Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

“If she’s so honest,” he said, “what’s she doing representing the Maniellas?”

“Hey, porn’s not illegal. And a girl’s gotta make a living.”

“Name like Yolanda, sounds like she might be black.”

“That she is.”

“Didn’t know that was your type.”

“The good-looking ones are all my type,” I said. “So what did she have to say?”

“I left a message. She didn’t return the call.”

“Maybe she’ll return mine,” I said. I’d been looking for an excuse to call her, and now I had one.

“And you’ll let me know what you learn?”

“After three days or so, you mean?”

“Wiseass.”

“Maybe I’ll drop in on Vanessa, too. See if she likes reporters more than cops.”

“I’m betting not,” he said.

The Maniellas’ front door had a mahogany frame, a round-top transom, four panels of stained glass, and a hand-wrought iron grill. This was the first time I’d seen it in daylight. I stood on the porch and admired it for a moment before I rang the fleur-de-lis-shaped doorbell. The door swung open to reveal a stout Hispanic woman in a demure black-and-white maid’s uniform. Behind her, I caught a glimpse of a vast foyer with a sparkling white marble floor.

“Yes?” she said, although it came out sounding more like “Jes?”

“Is the lady of the house in?”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Mr. Mulligan of the Dispatch .”

“Un momento, por favor,” she said, and firmly shut the door.

I stood on the porch and looked out over the lake, its surface riffling in a stiff breeze. It was late in the season for water sports, but three teenagers in wet suits roared past on Jet Skis, throwing spray onto the Maniellas’ floating wooden dock. It was a good five minutes before the maid swung the door open again and stood aside so Vanessa Maniella could block the entrance with her ample hips.

I knew her to be thirty-five, but she appeared younger in knee-high calf boots and the kind of short, clingy skirt favored by the Kardashian sisters. Bleached blond tresses tumbled to her shoulders in a style suitable for one of Sal’s MILF videos. Vanessa looked me up and down and smirked.

“How was Rome?” I asked, trying an old reporting gambit. Pretend you know something you don’t, and more often than not a source will either confirm it or correct you.

“Barcelona,” she blurted out. “We were in Barcelona.”

“Don’t suppose your dad came along for the ride.”

“I’ve got nothing to say about that.”

“Do you know where he is?”

She was closing the door now.

“Is he in the morgue?”

I heard the dead bolt click.

“Why won’t you ID the body?” I shouted. “Is the maid in the country legally? Are you paying her Social Security taxes?” Not that I cared about that. It was just something to say.

I climbed into Secretariat, cranked the ignition, peeled out of the driveway, and tore down the narrow causeway at a reckless speed. After weeks of work on the Maniellas, I still had nothing worth printing. The frustration was getting to me. I felt like pounding on something.

It was nearly eight in the evening when I picked up a burger and fries to go at the lunch cart next to Providence City Hall and called Joseph DeLucca from the Bronco. He sounded groggy, as if my phone call had awakened him. Must have been his day off.

“Mulligan? Whassup?”

“I need a favor.”

“Name it.”

“I need to hit something.”

“Sure. No prob. Vinny gave me a key to the gym. Meet you there in thirty minutes.”

Vinny Pazienza’s private gym was in an old brick firehouse on Laurel Hill Avenue. Inside, the walls were hung with fight memorabilia: Everlast boxing gloves, framed sports pages, fight cards, and boxing posters from Foxwoods, Las Vegas, and Atlantic City.

Vinny was a local folk hero, partly because of his inspiring story and partly because he was small but tenacious-just like Rhode Island. He grew up as a skinny undersized kid who played a mean Little League shortstop, provoked on-field brawls, and kept the playground bullies at bay with his wild-eyed ferocity. When he was fourteen, he sat in the dark in the Park Cinema in his hometown of Cranston, watched Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed beat each other half to death, and decided then and there that he wanted to become a boxer. He hit the weights, built himself a gladiator’s body muscle by muscle, won a hundred out of a hundred twelve amateur bouts, turned pro in 1983, and defeated Greg Haugen for the IBF world lightweight championship in 1987.

In 1991, a few weeks after he pummeled Gilbert Dele to win the WBA world junior middleweight title, Vinny woke up in the hospital with a broken neck. A car crash had cracked his third and fourth vertebrae. Doctors told him he would never fight again. He was lucky he could even move his legs. Three months after the accident, he limped out of the hospital with a medieval-looking brace still screwed to his skull and went right into the gym. Just thirteen months later, he outpointed former WBC world super welterweight champion Luis Santana in a tune-up fight and set his sights on bigger things.

Over his twenty-one-year ring career, Vinny took some beatings. Héctor “Macho” Camacho bloodied him. Roger Mayweather and the great Roy Jones Jr. knocked him around the ring. But along the way, he beat the legendary Roberto Duran twice, and by the time his final fight ended with a victory in 2004, he was a five-time world champion. His final pro record: ten losses and fifty wins, thirty of them by knockout.

When I walked into the gym Joseph was already at work, his fists thudding against one of the heavy bags hanging on a chain from the ceiling. Each time he slugged the bag, it swung away from him as if it feared for its life. He had to wait for it to swing back so he could punish it again.

“Hold this fuckin’ thing still for me, will ya?” he said.

I stood behind the bag and steadied it while Joseph clubbed it with lefts and rights. He fired a ten-punch combination of hooks and uppercuts, backed off to catch his breath, and then went at it again. He completed his workout with a flurry of blows that traveled through the bag, up my arms, and down the length of my spine. Then he backed away, snorted like a bull, and said, “Your turn.”

Joseph showed me how to wrap my hands with strips of two-inch-wide cloth, weaving it between each finger, over each knuckle, and back around the wrist to protect the joints and tendons. When I was ready, I approached the bag and threw a couple of tentative left jabs. I tried a right cross, a left hook, a right uppercut, and found a rhythm. I liked the smacking sound my fists made when they met the bag. It felt good to be beating on something that didn’t hit back.

Afterward, we reconvened over beers at Hopes.

“You beat the crap out of that bag,” I said. “That how you hit King Felix when he pulled a gun on you?”

“Fuck, no. Asshole wouldn’t still be walkin’ around, I hit him like that.”

He chugged his Bud and waved for another. “You know,” he said, “you smacked the bag pretty good yourself. For a rookie. Got some pop in that skinny-ass frame.”

“Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

“Sure. Anytime you want.”

When the waitress arrived with his beer, I ordered another for myself, but I was already two beers behind him.

“I need to ask you something,” I said.

“If it’s for the fuckin’ paper, I ain’t got nothin’ to say.”

“Off the record,” I said.

“That means you won’t write what I tell you?”

“That’s what it means.”

“What, then?”