Providence Rag

by Bruce DeSilva

  OR ELZE

  “Else with a z?” Mulligan said. “Nobody’s spelling is that bad. Looks like your correspondent ran out of the letter s.”

  “That’s how I figure it.”

  “This was left on your car?”

  “It was.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. There was another one, too. Scroll back to the previous picture.”

  “How the hell do I do that?”

  “Give it here,” Mason said.

  He took the phone from Mulligan, flicked a finger across the screen, and handed it back to him. This time, the message on the car door read:

  B SMART MASON

  WE C U

  “That one’s from a week ago,” Mason said.

  Mulligan took a minute to think it over. In his mind, he compared it with the threatening note Mason had gotten in the mail:

  WE KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING, RICHIE RICH.

  IF YOU KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR YOU, YOU’LL STOP.

  “Any more threatening letters?” he asked.

  “A couple more, yes.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Pretty much the same thing as the first one.”

  “Somebody obviously wants you to stop something,” Mulligan said. “Do the messages ever say what?”

  “I just assumed it was the Diggs story,” Mason said. “I mean, what else could it be?”

  “I don’t know, Thanks-Dad. You tell me.”

  “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Not screwing somebody’s wife, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Ripping somebody off in some sort of business deal?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Okay, then,” Mulligan said. “Let me poke into this. See what I can find out.”

  As he walked back to the newspaper, Mulligan puzzled over the threats. Refrigerator magnets were an awfully polite way of leaving threatening messages. Why weren’t they just scratched into the paint? The more he thought about it, the more it felt as though those brightly colored magnets were something a woman would use.

  * * *

  Mulligan had just stepped off the elevator when “Confused” by a San Francisco punk band called the Nuns began playing in his shirt pocket. His ring tone for the governor.

  “Mulligan.”

  “Is it true?”

  “Just between us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I actually trust you this time, Fiona?”

  “I promise.”

  “The story’s not nailed down yet, but it’s in the works.”

  “Who’s reporting this? Is it you?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “The Dispatch would actually print it?”

  “The publisher’s son is the one working on it, so I gotta think yes.”

  “Holy Mother of God.”

  “My feeling exactly, although I’d be prone to use more colorful language.”

  “When is the story likely to break?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe in a couple of weeks. Maybe never. Thanks-Dad doesn’t have enough sources yet.”

  “How likely is it that he’ll pull this off?”

  “If I were a betting man, I’d put the odds at fifty-fifty.”

  “You are a betting man.”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  “Is my name going to surface in this?”

  “You were the A.G. when Diggs was prosecuted for Galloway, so your fingerprints are all over it. I doubt Thanks-Dad will be able to prove it, though. The kid’s good, but he’s not that good. He’s close to nailing the warden for subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice, but I doubt he’ll be able to take it any higher.”

  “If he does, will you give me a heads-up?”

  “Maybe. No guarantees.”

  “I know I promised to keep this confidential, Mulligan, but I’m going to have to share it with the attorney general.”

  “Fiona…”

  “I’ll keep your name out of it, but I have to do something. I can’t stand by and allow Kwame Diggs to be released from prison.”

  “Of course you can’t.”

  “If he gets out, innocent people are going to die.”

  “And it would be fatal to your political career.”

  “That’s the last thing on my mind right now.”

  “Like hell.”

  They both fell quiet for a moment.

  “Attorney General Roberts and I are going to have to put our heads together,” Fiona said. “See if we can come up with a contingency plan.”

  “Like what?”

  “Maybe we can persuade a judge to order a psychiatric exam. If we can get Diggs declared a dangerous psychopath, we could get him locked away in a mental hospital.”

  “You’ll have to do some serious judge shopping to pull that off,” Mulligan said.

  * * *

  That evening Mulligan had a few brews at Hopes, watched the Sox fall to the Athletics on the West Coast, and played a couple of games of pinball.

  Shortly after two A.M., he returned to the newsroom. The lights were dim. The overnight cops reporter was snoozing in his cubicle. The rest of the desks were empty.

  Mulligan padded to Gloria’s cubicle, sat in her chair, opened the shallow drawer under the desktop, and rummaged through the contents. Cheap ballpoint pens, paper clips, an unopened pack of Post-it notes, three tubes of lipstick, a small brass key, spare media cards, a flash drive, and an old roll of Kodak film nobody had use for anymore. He slid the drawer closed and pulled the handles on the two-drawer file cabinet under the right side of the desk. It was locked. He reopened the shallow drawer, removed a small brass key, and inserted it in the file drawer lock.

  The top file drawer contained, of all things, files. The bottom drawer was a jumble of battery chargers, cables, camera lenses, filters, and flash attachments. Stuffed all the way in the back, concealed under an empty camera case, he found two Ziploc bags. One contained what appeared to be about a quarter ounce of marijuana. The other held a handful of candy colored alphabet refrigerator magnets. He dumped them on the desktop, sorted through them, and couldn’t find an “s.”

