Liam Mulligan: Cliff Walk Part 28

"There must be," she said. "I mean, what are the odds that there were two child p.o.r.n factories in our little state? The way I figure it, the Winklers were running their operation out of Colfax Street, somehow got away when the bust went down, and moved their operation to Chad Brown."

"That's how I figure it, too."

"Of course, we don't know for sure," she said. "The Providence cops are p.i.s.sed at the way Parisi's been bigfooting them, so they're stonewalling us."

"I don't suppose Dr. Charles Wayne's name has come up in any of this."

That startled her. "Some reason it should?"

So I told her what I'd heard, leaving McCracken and Peggi out of it. "Be nice if we could get a look at his home computer," I said.

"It would, but we can't. There's no probable cause for a warrant."

We lapsed into silence as Charlie shuffled over to top off our coffees. The silence dragged when he moseyed back to the grill. We were probably both thinking the same thing: We didn't have a clue who was behind the Chad Brown murders. The body parts at the pig farm were still a dead end. And we had no idea why Sal's double had been whacked. We were just blundering around in the dark.

We broke the silence at the same time.

"Could it all be connected somehow?" I asked, just as Fiona said: "What if it's all connected?"

"Parisi won't speculate," I said.

"But we will," she said.

So we started brainstorming, throwing out ideas that had been bouncing around in our skulls for weeks.

"A war between rival p.o.r.nographers?" I suggested.

"Maybe. The Chad Brown creeps try to whack Sal so he whacks them."

"Of course, the creeps could have been working for Sal."

"In that case," Fiona said, "maybe Arena and Gra.s.so whacked them all to settle their old strip club beef."

"Then again, what if this is all the handiwork of the Sword of G.o.d?" I said, and started to give her a rundown on Sunday's service.

"I heard all about that," she interrupted. "Parisi planted an undercover in the congregation to keep an eye on them."

"Jimmy Ludovich," I said.

"How'd you know that?"

"I saw him there Sunday."

I sipped coffee that was turning as cold as my investigation.

"Got anything solid yet on the Maniellas' illegal campaign contributions?" Fiona asked.

"Not yet."

"That's what you should be concentrating on. You're a reporter, not a cop. Murder investigations are way out of your league."

"You're probably right."

She picked up her cup of coffee, discovered it was cold, clunked it back on the table, and sighed.

"So we're still nowhere with all of this," she said.

"Only thing we can be pretty sure of," I said, "is that the body parts at Scalici's farm came from the Chad Brown snuff film factory."

"No, we can't," she said. "We can't be sure of anything."

40.

Christmas Day I didn't have anything better to do, so I volunteered for a double shift on the city desk again. I edited the annual holiday traffic fatal-a family of five erased in a collision with a snowplow-and was scrolling the AP national wire when a story out of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, caught my eye.

The parish priest at St. Agnes Roman Catholic Church had presided over midnight Ma.s.s on Christmas Eve, but he failed to show up for Ma.s.s on Christmas morning. Alarmed, the vicar went looking for him, found the back door of the rectory kicked in, and called the police. Two patrolmen arrived promptly and discovered that the place had been ransacked. They found the priest dead in his bed. Father Rajane Valois had been executed with a single gunshot to the back of his head.

I thought about calling Parisi to see if he'd heard the news, but it was Christmas. I figured it could wait a day. Twenty minutes later, Jimmy Cagney's voice shrieked from my cell phone: "You'll never take me alive, copper!"

"Merry Christmas, Captain."

"Not so merry in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin."

"Is that so?"

"A parish priest was shot to death sometime early this morning."

"Father Rajane Valois," I said.

"You know about this?"

"I read about it on the AP wire."

A five-second delay, and then: "I just got off the phone with the chief of police in Fond du Lac. He says they found about a hundred child p.o.r.n videos on the good father's personal computer."

"Doesn't surprise me," I said.

"Oh?"

"He was one of the names you got from the Internet providers," I said.

"How the h.e.l.l do you know that?"

"A source."

"Jesus! This investigation leaks like the t.i.tanic."

"Now we know why the Chad Brown killers downloaded all those e-mails," I said.

"Looks like."

