Liam Mulligan: Cliff Walk Part 25

"She's black and he's white," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"Aren't they married?"

"To one another, yeah."

She let out a long sigh. "I told you-"

"Yeah, yeah, you don't date white guys. But you do dance, don't you?"

She averted her eyes and sipped her joe.

Charlie turned from the grill, swept my cold coffee off the counter, dumped it, and gave me a refill. When I picked up the cup, my hand was shaking. As I raised the coffee to my lips, a few drops slopped over the rim and fell on the front of my Bruins sweatshirt.

"Still got that klutzy charm," I said.

I thought that would get a smile out of her, but it didn't. She plucked napkins from the dispenser and patted me dry. Then she called her office, told her secretary to cancel her afternoon appointments, and spun on her stool to face me.

"I've got a couple of things this morning that I can't get out of," she said, "but when I'm done, I'm buying you lunch."

Charlie watched me watch her as she exited the diner and strode down the sidewalk toward the Textron Tower, where she had an office on the fourteenth floor. I kept looking until she was out of sight.

"Cla.s.sy dame," he said.

"I agree."

"And she's black."

"Very."

"The little doll you used to come in here with last year was Asian," he said.

"She was."

"Got something against white girls?"

"I like 'em all, Charlie. White, black, yellow, and brown are my favorite colors."

"I like 'em all, too," he said, "but you seem to have a taste for the exotic." He put his hands on the counter and leaned toward me, wanting a serious answer.

"It's not about skin color, Charlie. Most guys want a woman who votes like they do, cheers for the same team, likes the same kind of movies, drinks the same brand of beer. I prefer women who aren't like me. They're more interesting both in and out of bed."

Charlie furrowed his brow and thought it over. Then he nodded to show he understood and turned back to the grill.

I wandered over to the Biltmore, bought The New York Times and Sports Ill.u.s.trated at the newsstand off the lobby, carried them back to the diner, and read them over cups of Charlie's decaf. I was admiring the magazine's photo spread on the ten greatest fights of all time when Yolanda called and said to meet her at the Capital Grille.

The place was packed with bankers, lawyers, politicians, and ladies who lunch, so we had to wait at the bar for ten minutes before the matre d' showed us to a table. At first Yolanda stuck to small talk, chatting about music, movies, and the weather while wolfing down the cedar-planked salmon with fennel relish. I played along as I nursed a c.o.ke and managed a few bites of the lobster-and-crab burger. After Claus, the pint-size waiter, smirked at my Bruins sweatshirt and served us Irish coffees, the conversation turned serious.

"Did you always want to be a reporter?"

"I always wanted to play for the Celtics. Journalism was my backup plan."

"Why that?"

"It's the only thing I'm any good at."

"Oh, come on! You're a smart guy. You could have done anything."

"Not true. I can't sing worth a d.a.m.n, I suck at math, I have a short attention span, and I hate wearing a tie. My options were limited."

"It takes a lot of courage to do what you do."

"Courage? My friend Brad Clift has courage. He was water-boarded by the Sudanese for photographing the genocide in Darfur for the Hartford Courant. Daniel Pearl had courage. He investigated al-Qaeda for The Wall Street Journal, and terrorists in Afghanistan cut off his head. I've never dared to chase stories like that. I'm a coward, Yolanda. I stayed right here in Little Rhody, where the worst thing likely to happen to me is a paper cut."

Yolanda grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes.

"Baby," she said, "you don't have to travel to Darfur or Afghanistan to fight evil. There's plenty of it right here."

That was a thought worth pondering, but all I could focus on was that she'd called me "baby."

"Come on," she said. "Let's go for a walk."

She turned her jacket collar up against the chill and took my hand as we strolled along the river. For a while, we didn't speak. It was a comfortable silence. I stroked her palm with my thumb, craving the contact.

"I have to ask you something," I said.

"Okay."

"Do you think your clients are involved in this?"

"The murders?"

"Yeah."

"If I knew, I wouldn't be able to say."

"What about the snuff film?"

"If I thought they were capable of that, they wouldn't be my clients."

