A Scourge of Vipers Read online

  “Or maybe it was a bribe from the fried calamari lobby,” I said. “I hear there’s a lot riding on the official state appetizer crown.”

  “But Alfano was mobbed up,” she said.

  “He was.”

  “And a fixer for the casino industry.”

  “Yeah, but not exclusively. From what I hear, he wasn’t picky about who he worked for.”

  “So most likely this was about the gambling bill,” she said.

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Which side of the issue do you think he was on?”

  “Depends on who hired him,” I said. “Personally, he probably didn’t give a shit.”

  I took a pull from my longneck and mulled it over.

  “The other four names on the list,” I said. “Did they know about the gambling bill before The Ocean State Rag broke the story?”

  “Of course. I’ve been working quietly for a couple of months to get the legislative leadership on board.”

  “Who else knew?”

  “Just three members of my staff, a couple of legislative committee chairmen, and the two top guys at the Lottery Commission.”

  “And where do they stand?”

  “They’re all for the idea in principle, but the Republicans, Slater and Pichardo, are holding things up. They don’t want the Lottery Commission involved. They think we should bring in a private company to run things.”

  “And one of these people leaked it,” I said.

  “Either that or somebody one of them confided in.”

  “Then here’s how I see it,” I said. “If Alfano was working for the Mob, his job was to get the bill killed. But if he was working for the casinos, he was supposed to grease the skids for privatization so some big shot from Atlantic City can waltz in here and become our official state bookmaker.”

  “I’m guessing it’s the casinos—or maybe somebody who’s got a stake in one of them,” Fiona said. “When New Jersey legalized casino gambling back in 1976, Atlantic City had the only legal slots, craps tables, and roulette wheels east of Las Vegas. By 2006, they were raking in more than five billion in annual profits. Since then, casinos have opened in more than a dozen states east of the Mississippi including New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. The competition has cut Atlantic City gambling revenue by fifty percent, and half of its casinos have been forced to close. It makes sense that big money people there would want to muscle in on our action.”

  She paused, then said, “Now that Alfano’s dead, whoever sent him is probably going to send somebody else.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “In fact, he might already be here.”

  There wasn’t much more to say about that, so we turned to small talk. Her younger brother’s particle-physics research at MIT. The baby boy my sister and her wife had adopted. But after a few minutes, I turned the conversation back to the gambling bill.

  “What’s your next step?” I asked.

  “Next week’s announcement is off,” she said. “I have to postpone until I can work out a deal with the leadership. We’ve got a lot of anti-gambling moralists on both sides of the aisle. No way I can get this thing through without some Republican support.”

  “Is that on background, or can I run with it?”

  She took her time thinking it over.

  “Go ahead and print it,” she said. “A lot of misinformation is floating around now. I need to get out ahead of it.”

  I pulled out a pad and was jotting some notes when Whoosh came through the door. He spotted me and hobbled toward my table. Then he saw who I was sitting with and peeled off to grab a stool at the bar.

  Fiona glanced his way and said, “Think your bookmaker pal has a line on what’s going on?”

  “No idea.”

  “If he does, will he tell you?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  With that, we turned to the TV for the last five minutes of the Celtics-Clippers debacle. When the horn signaled the end of the game, the conversation turned light.

  “So, Mulligan. Are you wearing those hot Bruins boxers again?”

  “No. I’m sporting my Red Sox briefs tonight. I’ve got two pair of each, and I rotate them once a week whether they need changing or not.”

  “I love a man who’s a stickler for hygiene.”

  Then a worried look crossed her face.

  “What if we’ve got this wrong? You said Alfano also arranged contract killings, right? Maybe that’s what all the cash was for. The five names could be a hit list.”

  As I reached across the table for Fiona’s hand, a camera flash lit us up. I turned in time to see a blond stranger at the bar snap a second shot of us with her cell phone. I didn’t think anything of it. People were always sneaking photos of Fiona and posting them on Facebook to make it look as if they were drinking buddies with the governor.

