Bruce DeSilva - A Scourge of Vipers

“Has he confessed?”

“No. But there’s more.”

“What?”

“Freitas and Wargart got a court order to open Parisi’s safe deposit box at Citibank. Inside, they found nearly two hundred grand in hundreds. Romeo Alfano’s prints were on a few of the bank bands.”

“They’re charging him with that, too?”

“With grand larceny.”

“What about Alfano’s murder?”

“They still don’t know if it was Parisi or Mario Zerilli,” she said. “From the sound of it, they may never find out.”

“But chances are, Parisi’s going to die in prison,” I said.

“Yes.”

“It’s a shame, really.”

“Why on earth would you say that?”

“Stephen Parisi was a damned good cop, Yolanda. For thirty years, he was relentless and flat-out incorruptible. And how was the state of Rhode Island prepared to reward him for his years of faithful service? By slashing the pension he and his wife were going to retire on. He didn’t plan his crime. He just walked into a hotel room I sent him to and stumbled on two hundred grand in cash. And in a moment of weakness, he took it. Under the same circumstances, I might have done the same thing.”

“He was going to kill you, Mulligan.”

“It wasn’t personal. He needed a patsy to pin the crime on, and I happened to be handy. I’ll never forget the tortured expression on his face when he pointed the gun at me and ordered me out of the car. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I can’t help but wonder, when it came right down to it, if he could have pulled the trigger.”

“I guess we’ll never know,” she said.

“I bet he doesn’t know either.”

Whatever Mario Zerilli’s part in the drama had been, he was apparently going to get away with most of it. He may not have shot Romeo Alfano, but he probably killed Templeton. Yet the only charges pending against him were last spring’s gay-bashing outside the Stable and the assault and gun charges from the incident at Whoosh’s store. He’d probably serve less than ten years for all that. And when he gets out, I thought, he’ll be back to making trouble for me about the bookmaking business.

I was relieved that it was all over for now, but nothing about the way things had turned out felt right.

After I helped Yolanda clear the dishes, she put Tony Bennett on the stereo. We held each other on the couch for a while, but when Bennett started crooning “Tender Is the Night,” we got up and danced.

That night, she wasn’t the tender lover I had grown accustomed to. This time, she responded with urgency. She even bit me.

“You look like you could use a drink,” McCracken said.

I made a show of looking at my watch. “It’s still morning.”

“But you had quite a scare this week.”

“Aw, you know me. Nerves of steel.”

He smirked, got up from behind his desk, and strolled to the bar.

“What’s your poison?”

I turned and ran my eyes over the options.

“Knob Creek,” I said. “But if you want to keep me working here, you better lay in some Irish whiskey.”

“Bushmills, right?”

“That’s my usual, but Locke’s Single Malt would be better.”

“Done.”

He poured and handed me the bourbon. For now, it would have to do.

“How are you with the way things turned out?”

“Happy to be alive. Otherwise, everything pretty much sucks.”

“A shame about Parisi,” he said.

“Templeton, too.”

“At least our client’s happy.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “No way the cops can hang murder and robbery charges on Mario now.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Um.”

“Annunzio sent over a check, and he threw in a thousand-dollar bonus.”

“How nice.”

“He’s putting us on retainer, too.”

“Good to hear.”

“Do you need a few days off, or can I toss you another case?”

I took a moment to think about it, then said, “I’d like to stay busy.”

“But nothing too heavy?”

“For now, I think that would be best.”

“Got a call from Walmart yesterday. Somebody’s been pilfering electronics from their store on Silver Spring. The manager will set you up with a job in the storeroom next week.”

“I dunno. Someone’s bound to recognize me.”

“Shear off that mop and shave your head,” he said. “And I’ll get you a pair of horn-rims with window-glass lenses. Not even Yolanda will recognize you then.”

“Unless I take my pants off,” I said.

I wandered into my office, opened the box containing the new Walther, and dry-fired it, testing the trigger pull. Then I fired up the computer, logged on to The Ocean State Rag, and caught up on the local news I’d missed while I was in lockup. Parisi’s arrest had been the main story for three days running. I picked up the desk phone and dialed.

“Mulligan? I was hoping you’d call.”

“Hi, Mason.”

“Are you okay?”

“It was touch-and-go for a while, but I’m fine now.”

“Are you up to writing a first-person account of your ride with Parisi?”

“I was on a case for McCracken when it happened,” I said. “He can be a sticker for confidentiality. I’ll have to check with him first.”

After we signed off, I wandered into McCracken’s office.

“I’ll have to clear it with Annunzio,” he said.

Ten minutes later, he popped his head into my office and gave the okay. I spent the rest of the day pounding out the story. After I checked it over, I e-mailed it to Mason. Then I leaned back in my chair and allowed myself to dream a little.

After a half hour or so, I bent over the keyboard and searched the real estate listings for Jamestown, the town that occupies the largest island in Narragansett Bay. In a year or so, I’d have enough cash from Joseph to make a down payment. Something cozy and secluded with a view of the water. If Yolanda relented and let me move in, I wouldn’t need it, but it could be our place to slip away for romantic weekends. Putting it in my name would be a risk, but Tuukka & Associates Insurance Underwriters of North America could hold the title. Nobody had to know that I was the sole stockholder.

Life after The Dispatch was coming into focus now, and I was starting to like the way it looked.

Whenever I visited Rosie at Swan Point Cemetery, it had nearly always been raining, but Saturday morning dawned clear. The sky was alive with Canada geese getting an early start on their annual pilgrimage from Hudson Bay to the Chesapeake.

I opened my gym bag, pawed through my basketball shoes and gym shorts, and found the Manny Ramirez jersey. I draped it over the gravestone, squatted in the grass, and gave Rosie a hug.

“No, I don’t think I’m going to miss newspaper work, Rosie. The Dispatch isn’t worth working for anymore anyway. Besides, wasn’t twenty-two years as a reporter enough? It’s time for me to start a new chapter. The truth is, I’m not sure how much good I ever did there anyway… Yeah, I know. I exposed a lot of bad people over the years. But most of them were just errand boys. The real corrupters always got clean away.

“Well, look at how things worked out this time, Rosie. Two of the Alfanos ended up dead, but the people who hired them keep getting richer. Cheryl Grandison will do time for bugging Fiona’s office, but I never laid a hand on the deep-pocket organizations that tried to buy our state legislature. The state budget is still in the crapper, the best cop I ever knew is behind bars, and Citizens United is still the law of the land.

“America is being poisoned by big money, Rosie. Casino money. Oil money. Big Pharma money. Wall Street money. It makes a mockery of our elections. It corrupt our cops and politicians, even some of the ones who entered public service for the right reasons. And somehow, the fat cats and their acolytes have convinced half the population that the avaricious pursuit of wealth is a virtue.