Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

“Then why in the world do you have so many?”

The woman chuckled and slowly shook her head.

“When Kwame was eight years old, he bought me an elephant figurine for my birthday. That one right there,” she said, pointing to the coffee table where a white, eight-inch-tall ceramic elephant with red lips and rouged cheeks reared on its hind legs. It seemed poised to stomp on a People magazine with a photo of Kim Kardashian on the cover.

“Hideous, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Gloria said. She felt the same way about the Kardashians.

“But of course, I gushed over it. I told Kwame it was the most wonderful gift I had ever received. So naturally the kids bought me more elephants for Christmas. And for my next birthday. And the one after that. And the one after that. Before long, visitors noticed them. Neighbors. Cousins. Aunts and uncles. So they started bringing me elephants, too, trinkets they picked up for fifty cents or a dollar at tag sales and secondhand shops. I didn’t have the heart to tell folks I didn’t like them, and one thing just led to another.”

Mrs. Diggs’s bottom lip quivered, and Gloria was afraid she was about to cry. Instead, the two women burst out laughing.

“But I don’t imagine you’re here to talk about elephants,” Mrs. Diggs said.

“No,” Gloria said. “I’m helping Mason out on his story about Kwame, and I wanted to ask a few questions about his childhood.”

“I guess that would be all right.”

“Was he a happy child?”

“It seemed to me that he was. He loved video games, playing ball with his friends, riding his bike around the neighborhood. He really loved that Schwinn of his. He’d ride fast, no hands, right down the middle of the street. I’d holler, ‘Kwame, put your hands on the handlebars before you fall and crack your head!’ And he would. But as soon as he thought I wasn’t looking, he’d be riding no hands again.”

“Did he have many friends?”

“Oh, my goodness, yes. The neighborhood was full of kids, a lot of them Kwame’s age. They were always hanging out together, playing card games, listening to music, playing football in the street.”

“I understand you were the only black family in the neighborhood back then.”

“That’s true.”

“How did Kwame feel about that?”

“That was never an issue with Kwame. He didn’t think much about color back then, as far as I could tell, and he fit right in with the white boys his age. Of course, there were a few black kids in his school. He made friends with them, too, and sometimes they’d sleep over at our house. But so did some of the white boys.”

“How about your white neighbors? Did they treat your family well?”

“Why, yes, they did. I was worried about that when we first moved in, seeing as we were the first black family and all. But on the very first day, that nice Mrs. Bigsby who lived next door came by to welcome us to the neighborhood and bring us one of her homemade cherry pies. Connie Stuart, God bless her soul, took the trouble to bring us a tuna casserole even though she was pregnant at the time. Over the years, we were invited to lots of backyard barbecues and kids’ birthday parties and such. People couldn’t have been nicer. Until after Kwame was arrested, of course. Then everyone stopped talking to us.”

“Was everybody nice before that?”

“Not everybody, no. There were a couple of people who shunned us. When we said hello, they’d just turn their heads. But they were the exception. Most everybody was very neighborly.”

“Including Becky Medeiros?”

“We didn’t get to know her very well, but she always smiled and greeted us whenever we passed by her house on one of our walks. Kwame said that when he’d ride by her house on his bicycle, she’d flag him down and give him cookies sometimes. Not homemade. The store-bought kind. Oreos or Fig Newtons.”

“So none of your neighbors ever called your kids racist names, then?”

“Lord, no. Some of the black boys called each other nigger. I caught Kwame doing it once, and I took his bike away for a week. I told him, ‘Young man, I don’t ever want to hear that filthy word come out of your mouth again.’”

“What about at school? Did he and his brother fit in well there?”

“Yes, they did. It was hard to get Kwame to study or do his homework, but we didn’t get on him about it because he got mostly B’s anyway. And he always got an A in history. Sekou and Amina were more studious, and Sekou was very good at sports.”

“Did the white kids ever pick on them?”

“Not that I ever heard.”

“Kwame never got in any school-yard fights, then?”

“Goodness, no.”

“He never came home from school with a split lip or black eye or maybe a bloody nose?”

“He got a bloody nose a couple of times playing football, I do recall that. But fights? No. If that had happened, I’m sure I’d remember.”

“Mrs. Diggs, I want to be honest with you here. Kwame has been telling Mason a lot of things that just aren’t true.”

The woman folded her hands, rested them on her knees, and studied them for a moment. Gradually, her gaze turned to steel.

“If Kwame did that,” she said, “I’m sure he must have had his reasons.”

“I hope you’ve got something else you can put on page one on Sunday,” Mulligan said.

“Problems?” Lomax said.

“Oh, yeah. Big-time.”

“Anything that can’t be fixed in the next forty-eight hours?”

Mulligan thought about it for a moment. “Depends on how fast Mason can rewrite this piece of shit. But what’s your hurry?”

“Tuesday morning, I sent the story down to promotion,” Lomax said. “Asked them to work up a radio promo so it would be ready once we had the piece set to go. The dumb bastards didn’t just write the promo. They sent it out. It started running on WTOP and WPRO last night.”

“Aw fuck,” Mulligan said.

“Yeah,” Lomax said. “If you run a promo and then don’t run the story, you look like a fool.”

“What’s the promo say?”

Lomax picked up a sheet of paper from his desk and read aloud: “‘Coming this Sunday: Rhode Island’s most notorious killer in his own words. Kwame Diggs breaks his silence to explain why he killed. And you’ll find it only in The Providence Dispatch .’”

“That all of it?”

“It is.”

“Nothing about black rage, then?”

“No.”

“Thank God,” Mulligan said. “Diggs lied his ass off to Mason about that.”

“Guess we better get the kid in here,” Lomax said.

“Yeah. And we’ll need Gloria, too.”

Mulligan and Gloria had already claimed the leather visitors’ chairs opposite Lomax’s desk, so Mason rolled in a spare desk chair from the copy desk.

“Edward,” Lomax began, “earlier this week I asked Mulligan to look over your Diggs profile, and he recruited Gloria to help him with the task. Today, they came back with some concerns that need to be addressed before the story can be published.”

“I see,” Mason said. “What are they and what do I need to do to fix them?”

“Your story portrays Diggs as a young man who killed in a blind rage because his neighbors called him racist names. Mulligan and Gloria believe he lied to you about that. They say it’s simply not true.”

Mason blanched visibly. He’d expected nitpicks about a few details. Instead, the central premise of a story he’d invested weeks in was being challenged. He felt cornered and ganged up on. His first instinct was to argue.

“So I suppose you geniuses think you know the real reason he killed,” he said, surprised to find that he’d balled his fists at his sides.