A Scourge of Vipers Read online

  “What about the Glock?” he asked.

  “You’re joking, right?” Joseph said.

  The guy turned to pluck his car keys from the hood, but I snatched them first and shoved them in my pocket.

  * * *

  “Whaddaya ’spose he was after?” Joseph asked as we cruised south toward the Newport waterfront.

  “The people he works for must have been mad about my bribery story,” I said. “They probably asked him to find out what I’m going to do next.”

  “What are you gonna do next?”

  “We’re doing it,” I said.

  In Newport, we stumbled on another new legislative campaign office, this one paid for by the super PAC working for privatization of sports gambling. After we talked up the staff and walked out with more fliers and lawn signs, I told Joseph to take the wheel and head west.

  As he drove across the majestic Claiborne Pell Bridge, I asked him to hand me the Glock. I slid my window down and tossed both the gun and Alfano number three’s car keys over the railing into Narragansett Bay’s East Passage. Then I pulled the cell out of my pocket and called Judy at The Atlantic City Press.

  “Hey, Mulligan. What’s up?”

  “There’s another Alfano in town.”

  “Which one?”

  “How many are there?”

  “Two more brothers and maybe a dozen uncles and cousins.”

  “All of them connected?”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Is Marco Alfano one of them?”

  “Another brother.”

  “According to his driver’s license, he’s from Somers Point, New Jersey. Where’s that?”

  “Just south of Atlantic City. How the heck did you get a look at his driver’s license?”

  “By asking politely. So what does Marco Alfano do for a living?”

  “Other than help out with the illegal family business?”

  “Yeah. Other than that.”

  “He owns a chain of escort services.”

  “So he’s a pimp.”

  “He is, but in Atlantic City you don’t get arrested for that. You get a plaque from the chamber of commerce.”

  “I’ve heard.”

  “So what was he doing in Rhode Island?” she asked.

  “Tailing me. Probably will be again once he figures out how to start his SUV without his car keys.”

  She chuckled at that. “Why? Because of the story you wrote?”

  “That’s how I figure it. Probably wants to find out what I’m up to now.”

  “Think he’s also spreading money around?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “He might also have a personal reason for being in Rhode Island,” she said.

  “Because Mario Zerilli probably killed his brother?”

  “Yeah. The Alfanos aren’t the kind to leave something like that to the authorities.”

  “If he wants Mario,” I said, “he’ll have to get in line.”

  After we hung up, Joseph gave me a nudge.

  “I think we picked up another tail.”

  I glanced in the side mirror.

  “Where?”

  “Four car lengths back. The gray Honda Civic.”

  It followed us for a dozen miles, but when we turned north on Route 1, it peeled off.

  I fetched my laptop from the backseat and used a reverse directory to check the phone numbers from Marco Alfano’s cell. Three of them were New Jersey landlines belonging to women who shared his last name, probably a wife and daughters. One was the number for Party Hearty Escorts in Atlantic City. The other six were unlisted. Probably more untraceable burners. When I called them, each was answered by a male voice that said, “Yeah?” When I asked who was speaking, they said, “Fuck you,” and clicked off.

  It was still light, but well past Joseph’s dinner hour, by the time we rolled into Central Falls and decided to call our tour to a halt. We’d cruised through nineteen of the state’s thirty-nine cities and towns and found freshly opened, super-PAC-run legislative campaign offices in twelve of them.

  On the drive back home, Joseph grumbled every time I passed a fast food joint. As we approached Providence on I-95, I spotted another gray Honda Civic in my rearview. I told myself that it was the most common car on the road.

  Still, it worried me.

  37

  Shortly before eight the next morning, I stepped off the newsroom elevator, turned to punch the clock, and couldn’t find my time card. I strode to Twisdale’s office to complain, but first I wanted to fill him in on what I’d learned during yesterday’s tour of the state.

  “Super PACs have started pouring a ton of money into the House and Senate races,” I said as I settled into the leather visitor’s chair. “By law, they have to report those expenditures to the Campaign Finance Division, so I should be able to get some hard numbers for you by the end of the week.”

  Twisdale glowered.

  “I’m surprised you had the gall to show up here this morning,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re fired.”

  “I’m what? Why? Because I called in sick again?”

  “Like you don’t know. You’ve gone too far this time, Mulligan. You’ll never work in the news business again. Gather your personal belongings and get out.”

  Puzzled and angry, I got up, stomped to my cubicle, and slumped into what used to be my chair. I rummaged through the desk and didn’t see anything worth taking home. Then I stood and took one last look around at the newsroom where I’d spent my entire working life.

  It was here that I’d learned how to write, exposed corrupt judges and politicians with front-page headlines, and forged a handful of friendships that would last a lifetime. It was here that I’d discovered my calling as an investigative reporter—and where I’d learned most of what I know about life.

  And death.

