Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel (22 page)

Felicia leaned in, and they locked eyes.

“But we can’t get involved right now,” she said.

“No, we can’t. Not until Kwame’s situation is resolved. It would be a conflict of interest.”

“For both of us,” Felicia said.

Mason drew a deep breath and then sighed audibly.

“If you’re going to keep me at arm’s length,” he said, “I advise you never to wear that perfume again.”

She laughed and squeezed his arm, trying to make him smile. Mason just stared and stared.

39

Mulligan parked Secretariat beside Andy Jennings’s Ford pickup in the Warwick police station parking lot. He found the ex-cop waiting for him on the front steps. They entered the building together, passed through the metal detector, and tromped upstairs for their morning appointment with Chief Oscar Hernandez.

The first thing Mulligan noticed as Hernandez rose to greet them was that he’d grown a potbelly since his promotion to chief last year. The second thing Mulligan noticed was a ten-by-twelve-inch color photo of Joe Arpaio, the jowly sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who was notorious for his harassment of Mexican immigrants. It was pinned to a bulletin board with thumbtacks, and it had several dozen small holes in it. Mulligan guessed they were made by the five darts that rested beside the blotter on Hernandez’s big mahogany desk.

“How’s retirement treating you, Andy?” the chief asked.

“I miss the action,” Jennings said. “Some days I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“Maybe you need a hobby.”

“Yeah, right. Like I could get into scrapbooking or collecting stamps.”

“How’s Mary?”

“She’s good, Oscar. I’ll tell her you asked after her.”

“Mulligan, I see you’ve survived the layoffs.”

“So far, but one of these days my luck’s gonna run out.”

The looming truth of that led to an uncomfortable pause. Finally, Hernandez cleared his throat.

“So what can I do for you gentlemen this morning?”

“You can give us access to the evidence from a cold case,” Jennings said.

“What case?”

“The Susan Ashcroft stabbing.”

Hernandez folded his hands on his desk blotter, looked Jennings in the eye, and said, “What for?”

“We want to take another run at nailing Kwame Diggs for it.”

“And by we, you mean you and Mulligan?”

“Yup.”

Hernandez shook his head vigorously.

“Last time I checked, newspaper reporters were not considered law enforcement officers in the state of Rhode Island. And you don’t carry a badge anymore, Andy. When I said you need a hobby, this isn’t what I had in mind.”

“You owe me this, Oscar,” Jennings said. “If I hadn’t insisted on promoting you to detective twelve years ago, when Chief Bennett thought Hispanics weren’t fit for anything but patrol…”

“I might still be riding shotgun in a squad car,” Hernandez said.

He clasped his hands on his blotter and studied the two men for a moment.

“I can see this is important to both of you,” he said. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

“We’re worried that Diggs is going to get out,” Jennings said.

“You kidding me?”

“’Fraid not.”

“What the hell makes you think that?”

“The charges the state has brought against him since he turned twenty-one were all concocted,” Mulligan said.

“So I’ve heard,” Hernandez said.

“Now somebody’s poking into that, and if they can prove it, he’ll have to be released.”

“You must be shitting me.”

“Wish I were,” Mulligan said.

“Who the hell would want to do that?”

“He’s got an aggressive new lawyer,” Mulligan said. “I hear she’s good, and she’s getting some outside help.”

“From whom?”

“Sorry, but I can’t get into that.”

“Do
you
know?” the chief asked, turning his eyes on Jennings.

“Mulligan won’t tell me either,” he said, “but it smells like the ACLU.”

“¡Santa Madre de Dios!”
He leaned back in his chair and studied the ceiling. “You know, it was years before I stopped having nightmares about what I saw inside the Medeiros house.”

“I still get ’em sometimes,” Jennings said.

“If I give you access to the evidence,” the chief said, “what do you hope to find?”

“Back in 1991, DNA testing wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now,” Jennings said. “We’re thinking Diggs might have shed something—a drop of blood, a few hairs, some skin cells—that could still be tested.”

“It’s a long shot,” the chief said. “A lot of old evidence has been lost or tossed. Even if we can find it, chances are the DNA has been degraded or contaminated.”

