Rogue Island (24 page)

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.

59

Getting out of my T-shirt was agony. Once I got it off, it took me five minutes to ease into my team jersey and button it up the front. By the time Veronica called, the Sox were up 1–0 in the third.

“Hey, baby. What's the plan for tonight?”

“I think we'll be staying in.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“ 'Fraid not.”

Even talking hurt.

“I need you to do me a favor.” I said. “Could you get us some takeout and stop off at the Walgreens on Atwells Ave. to pick up a prescription for me?”

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I'm okay. I'll fill you in when you get here.”

Forty minutes later, she walked in carrying a sack of deli sandwiches and a little white pharmacy bag.

“What happened to your door?”

“Nothing to worry about. The landlord says it'll be fixed in a couple of days.”

“What's wrong with you? What do you need this for?” she said, dropping the pharmacy sack beside me on the bed.

I still didn't want to talk about it. I tore open the bag, wrestled the childproof cap off the vial, swallowed two Oxycodone tablets, and washed them down with Killian's.

“You're not supposed to take those with alcohol, baby.”

“So they say, but in my experience they work better this way.”

“Are you going to tell me what's going on?”

“The Sox just fell behind four to one, and we're coming to bat in the top of the sixth.”

“Mulligan!”

She snatched the remote and turned the TV off.

“I'll tell you everything after the game,” I said.

“Tell me now.” She held the remote tantalizingly out of reach.

“Later. I can't miss this.”

She pouted, surrendered the remote, and plopped down beside me as I switched the TV back on. She rolled over to hug me, and I yelped.

“Mulligan?”

“Soon as the game ends. Eat your sandwich.”

The Sox tied the score in the eighth, Ramirez hit a three-run shot in the top of the ninth, Papelbon did his thing, and it was over.

“I don't suppose I'll be enjoying the postgame show,” I said.

She answered by punching a button on the remote, and the screen went dark.

“Well?”

“Lester didn't have his best stuff tonight, but the bullpen was great.”

“Enough already! Tell me what happened to you.”

So I did. I tried to put a good face on it, but it was no use. I'd been beaten up by a pygmy.

When I finished my sad tale, Veronica struggled to suppress a giggle.

“I thought you were going to kick his ass.”

“I was mistaken.”

Then she glanced at the broken door and furrowed her brow.

“Think he'll come back again?”

“He won't. He's made his point. Besides, the manhole-covers story is running tomorrow, so he's got nothing to gain by a return visit.”

Veronica cradled my face in her hands and touched her lips to my forehead, each cheek, my chin. I reached to pull her to me and yelped again.

“Maybe you could get on top,” I said. I'm nothing if not resourceful.

“Maybe we should give it a rest for a few days.”

A few days?

I swallowed another Oxycodone-Killian's cocktail and chased it with Maalox. I looked at Veronica and wondered how I'd ever ended up with a woman that beautiful. I was still thinking about that when the drug kicked in and I nodded off.

In the morning, I woke to the sound of Veronica banging around in the kitchen. When she heard me turn on CNN, she came in with the paper and a tray laden with scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, and coffee. I used the juice to wash down a couple of painkillers, but they didn't work as well without the beer chaser.

Mason's story about the manhole covers was splashed across page one. There was no fire news. There hadn't been any fires since Hell Night.

“Why do you think that is?” Veronica said.

“There are sixty-two pissed-off DiMaggios patrolling the streets now, looking to crack a head or two. Half the population of Mount Hope is popping NoDoz and lying in wait with firearms and nervous trigger fingers. Maybe our arsonist likes living even more than he likes burning things down.”

“Why doesn't he just move on to another neighborhood?”

“He seems to have a special interest in Mount Hope.”

“Those lawyers you asked me about the other day? What was that all about?”

“Just some names I happened to run across.”

“They lead you anywhere?”

“A dead end,” I lied. Given what had happened to Gloria and to Cheryl Scibelli, the less Veronica knew, the better.

That afternoon, Veronica curled up beside me with another book by that sexy poet she'd discovered. I opened a
New Yorker
magazine she'd brought for me to pass the time. Seymour Hersh was at it again, exposing more details about the mishandling of the war in Iraq.

