A Scourge of Vipers (12 page)

“Sure you did,” she said. “And then you lied to the responding officers and said you think Mario Zerilli did it. That would make him pretty lively for a corpse, don'tcha think?”

“Maybe he's a zombie,” I said. “From what I see on TV, lots of dead people are turning into zombies nowadays. It's a goddamned pandemic.”

Wargart reached across the table and grabbed the neck of my T-shirt with his left fist.

“What did you do with the forty-five, dickhead?”

“If you want to keep that hand,” I said, “you better remove it right now.”

“Are you threatening a police officer?”

“Bet your ass.”

Wargart gave me his best hard look, then let go of me.

“He probably threw the gun in the river,” Freitas said.

“Or down a storm drain, maybe,” Wargart said.

“I didn't,” I said, “but if I had, I sure as hell wouldn't tell you two hard cases about it.”

“You know, Mulligan,” Freitas said, her voice softer now, “Mario was a women-beating, gay-bashing punk who will not be missed. He threatened your life, for godsakes. I bet you shot him in self-defense. Nobody could blame you for that. Why don't you calm down and tell us what happened so we can all wrap this up and go home early.”

“Really?” I said. “Does anybody ever fall for that?”

“You'd be surprised,” Wargart said.

“Where's that other gun you own?” Freitas asked.

“None of your business.”

With that, they pulled themselves to their feet and stomped out.

Once they were gone, I returned to my desk and rushed through the rest of the press releases. I needed to clear the decks, because this was going to be a big news day. The circus was coming to town.

*   *   *

The NCAA and the four major sports leagues had scheduled a joint press conference for three in the afternoon, giving local TV plenty of time to chop the speechifying down to a half minute of out-of-context sound bites for the five o'clock news. But just before one o'clock, Chuckie-boy shoved some empty Chinese food cartons aside, perched on the corner of my desk, and announced that he had something more pressing for me to do first.

“Wait till you hear this,” he said. “The police just busted some mall cop they found living in an unused utility shed inside the Providence Place Mall parking structure. He'd actually set up housekeeping in there. Had a sectional sofa, a dinette set, lamps, a microwave, a space heater, a TV. They say he was even stealing electricity and cable from the mall.”

“Okay, I'm on it.”

“Try to wrap this one up before the press conference starts, okay? It should make a hilarious page-one bright.”

I didn't think it was funny.

According to the police report, thirty-one-year-old Joseph DeLucca had been arrested and charged with trespassing and theft of services, namely an estimated fifteen hundred bucks' worth of the mall's electricity. He'd already been arraigned and was being held in lockup in lieu of three hundred dollars bail.

After scribbling the details in my notepad, I went to the bank, got a cash advance on my Visa, and got him sprung. Fifteen minutes later we were sitting in a booth at the diner near city hall waiting for Charlie to finish scorching our burgers.

“Well,” Joseph said, “the fuckers finally caught me.”

He'd moved into the shed eighteen months ago because he couldn't afford both beer and rent on the pittance the mall paid him to strut around in a uniform and discourage theft. Given the thousands of bucks in cosmetics, running shoes, and small electronics he liberated from the loose-fitting clothes and oversize handbags the shoplifters favored, Joseph figured he was entitled. I thought he had a point.

I'd first met Joseph about five years ago when the cottage he was living in with his elderly mother got burned down in the Mount Hope arson spree. Back then, he'd been nearly as wide as he was tall, but he'd dropped a hundred pounds the year he took a job as a bouncer at the Tongue & Groove. There, he got into a dispute over employee benefits. The manager accused him of abusing the strip club's free-beer-and-blowjobs perk. Joseph insisted he'd been practicing admirable self-restraint. So they agreed to part ways, Joseph moving on to the mall cop job and the club manager to months of painful physical therapy. The manager made a sensible decision not to whine about it to the authorities.

I'd visited Joseph occasionally in his illicit mall digs to guzzle Narragansett, eat pizza, and watch the Patriots and the Red Sox on TV.

