Liam Mulligan: Cliff Walk Part 17

Or had I imagined it?

24.

"Yes," I said, "I am a member of Joseph DeLucca's immediate family."

"And exactly how are you related?"

"He's my brother."

"Why is it, then, that you have a different last name?"

"We're half-brothers."

"I'm skeptical," the hospital n.a.z.i said.

"You are?"

"Yes."

"And why would that be?"

"Because I recognize you. You're that reporter from the Dispatch."

"Reporters can have brothers," I said.

"I imagine so," she said. "But this is the fifth time this year you have tried to get into a shooting victim's room by claiming to be a relative."

"The fifth that you know of," I said.

"You mean there were more?"

"Would you believe my family is having a run of bad luck?"

"No."

"Give me a break," I said. "He's a friend, and I really need to talk to him."

"Get out of here before I call security."

"By security do you mean the geriatric rent-a-cop with a limp who waved to me in the lobby, or are you talking about the fat retired beat cop who's munching a cruller in the coffee shop?"

She reached for the phone. I shrugged and headed for the door.

It took a couple of hours, but I managed to piece together the story of what happened to Joseph by reading between the lines of the police report and chatting up three off-duty cops, two hookers, and a bartender. Of the sixty or so people who were in the Tongue and Groove when the shooting started, they were the only ones willing to talk to a reporter with a notepad. Logan Bedford, the a.s.shole from Channel 10, had better luck. A few dozen witnesses had queued up for the opportunity to talk into his microphone. Anything to get on TV.

From what I gathered, it went down this way: By the Budweiser clock on the wall, it was a little after nine P.M. when Jamal, King Felix's nervous triggerman, entered the club, pimp-walked up to the bar, and asked where he could find Joseph DeLucca. Jamal's full name, it turned out, was Jamal Jackson; and he was a little younger than I thought-just fourteen. The boy's father wasn't in the picture. His mother worked the day shift as an orderly at Rhode Island Hospital. Nights, she made beds at the Biltmore. No, she told police, she didn't know Jamal hadn't been to school all year.

Jamal made the bartender nervous. He didn't like the tic in the kid's left eye, and he especially didn't like the fact that he was a kid.

"Far as I know, there's no state law against a kid buying a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b," the bartender told me later, "but he's not permitted to be in an establishment that serves alcohol. If Attila the Nun ever found out he was in here, the b.i.t.c.h would have another excuse to scream b.l.o.o.d.y murder." I didn't like his choice of words for my friend, but I needed to hear the rest of the story, so I didn't make an issue of it.

He told Jamal to get out, the bartender went on. His exact words, if he remembered them right, were "Get lost and come back when you're eighteen."

"Ain't leaving till I see DeLucca," Jamal said, the twitch in his left eye growing more violent.

What the h.e.l.l, the bartender figured. Joseph was the bouncer. He asked Chloe, the plump waitress with the green hair, to fetch Joseph from the all-nude room so he could throw the kid out.

Two minutes later, Joseph walked up to the bar and said, "Somebody lookin' for me?"

"You DeLucca?" Jamal asked.

"Yeah," Joseph said. "Who the f.u.c.k are you?"

Jamal didn't answer. He just reached into his waistband and pulled out his little silver pistol.

He had not picked the best evening for this.

There were twenty-two hookers and roughly forty customers in the club. Eighteen of the customers were there for Mike Scanlon's bachelor party. The festivities had just gotten under way, so the celebrants hadn't drunk themselves into a stupor yet. They'd had one beer apiece, and the first round of tequila shots had just arrived at their tables. Most of the guys had strippers on their laps. The girl who called herself Sacha, a couple of the celebrants told me later, was on her knees in front of the groom-to-be, her head bobbing up and down.

"Can you keep that part out of the paper?" Scanlon asked me. "My fiancee would f.u.c.kin' kill me."

"Sure thing," I said, "as long as you fill me in on what happened next."

When Sacha's work was done, Scanlon expelled a sigh of satisfaction, opened his eyes, and saw the glint of bar light on nickel as Jamal's pistol emerged from his waistband. Scanlon shoved the hooker aside and reached for the revolver in his ankle holster. His pals weren't sure what was happening at first, but instinctively they went for their guns, too.

Scanlon was a Providence cop. So were his buddies.

In the next fifteen seconds, approximately a hundred rounds were fired, according to the official police estimate. One slug grazed Joseph's thigh. Another ricocheted off a metal post and tore a ragged hole through the impressive rump of a stripper named Jezebelle. Dozens more slammed into the mahogany bar and the club's black-painted walls. And some hit what the room full of sharpshooters were aiming at. An a.s.sistant medical examiner was still counting the holes in Jamal's body. Every time he counted, he told me, he came up with a different number.

The cop who recovered Jamal's gun at the scene told me the kid never got off a shot.

25.

Friday morning the executive editor, Marshall Pemberton, sent an all-hands e-mail directing the staff to a.s.semble in the newsroom for a mandatory late afternoon meeting. I didn't figure he was about to announce that we'd won a Pulitzer, so it had to be more bad news. Maybe he was finally going to tell us the old girl was closing down for good.

Once, Smith Coronas clicked and clacked here on long banks of dented metal desks. Teletype machines chattered day and night, spewing AP copy onto long rolls of yellow paper. Copyboys sorted it by subject and hightailed across the ink-stained tile floor to hang it in streams from spikes by the business, sports, and national desks. Every time the door to the back shop swung open, the football fieldsized newsroom rattled with the clanking from the linotype machines. That was all before my time, but I loved listening to the old-timers on the copydesk, the three that were left, reminisce about the old days.

