Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel (15 page)

By the Budweiser clock on the wall, it was a little after nine
P.M.
when Jamal, King Felix’s nervous triggerman, entered the club, pimp-walked up to the bar, and asked where he could find Joseph DeLucca. Jamal’s full name, it turned out, was Jamal Jackson; and he was a little younger than I thought—just fourteen. The boy’s father wasn’t in the picture. His mother worked the day shift as an orderly at Rhode Island Hospital. Nights, she made beds at the Biltmore. No, she told police, she didn’t know Jamal hadn’t been to school all year.

Jamal made the bartender nervous. He didn’t like the tic in the kid’s left eye, and he especially didn’t like the fact that he was a kid.

“Far as I know, there’s no state law against a kid buying a blow job,” the bartender told me later, “but he’s not permitted to be in an establishment that serves alcohol. If Attila the Nun ever found out he was in here, the bitch would have another excuse to scream bloody murder.” I didn’t like his choice of words for my friend, but I needed to hear the rest of the story, so I didn’t make an issue of it.

He told Jamal to get out, the bartender went on. His exact words, if he remembered them right, were “Get lost and come back when you’re eighteen.”

“Ain’t leaving till I see DeLucca,” Jamal said, the twitch in his left eye growing more violent.

What the hell, the bartender figured. Joseph
was
the bouncer. He asked Chloe, the plump waitress with the green hair, to fetch Joseph from the all-nude room so he could throw the kid out.

Two minutes later, Joseph walked up to the bar and said, “Somebody lookin’ for me?”

“You DeLucca?” Jamal asked.

“Yeah,” Joseph said. “Who the fuck are you?”

Jamal didn’t answer. He just reached into his waistband and pulled out his little silver pistol.

He had not picked the best evening for this.

There were twenty-two hookers and roughly forty customers in the club. Eighteen of the customers were there for Mike Scanlon’s bachelor party. The festivities had just gotten under way, so the celebrants hadn’t drunk themselves into a stupor yet. They’d had one beer apiece, and the first round of tequila shots had just arrived at their tables. Most of the guys had strippers on their laps. The girl who called herself Sacha, a couple of the celebrants told me later, was on her knees in front of the groom-to-be, her head bobbing up and down.

“Can you keep that part out of the paper?” Scanlon asked me. “My fiancée would fuckin’ kill me.”

“Sure thing,” I said, “as long as you fill me in on what happened next.”

When Sacha’s work was done, Scanlon expelled a sigh of satisfaction, opened his eyes, and saw the glint of bar light on nickel as Jamal’s pistol emerged from his waistband. Scanlon shoved the hooker aside and reached for the revolver in his ankle holster. His pals weren’t sure what was happening at first, but instinctively they went for
their
guns, too.

Scanlon was a Providence cop. So were his buddies.

In the next fifteen seconds, approximately a hundred rounds were fired, according to the official police estimate. One slug grazed Joseph’s thigh. Another ricocheted off a metal post and tore a ragged hole through the impressive rump of a stripper named Jezebelle. Dozens more slammed into the mahogany bar and the club’s black-painted walls. And some hit what the room full of sharpshooters were aiming at. An assistant medical examiner was still counting the holes in Jamal’s body. Every time he counted, he told me, he came up with a different number.

The cop who recovered Jamal’s gun at the scene told me the kid never got off a shot.

25

Friday morning the executive editor, Marshall Pemberton, sent an all-hands e-mail directing the staff to assemble in the newsroom for a mandatory late afternoon meeting. I didn’t figure he was about to announce that we’d won a Pulitzer, so it had to be more bad news. Maybe he was finally going to tell us the old girl was closing down for good.

Once, Smith Coronas clicked and clacked here on long banks of dented metal desks. Teletype machines chattered day and night, spewing AP copy onto long rolls of yellow paper. Copyboys sorted it by subject and hightailed across the ink-stained tile floor to hang it in streams from spikes by the business, sports, and national desks. Every time the door to the back shop swung open, the football field–sized newsroom rattled with the clanking from the linotype machines. That was all before my time, but I loved listening to the old-timers on the copydesk, the three that were left, reminisce about the old days.

