A Scourge of Vipers Read online

  35

  “Why do you suppose he singled out Martin and not me?” Twisdale asked.

  “Because Martin was a nervous wreck,” I said. “The poor bastard couldn’t stop sweating. You stayed cool, and I think Beauregard respected that.”

  “I came off as cool?”

  “You did.”

  “Inside, I was shaking.”

  He rested his elbows on his desk and clasped his hands in front of him.

  “So we live to fight another day,” he said.

  “We do. Should I tell you where I’m going next with this investigation, or would you prefer that I keep you in the dark?”

  “You heard Beauregard. No more stories like this.”

  “Yeah, but ‘like this’ is pretty vague,” I said. “That gives us some wiggle room, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  I chose to ignore that and pressed on.

  “We know that Pichardo, Longo, and Templeton refused the bribes,” I said, “but I’ll bet at least a few of our thirty-eight state senators and seventy-five House members took money from the Alfanos. I want to find out who they are.”

  “Oh, hell no. You want to go through another meeting with Beauregard the Destroyer? Next time, he’ll fire the both of us.”

  “Until he does,” I said, “I’m gonna keep doing my job. How ’bout you?”

  Twisdale folded his arms across his chest. “Easy for you to say, but I’ve still got a wife and kids to support.” He paused, self-interest and self-respect at war on his face. “But just for the sake of argument, how would you propose to go after this?”

  “Most legislators are successful lawyers and businessmen,” I said, “so if they suddenly started installing swimming pools or buying new luxury cars, no one would think anything of it. But about two dozen of them live paycheck to paycheck. Lovellette paints houses for a living. Parkinson is a sixth-grade teacher. Franklin is a prison guard. Berube got laid off by the Post Office last March and hasn’t worked since. For people like them, twenty grand would be hard to resist.”

  “If they were smart,” Twisdale said, “they’d sit on the dirty cash for a few years and wait till the heat dies down.”

  “Sure,” I said, “but most of them aren’t smart. And some of them need the money right now.”

  “Yeah, I get that. But what would you do, exactly? Drive around and look for new SUVs in their driveways or front-end loaders digging up their backyards?”

  “For starters, I’d ask a P.I. friend of mine to tap his bank sources, find out if there’s been unusual activity on their credit cards.”

  “Spending sprees?” he said.

  “Or paying off large balances.”

  “Wouldn’t it be illegal for the P.I. to do that?”

  “Only a little.”

  He leaned back and stared at the ceiling, thinking it over.

  “I’m not comfortable with this,” he said. “Besides, I don’t see how it would help us. You might find something that looks suspicious, but it wouldn’t prove anything.”

  “No, but it would tell us which legislators we should take a closer look at. Once we start asking questions and digging deeper into their finances, there’s no telling what might shake loose.”

  “I don’t know, Mulligan. I mean, how long would all this take?”

  “Maybe three or four weeks if I work it full-time.”

  “Uh-uh. No way I can spare you that long.”

  “Come on, Chuck. It’s an important story. If the Masons were still running the paper, they’d put three or four people on it.”

  “But they’re not, so it would have to be just you—and mostly on your own time again.”

  “That would take me two or three months,” I said. “By then it will be too late.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The governor’s going to send the gambling bill to the legislature this week. There’ll be hearings in both houses, but it will probably come up for a vote in about a month.”

  “So?”

  “So once the votes are counted, all we’ll be able to do is expose a few sad sacks for taking bribe money. That would cause them a world of hurt, but what good would it really do anybody? The sleazebags who’ve been spreading money around already will have gotten what they paid for. The damage will have been done.”

  “I guess that’s how it’s going to have to be, then,” Twisdale said.

  He’d grown some balls in the last week, but Beauregard had snipped them off.

  “Fuck you, Chuckie,” I said.

  I pulled myself from the chair and stomped out.

  * * *

  A fresh stack of press releases was waiting on my desk. Still fuming, I sorted through them and identified the winner of the day’s stupid press release challenge:

  “We are proud to announce that East Bay Exotic Animals of Johnston, Rhode Island, has been designated the official pet store of the Providence Vipers.”

  The team wouldn’t have been all that proud if they’d bothered to check the store owner’s criminal record. Over the last five years, he’d been fined three times for violating the federal prohibition against the importation and sale of endangered species.

  I added the salient fact to my story. It was an empty gesture of defiance. The Vipers and the pet store were both advertisers. Twisdale would feel compelled to show the story to our acting ad director, who would insist that the unflattering details be removed.

  36

  Early Wednesday morning I jumped out of bed, rummaged through yesterday’s clothes, located my cell phone, and called the paper. The managing editor was already at his desk.

  “I’m feeling poorly again, Chuckie-boy. Looks like I’ll have to take another sick day. Who knows? If I can’t shake what ails me, I might be out the whole damn week.”

  “Bullshit, Mulligan. Get your ass in here.”

  “No can do.”

  “You’re pissed off about the Vipers’ press release, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass about press releases,” I said, and that was more or less the truth.

  “You’re really not coming in?”

  “I’m not.”

  He paused, then said, “I’ll need another doctor’s note.”

  I ended the call and turned the phone off. Then I stepped into the shower and let the hot water wash the tension from my shoulders. Now that I had the day free, I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I was eager to hunt down bribe-taking legislators; but to pull that off I’d have to fake illness for a month. Chuckie-boy would never let me get away with that. Twenty minutes later, I was still pondering my next move when the water turned cold.

  After I toweled off, I pulled on a fresh pair of jeans and sniffed the Red Sox T-shirts in my laundry basket. The one with Shane Victorino’s name on the back was the least offensive, so I put it on. Completing the ensemble with a Red Sox cap, I walked into the living room and roused Joseph from the couch.

  “Got anything planned for today?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Let’s take a drive.”

  “Where we goin’?”

  “Nowhere in particular,” I said.

  “Okay, but can we get some breakfast first? I had too much to drink last night and barfed up my dinner. I’m fuckin’ famished.”

  Ten minutes later, we were seated in a booth at Charlie’s diner. By the time I finished my bacon and eggs, Joseph had consumed two stacks of pancakes and was making short work of an egg and sausage sandwich.

  “Hey, Joseph?”

  “Umf?”

  “How closely do you follow the NBA?”

  “Ask me fuckin’ anything.”

  “I’m thinking of putting a bet down on the Indiana Pacers to go all the way. What do you think?”

  Joseph plopped the last morsel in his mouth, swallowed, licked the plate, and washed everything down with a swig of coffee. Then he launched into a soliloquy about matchups, odds, and point spreads that was worthy of Jimmy the Greek.
I filed the information away for future reference. When Charlie came by with the check, Joseph asked for two corn muffins and a large coffee to go.

  As we crossed the Providence River and turned south on Route 114, Joseph asked again where we were going.

  “A reporter needs to know what’s happening on the streets,” I said, “but most days my boss keeps me cooped up in the office. It’s been months since I’ve had a chance to take a good look around, so I want to make a circuit of the state and see what’s changed out there.”

  “Fine with me,” he said, “long as we can stop for lunch.”

  We were cruising through the bedroom suburbs that line the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay when I noticed a black SUV keeping pace with us three car lengths back. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I’d seen the same car behind us as we crossed the river.

  In the little bayside town of Warren, Route 114 becomes Main Street, with shabby World War I–era storefronts, some of them empty, lining both sides of the street. There, something piqued my interest, so I backed Secretariat into a metered parking space.

  The display windows of a store that had once sold baby clothes were plastered with campaign posters for a Democrat seeking reelection to a third term in the state House of Representatives. A freshly painted sign stretching across the storefront proclaimed: “Concerned Citizens for Gus Lovellette.”

  Campaigns for the Rhode Island state legislature are normally small-time, retail politics. The candidates hand out fliers at strip malls and glad-hand old folks at nursing homes. They knock on doors and ask homeowners for their votes. Occasionally, some of them scrounge enough campaign contributions to run a few radio ads. But usually, that’s about it. Now and then, when unions representing teachers or state employees get worked up about a piece of pending legislation, a few key committee chairmen can accumulate war chests of fifty grand or so. But as a rule, most legislative campaigns cost less than ten thousand dollars.

  So why did Lovellette have his own campaign office? Usually the best someone like him could hope for was a poster in the local Democratic Party headquarters, which was located in another storefront just across the street. Lovellette was a struggling house painter. I doubted he was paying for this himself.

  As Joseph and I climbed out of Secretariat, the black SUV slowly rolled by. The windows were tinted, so I couldn’t see the driver. Was Mario stalking me again? The car continued on for half a block and then backed into a parking space.

  “Looks like we picked up a tail,” Joseph said.

  “I think you’re right.”

  I opened the passenger-side door, popped the glove box, and fetched the Kel-Tec the cops had reluctantly returned to me. I tucked it in my waistband and pulled my T-shirt over it.

  “Want I should drag him out and ask why he’s screwin’ with us?” Joseph asked.

  “Not just yet. Let’s keep an eye on him and see what he does.”

  “So what the fuck are we doing here?”

  “We’re gonna go into that campaign office and pretend we’re trying to decide whether to vote for Lovellette,” I said. “Ask some questions about his stand on the governor’s gambling bill. Think you can do that?”

  “Duh.”

  Inside, a young man with a phony smile plastered on his face was standing at a counter, waiting to greet walk-ins. Behind him, two middle-aged women were working the phones. From their chatter, it sounded as if they were making cold calls to voters.

  “Welcome,” the young man said. “Are you registered voters?”

  “We are,” I said.

  “Great. Are you familiar with Representative Lovellette’s stands on the issues?”

  “That’s what we come to find out,” Joseph said.

  “Well then, let me give you our new flier. It outlines his thoughts on the major issues facing our state and points you to a website where you can find his detailed position papers.”

  He handed us the fliers, and we took them.

  “Main thing I care about is the gambling bill,” Joseph said. “What’s Lovellette got to say about that?”

  “Representative Lovellette believes that legalized sports betting is the best way to alleviate the state’s fiscal crisis without raising taxes,” the young man said. “However, he opposes having the state Lottery Commission take the bets. He wants to turn that responsibility over to private enterprise. Mr. Lovellette is a firm believer in our capitalist system, and he opposes anything that would make big government bigger.”

  “Cool,” Joseph said.

  “So can we count on your vote?”

  “You bet.”

  With that, the young man turned to me.

  “And what about you, sir?”

  “I’m still thinking on it,” I said as I flipped through the flier. “Huh. At the bottom here, it says, ‘Paid for by Americans for the Preservation of Free Enterprise.’ What the heck is that?”

  “We are an organization that raises money to support candidates who share our position on sports gambling.”

  “You mean this isn’t Mr. Lovellette’s campaign office?”

  “No, sir, but we are doing everything we can to support his reelection.”

  “How long have you been at this location?” I asked.

  “We had our grand opening on Saturday. Would you two like some bumper stickers? How about a couple of lawn signs?”

  We smiled gratefully and carried them to the car with us, even though we didn’t have a lawn.

  I pulled out of the parking spot and cruised past the SUV. It waited until two other cars fell in behind us and then followed at a discreet distance. I kept tabs on it in the rearview mirror as I led our little convoy south toward Bristol.

  There, we found another new campaign office in a Hope Street storefront, this one promoting the reelection of veteran Republican state senator Ralph Cummings. According to the fliers the staff was handing out, Cummings was courageously bucking the Republican leadership’s stand for legalized, privately run sports gambling. He was morally opposed to any form of legalization. The small type at the bottom of the fliers read “Stop Sports Gambling Now”—the super PAC funded by the NCAA and the professional sports leagues.

  It was still morning when we crossed the Mount Hope Bridge and drove south through Portsmouth, but it wasn’t too early for Joseph to start whining about lunch. I’d been daydreaming about the Reuben Cuban sandwich at Newport’s White Horse Tavern; but when Joseph spotted the McDonald’s on East Main Road in Middletown, he drooled the way Homer Simpson does whenever somebody says “doughnuts.”

  Inside, we took our orders to a booth that looked out on the parking lot. The grilled chicken club sandwich and a medium Coke for me. Three Quarter Pounders, two large fries, and a strawberry shake for Joseph.

  “Keep this up,” I said, “and you’re gonna regain all those pounds you lost.”

  “I weigh myself every fuckin’ day,” he said. “Don’t worry, Mom. I’m keepin’ an eye on it.”

  We’d just started eating when the black SUV rumbled into the lot and braked to a stop two parking spaces from Secretariat. The driver sat behind the wheel for about five minutes. Then he climbed out and came inside. He waited at the counter for his Big Mac, fries, and Coke, carried them to a booth in back, and studiously avoided looking at us.

  I put him at forty-five years old with thick gray hair, a lantern jaw, and a slight paunch. Six feet tall and wide in the shoulders, he had the look of a former athlete who still worked out but had developed an unhealthy fondness for fatty food and beer.

  “Recognize him?” Joseph whispered.

  “No. You?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  We finished our meal, bused the table, and headed outside.

  “What now?” Joseph asked.

  “We sit in the car and wait for him to come out.”

  “And then?”

  “We roust him and find out who he is.”

  “’Bout fuckin’ time.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we
were still sitting there while our quarry nursed a second cup of soda and made a show of not watching us through the window.

  “How ’bout I go back inside and drag his ass out?” Joseph said.

  I shook my head and cranked the ignition. I backed out of the parking space, rolled slowly past the front of the restaurant, made a quick right turn, and braked beside the windowless south side of the building.

  “Get out of the car, stay out of sight, and grab him when he comes out,” I said. “I’ll circle the building and meet you out front.”

  I got there just in time to see Joseph rush our stalker from behind and bull him against the hood of his SUV. As I climbed out of Secretariat, Joseph kicked the guy’s legs apart and started to frisk him.

  “What the hell!” the guy said.

  Joseph smacked him hard on the back of the head and jerked a semi-auto from the small of his back.

  “Who are you,” I said, “and why are you following us?

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  “Empty your pockets.”

  “No.”

  Joseph gave him another smack.

  “My buddy here’s going to get annoyed if I have to ask you again,” I said.

  “You can’t make me do shit. You two assholes aren’t cops.”

  “No, we ain’t,” Joseph said. “Cops probably wouldn’t do this.”

  He shoved a paw between the guy’s legs, grabbed his scrotum, and squeezed. The guy yelped like a dog getting neutered without anesthesia. Then he dug into his pockets and tossed the contents onto the hood. A set of car keys, a cell phone, a handful of change, and a brown leather wallet.

  The cell looked like a prepaid that couldn’t be traced, but even burners were vulnerable to my expert sleuthing. I turned it on, checked the list of recent calls, and jotted the numbers in my notepad.

  Then I opened the wallet and slid out his driver’s license.

  “Jesus!” I said. “How many Alfanos are there in New Jersey, and how many of you have to get killed before you learn to stay out of Rhode Island?”

  He didn’t say anything. From the set of his jaw, I figured he wasn’t going to unless we roughed him up some more, and I lacked the stomach for that.

  Instead, I returned his phone and wallet, and he put them in his pockets.