“How the hell did he know that?”
“That call he took? It was Coyle threatening to sue the paper for invasion of privacy, libel, and a couple of other things Pemberton told me that I can’t remember just now.”
“What? How did Coyle know about the story?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. At that point, I lost my temper. Said some things I shouldn’t have.”
“Like what?”
“That Giordano, Dio, and Coyne are scum. That they are arsonists and murderers. That the three of them were going to get away with it because we didn’t have the balls to take them on.”
“Oh, boy.”
“Yeah. I was loud about it, too. Pemberton just shook his head and said I had some growing up to do. When I went upstairs to see Dad, he said the same thing.”
“Thanks for trying, Mason.”
“This isn’t over, is it?”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but there are two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and we’re down by ten.”
McCracken and I were commiserating when the cell rang again.
“Hello, asshole.”
“Brady! How good of you to call.”
“Glad to hear from me, are you?”
“It’s always a pleasure to talk with an old teammate.”
“Forgive me if I doubt your sincerity. After all, I’m scum. I’m an arsonist and a murderer. Isn’t that what your lapdog says? That’s malice per se, Mulligan. I almost hope the paper does print your lies. By the time I get done suing, I’ll own everything from the delivery trucks to the printing presses.”
And then he guffawed. He was still at it when I hung up. That was the first time I’d ever heard anyone guffaw. I didn’t like it much.
I called Mason back.
“This is important,” I said. “Who overheard your rant about Giordano, Dio, and Coyle?”
“I’m not sure.”
“It was just a few minutes ago, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Stand up and look around. Who’s there now?”
“Uh … Lomax and Pemberton, of course. Abbruzzi, Sullivan, Bakst, Kukielski, Richards, Jones, Gonzales, Friedman, Kiffney, Ionata, Young, Worcester. And Veronica’s here. It’s her last day.”
“What about Hardcastle?”
“I don’t see him. Wait a minute. Yeah, there he is. He’s just coming out of the men’s room.”
“That it?”
“There are some others, but they’re too far away to have overheard.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said, and hung up.
73
Ten minutes later, I was double-parked on Fountain Street with the motor running. At 6:45, a gray Mitsubishi Eclipse pulled out of the parking lot across from the newspaper. I let a few cars go by and then followed. The Eclipse turned right on Dyer, lurched onto I-195, and zoomed across the Providence River.
TV cop shows make a big deal over how hard it is to tail somebody. It’s bull. When you’re driving a nondescript subcompact in light traffic and the person you’re following has no reason to be suspicious, it’s as easy as stealing on Wakefield’s knuckleball.
In East Providence, we turned south on Route 114 toward the fashionable suburb of Barrington. Fifteen minutes later, the Eclipse stopped in front of a big Tudor-style house with a well-manicured lawn.
I idled half a block away as Veronica got out of her car, locked it, and started up the front walk. As she rang the doorbell, I rolled slowly by the house. The door swung open, revealing a man with a wine glass in his hand. He handed it to her, and she took it. Then she stood on her tiptoes, and he brought his face down to hers.
As I pulled away, Veronica and Brady Coyle were still in a lip-lock.
* * *
I didn’t feel much like driving back to Providence. I took 114 south to Newport, parked on Ocean Avenue, and sat there all night listening to the breakers beat their brains out on the rocks. I thought about the dead twins. I thought about Tony. I thought about Mr. McCready. I thought about the bullet holes in Scibelli’s body. I thought about Rosie. I wondered if Veronica had asked Coyle to get an AIDS test. I wondered if she’d ever talked to him about the future. I wondered if she’d told him she was her father’s girl. She certainly wasn’t mine.
I wondered if I’d see the bullet coming.
74
There was nothing to do but run.
In the morning, I crossed Narragansett Bay on the majestic Claiborne Pell and Jamestown bridges. When I reached the little town of West Kingston, I parked Gloria’s car at the train station and bought a northbound ticket.
As the local pulled into Providence, I buried my head in a newspaper and kept it there until we arrived at Boston’s South Station. Before I got off, I turned my cell phone on, muted the ringtone, and wedged it between the seat cushions. If Giordano had any cop friends who could track me through its signal, they’d go crazy chasing me up and down the Northeast Corridor until the battery ran down.
Aunt Ruthie put me up in my cousin’s old room. She was glad for the company.
I bought a Nokia prepaid to keep track of things back home. McCracken said he’d locked the original documents and the Giordano recording in his safe-deposit box, and that as far as he could tell, no one but Mason and I knew he had them. Whoosh said the word on the street was that someone, he wasn’t sure who, had a contract out on me, and what the hell had I gotten myself into? Mason said he didn’t think they’d be coming after him, but that Daddy had hired a couple of former Treasury agents as bodyguards just in case. Jack said Polecki and Roselli hadn’t hassled him lately, but that he still wasn’t welcome at the firehouse. Gloria said her first plastic surgery had gone well and that her mother had found the car right where I’d left it. The hospital said Rosie was still critical.
I didn’t give anyone my number. I didn’t tell anyone where I was.
I grew a beard and let my hair grow. The beard surprised me by coming in gray. Weekdays, when Aunt Ruthie went to her job at Fleet Bank, I’d get into a pickup basketball game at the Y or stretch out on her floral damask couch and devour Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels. I was used to writing every day, and I missed it. After a couple of weeks, I’d read so many crime novels that I started thinking I could write one. I banged out sixty pages on Ruthie’s old Smith Corona before I realized I was wrong.
Rosie and Veronica haunted my dreams. Each morning I awoke with a strand of razor wire wrapped around my heart. First thing, before sitting down to breakfast with Aunt Ruthie, I’d punch the familiar numbers into my prepaid and always get the same news about Rosie. And the wire around my heart would tighten.
Ruthie insisted on buying the groceries and wouldn’t hear of me paying rent. With Maalox and cigars my biggest expenses, the twenty-six hundred dollars in vacation pay I’d withdrawn in cash before leaving Rhode Island just might last till Christmas. I didn’t dare use my credit card.
Nights and weekends, we sat together in her parlor and watched the Red Sox on TV. By the beginning of June, Ortiz was on the shelf with a torn tendon, Ramirez was day-to-day with a hamstring, and the team had slipped a game and a half behind the upstart Rays.
On rainy days, I used Ruthie’s laptop to check the news from Providence. When the weather was good, I took the Red Line to Cambridge in the afternoon and bought the Providence newspaper at Out of Town News in Harvard Square. Summer headlines heralded Carozza’s big lead in the polls, bid-rigging at the Providence Highway Department, kickbacks in Pawtucket, the exposure of another pedophile priest, and sixty-three parishioners getting sick on polluted shellfish at the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus’s annual summer clambake. None of the stories carried my byline. I missed the rush.