Rogue Island (5 page)

Whoosh!

The officially sanctioned gangsters at the lottery commission, who pushed worthless scratch tickets and chump numbers games, resented Zerilli because he gave the suckers a legitimate chance to win. The Mafia always gives better odds than the state.

Just about everybody in Mount Hope dropped by Zerilli's store from time to time, either to lay down a bet or to replenish dwindling supplies of malt liquor, soft-porn magazines, and illegal tax-stamp-free cigarettes. They called him “Whoosh,” and it was said he knew them all by name. I bought my first pack of Topps baseball cards from Whoosh when I was seven years old, and he started taking my bets on the Sox and Patriots when I turned sixteen. Now, thanks to the snow-induced parking ban, I found a spot for Secretariat right out front.

“Pictures?” Zerilli said. “You want me to look at fuckin' pictures?”

“That's right.”

“Ah, shit. I thought you was gonna ask me about the DiMaggios.”

We were sitting in Zerilli's inner sanctum, only one of us wearing pants, the photographs fanned out on his keyhole desk. We had already gone through our ritual: him presenting me with a new box of illegal Cubans and asking me to swear on my mother that I wouldn't write about anything I saw in there; me swearing, opening the box, getting a cigar going, and not mentioning there was nothing to write about because everybody already knew what went on in there. Except for the part about the pants.

I said, “What's the DiMaggios?”

And he said, “Watch where you flick them fuckin' ashes.”

“A new way to bet baseball or something?”

“Nah! Ain't no new way to bet nothin'. S'all been done.”

“So?”

“So last week I started in thinkin'. Do I sit around waitin' for some asshole to torch my store, or do I do somethin' about it? Cops been tellin' me not to worry, said they put on an extra patrol. Big fuckin' deal. Prowl car makes a few extra passes through the neighborhood, like that's gonna do any fuckin' good. Last Thursday night I got two dozen of the guys together. Guys what come in the store regular, live in the neighborhood. You ain't heard about this? You must be slippin'. I figured you woulda heard about this. I broke 'em up into two-man teams, give each of 'em four-hour shifts, overlapping, you know, so they's always at least four guys on the streets. Some of the guys ain't workin', so we can cover the whole day no problem. They're all good guys, mostly micks and wops, coupla spics.”

“The DiMaggios?” I said.

“Yeah, well, they needed somethin' to carry, you know, in case they run into trouble. Don't need no more fuckin' guns on the street. Got enough headache, pukes strollin' in here with UZIs they buy in schoolyards, scarin' the help half to death. So I got the guys twenty-four brand-new Louisville Sluggers. Woulda set me back a few hundred bucks if Carmine Grasso hadn't had 'em sittin' around, you know, from the time he … ah … acquired a truckload of sporting goods. Charged me two bucks apiece. Ended up buyin' eighty of 'em. Gonna stick the rest out front the store this spring, sell 'em to the kids. If spring ever comes—this fuckin' snow—Jesus!”

“And since they're carrying bats,” I said, “why not name them after the best wop baseball player who ever lived.”

“Fuckin' A! The two spics are callin' themselves the ‘A-Rods' just to piss me off, but they're okay, those guys. Good they got some pride.”

When we finally got to the pictures, Zerilli's reputation for knowing everyone in the neighborhood turned out to be a mite exaggerated. Of the nine faces, he put names to six.

“Lemme keep these awhile, show 'em to the DiMaggios,” he said. “Maybe get some more names to go with the faces.”

“Fine,” I said.

“We got a meeting here at nine tonight, 'fore the night shift hits the streets. Probably do it then.”

“Maybe I'll drop by,” I said, “bring a photographer, do a little story on the DiMaggios, if it's okay.”

“Get some pictures of the guys holdin' the bats,” he said. “Scare the piss outta the asshole settin' the fires. Maybe convince him to pick on some other neighborhood.”

I'd been neglecting my cigar, and it had gone out. As I fished in my pockets for my Zippo, Zerilli handed me his Colibri, the Trifecta model with three compact flames, designed to fit perfectly in your palm.

“Keep it,” he said.

“I can't do that, Whoosh. You know what these things cost?”

“Grasso gets 'em for me cheap, as many as I can move,” Zerilli said, “long as I keep my mouth shut about where they come from. 'Sides, you take the Cubans, and you know damn well what they cost.”

