Rogue Island (13 page)

“Actually we considered that,” Pemberton said. “However, the lad was quite insistent that he begin his career in the newsroom. He was equally insistent that he work with you. Apparently he has been reading your copy and has convinced himself that you are the best we have. I tried to persuade him that this is not the case, but to no avail. Frankly, Mulligan, you are the last person I would have chosen for this. You are something of a dinosaur when it comes to new media, and I'm well aware of your irreverent attitude toward the owners of this newspaper. But the decision is out of my hands.”

“Jesus Christ!” I said, but it was out of His hands, too.

“We're all going to be working for the kid someday, Mulligan,” Lomax said. “Show him some fucking respect.”

I returned to my cubicle to find Edward Anthony Mason IV perched on the corner of my desk, looking now like he'd just stepped off a page of
The Great Gatsby
—narrow cover-girl waist, long legs encased in expensive black slacks, a blue silk tie that cost more than my entire wardrobe. He removed the Clark Gable fedora, exposing a head full of light-brown curls.

He said, “Hi.”

And I said, “Get lost.”

“Bad time?”

“Yeah. Why don't you go play polo and come back in thirty years?”

“Did I do something to offend you?”

“I'd be offended by anybody who hasn't learned to write a lead yet and already thinks he's going to be running the paper. Maybe you want to get in on the office pool. Pick the date that Daddy steps up to chairman of the board and makes his baby boy publisher. Me? I got fifty bucks on never.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Because?”

“Because newspapers are a dying business, kid. Readers are deserting us. Craigslist and eBay have stripped us of most of our classified advertising. And none of that is ever coming back.”

“We're just in a transition period,” Mason said.

“Is that what they taught you at Columbia? Look around, for Chrissake. Papers everywhere are slashing expenses—closing Washington bureaus, cutting the number of pages they print, laying off journalists by the hundreds. And still they're hemorrhaging money. The Knight Ridder chain has already thrown in the towel. The Tribune Company looks like it's on its last legs. The
Rocky Mountain News,
the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
and the
San Francisco Chronicle
are teetering on the edge of collapse. If you think it's not going to happen here too, you're kidding yourself. The scuttlebutt around the newsroom says we lost two or three million last year.”

“More,” Mason said.

“Aw, shit. Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How much more?”

“I'm not permitted to say.”

“So I guess layoffs are coming, huh?”

“Father and I will do everything in our power to prevent that.”

“Unless you can go back in time and get Al Gore to un-invent the Internet, there's not much you can do about it,” I said. “Newspapers are circling the drain, kid. By the time you're ready to take over, there won't be anything left to run.”

Mason was about to respond when Pemberton strolled up.

“I see you two are getting acquainted,” he said, his light tone clashing with the worried look etched on his face. “Mulligan treating you right so far, Edward?”

“I was just inquiring how he got that great ‘Dumb and Dumber' quote, Mr. Pemberton. And he chewed me out for even asking. Said a reporter never reveals his confidential sources. I've got a lot to learn, and Mr. Mulligan is the best mentor I could have. Next to him, the profs at Columbia are a bunch of posers. I want to thank you again for letting me work with him.”

“You're very welcome, Edward. Any questions? Anything you need?”

“Not right now, Mr. Pemberton.”

“Well, if there is, my door is always open.”

Hasn't always been open to me,
I thought, and was about to say so when Pemberton clapped Mason on the back and scurried off with that concerned look still on his face.

“Okay, kid,” I said. “Let's go play reporter.” A few nights cruising rat-infested streets, a meeting or two with sources in a hole like Good Time Charlie's, a couple of early mornings standing knee-deep in slush, and he'd lose his taste for the real thing soon enough.

27

A light snow was falling as we stepped out onto Fountain Street.

“So where are we going?” Mason said.

“You'll know when we get there.”

“Okay if I drive?”

“Sure.”

He led us a few yards down the street, pulled a remote from his pocket, and snicked open the lock to an opalescent silver-blue 1967 Jaguar E-Series coupe parked at a meter.

“Like this car?” I said.

“Sure do.”

“Then we better take mine.”