We walked on in silence. I tried to turn off the b.l.o.o.d.y slide show that was flashing through my brain. Overhead, a jetliner minutes from takeoff at T. F. Green Airport climbed through an impossibly blue sky. I wanted to toss the b.l.o.o.d.y images into its cargo hold and send them into the stratosphere. Sensing my agitation, Yolanda squeezed my hand tighter.

By a pedestrian bridge that arched over the river, she bought a hot pretzel from a street vendor, tore it into pieces, and tossed the sc.r.a.ps to a pair of mallards that had grown too fat on handouts to fly south for the winter.

"You look like you could use a drink," she said, so we rode the elevator to the top of the Renaissance Hotel and settled into a booth with a view of the statehouse dome. She ordered an apple martini. I ordered a Bushmills straight up. The first sip felt good on the way down and then tore into my stomach lining like a dagger.

"Hey, Mulligan?"

"Um?"

"Why don't you ever use your first name?"

"I was named after my maternal grandfather, Sergeant Liam Patrick O'Shaughnessy of the Providence PD. Thirty years ago, outside Bruccola's vending machine business on Atwells Avenue, somebody hit him in the head with a pipe, pulled his pistol from his holster, and shot him dead with it."

"Oh, Jesus! I'm so sorry."

"It's okay. It was a long time ago."

"It's not okay. If it were, you'd be able to use his name."

"Whenever I hear it," I said, "I picture the chalk outline of his body on a cracked sidewalk."

We sat in silence for a moment.

"Your byline is L. S. A. Mulligan, so you must have middle names you could go by."

"Seamus and Aloysius."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Mulligan suits me better."

"Isn't a mulligan a second chance?" she asked.

"A do-over, yeah. Lord knows I need as many of those as I can get."

"Okay, baby," she said. "Mulligan it is."

"'Baby' also works for me."

"Don't take that wrong," she said. "I call the mailman 'baby,' too."

That was a conversation stopper, so we sat quietly for a while and sipped our drinks.

"Mulligan?"

"Um?"

"Did they ever catch the guy?"

"No, they never did."

She picked up the bar tab, and we strolled the Riverwalk again as the golden globes lining the water snapped on. We stopped at a bench and sat together in the dusk. My grandfather's gun dug into the small of my back, making me wonder if I should buy something smaller. A beat cop stomped up and glared at us, figuring a black woman with her arm on a white guy's shoulder had to be up to no good. Then he noticed how well she was dressed and moved on. A minute later, a drug dealer shuffled up and offered us cocaine and marijuana. It was time to go.

"Thank you, Yolanda. It's been a lovely day."

"It's not over yet," she said.

We found our cars, and I followed Yolanda to her place, where she whipped up a tangy mix of chicken and vegetables. This time I managed to clean my plate. Later we sat together on her black leather sofa, and she opened a bottle of thirty-year-old single-malt Scotch. I was a Bushmills man, but I didn't let that or my doctor's advice stop me. Tonight I needed whiskey.

Yolanda placed her hand on my shoulder.

"How are you feeling?"

"Sitting here drinking with you? I'm great."

"You're not. You're so tense you're practically vibrating. You need to get your mind off what you saw yesterday."

"How do I do that?"

"By thinking good thoughts." She paused, then said, "Tell me what you're most proud of."

"Proud?"

"Uh-huh."

"Nothing leaps to mind."

"What about your Pulitzer? And the Polk Award you won?"

"How'd you know about that?"

"I Googled you."

"Awards are bulls.h.i.t, Yolanda. You just stick them in a drawer and move on to the next story."

"There must be something," she said.

"That I'm proud of?"

"Yeah."

"Well ... I guess I'm proud that I made the PC basketball team as a walk-on."

"That's a good one."

"I would have been prouder if I hadn't spent four years on the bench."

"What else?"

"That the cla.s.siest woman in New England wants to know what makes me proud."

I was exhausted and a little drunk. I must have nodded off because the next thing I knew, Yolanda was lifting my legs onto the couch. She untied my Reeboks, slid them off, and tucked a throw pillow under my head.

"Go back to sleep," she said.