“I see your point,” I said. I stuck the lighter in my shirt pocket and got up to go.

“Aaay, just a fuckin' minute,” he said. “Did you say ‘best wop baseball player'? Is that what you fuckin' said? Fuck you! Best baseball player that ever lived, period, you fuckin' harp.”

When I got back to the office, I logged on to check my messages and found this from Lomax:

T
HE DOG PEOPLE SAY THEY'RE CALLING
C
HANNEL 10 IF YOU DON'T TALK TO THEM TONIGHT.
I
F THAT HAPPENS,
I
WOULDN'T WANT TO BE YOU.

10

The dog people turned out to be Ralph and Gladys Fleming. They lived in one of those one-story boxes thrown together on concrete slabs in the seventies under a program designed to give folks with modest incomes a chance to get into the housing market.

The police radio had honked like a goose all the way to Silver Lake. Holdup in progress at the Cumberland Farms on Elmwood Avenue. Trash fire on Gano Street. Domestic dispute on Chalkstone Avenue. Some chatter about proceeding to locations and apprehending suspects. But no fire alarm in Mount Hope.

Fourteen inches of snow had fallen overnight, and the Providence Highway Department had done its customary crackerjack job of snow removal. The Flemings' street was a glacier. Ralph and Gladys must have been watching me negotiate their unshoveled walk, because as soon as I raised my hand to knock, the door swung open. I was about to introduce myself when something big and hairy forced its way between Ralph and Gladys and slammed into my groin. I toppled off the porch and crash-landed in the snow.

“Sassy, no!” Gladys piped, a bit tardily I thought.

Ignoring her, Sassy pinned me to the snow and sandpapered my face with her tongue. One of us seemed pretty happy.

Ralph helped me up, Gladys asked me six times if I was all right, four hands brushed snow from my clothes, apologies and “bad dog” were spoken in multiples of ten, and we were all seated cozily now on Gladys's floral seat covers. I in a rocking chair with a cup of coffee steaming beside me on a rock-maple end table. Ralph and Gladys on the sofa. Sassy at my feet, nibbling a Beggin' Strip. She looked like a cross between a German shepherd and a Humvee.

We quickly established that Ralph and Gladys were both fifty-six, had two grown daughters, and had moved here from the state of Oregon nine months before to work nights in a tool-and-die factory. They liked Oregon all right, but the move became necessary when the Sierra Club, the Environmental Protection Agency, and a couple of spotted owls conspired to abolish Ralph's job at a sawmill near the Willamette National Forest.

“Funny thing,” Ralph said. “When I went to the bank to open an account, the clerk looked at me strange and asked me why in heaven's name I had moved to Rhode Island. Same thing happened when I went to the registry to get a Rhode Island driver's license.”

“And the cable man,” Gladys said. “Don't forget the cable man.”

They both looked at me now like I was supposed to explain it. The littlest state's inferiority complex is as big as the chip on its shoulder. I imagined Ralph and Gladys would figure it out for themselves if they stuck around long enough.

“Well,” Ralph said after a moment, “I sure did hate to leave Sassy behind in Oregon. Didn't seem there was much choice, though. No way to know where we'd be staying once we got here.”

“Turns out we could have brought her,” Gladys said—a bit huffily, I thought.

“So we had to leave her,” Ralph continued. “Neighbors name of Stinson, John and Edna their Christian names, were kind enough to take her in.”

“Couldn't even call to ask about her when we got out here,” Gladys said, “ 'cause the Stinsons got no phone.”

“Weekend 'fore last,” Ralph said, “on Sunday, wasn't it, Glady?”

“Saturday,” Gladys said.

“Well, Saturday then. We got up the usual time. 'Round eight, I'd say it was. I was reading the paper while Glady made breakfast. Eggs, wasn't it, Glady?”

“Don't I make 'em for you every morning?”

“Suddenly there was this scratching at the door. I believe we both heard it, didn't we, Glady?”

“I heard it first, Ralph; you know I did. I heard it and I said, ‘What's that scratching, Ralph?' and you said, ‘What scratching?' and then you heard it, too.”

“So I put the paper down, and I got up from the table and went to the door, right, Glady?”

I wondered if Ralph had ever done anything without asking “Glady” if he'd actually done it.