  Mulligan drove home and swept up the shredded, shit-streaked newspapers Larry Bird had kicked onto his kitchen floor. He pulled on an oven mitt, lined the bottom of the cage with the arts section of the Dispatch, and filled the bird’s water tube and food tray.

  Then he fetched a Killian’s from the fridge, flopped onto his mattress, pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jeans, and punched in a number.

  “Hello?” The voice was groggy, as if the call had woken her.

  “Sorry about calling in the middle of the night, Gloria, but I have to ask you for a favor.”

  “Mulligan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly three.”

  “This better be important.”

  “It is. I need you to stop leaving threatening messages on Mason’s car.”

  Dead air. And then, “How’d you know?”

  “I’m an investigative reporter, Gloria. I know all kinds of stuff.”

  “Does Mason know?”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “And Gloria?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t mail him any more threatening letters, either.”

  “What? I never did that.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Okay, I believe you. Good night, Gloria,” Mulligan said. Then he hung up and growled, “Aw, crap.”

  45

  Saturday breakfast at the Mason family manse in Newport was hotcakes topped with cream and fresh strawberries. The old man waited until the plates were cleared before broaching the subject.

  “Son, Ed Lomax tells me you are the one working on the story that’s got Iggy Rock all fired up.”


  “I am.”

  “He also told me he asked you not to.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Would you mind telling me why you made the decision to proceed?”

  Mason took several minutes to explain his reasoning and to run through what he’d learned so far.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” his father asked.

  “I was afraid you might tell me to stop.”

  “I probably would have. This is causing us a good deal of trouble, son. Since Iggy Rock broke the news, more than three thousand readers have canceled their subscriptions. That’s nearly four percent of our circulation.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you also know that because of this, Media General and Belo have withdrawn their inquiries about acquiring the Dispatch?”

  “Sorry, Dad.”

  “Frankly, I’m not sure how serious their interest was in the first place, but now they’re saying they feel compelled to wait until they know how much permanent damage has been done.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m also receiving concerned inquiries from the board of directors.”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “If I get the story, are we going to publish it?”

  “I can’t say just yet. Let’s see what you come up with first.”

  Mason was awash with conflicting emotions. Regret at the damage he’d done to the newspaper. Pride that his father understood what he was doing—and maybe even approved of it, if only a little.

  After breakfast, he brooded over one last cup of coffee. Then he wandered into the music room and sat at the piano. He plunked out the tune to “Providence Rag,” his work in progress, jotted two lines of lyrics on a page of sheet music, studied what he’d written, and crossed it out. He had too much on his mind to concentrate.

  He sat quietly and let his mind drift to Felicia. Dropping his hands to the keys, he began to play Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” the most romantic piece of classical music he knew by heart.

  He wondered. When they were finally done with Kwame, would she let him take her to Paris? But he was getting ahead of himself. Probably he ought to kiss her first. They’d both been so ambitious, spending their lives working toward something they couldn’t touch—and that couldn’t touch them back. It scared and thrilled him now, the way he wanted to fill those hollow spaces with Felicia. The way he wanted time to fly.

  46

  “So what’s the topic for today, cuz?”

  “Susan Ashcroft.”

  “Who the hell is that?” Kwame asked.

  “You don’t remember her?”

  “No.”

  “A year before Becky Medeiros was murdered, someone broke into her house in Warwick, bashed her in the head with a clock radio, and stabbed her five times.”

  “That sucks, E, but why tell me?”

  “Aren’t you the one who did it?”

  “Fuck, no. I already told you. I ain’t never stabbed nobody.”

  “Do you know anything about what happened to her?”

  “This is the first I ever heard about it.”

  Mason peered at Kwame through the smeared Plexiglas and spoke again into the crackling visitors’ room telephone.

  “Okay, then, Kwame. Let’s talk some more about your childhood.”

  And so they did. A half hour later, Mason had all he needed to write his profile.

  “So does that mean you’re not coming back?” Kwame asked.

  “I’m still looking into the assault charges,” Mason said. “I’ll be back to talk to you again soon.”

  “I’m keeping the faith, cuz. Malcolm X said, ‘Truth is on the side of the oppressed.’” And then he cracked a smile. “So tell me. You pumpin’ my fine-ass lawyer yet?”

  “That’s really none of your business, Kwame.”

  “Come on, cuz. Does she get all wet and shit when you play with her titties?”

  Before he could stop himself, Mason flashed on a vision of Felicia nude from the waist up. Diggs sniggered. Mason squashed a sudden urge to punch the glass as hard as he could, to shatter it and wipe that smirk off the killer’s face.

  Ten minutes later, heading for his car in the prison visitors’ lot, Mason was still feeling unnerved. He realized that whenever he thought of Kwame’s victims, they were just that—victims. He felt sorry for them, but he had to strain to remember all of their names. He wished Kwame had never met Felicia. He didn’t want him to look at her face. He didn’t want him to ever speak her name.

  He stepped around a rusted Dodge van, spotted his car, and saw that someone had smashed the headlights and taillights.

