“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?”
“Probably not,” I said.
With that, we turned to the TV for the last five minutes of the Celtics-Clippers debacle. When the horn signaled the end of the game, the conversation turned light.
“So, Mulligan. Are you wearing those hot Bruins boxers again?”
“No. I’m sporting my Red Sox briefs tonight. I’ve got two pair of each, and I rotate them once a week whether they need changing or not.”
“I love a man who’s a stickler for hygiene.”
Then a worried look crossed her face.
“What if we’ve got this wrong? You said Alfano also arranged contract killings, right? Maybe that’s what all the cash was for. The five names could be a hit list.”
As I reached across the table for Fiona’s hand, a camera flash lit us up. I turned in time to see a blond stranger at the bar snap a second shot of us with her cell phone. I didn’t think anything of it. People were always sneaking photos of Fiona and posting them on Facebook to make it look as if they were drinking buddies with the governor.
“Don’t get paranoid about hired killers, Fiona,” I said. “I mean, do you really think Alfano would commit a hit list to paper?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have no idea what someone like him would do.”
Later that night, I drove up Olney Street and pulled into the deserted lot at Hope High School. I parked beside the basketball courts and fetched my Spalding from the back. Somebody had shot out the lights that hung over the courts, so I worked on my crossover dribble, my left-handed runner, and my jump shot in the glare from Secretariat’s lone working headlight.
For years, basketball had been my life. From the age of seven, my buddy Felix and I spent hour after hour shooting baskets in his driveway and playing horse on these same outdoor courts. Our boyhood hero was Ernie DiGregorio, a local legend who had led Providence College to the Final Four. Ernie D., as he was affectionately known, went on to win the NBA Rookie of the Year Award and, despite a gimpy knee, played eight seasons as a pro, the last as a member of our beloved Boston Celtics. Felix and I had read about how, as a child, Ernie dribbled a basketball everywhere he went. So we did, too, bouncing our worn Spaldings and Wilsons even when we walked to school.