Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel (21 page)

By a pedestrian bridge that arched over the river, she bought a hot pretzel from a street vendor, tore it into pieces, and tossed the scraps to a pair of mallards that had grown too fat on handouts to fly south for the winter.

“You look like you could use a drink,” she said, so we rode the elevator to the top of the Renaissance Hotel and settled into a booth with a view of the statehouse dome. She ordered an apple martini. I ordered a Bushmills straight up. The first sip felt good on the way down and then tore into my stomach lining like a dagger.

“Hey, Mulligan?”

“Um?”

“Why don’t you ever use your first name?”

“I was named after my maternal grandfather, Sergeant Liam Patrick O’Shaughnessy of the Providence PD. Thirty years ago, outside Bruccola’s vending machine business on Atwells Avenue, somebody hit him in the head with a pipe, pulled his pistol from his holster, and shot him dead with it.”

“Oh, Jesus! I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

“It’s not okay. If it were, you’d be able to use his name.”

“Whenever I hear it,” I said, “I picture the chalk outline of his body on a cracked sidewalk.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“Your byline is L. S. A. Mulligan, so you must have middle names you could go by.”

“Seamus and Aloysius.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Mulligan suits me better.”

“Isn’t a mulligan a second chance?” she asked.

“A do-over, yeah. Lord knows I need as many of those as I can get.”

“Okay, baby,” she said. “Mulligan it is.”

“‘Baby’ also works for me.”

“Don’t take that wrong,” she said. “I call the mailman ‘baby,’ too.”

That was a conversation stopper, so we sat quietly for a while and sipped our drinks.

“Mulligan?”

“Um?”

“Did they ever catch the guy?”

“No, they never did.”

She picked up the bar tab, and we strolled the Riverwalk again as the golden globes lining the water snapped on. We stopped at a bench and sat together in the dusk. My grandfather’s gun dug into the small of my back, making me wonder if I should buy something smaller. A beat cop stomped up and glared at us, figuring a black woman with her arm on a white guy’s shoulder had to be up to no good. Then he noticed how well she was dressed and moved on. A minute later, a drug dealer shuffled up and offered us cocaine and marijuana. It was time to go.

“Thank you, Yolanda. It’s been a lovely day.”

“It’s not over yet,” she said.

We found our cars, and I followed Yolanda to her place, where she whipped up a tangy mix of chicken and vegetables. This time I managed to clean my plate. Later we sat together on her black leather sofa, and she opened a bottle of thirty-year-old single-malt Scotch. I was a Bushmills man, but I didn’t let that or my doctor’s advice stop me. Tonight I needed whiskey.

Yolanda placed her hand on my shoulder.

“How are you feeling?”

“Sitting here drinking with you? I’m great.”

“You’re not. You’re so tense you’re practically vibrating. You need to get your mind off what you saw yesterday.”

“How do I do that?”

“By thinking good thoughts.” She paused, then said, “Tell me what you’re most proud of.”

“Proud?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Nothing leaps to mind.”

“What about your Pulitzer? And the Polk Award you won?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“I Googled you.”

“Awards are bullshit, Yolanda. You just stick them in a drawer and move on to the next story.”

“There must be something,” she said.

“That I’m proud of?”

“Yeah.”

“Well … I guess I’m proud that I made the PC basketball team as a walk-on.”

“That’s a good one.”

“I would have been prouder if I hadn’t spent four years on the bench.”

“What else?”

“That the classiest woman in New England wants to know what makes me proud.”

I was exhausted and a little drunk. I must have nodded off because the next thing I knew, Yolanda was lifting my legs onto the couch. She untied my Reeboks, slid them off, and tucked a throw pillow under my head.

“Go back to sleep,” she said.

*   *   *

In the morning, I awoke early. The condo was silent, so I pulled on my running shoes and let myself out, making sure the door locked behind me. I needed a shower and fresh clothes, so I drove to my apartment, parked illegally on the street, tromped up the stairs, and found eight cardboard boxes—each big enough to hold a child’s head—stacked against my front door.