I'd spent the last eighteen years writing about the small-time thugs and liars who ran Rogue Island. Hersh had spent the last thirty-five writing about the big-time thugs and liars who ran the country. Maybe Veronica was right. Maybe it
was
time for me to move on, see if I could write something that would matter.

I thought about that. Then I thought about it some more. My marriage was over. My parents were dead. My sister was in New Hampshire. My brother was in California, and we weren't talking anyway. Veronica was heading for Washington, and I couldn't bear losing her. What was holding me here?

That evening, Veronica brought up that thing called the future again.

“Mulligan?”

“Um?”

“Have you called Woodward yet?”

“This week. I promise.”

“You really will?”

“I really will,” I said. And this time, I meant it.

*  *  *

Wednesday morning Veronica tried to talk me into calling in sick again, then gave it up and helped me sponge off and get into my shirt. My ribs didn't seem to hurt quite as much as they did yesterday, the Red Sox were on a winning streak, and I was on the verge of a decision about my future. If it weren't for Gloria's eye, Scibelli's corpse, the cloud of suspicion over Jack, the humiliating beating I'd taken, and five consecutive nights without sex, I might have been in a good mood.

I couldn't find a space on the street, so I paid ten bucks to park in a mob-owned lot and walked two blocks to the paper. A couple of prowl cars were double-parked out front. As I walked up the sidewalk, their doors flew open and four uniforms climbed out.

Two got behind me, the other two in front, blocking my way. One grabbed my arms, yanked them behind my back, and snapped handcuffs on tight. Then he shoved me against a prowl car, kicked my legs apart, patted me down, and turned my pockets inside out. My vial of painkillers clattered on the curb. The pain in my ribs felt like I'd been shotgunned.

“You're under arrest.”

Yeah. I'd figured that part out.

The only words spoken on the short drive to police headquarters were: “What's this all about?” “Can you guys tell me what's going on?” “What the hell am I charged with?” Maybe the authorities had found out about my parking-ticket scam and didn't think it was funny.

60

Three TV news vans were double-parked in front of the station, and a welcoming committee of cameras and microphones waited on the front steps. Reporters started shouting questions the moment I was yanked from the prowl car. Logan Bedford pushed his way to the front of the pack and hollered:

“Why did you do it?”

Do what?

The uniforms pulled me by the arms into the station, bulled me into an elevator, and dragged me to a second-floor interrogation room. I was in too much pain to tell them how much pain I was in. A cop put his hands on my shoulders and shoved me down onto a straight metal chair. Then they left, slamming the door on the way out. Through a little window in the door, I could see that one of them had stayed behind to stand guard. Apparently I was an escape risk.

By the pattern of cigarette burns on the table, I could tell this was the same room where I had told Polecki about the little thug. I'd been sitting there in handcuffs for nearly an hour, savoring the aroma of old sweat and stale cigarettes, when Polecki and Roselli walked in grinning like idiots. My ribs ached and my arms were numb from elbows to fingertips.

“How about taking these things off?”

“Nah,” Polecki said. “You ought to wear steel more often. Looks good on you.”

“Yeah,” Roselli said, “and you're gonna look even better in stripes.”

“They don't wear stripes at the state prison no more,” Polecki said.

“Maybe Mulligan could be a trendsetter and bring them back,” Roselli said.

“Are you done,” I said, “or have you got some fresh material about bending over for the soap?”

“I'm done,” Polecki said. He turned to his dumber half. “You?”

“I got nothin'.”

“So, Mulligan,” Polecki said, “You doing drugs now?”

He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a plastic evidence bag, and tossed it on the table. My vial of pills was inside.

“Read the label, asshole. It's a prescription.”

“Yeah?” Polecki said. “Then you won't mind if we call this Doctor Brian Israel, make sure it's all on the up-and-up.”

“This is why you dragged me in here?”

“Oh, no,” Polecki said. “There's more.”

“Let me tell him,” Roselli said.

“We'll take turns,” Polecki said. “Why don't you start by reading him his rights?”

Roselli pulled a well-thumbed card from his pocket and started the spiel. Watch a few TV police dramas and you can recite Miranda backwards, but Roselli still needed that card.

“Now, then,” Polecki said, “I'm so glad you could come in for this little chat.”

“Yeah,” Roselli said. “Good of you to drop by.”