“I see.”
“Our recent circulation losses have already made several potential buyers shy away,” the old man said. “We can’t afford to lose any more readers.”
“I understand,” Lomax said. “Shall I kill the story, then?”
The old man blew three perfect smoke rings.
“Walk with me,” he said.
They stepped out of the office and strolled down a corridor lined with framed photographs of historic Dispatch front pages: The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. The annihilation of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. The Battle of the Somme. The 1929 stock market crash. Pearl Harbor. The Kennedy assassination. The moon landing. The Challenger explosion. The election of the first black president.
The publisher opened the door to the boardroom and snapped on the lights, illuminating a meeting table surrounded by two dozen antique leather chairs. The table was big enough to land a Boeing 747. On one wall, a huge glass case was crammed with plaques, medals, and trophies.
“See that medal right there?” the old man said. “It’s the Pulitzer Prize George Boyle won in 1919 for exposing corrupt military contractors during World War One. It was just the third year the Pulitzer was awarded. That one up there? It’s the Pulitzer Mulligan won twelve years ago for blowing the lid off bribery in the state court system. That’s the last Pulitzer Prize the paper won. Probably the last we ever will win.”
They smoked in silence and peered into the case, their eyes moving across three more Pulitzer medals and scores of plaques, trophies, and framed certificates for excellence in feature writing, beat reporting, hard news coverage, photography, and investigative reporting. Polk, Hillman, Livingston, National Headliner, Overseas Press Club, Ernie Pyle, and Robert F. Kennedy Awards. Goldsmith Prizes. Batten Medals…
“A grand legacy,” Lomax said.
“And a lot to live up to,” the old man said. “If The Providence Dispatch is to pass into history, I will not have it cowardly slink into the darkness. Run that baby, Ed. Page one, with a second-coming headline.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll have it ready to go for Sunday.”
“Make it a week from Sunday,” the publisher said. “I’ve got some arrangements to make first.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, Ed? Be sure to post the videos on our Web site.”
“All of them, sir?”
“All of them. The one with Diggs’s poem should be accompanied by a sensitive-content warning. I trust you to handle that with the appropriate discretion.”
July 2012
Freedom is tantalizingly close now. He stares at the bars of his prison cell and imagines them dissolving, sees himself strutting out of the prison gate. No cuffs binding his hands. No leg chains hobbling his gait.
He pictures himself shopping for his murder kit. Rubber gloves. A glass cutter. Condoms. A Buck knife. In his mind, he caresses each of the items, then carefully packs them in a small black valise.
His lawyer says he shouldn’t get his hopes too high. Legal hurdles remain. A judge might order him to take a psychiatric evaluation. But he beat the headshrinkers once before. He can do it again. The hot little ho is probably screwing that reporter right now. He imagines catching them in the act, a knife singing in his hand.
He thinks about the other blessings freedom could bring. Finding Susan Ashcroft and finishing the job. Plunging his blade into Connie Stuart’s twin sister, a thrilling way to reenact his finest moment. Walking down a city sidewalk stinking with blondes, picking one out, and following her home. So many honey-haired bitches to choose from.
His thoughts drift to the one-eyed photographer, the way she shivered when she took his picture last fall. He knows her name. It was right there, under the photo in the newspaper he read in the prison library. Gloria Costa.
He wonders if she can still weep out of both eyes.
60
Mulligan worked the phones all morning, trying to flesh out an advance about Judge Needham’s pending ruling on a psychiatric evaluation for Diggs.
The sheriff’s department confirmed that in the last five days, sixteen bomb threats had been called in to the Providence Superior Court building. Felicia Freyer reported that someone had slashed the tires on her Acura MDX. And Needham’s secretary said the judge had received thousands of e-mails and a bulk mail bag full of letters in the last week. Some of them urged the judge to “do the right thing.” Others threatened him with dismemberment or death if he didn’t.
No, the secretary hadn’t sorted through them all. No, she couldn’t read any of the letters or e-mails to Mulligan. She had turned them all over to the police, who had asked her not to release anything to the press for fear that publicity would “bring more squirrels out of the woodwork.” That was a bizarre way to put it, but Mulligan decided to use the quote. He figured readers would know exactly what she meant.
The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and four national TV news organizations were planning coverage of Needham’s ruling, and both Greta Van Susteren and Nancy Grace, who Mulligan doubted had ever even been to Rhode Island, were already tweeting about the case.
A “Keep Kwame Diggs Locked Up” Facebook page now had 53,612 followers-not nearly as many as the Texas hold ’em poker, Family Guy, or Vin Diesel fan pages, but still impressive.
Two years ago, Lomax had ordered the whole news staff to sign up with Facebook and Twitter to keep track of stuff like that. Mulligan had reluctantly complied, but his Facebook profile was nearly devoid of personal information. Under Religion, he had typed, “None of your business.” Under Politics, he had listed, “Disgusted.” And under Favorite Quotes, he’d posted: “‘Fuck this yuppie journalism shit’-the late Will McDonough, a reporter’s reporter.” He’d left everything else blank.
Because he’d never uploaded a profile picture, and never would, its place was held by a head-and-shoulders silhouette that reminded him of a pistol-range target. He’d never once posted a message on either Twitter or Facebook; and when others-mostly old acquaintances he hadn’t missed, old girlfriends he’d been glad to be rid of, and people he’d never met-tried to “friend” him, he always clicked the “not now” button because there wasn’t one that said “fuck off.”
Mulligan had nearly finished writing the advance when a courthouse tipster phoned with the perfect tidbit for a kicker. Judge Needham had already made his decision but was dithering with the draft because he was waiting for a custom-made, boy’s-size judicial robe-one with stylish yellow lightning bolts on the sleeves-to be shipped from Academic Apparel in Chatsworth, California.
The judge wanted to look pretty for the camera.
Nancy Grace and Greta Van Susteren had both been leaked advance word of Judge Needham’s ruling-or so they claimed. Grace, the CNN court reporter and failed Dancing with the Stars contestant, was reporting that Needham had approved the state’s request and that Diggs would be examined by a committee of experts at the Harvard University Department of Psychiatry. Van Susteren, the Fox News harpy, was reporting that Needham had denied the state’s request, and she was howling for his removal, branding him “a liberal activist judge who is way out of the mainstream.”
Mulligan figured both of them were talking out of their asses.
On Thursday morning, the protesters on the Superior Court building steps numbered three hundred by Mulligan’s rough count. He bobbed and weaved through them, made his way to Needham’s third-floor courtroom, and settled into a seat in the jury box between a reporter for the National Law Journal and a stringer for The New York Times.