Shit. Could we manage a long-distance relationship? Woodward certainly wouldn’t be hiring me now. I was damaged goods.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, as soon as I get the mess I’m in straightened away, how about I come down there for a weekend of unbridled lust?”
“I’d really like that.”
After we hung up, I strolled around the park some more. It was shortly after six when a statuesque black woman came through the Textron Tower’s revolving door, cut across the park, and entered the Capital Grille. I recognized her from her photo on the law firm’s Web site. I waited a few minutes, then followed her in.
Yolanda Mosley-Jones was sitting alone at the end of the bar, looking both professional and lusty in a hunter-green business suit. I chose a stool at the other end, asked the bartender for a club soda, and feigned interest in the menu. Mosley-Jones picked up what looked like a martini, took a small sip, and set it back down on a cocktail napkin.
Behind her, four suits were crammed into a booth, consuming vile, neon-colored drinks from highball glasses. From their furtive glances, it was apparent they were interested. Finally one of them got up, lurched over to the bar, and sat down beside her. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was didn’t take. He got back up, shoulders slumping a little, and rejoined his friends.
A half hour ticked by. She never checked her watch. Never looked up at the clock over the bar. She didn’t seem to be waiting for anybody. I walked over, sat down next to her, and asked the bartender to bring her another on me.
“Sorry,” she said, “but I don’t date white guys.”
“Neither do I.”
She spun the bar stool to face me, looked me over, and frowned. Suddenly I didn’t feel fashionable anymore.
“Oh,” she said. “I know who you are. I saw you on the news. You were in handcuffs.”
“Not my finest moment.”
“Brady Coyle said you might try to pump me for information. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“So don’t say anything. Just listen.”
“I don’t think so.”
She twisted away, stood, and gathered her purse and BlackBerry from the bar.
“You filed the incorporation papers for Little Rhody Realty.”
She looked back over her shoulder.
“What if I did?”
“Little Rhody is a front for mobsters who are buying up property in Mount Hope. They’re the ones behind the fires.”
That got her attention. Eyes fixed on mine, she settled back onto the bar stool.
“They’re burning out the families that won’t sell. They’re burning down the buildings they buy to collect the insurance. And they don’t care who gets killed.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, but she kept her seat.
The bartender placed a fresh martini in front of her and cleared away her empty glass. I waited for him to wander down the bar before I gave her the rest of it.
When I was done, she shook her head slowly like maybe she still didn’t believe it. Or didn’t want to.
“Why tell me?” she said.
“Because I did my homework. I know your best friend Amy’s place burned down on Hell Night, and I thought you might want to do something about it. I need you to get something for me.”
When I told her what it was, she shook her head so hard her hair bounced.
“Not a chance. Maybe I believe you and maybe I don’t, but what you’re asking could get me fired. Even disbarred.”
“There are worse fates,” I said.
I told her how I watched Rosie carry Tony DePrisco’s burned and broken body out of a smoldering triple-decker. I told her what Rosie looked like when they slid her out of the ambulance. I described what it must have been like for my favorite English teacher, old Mr. McCready, when he drew his last lungful of smoke. I told her about Efrain and Graciela Rueda’s dreams for their children. I told her how Scott’s body looked when the fireman carried him down the ladder. I told her how the smoke rose right through the sheet Melissa was wrapped in. I told her what it was like to watch them go into the ground.
I was starting to tell her about the bullet holes in Scibelli’s corpse when she said, “Please stop.” She picked up her drink and took a long swallow.
“Why me?” she said. “Why don’t you talk to the lawyers who filed the papers for the other four dummy corporations?”
“I tried them already.”
She didn’t say anything, just fingered the stem of her martini glass. She had beautiful eyes. Her voice had smoke in it. And as best I could tell in that suit, her legs went on awhile.
“I’m not really white,” I said. “I’m passing.”
She laughed softly, but there was no joy in it. I took out one of my business cards, crossed out the address, wrote in another, and slid it into her purse. Then I took a twenty from my wallet and laid it on the bar.
70
McCracken’s secretary celebrated an unseasonably warm Thursday in April by squeezing into a short, low-cut yellow sundress. Her nipples showed dark against the thin fabric.
“She might as well have come to work naked,” he said, after closing his inner door.
“Maybe she’s working her way up to that.”
“Something to look forward to,” he said. “Listen, I’ve been worried about you. Are you all right?”
“I’ve got four broken ribs. I’ve been identified as a person of interest in a series of heinous crimes. The paper has suspended me without pay. My best friend is in the hospital. My best girl doesn’t want to be seen with me. And I’m pretty sure Vinnie Giordano is planning to shoot me. But the Sox are in first place, so on balance I guess I’m doing okay.”
“Why would Giordano want to shoot you?”
“Because of the documents I lifted from Brady Coyle’s office.”
“You stole documents from Brady Coyle’s office?”
“Gee. When you put it that way, it almost sounds illegal.”
McCracken sat down behind his desk, opened his humidor, extracted two maduro torpedoes, clipped the ends, and offered me one. I took it and collapsed into a visitor’s chair.
“Tell me all about it,” he said, and I was about to when Mason came through the door with a big yellow envelope under his arm.
“Did you look at it?” I asked him after handling the introductions.
“I did.”
“Then you might as well stay.”
He dropped into the other visitor’s chair and handed me the envelope. I opened it, pulled out the papers, and started to unfold them.
“Wait a minute,” McCracken said. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you had him bring it here?”
“I figured you’d want to have a look.”
“Christ! What if he was followed?”
“I wasn’t,” Mason said.
“No reason he would be,” I said. “No one knew I was having him hold it. I’m the one they are looking for, and so far I’ve got them fooled into thinking I’m out of state.”
“What if someone spotted you coming in here?”
“That’s the reason for the disguise,” I said. I stood, removed the blazer, draped it over the back of the chair, and took off the sunglasses. McCracken stared at me now like he thought I was an idiot. He might have been on to something.
“Look,” I said. “Do you want to see this or not?”
He shoved some papers aside to clear desk space, and I smoothed the first document out in front of him. Anyone who’d been stuck in Providence as long as we had could recognize it as a plat map of Mount Hope’s southeast quarter. The existing buildings were gone, though, replaced by a rough layout of what appeared to be a large real estate development. In the lower right hand corner, a name and address: “Dio Construction Corp., 245 Pocasset Avenue, Providence, RI.”