37

I unlocked the door and dragged the boxes inside. Then I rummaged in the kitchen drawer, pulled out a steak knife, knelt on the floor, and carefully slit open the first box. I reached in and pulled out the June 1935 issue of
Black Mask
—the one with a Raymond Chandler story, “Nevada Gas,” listed on the front cover.

I unpacked the rest of my pulp magazine collection from the box, and as far as I could tell it was all there. I slit open the other boxes and found my turntable, my old blues records, and my hoard of paperback novels from the 1940s and 1950s.

I showered, pulled on fresh jeans, plucked a relatively odorless Tommy Castro Band T-shirt from the laundry basket, and headed to the diner for a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast and a mug of Charlie’s decaf. I took a sip, pulled my phone out of my jeans, and punched in a number.

“Sal Maniella.”

“It’s Mulligan.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I found some boxes on my doorstep this morning.”

“Is that so?”

“It is. Apparently a couple of big guys forced their way into my almost-ex’s place and retrieved them for me. Scared the woman half to death.”

“Must have been terrible for her.”

“I don’t suppose you know anything about this.”

“Of course not.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“The boxes. Was everything in them?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Be a shame if somebody had to go back and scare the poor woman all over again.”

Maniella had done me a favor, and his banter showed that he wanted me to know it. I wondered why he’d thought it was worth his while. Call me a cynic, but I couldn’t buy the possibility that he was just being nice.

“Hear about the murders at Chad Brown?” I asked.

“I did.”

“Something you can shed light on?”

“All I know is what I read in your paper.”

I signed off, finished my eggs, and walked to the
Dispatch
. The assistant business editor had called in sick, so I spent the morning and half the afternoon editing banking and technology stories I didn’t understand. It was past two o’clock before I was able to break away to check in with my sources.

*   *   *

I tore open a bag of Beggin’ Strips, pulled one out, and tossed it to Shortstop. He snatched it from the air, wolfed it down, and laid his head in my lap. I scratched him behind the ears. He rumbled contentedly and drooled on my jeans.

“Give me a dime on Miami to cover,” I said. I hated betting against New England, but the Dolphins’ wildcat offense usually gave the Patriots fits. Zerilli jotted my bet on a scrap of flash paper and tossed it into his washtub.

“Nice of you to bring something for the mutt,” he said.

“No problem.”

“He likes you.”

“Good somebody does.”

“Yeah,” he said, drawing the word out. “Nothin’ gets your head straight like spending time with a good dog.”

I reached into the bag and gave the pooch another treat. He swallowed it whole, tore the bag from my hand, retreated to a corner, and helped himself to the rest.

“So what are you hearing?” I asked.

“The Chad Brown murders?”

“Yeah.”

“Not a fuckin’ thing.”

He opened his file drawer and presented me with a fresh box of Cohibas.

“Thanks, Whoosh,” I said, and laid the box on the floor by my chair.

“Not lighting one up?”

“Not right now. My doc says I gotta cut down.”

“That sucks.”

“It does.”

“Think the child porn racket was Maniella’s?” he asked.

“I was gonna ask
you
.”

“No idea.”

“Did Arena and Grasso try to have Sal whacked?” I asked.

“And risk a war with the ex-SEALs? No fuckin’ way.”

“If they did, would you tell me?”

“Ah … probably not.”

“Okay, Whoosh,” I said. “If you hear any chatter about the Chad Brown killings, give me a holler.”

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled my car into the lot at the Tongue and Groove just in time to watch Joseph DeLucca shove a half-dozen pickets from the Sword of God off the stairs into snow.

“Assholes have been hassling the customers all afternoon,” he told me. “They keep hollering about how I’m goin’ straight to hell. I told the fuckers I look forward to seeing ’em there.”

We walked out of the light into the dark and took adjoining stools at the bar. Christmas was just two weeks off, and the place was festooned with pine boughs, tinsel, and twinkling colored lights. The bartender popped the tops on a couple of Buds, clunked them on the bar in front of us, and wandered off without asking for money.

“How’s the leg?” I asked.

