The Dread Line Read online

  “Where?” he asked.

  I pointed.

  “I say we sneak out the back door, circle around behind, and roust them,” he said. “Give them a few lumps and maybe they’ll tell us what the hell they’re after.”

  “And if they start shooting?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that.

  “Do they intend to harm my son?” Malcolm Bowditch asked.

  “If that was their plan,” I said, “they probably would have done it already.”

  “How do you suggest we handle this?” Vachon asked.

  “Wait till I leave,” I said. “If they follow me, don’t do anything. If they don’t, call the cops.”

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on, Mr. Mulligan?” the older Bowditch asked.

  “I suggest you ask your son.”

  “I already told you,” Conner said. “I got no clue.”

  “What’s your business with Morris Dunst?”

  Conner slid his eyes off mine and turned to his father. “He asked me that a couple of days ago, Dad, and it was the first time I heard the name.”

  “That so?” I said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So why’s he been calling you?”

  “Sir?”

  “Your cell rang when I was on my way over here, Conner. When I picked up, the caller identified himself as Dunst and demanded I put you on the line.”

  “Son?” Malcolm Bowditch said.

  “I can’t explain it, Dad.”

  “When I told him you were unavailable, he said you needed to call him back. The number’s in your log of incoming calls, but I’m guessing you already know it.”

  Conner glared at me and vigorously shook his head.

  * * *

  The white Accord was still there when I walked down Bowditch’s front walk and opened the gate. I made it a point not to look. I stepped behind the RAV4, scooped a handful of mud from the gutter, and smeared it on the front and rear plates.

  As I pulled away from the curb, the Accord fell in behind me. McNulty and Vargas weren’t bothering to disguise the tail now. They wanted me to know they were there. They wanted to intimidate me. Or worse. I reached for my cell and hit speed dial.

  “Zerilli’s Market.”

  “Joseph?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get away?”

  “If you need me. What’s up?”

  “The two thugs who’ve been tailing me off and on since you incapacitated the Vacca brothers are on my ass again.”

  “Inka what?”

  “Since you fucked them up.”

  “Got it.”

  “I’m just two or three minutes away. Bring a gun and meet me on the corner of Hope and Burlington. Oh, and pull something over your head. These two haven’t seen you yet.”

  When I braked at the corner, Joseph was standing there in the evening gloom, the hood of a Patriots sweatshirt covering his noggin. I unlocked the passenger door, but he didn’t climb in. Instead, he turned and studied the Honda, which had come to a stop about fifteen yards from my bumper. And then he grinned.

  He raised the hem of the sweatshirt, jerked a large revolver from his belt, raised it, and pulled the trigger. And then he pulled it some more, the gun cracking five times in quick succession. I turned in my seat in time to see the last two slugs smash through the hood into the Accord’s engine block.

  Then the car’s doors flew open, and McNulty and Vargas burst out. Joseph gave them a little wave and jumped in beside me. I hit the gas and ducked, expecting the rear window to implode with return fire. There was none. A couple of minutes elapsed before my heart stopped racing.

  “When did you get the cannon?” I asked.

  “Last week.”

  “What model?”

  “Forty-four mag Smith and Wesson.”

  “The nine mil wasn’t enough gun for you?”

  “I wanted something with more stopping power,” he said. “This was the first chance I had to try it out.”

  “Next time you decide to pull a stunt like that, I’d appreciate a warning.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t know I was gonna do it till I did it.”

  “That was fucking crazy, Joseph.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “For now, but they’ll be back.”

  “Yeah, but they’re gonna have to steal some new wheels first.”

  29

  “Rack, ’em,” Ragsdale said.

  “Loose or tight?”

  “Tight.”

  He chalked his cue and broke. The balls streaked across the table, and the eight ricocheted into the right corner pocket.

  “Drinks are on you again,” he said.

  “Lucky bastard.”

  “It ain’t luck, Mulligan. I drop the eight ball at least one break out of ten.”

  “You’ve been hustling me.”

  “Bet your ass. Go again?”

  He whipped me three more times, only one of the games close, before we picked up our beers and carried them to a corner table.

  “Got your head clear, now?” I asked.

  “Clear as it gets, I guess.”

  “And?”

  “Alexander Cargill claims he was at the mansion when Belinda got shot.”

  “Anyone back up his story?”

  “A couple of the servants, yeah, but they’d say anything he wants them to.”

  “Tell me about the interrogation.”

  “I asked him to account for his whereabouts the night before. He wanted to know why I was asking. I danced around that for a few minutes, but I couldn’t get anything out of him. When I finally told him Belinda was dead, he burst into tears.”

  “Think it was an act?”

  “The tears were real enough. The kid put his hands over his eyes and blubbered.”

  “But was he crying for Belinda or for himself?”

  “Damned if I could tell,” the chief said, “but he sure did carry on. Took a couple of minutes before he could compose himself.”

  “And then I bet he asked for a lawyer.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “No shit?”

  “Surprised the hell out of me, too. All the trouble he’s been in, the kid ought to know not to talk to a cop without one of his daddy’s shysters present.”

