Liam Mulligan: Cliff Walk Part 30

"The p.o.r.nography business will survive." Sal rubbed his face and looked at me for a moment. "How much longer do you think the Dispatch will hold on?"

"I don't know. Two or three years, maybe."

"What will you do then?"

"No idea."

"Would you consider coming to work for me?"

"Doing what?"

"You are an expert at digging up hard-to-get information," Sal said.

"So I've been told."

"I could use somebody like you."

"What kind of information are you after?"

"That is something to be discussed after you take the job."

I considered asking Sal about the Chad Brown murders again but then thought better of it. He'd already told me the only thing he knew was what he'd read in the paper. If he wasn't involved, that was probably the truth. If he was involved, he wasn't going to tell me.

I told Sal I'd think about his offer. I shook his hand, and I was on my way out when I ran into Vanessa in the hall.

"Did Dad offer you that job?" she asked.

"He did."

"Going to take it?"

"I don't know."

"You should. You'd look good in front of a camera."

"Oh G.o.d, no!"

She threw back her head and laughed. "Just kidding," she said, and walked on by. I turned and watched her step into her father's office.

I continued down the hall, pushed through the door to the outer office, and found it empty. The receptionist had left for the day, or maybe she'd stepped out for a smoke. I walked across the beige carpet and went through the steel door to the peeling green vestibule. Then I stopped, thought for a second, and decided to employ one of those investigative reporting techniques they don't teach at Columbia. I turned back just as the lock in the steel door clicked shut. I punched the first four numbers into the electronic keypad, guessed at the fifth, and hit it on the fourth try. At the receptionist's desk, I found the b.u.t.ton that unlocked the inner door, slipped inside, and crept back to Sal's office. Standing outside the door, I could just make out the voices.

"When did this happen?" Sal said.

"A couple of hours ago," Vanessa said.

"Where?"

"Pawtucket."

"Sonuvab.i.t.c.h," Sal said. "It's not over."

Then the phone rang. Sal took the call and started arguing with someone about the price of a new video camera. I tiptoed down the hall, went back out the door, and headed for the Dispatch.

I'd just stepped into the newsroom when Lomax grabbed me by the arm and handed me a printout of a story under Mason's byline: Nine-year-old Julia Arruda of 22 Maynard St., Pawtucket, was abducted at 3:15 p.m. today and remains missing.

Pawtucket police said the child had been playing with friends outside the Potter Burns Elementary School, which she attends, when she was struck in the face with a s...o...b..ll and decided to go home. She had just stepped onto the sidewalk when a van pulled up and the back door flew open. A man wearing a black ski mask jumped out, grabbed her, and dragged her inside. Julia's best friend, Karen Rose, also 9, ran after the van, caught the license plate, and wrote it down in the snow, police said.

Twenty minutes later, police found the van abandoned on a side street a half-mile away. It had been reported stolen yesterday from a U-Haul lot on Harris Street in nearby South Attleboro.

42.

Tuesday at dawn, FBI agents raided houses in Fort Worth, Texas; Naples, Florida; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Andover, Ma.s.sachusetts; and Edison, New Jersey. They arrested five middle-aged men and seized their computers. By Thursday, all five had been formally charged with possession of child p.o.r.nography, released on bail pending trial, and fired from their jobs. According to Parisi, all five were warned that the charges might be the least of their problems-that someone out there might be gunning for them.

Shortly before noon on Friday, Charles H. Gleason of 43 Carmello Drive in Edison was waiting at a red light at the corner of Lincoln Highway and Plainfield Avenue when somebody driving a stolen Buick Regal pulled up next to him, rolled down the pa.s.senger-side window, and fired three shots from a nine-millimeter Springfield XdM. According to the a.s.sociated Press account, cops found the Buick abandoned a few miles away on the Rutgers University campus. The handgun, reported stolen from a gun shop in Providence a month earlier, was under the driver's seat. Gleason's wife, referring to her late husband as "the pathetic little pervert," told the AP he'd been on his way to the state unemployment office to apply for benefits.

I didn't care. I had a date.

43.

I liked to go into Boston for the games. Secretariat had memorized the directions to Fenway Park and the Garden and knew to drop me off at a couple of watering holes along the route. The bars on Yawkey Way always served up just what I needed-cheese fries, entertaining loudmouths, and the occasional Yankees or Knicks fan who wandered into the wrong place. I didn't often bother with the rest of the city. Providence had all the problems I could handle, and it was small enough to fit in my pocket.

