Rogue Island

by Bruce DeSilva

  * * *

  The firm of McDougall, Young, Coyle, and Limone occupied two full floors of the Textron Tower. I got off the elevator on twelve, pushed open the mahogany double doors, and stepped into a waiting room big enough for a pickup basketball game. To the left, a receptionist in a beige business suit juggled calls behind a large glass desk. To the right, five baby dog sharks with tiny, cruel eyes cruised counterclockwise in a hundred-gallon aquarium, the firm’s way of telling you right off what kind of lawyer you’d be getting.

  I stood in front of the desk until the receptionist hung up the phone, glanced at my David Ortiz jersey and Red Sox cap, and asked if I was there to pick up or drop off.

  “I have a ten o’clock appointment with Brady Coyle.”

  “Do you, now?”

  “I do,” I said, hoping she didn’t recognize my voice.

  “Your name?”

  “L. S. A. Mulligan.”

  “One moment, please.”

  She picked up the phone, spoke a few words, told me Mr. Coyle would be with me shortly, and asked me to take a seat. I spent nearly an hour obsessing about Rosie and studying the little sharks—the wait just the big shark’s way of establishing his dominance—before his secretary appeared and led me up an interior staircase to his office.

  “Mulligan!” he said, gripping my right hand in both of his and smiling big to display a picket fence of blinding teeth. “I haven’t seen you since I took you to school in that pickup game at Alumni Hall.”

  Still trying to establish dominance, as if his panoramic view of historic Benefit Street, his three-inch height advantage, and his twelve-hundred-dollar suit weren’t enough to do the job.

  As he led me across a blue oriental rug toward a black leather visitor’s chair, I took a moment to study the decor. Photos of Coyle posing with Buddy Cianci, George W. Bush, Alan Dershowitz, and Ernie DiGregorio. Four tastefully framed Jackson Pollocks. The room wasn’t a vault, so I figured the paintings for reproductions.

  “So,” he said, settling into the high-backed leather chair behind his desk, “you should know right off that we require a twenty-thousand-dollar retainer in criminal cases.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I just signed an eighty-thousand-dollar deal with Simon and Schuster for a book on the imminent demise of the newspaper business.”

  “Really!”

  “Yeah,” I lied. “After I give twenty grand to you and another twenty to the IRS, I’ll still have enough left to buy a judge, twelve jurors, and a sex tour of Woonsocket.”

  “Jury tampering is not something you should joke about, Mulligan.”

  “What about judge buying?”

  “Half of them have ‘For Sale’ embroidered on their robes, but speaking of it is considered uncouth.”

  “Thanks for the etiquette lesson.”

  “You’re welcome. But enough with the banter. Let’s see what we can do to get you out of this fix.”

  We discussed the FBI profile, Coyle already familiar with some of it from reading the paper.

  “A profile is a useful investigative tool, but it’s not evidence,” he said. “This one could fit any number of people. Could they have something solid? An eyewitness? Physical evidence?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Nothing incriminating in your car or apartment?”

  “Not unless they planted something.”

  “Can you account for your whereabouts when the fires were set?”

  “Back in December, when a triple-decker on Hope Street was torched, I was in Boston with an insurance investigator watching the Canadians slap-shot the Bruins into unconditional surrender. Couple of others, I was getting naked with that court reporter you’ve been leaking grand-jury testimony to.”

  He glared at me for a moment.

  “Well I am surprised Veronica would break our confidentiality agreement, even under such intimate circumstances.”

  “She didn’t. I guessed.”

  “I see.” He forced a smile. “Perhaps this can remain between the three of us.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Good. Well, then. We may be able to dispose of your case expeditiously. I can inform the chief of police that you have witnesses who will swear to your whereabouts when several of the fires were set. Since the police apparently believe all of them were set by the same individual, you should be in the clear once they check out your alibis. At that time, I will insist that the chief issue a public apology and rebuke the arson squad for naming you as a person of interest. We still require the retainer, of course, but if things are as you say, you’ll be getting some of it back.”

  I pulled my checkbook out of my jeans. Coyle reached across the desk and handed me a fountain pen.

  “Before I give you this,” I said, “I want to be sure that representing me won’t involve you in a conflict of interest.”

  “I don’t see how it could.”

  “It’s like this,” I said. “Most of the torched buildings are owned by five real estate companies that have been busy buying up the neighborhood. The companies were all incorporated over the last eighteen months or so. Lawyers from this firm filed the papers.”

  “I don’t see the relevance.”

  “The relevance is that the people behind those companies are the ones burning down the neighborhood. I intend to expose them. With this firm representing both me and them, things might get awkward.”

  Coyle raised his eyebrows, feigning shock.

  “You have proof to support these allegations?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “I can’t imagine there is anything to it. These are not the sort of people who would ever get involved in such a thing.”

  Interesting. The firm files a lot of incorporation papers. These particular documents were filed by five of its junior associates. Yet Coyle knew exactly which companies I was talking about.

  “Johnny Dio and Vinnie Giordano are exactly the sort of people who would get involved in such a thing.”