  “So then what?”

  “I got him a cup of coffee, which he didn’t drink, and started in with the questions again. He didn’t answer at first. Kept asking me questions. How did she die? Where she was found? Did she suffer? Who could have done this to her? Then he started in with a song and dance about how much he loved her.”

  “Maybe he did,” I said.

  “Obsession and love ain’t the same thing, Mulligan.”

  “Still think he killed her?”

  “I don’t have enough to hold him, but my gut says yes.”

  I nodded, went to the bar for another round, and returned to the table.

  “When’s the last time someone got murdered in Jamestown?” I asked.

  “Belinda’s the first since I joined the force.”

  “When was that?”

  “Eighteen years ago.”

  “Huh.… Wasn’t there something about a serial killer? About fifteen years back, I think.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hadden Clark.”

  “Can you refresh my memory?”

  “After Clark got locked up for murder in Maryland, he bragged about burying a couple of bodies on one of our beaches. Two girls he supposedly killed in the 1990s when he was living with his grandfather in Providence. But we dug the place up and didn’t find anything.”

  “Nothing else since then?”

  “Well, there was David Swain, the scuba shop owner who got convicted of drowning his wife by ripping her regulator off during a dive. But it happened when they were on vacation in the British Virgin Islands. This is a peaceful town, Mulligan. Hell, the stickup at the bank and the attack on Carter Blount were the first armed robberies we’ve had here in over
a decade.”

  “Forgive me for saying this,” I said, “but maybe you need to bring the state cops in on Belinda.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Find any shell casings at the scene?”

  “Uh-uh. No indication the shooter pawed through the snow looking for them, either. Must have used a revolver.”

  “Find the slugs?”

  “They’re still looking.”

  “Any guess on the caliber?”

  “Ferguson says she can’t say for certain but that the wounds were consistent with a thirty-eight.”

  I drained my beer and thought for a moment. “You’re probably right to focus on Alexander Cargill, but I gotta tell you, Chief. The timing of this bothers me.”

  “Because she was killed the day after I questioned her about the bank job?” Ragsdale said.

  “Yeah. What if her partner got worried that she might talk? Or decided not to share the profits?”

  “Not much there to hang my hat on,” Ragsdale said. “We don’t even know that she was involved.”

  30

  “It’s done,” Joseph said. “We’re all legal.”

  “What’s the setup look like?”

  “Three-year-old five-story building with two-foot-thick concrete walls, steel bars on the windows, and a state-of-the-art security system. We’ve got the southwest corner on the fourth floor, and there’s two other online gambling operations just down the hall. I spent a couple of days watching two techies wire stuff up and plug stuff in. Antigua’s a fuckin’ paradise, Mulligan. You and me, we ought to pop down there now and again. Catch some rays, get ourselves laid, drink Wadadli, and visit our money.”

  “What’s Wadadli?”

  “The local beer. It’s fuckin’ killer.”

  With that, he popped the top on a can of Narragansett. I rose from the couch and fed wood to the iron stove I’d recently installed. Outside, the temperature had dropped into the teens, the yard covered with another four inches of fresh snow.

  “Got an ATM card for you,” Joseph said, “but check the bank balance before you use it. Ain’t much money in it yet, but the dough is starting to roll in.”

  “Send a card to Zerilli?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And he’s okay with this?”

  “Took me a fuckin’ hour to explain everything to him over the phone, but yeah, he’s fine with it long as he gets his cut.”

  “Good work, Joseph.”

  “Nothin’ to it. The computer geeks Yolanda set us up with did the heavy lifting.”

  “What did it cost us?”

  “Forty large. Yolanda says we can write it off as a business expense.”

  I nodded.

  “Gonna be some fireworks tomorrow, though,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “That’s when Widget and Fritos will be dropping by for their monthly payoff. I finally get to tell the assholes to go fuck themselves. Don’t think they’re gonna like it.”

  The bookie operation at Zerilli’s Market had been an open secret. For years, old man Zerilli, and then Joseph, had been paying off the Providence cops to look the other way. The bagmen were a couple of bent detectives, Wargart and Freitas, but Joseph never could get their names right.

  “Call me if they give you trouble,” I said.

  “Sure thing.”

  Just past three o’clock the following afternoon, he did.

  * * *

  “The bastards got me chained to a table in an interrogation room,” Joseph said. “Thanks for pickin’ up. You’re my one phone call.”

  “Sit tight and keep your mouth shut. Help’s on the way.”

  It took me nearly two hours to reach Yolanda. “Sorry,” she said. “I was in class. Soon as I heard your message, I got ahold of Mark Gardner, one of our junior associates. He’ll head over to the police station as soon as he finishes taking a deposition.”

  Forty-five minutes later, I stepped into a second-floor interrogation room at the Providence PD and found the interested parties seated on steel chairs at a heavy metal table. Wargart, a big lug with fists like hams, and Freitas, a bottle blond with a predatory Cameron Diaz smile, were on one side, their backs to the door. Joseph and a suit I took to be Gardner sat on the other. Joseph’s hands were cuffed in front, his left leg still chained to the table. He had an angry purple bruise under his left eye and a ribbon of dried blood curling from a split lip.