Cambridge, just north of Boston, was a schizophrenic little place: halfway houses and mom-and-pop grocers interspersed with pretentious eateries and ivory towers that hummed with possibility. The center of the town was gritty enough to remind me of home.

As Yolanda and I headed to Central Square for Patricia Smith's poetry reading, I pointed out everything I didn't like. "Another Starbucks," I said for the fourth time. "Another grill with an 'e' on the end. And there's another shop with an extra 'pe' on the end. Either folks around here can't spell, or we've wandered into an alternate universe."

Behind the wheel of her Acura, Yolanda shook her head and laughed, and I felt my breath catch on something.

"MIT and Harvard spell money," she said. "What did you expect?"

The Cantab Lounge was in the middle of a block that lifted my spirits a little. Although it held one of those ghastly fern-filled restaurants, there was also a pizza joint that sold sloppy slices and a 7-Eleven with ancient hot dogs spinning on hot rollers-cuisine for the tipsy, late-night connoisseur.

We grabbed a parking spot behind the bar, and I walked behind my date, getting a load of the scenery. Yolanda had tucked a man's blue oxford shirt into faded jeans that looked poured on. On the back right pocket was a familiar logo-True Religion. I don't consider myself a prayin' man, but ...

"Mulligan, c'mon, the show's starting soon. What are you doing back there?" I looked up to see Yolanda smirking at me from beneath the brim of a Chicago Cubs hat. She looked so gorgeous that I'd already decided to forgive her for the ball cap.

She'd finally agreed to go with me because she really wanted to hear Patricia read, didn't want to go alone, and couldn't find anyone else who gave a s.h.i.t about poetry. Her usual ground rule applied: We were just going together, not goin' together.

We opened the door to the Cantab and were greeted by the smell of cheap whiskey and old fried food, the sound of heartbreak on the jukebox, and dark the way drunks like it. Before my eyes adjusted, I could barely make out the forms of guys who'd probably been glued to their stools since breakfast.

We followed a stream of people down a narrow staircase to the bas.e.m.e.nt, where the poetry reading was set to start in fifteen minutes. The buzz there hinted at an optimism sorely lacking on the first floor. The room was strung with colored lights. The stage was just a small area cleared at the front of the room. A DJ was playing songs that sounded like drums mumbling.

We found stools at the bar, the last seats left. Yolanda requested white wine. The barkeep, a gravelly-voiced gal named Judy, unscrewed the cap on a green bottle and poured liberally into a plastic cup. I wanted beer, but I asked for a club soda.

"I know why this place is called the Cantab," I said.

"Why?" Yolanda said.

"In England, a resident of Cambridge was called a Cantabrigian. So were students at the University of Cambridge. And here we are in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts."

"And just how did you know that?"

"I Googled it this morning while I was looking up ways to impress you."

The room had grown so crowded that folks were sitting on the floor beside the stage and on the stairs leading to the restrooms. We were approaching fire hazard, and Yolanda already had me a little sweaty. I could feel her thigh against mine.

"So where's my favorite poet?" I shouted. It was tough to hear.

"How many poets have you actually read?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether Dr. Seuss counts."

Yolanda laughed again, and my thigh quivered a little. "That's Patricia over there," she said.

I followed her eyes to a corner near the front of the room where a Hershey-colored woman was signing a slim volume of poetry. I recognized her smile from the back of her books, but I was unprepared for the rest of her, looking good in black slacks and a blue silk blouse with an African print. She looked up just in time to see me staring, came straight for us, and gave Yolanda a hard hug. Seeing the two of them tangled that way sent my mind into all sorts of kinky places.

"I didn't know you two knew each other," I said. "I a.s.sumed Yolanda only knew you from your work, and she let me think it."

Patricia looked at me curiously.

"My name is Mulligan. I'm Ms. Mosley-Jones's boy toy."

Patricia looked at Yolanda. Then back at me. Then at Yolanda again.

"In his dreams," Yolanda said, and they both laughed.

n.o.body told me that we'd have to suffer through something called an "open mic," which consisted of folks reading poems about their cats, poems about their o.r.g.a.s.ms, poems about their cats' o.r.g.a.s.ms, and poems that said over and over that the poet was angry, or in love, or h.o.r.n.y, or all three. Then it was time for the main event.

