Bruce DeSilva - Cliff Walk

Charlie dropped our orders in front of us with a clatter of plates and tableware. Allegra picked at her salad. I inhaled the burger.

“Tracy says Phillip’s physical injuries are healing,” Allegra said, “but his emotional health is another story. He goes to counseling once a week, but it’s going to take a long time.”

“I imagine so.”

“Mulligan?”

“Um?”

“Do this job as long as Tracy and I have and you kinda get hardened to things, you know?”

“I do.”

“And Tracy’s always been a tough customer. But she couldn’t even talk about Phillip without tearing up.”

I didn’t have a response to that, so I finished my coffee and reached for the check.

“Can you stay a little longer?” Allegra said. “I thought maybe we could sit for a while and talk about Rosie.”

Mason, looking relaxed and deeply tanned, popped into my cubicle Tuesday morning and dropped a shopping bag on the desk.

“A present,” he said.

I reached in and pulled out a black T-shirt. It had a blue surfboard on the front and the words “Surfin’ Malibu U.S.A.” on the back.

“Why, thank you, Thanks-Dad,” I said. This would come in handy if I ever decided to wash the Bronco. “So how’d it go?”

“Great,” he said. “I rented a town house right on the beach. Met a couple of fun-loving girls. And I took surfing lessons from a former ASP World Tour champion who called me ‘dude.’”

“What else?”

“Don’t tell anybody,” he said, “but I got a tattoo.” He took off his suit jacket, draped it over the cubicle divider, rolled up his left sleeve, and displayed a small blue tattoo of a sailboat on an angry red patch of forearm. “I’ve got to hide it from Dad,” he said. “He’ll hate it.”

“Judging from the grin on your face,” I said, “I don’t think you’ve told me the best part yet.”

“Quite right.”

“So?”

“I’ll tell you over dinner. I made reservations at Camille’s for eight this evening. We’ll celebrate.”

Camille’s was the finest Italian restaurant on Federal Hill and had been for almost a hundred years. It was also the place where Vinnie Giordanno fell face-first into his plate of vongole alla Giovanni last year after two gunmen put one bullet each in his head.

“Don’t worry, it’s on me,” Mason said. “And just a suggestion: You might want to skip lunch.”

“I will.”

“Oh, and don’t forget to wear a jacket.”

Mason had arranged a small private dining room for the occasion. After we perused the menu and placed our orders, he selected a hundred-dollar bottle of wine for each of us: something called Antinori, Cervaro della Sala, Chardonnay, Umbria, for me; Poliziano, Asinone, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, for him. I’m no wine drinker, so I figured this was a good time to follow my doctor’s orders. I told the waiter to hold the wine and bring me a bottle of San Pellegrino.

And then the food kept coming and coming and coming.

Appetizers: portobello strudel and shrimp Santiago. Soups: pasta e fagioli and escarole with bean and Speck ham. Salads: scungilli and cold antipasto platter. Pasta: linguine carbonara and rigatoni con formaggio affumicato. And finally the entrées: veal steak Giovanni for him and swordfish al cartoccio for me.

After they were served, Chef John Granata popped in to shake our hands and ask if everything was satisfactory. We assured him it was. My ulcer wasn’t so sure. I popped a couple of omeprazole tablets and washed them down with San Pellegrino.

I kept trying to steer the conversation to Mason’s big news, but he was having none of it. “After we dine,” he said, and filled the space between us with small talk about surfing, Malibu, and the sorry state of the newspaper business.

I managed to eat about half of what was put in front of me. Mason, who was built like a Popsicle stick, cleaned his plate. If he weren’t so well-bred, I think he would have licked it. We skipped dessert and went straight for the after-dinner drinks, cognac for him and decaf for me. After they were delivered, Mason clinked his glass against my cup and sipped.

“So, Thanks-Dad,” I said, “don’t you think it’s time you told me what we’re celebrating?”

Mason laced his fingers behind his head, leaned back in his chair, and said: “Nailed it.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“I got seventeen porn stars on the record.”

“Great.”

“I knew you’d be pleased.”

“I’d be more pleased if you told me what they went on the record about .”

“Let me tell it from the beginning,” he said.

“Sure.”

“At first I didn’t think this was going to work out. The first six porn actors I located declined to talk to me, and most of them were quite rude about it. One even took a poke at me.”

“That how you got the split lip?”

“No. I ducked and he missed.” Mason laid a finger against the half-moon-shaped scab. “I got this when a whitecap flipped me and I got clipped by the board.”

“So what happened next?”

“On my second day in the Valley, I knocked on the door of a little pink bungalow in Santa Clarita, and a very pretty blonde in shorts and a halter top greeted me with a smile. When I told her what I wanted, she didn’t slam the door like the others. She invited me in and offered me iced tea.”

“What’s her name?”

“Her real name is Frieda Gottschalk, but she started calling herself Shania Bauer six years ago when she moved to Hollywood from Duluth to try to make it in the movie business.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Not well. After a couple of years, she gave it up and started doing porn under the names Peachy Butt and Sugar Sweet.”

“Does she have a peachy butt?”

“If that means what I think it does, I’d have to say yes.”

“Is she sugar sweet?”

“I resisted the urge to taste.”

“So what did she tell you?”

“First I showed Frieda the records indicating she had contributed five thousand dollars to the governor’s reelection campaign three years in a row.”

“I’d prefer that you refer to her as Peachy Butt.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Okay. Peachy Butt confirmed that the records were accurate. She also acknowledged contributing two thousand dollars each to our house and senate judiciary committee chairmen. When I asked her why she made the contributions, she said Sal Maniella told her to.”

“Did she tell you where she got the money?”

“She said Sal gave it to her.”

“Did she know this was illegal?”

“She didn’t say. I forgot to ask her that.”

“Why do you suppose she told you all this?”

“She said Maniella trimmed his roster of actors a few months ago when he opened a new studio in Rhode Island. She’s one of the ones who got dumped, and she’s not pleased about it.”

“Did she lead you to some of the others?”

“To five of them, yes. She even called them and said they should talk to me. Those five led me to still more, and by the end of the week I had seventeen on-the-record interviews. I could have gotten more, but I figured that was enough.”

“They all told the same story?”

“Pretty much, yes.”

“I don’t suppose you recorded the interviews.”

“I videotaped them with the Sony camcorder I brought along to document my vacation.”

“They didn’t mind?”

“Not at all. They were quite accustomed to being on camera.”

“Great job, Thanks-Dad. You’re really getting the hang of it. Don’t forget what street reporting is all about when you land the big job in the corner office.”