Bruce DeSilva - A Scourge of Vipers

“Sure,” I said, “but most of them aren’t smart. And some of them need the money right now.”

“Yeah, I get that. But what would you do, exactly? Drive around and look for new SUVs in their driveways or front-end loaders digging up their backyards?”

“For starters, I’d ask a P.I. friend of mine to tap his bank sources, find out if there’s been unusual activity on their credit cards.”

“Spending sprees?” he said.

“Or paying off large balances.”

“Wouldn’t it be illegal for the P.I. to do that?”

“Only a little.”

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling, thinking it over.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” he said. “Besides, I don’t see how it would help us. You might find something that looks suspicious, but it wouldn’t prove anything.”

“No, but it would tell us which legislators we should take a closer look at. Once we start asking questions and digging deeper into their finances, there’s no telling what might shake loose.”

“I don’t know, Mulligan. I mean, how long would all this take?”

“Maybe three or four weeks if I work it full-time.”

“Uh-uh. No way I can spare you that long.”

“Come on, Chuck. It’s an important story. If the Masons were still running the paper, they’d put three or four people on it.”

“But they’re not, so it would have to be just you-and mostly on your own time again.”

“That would take me two or three months,” I said. “By then it will be too late.”

“How do you mean?”

“The governor’s going to send the gambling bill to the legislature this week. There’ll be hearings in both houses, but it will probably come up for a vote in about a month.”

“So?”

“So once the votes are counted, all we’ll be able to do is expose a few sad sacks for taking bribe money. That would cause them a world of hurt, but what good would it really do anybody? The sleazebags who’ve been spreading money around already will have gotten what they paid for. The damage will have been done.”

“I guess that’s how it’s going to have to be, then,” Twisdale said.

He’d grown some balls in the last week, but Beauregard had snipped them off.

“Fuck you, Chuckie,” I said.

I pulled myself from the chair and stomped out.

A fresh stack of press releases was waiting on my desk. Still fuming, I sorted through them and identified the winner of the day’s stupid press release challenge:

“We are proud to announce that East Bay Exotic Animals of Johnston, Rhode Island, has been designated the official pet store of the Providence Vipers.”

The team wouldn’t have been all that proud if they’d bothered to check the store owner’s criminal record. Over the last five years, he’d been fined three times for violating the federal prohibition against the importation and sale of endangered species.

I added the salient fact to my story. It was an empty gesture of defiance. The Vipers and the pet store were both advertisers. Twisdale would feel compelled to show the story to our acting ad director, who would insist that the unflattering details be removed.

Early Wednesday morning I jumped out of bed, rummaged through yesterday’s clothes, located my cell phone, and called the paper. The managing editor was already at his desk.

“I’m feeling poorly again, Chuckie-boy. Looks like I’ll have to take another sick day. Who knows? If I can’t shake what ails me, I might be out the whole damn week.”

“Bullshit, Mulligan. Get your ass in here.”

“No can do.”

“You’re pissed off about the Vipers’ press release, aren’t you?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about press releases,” I said, and that was more or less the truth.

“You’re really not coming in?”

“I’m not.”

He paused, then said, “I’ll need another doctor’s note.”

I ended the call and turned the phone off. Then I stepped into the shower and let the hot water wash the tension from my shoulders. Now that I had the day free, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I was eager to hunt down bribe-taking legislators; but to pull that off I’d have to fake illness for a month. Chuckie-boy would never let me get away with that. Twenty minutes later, I was still pondering my next move when the water turned cold.

After I toweled off, I pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and sniffed the Red Sox T-shirts in my laundry basket. The one with Shane Victorino’s name on the back was the least offensive, so I put it on. Completing the ensemble with a Red Sox cap, I walked into the living room and roused Joseph from the couch.

“Got anything planned for today?”

“No.”

“Good. Let’s take a drive.”

“Where we goin’?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said.

“Okay, but can we get some breakfast first? I had too much to drink last night and barfed up my dinner. I’m fuckin’ famished.”

Ten minutes later, we were seated in a booth at Charlie’s diner. By the time I finished my bacon and eggs, Joseph had consumed two stacks of pancakes and was making short work of an egg and sausage sandwich.

“Hey, Joseph?”

“Umf?”

“How closely do you follow the NBA?”

“Ask me fuckin’ anything.”

“I’m thinking of putting a bet down on the Indiana Pacers to go all the way. What do you think?”

Joseph plopped the last morsel in his mouth, swallowed, licked the plate, and washed everything down with a swig of coffee. Then he launched into a soliloquy about matchups, odds, and point spreads that was worthy of Jimmy the Greek. I filed the information away for future reference. When Charlie came by with the check, Joseph asked for two corn muffins and a large coffee to go.

As we crossed the Providence River and turned south on Route 114, Joseph asked again where we were going.

“A reporter needs to know what’s happening on the streets,” I said, “but most days my boss keeps me cooped up in the office. It’s been months since I’ve had a chance to take a good look around, so I want to make a circuit of the state and see what’s changed out there.”

“Fine with me,” he said, “long as we can stop for lunch.”

We were cruising through the bedroom suburbs that line the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay when I noticed a black SUV keeping pace with us three car lengths back. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I’d seen the same car behind us as we crossed the river.

In the little bayside town of Warren, Route 114 becomes Main Street, with shabby World War I-era storefronts, some of them empty, lining both sides of the street. There, something piqued my interest, so I backed Secretariat into a metered parking space.

The display windows of a store that had once sold baby clothes were plastered with campaign posters for a Democrat seeking reelection to a third term in the state House of Representatives. A freshly painted sign stretching across the storefront proclaimed: “Concerned Citizens for Gus Lovellette.”

Campaigns for the Rhode Island state legislature are normally small-time, retail politics. The candidates hand out fliers at strip malls and glad-hand old folks at nursing homes. They knock on doors and ask homeowners for their votes. Occasionally, some of them scrounge enough campaign contributions to run a few radio ads. But usually, that’s about it. Now and then, when unions representing teachers or state employees get worked up about a piece of pending legislation, a few key committee chairmen can accumulate war chests of fifty grand or so. But as a rule, most legislative campaigns cost less than ten thousand dollars.

So why did Lovellette have his own campaign office? Usually the best someone like him could hope for was a poster in the local Democratic Party headquarters, which was located in another storefront just across the street. Lovellette was a struggling house painter. I doubted he was paying for this himself.