Hearing Patricia was more mesmerizing than reading her. The poems, jazzy and full of language play, gave my emotions a workout. I hadn't been that close to tears since I'd been forced to give away my dog. The dog wasn't too thrilled about it, either.

When the reading was over, I just wanted to go someplace with Yolanda and talk about what we'd heard. Preferably her place. Preferably in a horizontal position. But first it was burgers at the fern place. I suffered through a waitress named Ariel, shoestring fries, and parsley on the plate. Yolanda and I talked about Patricia's poetry, and she suggested names of other poets I might like. I promptly forgot them all.

The drive back to Rhode Island took too long, yet not as long as I wanted it to. We listened to Buddy Guy and John Lee Hooker and Koko Taylor and Tommy Castro. We didn't talk much, but it was a comfortable silence. At least her half of it. I felt sweat trickle under my shirt.

Finally we reached Yolanda's place, where Secretariat waited like a sentry at the curb across the street. I hoped he'd be waiting there for a while. Maybe until morning.

I walked her to her door. She held my hand part of the way, then broke the connection.

"That was great, Mulligan. I had a good time," she said. "You wear culture pretty well." She pulled her keys from her bag and unlocked her front door.

"Yolanda?"

She turned and locked eyes with me.

"I want to kiss you."

"I know."

She looked at me as if I were a puppy she had decided not to adopt. Then she stepped inside and closed her door so softly that I didn't hear the latch click into place.

44.

Next morning I woke up thinking about Yolanda. I needed to stop obsessing about her and get my head back into the job. The cops were nowhere and so was I. Clearly we were missing something, but I had no idea what it was or where to find it.

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to take another look at Sal Maniella. He'd come out of hiding because, as he put it, "something needed my attention." He'd offered me a job because, according to him, I was "an expert at digging up hard-to-get information." And what was it I'd overheard him say on the afternoon of the Pawtucket kidnapping? Oh yeah. He'd said: "Sonuvab.i.t.c.h. It's not over."

Sal knew more than he was telling, and I had the feeling he was up to something more than making dirty movies.

I ran the possibilities over in my mind while I unloaded my grandfather's gun. I doubted Sal was involved in the child p.o.r.n business, but it sounded like he was keeping tabs on it. If his interest wasn't business, maybe it was personal. I put the gun back in the shadow box and returned it to its place of honor on my wall. Whatever Sal was up to, there was no reason to think it would involve sending Black Shirt and Gray Shirt after me again.

In the newsroom, I spent the morning using every search engine I knew of to research him again online. I didn't find much, and I learned nothing new. After lunch at the diner, I walked across the Providence River to the red-brick courthouse and looked him up in the card catalog that lists the docket numbers of every criminal case filed in the state in the last fifty years. Nothing. Then I checked the card catalog for civil cases and learned he'd been sued a few times (payroll disputes with three of his employees, an alienation of affections suit, and a slip-and-fall on his front steps) and that he'd sued a few people himself (a manufacturer in a dispute over some faulty video equipment, a contractor who did a shoddy job roofing his house, and a neighbor he accused of poisoning his dog). No help there. To be thorough, I ran the same check on Vanessa and came up empty.

What next? I decided to try another long shot.

Police and social service records involving children are supposed to be confidential, but nothing really is if you know the right people. In a state you can throw a shot put across, a good reporter knows almost everybody. I rang up Dave Reid, a former Dispatch a.s.sistant city editor. He'd fled the crumbling business six years ago to join the police department in the little town of Smithfield, which includes the village of Greenville, where the Maniellas had lived for years.

"Seven tomorrow morning work for you?" he asked.

"Sure," I said, although it was awfully G.o.dd.a.m.ned early. So at seven o'clock sharp, I stepped into the deputy chief's office and plunked a copy of the Dispatch, two large coffees, and a box holding a Dunkin' Donuts a.s.sortment on his supernaturally clean desk.

"Doughnuts? Really?" he said. "I thought you hated cliches."

"If you don't eat them, I will," I said, so he pried open the box and plucked the leaking jelly doughnut I'd had my heart set on.

"You sure Vanessa Maniella spent her entire childhood in Smithfield?" he asked.

"Yeah. The family owned a house near the Stillwater Reservoir before they built their Versailles on Waterman Lake."