Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

She counted out ten one-dollar bills and slid them across the tabletop to Gloria. Gloria slid them back.

“Well, at least let me leave the tip,” Mrs. Diggs said, returning six bills to her purse and leaving the other four on the table. “You’re a nice young woman, even though you work for that newspaper. God bless. I’ve enjoyed our little talk.”

“Perhaps we can do it again sometime,” Gloria said.

Mrs. Diggs didn’t reply. She slipped on her coat, clutched her purse, and tottered out of the diner.

Psychologists used to blame serial killers on uncaring or abusive mothers. Some still espouse the theory, but it has largely fallen out of favor. It would be folly to draw conclusions about the household Kwame Diggs grew up in from this one conversation. Gloria knew that. Still, she felt certain that Esther Diggs was exactly the loving, churchgoing woman she appeared to be.

Gloria looked out the window and watched the woman cross the street, her head tilted toward the pavement as if looking for lost change.

“Frank Horrocks, please.”

“May I tell him who is calling?” A woman’s voice.

“Edward Mason. I’m a reporter for the Dispatch .”

“The newspaper?”

“Yes.”

“What’s this about?”

“I’ve got a few questions for a story I’m working on.”

“A story about what?”

“The state prison.”

“My husband doesn’t work there anymore.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And you still want to talk to him?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it after you put him on the phone.”

“Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“Not that I am aware of.”

“Well, all right,” she said. “Hold on and I’ll get him.”

Mason listened to dead air for a couple of minutes, thinking the best thing about calling people at home is that you don’t get put on hold and have Muzak piped into your ear.

“Hello.”

“Mr. Horrocks?”

“Yeah.”

“My name is Mason. I’m a reporter for the Dispatch .”

“Well, la-de-fuckin’-da.”

“I was hoping you’d be willing to meet with me and answer some questions.”

“I don’t think so, pal. I’m too busy.”

“You are? I heard that you’re out of work.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I promise I won’t take up much of your time, sir. I could really use your help for a story I’m working on.”

“What kind of story?”

“It’s about some things that happened at Supermax when you worked there.”

“I ain’t got nothin’ to say about any of that,” he said, and hung up.

That went well, Mason said to himself. So much for the first guy the cokehead, Ty Robinson, had seen in the break room that day. Fortunately, there were two left to try.

Charles “Chuckie” Shaad, the next one on the list, told Mason that he was waiting for callbacks from a couple of places where he’d applied for jobs.

“So you understand why I can’t talk right now,” he said. “I don’t want to tie up the phone.”

Doesn’t everybody have call waiting now? Mason thought, but what he said was, “Perhaps we could meet later at a place of your convenience.”

“Yeah, okay. Let’s say half-past eight at Galway Bay.”

“What’s that?”

“An Irish pub.”

“Do you know the address?”

“It’s right behind McCoy Stadium, left-field side. I’ll be the big galoot in the M &D Truckers cap. Sorry, gotta go.”

The old stadium, built with taxpayer money during the tail end of the Great Depression, was the crowning boondoggle of one of Rhode Island’s legendary political bosses, Pawtucket mayor Thomas P. McCoy. He had personally selected the site, a swamp known locally as Hammond’s Pond. A construction crew spent months draining and excavating it over and over again, battling mountains of muck that kept sliding back into the work area.

The original lowball estimate for the project was six hundred thousand dollars, but by the time it was completed in 1942, the bill had escalated to 1.2 million. That was more than it had cost to build the seventy-thousand-seat Yale Bowl in New Haven three decades earlier. McCoy Stadium seated only fifty-eight hundred fans when it was completed, although it had since been expanded to hold ten thousand.

For decades, McCoy Stadium was notorious for a playing surface so hard that batted balls ricocheted from it as if they had been launched by bazookas. According to local legend, construction workers had filled the swampy site with thousands of bags of cement purchased at an exorbitant rate from one of the mayor’s cronies.

Mason had never been to McCoy, home of the minor league Pawtucket Red Sox, so he left early in case he had trouble locating the pub. He found it right off, spotting a massive Guinness sign nailed to the side of a three-story commercial building that looked as if it had been thrown together between the two world wars. The inside was a pleasant surprise of gleaming circular bars, polished brass fixtures, and a menu that made him regret he’d already eaten. They didn’t carry Red Stripe, so he ordered a Smithwick’s and nursed it for twenty minutes until Shaad shambled in.

The ex-prison guard looked the place over, saw Mason give him a wave, greeted him with a hearty handshake, and asked the bartender for a pint. It was apparent he was a regular because he didn’t have to specify the brand. He dipped his gray mustache in the foam head of his Guinness and then turned back to Mason.

“So what’s this all about?”

Mason ducked the question, saying, “What’s with the hat? Are you a trucker now?”

“I drove for M &D for a couple of years before I got laid off last month. Probably just as well, ’cause I didn’t like it much. Too many nights on the road away from family. I’m tryin’ to catch on with a rent-a-cop company now, but it ain’t easy thanks to the assholes in Washington. George Bush wrecked the economy, and Obama and the Republicans in Congress can’t stop pissing on each other long enough to do anything about it.”

“Why’d you leave the prison job?”

“Wasn’t like I had a choice. I was one of the ten Supermax corrections officers let go in 2010 when the department’s budget got slashed. Our union raised hell about it. Said fewer guards would make the job more dangerous. But the governor didn’t give a shit.”

“I see,” Mason said, and jotted something in his notebook.

“Why the personal questions?” Shaad said. “Ain’t nothin’ newsworthy about me, is there?”

“No, nothing like that,” Mason said. “I want to ask you about Kwame Diggs, but I like to know who I’m talking to first.” He had skipped that step with Ty Robinson, but the young reporter was a quick study.

Shaad froze, his glass in the air.

“Diggs? What about him?”

“Was he difficult to handle inside?”

“Why do you want to know?” The ex-guard’s shoulders stiffened, his whole body on alert.

“I’ve been visiting him,” Mason said. “It’s the first time he’s ever opened up to a reporter.”

“So?”

“So I think I’ve got the makings of a pretty good story, but I need to verify what he’s been telling me. I don’t want to take his word for everything.”

Shaad’s shoulders relaxed.

“I’ll bet,” he said.

“So did he make much trouble for you?”

Shaad took off his cap, laid it on the table next to his beer, and looked up at the ceiling, thinking over his answer, maybe, or pondering whether he should say anything at all.

“No,” he finally said. “Not really.”

Shaad sipped his beer. Mason looked at him expectantly. It was a trick he’d learned from Mulligan. Just sit quietly and the person you are interviewing may feel compelled to fill the silence.