“When I opened it,” Ralph said, “Sassy bounded in and skittered round on the kitchen floor, then leaped up on me and nearly knocked me down. Slobbered all over my face and then turned round and started in on Glady.”

“I was so glad to see her that I let her,” Gladys said. And then she blushed. “Had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn't dreaming.”

“How do you suppose she got here?” I asked.

“Walked, most likely,” Ralph said.

“Well,” Gladys said, “she could have run some, too.”

Or hitched a ride with a long-haul trucker or flown first-class on American Airlines,
I thought, but figured I better keep my mouth shut.

“Once all the face licking was over and she'd settled down some, I gave her water and leftovers,” Ralph said. “Sassy gobbled it down like there was no tomorrow.”

“Poor thing was starving to death,” Gladys said. “I told Ralph, I said, ‘You get out to the store right now and bring back some dog food.' ”

“When I got back,” Ralph said, “she wolfed down three cans of Alpo fast as I could open them up and dish them out, didn't she, Glady?”

“I told him, ‘Three cans is enough,' ” Gladys said. “I told him, ‘Ralph, you're gonna make that dog sick, you don't stop feeding her.' ”

“Would of ate more if I'd let her,” Ralph said.

“No call to make her sick,” Gladys said.

“Perhaps you'd like to stay for lunch, Mr. Mulligan?” Ralph said.

“Thank you, but no, I've got to get back.”

“Be no trouble at all,” Gladys said. “Got some olive-loaf sandwiches all made up.”

“No. Thank you.”

“So the next day,” Ralph said, picking up the story, “we got to talking about how amazing it was. The way Sassy tracked us all the way across the country like that, just like them dogs in the movies. Glady said we ought to call the TV, but I figured we should give it some thought.”

“
Amazing Animals
would have paid a pretty penny,” Gladys said, a bit wistfully, I thought.

“Maybe so,” Ralph said, “but seems to me nobody'll believe our story 'less they read it in the paper.”

“I thought Channel 10,” I said.

“What was that?” Ralph said.

“I thought you were thinking of calling Channel 10.”

“Well, sure,” Ralph said. “That's the channel
Amazing Animals
is on, ain't that right, Glady?”

“No it ain't, Ralph. It's on one of them cable channels.”

On the way out, I gave a wide birth to Sassy. I wasn't all that eager to write about Ralph, Gladys, and their amazing animal, so I decided to stop at the health department on the way back to the paper, even though it wasn't really on the way back.

11

I made it to the clinic forty minutes before closing and spent half an hour guessing what everyone else in the waiting room was there for.

The pimply redhead with the gnawed fingernails? She had unprotected sex with her lout of a boyfriend and was afraid she might be pregnant again. The bald guy with the bulbous honker? He wanted to be sure the city council president, who'd picked him up on karaoke night at the Dark Lady, hadn't passed him AIDS along with the bar nuts. The middle-aged guy in the mirror across the room, the one with the tousled hair, the Dustin Pedroia T-shirt, and the hangdog expression? He hated needles but would have gone under the knife without anesthesia if it meant that the woman with the cartoon-mouse snicker would finally let him.…

The clerk was calling my name.

The phlebotomist spiked me three times before she struck a vein. The clerk reaffirmed that the lab was backed up.

“Be seven weeks before the results come back,” she said.

“This morning, on the phone, they said five.”

“Seven,” she said. “Look at this stack of blood test orders, most of 'em for HIV, which you say no way you got anyway. So what's your rush?”

When a Rhode Islander needs something he can't flat out steal, there are two ways to get it. Need a plumber's license but can't pass the state test? Want those fifty parking tickets fixed? Or maybe you'd just like a rush job on an HIV test. Chances are, in a state this small, you know somebody who can help. Maybe your uncle's on the state plumbing board. Maybe you went to school with a police captain. Maybe the health department clerk is married to your cousin. No? Then you have the option of offering a small gratuity.

Graft, Rhode Island's leading service industry, is widely misunderstood by citizens of states you can't stroll across on your lunch break. Those of us who live here know that it comes in two varieties, good and bad, just like cholesterol. The bad kind enriches politicians and their greedy friends at taxpayers' expense. The good kind supplements the wages of underpaid government workers, puts braces on their kids' teeth, builds college funds. Good graft is fat free. It's biodegradable. It dissolves red tape. Without the lubricant of graft and personal connections, not much would get done in Rhode Island, and nothing at all would happen on time.