As we settled into the Bronco, he eyed the wires snaking from the slot where the CD player used to be.

“Leave the Jag in Newport,” I said. “Get yourself a used Chevy or Ford to drive on the job. And if you ever have to park the Jag in Providence again, put it in a parking garage, lock it, remove the wheels, and take them with you.”

“Got it, Mister Mulligan.”

“And drop the ‘Mister.' ”

“I don't know your first name. Just your byline, ‘L. S. A. Mulligan.' ”

“Tell you what,” I said. “You call me Mulligan, and I'll call you Thanks-Dad.”

“I prefer Edward.”

The drive to Zerilli's Market took us past two burned-out buildings. Crews from Dio Construction were busy knocking them down and loading the debris into dump trucks. I backed into a parking space right in front of the market and told the kid to stay in the car.

“How come?” he said.

“Remember that ‘lesson' about confidential sources? That's why.”

*  *  *

“Back already?” Zerilli said. “Jesus! How many Cubans can one scribbler smoke?”

“Only burned four sticks from the last box, Whoosh. Just wanted to drop by, see how you're doing.”

“The Colibri working okay?”

“Hotter than Ramirez on a hitting streak, reliable as Lowell's glove at the hot corner. Which reminds me. What odds you giving on them going all the way again?”

“This week, nine to two. Gonna throw money away on 'em, oughta do it now. Word is Colón's shoulder may be okay. I hear his fastball's hitting ninety-five on the radar gun. If he's healthy, the odds will fall to four to one. Sucker bet either way, cause no way they're gonna repeat. Only two teams have done that in the last thirty years.”

He tapped the ash from his Lucky and scratched his balls through his white boxers.

“Put me down for a Franklin,” I said.

He threw me a disgusted look, pulled the nub of a pencil from behind his ear, and made a note, then rubbed a bruise on his right wrist.

“From the handcuffs?” I asked.

“Yeah. Put 'em on tight as a bastard, the fuckin' pricks.”

“How long did they hold you?”

“Overnight. Spent half of it on a metal chair that hurt my back somethin' wicked, getting threatened by two detectives and a snot-nosed junior prosecutor who kept sayin' he'd throw the book at me on the DiMaggios' assault case 'less I rolled on Grasso. Like I'm gonna do that, the fuckin' morons. Jesus!”

“Grasso send his lawyer over to get you out?”

“Yeah. Brady Coyle showed up about eight in the mornin' looking like he just stepped out of a can of starch. Didn't need 'em, it turned out.”

“How's that?”

“Just after the sun come up they led me out of the holding cell, took me up to the chief's office. Chief took the cuffs off himself, shook my hand, apologized all over the place. Set me down on one of his leather chairs, gave me coffee and a Danish. Then apologized some more. Kept callin' it a misunderstanding. Hoped I wouldn't hold it against him.”

“What the hell?” I said.

And he said, “Who's the asshole in the hat?”

We were both looking at him now through the window over the grocery aisles, skinny guy in a fedora and a trench coat picking up a soft-porn mag, grimacing, and placing it back on the rack.

“He's with me,” I said. “I told him to stay in the car, but he's not used to taking orders.”

“Long as he doesn't try comin' up here.”

“He does that,” I said, “and I'll shoot him myself.”

“So I was eating a Danish,” he said, picking up the story, “when those two retards, Polecki and Roselli, come waltzin' in. Chief introduces them, real formal, like I don't already know the pricks.”

“What did
they
want?”

“The four of 'em—the two retards, the snot-nosed prosecutor, and the chief—pull up chairs, sit in a half-circle around me. Show me a fuckin' picture—young chink in a black leather jacket watching one of the fires. The one where DePrisco got burned up, I think. Terrible thing. I put a collection can on the counter for his wife and kids.”

Mason was over by the coffee stand now, pouring himself a cup of Green Mountain. He sneaked a look at Zerilli's office window, saw me staring back at him, and quickly looked away.

“Same guy that was in one of the pictures you showed me that time,” Zerilli was saying. “Didn't get it from you, did they?”

“Fuck, no.”

“I didn't think so.”