When the paper's miserly owners finally got around to buying computers, the clicking and clacking ceased. Some of the old guys grumbled. Some had trouble adjusting. "Where do you put the paper in this d.a.m.n thing?" Jim Clark had famously asked. But there was no arguing with progress.

Even after the typewriters and linotype machines were ancient history, the newsroom I loved was never quiet. Reporters relentlessly worked the phones. a.s.sistant city editors scuttled from desk to desk, handing out a.s.signments that were not always gratefully received. Photographers and photo editors huddled at the picture desk, arguing about what shots to use. Sports editors bellowed the latest scores. Copy editors cracked wise about bad leads. Some reporters needed earplugs to write their stories, but I liked the racket.

Six years ago the Dispatch's owners, failing to recognize they were in a dying business, spent a million dollars to renovate the place. They laid a maroon carpet, installed recessed lighting, chopped the newsroom into cubicles, hauled in fake butcher-block desks, and plopped down potted plants. But the newsroom still thrummed with the thrill of putting out a daily newspaper. Evenings, when the first edition deadline pa.s.sed and the giant Goss presses began to turn, I could feel the floor vibrate under my feet. Sometimes I'd trot down the back stairs and watch the rolls of newsprint race through those elegant machines. I loved their defiant roar.

Two decades ago, when the Dispatch hired me right out of Providence College to cover high school sports, those presses churned out a quarter of a million copies a day. Now they printed less than half that. The Dispatch's news staff once numbered 340, but there were only 80 of us left-if you counted the 5 interns who worked for free.

At three P.M., Pemberton ventured out his gla.s.s-walled office in the middle of the newsroom and gathered what was left of the news staff around him. Lomax stood by Pemberton's side. They both looked grim.

"As you are all aware, the newspaper industry is experiencing difficult times," Pemberton began, and I felt the air go out of the room. "Over the course of the last two years, we have been forced to make significant cuts in the Dispatch's news budget, including a number of regrettable staff reductions. This week, I was informed by the publisher that the cuts we have made to date have not been sufficient to restore the newspaper's financial stability. Therefore, we are taking the following steps: "Effective a week from tomorrow, the Dispatch will cease publication on Sat.u.r.days. This measure will reduce our printing and delivery costs by fourteen percent. In addition-"

"Why Sat.u.r.days?" Gloria shouted.

Pemberton looked alarmed at the interruption, then said, "Because, Miss Costa, Sat.u.r.day is the weakest advertising day of the week."

"But what if there's news on Friday?" Gloria said.

"There's always news on Friday," Carol Young, the sports editor, grumbled. "It's a big night for sports scores."

"And we'll report them in our online edition," Pemberton said. "Now if I may be allowed to continue?" He held up his right hand, asking for silence, and then pressed on.

"In addition," he said, "we are compelled to make further reductions in payroll."

The staffers present released a collective groan.

"We wish to accomplish this without additional layoffs," Pemberton said. "Therefore, we are reducing the work week of all news department employees, with a commensurate reduction in pay. Effective next Monday, each of you will be a.s.signed to work four eight-hour days a week. Ed Lomax is revising the schedule for next week and will post it by five o'clock, so please check the bulletin boards before you leave for the day. That is all."

With that, he turned and slipped back into his office.

"Hold on," Lomax shouted as the group began to break up. "Mr. Pemberton forgot to mention one last thing. When the supplies on hand run out, you'll all have to buy your own pens and notepads."

That set off a stampede for the supply cabinets. I watched the mayhem for a moment and then sidled up to Lomax as he headed back to the city desk.

"The copy editors might actually work four days a week," I said, "but most of the reporters care too much about their beats to do that. h.e.l.l, most of us have been working six days a week for five days' pay as it is."

"I know that, Mulligan."

"Know what p.i.s.ses me off most about this?"

"No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me."

"Waiting till three o'clock on a Friday afternoon to break bad news," I said. "It's one of those cheap tricks you can find in every management textbook. Pemberton figures that after we fume all weekend, the anger will die down by the time he comes back to work Monday morning."

"There's a hole in your theory," Lomax said.

"What?"

"Pemberton won't be coming back on Monday."

"Why is that?"

"His job has been eliminated."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Now I get to do my work and his."

26.

Monday morning, the newsroom was as quiet and empty as Fenway Park in January. I'd just started working on the day's obits when Mason wandered in, dragged a chair into my cubicle, and dropped into it.

"I finally have something on that thing you asked me to look into," he said.

At first I drew a blank. I'd given him the campaign contribution lists weeks ago, and a lot had happened since then.

"I didn't know anything about the p.o.r.n business," he said, "so I read everything I could find online. One of the things I learned is that most American-made p.o.r.n is shot in the San Fernando Valley, but that some of it also comes out of Miami, Las Vegas, and Ypsilanti, Michigan."

"Ypsilanti? Really?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting," I said, "but how does any of this help us?"

"I figured there's a good chance Maniella has a studio in one of those places."

"But you looked and couldn't find it, right?"

"Not at first."

"Oh?"

"Most p.o.r.nographers aren't as secretive as Sal Maniella. Wicked Pictures, Vivid Entertainment, Digital Playground, and a bunch of others with more, uh, more colorful names even have listed phone numbers. So I made a dozen blind calls and asked to speak to the owners. A couple of them hung up on me when I told them who I was, but most of them were eager to talk about Maniella."

"How come?"

"They don't like him. The guys I talked to-a couple of them were women, actually-said Maniella is notorious for stealing their best girls."

"I see."

"They also think he rats them out to the authorities."

"For what? It's a legal business."