Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

“Long time,” she said.

“More than a year.”

“I’ve missed you.”

He’d missed her, too, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

“The reason I’m calling,” he said. “Lomax is bugging me for a follow on Kessler. Wants to keep the story alive in the paper. I was hoping you could give me something that will get him off my back.”

“I can do that.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I’m a little busy right now. Why don’t we get together later at the Trinity Brewhouse?”

“Not Hopes?”

“I don’t go there anymore. My press secretary says the governor should patronize a better class of gin joint.”

“The Brewhouse can get loud,” Mulligan said. “It’s not the best place for a conversation.”

“Happy hour starts at four. If we get there at three, we’ll have the place pretty much to ourselves.”

So when Mulligan walked through the door ten minutes early, Fiona was already there, sitting alone by a window overlooking the Providence Public Library. She was a small woman whose chopped-short hair had gone prematurely gray. A pint of amber microbrew sat on the table in front of her. On the street outside the window, the governor’s official limo idled at the curb, a state trooper behind the wheel.

Before Mulligan could seat himself on the stool across from her, Fiona sprang up and gave him an awkward hug.

A waitress materialized and said, “Menu?”

“No thanks,” Mulligan said. “Just bring me some chips and salsa and a glass of Tommy’s Red.”

Fiona and Mulligan sat uncomfortably for a moment, eyes averted, each hoping the other would speak first.

“It’s good to see you,” she finally said.

“Wish I could say the same.”

“You’re not going to make this easy, are you.”

“Guess not. We Irish know how to hold a grudge.”

“Better than anybody,” Fiona said.

“You’re looking well,” Mulligan said. He decided not to mention the new lines at the corners of her eyes. “Running the state must agree with you.”

“Since the election, it’s been one disaster after another,” she said. “The state pension system is collapsing. Tax revenues have plummeted. Unemployment is over ten percent. Half our cities and towns are on the brink of bankruptcy. And we might have to set a child killer loose. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I fuckin’ love it.”

Not the choice of words you’d expect from a governor, let alone a former nun, but Fiona had always been herself around Mulligan.

“So what about you?” she said.

“What about me?”

“Judging from all your page-one bylines, I gather the job is going well.”

“I’m doing okay.”

“Seeing anybody?”

“No.”

“Cooled off on that hot lawyer, did you?”

“She cooled off on me,” Mulligan said.

“Oh. Too bad.”

“I’ll get over it.”

“Meaning you haven’t yet?”

“Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure. Think the Red Sox have a shot at the playoffs?”

“No.”

“ No? That’s all you’ve got to say about that?”

“It is.”

She scowled.

“I probably should tell you to go to hell and walk out the door,” she said. “But I’m not going to do that. I’m still your friend, even if you don’t want to think so. So I’m going to give you what you came for.”

“Shoot,” Mulligan said, and slid a notebook from his jacket pocket.

Mason sat at the dining room table, sipped his morning coffee, and listened patiently to his father.

“The older members of the board are not eager to sell,” the old man said. “They have always valued the influence the newspaper gives them in the affairs of the community, and they are willing to preserve that influence, even at a substantial financial loss.”

“Meaning Uncle Arthur, Aunt Charlotte, and Aunt Mildred?”

“And my brother Bradford as well.”

“How very noblesse oblige of them,” Mason said.

“Quite so,” his father said.

“And the younger members?”

“Except for Cameron, who sided with his father, all of your cousins voted to sell.”

“So that’s it, then,” Mason said.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve been directed to engage the services of Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, the leading brokerage firm for newspaper mergers and acquisitions, to negotiate the sale of the Dispatch .”

“To whom?”

“The board would prefer to reach an agreement with one of the respectable newspaper groups: Belo, Media General. The New York Times Company, perhaps.”

“And if they’re not interested?”

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve had several inquiries from General Communications Holdings International,” his father said. “If no alternatives present themselves, we might be compelled to work something out with them.”

Mason was familiar with that company’s track record. For a decade, it had been buying up struggling newspapers and television stations at rock-bottom prices, stripping their newsrooms bare of staff, filling their news holes with wire copy, running them into the ground, and then selling off their equipment and real estate.

For The Providence Dispatch, one of the finest small-city newspapers in America for 150 years, it would be an ignoble end.

Mason nodded, indicating that he understood.

“Why don’t we drive in together this morning?” his father said. “We can talk about this some more on the way.”

“I’d like that,” Mason said, “but I’m not going straight in. I have an interview scheduled this morning.”

After his father left, Mason asked the maid to refill his coffee. He lingered over it as he read the morning paper, starting with Mulligan’s front-page update on the Kessler case. State officials were scheduled to appear before Superior Court judge Clifford Needham on Thursday to ask that Kessler be ordered to submit to a psychiatric evaluation, which he had declined to take voluntarily.

“It is our position,” Governor McNerney was quoted as saying, “that Eric Kessler is suffering from a severe mental disorder that would make him an imminent danger to the public if he were to be released, as scheduled, next week. If this can be confirmed by a mental health professional, we will then ask the court to order that he be confined indefinitely in a secure facility until such time as his condition no longer presents a serious risk to the community.”

Kessler’s court-appointed defense attorney, Austin Donahue, declared that he would oppose the petition.

“This is a naked attempt to subvert the law and violate my client’s rights,” he was quoted as saying. “He has paid his debt to society, and under the laws of our state, he is entitled to his freedom.”

Mulligan had given the governor the last word: “Kessler’s debt to society is not something that can ever be repaid.”

Huh, Mason thought. Maybe Mulligan and Fiona have finally made up.

An hour later, Mason sat in a cubicle at Supermax and watched Diggs drop into the chair on the other side of the thick glass partition.

Diggs’s lawyer hadn’t come along this time, but she’d arranged for Mason’s name to be placed on the inmate’s approved visitors list. Mason should have been pleased to have Diggs all to himself. But he wasn’t. He missed Felicia.

Since they’d met, his nighttime ritual of reviewing his notes and sipping his whiskey had taken a disturbing turn. He’d been imagining her there, curled up beside him on the Belgravia leather sofa, intent on her legal work. Every once in a while, still engrossed, she’d reach out and touch his arm. Mason was amazed, and a little flustered, about how that imaginary contact made him feel.