  I’d seen the brains of shotgunned mobsters spattered on barroom walls, smelled putrefied cadavers pulled from polluted rivers, watched medical examiners paw through the remains of dismembered bodies, witnessed firemen carrying charred corpses from smoking ruins, and stared into the dead eyes of abused children. I’d been struck dumb by what remained of human beings who’d been run through wood chippers, crushed by automobiles, fed to pigs, and smashed in aircraft accidents. Once, I’d even stood on the Amtrak ties on the outskirts of the city as rescue workers plucked bits of a fifteen-year-old named Tommy Santos out of the trees minutes after he’d stumbled into the path of a speeding train.

  Good times.

  As I trudged to the elevator, Frieden approached, a pen and an open notebook in her hands.

  “Mulligan?” she said, her voice a tentative whisper. “Twisdale assigned me to write the breaking story about you and the governor, and I was hoping you could give me a comment.”

  A story about me and the governor?

  “Sorry, Kate,” I said. “In my twenty-two years in the news business, I’ve learned one important lesson. Never talk to a reporter.”

  The rest of the staff stared at me as I trudged to the elevator. Nobody said good-bye.

  Outside, I stood at the curb for a moment and looked up at the red-brick newspaper building. Nearly fourteen feet above the sidewalk, a brass plaque marked the high-water mark of the flood that had inundated downtown Providence during the 1938 hurricane. Meteorology was a primitive science when that storm formed in the Atlantic, so it had slammed into the New England coast without warning. But why hadn’t I seen today’s storm coming?

  I pulled the cell from my pocket and realized I hadn’t turned it back on since I shut the power off last night. There were two dozen new messages. Three from the governor insisted that I call her right away. A couple from McCracken and my buddy Mason at The Ocean State Rag asked if I was all right. The rest were from Iggy Rock and from reporters at the Associated Press, The Pawtucket Times, and the state’s TV affiliates, each of them asking me to call back with my comment on “the scandal.”
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  I turned toward the street and whistled for Secretariat. When he didn’t come, I went looking and found him grazing in a nearby parking lot. I slumped behind the wheel and wondered whom I should call first. McCracken, Mason, or the governor? I decided not to call any of them.

  Instead, I spurred the Bronco toward Chestnut Street, where The Ocean State Rag occupied half the second floor of an old jewelry factory that recently had been renovated for office space.

  * * *

  Mason greeted me with a furrowed brow and a bear hug.

  “Jesus, Mulligan. Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He ushered me into a leather chair across from his desk. Then he turned to his bar, poured some bourbon into a glass, and handed it to me.

  “Really?” I said. “It’s awfully early for hard liquor, don’t you think?”

  “Not today, it isn’t.”

  “Maybe so,” I said, and gulped half of it down.

  “I assume The Dispatch fired you this morning.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you’ve got a job here, Mulligan. But not just yet. I can’t bring you on board until this bullshit gets straightened out.”

  “And what bullshit is that?”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “Apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t. Twisdale just told me to get out. Never gave me a reason.”

  “You haven’t seen the TV news this morning?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t listen to Iggy Rock or check the news online?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  He drew a deep breath and blew it out through his nose.

  “Okay, then. Step over here and have a look at this.”

  He tapped at his keyboard and called up the Ocean State Rag website. The top headline screamed ALLEGED SEX SCANDAL ROCKS R.I. GOVERNOR.

  “What the hell?”

  Accompanying the story was a color photograph of the governor and me sitting together at a table at Hopes. Two bottles of beer, both half empty, stood on the table between us. I was holding Fiona’s hand.

  “The photo was e-mailed to every news outlet in the state early this morning,” Mason said. “With it, there was an audio file.”

  He clicked on it and let it play.

  Fiona’s voice: “I’m disappointed. I was hoping you were going to stroll in wearing those black-and-yellow Bruins boxers.”

  My voice: “I could drop my pants if you want to have a look at them.”

  Fiona: “I better lock the door first. It wouldn’t do to have anyone walk in on us.”

  Me: “Do it. I’ve always wanted to fool around in the governor’s office, but until now, the opportunity never came up.”

  Fiona: “How come?”

  Me: “Because we never had a girl governor before.”

  Fiona: “If you keep teasing me, I might not be able to keep my hands to myself.”

  The audio stopped there, leaving the rest to the listener’s imagination.

  “Our story suggests this could be just playful banter between old friends,” Mason said, “but all the other outlets are treating it as gospel.”

  “Where’d this come from?” I asked, although I thought I already knew.

  “It was sent anonymously.”

  “Swell.”

  “Give me a statement denying that you slept with the governor,” he said, “and I’ll stick it in the story right up top.”

  “I’m thinking about it.”

  “What’s there to think about?”

  “Tell me what the governor said about it first.”

  “So far, she has refused to comment.”

  “Huh. I wonder why she hasn’t issued a denial.”

  “Me too,” Mason said. Then he paused and gave me a quizzical look. “I mean, it’s not true, right?”

  “Are you asking as a friend or as a journalist?”

  “Both.”

  “To a journalist, I have no comment.”

  “To a friend, then?

  “Of course it’s not true.”

  I walked back around the desk, flopped into the visitor’s chair, and swallowed the rest of the bourbon.