  “Don’t get paranoid about hired killers, Fiona,” I said. “I mean, do you really think Alfano would commit a hit list to paper?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I have no idea what someone like him would do.”

  * * *

  Later that night, I drove up Olney Street and pulled into the deserted lot at Hope High School. I parked beside the basketball courts and fetched my Spalding from the back. Somebody had shot out the lights that hung over the courts, so I worked on my crossover dribble, my left-handed runner, and my jump shot in the glare from Secretariat’s lone working headlight.

  For years, basketball had been my life. From the age of seven, my buddy Felix and I spent hour after hour shooting baskets in his driveway and playing horse on these same outdoor courts. Our boyhood hero was Ernie DiGregorio, a local legend who had led Providence College to the Final Four. Ernie D., as he was affectionately known, went on to win the NBA Rookie of the Year Award and, despite a gimpy knee, played eight seasons as a pro, the last as a member of our beloved Boston Celtics. Felix and I had read about how, as a child, Ernie dribbled a basketball everywhere he went. So we did, too, bouncing our worn Spaldings and Wilsons even when we walked to school.

  Together, we made the Hope High freshman team; and by then, I had big dreams. I was going to lead our varsity in scoring for three years, star for the PC Friars, and then get drafted by the Celtics. But by our junior year of high school, Felix had grown taller, stronger, and faster than I. It was he who led the team in scoring and rebounding, dominating the paint while I planted myself at the three-point line to discourage the defense from collapsing on him. My jump shot was deadly from thirty feet. When he kicked the ball out to me, I rarely missed.

  I pictured the two of us doing the same for PC; but during our senior year, Felix tanked his SATs, and I wasn’t good enough to get scholarship offers. I ended up making the PC team as a walk-on. Felix matriculated in the fast food industry until he decided to pursue a career as a pimp and drug dealer.

  The Friars’ starters and most of the bench players were also faster and stronger than I, so I didn’t get much playing time. But my jump shot? A thing of beauty.

  I had no delusions about impressing the Vipers’ coaches, but I didn’t relish the thought of embarrassing myself. As I practiced, I ran through what I knew about Alfano and his briefcase full of cash. It wasn’t much. I still didn’t think the names were a hit list, but the more I thought about it, the more I wondered who he was working for and what they were after.

  If I’d been right about Pichardo recognizing Alfano’s picture, the fatal crash wasn’t his first trip to Rhode Island. It was merely his last.

  11

  First thing next morning, I was refilling Tuukka’s water dish when I heard footsteps pound up the stairs to the second floor. Then a heavy fist rattled my apartment door.

  “Providence PD. Open up.”

  So I did.

  In stepped the homicide twins: Jay Wargart, a big lug with a five o’clock shadow and fists like hams, and Sandra Freitas, a bottle blonde with a predatory Cameron Diaz smile.

  “I don’t recall poisoning, bludgeoning
, garroting, stabbing, or shooting anybody this week,” I said, “so this must be a social visit.”

  “Mind if we sit?” Freitas asked.

  I waved them toward the kitchen table, where Tuukka was curled up in his aquarium, blissfully digesting his breakfast.

  “Jesus!” Freitas said. “What the hell is that?”

  “Exactly what it looks like.”

  “You have a snake?”

  “Why are you surprised, Sandy?” Wargart said. “You know the old saying. Birds of a feather.”

  “Feathers?” I said. “Snakes don’t have feathers. Their ancestors shed both their feathers and their legs millions of years ago. I don’t have any feathers either, although there’s a feather boa around here somewhere. One of my overnight guests left it under my bed.”

  I went to the kitchen counter and dumped what was left of the morning’s coffee into three chipped mugs. Then I carried them to the table and sat down with my guests.

  “Seen Mario Zerilli around lately?” Wargart asked.

  “Not for a couple of weeks.”

  “His girlfriend has reported him missing.”

  “That so?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did this girlfriend have a black eye or a split lip?”

  “Both.”

