“Sure thing. So what’s my first case?”
“You know Brian Annunzio?”
“The criminal lawyer?”
“That’s the one,” McCracken said. “He’s hired us to help prepare the defense for his latest client.”
“What’s the charge?”
“The guy’s ready to cop to attempted robbery, assault and battery, and possession of an unregistered firearm; but the Providence cops are also looking at him for two murders and for stealing two hundred grand from one of the dead guys.”
I turned and stared at him.
“Are you talking about Mario?”
“I am.”
“If Mario can afford Annunzio, he must have Alfano’s money stashed somewhere.”
“He claims he doesn’t.”
“Then how’s he paying the lawyer?”
“Whoosh is footing the bill.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m not,” McCracken said. “He isn’t springing for bail, though. Says he doesn’t want the punk running around loose for a while.”
“I’ll bet. Are you sure you want me on this one? I haven’t exactly been getting along with Mario lately.”
“Me either,” McCracken said. “As you may recall, the last time I ran into him I popped him in the nose.”
“Did you tell Annunzio about this?”
“Didn’t have to. Mario gave him the whole story.”
“And he still wants us?”
“It’s why he wants us. We already know the case. Anybody else would be starting from scratch.”
“Have you talked to Mario yet?”
“I have.”
“What’s his story?”
“Says he didn’t shoot Templeton. Claims he never even heard of the guy.”
“What’s he saying about Romeo Alfano?”
“Says he didn’t kill him either.”
“Bullshit.”
“The way Mario tells it, he did get pissed off at Alfano.”
“When I spilled the beans about what his boss was really up to?”
“Yeah. After you and I left the hotel room, he told Alfano he was quitting and demanded payment for services rendered. Alfano pulled a gun on him. Said that if Mario had been any good at his job he wouldn’t have let us get the drop on him.”
“And then?”
“Mario says he scooped his empty revolver off the floor, turned tail, and beat it out of the hotel. When he heard that Alfano was dead and that the cops thought he’d shot him, he just kept on running.”
“Don’t tell me you believe that,” I said.
“Could be the truth,” McCracken said. “The cops ran ballistics on the gun Mario used to pistol-whip Whoosh, and it’s not a match to the one that killed Alfano.”
“So they can’t tie him to either murder,” I said.
“Not yet, anyway.”
I’d given up cigars during the Vipers tryout, but I was jonesing for one now. I drew two Cohibas from my shirt pocket and clipped the ends. McCracken stuck one in his teeth, and I set fire to it with my torch lighter. Then I got mine going. We smoked in silence until I tapped two inches of white ash into my empty coffee cup.
“Mario’s not the only one who had motive and opportunity to kill Alfano,” I said.
“Freitas and Wargart like him for it,” McCracken said, “but I hear they still think it could have been you.”
“What about you?” I asked.
“I’ve been wondering about that. Think the desk clerk saw me leave the hotel with you that day?”
“Could have,” I said. “And if he told the homicide twins-”
“Then they might suspect both of us.”
“You know what I’m thinking?” I said.
“What?”
“That it could have been them.”
McCracken nodded. “When we left the hotel, the first thing you did is call Wargat. You pointed him and his partner right to that hotel room.”
I took a moment to think it over.
“I called Parisi, too,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“If he was at state police headquarters when he answered his cell, it would have taken him a good forty minutes to get to the hotel,” I said. “In that case, the homicide twins would have beat him to the scene.”
“But was he?”
“I don’t know.”
McCracken shook his head. “Parisi’s a straight arrow,” he said. “But Wargart and Freitas have been on the pad for years.”
“Really? I hadn’t heard that.”
“Oh, fuck yeah. I wouldn’t trust those two assholes with their own kids’ lunch money.”
That afternoon, the House finally voted on the governor’s gambling bill and defeated it by twenty-three votes. It then took up the Republican version, which called for sports gambling to be run by private enterprise, and passed it with a solid majority. The next morning, the House bill passed the Senate with a margin of seventeen votes. Whoever the Alfanos had been working for had gotten something for their money.
That evening, Fiona and I met to commiserate over brews at Hopes.
“The tax on private sports gambling will amount to only six percent of the revenue we could have brought in if the Lottery Commission had been authorized to take the bets,” she said.
“Twelve million a year is better than nothing,” I said.
“You think?”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “We’ll have to spend most of the first year’s proceeds just to fight the federal lawsuits the NCAA and the professional sports leagues are going to file against the state. Besides, the whole thing is tainted now.”
“By the bribes that got handed out?”
“And by all the super PAC money,” she said. “The way I see it, that’s just legal bribery.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to veto it.”
“Told anybody else yet?”
“Just you.”
“Mind if I give the story to Mason?”
“So you can rub The Dispatch’s face in it?”
“Of course.”
“I’m all for that.”
Next morning, I slipped into Mason’s office at The Ocean State Rag and found him hunched over his computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Give me a sec,” he said, “and I’ll be right with you.”
Edward Anthony Mason III was no longer the slim, naive, fresh-faced Columbia University J-School grad I’d met six years earlier when he strode into The Dispatch’s newsroom. He’d put on a few pounds; I could see it in his face. He’d grown wiser in the ways of the world. And he’d recently gotten engaged to Felicia Freyer, the drop-dead-gorgeous attorney he’d met when we worked the Diggs case together a couple of years back. Once, he’d been a callow, privileged youth who thought the publisher’s chair at The Dispatch was his birthright. But when the family patriarchs sold the paper out from under him, he hadn’t sulked. He’d started his own business, and it was growing. He was a publisher now.
He rose from the computer, shook my hand, waved me into a visitor’s chair, and settled back down behind his desk.
“So,” he said, “are you ready to start?”
“Sort of.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve agreed to work part-time for McCracken. I’m thinking maybe I could do the same for you.”
“Figure on trying out both jobs to see which suits you best?”
“Something like that.”
“Reporter or private detective? Interesting life choice.”
“It is.”
“Tell you what. For now, I’ll add you to our stringers list and pay you by the piece.”
“Sounds good.”
“You’ll be on your own for health insurance, Mulligan.”
“I understand.”