  “So what’s the play?” Mason asked.

  “First, let’s see if we can prove where this crap came from,” I said. “Would you mind if I ask McCracken to look at the e-mail? He might be able to track the IP address.”

  “Call him,” Mason said.

  The first thing McCracken said was, “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine and dandy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get fired yet?”

  “Of course.”

  “It’s for the best, buddy. You don’t belong there anymore, anyway. You can start work here tomorrow morning. I’ll have Sharise mount the nameplate on your door soon as we hang up.”

  “You don’t want to wait until this thing blows over?”

  “What for? Clients like to believe private detectives are at least a little bit shady. Makes ’em think we won’t hesitate to bend the rules for them.” And then he chortled. “You gotta admit, this is pretty funny. I mean, you and the governor? The woman’s built like a twelve-year-old boy.”

  When he finished trying to cheer me up, I told him Mason had offered me a job, too, and that I needed time to consider my options. Then I told him why I’d called. He said he’d be right over.

  With that, I pulled myself out of the chair, thanked Mason for handling the story responsibly, and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To the statehouse to talk dirty with the governor.”

  But first, I had an urgent call to make.

  38

  “McDougall, Young, and Limone. How may I direct your call?”

  “Yolanda Mosely-Jones, please.”

  “One moment, sir.”

  And then, as if the day hadn’t already gone badly enough, I slumped behind the wheel in Secretariat and suffered through a minute or two of Kenny G’s nausea-inducing “Forever in Love.”

  “Miss Mosley-Jones’s office.”

  “Is she in?”

  “Who may I say is calling?”

  “Mr. Mulligan.”

  “Liam Mulligan?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but Miss Jones asked me to inform you that she is not accepting your calls.”

  I clicked off, twisted the rearview mirror, and took a hard look at myself. Same Sox T-shirt that was pressed into duty five years ago. Same lanky guy with a rakish lock of hair that wouldn’t stay off his forehead. Same sucker who’d married badly and suffered through a contentious divorce. Same damned fool who’d stumbled so badly with love that he’d all but given up on it. Same bastard who’d resorted to treating his infrequent overnight guests as conquests. But the lady who’d finally welcomed him into her bed a few days ago was a revelation. This time, it was the guy in the mirror who’d been conquered.

  Poor bastard.

  I readjusted the mirror and tried Yolanda’s personal cell. It went straight to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message.

  If Yolanda didn’t trust me, what good would a message do?

  39

  For once, Fiona didn’t keep me waiting. I was ushered straight into her office, where I found her sitting primly on the couch of infamy. The one where our “scandal” began.

  She looked up at me and burst out laughing.

  At first, I was too worried about what Yolanda was thinking to appreciate the humor in the situation; but once I seated myself beside the governor, the hilarity proved to be infectious. I don’t know how long we sat there, arms wrapped around each other, our bodies shaking.

  “Oh, my God!” she finally said. “I haven’t laughed that hard in years.”

  “It’s not all funny. I got fired this morning. And Yolanda isn’t speaking to me.”

  “I’m so sorry. If I could have debunked the story before it got out, I would
have; but once Iggy Rock went on the air with the audio file this morning, it was too late.”

  “Has Parisi figured out who bugged your office yet?”

  “No, but he bullied Channel 10 into giving him the IP address the audio file and photo were sent from, and he’s trying to trace it.”

  “I’ve got McCracken working on that, too,” I said, “but we already know who’s behind this.”

  “Yeah. The same person who took our photo at Hopes.”

  “Cheryl Grandison,” I said. “She’s trying to destroy you so you won’t be able to get the gambling bill passed. The NCAA and the pro sports leagues will probably give her a bonus for this.”

  “But as always, Mrs. Grandison, if you or any of your Stop Sports Gambling Now super PAC force should be caught or killed, the commissioners will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

  And we both laughed again.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “I’m leaving for Trenton tomorrow.”

  “Trenton? What for?”

  “To confer with Governor Christie.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if we can come up with a joint strategy for derailing the opposition to our gambling bills. But mainly to duck reporters for a few days.”

  “Duck them? Why? The move here is to tell them that the audio file is harmless kidding between friends and that your enemies obtained it by illegally bugging your office. You’ve got to act fast to change the narrative, Fiona. If you don’t, this thing is gonna get a lot worse.”

  “That’s exactly what I want, Mulligan. Let the scandalmongers have their fun for a few more days.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this so-called scandal is going to guarantee my reelection.”

  She shot me a sly smile.

  “Okay, Fiona. What’s up your sleeve?”

  When she laid it out, I had to admit it was worthy of her nickname. The plan was both brilliant and diabolical.

  40

  While Fiona was out of town, I spent my time ducking reporters, applying for unemployment insurance, listening to Iggy Rock rant about our slut governor and her disgraced boy-toy, following the news about the legislative hearings on the gambling bill, trying unsuccessfully to reach out to Yolanda, and getting drunk with Joseph. We turned the TV news into a drinking game. Every time somebody said “disgraced boy-toy,” we each chugged a ’Gansett.