  Another educated guess. I was hoping it would provoke a reaction, but Coyle was a cool customer. His eyes darted to a corner of the room, then landed back on me. Nothing more. It was so fast that I almost missed it. For a second, I considered turning around and grabbing whatever had drawn his eyes. Then I remembered my ribs—and the way Coyle used to manhandle me under the boards.

  “I don’t know how you came up with those names, Mulligan, but they do not appear anywhere on the incorporation papers.”

  “No, but they wrote the checks, didn’t they?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’d have to check with billing.”

  “Why don’t you do that?”

  “What would be the point? Ethics would prevent me from sharing that information with you without the clients’ permission.”

  “And they aren’t about to give permission?”

  “I’d have to advise against it.”

  “Would those be the same ethics that prohibit leaking secret grand-jury testimony?”

  “I don’t believe this firm can represent you, Mulligan. This conversation is over.”

  “Hey, this has been great,” I said. “Let’s get together again real soon, maybe play a little one-on-one.”

  “Didn’t you notice? We just did. You lost.”

  I didn’t think so.

  66

  I grabbed a coffee to go at the diner and loitered in Burnside Park, proudly named in honor of Rhode Island’s own Ambrose Everett Burnside, an incompetent Civil War general whose lone achievement was popularizing the facial hair that sort of bears his name.

  In the middle of the park, Mr. Potato Head stood at attention, honoring Burnside’s equestrian statue with a salute. On the spud’s flank, someone had added a memorial in red spray paint: “Thanks for 8,000 Union casualties at Fredericksburg.”

  I was asked a dozen times for spare change, offered a variety of pharmaceuticals at competitive prices, snarled at by a pit bull, and growled at by a teenage hooker
who felt rejected. The hooker didn’t interest me, but with my ribs still aching, I was tempted by the Vicodin.

  I called the hospital again. Still critical.

  It was nearly one thirty in the afternoon when Coyle emerged from the Textron Tower and strode purposefully down the sidewalk in his Italian loafers. I watched him cross the park, dash across the street, and slip into the Capital Grille, the hot spot for pricey expense-account lunches. Then I walked over to the Textron Tower and rode the elevator back to the twelfth floor.

  The receptionist was fussing with something on her desk. She didn’t look up, but she must have caught a glimpse of my jeans.

  “Picking up or dropping off?”

  “Picking up,” I said. I walked briskly past her and started up the stairs.

  “Stop! Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Forgot my Red Sox cap,” I shouted.

  “You’re wearing it!”

  I could hear her clattering up the staircase behind me, but her high heels were no match for my Reeboks.

  I tried Coyle’s office door. Unlocked. I entered, spun toward the corner where his eyes had flickered, and saw a four-foot-long mailing tube.

  “What are you doing? Put that down!”

  I brushed past her, went through the door, and pushed the button for the elevator. As I waited for it, I heard her shouting into the phone, asking building security to intercept a thief in a Red Sox cap and jersey. He’d be carrying a large mailing tube, she said.

  When the elevator opened on the first floor, two security guards were waiting. They glanced at a tall, bareheaded man in a black tank top, several large sheets of heavy paper, folded into quarters, tucked under his left arm. Then they turned away as another elevator door soundlessly slid open. I pushed through the revolving door, walked down the sidewalk, pulled my cap out of my back pocket, and tugged it on. The day was a bit chilly without my jersey, but it was stuffed into the mailing tube I’d left in the elevator, and I didn’t suppose I’d be getting it back.

  I walked to Central Lunch on Weybosset, settled into a booth, and ordered a bacon cheeseburger. While it was frying, I unfolded the sheets of paper, hastily refolded them, and asked the waitress to bag my order to go. Then I hurried over to the Peter Pan terminal and jumped on the first bus out of town.

  I got off in Pawtucket, looked around to make sure I hadn’t been followed, and took a room for the night at the Comfort Inn.

  Sleep, when it finally came, was broken up by pieces of one long dream. Fenway. The sun was brighter than it had ever been. In a sea of red and blue, a tall, gorgeous woman spotted Manny Ramirez and broke into a girlish grin.

  67

  In the morning, I tried to hold on to that image of a smiling Rosie for as long as I could, but by the time I’d showered and dressed, it had evaporated. I strolled to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts, calling the hospital again on the way over. No change. I bought a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and carried them to a seat by the window. Outside, the Blackstone River churned over an ancient dam that once powered the first water-driven cotton mill in North America.

  Slater Mill was a museum now, celebrated as the Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. I suppose that was one way to look at it. To me, it was the birthplace of American industrial espionage. It was here, in 1790, that an Englishman named Samuel Slater built spinning machines from pirated plans he had smuggled out of Britain.

  Buses with the names of New England school districts on them were disgorging kids into the museum parking lot. I wondered if the docents would tell them that most of the mill’s employees had been children. That they had worked twelve-hour days breathing air thick with lint. That when they paused in their work, they were beaten by overseers. That the machines sometimes grabbed them by the hair, dragged them in, and chewed them into ground beef.

