A Scourge of Vipers (7 page)

“I'm not implying anything. I'm just giving you the facts.”

He leaned against the sink and looked at the photo again.

“What was his name?”

“Lucan Alfano. Mean anything to you?”

“No. I know some Alfanos, but no Lucan. What do you know about him?”

“Just that he was a bad guy from out of town.”

“How bad?”

“Bad as it gets.”

“How did he die?”

“He was in that plane, the one that hit a house in Warwick last week,” I said. “It was in the paper.”

“I don't read the paper.”

“You don't?”

“Not anymore.”

“How do you keep up with the news?”

“I get Google alerts on the things that matter to me—legislative news, business stories, sports scores, anything with my name attached to it.”

He handed the phone back, and I put it in my pocket.

“So what's this about, Mulligan?”

“I don't know yet,” I said, “but I intend to find out.”

I braced Peter Slater, the Senate minority leader, and Daniel Crowley, the Speaker of the House, in their offices. They were no help either. They both claimed they'd never heard of anyone named Lucan Alfano. From their puzzled looks when they examined his photo, I was inclined to believe them—and for Crowley, that was a first.

I caught up with Lisa Pichardo, the House minority leader, as she was dashing down a statehouse hallway.

“Got no time for you now, Mulligan. The GOP caucus is meeting on the budget in five minutes.”

“So you've got five minutes,” I said.

“We have to do this now?”

“We do.”

“Then make it quick.”

“Take a look at this,” I said, and flashed the photo at her.

She glanced at it and blanched under her makeup.

“What am I looking at?” she asked.

“I think you know.”

“I've never seen this guy in my life.”

“Really? Because your poker face needs work.”

She scowled and turned away. I fell into step with her.

“That pile of cash you were expecting?” I said. “I hope you haven't already spent it, because it's sitting in a Warwick Police Department evidence locker.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

I watched her scurry away down a corridor and duck into a meeting room. She'd never even asked the guy's name. I figured it was because she already knew.

That left one last name from Alfano's list—the only one I'd been shocked to see on it.

 

10

That afternoon, I made a round of calls to the NCAA, the NBA, the NHL, the NFL, and Major League Baseball. Their press officers, tipped off by an Associated Press rewrite of the
Ocean State Rag
story, had their talking points ready. They were nearly identical, full of the same sputtering outrage they had dished in response to Chris Christie's plan. They'd been peddling the same hypocritical, self-serving bullshit for decades:

•
  Legalizing sports betting would irreparably harm the integrity of their games, creating a climate of suspicion about controversial plays, officiating calls, and players' performances.

•
  It would expand the amount of money wagered on games, increasing the temptation to fix results.

•
  It would infringe on the leagues' intellectual property by encouraging gambling operations to use proprietary information including statistics, injury reports, and team logos.

•
  Gambling on sports is an addiction that ruins lives, a scourge that should not be condoned by a benevolent state.

I wrote it up and filed it to the city desk. We were playing catch-up, but at least Chuckie-boy would have something to advance the story Mason had broken.

A half hour after I turned it in, I was summoned to Twisdale's office.

“These guys are
so
full of shit,” he said.

“I agree.”

“Billions of dollars are already being wagered on sports,” he said. “Professional gamblers don't need any more incentive to fix games.”

“Of course they don't.”

“In fact, legalized gambling would more likely deter game-fixing than encourage it, because the amount being wagered would be public knowledge,” he said. “The Arizona State point-fixing scandal was exposed because somebody bet an obscene amount of money against them legally in Las Vegas, and alarm bells went off.”

“That's right. You're on a roll, Chuckie.”

He didn't even stop to growl at me.

“Gambling is one of the reasons so many people follow sports,” he said. “The NCAA and the pro leagues know that, and they profit handsomely from it. That's why they don't object when sports writers cite point spreads. These jerk-offs blackmail cities into spending millions on stadiums by threatening to move their teams out of town, yet they object to state governments sharing the wealth. And by keeping sports betting illegal, they help the Mob stay in business. They and the bookmakers are practically co-conspirators, for godsakes.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” I said.

“I've been reading up.” He snatched a printout of my story from his desktop and tossed it at me. “Your copy tells only one side of the story. Scare up some quotes from people who can call these assholes on their bullshit.”

“Already on it,” I said. “I should have more for you in an hour or so.”

“Make it a separate,” he said. “We'll run the two pieces side by side under a ‘Pros and Cons' headline.”

“Sounds good.”

“Before you go, there's something else we need to discuss.”

“Oh?”

“What are you, about six-three?”

“Six-four, last time I checked,” I said.

“I hear you were a basketball star at Providence College, is that right?”

“A star? No way. Mostly I rode the bench.”

“Do you still play?”

“Once or twice a week. Pickup games at PC's Begley Arena or the outdoor courts at Hope High School.”

“Good. I've got an idea I think you're going to like.”

“I'm listening.”

“I want you to try out for the Vipers and write a series of first-person human interest stories about the experience.”

“Oh, hell no.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm forty-four years old, Chuckie.”

“Oh, come on now. It's not like I'm asking you to make the team. You just have to show up.”

“Why don't
you
do it?” I said. “You're nearly my height, and you're twelve years younger.”

“Because I've got a newspaper to run. Besides, basketball was never my sport. I played middle linebacker at Valdosta State.”

“There are easier ways to get rid of me, Chuckie. You don't have to try to get me killed.”

“This is an order, Mulligan. You already refused one assignment last week. It would not be in your best interest to pull that again.”

