Bruce DeSilva - Providence Rag

“I asked the Providence cops to watch out for her,” Hernandez said. “They say all they can do is have a patrol car drive by her place a couple of times during the night.”

“Then I better sleep there until he’s caught,” Mason said.

“Diggs is twice your size,” Mulligan said. “What good will you be if he breaks in?”

“He won’t,” Mason said. “He’s a coward. He’s never attacked a woman when there’s a man around.”

“There’s always a first time,” Jennings said.

“Do you have a gun, Thanks-Dad?” Mulligan asked

“No.”

“Do you know how to use one?”

“No.”

“I do,” Mulligan said. “I’m still stuck working nights on the copy desk, but I usually get off around midnight. Get me a key to her place and I’ll let myself in, spend the night dozing on the couch.”

Mason pulled out his cell and called Felicia.

“Is this really necessary?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mason said.

“I’m his lawyer. Why would he want to hurt me?”

“He probably doesn’t,” Mason said, “but let’s not take any chances, okay? I mean, the guy is a homicidal maniac. Who knows what he’ll do?” He took a deep breath and half whispered, “I need to know that you’re safe.”

They agreed that Mason would stay at her place until the danger passed. Reluctantly, Felicia agreed to give Mulligan a spare key.

As Mulligan strolled out of the diner, he was in desperate need of sleep. He’d worked the night shift on Saturday, then risen well before dawn for the abortive raid. But it would be hours before he could get any.

First he had to write a news story about the raid. Then he had to put the finishing touches on an account of the newspaper’s investigation into the old New York killing and how it led to the new murder charge against Diggs. Lomax planned to start that one on page one, with a full page inside.

When he was done with that, it would be time for his evening copy desk shift again.

At midnight, nineteen hours after the raid on the Diggs house, Mulligan finished work and drove to Freyer’s place in Newberry Village, a condo development in the Providence suburb of Cranston. The street was well lighted, and some of the front yards, including Freyer’s, were bright with floods.

Fighting to keep his eyes open, he drove down the street past her place and kept going, studying both sides of the street. Then he turned around and made another pass. When he was satisfied that no one was lurking, he parked on the street, pulled his.45 from its hiding place under the front passenger seat, tucked it in his waistband, and trudged up the front walk. He climbed the steps to the front stoop and inserted his key in the lock.

He found Mason dozing in the living room on a tan leather sofa, a pen in his hand and a yellow legal pad open in his lap. Beside him on the cushions, an aluminum baseball bat.

“Whatcha doin’?” Mulligan asked as Mason stirred awake.

“Working on the lyrics for a song I’m writing,” Mason said.

“Want to sing it for me?”

“Not yet.”

“Tell me the layout.”

“Living room, kitchen, dining room, and half-bath on this floor. Two bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs.”

“Checked the locks on all the doors and windows?”

“Of course.”

“Where’s Felicia?”

“Asleep upstairs.”

Mulligan stifled a yawn.

“Why don’t you head up, too? I’ve got this now.”

“You can have the other bedroom,” Mason said.

Oh? Mason was sleeping with Felicia now? That was news. No bragging. No bravado. The publisher’s son was a class act.

“No thanks,” Mulligan said. “Better if I stay down here.”

Mason wished him good night, picked up the baseball bat, and trudged upstairs. Mulligan watched him go, then rechecked the locks on the front door and the downstairs windows. Off the kitchen, he unlocked a sliding glass door and stepped onto a small deck that looked over a treeless backyard. It was not fenced.

Thirty yards away, the back sides of a string of matching condos were dark, save for the blue light from a television flickering in one upstairs window. He dropped his hand to his waistband, felt the grip of his pistol, and stared into the darkness, looking for the glow of a cigarette or any sign of movement.

He stood there for a good ten minutes, then went back through the sliding doors and locked them. He turned off the lights, placed his.45 on the coffee table by the couch, pulled off his Reeboks, and stretched out on the leather.

He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the house. He heard nothing but the hum of the air conditioner, not liking the way it muffled the sound of a car gliding by on the street. He got up, found the temperature controls on the living room wall, and shut off the A/C. Then he returned to the couch, dozed off, and found himself on the death plane again.

A week crawled by. Updates on the manhunt appeared daily in the Rhode Island and Massachusetts newspapers and every morning, noon, and night on New England TV news broadcasts.

Late every afternoon, Mason met Felicia at her law office and drove her home. Every day after midnight, Mulligan drove to the condo, studied the street, let himself in with his key, checked the backyard and the locks, and settled down to sleep on the couch.

The daily manhunt updates never had anything new to report. Diggs had either fled the area or was lying low.

Tuesday afternoon, Mulligan ambled down the sidewalk past the governor’s limo and shoved open the door to Hopes. Fiona was waiting for him at a table in back. He grabbed a shot of Bushmills and a Killian’s chaser at the bar, took the seat across from her, and said, “What’s up?”

“Thought you might want a scoop on the obstruction of justice investigation.”

“I would.”

“The A.G.’s office negotiated a plea bargain with Galloway and Quinn. They’ll both admit to one count of perjury and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. They’ll be sentenced to ten years in prison and be ordered to pay five-thousand-dollar fines. After the sentences are handed down, I’m going to pardon both of them.”

“What about Warden Matos?”

“He won’t be charged, but he’s agreed to take early retirement.”

“With full pension?”

“Yes.”

“My tax money at work,” Mulligan said. “How about the prosecutors who handled the assault case? They were in on it, too.”

“The attorney general has found no evidence to proceed against them.”

“Did he look for any?”

“Off the record?”

“Sure.”

“Then, no.”

“That all of it?”

“One more thing. Another guard, Paul Delvecchio, will plead guilty to one count of vandalism for destroying Mason’s car. He’ll be fined a thousand dollars and get a year, suspended. And he’ll have to pay Mason twenty-eight thousand in restitution. I’m told the guards’ union plans to take care of that for him.”

“Swell,” Mulligan said.

Tuesday night was a bitch. Statehouse reporters flooded the copy desk with political news, some of it so clumsily done that Mulligan felt compelled to rewrite it. Five people, one of them a local bank president, died in the rain in a three-car collision on Providence’s treacherous Thurbers Avenue curve. And Sammy “Snake Eyes” Tardio, a Mob enforcer rumored to have turned rat, was shotgunned in a Federal Hill bar. Mulligan juggled copy with no time for a dinner break, surviving the evening on Cheetos and lots of weak coffee from the newsroom vending machines.

At midnight, just as the paper was about to be put to bed, a four-alarm fire broke out in an abandoned jewelry factory in the city’s dilapidated Olneyville section. Fifteen minutes later, the police radio on the city desk screamed the news that the roof had collapsed, trapping half a dozen firemen inside.