A Scourge of Vipers (23 page)

“I've been writing investigative stories in Providence for more than twenty years, Mr. Freeley. I bet I know more about Rhode Island libel law than you do.”

Freeley was briefly taken aback.

“Well,” he huffed, “I do concur with your assessment of our legal exposure, Mr. Mulligan. However, company policy requires that stories of this nature must be run past the legal department. In the future, I trust the two of you will follow the proper procedure.”

Beauregard whacked his palm on the table. The sound made Martin flinch.

“There ain't gonna to
be
any more stories like this,” he said. “No more running around pretending you're the cast of
Law and Order
. Ya get me?”

“Now that was inspiring,” I said. “I think Ben Bradlee once gave the same speech to Woodward and Bernstein.”

For that, Joe Pesci would have put a bullet in my brain. I figured Beauregard would fire me on the spot. Instead, he laughed out loud.

“You might have a future in stand-up yourself,” he said. “But you sure as hell ain't got one in the newspaper business.”

“Nobody does,” I said.

Beauregard nodded in agreement. “On my way in,” he said, “I saw your name on one of them Pulitzer medals. I think I saw it on a Polk Award, too. You have my respect for that, Mr. Mulligan. But the economics of the news business have changed, and we gotta change with it. If Ben Bradlee himself walked through that fuckin' door and begged for a job, I wouldn't hire the bastard. And if Woodward and Bernstein were working here, I'd fire both their asses. The age of newspaper heroics is over. Today, the only job of the news department is to fill the holes between the ads. Do I myself clear?”

I didn't say anything.

“Mr. Twisdale?” Beauregard said.

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“Okay, then,” he said. “One last thing.” He picked up his copy of the Sunday paper and waved it in Twisdale's face. “I'm told you never sent this story to our copy center. Is that right?”

“It is.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Copyediting this story properly required an extensive knowledge of Rhode Island law and politics. That is something the professionals at our copy center do not possess. Under the circumstances, I thought it best to do the job myself.”

“You're the managing editor, pal,” Beauregard said. “I don't pay you to be a goddamned copy editor.”

“I understand, sir.”

I should have left it alone, but as usual, I couldn't help myself.

“The clowns you
are
paying to be goddamned copy editors are useless,” I said. “They edit in more errors than they fix.”

“Oh, is that so?” Beauregard said.

“Yeah, it is. If you're hankering to recoup the hundred grand that's got your jockstrap in a bunch, the copy center would be the place to start.”

“I'll take that under advisement, Mr. Mulligan. Meanwhile, I believe we can realize some immediate savings. When I leave this room, I'm taking somebody's head with me.”

He swept his eyes across the three of us, hoping to make us squirm. Only the ad director did.

“Mr. Martin,” Beauregard said, “get the fuck out and don't come back. Security will pack up any personal crap in your office and ship it to your home address.”

 

35

“Why do you suppose he singled out Martin and not me?” Twisdale asked.

“Because Martin was a nervous wreck,” I said. “The poor bastard couldn't stop sweating. You stayed cool, and I think Beauregard respected that.”

“I came off as cool?”

“You did.”

“Inside, I was shaking.”

He rested his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands in front of him.

“So we live to fight another day,” he said.

“We do. Should I tell you where I'm going next with this investigation, or would you prefer that I keep you in the dark?”

“You heard Beauregard. No more stories like this.”

“Yeah, but ‘like this' is pretty vague,” I said. “That gives us some wiggle room, don't you think?”

“No, I don't.”

I chose to ignore that and pressed on.

“We know that Pichardo, Longo, and Templeton refused the bribes,” I said, “but I'll bet at least a few of our thirty-eight state senators and seventy-five House members took money from the Alfanos. I want to find out who they are.”

“Oh, hell no. You want to go through another meeting with Beauregard the Destroyer? Next time, he'll fire the both of us.”

“Until he does,” I said, “I'm gonna keep doing my job. How 'bout you?”

Twisdale folded his arms across his chest. “Easy for you to say, but I've still got a wife and kids to support.” He paused, self-interest and self-respect at war on his face. “But just for the sake of argument, how would you propose to go after this?”

“Most legislators are successful lawyers and businessmen,” I said, “so if they suddenly started installing swimming pools or buying new luxury cars, no one would think anything of it. But about two dozen of them live paycheck to paycheck. Lovellette paints houses for a living. Parkinson is a sixth-grade teacher. Franklin is a prison guard. Berube got laid off by the Post Office last March and hasn't worked since. For people like them, twenty grand would be hard to resist.”

“If they were smart,” Twisdale said, “they'd sit on the dirty cash for a few years and wait till the heat dies down.”

“Sure,” I said, “but most of them aren't smart. And some of them need the money right now.”

“Yeah, I get that. But what would you do, exactly? Drive around and look for new SUVs in their driveways or front-end loaders digging up their backyards?”

“For starters, I'd ask a P.I. friend of mine to tap his bank sources, find out if there's been unusual activity on their credit cards.”

“Spending sprees?” he said.

“Or paying off large balances.”

“Wouldn't it be illegal for the P.I. to do that?”

“Only a little.”

He leaned back and stared at the ceiling, thinking it over.

“I'm not comfortable with this,” he said. “Besides, I don't see how it would help us. You might find something that looks suspicious, but it wouldn't prove anything.”

“No, but it would tell us which legislators we should take a closer look at. Once we start asking questions and digging deeper into their finances, there's no telling what might shake loose.”

“I don't know, Mulligan. I mean, how long would all this take?”

“Maybe three or four weeks if I work it full-time.”

“Uh-uh. No way I can spare you that long.”

“Come on, Chuck. It's an important story. If the Masons were still running the paper, they'd put three or four people on it.”

“But they're not, so it would have to be just you—and mostly on your own time again.”