When the paper’s miserly owners finally got around to buying computers, the clicking and clacking ceased. Some of the old guys grumbled. Some had trouble adjusting. “Where do you put the paper in this damn thing?” Jim Clark had famously asked. But there was no arguing with progress.

Even after the typewriters and linotype machines were ancient history, the newsroom I loved was never quiet. Reporters relentlessly worked the phones. Assistant city editors scuttled from desk to desk, handing out assignments that were not always gratefully received. Photographers and photo editors huddled at the picture desk, arguing about what shots to use. Sports editors bellowed the latest scores. Copy editors cracked wise about bad leads. Some reporters needed earplugs to write their stories, but I liked the racket.

Six years ago the
Dispatch
’s owners, failing to recognize they were in a dying business, spent a million dollars to renovate the place. They laid a maroon carpet, installed recessed lighting, chopped the newsroom into cubicles, hauled in fake butcher-block desks, and plopped down potted plants. But the newsroom still thrummed with the thrill of putting out a daily newspaper. Evenings, when the first edition deadline passed and the giant Goss presses began to turn, I could feel the floor vibrate under my feet. Sometimes I’d trot down the back stairs and watch the rolls of newsprint race through those elegant machines. I loved their defiant roar.

Two decades ago, when the
Dispatch
hired me right out of Providence College to cover high school sports, those presses churned out a quarter of a million copies a day. Now they printed less than half that. The
Dispatch
’s news staff once numbered 340, but there were only 80 of us left—if you counted the 5 interns who worked for free.

At three
P.M.,
Pemberton ventured out his glass-walled office in the middle of the newsroom and gathered what was left of the news staff around him. Lomax stood by Pemberton’s side. They both looked grim.

“As you are all aware, the newspaper industry is experiencing difficult times,” Pemberton began, and I felt the air go out of the room. “Over the course of the last two years, we have been forced to make significant cuts in the
Dispatch
’s news budget, including a number of regrettable staff reductions. This week, I was informed by the publisher that the cuts we have made to date have not been sufficient to restore the newspaper’s financial stability. Therefore, we are taking the following steps:

“Effective a week from tomorrow, the
Dispatch
will cease publication on Saturdays. This measure will reduce our printing and delivery costs by fourteen percent. In addition—”

“Why Saturdays?” Gloria shouted.

Pemberton looked alarmed at the interruption, then said, “Because, Miss Costa, Saturday is the weakest advertising day of the week.”

“But what if there’s
news
on Friday?” Gloria said.

“There’s always news on Friday,” Carol Young, the sports editor, grumbled. “It’s a big night for sports scores.”

“And we’ll report them in our online edition,” Pemberton said. “Now if I may be allowed to continue?” He held up his right hand, asking for silence, and then pressed on.

“In addition,” he said, “we are compelled to make further reductions in payroll.”

The staffers present released a collective groan.

“We wish to accomplish this without additional layoffs,” Pemberton said. “Therefore, we are reducing the work week of all news department employees, with a commensurate reduction in pay. Effective next Monday, each of you will be assigned to work four eight-hour days a week. Ed Lomax is revising the schedule for next week and will post it by five o’clock, so please check the bulletin boards before you leave for the day. That is all.”

With that, he turned and slipped back into his office.

“Hold on,” Lomax shouted as the group began to break up. “Mr. Pemberton forgot to mention one last thing. When the supplies on hand run out, you’ll all have to buy your own pens and notepads.”

That set off a stampede for the supply cabinets. I watched the mayhem for a moment and then sidled up to Lomax as he headed back to the city desk.

“The copy editors might actually work four days a week,” I said, “but most of the reporters care too much about their beats to do that. Hell, most of us have been working six days a week for five days’ pay as it is.”

“I know that, Mulligan.”

“Know what pisses me off most about this?”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“Waiting till three o’clock on a Friday afternoon to break bad news,” I said. “It’s one of those cheap tricks you can find in every management textbook. Pemberton figures that after we fume all weekend, the anger will die down by the time he comes back to work Monday morning.”