“I know,” Jennings said, “but it’s the only shot we’ve got.”

“Okay,” the chief said, “I’ll have our property clerk look for the evidence boxes. If he finds them, you can observe him as he goes through the contents; but I don’t want you touching or removing anything. We have to preserve chain of custody. If you see something that might be worth testing, I’ll have him hand-deliver it to the state crime lab. The lab has a huge backlog. I’m talking hundreds of cases going back years. But Diggs is the magic word, so I might be able to get them to fast-track this.”

“When can we start?” Jennings asked.

“I’ll call DeMaso in Property this morning and get him started. If he finds the boxes, I’ll be in touch.”

40

“I wasn’t there,” John Pugliese said.

“Two former guards I spoke with said you were,” Mason told him.

“They’re mistaken.”

“They seemed pretty sure.”

“Hell, I wasn’t even
at
Supermax in 2005. When Diggs was charged with assaulting Araujo, I was working medium security. I didn’t get transferred to Supermax till 2007.”

“Oh.”

They were sitting across from each other in a booth at the diner near Providence City Hall. Pugliese, swarthy and well muscled, chomped on one of Charlie’s lard-slicked bacon-and-egg sandwiches. Mason, who’d enjoyed a breakfast of mascarpone-stuffed French toast with peaches at home, nursed a cup of sweetened black coffee.

“What about the assault on Joseph Galloway last fall?” Mason asked.

“Oh, I know all about that one.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Why should I?”

“Why shouldn’t you? You don’t have anything to hide, right?”

“He doesn’t,” someone said, “but he still has to work there.”

Mason turned toward the voice, saw Mulligan standing behind his left shoulder, greeted him with a thin smile, and slid over to make room for him in the booth.

“How have you been, John?” Mulligan asked.

“I’m hanging in there,” Pugliese said.

“Really? Last time we spoke, you’d gotten your nose broken for the second time and were dying to get the hell out of that madhouse.”

“I still am, but there’s no jobs out there, Mulligan.”

“The Crips still got a hard-on for you?”

“Yeah. It’s more than a year since I broke Stanley Turner’s arm in the exercise yard, but the gang has a long memory.”

“Why not quit and collect unemployment for a while, John? Better that than a shiv in the ribs.”

“I just might,” Pugliese said. “Then again, maybe I’ll join the army. See if I can get into one of those training programs they’ve got for electrical engineering or heating and cooling mechanics.”

“Aren’t you too old for that?” Mason chimed in.

“Not quite. The maximum enlistment age is thirty-five. I looked it up.”

To Mason, John Pugliese looked like somebody who’d seen thirty-five a decade ago.

Charlie wandered over, plunked a cup of coffee in front of Mulligan, and took his order of bacon and scrambled eggs.

“The army’s not a bad idea,” Mulligan said, “now that Iraq is over and Afghanistan is winding down.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Pugliese said.

“Then again, we might end up in a shooting war with Iran,” Mason said, trying not to show his irritation at the way Mulligan had usurped the interview.

“Or Pakistan,” Mulligan said.

“Or North Korea,” Pugliese said. “Then I’d have more than shivs to worry about.”

They were still kicking the sorry state of the world around when Charlie slapped Mulligan’s order on the table and topped off his coffee.

“If you’re serious about quitting,” Mason said, “why not talk to me about Galloway? I mean, what do you have to lose?”

“What do I have to gain?” Pugliese said.

“Not a thing,” Mulligan put in.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Mason said.

“No?” Pugliese said.

“You’d have the satisfaction of helping me expose officials who are perverting the criminal justice system,” Mason said. “I think that’s worth something.”

“Not much,” Pugliese said. “Besides, if you succeed, they’d have to release Diggs. When he killed again, it would be on me.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t,” Mason said.

“He would,” Mulligan put in. “And it wouldn’t just be on Pugliese. It would be on you, too, Mason.”

Mason let out a long sigh. “I’ve thought a lot about this in the last few weeks,” he said. “The way I see it, my first obligation as a journalist is to the truth.”

“Regardless of the consequences?” Mulligan said.

