Bruce DeSilva - A Scourge of Vipers

“The tax on private sports gambling will amount to only six percent of the revenue we could have brought in if the Lottery Commission had been authorized to take the bets,” she said.

“Twelve million a year is better than nothing,” I said.

“You think?”

“You don’t?”

“No, I don’t,” she said. “We’ll have to spend most of the first year’s proceeds just to fight the federal lawsuits the NCAA and the professional sports leagues are going to file against the state. Besides, the whole thing is tainted now.”

“By the bribes that got handed out?”

“And by all the super PAC money,” she said. “The way I see it, that’s just legal bribery.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to veto it.”

“Told anybody else yet?”

“Just you.”

“Mind if I give the story to Mason?”

“So you can rub The Dispatch ’s face in it?”

“Of course.”

“I’m all for that.”

Next morning, I slipped into Mason’s office at The Ocean State Rag and found him hunched over his computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Give me a sec,” he said, “and I’ll be right with you.”

Edward Anthony Mason III was no longer the slim, naive, fresh-faced Columbia University J-School grad I’d met six years earlier when he strode into The Dispatch ’s newsroom. He’d put on a few pounds; I could see it in his face. He’d grown wiser in the ways of the world. And he’d recently gotten engaged to Felicia Freyer, the drop-dead-gorgeous attorney he’d met when we worked the Diggs case together a couple of years back. Once, he’d been a callow, privileged youth who thought the publisher’s chair at The Dispatch was his birthright. But when the family patriarchs sold the paper out from under him, he hadn’t sulked. He’d started his own business, and it was growing. He was a publisher now.

He rose from the computer, shook my hand, waved me into a visitor’s chair, and settled back down behind his desk.

“So,” he said, “are you ready to start?”

“Sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ve agreed to work part-time for McCracken. I’m thinking maybe I could do the same for you.”

“Figure on trying out both jobs to see which suits you best?”

“Something like that.”

“Reporter or private detective? Interesting life choice.”

“It is.”

“Tell you what. For now, I’ll add you to our stringers list and pay you by the piece.”

“Sounds good.”

“You’ll be on your own for health insurance, Mulligan.”

“I understand.”

“So, then. Got any story ideas?”

“I already have a scoop for you,” I said. “Show me where to sit, and I’ll bang it out.”

If the homicide twins were guilty of robbery and murder, proving it was going to be a bitch. I didn’t know where to start. The next morning, I kicked it around with Joseph for a couple of hours. He wasn’t any help.

At noon, I drove to the Omni and cornered the desk clerk who’d been on duty when Romeo Alfano was killed. Had he seen anybody who looked like a cop walk out of the hotel with a briefcase that day? He didn’t remember. When I slipped him forty bucks, he still didn’t. The concierge was no help either.

The hotel detective was a retired Providence police sergeant named Ferguson Conklin. I found him sitting in a cramped office near the reception desk, his eyes scanning the hotel’s surveillance monitors.

“How ya doin’, Fergie?”

“Been better. Murder ain’t good for business.”

“I assume you’ve gone over all the video from the day of the murder.”

“Of course I have. Freitas and Wargart did, too.”

“They show anything?”

“Nothing helpful.”

“No intruder sneaking into the murder room before the cops showed up?”

“There aren’t any surveillance cameras in the hallways.”

“What? Why not?”

“Our guests value their privacy.”

“But the cameras cover the stairwells and elevators?”

“Of course.”

“Anybody go up to the ninth floor shortly before the cops arrived?”

“Just a couple of the housekeeping staff. And one guy who knew how to avert his face from the cameras. Could have been the killer. Could have just been some guy cheating on his wife. Happens all the time. Of course, the cameras also caught you and McCracken coming down. Wargart and Freitas seemed real interested in that.”

“Did the homicide twins go up before Parisi arrived?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Mind if I take a look at the tape?”

“Sorry. The Providence dicks took it with them.”

I went back to my car and tried to think things through. A couple of weeks ago, I was an investigative reporter hell-bent on exposing massive political corruption in the state legislature. Now I’d been reduced to trying to clear a violent punk, and myself, of a murder rap. The sense of mission that had driven me for more than two decades as a journalist was gone, but my new task did come with a sense of urgency.

When I couldn’t think of anything better to do, I decided to try talking things over with Parisi-even though he was never much for talking.

“I hear you’re a private dick now,” he said through his rolled-down driver’s-side window.

“I am.”

“I hate private dicks.”

“That’s funny. Last time we talked, you said some nice things about McCracken. And he always speaks well of you.”

“Of course he does.”

“Mario Zerilli claims he didn’t shoot Romeo Alfano,” I said.

“What else would you expect him to say?”

“He also says he doesn’t have the two hundred grand.”

“Umpf.”

“Know what I’m wondering?” I asked.

“No idea.”

“I’m wondering if the homicide twins took it.”

A ten-second delay, and then, “You’re thinking they found Alfano dead and grabbed the money before I got there?”

“Or maybe scooped it after they shot him.”

Five seconds. “Interesting theory. Only one problem with it.”

“And what would that be?”

Ten seconds this time. “That grocery bag the Providence cops confiscated when they executed the warrant on your apartment?”

“Yeah?”

“You know what was in it?”

“No idea. I didn’t notice anything missing.”

Five seconds. “Hundred-dollar bills bundled with blue bank bands.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“How much?”

“Seven grand.”

“Jesus!”

He gave me a hard look and held it.

“Want to tell me where you and McCracken stashed the rest of the cash?”

I studied his face, trying to figure out if he was serious. It didn’t tell me anything.

“Come on, Captain. Freitas and Wargart must have planted a few bundles to set us up. You know we didn’t do this.”

“Do I?”

“Otherwise, you’d already have us in handcuffs.”

Ten seconds. “Not my decision. It’s Providence PD’s case.”

With that, he rolled up his window and roared out of the parking lot.

At first, I was too shocked to think straight. When I finally calmed down, my mind flooded with questions. If the homicide twins had me in a frame, why was I still running around loose? If they thought McCracken was involved, why hadn’t he been brought in for questioning? Why hadn’t his home and office been searched? For that matter, why hadn’t they searched my car?

None of it made sense.

I was halfway back to Providence when I spotted another gray Honda Civic in my rearview. This one tailed me all the way to Federal Hill, then kept going straight on Atwells Avenue when I turned onto America Street. I parked in front of my tenement building and spotted another one parked two blocks away on the other side of the street. I was getting paranoid about them again. The damned things were everywhere.