Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

What next? I decided to try another long shot.

Police and social service records involving children are supposed to be confidential, but nothing really is if you know the right people. In a state you can throw a shot put across, a good reporter knows almost everybody. I rang up Dave Reid, a former Dispatch assistant city editor. He’d fled the crumbling business six years ago to join the police department in the little town of Smithfield, which includes the village of Greenville, where the Maniellas had lived for years.

“Seven tomorrow morning work for you?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said, although it was awfully goddamned early. So at seven o’clock sharp, I stepped into the deputy chief’s office and plunked a copy of the Dispatch, two large coffees, and a box holding a Dunkin’ Donuts assortment on his supernaturally clean desk.

“Doughnuts? Really?” he said. “I thought you hated clichés.”

“If you don’t eat them, I will,” I said, so he pried open the box and plucked the leaking jelly doughnut I’d had my heart set on.

“You sure Vanessa Maniella spent her entire childhood in Smithfield?” he asked.

“Yeah. The family owned a house near the Stillwater Reservoir before they built their Versailles on Waterman Lake.”

“You understand I can’t tell you anything officially,” he said.

“Of course you can’t.”

“So we never had this conversation, right?”

“What conversation?”

“Our computerized records don’t go that far back,” he said. “I’ll have to hit the file cabinets, and I can tell you right now they’re a mess-a lot of stuff missing or misfiled.”

“Whatever you can do,” I said.

He got up, grabbed his cup of coffee from the desk, snatched another doughnut from the box, and said, “Wait here.”

I sipped my vile, milk-diluted decaf, sank my teeth into a lemon doughnut, and settled down with the paper. The Pawtucket PD was begging the public to come forward with leads on the missing girl, a sure giveaway that they had nothing to go on. Three men in ski masks had invaded the statehouse, fired warning bursts with their Heckler & Koch 5.56mm machine guns, smashed the glass case outside the governor’s office, stuffed the contents into canvas laundry bags, and made off with the antique Gorham sterling silver tea service that once graced the captain’s table of the battleship USS Rhode Island . And the Celtics, with Garnett still hobbling on a surgically repaired knee, were getting wiped out on their West Coast road trip. By the time Reid stepped back in, I’d been reduced to reading the obituaries, some of which I’d written. He looked at me and shook his head.

“Aw, crap.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Doesn’t mean she was never molested. The file might be missing. Or maybe it was never reported.”

“Could be,” I said. “Maniella’s the kind of guy who’d be inclined to handle something like that himself.”

“Tell you what,” Reid said. “Why don’t you talk to my older sister, Meg. She’s been the nurse at the middle school for thirty-five years; and don’t tell her I said this, but she’s quite the busybody. I’ll call and let her know you’re on the way.”

A half hour later, Meg ushered me into her closet-size office, directed me to an uncomfortable metal folding chair, and made me wait for twenty minutes while she attended to a couple of gum-chewing malingerers whining about tummy aches. When she was done, she sat behind her little metal desk and clasped her hands together on the plain paper desk pad.

“If anything like that happened, I never heard tell of it,” she said. “Before you got here, I called my friends Mary and Sylvia. They worked in the system forever. Mary was a nurse at the elementary school and Sylvia was a counselor at the high school before they both retired last year. Neither of them ever heard so much as a whisper.”

“I see.”

“Are you sure it’s true?” she said, sounding a little breathless.

“If I were, I wouldn’t be asking you about it,” I said. “I’m just fishing.”

“Fishing?”

“Yeah. It’s what I do. I poke into things, ask a lot of questions, and once in a while I learn something.”

“But you wouldn’t be asking about this if you weren’t pretty sure there was something to it, right?”

“Wrong.”

“I see,” she said. Rather coldly, I thought. “Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”

I thanked her and left.

It had been almost a week since I’d had a good cigar-or a bad one, for that matter. So I popped Memphis Slim into the Bronco’s CD player and fired up a Cohiba. As I drove back to the Dispatch, I pictured Meg sitting at her desk, balancing her professional ethics against the merriment of spreading a malicious rumor all over town.

Allegra Morelli was nothing like her older sister. Rosie had been six feet five; Allegra was five feet one. Rosie had been outgoing; Allegra was withdrawn. Rosie had been drop-dead gorgeous; Allegra was as plain as a grocery bag. Rosie had been ambitious; Allegra settled for juggling a caseload of sorrow at the state Child Protective Services Unit. And the biggest difference: Allegra was alive; Rosie was dead.

“Give me an hour to check the files, and I’ll call you back,” Allegra said.

“I got a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t you meet me at the diner in Kennedy Plaza so I can buy you lunch?”

A couple of hours later, I walked into the place and found her sitting alone in a booth, perched like a nervous little bird on the edge of the red vinyl seat. Her black handbag was on the table in front of her, and she clutched it with both hands as if she were afraid somebody might try to take it away from her.

Allegra and I had fallen into the habit of talking on the phone every few weeks to reminisce about Rosie, but I hadn’t seen her since the funeral and felt bad about that. I sat down across from her and said, “It’s good to see you. Thanks so much for coming.”

“I probably shouldn’t have,” she said. “Being seen with a reporter could get me in trouble.”

“I know.”

“But Rosie would have wanted me to.”

“God, I miss her,” I said.

“Me too.”

“Did you order yet?”

“No. I was waiting for you,” she said, so I gave Charlie a wave, and he came right over.

“What can I get you, miss?”

“A small garden salad, please, with Italian dressing on the side.”

“Anything to drink?”

“A glass of water.”

“A burger and a cup of decaf for me, Charlie,” I said. He nodded and went away.

“So, Allegra,” I said, “what did you find out about the Maniellas?”

“Nothing,” she said. “If either of them was ever molested as a child, there’s no record of it.”

“Oh. Well, thanks for checking.”

“Sure.”

“What about the three kids who were rescued from the Chad Brown child porn factory?”

“I can’t talk about that if you’re going to put something in the paper.”

“I won’t. I was just wondering how they’re doing.”

“Two of them are back with their parents. I assume they’re getting psychiatric care, but they aren’t in the system so we don’t have files on them.”

“What about the eight-year-old boy who was sold by his drug addict mother?”

“He’s on my girlfriend Tracy’s caseload,” Allegra said, “so I got the whole story. The child’s name is Phillip. Phillip Bowen. He was placed in a foster home in North Kingstown and will stay in foster care until his mother gets out of jail, which won’t happen anytime soon, from what I hear.”

“By the time that bitch sees sunshine again,” I said, “Phillip will be all grown up.”