“So what are you going to do now, Joseph?”

“Go to jail, I guess.”

“This is your first offense, right?”

“Second. Got busted with a quarter-ounce of weed a coupla years ago.”

“You'll get off with a lecture and fine. Probably less than a grand. But you'll have to make restitution for the stolen electricity.”

“And if I can't pay?”

“That could be a problem,” I said.

“Shit.”

“Maybe I can find a way to help you with that by the time your court date comes around. But first things first. Do you have a place to crash?”

“If I did, you think I woulda been squattin' in a fuckin' shed?”

“Tell you what. Why don't you bunk down at my apartment for now?”

“You'd do that for me?”

“When we're done eating, I'll drop you there.”

“Thanks, Mulligan. I owe you big time.”

“I'll get a key made for you tomorrow. Meanwhile, the place is wide open. Somebody broke in and trashed it last night. I'm afraid it's an awful mess right now.”

“Aw, hell. Did they catch the guy who done it?”

“No, but I've got a pretty good idea who it was. If I find him, maybe you can hold him down for me while I break all his fingers and toes.”

“You bet. Meanwhile, the least I can do is help you clean up.”

“That would be great, Joseph. There's some cleaning supplies under the sink. I'll let the landlord know I've got a guest so he won't be surprised when he comes by to fix the door.”

“Okay.”

“Are you still driving that piece-of-crap pickup truck?”

“Yeah.”

“It's trash day on the East Side, and wealthy people there tend to throw out a lot of good stuff. Think you could cruise around and see if you can salvage a few things we need?”

“Like what?”

“Anything but a refrigerator, bookshelves, and a kitchen table. Everything else in the place is wrecked.”

*   *   *

No bigwigs stood behind the microphone-spiked lectern that had been placed on the statehouse steps. No Roger Goodell, Adam Silver, Gary Bettman, Rob Manfred, or Mark Emmert. Instead, the commissioners of the four major sports leagues and the president of the NCAA had dispatched their press flunkies, all of them schooled in the art of manipulating the media.

As the local TV affiliates, a half-dozen radio reporters, an AP reporter, and stringers for
The Boston Globe
and ESPN recorded the action, I roamed through the sparse crowd. Three members of the governor's staff, the assistant director of the state Lottery Commission, and more than a dozen Rhode Island legislators had shown up to hear the speakers spout the same crap they'd spoon-fed me on the phone last week. I didn't take many notes.

I was chatting with Mason, who was covering the proceedings for his
Ocean State Rag,
when I spotted a middle-aged woman in a gray business suit working the crowd. She flitted from one legislator to another, shaking their hands and whispering furtively into their ears. The woman looked familiar, but I couldn't place her at first. Then it came to me. I raised my Nikon and snapped a few shots of her before I made my approach.

“Excuse me. My name is Mulligan. I'm a reporter for
The Providence Dispatch.
”

“I have nothing to say to you, Mr. Mulligan.”

“Can you tell me your name and who you represent?”

“Fuck off.”

“Look, lady. I already took your picture. I can always show it around until I find someone who knows who you are. Why not save me the time?”

“You photographed me?”

“I did.”

“Who authorized you to do that?”

“The same person who authorized you to take pictures of me and the governor at Hopes the other night.”

“Oh. You noticed that, huh?”

“I did.”

She narrowed her eyes and tried to stare me down. It didn't work.

“Why not be civil and introduce yourself?” I said.

“Fine. My name is Cheryl Grandison. I'm the vice president of Stop Sports Gambling Now.”

“What's that?”

“A super PAC.”

“Never heard of it.”

“We formed last year to oppose Governor Christie's plan to legalize sports betting in New Jersey.”

“Where's your funding come from?”

“Good luck figuring that out,” she said. Then she turned her back on me and stalked off.

