Bruce DeSilva - A Scourge of Vipers

“If you want to keep that hand,” I said, “you better remove it right now.”

“Are you threatening a police officer?”

“Bet your ass.”

Wargart gave me his best hard look, then let go of me.

“He probably threw the gun in the river,” Freitas said.

“Or down a storm drain, maybe,” Wargart said.

“I didn’t,” I said, “but if I had, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell you two hard cases about it.”

“You know, Mulligan,” Freitas said, her voice softer now, “Mario was a women-beating, gay-bashing punk who will not be missed. He threatened your life, for godsakes. I bet you shot him in self-defense. Nobody could blame you for that. Why don’t you calm down and tell us what happened so we can all wrap this up and go home early.”

“Really?” I said. “Does anybody ever fall for that?”

“You’d be surprised,” Wargart said.

“Where’s that other gun you own?” Freitas asked.

“None of your business.”

With that, they pulled themselves to their feet and stomped out.

Once they were gone, I returned to my desk and rushed through the rest of the press releases. I needed to clear the decks, because this was going to be a big news day. The circus was coming to town.

The NCAA and the four major sports leagues had scheduled a joint press conference for three in the afternoon, giving local TV plenty of time to chop the speechifying down to a half minute of out-of-context sound bites for the five o’clock news. But just before one o’clock, Chuckie-boy shoved some empty Chinese food cartons aside, perched on the corner of my desk, and announced that he had something more pressing for me to do first.

“Wait till you hear this,” he said. “The police just busted some mall cop they found living in an unused utility shed inside the Providence Place Mall parking structure. He’d actually set up housekeeping in there. Had a sectional sofa, a dinette set, lamps, a microwave, a space heater, a TV. They say he was even stealing electricity and cable from the mall.”

“Okay, I’m on it.”

“Try to wrap this one up before the press conference starts, okay? It should make a hilarious page-one bright.”

I didn’t think it was funny.

According to the police report, thirty-one-year-old Joseph DeLucca had been arrested and charged with trespassing and theft of services, namely an estimated fifteen hundred bucks’ worth of the mall’s electricity. He’d already been arraigned and was being held in lockup in lieu of three hundred dollars bail.

After scribbling the details in my notepad, I went to the bank, got a cash advance on my Visa, and got him sprung. Fifteen minutes later we were sitting in a booth at the diner near city hall waiting for Charlie to finish scorching our burgers.

“Well,” Joseph said, “the fuckers finally caught me.”

He’d moved into the shed eighteen months ago because he couldn’t afford both beer and rent on the pittance the mall paid him to strut around in a uniform and discourage theft. Given the thousands of bucks in cosmetics, running shoes, and small electronics he liberated from the loose-fitting clothes and oversize handbags the shoplifters favored, Joseph figured he was entitled. I thought he had a point.

I’d first met Joseph about five years ago when the cottage he was living in with his elderly mother got burned down in the Mount Hope arson spree. Back then, he’d been nearly as wide as he was tall, but he’d dropped a hundred pounds the year he took a job as a bouncer at the Tongue & Groove. There, he got into a dispute over employee benefits. The manager accused him of abusing the strip club’s free-beer-and-blowjobs perk. Joseph insisted he’d been practicing admirable self-restraint. So they agreed to part ways, Joseph moving on to the mall cop job and the club manager to months of painful physical therapy. The manager made a sensible decision not to whine about it to the authorities.

I’d visited Joseph occasionally in his illicit mall digs to guzzle Narragansett, eat pizza, and watch the Patriots and the Red Sox on TV.

“So what are you going to do now, Joseph?”

“Go to jail, I guess.”

“This is your first offense, right?”

“Second. Got busted with a quarter-ounce of weed a coupla years ago.”

“You’ll get off with a lecture and fine. Probably less than a grand. But you’ll have to make restitution for the stolen electricity.”

“And if I can’t pay?”

“That could be a problem,” I said.

“Shit.”

“Maybe I can find a way to help you with that by the time your court date comes around. But first things first. Do you have a place to crash?”

“If I did, you think I woulda been squattin’ in a fuckin’ shed?”

“Tell you what. Why don’t you bunk down at my apartment for now?”

“You’d do that for me?”

“When we’re done eating, I’ll drop you there.”

“Thanks, Mulligan. I owe you big time.”

“I’ll get a key made for you tomorrow. Meanwhile, the place is wide open. Somebody broke in and trashed it last night. I’m afraid it’s an awful mess right now.”

“Aw, hell. Did they catch the guy who done it?”

“No, but I’ve got a pretty good idea who it was. If I find him, maybe you can hold him down for me while I break all his fingers and toes.”

“You bet. Meanwhile, the least I can do is help you clean up.”

“That would be great, Joseph. There’s some cleaning supplies under the sink. I’ll let the landlord know I’ve got a guest so he won’t be surprised when he comes by to fix the door.”

“Okay.”

“Are you still driving that piece-of-crap pickup truck?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s trash day on the East Side, and wealthy people there tend to throw out a lot of good stuff. Think you could cruise around and see if you can salvage a few things we need?”

“Like what?”

“Anything but a refrigerator, bookshelves, and a kitchen table. Everything else in the place is wrecked.”

No bigwigs stood behind the microphone-spiked lectern that had been placed on the statehouse steps. No Roger Goodell, Adam Silver, Gary Bettman, Rob Manfred, or Mark Emmert. Instead, the commissioners of the four major sports leagues and the president of the NCAA had dispatched their press flunkies, all of them schooled in the art of manipulating the media.

As the local TV affiliates, a half-dozen radio reporters, an AP reporter, and stringers for The Boston Globe and ESPN recorded the action, I roamed through the sparse crowd. Three members of the governor’s staff, the assistant director of the state Lottery Commission, and more than a dozen Rhode Island legislators had shown up to hear the speakers spout the same crap they’d spoon-fed me on the phone last week. I didn’t take many notes.

I was chatting with Mason, who was covering the proceedings for his Ocean State Rag, when I spotted a middle-aged woman in a gray business suit working the crowd. She flitted from one legislator to another, shaking their hands and whispering furtively into their ears. The woman looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her at first. Then it came to me. I raised my Nikon and snapped a few shots of her before I made my approach.

“Excuse me. My name is Mulligan. I’m a reporter for The Providence Dispatch. ”

“I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Mulligan.”

“Can you tell me your name and who you represent?”

“Fuck off.”

“Look, lady. I already took your picture. I can always show it around until I find someone who knows who you are. Why not save me the time?”

“You photographed me?”

“I did.”

“Who authorized you to do that?”