“No,” Mason said. “But what about the consequences of letting them get away with this? If they can frame Diggs, what’s to stop them from doing the same thing to the next guy who comes along? Maybe somebody whose crime isn’t as serious. Maybe somebody who isn’t guilty of anything at all. Our public officials are supposed to uphold the law, not break it.”

“You do realize we are in Rhode Island, right?” Mulligan said.

“Yeah, yeah. I know all about our sordid history,” Mason said. “Crooked politicians, corrupt judges, dirty cops. It’s been that way for as long as anybody can remember. Hell, it’s been that way for three hundred years. But for the last hundred and fifty of them, the
Dispatch
has crusaded against it. Sure, we don’t catch them all. Not even close. But we nail enough to make the rest of them think twice.

“Now the paper is dying,” he continued. “Who’s going to investigate public corruption when we’re gone? Bloggers? The bobbleheads on TV? Don’t make me laugh. When we know public officials are corrupting the criminal justice system, it’s our
job
to do something about it. If we don’t, the First Amendment is just words on paper. And this could be one of our last chances to set something right.”

“Nice speech,” Mulligan said.

“It was,” Pugliese said. “Did anyone else hear the music playing?”

“One of our last chances?” Mulligan said.

“That’s right,” Mason said.

“Something going on that I should know?” Mulligan asked. “Is the paper closing down?”

“Not in front of Pugliese,” Mason said. “We’ll talk about it later.”

That was a conversation stopper. The three men sat for a while and sipped their coffee.

“You know, Mulligan,” Pugliese finally said, “I remember you giving me that same speech one time—minus the part about the newspaper dying.”

“When was that?”

“About six years ago when you wanted me to spill my guts about no-show jobs at medium security.”

“Oh, yeah,” Mulligan said. “I remember now. I tried to snow you with that First Amendment crap, but you didn’t tell me shit.”

“Did the speech work any better this time?” Mason asked.

“I’m thinking about it,” Pugliese said.

“According to court records,” Mason said, “Galloway and another guard had just taken Diggs out of his cell for his exercise period when a scuffle broke out.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Diggs supposedly got mad for no apparent reason, charged into Galloway, cracked his head against the hallway wall, and then head-butted him.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Earlier, you said you know all about it. What do you know?”

Pugliese slid his eyes off Mason and looked at Mulligan.

“Up to you, John,” Mulligan said. “I wouldn’t, but it’s your ass.”

The guard stared at the tabletop and rubbed his chin. Then he moved his eyes back to Mason.

“I was there,” Pugliese said.

“You were?” Mason said. “According to the court records, the other guard was named Quinn.”

“Eddie Quinn. That’s right.”

“So what were you doing there?”

“Normal procedure,” Pugliese said, “is for two guards to escort a prisoner to the exercise yard, but Diggs was so big that three were always assigned to him.”

“And that day, you were the third?”

“I was.”

“So you were a witness. Why didn’t you testify at the trial?”

“The warden asked me to, but I refused.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to commit perjury.”

Mason and Mulligan both stared at Pugliese, knowing that whatever he said next could change everything.

“So what really happened in that hallway, John?” Mason asked.

“Not a fucking thing. We led Diggs out of his cell, and he walked quietly to the yard. He didn’t give us any trouble at all.”

*   *   *

After Pugliese left, the first thing Mulligan said was, “Are you going to quote him by name?”

“Why shouldn’t I? He never said it was off the record.”

“Better give him a heads-up before the story runs, then.”

“I will once I have enough to get it in print.”

“Are you close?”

“I think so, yes.”

“On just the Galloway case, or the Araujo assault too?”

“Both,” Mason said. “And the drug charges as well.”

“Prison guards are your sources for all this?”

“For most of it, yeah.”

He picked up his mug, discovered that the coffee had gone cold, and waved Charlie over for a refill.

“Tell me what more you need,” Mulligan said, “and maybe I can help.”

“The same way you’ve been helping so far?”

“I culled that list of guards for you.”

“That
was
a help,” Mason said. “I crossed the ones you recommended right off my list. Saved me a lot of time.” And then he laughed.

Mulligan stared at him and shook his head.

“How long have you known?”

“Right from the start,” Mason said.

“You’re getting pretty good at this, aren’t you.”