Still, I was growing anxious about how I’d manage to pay the rent and keep my ancient Ford Bronco fed with gas and junkyard parts once The Dispatch was done with me. My young pal Edward Anthony Mason III-trust fund baby, son of The Providence Dispatch’s former publisher, and first journalist laid off when the paper’s new owners took over last year-was dangling a reporting gig at his online local-news start-up, The Ocean State Rag. But the venture wasn’t making any money yet, so the job didn’t pay much. A standing offer to join my old buddy Bruce McCracken’s private detective agency would pay better, but it wasn’t journalism.
But bookmaking? Now that was real money. I could replace the torn sofa I’d found on the sidewalk, buy myself a new Mustang convertible, move into a luxury condo on the bay, start an IRA. Maybe even invest in some Red Sox T-shirts that weren’t adorned with cigar burns and pizza grease.
“Have you broken the news to Mario yet?” I asked.
“Not yet.”
“How he’s gonna take it?”
“He’s gonna be wicked pissed.”
“He’s still got that no-show Sanitation Department job, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably doesn’t pay much,” I said.
“A couple grand a month. Chump change if you gotta work for it, which he don’t, so what’s to complain about?”
“He’ll make trouble,” I said, “unless you can buy him off with something else.”
“Already on it. I been introducin’ him to another line of work.”
“What?”
“Somethin’ that don’t require a remedial course in junior high math. So are you in or out?”
I took a pull from my beer, tipped my head back, and thought about it for a moment.
“Can you give me some time to think it over?”
“Sure thing, Mulligan. Just don’t take too goddamn long, okay? I’m havin’ a helluva time holding Maggie off. She’s fuckin’ relentless.”
I never learned how Mario found out about Whoosh’s offer, but two days later the threatening phone calls started. The first one went something like this:
“You Mulligan?”
“The one and only. And you are?”
“I’m the guy who’s gonna be your worst nightmare if you don’t stop messin’ with what’s mine.”
“You mean the redhead I picked up at Hopes Friday night?”
“What? No.”
“Cuz you’re welcome to her,” I said. “She’s a poor conversationalist, and the sex was below average. I got no plans to see her again.”
“Stop kidding around, asshole. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”
“Let me think. Did my story about no-show sanitation jobs cause you some inconvenience?”
“I’m talkin’ about my Uncle Whoosh’s racket, you dumb fuck. You better hear what I’m saying, cuz this ain’t no joke. Back off, or I’m gonna tear you a new one.”
He called me daily after that, usually right around midnight. I should have stopped provoking him, but I didn’t. Sometimes I just can’t help myself. So after work last Friday, I found my Ford Bronco vandalized in the parking lot across from The Dispatch, although with all the old dents and rust, the new damage matched the décor. And tonight, before I came home and found the snake, Mario caught me staggering out of Hopes after last call and pointed a small nickel-plated revolver at me.
“Ain’t laughing now,” he said, “are you, shithead?”
“You haven’t said anything funny yet.”
“My uncle’s racket is supposed to go to me. I’m his blood. This is my future you’re fuckin’ with. I don’t know what you got on Uncle Whoosh, but I’m warning you. Get lost. If you don’t, I’m gonna bust one right through your heart, you fuckin’ snake.”
He was pointing the gun at my belly when he said it. I wasn’t sure if he was confused about human anatomy or just a lousy shot.
Confident that he’d made his point, Mario brushed past me and pimp-walked away down the sidewalk. As I turned to watch him go, he shoved the pistol into his waistband and pulled his shirttail over it. I decided not to take any more chances. The next time we met, Mario wouldn’t be the only one packing heat.
My late grandfather’s Colt, the sidearm he’d carried for decades as a member of the Providence PD, used to hang in a shadowbox on my apartment wall. I’d taken it down and learned how to shoot a few years ago after my investigation into a string of arsons in the city’s Mount Hope section provoked death threats. But Grandpa’s gun had a hell of a kick and was too large for easy concealment. So the day after that encounter with Mario, I splurged three hundred bucks on a Kel-Tec PF-9 at the D &L gun shop in Warwick. The chopped-down pocket pistol was five and a half inches long, had an unloaded weight of just twelve and a half ounces, and tucked comfortably into the waistband at the small of my back.
Beyond ten yards, I couldn’t hit anything smaller than Narragansett Bay, but I didn’t figure on doing any sharpshooting.
2
It was just past eight A.M. when I stepped into The Dispatch’s third-floor newsroom and punched the time clock. The device was the latest employee-friendly innovation from General Communications Holdings International-GCHI to its closest friends-the bottom-feeding media conglomerate that had gobbled up the struggling newspaper last year. I’d never heard of a newsroom with a time clock, but there was no fighting progress.
“Mulligan?” the receptionist said. “The managing editor would like a word.”
I plodded over to the aquarium, a glass-walled office where Mister Twisdale-who did not allow the staff to call him Charles and became apoplectic when addressed as Chuck or Charlie-sprawled in the black leather throne formerly occupied by my longtime boss, Ed Lomax. Lomax’s passion had been to put out the best newspaper he could every day. Twisdale’s assigned task was to wring as much money as possible from The Dispatch before it finally went belly-up.
He was a six-foot-three-inch, broad-shouldered thirty-two-year-old with a boy’s regular haircut, a white dress shirt, and a red rep tie splattered with the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity emblem. Wrists thickened by weight lifting shot out of a navy-blue blazer he’d probably bought on sale at Men’s Wearhouse. The smug bastard liked the way he looked.
I didn’t, but I gave him a toothy good-morning grin and said, “What’s up, Chuck?”
“Do I really have to tell you again?” he said.
“Tell me what, Chuck?”
“How to address your superiors.”
I made a show of looking around.
“I don’t see any of those here.”
“Stop being such an asshole, Mulligan. When you win a Pulitzer, you can be an asshole.”
“Really, Chuckie? When did you win yours?”
If he’d bothered to read my personnel file, he would have known that I had won a Pulitzer. Not that I gave a shit about that. It was a long time ago. I was more concerned about all the other things this former TV news producer from Oklahoma City didn’t know about leadership, newspapers, Providence, or being human.
Over the years, I’d had my share of squabbles with Lomax, but I missed him. He’d been summarily dismissed because he possessed two qualities that our new owners could not tolerate-integrity and a hundred-and-twenty-thousand-dollar salary. Living on Social Security and savings now, he and his wife recently sold their big house in Cumberland and moved into a small condo in East Providence.