Liam Mulligan: Cliff Walk Part 7

"You know, there is something," I said, and handed him the computer printouts. "I could use a fresh pair of eyes on this."

"What am I looking for?"

"Any hint that the Maniellas have been funneling campaign contributions to the governor by using their p.o.r.n actors as fronts. You might as well look at these, too," I said. I opened a file drawer and pulled out similar lists for the chairmen of the Rhode Island House and Senate judiciary committees.

He fanned the pages and whistled. "A lot to go through," he said.

"It is, but there's no hurry."

"Do we know the p.o.r.n actors' names?"

"No, we don't."

He thought for a minute, then said, "Okay. Let me play around with this for a while and see what I can do."

Mason didn't know all the tricks of the trade, but he was d.a.m.ned smart. Maybe he could find something.

10.

A half hour south of Providence, the little town of Warren clings like a barnacle to the eastern sh.o.r.e of Narragansett Bay. Here, the water is sometimes streaked with sewage, and quahogs angry with coliform bacteria pave the mucky bottom. Main Street, several hundred yards from and parallel to the sh.o.r.eline, is a postcard from the Great Depression-old corner drugstore, red-brick town hall with Palladian windows, and ramshackle wood-frame storefronts with vacant office s.p.a.ce on the second and third floors.

I parked Secretariat at a meter in front of a narrow storefront office two doors north of the police station. The office had housed a three-reporter news bureau until the Dispatch closed it down a couple of years ago to save money. Now, black lettering on the gla.s.s front door read "Bruce McCracken, Private Investigations." I entered and found him alone, sitting behind a computer at an oak desk that had seen better days. For the desk, like the town, those days were ninety years ago. A bank of dented metal file cabinets and an old black safe the size of a minifridge had been shoved against the back wall. The only decent pieces of furniture in the place were the black leather swivel chair he was sitting in and two client chairs lined up in front of his desk.

I'd known McCracken since our school days at Providence College. After graduation, he'd taken a job as an in-house investigator for a big fire insurance company and stayed for twenty years until he got laid off last spring. For the company, it was a brain-dead move. McCracken was good. Every year, his work had saved his employer hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of dollars.

He held up his cell phone to show me he was occupied and pointed at one of the client chairs, inviting me to take a seat. Instead, I walked across the warped linoleum floor to the center of the room and scanned the framed autographed photos of Providence College basketball greats mounted on the cracked plaster walls: Jimmy Walker, Ray Flynn, Jim Thompson, Johnny Egan, Vinnie Ernst, Kevin Stacom, Lenny Wilkins, Joey Ha.s.sett, Marvin Barnes, Billy Donovan, Ernie DiGregorio. I was still looking when McCracken finished his call, popped out of his chair, and walked over to grip my hand in his customary metacarpal-crushing handshake.

"When is my picture going up?" I asked.

"Soon as you get off the bench."

Fans of private eye novels have a warped idea of what real private detectives do. Most of their work is routine: delivering summonses in civil cases, locating child support delinquents, investigating pilfering from warehouses, spying on unfaithful spouses, checking the validity of insurance claims, and doing background checks on job applicants. From time to time, they might search for missing persons the police have given up on or help lawyers gather evidence in civil and criminal cases. Some P.I.s specialize, but McCracken, like most of them, did a little of this and a little of that. Unlike Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Robert B. Parker's Spenser, real private detectives rarely investigate murders. Most of them go their whole lives without beating somebody up or gunning somebody down.

"How's business?" I asked as I dropped into one of the visitor's chairs.

"Great!" he said.

"Really? Because this place is a dump."

"I'm trying to keep overhead down for now," he said, "but I'm getting so much work that I'm thinking about hiring a s.p.u.n.ky secretary and moving into a two-room suite in the Turk's Head Building in the spring."

"Glad to hear it."

"Maybe I can get Effie Perine."

"She's s.p.u.n.ky all right, but she's also loyal. You'll never lure her away from Sam Spade."

"Things keep going this good and I'll need a partner to help shoulder the load," he said. "You oughta give it some thought. From what I hear, the Dispatch is going down the tubes."

"Thanks. I will. That why you wanted to see me? To offer me a job?"

"One of the reasons."

"What else?"

"You looking into that Colfax Street child p.o.r.n bust?"

"I'm not," I said.

"Maybe you should."

"And why would that be?"

"Day after the raid, this guy shows up in my office. Six two, blue eyes, gray hair, expensive razor cut. Wearing an Armani suit and a TAG Heuer watch. Maybe fifty or fifty-five. Wants to know do I have any Providence police contacts."

"Which you do."

"Of course."

"And?"

"He asks could I give him a heads-up if his name surfaces in the child p.o.r.n investigation."

"What's this guy's name?"

"He says I don't need to know until I agree to take his case."

"What did you do?"

"I pulled out the top drawer of my desk, reached in, and told him I was going to shoot him if he didn't get the h.e.l.l out of my office."

"Got a gun in the top drawer, do you?"

"I keep my Sturm, Ruger in the safe, but he didn't know that."

"Recognize him?"

"I didn't. But it was a busy morning. Hard to find a parking s.p.a.ce on the street. I figured he must have left his car in the munic.i.p.al lot behind the town hall. As soon as he went out the door, I slipped out the back, checked the lot, and watched him get behind the wheel of a black, year-old Jaguar XJ."

"Piece of s.h.i.t," I said.

"Yeah. Shouldn't drive one of those unless you can afford to have a mechanic follow you around in a tow truck."

"Get the plate?"

"Of course."

"Run it?"

"Duh."

"So who is he?"

"Charles B. Wayne."

"Doctor Charles B. Wayne?"

"The same."

"No s.h.i.t?"

"No s.h.i.t."

I thanked him and got up to go.

"Mulligan?"

"Um?"

"If the good doctor is a chicken hawk, do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Bury the sonuvab.i.t.c.h."

11.

The most interesting thing about Mary and Joseph Mendoza was that they had eight children and had named the three girls Mary and the five boys Joseph. I wondered how Joseph Sr. would manage now that his wife, just thirty-seven, had died from what the undertaker described as "a short illness."

I had two obits to go when Jimmy Cagney screamed, "You'll never take me alive, copper!" The line from his 1931 cla.s.sic, Public Enemy, was my ringtone for incoming from law enforcement sources.

"Mulligan."

"Steve Parisi."

"Afternoon, Captain."

"Thought you'd like to know Vanessa Maniella and her mother came home Tuesday."

"Three days ago?"

"That's right."

"Guess you've been a little busy," I said.

"Be grateful I called at all, smart-a.s.s."

"They ID the body?"

Five seconds ticked off. Maybe six. "No, they did not."

"It's not him?"

"We still don't know."

"What? Okay. Start from the beginning and tell me the whole story."

"You're joking, right?"

"Hey, you called me, remember? What can you tell me?"

Five seconds again. "Just that they're home. When I drove up to their place on the lake again Tuesday night, they were pulling a couple of big suitcases out of the Lexus."

"Where'd they been?"

"They declined to say."

"Did they say anything?"

"I asked when did they last speak to Sal."

"And?"

"Vanessa informed me that she and her mother had nothing to say to the police and referred me to her attorney."

"Why would she act like that?"

"Been asking myself the same question."

"Makes you wonder if maybe she had him killed, doesn't it?"

That five-second delay again. "The thought crossed my mind."

"Got tired of waiting for the old man to turn the rest of the business over to her, did she?"

"I wouldn't want to speculate."