“I gather you’ve done your homework on Lucan Alfano,” I said.
“Of course I have. I don’t sit here fixing traffic tickets for the mayor’s kids all day, you know.”
“Wow. Who would have thought?”
“Alfano was a fixer,” Hernandez said.
“For the Atlantic City casinos,” I said, “although I doubt he would have stooped to anything as mundane as traffic tickets.”
“Jesus, Mulligan. You mean to tell me you have sources in Jersey?”
“I’m very resourceful, Oscar. It’s my best quality.”
“So what did your sources have to say about why Alfano was coming to Rhode Island?”
“They were clueless,” I said. “Yours?”
“The same.”
“Can you trace the money?” I asked. “That could lead us to whoever he was working for.”
“Can’t be done. They’re all circulated bills. No consecutive serial numbers.”
“I only caught a glimpse,” I said, “but to me they looked like freshly packed bundles with bank bands on them.”
“Doesn’t help us any,” Hernandez said. “Anybody can buy bank bands, manufactured and color-coded to Federal Reserve standards, for less than seven dollars per thousand. And for three hundred bucks, you can buy a counting machine that will spit out counterfeits and bundle the good bills for you.”
I slid a Partagás out of my shirt pocket and clipped the end. Hernandez got up and threw open the window behind his desk. Then he sat back down again and said, “Got another one of those?”
I handed him a cigar and leaned across the desk to set fire to it with my Colibri. He puffed, plucked it from his lips, and studied the band.
“Kind of pricy for a scribe who lives in a dump on America Street.”
“Not the way I come by them. If you want, I can get you a box.”
“How much?”
“No charge. I get ’em for free.”
He raised an eyebrow at that.
“Sorry,” I said, “but a reporter never reveals his source.”
We smoked in silence for a few minutes.
“Alfano owns some pawnshops and a payday loan outfit in Jersey,” he said. “The payday loan company deals mainly in checks, but pawnshops are a cash business.”
“Which makes them a great way to launder money,” I said.
“Yeah. Chances are we’re never going to figure out what the hell this was about.”
“Anything on the cause of the crash yet?”
“Investigators from the FAA and the NTSB started combing through the wreckage this morning. It’ll be at least a couple of weeks before they tell me anything.”
“And six months before they release their final report,” I said.
“Sounds about right.”
“Okay to print the names of the crash victims?”
“Yeah. The notifications were made this morning.”
I thanked him, rose to leave, and then turned back when I got to the door.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a photo of Alfano you could let me have,” I said.
“What for?”
“I’m thinking I might show it around. See if it gets a rise out of anybody.”
“I’ll e-mail you a copy.”
I was halfway home when my cell stared playing the theme from The Godfather, my ringtone for Zerilli.
“Hi, Whoosh. What’s up?”
“I need to see you. We got trouble.”
6
The little market on Hope Street was the destination of choice for stocking up on Yoo-hoo, Ding Dongs, Red Bull, Cheetos, malt liquor, Juggs magazines, and illegal tax-stamp-free cigarettes. It was also the place to go in Providence to lay down an illegal sports bet.
The old brass bell over the front door clanked as I pushed through it and wound my way down the cramped grocery aisles to a short flight of stairs in back. At the top, I knocked on a locked, steel-reinforced door. An electric lock buzzed to admit me. I stepped in and found Zerilli hunched over his keyhole desk. He was clothed in a light gray suit jacket, a white dress shirt, a green-and-yellow tie with red parrots on it, and clashing sky-blue boxer shorts. As always, he’d draped his suit pants over a hanger on the office clothes rack to preserve the crease.
Shortstop, who looked like a cross between a bull mastiff and a Tyrannosaurus, was half in and half out of the office’s only visitor’s chair, his rump planted on the seat and his front paws braced on the floor. That was as close as he could get to wedging his bulk into the solid oak Windsor. Whoosh tossed a Beggin’ Strip into the corner by his black floor safe to coax the beast down. Shortstop slid off the chair, lumbered over, and snatched the treat in his jaws. Then he locked eyes with me and growled like a muscle car. The hair he’d shed on the chair was enough to make another dog. I brushed it off and sat.
“So what’s up?”
“Hold on a sec,” Whoosh said. He reached up with his left hand, the one without the tremor, and closed the blinds on the long, narrow window that looked out over the grocery shelves. “Anita? The new cashier? I think she reads lips.”
“This must be serious.”
“Hell, yeah, it’s fuckin’ serious. You know what your favorite nun’s up to, right? You coulda warned me, asshole.”
“You mean the governor?”
“Like you ain’t already heard.”
“Sorry, Whoosh, but I’m clueless.”
“What the fuck, Mulligan. I thought you was always on top of things.”
“Except nuns,” I said. “Besides, my new boss doesn’t let me out much.”
“Well, from what I hear, the bitch is gonna introduce legislation to legalize sports betting.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I am absolutely goddamned fuckin’ not. You really ain’t heard about this?”
“No. Where did you get it from?”
“Coupla statehouse lackeys on Arena’s pad.”
“Can she do this? I mean, isn’t there some federal law prohibiting sports betting?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act. Been the law since 1992. Four states including Nevada, where sports betting was already legal, were grandfathered in, but it’s against federal law everywhere else.”
Zerilli couldn’t have named the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but he knew more about gambling laws than the Harvard Law School faculty.
“The NCAA, the pro leagues, and the Vegas casinos all lobbied to get it passed. Between you and me, a few heavies from my side of the tracks lent a hand by twisting arms and spreading goodies around on Capitol Hill.”
“Like who?”
“Between us?”
“Sure.”
“The Outfit in Chicago and the Gambino family in New York did the grunt work, but Kansas City, New Orleans, St. Louis, Detroit, Philly, and the rest of the New York families all chipped in. Once it passed, we figured that was the end of it. Now it’s comin’ up again all over the fuckin’ country.”
“Because so many states are in financial trouble?”
“Yeah. That fat fuck Chris Christie got the ball rolling down in Jersey. In 2012, he signed a bill giving Atlantic City casinos the green light to take sports bets so he can tax the action. Ever since, he’s been bullying the New Jersey congressional delegation into tryin’ to get the federal law repealed so the money can start flowing. The NCAA, the NBA, the NHL, the NFL, and Major League Baseball are all working to head him off. The NCAA is fuckin’ pissed. The Prudential Center in Newark will never get another March Madness regional if the cocksucker don’t back down.”
Zerilli slipped a soft pack from his shirt pocket and shook out an unfiltered Lucky. I reached over to give him a light.
“This is bad for us, Mulligan. Guys like me ain’t got much turf left as it is. Payday loan companies have put most of the loan sharks out of business. The Indian casinos in Connecticut have wiped out our poker rooms. State lotteries control the numbers game, which was our biggest cash cow back in my day. Colorado just legalized marijuana, for fuck sake. The way things are goin’, every vice you can think up is gonna be legal. You got a stake in this, too, Mulligan. My offer stands, but if Attila the Nun gets her way, there ain’t gonna be shit left for you to run.”