  I thought about that for a while, then opened my newspaper and pulled out the sports section. I was reliving last night’s 8–3 victory over the Rangers when Mason walked in. He gave me a nod, went to the counter for coffee and a corn muffin, and joined me by the window looking out on the museum.

  “Rosie’s still critical,” he said.

  “Yeah. I know.”

  He gestured toward Slater Mill. “Ever take the tour?”

  “Not since I was a kid.”

  “My great-great-great-great-grandfather, Moses Brown, is the one who lured Samuel Slater here and gave him the money to build his machines.”

  “I was just thinking about that.”

  “It’s something to be proud of,” he said.

  “If you say so, Thanks-Dad.”

  We raised our cups and sipped.

  “Thanks for driving all the way out here this morning,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “But why am I here?”

  “I need you to keep something for me for a couple of days.”

  “Okay.”

  “It wouldn’t be fair to ask you to do this without telling you that it’s something I’m not supposed to have and that some bad people will be trying to get it back.”

  “What is it?”

  “Better you don’t know.”

  “Where do you want me to put it?”

  “It’s small. Maybe you can just tuck it under your spare tire and throw something over it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Just like that? No more questions?”

  “Sure.”

  “If you’re a real reporter, you won’t be able to resist taking it out and looking it over.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Better you don’t.”

  “But you know I will.”

  “It’s folded inside the business section,” I said.

  We talked about Rosie again for a couple of minutes. Then Mason drained his coffee, picked up the newspaper, tucked it under his arm, and strolled out the door.

  I finished my breakfast, ambled down the street to an electronics store, and bought a wireless phone recorder for $21.99. Then I walked a few blocks to the Apex department store and bought a small duffel bag, socks, underwear, toiletries, two bottles of Maalox, a couple of black T-shirts, a pair of tan Dockers, a blue blazer, and sunglasses that could pass for Ray-Bans if you didn’t look closely. I carried my purchases back to the hotel and flopped on the bed.

  That night, I called the hospital again.

  “Chief Rosella Morelli?”

  “Still critical.”

  I plugged the recorder into the microphone jack on my cell phone and stretched out on the bed to watch the Sox battle the Angels. The Sox were trailing by three in the fourth when Tammy Wynette started whining about standing by her man. What had I been thinking? That song sucks. I checked caller ID and decided to answer anyway.

  “You!

  fucking!

  bastard!”

  “And a good evening to you too, Dorcas.”

  “Who are you shacked up with tonight, you son of a bitch?”

  “Speaking of bitches, how’s Rewrite doing? You’re remembering her heartworm pills, right?”

  “You love that dog, don’t you?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Good. I think I’ll take her to the pound,” she said, and slammed down the receiver. That was new. Usually I was the first one to hang up.

  Rewrite hated cages. Four years ago, when we put her in a kennel for a few days and took a rare vacation together to the Monterey Bay Blues Festival, she refused to eat until we got back. I told myself Dorcas was bluffing.

  Youkilis had just tied the score with a home run when the cell rang again. This time I didn’t recognize the number so I turned the recorder on.

  68

  “Red Sox Nation. How may I direct your call?”

  “Mulligan?”

  “Who should I tell him is calling?”

  “Listen up, asshole. If you want to live to see next week, you’ll give it back.”

  “Give what back?”

  “Don’t be cute.”

  “
Okay, Giordano. What’s it worth to you?”

  “The price of three two-hundred-thirty-grain slugs from a forty-five.”

  “That would only come to a dollar and change. Given the stakes, I was hoping for a little more.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “How much?”

  “Consider it from my point of view,” I said. “The cops have all but accused me of setting the fires. I’ve been suspended without pay. My journalism career is over. I need to find another line of work.”

  “Blackmailers have a short life span, Mulligan.”

  “Actually, I was thinking about getting into real estate.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “Remember our conversation over drinks at the Biltmore?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m ready to take you up on your generous offer.”

  He fell silent again, thinking it over.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “I just bought twenty acres in Lincoln. Gonna put up some luxury condo units. I’ll give you a five-percent share. You should clear at least a hundred grand in two years.”

  “What am I supposed to do for money in the meantime?”

  “I’ve got an opening at Little Rhody Realty,” he said. “Doesn’t pay much, but it’ll give us a chance to see if you’ve got an aptitude for the business.”

  He was offering me Cheryl Scibelli’s old job. “Deal,” I said. “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  “So when do I get it back?”

  “Can’t be this week. I’m on the way to Tampa to visit a college buddy.”

  “Better get your ass back here.”

  “Look,” I said. “My buddy got us tickets for the Sox–Rays series this weekend. No way I’m gonna miss that. The Rays are pretty good this year, so they should be great games. Besides, it’ll take you a few days to get the papers drawn up on the Lincoln property for me, right?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t like you being out of reach.”

  “I was planning to stay down there a couple of weeks,” I said, “but I’ll rebook and fly back the day after the games. I’ll give it to you as soon as I get back.”