*   *   *

“He wants you to do
what
?” Attila the Nun asked.

“You heard me right the first time.”

We were drinking beer at a table in Hopes while the governor's limo, a state trooper at the wheel, lurked just outside the door.

“Can't you talk him out of it?”

“I tried, but he's got a whim of iron.”

“This is crazy, Mulligan. You could kill yourself trying to keep up with twenty-year-olds.”

“Who says I'm going to try to keep up?”

“Are you in shape?”

“Do I look in shape?”

She thunked her bottle of Bud on the cracked Formica table and looked me up and down, then glanced at the TV over the scarred mahogany bar, where the Celtics were getting run over by the Clippers.

“Not compared to those guys.”

“It's not like I'll be going up against Blake Griffin,” I said. “My wind is pretty good, and I can still fill it up from the three-point line.”

“You'll have to kick the cigars for a while.”

“Aw, fuck.”

“What about your knee?” she asked.

“Hasn't bothered me much since the surgery.”

“Sounds like you're warming to the idea.”

“I hate it,” I said. “It's a stupid prank to gin up circulation, but at least it will get me out of the office for a while.”

I flagged down Annie, the leggy Rhode Island School of Design teaching assistant who moonlighted as a barmaid, and ordered another round.

“Is this why you wanted to get together tonight?” Fiona asked. “To see if I could talk you out of a heart attack?”

“No. There's something else.”

I slid the cell out of my pocket and called up the photo.

“Ever seen this guy?”

“Isn't that Paulie Walnuts?” she said. “I loved that show.”

“It does look like him, but no.”

“So who is it?”

“A guy named Lucan Alfano.”

“That sounds familiar, but—” She stared up at the pressed-tin ceiling, searching her memory. “Oh, wait. Isn't that the Jersey guy who got killed in the plane crash?”

“Yeah. That the only thing you know about him?”

“Uh-huh. What's this about, Mulligan?”

So I ran down what I knew about Alfano, his briefcase full of cash, and the list found in his pocket.

“
My
name was on the list?”

“It was.”

“You think the cash was intended for me?”

“Some of it, anyway. At least that's how it looks.”

We sipped our beers in silence and thought about it.

“Who was he was working for?” she asked. “And what was he supposed to buy with all that money?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“This could be about any one of a number of things,” she said. “We're putting some big road-construction contracts out to bid this month. The medical association and the hospitals are having fits about our proposed Medicaid cuts. My bill to tighten wetlands protections is going to the floor in a couple of weeks, and the construction industry is livid about it.”

“Or maybe it was a bribe from the fried calamari lobby,” I said. “I hear there's a lot riding on the official state appetizer crown.”

“But Alfano was mobbed up,” she said.

“He was.”

“And a fixer for the casino industry.”

“Yeah, but not exclusively. From what I hear, he wasn't picky about who he worked for.”

“So most likely this was about the gambling bill,” she said.

“That would be my guess.”

“Which side of the issue do you think he was on?”

“Depends on who hired him,” I said. “Personally, he probably didn't give a shit.”

I took a pull from my longneck and mulled it over.

“The other four names on the list,” I said. “Did they know about the gambling bill before
The Ocean State Rag
broke the story?”

“Of course. I've been working quietly for a couple of months to get the legislative leadership on board.”

“Who else knew?”

“Just three members of my staff, a couple of legislative committee chairmen, and the two top guys at the Lottery Commission.”

“And where do they stand?”

“They're all for the idea in principle, but the Republicans, Slater and Pichardo, are holding things up. They don't want the Lottery Commission involved. They think we should bring in a private company to run things.”

“And one of these people leaked it,” I said.

“Either that or somebody one of them confided in.”

“Then here's how I see it,” I said. “If Alfano was working for the Mob, his job was to get the bill killed. But if he was working for the casinos, he was supposed to grease the skids for privatization so some big shot from Atlantic City can waltz in here and become our official state bookmaker.”

“I'm guessing it's the casinos—or maybe somebody who's got a stake in one of them,” Fiona said. “When New Jersey legalized casino gambling back in 1976, Atlantic City had the only legal slots, craps tables, and roulette wheels east of Las Vegas. By 2006, they were raking in more than five billion in annual profits. Since then, casinos have opened in more than a dozen states east of the Mississippi including New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The competition has cut Atlantic City gambling revenue by fifty percent, and half of its casinos have been forced to close. It makes sense that big money people there would want to muscle in on our action.”

She paused, then said, “Now that Alfano's dead, whoever sent him is probably going to send somebody else.”

“Yeah,” I said. “In fact, he might already be here.”

There wasn't much more to say about that, so we turned to small talk. Her younger brother's particle-physics research at MIT. The baby boy my sister and her wife had adopted. But after a few minutes, I turned the conversation back to the gambling bill.

“What's your next step?” I asked.

“Next week's announcement is off,” she said. “I have to postpone until I can work out a deal with the leadership. We've got a lot of anti-gambling moralists on both sides of the aisle. No way I can get this thing through without some Republican support.”

“Is that on background, or can I run with it?”

She took her time thinking it over.

“Go ahead and print it,” she said. “A lot of misinformation is floating around now. I need to get out ahead of it.”

I pulled out a pad and was jotting some notes when Whoosh came through the door. He spotted me and hobbled toward my table. Then he saw who I was sitting with and peeled off to grab a stool at the bar.

Fiona glanced his way and said, “Think your bookmaker pal has a line on what's going on?”

“No idea.”

“If he does, will he tell you?”