Federal law allowed super PACs to raise unlimited amounts of money. It also permitted them to spend it on lobbying, political advertising, or just about anything else as long as they didn't contribute directly to political candidates. They were supposed to publicly disclose the names of their contributors, but they could accept donations from other organizations that didn't have to say where
their
money came from. Regulators called it the Russian doll loophole. As a result, big donors could remain anonymous, and usually did.

I took out my phone, punched in the number for the Campaign Finance Division of the State Board of Elections, and asked for Bud Henry.

“I've got a question about a super PAC that just showed up in town to influence the pending sports gambling legislation,” I said.

“Sorry, I but I don't think I can give you much help on that,” he said. “Super PACs aren't required to register with the state.”

“You don't regulate them at all?”

“We haven't dealt with them much,” he said. “Most of them are only active in federal elections. Sometimes they get involved in big-state gubernatorial races, but until now they haven't bothered with Little Rhody.”

“Are there any state rules they have to follow?”

“Well, yeah. Whenever they spend at least a thousand dollars advocating for a political candidate, they have to report that to us within seven days.”

“What about money spent to advocate on a public issue?”

“If we're talking about a ballot initiative, they would have to comply with the same reporting requirement,” he said. “But if they just launch a media campaign to advocate on an issue like sports gambling, they don't have to disclose their spending.”

“Aw, crap,” I said. “That's what I thought, but I wanted to make sure.”

“Hey, Mulligan?”

“Yeah?”

“Off the record, I don't like it any more than you do.”

*   *   *

Back in the newsroom, I wrote up the mall-guy story and then banged out a column of copy about the press conference, mentioning the super PAC high up and hinting that big out-of-state money would soon be flooding in to influence the legislative process.

An hour after I turned the copy in, Chuckie-boy called me into his office.

“Did you get the woman's phone number?” he asked.

“What woman?”

“The super PAC woman. What was it, again? Grandison?”

“No, I didn't.”

“You should have.”

“I don't see why,” I said. “She wasn't that hot.”

“Well, we need it. Our ad director wants to give her a call. The super PAC's probably got a huge advertising budget. Most of it will be spent on TV spots, but we want to get a piece.”

“Oh.”

“You should be alert to opportunities like this, Mulligan. Where do you think your paycheck comes from?”

“The tooth fairy?”

“Can the jokes and track her down for us.”

“Can't advertising do that?”

“Just call the area hotels and find out where she's staying, okay?”

“What about the Chinese wall between news and advertising?” I said.

“Didn't you hear? We tore that sucker down.”

 

17

After informing Chuckie-boy that Grandison was staying at the Omni, I needed beer to wash the bile from my throat. I figured it was going to take more than one.

Ten minutes later, I pushed through the door to Hopes and was greeted by heartbreak on the jukebox and dark the way alcoholics crave it. I waited by the entrance until my eyes adjusted, took one step forward, and froze.

Yolanda Mosley-Jones was sitting alone at the battered mahogany bar, her long legs curled around a rickety stool. She looked at once professional and sultry in gold hoop earrings, matching bangles on her right wrist, and a pearl-gray silk business suit that fit like it had been cut and stitched just for her. The shoulder-length, raven hair I remembered was gone now. In its place was a close-cropped Afro that looked great on her. I'd never seen Yolanda in Hopes before. She looked as out of place as Mario Andretti in a Volkswagen Beetle.

Behind her, five off-duty firemen were drinking Budweiser and playing Texas Hold 'Em at the table by the pinball machine. One of them tossed his cards down, wet his index fingers with his tongue, and used them to smooth his unruly eyebrows. Then he slapped a grin on his face, strutted to the bar, and whispered something in Yolanda's ear. Never raising her eyes from her drink, she murmured two words, three at the most. His grin vanished, his shoulders slumped, and he slinked back to his buddies. I knew exactly how he felt.

I started to back out, but she spotted my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She spun, lit me up with her high-beam smile, and beckoned me with red talons. I hesitated, then went to her on unsteady legs and claimed the adjoining bar stool. Without a word, I took the glass from her right hand, held it up to the light, and then took a small sip.