“There’s a hole in your theory,” Lomax said.

“What?”

“Pemberton won’t be coming back on Monday.”

“Why is that?”

“His job has been eliminated.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Now I get to do my work
and
his.”

26

Monday morning, the newsroom was as quiet and empty as Fenway Park in January. I’d just started working on the day’s obits when Mason wandered in, dragged a chair into my cubicle, and dropped into it.

“I finally have something on that thing you asked me to look into,” he said.

At first I drew a blank. I’d given him the campaign contribution lists weeks ago, and a lot had happened since then.

“I didn’t know anything about the porn business,” he said, “so I read everything I could find online. One of the things I learned is that most American-made porn is shot in the San Fernando Valley, but that some of it also comes out of Miami, Las Vegas, and Ypsilanti, Michigan.”

“Ypsilanti? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Interesting,” I said, “but how does any of this help us?”

“I figured there’s a good chance Maniella has a studio in one of those places.”

“But you looked and couldn’t find it, right?”

“Not at first.”

“Oh?”

“Most pornographers aren’t as secretive as Sal Maniella. Wicked Pictures, Vivid Entertainment, Digital Playground, and a bunch of others with more, uh, more
colorful
names even have listed phone numbers. So I made a dozen blind calls and asked to speak to the owners. A couple of them hung up on me when I told them who I was, but most of them were eager to talk about Maniella.”

“How come?”

“They don’t like him. The guys I talked to—a couple of them were women, actually—said Maniella is notorious for stealing their best girls.”

“I see.”

“They also think he rats them out to the authorities.”

“For what? It’s a legal business.”

“One guy said a couple of his actors—which is what he calls them—contracted HIV. He said he was dealing with it, but somebody reported him to the California State Health Department. Couple of others said someone called the cops on them for employing underage girls.”

“Were they?”

“They said it wasn’t their fault, that the girls had convincing fake IDs, but the studio heads—which is what they call themselves, like they’re DreamWorks or something—are facing criminal charges.”

“And they blame Maniella?”

“For some reason, they’re sure it was him, yeah. Couple of them said they’re glad he’s dead. Saved them the trouble of shooting him themselves.”

“So what did they tell you that’s going to help us?”

“That the Maniellas have a studio in Van Nuys. Big brick warehouse just off the San Diego Freeway with no sign on the building.”

“That all you got?”

“There’s more. Once I knew he was operating out of Van Nuys, I combed through the governor’s campaign contribution list looking for people with addresses in or near there: Glendale, Burbank, Santa Clarita…”

“And?”

“And I found sixty-two.”

“That’s a lot of Southern California residents with an unnatural interest in getting the governor of Rhode Island reelected,” I said.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Any of them named Hugh Mungus or Lucy Bangs?”

“I don’t think those are real names, Mulligan.”

“Run the same check on the contribution lists for the legislative committee chairmen?”

“Not yet, but I will. I’m betting that will give us more names.”

“That it?”

“Only twelve of the names I came up with have listed phone numbers,” he said. “I called them, but they hung up on me.”

“A lot of people just use unlisted cell phones these days.”

“That’s true. I guess one of us needs to fly to California and knock on doors.”

“The paper will never spring for it,” I said.

“Can this wait a couple of months?” he said. “I was thinking of taking some vacation time at the end of January.”

“Knocking on doors isn’t much of a vacation.”

“I’ve got three weeks coming,” he said. “I’ll spend the first week on this and the rest lying in the sun in Malibu.”

“Three weeks? Beginning reporters get one. Must be nice to be the publisher’s son.”

“There are advantages”

“Well, you did some good work on this, Thanks-Dad. Maybe you can overcome your upbringing after all.”

27

Thanksgiving sneaked up on me. It was Tuesday before I realized what week it was. By then my sister Meg, who lives in New Hampshire, had already flown out to spend the week with our brother in Los Angeles. Yolanda was on the way to Chicago to celebrate the holiday with her mom. And Rosie was still in her grave in Swan Point Cemetery. I didn’t know what Dorcas was doing and didn’t give a shit.