“Holy shit!”
“Wait. There’s more.”
Four more documents, in fact, each an exterior architectural rendering or floor plan for what looked to be very expensive condominiums.
“I removed it from a mailing tube addressed to Brady Coyle. The return address was Rosabella Development.”
“Isn’t that Vinnie Giordano’s company?”
“It is.”
“Holy shit!”
“Speaking of Giordano, give this a listen,” I said. I laid the phone recorder on the desk and pressed play.
When I clicked it off a few minutes later, McCracken said it again: “Holy shit!”
“My Latin’s a little rusty,” I told Mason, “but I think that’s Roman Catholic for ‘Wowie.’ ”
“I don’t get it,” Mason said.
“Get what?”
“How could they think they could keep this a secret? When the buildings start to go up, the developer and the builder will be a matter of public record.”
“It’ll go something like this,” McCracken said. “The five dummy corporations will keep buying up property. When they’ve got everything they need, the arsons will stop. In the aftermath, there’ll be a lot of public hand-wringing about how to rebuild the neighborhood. Giordano and Dio will come to the rescue, offering to build something Providence can be proud of. They’ll buy the property from the five dummy companies, and no one will know they’ll actually just be buying it from themselves.”
“Except us,” I said.
McCracken offered Mason a cigar, and he surprised me by accepting. I leaned over to give him a light, and the three of us smoked for a while. Suddenly McCracken’s face changed as if he’d just remembered something. He slid open his top drawer, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it to me.
“This came by messenger this morning,” he said.
It had been sent to my attention at McCracken’s office. The address was printed in block letters. There was no return address.
Inside was a computer printout of billing records from McDougall, Young, Coyle, and Limone. If I was right, they were going to show that the fees for incorporating the five dummy corporations had been charged to Dio or Giordano. But I was wrong.
They had been paid for personally by Brady Coyle.
I handed it to Mason. He looked at it and then passed it to McCracken.
“Giordano to Dio to Coyle,” I said.
“The three of them are in it together,” McCracken said.
“So,” I said. “How do we make them pay?”
McCracken got up, took three glasses down from a cabinet, filled them with ice from his minifridge, and poured us each three inches of Bushmills. We smoked, sipped our drinks, and thought about it for a while.
It was McCracken who broke the silence.
“Legally, I think we’re screwed.”
“I think so, too,” I said.
“Why’s that?” Mason said.
“The billing records were delivered anonymously,” McCracken said. “No way to prove they’re genuine.”
“Besides,” I said, “once Coyle realizes we have them, he’ll delete the records from the firm’s computer.”
“The building plans are stolen property,” McCracken said. “Might make it difficult to get them admitted as evidence. Worse, they were stolen from Dio’s lawyer, which probably means they are protected by lawyer-client privilege.”
“What about the recording?” Mason said.
“It’s illegal,” I said.
“How so?”
“Rhode Island is one of a handful of states in which it’s a crime to record your own phone conversation unless you inform the other party. Besides, who does it incriminate? The way the cops will hear it, I stole some documents and used them to shake down Giordano.”
“Use what we’ve got,” McCracken said, “and Mulligan’s the one who ends up doing time.”
“When you add all this up,” I said, passing my hand over the documents and digital recorder, “what does it really prove, anyway? Just that Giordano, Dio, and Coyle have a secret plan to build pricey condos in Mount Hope. We don’t have any hard evidence that they’re behind the arsons.”
“But we know they are,” McCracken said.
“Yeah. We do.”
“If we can’t go to the authorities,” Mason said, “is there any way we can get what we know into the newspaper?”
It was worth a try. The three of us worked until midnight, pouring everything we had into an exposé under Mason’s byline.
71
In the morning, I bought some flowers at Downtown Florist and caught a cab to Warwick.
“She’ll be happy to see you,” Gloria’s mother said as she ushered me into the house. “She’s been following the news, and she’s been worrying about you.”
She’s been worrying about me?
Gloria rose from the couch, where she’d been watching TV, met me in the middle of the living room, wrapped her arms around me, and gave me a squeeze. That’s when it dawned on me that my ribs were feeling better. I guess hers were too.
We sat together on the couch and caught up. I told her there was still no news about Rosie but that I hoped to be exonerated and back to work soon. She told me the surgery on her hand had gone well and that she was scheduled for her first plastic surgery next week. Her bruises were faded now, and the fear was no longer in her eyes. She was animated. She seemed hopeful. Her smile was lopsided, but it was still a smile.
Before I left, I asked her if I could borrow her car.
“Keep it as long as you like,” she said. “With one good eye, it’ll be a while before I get up the nerve to drive.”
She took the keys from her purse and dropped them in my palm.
72
That afternoon I hid out in McCracken’s office, smoking and killing time. I fiddled with my cell, changing the ringtone to the “Peter Gunn Theme.” By five, I still hadn’t heard from Mason, and I was starting to get anxious.
Then the orchestra began to play: “Waaaaah, wah! Waaaaah, wah-wah!”
“So how’d it go?”
“Not good.”
“Ah, shit.”
“Yeah. After Lomax and Pemberton killed the story, I went upstairs to see Dad and got the same song and dance.”
“Start from the beginning and give me all of it, Edward.”
“Hey! That’s the first time you called me by my real name.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just tell me what happened.”
“First off, Lomax kept asking if I had really come up with all this on my own. Wanted to know, did I have help from you.”
“And you said?”
“That it was my work.”
“He believe you?”
“I don’t think so, but he let it slide.”
“Then what?”
“He had a lot of questions about sourcing. Where did I get the architectural drawings? Where did the billing records come from? How did I know they were genuine?”
“And you said?”
“That I couldn’t reveal my confidential sources.”
“And then?”
“Lomax said there was no way the paper would put its reputation on the line based on the work of a cub reporter who couldn’t disclose his sources. Not even a cub reporter whose daddy was the publisher. When I pressed the argument, he backed off and said he’d discuss it with Pemberton. He walked into the aquarium, and the two of them went into a huddle. In the middle of it, Pemberton took a call, talked for a few minutes, and hung up. After a half hour or so, they both walked over to my cubicle looking pretty mad.”
“Why mad?”
“Pemberton asked, did I know that my story was based on documents you had stolen from Brady Coyle’s office?”