“It’s healing up good.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said. “By the way, I want to thank you for that tip on the bodies at Chad Brown.” It was a shot in the dark. When his small eyes flew open, I thought I might have scored a hit, but I couldn’t be sure.

“No idea what you’re talkin’ about,” he said.

I was about to press the point when a slim, small-breasted girl in high heels, a G-string, and a Santa hat bounced up and wrapped her arms around my neck.

“Alo, beebe. You come back to spen’ some moany on DEZ-tin-ee?”

“Not today, Marical.”

She stood on tiptoes, beamed at me, and brushed her brown nipples across my lips.

“Pleeze, beebe. I make you world go round like craysee.”

The complimentary card for a trip around the world was in the wallet in my hip pocket. I swear I felt it vibrate.

“Sorry, darlin’,” I said, and her face fell. She pouted, threw me a look that said her heart had just been shattered by the man of her dreams, and took her routine to a fatso in a plaid work shirt at the other end of the bar.

“My God, she’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yeah,” Joseph said. “And she can suck a hard-boiled egg through a screen door.”

“Know this from experience?”

“Oh, yeah.”

I took a small sip of Bud and tried to block out the image.

“So, Joseph,” I said, “do you think the Maniellas have been making child porn videos?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

The bartender was lurking now, interested in our conversation, so we spun around on our stools to watch a lone dancer swinging from a stripper pole.

“Somethin’ wrong with your beer?” Joseph said.

“My doctor says I’ve got to quit the booze,” I said, and Joseph gasped as if he’d been told the worst news in the world.

*   *   *

Parisi’s Crown Vic was already in the Johnston Town Hall parking lot when I pulled in beside it and rolled down my window.

“Somebody copied the address books and e-mails off the computers in the death house at Chad Brown,” he said. “Loaded them onto some kind of portable hard drive. Was it you?”

“I’m a Luddite, Captain. I wouldn’t have any idea how to do that.”

“You better not be lying to me, wiseass.”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“Sure you would.”

“Okay, I guess I would. But I’m not.”

A five-second delay, and then: “If it wasn’t you, it must have been the perps.”

“Copied stuff from the smashed laptops, too?”

“Yeah.”

“How can you tell?”

“
I
can’t. The department computer nerd figured it out by fiddling with the hard drives.”

“Fiddling?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure know your techie lingo.”

“Fuck you,” he said, and shot me a look that could make Dirty Harry cry out for his mama. In all the years I’d known him, Parisi had always been as alert as an eagle and as well-groomed as a show dog. Today, his hair was tousled, he needed a shave, and the light had leaked out of his eyes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“What do you suppose they wanted the e-mails for?”

“Don’t know.”

“Did they wipe them off the hard drive after they copied them?”

“They did not.”

“So what’s in them?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Because we’re on the same side.”

“Are we?”

“Neither of us is into snuff films, and I don’t like child pornographers and assassins any more than you do. So yeah, this time we are.”

He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and softened his glare a little.

“Off the record?”

“Sure,” I said, and then counted off five seconds.

“What we’ve got,” he said, “are e-mails from twelve hundred and fifty-four perverts in the market for videos of adults raping children, five hundred and fourteen more who get hard watching kids diddle each other, and another seventy-six who asked specifically for videos of kids getting murdered after they’ve been violated.”

“That’s more than eighteen hundred people,” I said.

“It is.”

We looked at each other and shook our heads.

“Fuckin’ case is giving me nightmares,” he said.

“Tell me about it.”

“If you ask me,” he said, “the killers performed a public service.”

“But you’ve still got to catch them.”

“Yeah, but then what? Arrest them or give them medals?”

“Why not both?”

Parisi closed his eyes, nodded, and seemed to doze off for a second.

“The e-mails,” I said. “Are they traceable?”

“Mostly not. My tech guy says the senders used some kind of cloaking software to mask their IP addresses, whatever that means.”

“
Mostly
not?”

“Six of ’em were careless. That means their Internet providers should be able to tell us who they are.”

“They’ll be willing to do that?”

“Once they’re served with subpoenas, they will.”