"How do you suppose they got the priest's name from the Internet provider?"

"Probably paid somebody off," Parisi said. "A bribe is as good as a subpoena."

"Better," I said. "You don't have to wait for it to be signed by a judge."

"They probably have the other five names, too," Parisi said.

"A hit list," I said.

"Be my guess. I called the FBI this morning, but n.o.body on duty today knows anything about our case. If the bureau doesn't move on this soon, we might end up with five more deserving corpses."

"Vigilantes," I said.

"Or Good Samaritans with guns."

After we signed off, I tried to remember what I knew about Fond du Lac. All I could come up with was that it was about the size of Providence and that Edward L. Doheny, an Irish American oil tyc.o.o.n, was born there. Doheny was the inspiration for the fictional Daniel Plainview, the evil genius played by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood.

41.

Three days later, the cops reporter called in sick, so I got stuck with writing the police briefs-a dozen short, pointless paragraphs about purse s.n.a.t.c.hings, break-ins, fender benders, and Peeping Toms. A few minutes after I turned it in, Lomax was standing over my desk with a computer printout in his hand. He gave me a dirty look and began to read out loud.

John Mura, 24, of 75 Chalkstone Avenue, was charged with burglary yesterday after four teenagers walking their Great Dane spotted him climbing through the window of an apartment at 21 Zone Street. Mura told police he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids and their dog.

"Exactly right," I said.

"I can't help but notice that you didn't quote Mura directly," Lomax said.

"I paraphrased."

"And why is that?"

"Because according to the Providence police, his exact words were 'those little c.o.c.ksuckers and their f.u.c.king mutt.'"

"And do I detect, in your paraphrase, an allusion to s...o...b..-Doo?"

"I don't know," I said. "Do you?"

One corner of his mouth curled in a poor excuse for a smile. "I kinda like this one, so I'm gonna run with it," he said, "but I'm keeping my eye on you."

I was flipping through my notes on the Chad Brown murder, trying to see if I'd missed anything, when Johnny Rivers interrupted me with his rendition of "Secret Agent Man," my ring-tone for McCracken.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Did you know Vanessa Maniella bought an old warehouse in West Warwick six weeks ago?" the private detective said.

"I didn't. Your source good on this?"

"A Realtor I know brokered the deal."

"Where is it exactly?"

"On Washington Street. Used to be a discount furniture warehouse. When that went belly-up, the Cunha brothers ran a flea market there for a while."

"What's she doing with it?"

"Don't know. Another strip club, maybe."

"Sounds like a lot of s.p.a.ce for a strip club," I said. "Have you been out there?"

"No. Just thought there might be a story in it for you."

Late that afternoon, I drove out to West Warwick to check it out. The warehouse was a three-story red-brick structure sandwiched between a print shop and a p.a.w.nbroker. A "Half Price on Discount Furniture" sign, so faded that it was almost unreadable, stretched across the front of the building between the first- and second-floor windows. A "Cunha's Fabulus Flea Market" sign, misspelled and hand-painted on a barn doorsize slab of plywood, was nailed across three of the second-floor windows. All of the windows were dark, but eight cars were parked head in against the front of the building. One of them was Sal Maniella's black Hummer. The others, low-end-model Fords and Toyotas, looked a few miles short of the junkyard.

I pulled in beside the Hummer, got out, and saw why the warehouse windows were dark. The gla.s.s had been painted black on the inside. I climbed the crumbling concrete steps to the front door and tried the latch. It was locked, and there was no bell. I pounded on the peeling green paint with my fist until I heard heavy footsteps. The door was shoved open by a big man wearing a leather shoulder holster over a green-and-white Celtics T-shirt with Kevin Garnett's number 5 on the front.

"Mulligan? The h.e.l.l you doing here? This place is secret."

"Not anymore," I said.

"Mr. Maniella ain't gonna like this."

"He'll get over it," I said. "So what are you doing here, Joseph? Get tired of bouncing drunks at the Tongue and Groove?"

"I got promoted."

"To what?"

"Bodyguard."

"The two ex-SEALs aren't enough?"

"Them guys are f.u.c.kin' good, but they ain't always around."

"Out of town, are they?"