Mason poured a second cup and grabbed some sugar packets and a couple of those little creamers.

“So then what?” I said.

“Chief said they want to talk to this guy real bad, and would I be willing to hand the picture out to the DiMaggios, ask them to be on the lookout.”

“Amazing,” I said.

“Yeah. One day, we're a menace to society. Next day, we're practically deputized.”

“Officer Zerilli,” I said.

“Fuck you, Mulligan. That ain't funny.”

“So you turned him down?”

“Nah! No percentage in pissing them off. 'Sides, I want this asshole bad as they do. They give me this here stack of pictures,” he said, slapping a pale, bony hand on a stack of eight-by-tens lying facedown on his keyhole desk. “Gonna hand 'em out to the boys tonight.”

Mason was at the register now, paying for the coffees.

“ 'Course, they asked me to make sure the boys don't rough him up, we happen to catch the asshole. I told 'em, Sure, I can do that. Then they told me to take their bats away. Citizen patrol was a great idea, they said, but arming them was askin' for trouble.”

“What'd you say?”

“That I wasn't sendin' my boys out at night with nothin' to carry. Up to you, I told 'em—bats or semiautomatics.”

“Good for you,” I said, and got up to leave.

“Hey. Heard your CD player got ripped off the other night.”

“Where'd you hear that?”

“Can't say. But if you pop over to Deegan's chop shop, he'll put one in for you free. As a favor to me. Who knows, might be the same one you lost. I told him you might be droppin' by.”

I walked down the stairs, put a twenty in the collection jar, strolled over to the coffee stand, and grabbed a handful of creamers. Mason was waiting by the Bronco. He handed me a coffee, and I pried off the plastic lid, poured a quarter of it out, and dumped the creamers in.

“So what was that all about?” he said.

“It was about you not doing what you were told.”

“How's the coffee? I didn't know how you take it.”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I did. I'm sorry, Mulligan. It won't happen again.”

“And lose the stupid hat,” I said.

“No, I don't think so,” he said. “It's a Mallory and I rather like it. I think it makes me look older.”

“Well, it doesn't.”

28

The day they buried Ruggerio “the Blind Pig” Bruccola, I wore a black hoodie to the funeral. White letters splashed across the front read “Your Message in This Space.”

Six hours later, I was sprawled in a fake-leather chair in somebody's idea of a classy bar on the top floor of the Biltmore. Outside the streaked plate-glass windows, the city skulked in a drizzle.

Vinnie Giordano strolled in, looked the place over, and dropped heavily into the chair across from mine. He was wearing the Providence wiseguy uniform: tapered LouisBoston suit, black shirt, white silk tie, white leather belt. He flashed me his hard look, something he probably practiced in the mirror daily. It still needed work.

“Wear that to the funeral?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Lucky nobody shot you.”

“I saw you there this morning, whispering in the mayor's ear,” I said. “Didn't know the two of you were tight.”

“We ain't. He grew up on Federal Hill, same as me and Bruccola and your asshole buddy Whoosh, but since he got elected he's been acting like he don't know us. I was surprised to see him there, so I was just thanking him for paying his respects.”

*  *  *

The day had dawned clear and unseasonably warm. A low March sun vaporized the snow banks, conjuring a dense gray fog that drifted over the shoes of the mourners. The women's Sergio Rossi and Prada pumps, the men's Ferragamo wingtips, and my Reeboks.

To the west, the spire of Pastor's Rest Monument, the tallest in Swan Point Cemetery, floated over the fog, marking the final resting place of the city's leading nineteenth-century ministers. To the east, the gray surface of the Seekonk River crinkled like old skin. A yellow tug churned upstream with the tide.

At least one thousand mourners, a Who's Who of Rhode Island crime, politics, business, and religion, had gathered in a grassy clearing still patched with snow. All about them, an undergrowth of laurel, rhododendron, and azalea shivered in the southerly breeze. Alongside the gunmetal-steel casket with its gold-plated handles was a bonfire of funeral wreaths. Figuring an average of three hundred dollars each, it must have set the assembled back a cool hundred and fifty grand.