  47

  Two cardboard boxes, each the size of a mini fridge, had been placed on a long metal worktable in the basement of the Warwick police station. Judging by the scrawls on the orange evidence seals, they hadn’t been opened since 1996.

  “Is this everything?” Mulligan asked.

  “No,” said Sergeant Mario DeMaso, the department evidence clerk. “According to the logs, there should have been three boxes. There’s no record of anyone checking one out, but I’ve looked everywhere. The damn thing’s just gone.”

  “How can that be?” Mulligan asked.

  Jennings, standing beside him, shrugged.

  “Mulligan,” he said, “this happens more often than you’d like to think.”

  DeMaso broke the seals with a fingernail and removed the lids. Mulligan and Jennings crowded around, bending to the boxes. Inside were evidence bags, some made of clear plastic and others of brown paper. Each had a label listing its contents, where and when it was collected, and the name of the officer who had bagged it. Each also included a chain of custody record that documented every instance in which the evidence had been removed for examination.

  DeMaso carefully emptied the boxes, placing the evidence bags on the table. The men didn’t open them. They just read the labels. The largest bags held Susan Ashcroft’s pillowcase, her sheets, her blanket, and a stuffed bear. Smaller ones held a water glass and a blood-splattered paperback book collected from her nightstand. A dozen envelopes contained hairs, fibers, and other small bits of dubious value that had been plucked from the bedding and from the bedroom carpet.

  “Where’s the clock radio the vic was struck with?” Jennings asked.

  “Must have been in the missing box,” DeMaso said. “The kitchen knife she was stabbed with doesn’t seem to be here, either.”

  “So what do you think?” Mulligan asked.

  “I’d say your best bet for DNA is the bedsheet and the hairs,” DeMaso said. “But I’d also have the pillowcase and blanket examined again to see if the fucker shed anything on them.”

  “Sounds right,” Jennings said.

  “Okay,” DeMaso said. “I’ll drive it over to the crime lab this afternoon.”

  48

  “Today, I want to ask you about your confession,” Mason said.

  “I already told you it was coerced,” Diggs said. “The fuckers beat me and then told me what to say.”

  “I’m not talking about that confession. I’m talking about the one you made to me.”

  “What the fuck you talkin’ about?”

  “When we were discussing how you used to get angry, you told me this.” Mason flipped open his notebook and read from a page: “‘I understand now that there are better ways than killing to get even with racists.’”

  Diggs didn’t say anything. Mason sat silently and stared at him through the Plexiglas.

  “Shit,” Diggs finally said. “You took that out of … what the fuck’s the word?”

  “Context?”

  “Yeah. Out of context.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I thought you was on my side,” Diggs said.

  “I’m on the side of the truth,” Mason said.

  They stared at each other some more. After thirty seconds, Diggs averted his eyes.

&nbs
p; “Look, Kwame. I don’t understand why you keep denying that you killed those people. Everybody knows you did it. Admitting it can’t do you any harm now. You’ve already done your time for it. And who knows? Showing remorse might even do you some good.”

  Diggs sat silently, his eyes lowered. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and raspy.

  “Don’t know why I let you in, cuz. Don’t know why I tell you shit.”

  Another moment passed before he lifted his eyes to meet Mason’s and whispered, “It’s ’cause of my moms.”

  “Your what? I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “My moms. How do you tell your mother that you stabbed five people to death? How do you look into the eyes of the woman who gave birth to you and say that shit? You can’t, cuz. You just can’t fuckin’ do that. So all these years I been telling her I’m innocent. And she believes me, cuz. She really does.”

  “What exactly have you been telling her?”

  Diggs closed his eyes and rubbed them with the backs of his cuffed hands. For the first time, Mason noticed a scar on Diggs’s right thumb. He wondered if it was from when he cut himself with the knife he used to murder the Stuart family.

  “When I was thirteen,” Diggs said, “I started hanging on the streets. Got in with some older kids who liked to break into houses and steal shit. Some nights, they’d ask me to come along as a lookout. My moms didn’t know about the break-ins, but she knew those kids were trouble. She always told me to stay away from them. So I figured I could blame everything on them. I told my moms I was there the nights of the murders but never went inside—that I didn’t even know anybody got killed until the police came around asking questions.”

  “Why didn’t she go to the police with that story?”

  “Cuz she knew I’d get arrested anyway, as an accessory to murder.”

  “How’d you explain your fingerprints at the crime scenes and the trophies in your garden shed?”

  “I told her the police planted all that stuff.”

  Mason took a deep breath.

  “Why did you kill those people, Kwame?”

  “Cuz they hated black folks.”

  “Not just Becky Medeiros? The Stuarts, too?”

  “Oh, yeah. Connie Stuart and them little girls would stand on their front stoop and point at me when I rode my bike in the street. They’d say, ‘There goes the porch monkey,’ and then they’d laugh at me. Made me so fuckin’ mad I couldn’t think straight.