“That would take me two or three months,” I said. “By then it will be too late.”

“How do you mean?”

“The governor's going to send the gambling bill to the legislature this week. There'll be hearings in both houses, but it will probably come up for a vote in about a month.”

“So?”

“So once the votes are counted, all we'll be able to do is expose a few sad sacks for taking bribe money. That would cause them a world of hurt, but what good would it really do anybody? The sleazebags who've been spreading money around already will have gotten what they paid for. The damage will have been done.”

“I guess that's how it's going to have to be, then,” Twisdale said.

He'd grown some balls in the last week, but Beauregard had snipped them off.

“Fuck you, Chuckie,” I said.

I pulled myself from the chair and stomped out.

*   *   *

A fresh stack of press releases was waiting on my desk. Still fuming, I sorted through them and identified the winner of the day's stupid press release challenge:

“We are proud to announce that East Bay Exotic Animals of Johnston, Rhode Island, has been designated the official pet store of the Providence Vipers.”

The team wouldn't have been all that proud if they'd bothered to check the store owner's criminal record. Over the last five years, he'd been fined three times for violating the federal prohibition against the importation and sale of endangered species.

I added the salient fact to my story. It was an empty gesture of defiance. The Vipers and the pet store were both advertisers. Twisdale would feel compelled to show the story to our acting ad director, who would insist that the unflattering details be removed.

 

36

Early Wednesday morning I jumped out of bed, rummaged through yesterday's clothes, located my cell phone, and called the paper. The managing editor was already at his desk.

“I'm feeling poorly again, Chuckie-boy. Looks like I'll have to take another sick day. Who knows? If I can't shake what ails me, I might be out the whole damn week.”

“Bullshit, Mulligan. Get your ass in here.”

“No can do.”

“You're pissed off about the Vipers' press release, aren't you?”

“I don't give a rat's ass about press releases,” I said, and that was more or less the truth.

“You're really not coming in?”

“I'm not.”

He paused, then said, “I'll need another doctor's note.”

I ended the call and turned the phone off. Then I stepped into the shower and let the hot water wash the tension from my shoulders. Now that I had the day free, I wasn't sure what to do with it. I was eager to hunt down bribe-taking legislators; but to pull that off I'd have to fake illness for a month. Chuckie-boy would never let me get away with that. Twenty minutes later, I was still pondering my next move when the water turned cold.

After I toweled off, I pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and sniffed the Red Sox T-shirts in my laundry basket. The one with Shane Victorino's name on the back was the least offensive, so I put it on. Completing the ensemble with a Red Sox cap, I walked into the living room and roused Joseph from the couch.

“Got anything planned for today?”

“No.”

“Good. Let's take a drive.”

“Where we goin'?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said.

“Okay, but can we get some breakfast first? I had too much to drink last night and barfed up my dinner. I'm fuckin' famished.”

Ten minutes later, we were seated in a booth at Charlie's diner. By the time I finished my bacon and eggs, Joseph had consumed two stacks of pancakes and was making short work of an egg and sausage sandwich.

“Hey, Joseph?”

“Umf?”

“How closely do you follow the NBA?”

“Ask me fuckin' anything.”

“I'm thinking of putting a bet down on the Indiana Pacers to go all the way. What do you think?”

Joseph plopped the last morsel in his mouth, swallowed, licked the plate, and washed everything down with a swig of coffee. Then he launched into a soliloquy about matchups, odds, and point spreads that was worthy of Jimmy the Greek. I filed the information away for future reference. When Charlie came by with the check, Joseph asked for two corn muffins and a large coffee to go.

As we crossed the Providence River and turned south on Route 114, Joseph asked again where we were going.

“A reporter needs to know what's happening on the streets,” I said, “but most days my boss keeps me cooped up in the office. It's been months since I've had a chance to take a good look around, so I want to make a circuit of the state and see what's changed out there.”

“Fine with me,” he said, “long as we can stop for lunch.”

We were cruising through the bedroom suburbs that line the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay when I noticed a black SUV keeping pace with us three car lengths back. I couldn't be sure, but I thought I'd seen the same car behind us as we crossed the river.

In the little bayside town of Warren, Route 114 becomes Main Street, with shabby World War I–era storefronts, some of them empty, lining both sides of the street. There, something piqued my interest, so I backed Secretariat into a metered parking space.

The display windows of a store that had once sold baby clothes were plastered with campaign posters for a Democrat seeking reelection to a third term in the state House of Representatives. A freshly painted sign stretching across the storefront proclaimed: “Concerned Citizens for Gus Lovellette.”

Campaigns for the Rhode Island state legislature are normally small-time, retail politics. The candidates hand out fliers at strip malls and glad-hand old folks at nursing homes. They knock on doors and ask homeowners for their votes. Occasionally, some of them scrounge enough campaign contributions to run a few radio ads. But usually, that's about it. Now and then, when unions representing teachers or state employees get worked up about a piece of pending legislation, a few key committee chairmen can accumulate war chests of fifty grand or so. But as a rule, most legislative campaigns cost less than ten thousand dollars.

So why did Lovellette have his own campaign office? Usually the best someone like him could hope for was a poster in the local Democratic Party headquarters, which was located in another storefront just across the street. Lovellette was a struggling house painter. I doubted he was paying for this himself.

As Joseph and I climbed out of Secretariat, the black SUV slowly rolled by. The windows were tinted, so I couldn't see the driver. Was Mario stalking me again? The car continued on for half a block and then backed into a parking space.

“Looks like we picked up a tail,” Joseph said.

“I think you're right.”

I opened the passenger-side door, popped the glove box, and fetched the Kel-Tec the cops had reluctantly returned to me. I tucked it in my waistband and pulled my T-shirt over it.