Bruce DeSilva - A Scourge of Vipers

“Our topic this morning is Governor McNerney’s shameful plan to legalize sports betting. It’s bad enough that the state squanders the millions of dollars it rakes in from the sale of lottery tickets. Now Attila the Nun wants to be your bookmaker so she can get her claws on millions more. Make no mistake, my fellow patriots. Her scheme is nothing more than a disguised tax increase to fuel our bloated state government.

“Our guest this morning is the Reverend Lucas Crenson, pastor of the Sword of God Church in Foster and announced Republican candidate for governor. Welcome to the show, Reverend.”

“Thank you, Iggy. And you are so right. State-sponsored gambling isn’t just a tax. It’s a regressive one that steals money from the pockets of people who can least afford it. The answer to our budget crisis isn’t more taxes. It’s cutting waste and eliminating the endemic corruption that is bleeding our state dry. I pledge to you that when I am elected, I will do everything in my power to set Rhode Island on an honest and godly path.”

I backed Secretariat into a metered space next to Burnside Park and let the engine idle.

“But this isn’t just about taxes,” Iggy said. “Gambling is also a moral issue. Isn’t that right, Reverend?”

“It certainly is. Gambling is a sin. One that ruins lives and destroys families. Government-sponsored gambling is even worse. It poisons our democracy, making all of us complicit in this unholy vice. And the money it generates fills the coffers of a nanny state that squanders our hard-earned dollars on free abortions and handouts to people who refuse to work for a living and are not deserving of our largess.”

“The phone is lit up,” Iggy said, “so let’s take some calls. June from Barrington, you are on the air.”

“Good morning, Iggy.”

“Good morning, June. What’s on your mind?”

“I can’t believe the governor wants to allow the Lottery Commission take sports bets,” she said. “If we’re going to go down this road, we should turn it over to private enterprise.”

“Right you are, June. That’s the only sensible way to go about this,” Iggy said, blissfully oblivious that he was contradicting everything he and his guest had just said.

“Governor McNerney will never do that because she’s a socialist,” Reverend Crenson chimed in. “When she renounced her role in the church of Rome, she chose to forsake God, and as governor she has renounced freedom. She’s as evil as the Kenyan-born Muslim tyrant who illegally occupies the White House.”

Swell. I killed the engine, fed the parking meter, crossed the park, and slipped into the diner near city hall. As I grabbed a stool at the counter, Charlie, the fry cook who owns the place, cracked three eggs on the grill without taking my order and slapped five strips of bacon down beside them.

“So whaddaya think about the governor’s plan to legalize bookmaking?” he asked.

“I don’t have an opinion. You?”

“My three brothers all work for the state. If this’ll bring in enough dough to save their pensions, I’m all for it.”

We kicked that around for a while as I ate, then chatted about how the Red Sox were shaping up. We finished critiquing the starting lineup and had just started in on the bullpen when Frieden, the kid city hall reporter, pushed through the door.

“Mulligan? I thought you were supposed to be sick.”

“I’m feeling a wee bit peaked,” I said. “Not sure I’ll be able to keep Charlie’s bacon and eggs down.”

“Liar.”

“Okay, you caught me,” I said. “But maybe this can be our little secret.”

“No worries. I won’t tell.”

“So, how are you doing?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“Why was Chuckie-boy on your case the other day?”

“He gave me three times more work than I could finish and then yelled at me because I didn’t finish it.”

“Don’t let him get you down, Kate. The man’s a bully.”

She plopped down on the stool next to me. Without meeting my eyes, she said, “Working for a newspaper isn’t what I thought it would be.”

I was pretty sure she didn’t expect a reply, and I was in no mood to nurture. I drained my coffee and wiped the grease from my mouth with a paper napkin. Then I dropped a ten on the counter, turned up the collar of my jean jacket, put on my Red Sox cap, and stepped out into a light morning rain.

The Turk’s Head Building was located in a modest cluster of office towers that Mayor Carozza called the Providence financial district. He actually said this with a straight face. The sixteen-story, V-shaped structure, loosely modeled after New York City’s Flatiron Building, was the tallest in Rhode Island when it was erected in 1913. A century later it was a dwarf, but it remained one of the state’s most fashionable business addresses.

I sloshed down Westminster Street toward a snarling concrete figurehead suspended three floors above the main entrance. Adorned with a turban and a Fu Manchu mustache, it was supposed to represent a Turkish sultan. I thought it was a dead ringer for Flash Gordon’s arch-enemy, Ming the Merciless.

I ducked through the revolving door, shook the rain from my cap, and scanned the tenant directory: TD Ameritrade, Janney Montgomery Scott, the BankRI Art Gallery, Café la France, a pride of life insurance companies, a bloat of boutique law firms… Then I rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor and strode to the end of a spit-shined hallway. There I found a frosted-glass door discreetly labeled in gold paint:

McCracken & Associates

CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES

Inside, a secretary who resembled Rihanna stabbed at a keyboard with glitter-polished nails. Putting my own investigative skills to the test, I deduced from the nameplate on her desk that this was not the actual pop star but rather a pretender known to her friends and colleagues as Sharise Campbell. Behind her were three oaken doors. A golden metal plate on one of them said “Mr. McCracken.” The other two doors were blank.

“Good morning, sir,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”

“I don’t, but I was hoping your boss might be able to squeeze me in.”

“That would be quite irregular, sir, but it would be my pleasure to ask if you can tell me your name and what this is regarding.”

“They call me Mulligan, and I’m here to see if the resident gumshoe can weasel me out of a murder rap.”

She didn’t even raise an eyebrow. She just lifted the receiver of her desk phone and murmured into it. Then she beamed at me and said, “You’re in luck, sir. Mr. McCracken is able to see you now.” She rose on Rihanna’s legs, opened the door to her right, and ushered me inside.

“May I bring a refreshment for you and your guest, Mr. McCracken?”

“Yes, Sharise,” he said as he got up to greet me. “Two cups of your excellent coffee, please. Mr. Mulligan takes it with cream and one sugar.”

“Right away, sir.”

As McCracken crushed my fingers in his grip, I took inventory. Gone was my friend’s dated Sears blazer. Now his five-foot-eight-inch weight-lifter’s body was draped in a chalk-striped navy-blue suit that hung like it had been made for him. A Glock automatic and a gun-cleaning kit rested on the glare of his desk, a modernistic slab of glass and steel big enough to accommodate off-street parking. To the left was a small cherrywood bar stocked with Johnnie Walker Black, Chivas Regal, Knob Creek, Rémy Martin, and Grey Goose in three vile fruit flavors. Behind the desk, high windows looked down on a neighborhood of restored colonial homes nestled just across the shit-brown ribbon of the Providence River. The red-and-green rug in the center of the white marble floor looked like real Persian.