-falls.

  My best lead, the little thug, had nothing to do with the fires. My second best lead was dead, and the message I’d left her might have been the reason why. I didn’t have a clue what to do next.

  The X-ray showed four broken ribs, one on the left, three on the right.

  The intern who turned me into an Egyptian mummy put it all in perspective: “A couple more punches and one of these ribs would have punctured a lung.”

  “I guess it’s my lucky day.”

  When I got back, Lomax watched me shuffle across the newsroom and settle gingerly into my desk chair. I was pounding out a lead on the shooting for our online edition when he walked up and sat on the corner of my desk.

  “What the hell happened to you?”

  I didn’t want to talk about it. “I ran into a couple of New York fans who didn’t appreciate my ‘Yankees Suck’ T-shirt.”

  “Ribs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Broken?”

  “Four of them.”

  “After you write this up, why don’t you go home?”

  I didn’t argue. Tonight, the Sox were starting a two-game series against the Indians, the team we beat in last year’s league-championship series, and I was going to need more time than usual to suit up.