Bruce DeSilva - A Scourge of Vipers

Next morning, I punched the clock and was promptly summoned to Twisdale’s office.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Later, Chuckie. There are some people I’ve gotta see first.”

“No. We have to do this now.”

I shrugged and flopped into the chair across from his desk.

“What’s on your mind?”

“A couple of little things,” he said.

“Like?”

“Like why the cops dragged you out of my newsroom again.”

“What do you know about the murder at the Omni,” I asked.

“Just this,” Chuckie said. He folded The Dispatc h to the metro front and pointed to a one-column headline. The story beneath it was thin on details, saying only that Romeo Alfano, a businessman from Atlantic City, had been found shot to death in his hotel room and that police were investigating.

“The Providence cops questioned me about it,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I might have been the last person to see him alive.”

“Are you a suspect?”

“The homicide twins seem to think so.”

“Holy shit!”

“Yeah.”

“Who is this Romeo Alfano?”

“A mobster who’s been bribing state legislators to change their votes on the sports gambling bill.”

“Jesus! And you’ve been looking into this behind my back?”

“On my own time, yeah.”

Chuckie stared at me for a moment. His eyes narrowed and his jaw muscles clenched. When he spoke, his voice was an octave lower.

“Okay, Mulligan. You’re going to have to start trusting me. I need you to turn your cards over and tell me everything.”

“Not yet. I need a few days to tie up loose ends first.”

“We don’t have a few days. If corporate gets wind that you’re a suspect in a murder case, they’ll want me to fire you. I won’t be able to protect you unless I know what the hell’s going on.”

“Protect me ? You’re just trying to cover your ass.”

“That too,” he said.

The determined look on his face made it clear that I was out of options. Reluctantly, I ran it all down for him: The suitcase full of cash pried from Lucan Alfano’s lap. The list of public officials found in his pocket. His attempts to bribe Lisa Pichardo, Joseph Longo, and Phil Templeton. My confrontation with Mario Zerilli and Lucan Alfano’s brother Romeo at the Omni. New Jersey state cops’ assertion that the Alfanos were fixers for Atlantic City casinos. And my suspicion that Mario had killed both Romeo Alfano and Templeton.

With each revelation, Twisdale’s eyes got a little bigger. When I was done, he put his hands on his head, leaned back in his chair, and studied the ceiling.

“That’s one hell of a story,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“How much of it can you prove?”

“With a little more time, most of it. Maybe all of it.”

“Why did you keep me in the dark about this?”

“Because you would have called me off.”

“You got that right.”

“Coward.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Do you have any idea how lucky you’ve been, Mulligan?”

“It’s not luck, Chuckie. I’m good at this.”

“I know you are. What I mean is that you got to work here back in the days when The Dispatch was a real newspaper.”

“How would you know what it was like?”

“I’ve been reading through the archives,” he said. “Twenty, fifteen, even ten years ago, there was something amazing in the paper almost every day. Great beat reporting. Remarkable explanatory journalism. Superb storytelling. Blockbuster exposés.” He sighed. “You have no idea how much I wish I could have been part of that.”

At first, I thought he was blowing smoke. Then I caught the way his eyes lit up. I slid two cigars out of my pocket, clipped the ends, and tossed him one. He surprised me by picking it up and sticking it in his jaw. I gave him a light, then got mine going. We smoked in silence for a couple of minutes, blatantly disregarding both company policy and state law. Reporters stationed at nearby desks stared at us openmouthed through the aquarium’s glass walls.

“I know you don’t respect me,” Twisdale said. “If I were in your shoes, I’d probably feel the same way. But you don’t understand the pressure I’m under. Corporate doesn’t give a rat’s ass about covering the news or serving the public. All they care about is the bottom line.”

“You knew that when you took this job,” I said. “It’s what you signed up for. But maybe it’s not too late to grow some balls.”

“It is if I want to keep working here.”

“A paycheck means more to you than self-respect?”

Twisdale grabbed the picture frame on his desk and turned it around to show me his pretty blond wife and three towheaded little boys. “No,” he said, “but they do.” He frowned and slowly shook his head. “Besides, I don’t have the resources to let you run around chasing long shots.”

“Like I said, it was all on my own time.”

“Only if we don’t count your bullshit sick days,” he said.

“Fair enough.”

“But this isn’t a long shot anymore, is it.”

“No.”

He leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. Maybe trying to decide what to do about me. Maybe searching for some courage up there.

“What’s left to do before you can write?”

“I need to get a few key sources to go on the record.”

“Then I guess you better get cracking.”

This time I didn’t feel the urge to crack his head.

“One last thing,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t tell anybody else what you’re working on. If word gets out around the building, I’ll get pressure from the business side to kill the story.”

“Why?”

“That super PAC you say is funded by Atlantic City casinos? They’ve scheduled a series of full-page ads that start on Thursday.”

“And if my story pisses them off,” I said, “they might pull them.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re prepared to take the heat for that?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Twisdale said. “You know the saying-‘Act now, apologize later.’”

As I walked back to my desk, I wondered. Chuckie-boy had shown some guts today, but would he stand up when the heat came down?

Lisa Pichardo sat behind her desk in the House minority leader’s office, arms folded defensively across her chest.

“No way, Mulligan,” she said. “You promised everything I gave you would stay off the record.”

“That was before,” I said. “Things have changed.”

“In what way?”

“The bribery story’s going to break any day now. If you go on the record, people will know you blew the whistle. Otherwise, they might think you took the money.”

“I still don’t like it,” she said. “I’ve been threatened. If my name comes out, somebody might come after me.”

“Your name’s going to come out anyway once the state police make their case,” I said. With the Alfanos both dead, Parisi’s bribery investigation probably had stalled, but I was hoping Pichardo didn’t realize that.

“How can I be sure you’ll be fair with me?” she asked.

“Haven’t I always?”

She shook her head emphatically.

“You’ve made a lot of trouble for me over the years,” she said. “For one thing, I didn’t much like how I came off in that highway contract story last winter.”

“The one about you pressuring the DOT to turn down the low bid and hire a paving company from your district?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“I know it caused problems for you, but it was fair, wasn’t it?”

She sighed and uncrossed her arms.

“Maybe so,” she said.