Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

“Great idea, Sal. Let’s everybody do that. Show them that we mean business! Natalie from Pawtucket, you are on the air.”

Mulligan finished his coffee, turned to Mason, and said, “Well, that could have gone worse.”

“How do you mean?”

“At least he didn’t give Sal from North Providence and Natalie from Pawtucket your name.”

“Why do you suppose he didn’t?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to put a target on your back,” Mulligan said.

“He didn’t mind putting one on Lomax. Not that it makes much difference, I guess. I’ve got a target on my back already. Here, take a look at this.”

He handed Mulligan his iPhone. On the screen was a photo of a car door with a message written in what appeared to be alphabet refrigerator magnets.

STOP NOW

OR ELZE

“Else with a z ?” Mulligan said. “Nobody’s spelling is that bad. Looks like your correspondent ran out of the letter s .”

“That’s how I figure it.”

“This was left on your car?”

“It was.”

“When?”

“Last night. There was another one, too. Scroll back to the previous picture.”

“How the hell do I do that?”

“Give it here,” Mason said.

He took the phone from Mulligan, flicked a finger across the screen, and handed it back to him. This time, the message on the car door read:

B SMART MASON

WE C U

“That one’s from a week ago,” Mason said.

Mulligan took a minute to think it over. In his mind, he compared it with the threatening note Mason had gotten in the mail:

WE KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING, RICHIE RICH.

IF YOU KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR YOU, YOU’LL STOP.

“Any more threatening letters?” he asked.

“A couple more, yes.”

“What did they say?”

“Pretty much the same thing as the first one.”

“Somebody obviously wants you to stop something, ” Mulligan said. “Do the messages ever say what?”

“I just assumed it was the Diggs story,” Mason said. “I mean, what else could it be?”

“I don’t know, Thanks-Dad. You tell me.”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“Not screwing somebody’s wife, are you?”

“Of course not.”

“Ripping somebody off in some sort of business deal?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Okay, then,” Mulligan said. “Let me poke into this. See what I can find out.”

As he walked back to the newspaper, Mulligan puzzled over the threats. Refrigerator magnets were an awfully polite way of leaving threatening messages. Why weren’t they just scratched into the paint? The more he thought about it, the more it felt as though those brightly colored magnets were something a woman would use.

Mulligan had just stepped off the elevator when “Confused” by a San Francisco punk band called the Nuns began playing in his shirt pocket. His ring tone for the governor.

“Mulligan.”

“Is it true?”

“Just between us?”

“Yes.”

“Can I actually trust you this time, Fiona?”

“I promise.”

“The story’s not nailed down yet, but it’s in the works.”

“Who’s reporting this? Is it you?”

“Hell, no.”

“The Dispatch would actually print it?”

“The publisher’s son is the one working on it, so I gotta think yes.”

“Holy Mother of God.”

“My feeling exactly, although I’d be prone to use more colorful language.”

“When is the story likely to break?”

“Hard to say. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Maybe never. Thanks-Dad doesn’t have enough sources yet.”

“How likely is it that he’ll pull this off?”

“If I were a betting man, I’d put the odds at fifty-fifty.”

“You are a betting man.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

“Is my name going to surface in this?”

“You were the A.G. when Diggs was prosecuted for Galloway, so your fingerprints are all over it. I doubt Thanks-Dad will be able to prove it, though. The kid’s good, but he’s not that good. He’s close to nailing the warden for subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice, but I doubt he’ll be able to take it any higher.”

“If he does, will you give me a heads-up?”

“Maybe. No guarantees.”

“I know I promised to keep this confidential, Mulligan, but I’m going to have to share it with the attorney general.”

“Fiona…”

“I’ll keep your name out of it, but I have to do something. I can’t stand by and allow Kwame Diggs to be released from prison.”

“Of course you can’t.”

“If he gets out, innocent people are going to die.”

“And it would be fatal to your political career.”

“That’s the last thing on my mind right now.”

“Like hell.”

They both fell quiet for a moment.

“Attorney General Roberts and I are going to have to put our heads together,” Fiona said. “See if we can come up with a contingency plan.”

“Like what?”

“Maybe we can persuade a judge to order a psychiatric exam. If we can get Diggs declared a dangerous psychopath, we could get him locked away in a mental hospital.”

“You’ll have to do some serious judge shopping to pull that off,” Mulligan said.

That evening Mulligan had a few brews at Hopes, watched the Sox fall to the Athletics on the West Coast, and played a couple of games of pinball.

Shortly after two A.M., he returned to the newsroom. The lights were dim. The overnight cops reporter was snoozing in his cubicle. The rest of the desks were empty.

Mulligan padded to Gloria’s cubicle, sat in her chair, opened the shallow drawer under the desktop, and rummaged through the contents. Cheap ballpoint pens, paper clips, an unopened pack of Post-it notes, three tubes of lipstick, a small brass key, spare media cards, a flash drive, and an old roll of Kodak film nobody had use for anymore. He slid the drawer closed and pulled the handles on the two-drawer file cabinet under the right side of the desk. It was locked. He reopened the shallow drawer, removed a small brass key, and inserted it in the file drawer lock.

The top file drawer contained, of all things, files. The bottom drawer was a jumble of battery chargers, cables, camera lenses, filters, and flash attachments. Stuffed all the way in the back, concealed under an empty camera case, he found two Ziploc bags. One contained what appeared to be about a quarter ounce of marijuana. The other held a handful of candy colored alphabet refrigerator magnets. He dumped them on the desktop, sorted through them, and couldn’t find an “s.”

Mulligan drove home and swept up the shredded, shit-streaked newspapers Larry Bird had kicked onto his kitchen floor. He pulled on an oven mitt, lined the bottom of the cage with the arts section of the Dispatch, and filled the bird’s water tube and food tray.

Then he fetched a Killian’s from the fridge, flopped onto his mattress, pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans, and punched in a number.

“Hello?” The voice was groggy, as if the call had woken her.

“Sorry about calling in the middle of the night, Gloria, but I have to ask you for a favor.”

“Mulligan?”

“Yeah.”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly three.”

“This better be important.”

“It is. I need you to stop leaving threatening messages on Mason’s car.”

Dead air. And then, “How’d you know?”

“I’m an investigative reporter, Gloria. I know all kinds of stuff.”

“Does Mason know?”

“He doesn’t.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“No.”