  “That must be her, all right.”

  “We’re thinking the corpse the Pawtucket PD fished out of the Blackstone might be Mario,” Wargart said. “Same height and weight. Same shoe size. Same Bruins sweatshirt he had on when the girlfriend last saw him.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Why’s that?” Freitas asked.

  “The guy was a punk,” I said. “He was bound to come to a bad end.”

  “Didn’t you have a run-in with him outside Hopes a while back?” Wargart asked.

  “Where’d you get that from?”

  He smirked, then said, “The way we heard it, he pulled a gun on you.”

  “Sounds like the sort of thing he’d do,” I said.

  “What was the altercation about?” Freitas asked. Altercation? I grinned at her. The detective had been working on her vocabulary.

  “You aren’t going to tell us about it, are you?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t you report it?” Wargart asked.

  “If I bothered you every time somebody threatened me,” I said, “the mayor would have to double the size of the police department.”

  “I’ll bet,” he said.

  “We’re thinking you might be the last person to have seen him alive,” Freitas said.

  “Except for the good Samaritan who iced him,” I said. “Assuming he’s dead, of course.”

  “The victim was shot with a large caliber pistol,” Freitas said. “Don’t you own a Colt forty-five?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’ve got a nine mil, too,” Wargart said. “They’re both registered in your name. Where are the weapons now?”

  “In a safe place.”

  “Go get them.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Not unless you have a warrant.”

  Wargart hadn’t touched his coffee. He picked up the mug now and slammed it down. Tuukka startled and fled to a corner of the aquarium as coffee sloshed over the tabletop.

  “Look,” I said. “You don’t even know for sure if Mario’s dead.”

  “Somebody is,” Wargart said.

  “We’ll know if it’s Mario soon enough,” Freitas said. “We can’t find a record of him ever getting dental x-rays, but we collected a comb and toothbrush from his bathroom, and the crime lab is running the DNA as we speak.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “There’s a huge backlog for DNA tests. If that’s what you’re waiting on, it’ll be a year before you know dick.”

  With that, the homicide twins pushed back from the table and clambered to their feet. Wargart loomed over me, trying to intimidate with his bulk. I rose and crowded him, a subtle reminder that I had him by two inches.

  “We’ve got our eye on you, Mulligan,” Wargart said. “Don’t leave town.”

  * * *

  After they left, I called Ferguson at the M.E.’s office and Lebowski at the Pawtucket PD and asked if there was anything new on the floater. There wasn’t. Then I rang the receptionist at The Dispatch to call in sick.

  It was eight on the dot when I climbed into Secretariat, tuned the radio to WTOP, and rumbled down Broadway toward downtown Providence under a slate-colored sky.

  “Good morning, Row Dyelin!”

  The mellifluous voice of Iggy Rock, the state’s most popular morning drive-time radio host, oozed from my tinny speakers. Iggy’s shtick was a toxic mix of Laura Ingraham–style moralizing, Rush Limbaugh–style liberal bashing, and Glenn Beck–style lunacy.

  “Our topic this morning is Governor McNerney’s shameful plan to legalize sports betting. It’s bad enough that the state squanders the millions of dollars it rakes in from the sale of lottery tickets. Now Attila the Nun wants to be your bookmaker so she can get her claws on millions more. Make no mistake, my fellow patriots. Her scheme is nothing more than a disguised tax increase to fuel our bloated state government.

  “Our guest this morning is the Reverend Lucas Crenson, pastor of the Sword of God Church in Foster and announced Republican candidate for governor. Welcome to the show, Reverend.”

  “Thank you, Iggy. And you are so right. State-sponsored gambling isn’t just a tax. It’s a regressive one that steals money from the pockets of people who can least afford it. The answer to our budget crisis isn’t more taxes. It’s cutting waste and eliminating the endemic corruption that is bleeding our state dry. I pledge to you that when I am elected, I will do everything in my power to set Rhode Island on an honest and godly path.”