  The detectives’ heads swiveled when they heard the door creak open. “What the fuck are you doing here, Mulligan?” Wargart asked.

  “I require Mr. Mulligan’s presence,” Gardner said. “He is an operative for a detective agency that I have retained to assist on this case.” He turned to me and added, “You haven’t missed anything. We were just getting started.”

  I liked Gardner already. Claiming he’d retained me was a clever lie on short notice. Seeing no empty chairs, I leaned against the wall and said, “Care to explain what happened to Joseph’s face?”

  “He resisted arrest,” Wargart said.

  “Like hell I did,” Joseph said. “If I had, you’d be the one with the fuckin’ bruises.”

  “Please refrain from speaking, Mr. DeLucca,” Gardner said. “I’d prefer not to have to remind you of that again.”

  “Let him talk, counselor,” Freitas said. “We can’t wait to hear how the scumbag’s going to try to lie his way out of this one.”

  “I suggest you refrain from name calling, Detective,” Gardner said. “Mr. DeLucca is a legitimate businessman.”

  “Oh, is he now?” Wargart said. “And what does that make you, a fucking comedian?”

  Gardner calmly opened his briefcase, slid out a manila folder, and placed it on the table.

  “What this?” Freitas asked.

  “Documents confirming that Mr. DeLucca is the proprietor of an online gambling enterprise operating in conformity with state and federal law.”

  Freitas opened the folder and rifled through it. “This is all gobbledygook to me,” she said.

  “Then perhaps you should consult an attorney.”

  “We’ll have the prosecutor look it over, Freitas said, “but whatever it means, it won’t do your client any good. We know for a fact he’s been taking bets illegally in the back room of Zerilli’s Market for more than a year.”

  “Yeah,” Wargart said. “Ever since his asshole buddy Dominic Zerilli retired to Florida.”

  “And how exactly do you know this?” Gardner asked.

  The detectives exchanged a glance and chose not to respond.

  “Zerilli is a capo for the Rhode Island mob,” Wargart finally said. “That makes your client an associate of organized crime.”

  “That’s just guilt by association,” Gardner said. “Charge him or release him.”

  Silence.

  “Permit me to speak hypothetically for a moment,” Gardner said. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you are in possession of evidence that Mr. DeLucca illegally accepted bets for a period of a few months—an accusation, by the way, that he vehemently denies. Given that he has gone to great lengths and considerable expense to establish a legal online gambling business, I doubt that the attorney general’s office will seek to prosecute. And even if my client should somehow be convicted, he would in all likelihood be sentenced to nothing more than a two-thousand-dollar fine.

  “Then again, still speaking hypothetically, let’s suppose that Mr. DeLucca could produce compelling evidence of ongoing corruption in the Providence Police Department. I’m confident the attorney general would be inclined to forgo charges against him in return for his cooperation.”

  Wargart slammed his ham-size fist on the table. “Are you threatening us, counselor?”

  “Only hypothetically,” Gardner said. And for the first time, I saw him smile.

  “No one’s gonna believe your client’s lying ass,” Freitas said.

  “They will when they see the video,” I said. That shut them up. “What? You mean you did
n’t notice the surveillance camera in the office where you’ve been hypothetically collecting your monthly payoff? I guess it is hard to spot. It’s hidden in the wall clock.”

  “You’re bluffing,” Wargart said.

  “Oh, it’s there all right,” I said. “I installed it myself.”

  Wargart and Freitas hauled themselves to their feet and stalked out of the room. When they returned a half hour later, they changed the subject.

  “All right, DeLucca,” Freitas said. “Can you account for your whereabouts at approximately seven fifteen on Monday evening?”

  “Don’t answer that,” Gardner said. “Detective, may I inquire what this is regarding?”

  “Shots fired outside Zerilli’s Market.”

  “I see. Was anyone injured in the incident?”

  “We’re not sure,” Wargart said. “A car stolen in Somerville, Massachusetts, a week ago got blasted to all hell, but no one was inside when officers responded.”

  “I shall require a private moment to consult with my client,” Gardner said. The detectives slammed the door on their way out.

  “Do you know anything about this?” the lawyer asked Joseph.

  I answered for him. “We both do.”

  “Go ahead,” Joseph said. “You tell it better.”

  After I spilled the story, Gardner instructed us on how to handle it and called the detectives back in.

  “Is Mr. DeLucca a suspect in this incident?” Gardner asked.

  “At this point,” Freitas said, “we consider him a material witness.”

  “Ask your questions, Detective.”

  “Where were you at seven fifteen P.M. Monday?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Were you at your place of business?”

  “You mean the market?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t say. I might have already left for the day.”

  “Did you hear any gunshots before leaving?”

  “No way I could have.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “I was blasting AC/DC on my iTunes. Can’t hear a fuckin’ thing with my earbuds in.”