After Doug Woolverton’s trumpet finished the tune with a sizzling flourish, Phil acknowledged the screams for more, then hushed the crowd.
“Got a triple threat for ya here tonight,” he said. “Newport’s own Edward Mason is in the house. He writes the news. He writes music. And if he hasn’t lost his nerve, tonight he’s gonna sing. This ragtime number he just wrote is something different for the band, but we ran through it a couple of times this afternoon, and we dig it. I think you will too.”
Mason grinned at his shocked colleagues, winked at Felicia, and made his way to the stage. Travis Colby, the keyboard player, got up so the kid could take his place. Mason bent toward the mike and said rather jauntily, “Ladies and gentlemen, ‘Providence Rag.’”
His fingers hit the keys, setting down a rollicking beat that made the audience hoot with surprise. When he began to sing, his voice wavered, hunting for a key. Once the rhythm kicked in, he found it and started to have fun.
Come on and hear the presses rising roar
Inking tales of sins and war
Oh ma honey, what we do
Provide you with a point of view
Oh ma baby, there’s just no match
For the roar we roar at the ol’ Dispatch
That mighty rumble that you hear
Rhode Island’s favorite ragtime rag
The truth we tell will persevere
Rhode Island’s favorite ragtime rag
Work up a cheer, and hoist your beer
For Rhode Island’s favorite ragtime rag!
After Mason’s debut, and a raucous ovation from the crowd, the band took a break. The newly minted performer walked back to the table through backslaps, toasts, and high fives. When he reached his seat, Felicia jumped up and planted a long kiss on his lips. Mulligan leaned in as if he were going to do the same, then laughed and gave his friend a brotherly clap on the shoulder.
“Two questions,” Mulligan said. “Is this what you’re gonna do when the paper is sold? And do you need a roadie?”
Mulligan drove home alone beneath a big yellow moon, Phil Pemberton’s tender rendition of Sam Cooke’s masterpiece “A Change Is Gonna Come” still singing in his ears. He left Secretariat at the curb, trudged up the stairs, and shouldered through his apartment door. He was grateful that Larry Bird was history, but he still longed for a big dog, one that would greet him with moist kisses and a thumping tail.
He was bone tired and a little drunk, but when he threw himself on his mattress, sleep wouldn’t come. He’d never shot anyone before, but he was fine with that. He wished he’d shot straighter, that he’d blasted a hole straight through the place where Kwame Diggs’s heart should have been.
Mulligan’s mind raced, a slide show of death. He’d never been inside the murder houses, but he imagined the five long-ago victims lying in glistening pools of blood. He struggled to remember his best friend, Rosie, as she once was and not as a bundle of bones entombed beneath a marble slab. The pumping heart of the newspaper he loved was failing, too, sluggish rivers of printer’s ink barely trickling through its veins.
Mulligan had always said that being a newspaperman was the only thing he was any good at-that if he couldn’t be a reporter, he’d probably end up selling pencils from a tin cup. He figured begging would pay as well as the Dispatch, but it didn’t sound like much of a plan.
September 2012
The pain in his chest is returning. He presses the red call button for the nurse. Ten minutes later, she still has not come.
He looks at the wall clock and realizes it has been only an hour since his last shot of Demerol. It will be another sixty minutes before the bitch will give him another one.
He picks up the remote and flips through the channels. Celebrity Apprentice. The Golden Girls. Battlestar Galactica. Hillbilly Handfishin’. Jesus, what a bunch of crap.
The cop stationed outside his door steps in, glares at him for a moment, then ducks back into the hallway. The cop, or others like him, will remain there, the man knows, until he’s well enough to appear in court for his extradition hearing.
More channel flipping. Finally, he hits on something worth watching. Jason X, a slasher movie about Jason Voorhees, one of his favorite characters. He’s never seen this one; it was made while he was in prison.
He slides his right hand, the one that doesn’t have an IV stuck in it, under the coarse hospital sheet and gives himself a tug. His erection rises, then deflates. What the hell?
The drugs, maybe. Yeah. That must be it.
By the time the movie ends, his chest is on fire. He presses the call button maybe fifty times. Finally, the bitch comes in with his silver needle. The pain recedes.
He drifts off…
He is behind the condo again, peering through the windows. The kitchen is empty. He sits in the wet grass and removes his sneakers. Then he pulls a glass cutter from his little black valise and carves a hole in the window. He reaches through it, unlocks the latch, raises the sash, and crawls inside.
He tiptoes out of the kitchen and pads across the living room rug. Someone is sleeping on the sofa. He slips the combat knife from the sheath on his belt and swings it in an arc, tearing out the sleeper’s throat. There is a gun on the coffee table. A big, heavy pistol. He picks it up, sticks it in his waistband, and wipes his knife blade clean on the leather couch.
Then he turns and stealthily climbs the stairs. Somewhere up there, the girl of his dreams is waiting. He feels himself getting hard.
At long last, he will hear Felicia scream.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In September 2011, Thomas H. Cook, one of the finest writers of my generation, accepted my invitation to lunch at a pub in St. Louis. He welcomed the chance to catch up with an old pal. I had something more in mind. For two hours, the Jedi prose master listened patiently as I droned on about my muddled idea for a third crime novel, prodding me with questions and offering priceless suggestions. A year later, when I completed the first draft, I was pleased with each chapter but not with the way they fit together. Something wasn’t right, but darned if I could figure out what it was. I sheepishly sent the manuscript to Susanna Einstein, who is not only a great agent but the best story doctor I’ve ever known. She promptly identified the problem and offered a solution. As always, my wife, Patricia Smith, one of our finest living poets, edited every line of every page, adding music to my occasionally toneless prose. If not for their brilliance and generosity, this novel might never have been written. Every writer should have such friends.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bruce DeSilva’s crime fiction has won the Edgar and Macavity awards, has been listed as a finalist for the Shamus, Anthony, and Barry awards, and has been published in ten foreign languages. His short stories have appeared in Akashic Books’s award-winning noir anthologies, and his book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and scores of other publications.
DeSilva was a journalist for forty years, most recently as worldwide writing coach for the Associated Press, editing stories that won nearly every major journalism prize, including the Pulitzer. He has worked as a consultant for fifty newspapers, taught at the University of Michigan and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and lectured at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation. He and his wife, the poet Patricia Smith, live in New Jersey with two enormous dogs named Brady and Rondo. Find him online at www.brucedesilva.com.