  I backed Secretariat into a metered space next to Burnside Park and let the engine idle.

  “But this isn’t just about taxes,” Iggy said. “Gambling is also a moral issue. Isn’t that right, Reverend?”

  “It certainly is. Gambling is a sin. One that ruins lives and destroys families. Government-sponsored gambling is even worse. It poisons our democracy, making all of us complicit in this unholy vice. And the money it generates fills the coffers of a nanny state that squanders our hard-earned dollars on free abortions and handouts to people who refuse to work for a living and are not deserving of our largess.”

  “The phone is lit up,” Iggy said, “so let’s take some calls. June from Barrington, you are on the air.”

  “Good morning, Iggy.”

  “Good morning, June. What’s on your mind?”

  “I can’t believe the governor wants to allow the Lottery Commission take sports bets,” she said. “If we’re going to go down this road, we should turn it over to private enterprise.”

  “Right you are, June. That’s the only sensible way to go about this,” Iggy said, blissfully oblivious that he was contradicting everything he and his guest had just said.

  “Governor McNerney will never do that because she’s a socialist,” Reverend Crenson chimed in. “When she renounced her role in the church of Rome, she chose to forsake God, and as governor she has renounced freedom. She’s as evil as the Kenyan-born Muslim tyrant who illegally occupies the White House.”

  Swell. I killed the engine, fed the parking meter, crossed the park, and slipped into the diner near city hall. As I grabbed a stool at the counter, Charlie, the fry cook who owns the place, cracked three eggs on the grill without taking my order and slapped five strips of bacon down beside them.

  “So whaddaya think about the governor’s plan to legalize bookmaking?” he asked.

  “I don’t have an opinion. You?”

  “My three brothers all work for the state. If this’ll bring in enough dough to save their pensions, I’m all for it.”

  We kicked that around for a while as I ate, then chatted about how the Red Sox were shaping up. We finished critiquing the starting lineup and had just start
ed in on the bullpen when Frieden, the kid city hall reporter, pushed through the door.

  “Mulligan? I thought you were supposed to be sick.”

  “I’m feeling a wee bit peaked,” I said. “Not sure I’ll be able to keep Charlie’s bacon and eggs down.”

  “Liar.”

  “Okay, you caught me,” I said. “But maybe this can be our little secret.”

  “No worries. I won’t tell.”

  “So, how are you doing?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “Why was Chuckie-boy on your case the other day?”

  “He gave me three times more work than I could finish and then yelled at me because I didn’t finish it.”

  “Don’t let him get you down, Kate. The man’s a bully.”

  She plopped down on the stool next to me. Without meeting my eyes, she said, “Working for a newspaper isn’t what I thought it would be.”

  I was pretty sure she didn’t expect a reply, and I was in no mood to nurture. I drained my coffee and wiped the grease from my mouth with a paper napkin. Then I dropped a ten on the counter, turned up the collar of my jean jacket, put on my Red Sox cap, and stepped out into a light morning rain.

  * * *

  The Turk’s Head Building was located in a modest cluster of office towers that Mayor Carozza called the Providence financial district. He actually said this with a straight face. The sixteen-story, V-shaped structure, loosely modeled after New York City’s Flatiron Building, was the tallest in Rhode Island when it was erected in 1913. A century later it was a dwarf, but it remained one of the state’s most fashionable business addresses.

  I sloshed down Westminster Street toward a snarling concrete figurehead suspended three floors above the main entrance. Adorned with a turban and a Fu Manchu mustache, it was supposed to represent a Turkish sultan. I thought it was a dead ringer for Flash Gordon’s arch-enemy, Ming the Merciless.

  I ducked through the revolving door, shook the rain from my cap, and scanned the tenant directory: TD Ameritrade, Janney Montgomery Scott, the BankRI Art Gallery, Café la France, a pride of life insurance companies, a bloat of boutique law firms … Then I rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor and strode to the end of a spit-shined hallway. There I found a frosted-glass door discreetly labeled in gold paint: