Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel

by Bruce DeSilva

  “Because it’s a worthy one,” Sal said.

  “Well, sure, but so are the Jimmy Fund and the American Red Cross. Is there some personal motivation behind these donations?”

  “Personal reasons are, by definition, personal,” Vanessa said.

  “Were either of you abducted or molested as children?”

  “Absolutely not,” Sal said.

  “Any members of your family?”

  “No.”

  “So I’m supposed to believe that the state’s top madam and one of the country’s biggest smut peddlers just happen to have a soft spot for kids?”

  “There’s no need to insult us, Mulligan,” Maniella said. “Haven’t I always treated you with respect?”

  “You have,” I said. “I apologize for my choice of words. I would defend their accuracy, but perhaps they were unnecessarily indelicate.”

  “I accept your apology,” Sal said.

  But Vanessa had the last word: “Go fuck yourself, Mulligan.”

  * * *

  Wednesday afternoon, I pointed Secretariat north toward the Bryant University campus in the bedroom community of Smithfield. Back in 1966, when the school granted Sal Maniella his business degree, it was called Bryant College and operated out of a handful of antiquated buildings in Providence. I found the 1966 yearbook in the library’s reference room and flipped through the pages of sports and club pictures in the back, scanning the captions.

  Sal showed up in two action shots of the basketball team. In the first one he was in the background, sitting on the bench as the team’s star forward let a jump shot fly. In the second one he was leaping in the air, celebrating the final win of the team’s undefeated season under coach Tom Duffy. The Bryant Indians—later renamed the Bulldogs in a bow to political correctness—won the NAIA national championship that year. I’d had no idea Sal had been on the team.

  I flipped to the page with the formal team group photo and got another surprise. Dante Puglisi, Sal’s dearly departed double, was in it, his arm draped over Sal’s shoulder. I hadn’t realized the two went that far back. I copied down the names of all seventeen players, returned the yearbook to its shelf, and asked the reference librarian for directions to the alumni office.

  * * *

  “I don’t understand,” Paloma McGregor, the alumni director, said. “Why are you interested in the 1966 men’s basketball team?”

  “Because they won the NAIA national championship.”

  “What’s the NAIA?”

  “Sort of like the NCAA, but for really small colleges.”

  “We’re in the NCAA now, Division Two,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Nineteen sixty-six was a long time ago,” she said.

  “Forty-four years.”

  “Before my time,” she said, but I already knew that. I put her at thirty, with a trim body and a wild mane of black hair that a few guys were probably still lost in. A dancer’s legs flashed beneath the hem of her black pencil skirt.

  “Before my time, too,” I said.

  “You’re a news reporter,” she said. “Why do you care about ancient history?”

  “Next year marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the only national championship in Bryant history. I thought it would be a good idea to contact the members of the team and write a tribute for the Dispatch.”

  “Oh, that is a good idea,” she said. “And you want my help with contact information?”

  “I do.”

  She turned to her computer and tapped on the keyboard, red talons flashing.

  “Ronald Amarillo and Dante Puglisi are deceased,” she said. “Of the remaining fifteen, I have addresses for eleven and telephone numbers for six, but I can’t be sure how much of this is current.”

  She clicked her mouse, and a laser printer hummed and spit out a sheet of white paper. She folded it in threes, slipped it into a white business envelope with the Bryant logo on it, and handed it across the desk to me.

  “If there’s anything else I can help you with, don’t hesitate to call,” she said, flashing a smile that made me want to know her better. She was so pleasant and helpful that I felt guilty about deceiving her. Maybe I’d have to write a story about the team after all.

  * * *

  That afternoon and all the next morning, I worked the phones. I learned that the team’s star forward had suffered a stroke and was living in a nursing home in Pawtucket. But the starting center and shooting guard were both well and living in Rhode Island, and they were still the best of friends. They remembered Maniella as a slow-footed forward who was a tiger on the boards; but, no, they’d never hung out with him, and they never got to know him well. The phone numbers and addresses for a couple of bench players turned out to be no good, and I couldn’t find any listings for them in the Internet telephone directories. It was nearly noon when I called the Brockton, Massachusetts, telephone number for Joseph Pavao, who had been the team’s starting point guard.

  “Of course I remember Sal,” he said. “He, Dante Puglisi, and I roomed together. We were darn near inseparable back in the day—working out, drinking, chasing skirts. Even cracked a book or two every now and then.”

  “Did you hear what happened to Dante?”

  “Yeah. A damn shame. Cops catch the guy who did it?”

  “Not yet, but they’re still looking.”

  He agreed to meet me at nine the next morning at a Brockton coffee shop creatively named Tea House of the Almighty. He was already there, pouring a whole lot of sugar into his mug of black coffee, when I walked in and sat down across from him.

  “Nice place,” I said.

  “I like it.”

  “The Almighty ever show up to check the till?”

  “He never shows his face, but I sense his presence every day.”

  I put him at five feet ten, with stringy arms, a sunken chest, and a bowling ball–size potbelly. He wore a red plaid work shirt with a gold cross showing at the neck and a green baseball cap with the words “World’s Best Grandpa” above the bill. It was hard to imagine him as an athlete.

  “Tell me more about you, Sal, and Dante,” I said.

  “The three of us were wicked sinners. Drunk out of our skulls or high on marijuana most of the time, ’cept on game days, and copulating with every girl what would let us. Being as we were big men on campus, a lot of ’em did.”

  “Good times,” I said.

  “Sure thing, if hell’s what you’re aiming for. After college I found Jesus and got over the wildness. I guess Sal and Dante never did.”

  “The way I heard it, Sal got his start in the pornography business when he was still at Bryant.”

  “You heard right,” he said. “Sal shot most of the pictures for his skin magazine in our dorm room. He’d smoke a little weed with a girl and then get her to pose naked on his bed. Sometimes he’d bring in two or three at the same time and talk ’em into pleasuring each other, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do.”

  “Sal let Dante and me help out with the lighting, not that he needed the help. It was just an excuse so’s we could watch. Afterward, we’d all get to drinking, and sometimes the girl would sleep with one of us. Couple of ’em took on all three of us, God forgive me.”

  “Were any of the girls underage?”

  “I don’t believe so. Sal was real careful about that, always checking ID to make sure they were at least eighteen. He got real righteous about it after what happened to Dante’s little sister.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “Awful thing. She was just eight years old when it happened.”

  “When was this?”

  “Our junior year. Dante turned white as a sheet when he got the news over the telephone. He put down the receiver, curled up in his bed, and cried like a baby. Sal got down on his knees at the bedside and held on to him until Dante stopped blubbering and told us what was wrong.”

  “Which was what, exactly?”

  “Some animal grabbed her off
the playground near her house. The cops found her tied to a tree the next day, raped and beaten, but still breathing, thank the Lord.”

  “Where was this?”

  “In New Haven, Dante’s hometown.”

  “The cops catch the guy?”

  “They figured out who did it all right, but they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. Left his DNA all over her, I imagine, but they didn’t know about that stuff back then.”

  “Dante must have been pretty angry about it.”

  “All three of us were.”

  “You do anything about it?”

  “I probably shouldn’t talk about that.”

  “Dante’s sister. What was her name?”

  “Rachel,” he said. “Rachel Elizabeth Puglisi.”

  “Know where she is now?”

  “Dead.”

  “What happened?”

  “Way I heard it, she seemed to recover from the attack; but sometime after she turned thirteen, she found the tree she’d been tied to and hanged herself from it, God rest her soul.”

  54

  The New Haven Register’s Web site didn’t include archives, so I called the paper and was told that its news library had never digitized them. Still worse, all its paper clippings from the 1960s and 1970s had been discarded. Fortunately, the city’s public library had all of the old newspapers on microfiche.

  Friday, the deputy sports editor called in sick so he could interview with ESPN, and I got stuck editing basketball game stories and laying out sports pages all day. It was Saturday before I could saddle up Secretariat and make the two-hour drive to New Haven. When Secretariat was younger, he could have done it in an hour and a half.

  An attendant in the public library’s reading room set me up with a microfiche reader. “It’s not often that somebody asks for these old newspaper files,” she said, “but you’re the second one in the last few weeks.”

  “Who was the other one?”

  “I didn’t get her name.”

  “What did she look like?”

  She frowned and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I can’t help you with that. We respect people’s privacy here.”

  I started with the September 1, 1966, edition of the Register, began scrolling, and immediately got caught up in it.

  Red Guards were on the rampage in China.

  Senator Charles Percy’s twenty-one-year-old daughter was found stabbed and bludgeoned in the family mansion on Chicago’s North Shore.

  A new TV show called Star Trek, starring a former Shakespearean actor named William Shatner, debuted on NBC.

  Scotland Yard arrested Buster Edwards and charged him with masterminding the Great Train Robbery.

  President Lyndon Johnson visited American troops in Vietnam.

  The Baltimore Orioles swept the Los Angeles Dodgers to win their first World Series ever.

  Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.

  A B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California.

  Dr. Sam Sheppard, on trial for murdering his pregnant wife, was acquitted.

  The Beatles went into seclusion to record a new album; according to record industry gossip, the working title was Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

  Stop it, I told myself. If you keep this up, you’ll be sitting here for a month.

  Ninety minutes after I started, I spotted a one-column headline at the bottom of page one in the October 30 edition:

  Girl, 8, Raped and Left Tied to Tree

  New Haven—An 8-year-old city girl who was abducted from a playground near her home 12 hours earlier was found tied to a tree about a hundred yards from the Pardee Rose Garden in East Rock Park yesterday morning, New Haven police said.

  Police said she was rushed to Yale–New Haven Hospital, where she was listed in fair condition with a broken nose, a fractured left arm, and multiple abrasions and contusions. A hospital examination determined that the girl had been raped, police said.

  Police detectives were still in the park late yesterday afternoon collecting evidence.

  Out of consideration for the family, the story didn’t mention her name.

  I kept scrolling. Over the next few months, occasional updates appeared on inside pages:

  Police Vow to Find Girl’s Attacker

  Hamden Man Questioned in Child Rape

  Police Arrest Child-Rape Suspect

  Child-Rape Suspect Released, Police Cite Lack of Evidence

  Child Rape Case Still Open

  Then nothing until April 3, when the following appeared:

  Child Molester Beaten

  New Haven—Alfred V. Furtado, 44, of 62 Evergeen Ave., Hamden, a convicted child molester, was found naked and tied to a tree in East Rock Park yesterday afternoon. Police said he had been savagely beaten.

  He was taken to Yale–New Haven Hospital, where he was reported in serious condition with a fractured skull. Police said he also suffered two fractured kneecaps and a broken eye socket. His nose, left clavicle, and five of his fingers were also reported broken, and his sex organs had been mutilated with a sharp object, police said. A baseball bat and a hunting knife recovered beside the tree may have been used in the attack, police said.

  Furtado was found tied to the same tree that had been used to bind an 8-year-old New Haven girl after she was beaten and raped last October, police said. They added they are exploring the possibility that the two crimes are linked.

  Furtado was initially arrested in connection with the attack on the girl, but he was subsequently released for lack of evidence. Police said he has a criminal record that includes public lewdness and molestation, and that he served 7 years of his 15-year sentence for the violent rape of a 10-year-old East Haven girl in 1957.

  When I walked out of the library, it was after seven P.M. and raining. I dashed to Secretariat and drove home in the dark. I parked illegally on the street outside near my apartment, trudged up the stairs, shrugged off my damp clothes, and stepped into the shower. I stood under the hot water for a long time. It took the chill off but didn’t do much to wash away the day. Maybe talking about it would help.

  * * *

  “Hi, Yolanda. It’s Mulligan.”

  “Hi, baby. You okay? You sound weary.”

  “That I am.”

  “Tough day?”

  “Tough year. Uh … listen, I know it’s on the late side, but I wonder if you’d like to have a nightcap. Maybe grab a little something to eat somewhere.”

  “Sorry, but I can’t.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Mulligan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve started seeing somebody.”

  “Oh.”

  “He teaches chemistry at Brown, and he’s a really great guy.”

  “What’s he got that I don’t?”

  “You know.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “No, I can’t.… He’s there now, isn’t he?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I better let you go, then.”

  “Still friends?”

  “Always,” I said.

  “’Night, Mulligan.”

  “Good night, Yolanda.”

  So what. I’d been shot down by women before. Short ones and tall ones. Plump and skinny. Blondes, brunettes, and redheads. White, black, and yellow. Schoolteachers, barmaids, reporters, secretaries, and college professors. Most times, I’d shaken it off with a shot of Bushmills and a good night’s sleep. This was one of those other times. This time, I felt blue drop over me like a shroud.

  I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, zipped a windbreaker over it, tromped down the stairs, and stepped out into the rain. It was coming down harder now, but I didn’t care. Like a batter who’d been drilled in the ribs with a fastball, I needed to walk it off. I sloshed two blocks north on America Street and turne
d right. The bars and restaurants on Atwells Avenue beckoned, but I wasn’t in the mood for food, light, or company that wasn’t Yolanda. I walked east to DePasquale, turned right, and trudged past a long row of triple-deckers and rooming houses all the way to Broadway. There I turned right, walked to the corner of America Street, and turned back toward home.

  Outside my apartment, Secretariat shivered in the rain. I climbed in, wrung the wet from my hair, and fired the engine. The drive to Swan Point Cemetery took fifteen minutes. I thought about leaving the Manny Ramirez jersey in the car, not wanting to get it wet, but on a night like this, Rosie would welcome what little warmth it could provide. I draped it over the shoulders of her gravestone, sat in the mud, and rested my back against the cold granite.

  “Evening, Rosie. How are you tonight?”

  The same. Rosie was always the same now.

  “Me? I’ve been better.… Yeah, it’s about that lawyer I’ve been seeing. Remember me telling you that as long as she didn’t say, ‘Let’s just be friends,’ I still had a chance?”

  Rosie always remembered everything.

  “Well, tonight, she finally said it.”

  55

  “I’m confused.”

  “What about?” Fiona asked.

  “Sex and religion.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Welcome to the club.”

  “You too?” I asked.

  “About religion, sure. Sex? Not so much.”

  We were sitting at opposite ends of a brown leather couch in her parlor, she with a calico cat in her lap and I with a rolled-up copy of the Dispatch in my left hand. An autographed photo of Fiona getting a peck on the cheek from Barack Obama stood on the mantel in the spot where a photo of Joseph Ratzinger in his white-mitered, post–Hitler Youth incarnation used to be. The log fire she’d lit when we came in from the cold had burned low. The red coals hissed and popped.

  “Vanessa Maniella gave me the ‘oldest profession’ speech,” I said.

  “Let me guess,” Fiona said. “She claims prostitution is older than the Bible, that women have a right to sell their bodies, and that all she’s been doing is providing them with a clean, safe place to do it.”