Liam Mulligan: Cliff Walk Part 20

"No, I'm still not getting any from that hot lawyer. She seems to be warming up to me, but not in that way. The good news is she hasn't said, 'Let's just be friends,' yet. Think I might still have a chance?"

I sat beside Rosie in the wet gra.s.s, and together we looked at the sky. A light rain was falling, so there were no stars to wish on.

"The little girl with no arms visits my dreams every night," I said. "Yes, it is hard on me. Probably hard on her, too."

With that, my imagination failed me. I could no longer hear Rosie's voice. I sat with her in the dark, my hand resting on the shoulder of her gravestone, until the rain turned to snow. By the time I got home, it was coming down hard.

30.

Tuesday afternoon, I was das.h.i.+ng off a fender bender wrap-up for Lomax when "Confused" by a San Francisco punk band called the Nuns began playing in my pants pocket.

"Afternoon, Fiona."

"Let's talk."

"Hopes?"

"In ten minutes," she said, and hung up.

Except for a couple of alkies hunched over boilermakers at the bar, Hopes was nearly deserted, the snow keeping the regulars away. I asked the barkeep for a club soda. It probably wasn't the best thing for my ulcer, but I figured it was better than beer. I carried the drink to Fiona's table, draped my hooded army surplus parka over the back of a chair, and sat across from her. The gold wedding band G.o.d had given her gleamed on her ring finger.

"So what's up?" I asked.

"Frank Drebin and Police Squad! still aren't getting anywhere with the Maniella murder," she said.

"Same story with the body parts at Scalici's pig farm," I said.

"Problem with the body parts is we got no suspects," she said. "Problem with the Maniella murder is we got too many."

"Think Vanessa had Sal whacked so she could take over the family business?"

"No evidence to support it," Fiona said, "but she's got a h.e.l.l of a motive."

"She's not the only one," I said, and told her about the rival p.o.r.n producers boogying on Sal's grave.

"There's also the Mob," Fiona said. "Maybe Arena and Gra.s.so whacked Sal to settle their old strip club beef."

"Could be," I said.

"What about your old pal King Felix? How does he fit into this?"

"I don't think he does," I said. "His beef is with DeLucca."

"Can't rule him out, though," she said. She took another swallow of Bud, picked her box of Marlboro 100's off the table, shook one out, and stuck it between her lips. I whipped out my lighter, and she leaned into the flame.

"Families of p.o.r.n actresses?" I said.

"Parisi's working that angle. He's interrogated a bunch of them who are angry enough to have done it, but so far their alibis are holding up."

"What about vigilantes?" I said.

"Like who?"

"A radical feminist group, maybe. Or right-wing religious zealots like the Sword of G.o.d. Did you know they've been picketing the Maniellas' strip clubs?"

"So I've heard."

"I made Reverend Crenson's acquaintance the other day," I said. "That's one scary dude. Looks just like Reverend Kane in Poltergeist II."

"Really? I think he looks more like Mr. Burns from The Simpsons."

"Yeah, I can see that, too."

"We've had our eye on him since last winter," she said, "when his paris.h.i.+oners started sending hate mail to Sheldon Whitehouse and Patrick Kennedy."

"About what?"

"Their votes for Obama's 'death panels,' their support for our 'c.o.o.n' president's 'socialist agenda,' and their secret plan to take everyone's guns away."

"The church has been around for what, a couple of years?"

"More like ten, but they kept a low profile until last year."

"Before he got canned," I said, "our religion writer told me the church took its name from a Roger Williams quote. I don't remember it word for word, but I don't think our gentle founder was advocating the use of firearms."

History preserved a lot of Williams's words, but no portrait-not even a description of him-has been handed down to us. The fourteen-foot-tall granite Roger Williams who stares down from Prospect Park, arms outstretched to bless the city he founded, is entirely made up. Leo Friedlander's statue has been up there since it was dedicated in 1939. Several years ago, vandals whacked the thumb and all five fingers from his right hand. I doubt they even knew who he was.

"Roger Williams was a pacifist," Fiona said. "The sword he wielded was the Word. The Sword of G.o.d seems to prefer bullets. I liked them for the shooting at the abortion doctor's house in Cranston last fall, but Parisi couldn't make a case."

We ordered another round, drank in silence, and pondered the possibilities.

"What we've got," I said, "is a lot of theories and nothing to back any of them up."

"The only thing we can be sure of," she said, "is that Sal Maniella is still dead."

31.

The snow turned into a blizzard overnight. By first light, it was nearly two feet deep and still falling. Cars skidded into each other. Schools and businesses closed. Thirty thousand Narragansett Electric customers lost power. The mayor went on TV and urged everyone with a nonessential job to stay at home. Sugary flakes clung to tree branches, blanketed trash-strewn sidewalks, drifted across potholed streets, and transformed our hideous city hall into a fairy castle. I managed to write the weather story without using the phrase winter wonderland.

I'd just finished the piece when I heard "Who Are You?" by the Who, my ringtone for unrecognized numbers, playing in my pants pocket.

"Mulligan."

"It's Sal Maniella. I understand you've been looking for me."

A stiff wind howled out of the northeast. Drifts formed, blew away, and re-formed across the streets. The plows couldn't keep up. Secretariat groped his way west at ten miles an hour on Route 44, struggling to hold the road. As we pa.s.sed the deserted Apple Valley Mall, he skidded into a drift and stubbornly refused to budge. I fetched a collapsible shovel from the back, dug him out, threw rock salt under the wheels for traction, and pressed on. By the time I reached Greenville, I could barely see the road through the winds.h.i.+eld. I switched on the GPS so I wouldn't miss the left turn onto West Greenville Road again, but the device couldn't locate a satellite through the thick cloud cover. I managed to find the turn anyway and crept along, searching for the big white colonial that marked the entrance to unpaved Pine Ledge Road.

I'd just spotted it when a figure in a navy-blue parka appeared out of the gloom and threw both hands in the air, directing me to stop. I pumped the brakes, and Secretariat skidded to a halt. I rolled down the window, and Black s.h.i.+rt, or maybe it was Gray s.h.i.+rt, filled it with his cinder-block head.

"I just plowed the access road," he said, "but it's still treacherous along the top of the dike. I d.a.m.n near went into the drink. We're gonna leave the cars here and walk in."

I turned right onto Pine Ledge, nosed into a freshly cleared s.p.a.ce at the side of the road, and parked beside a Jeep Wrangler with a plow mounted on the front. Next to it was another car that must have been there all day, or maybe even overnight. It was smothered with snow. As I walked behind it, I knocked enough off the back to identify it as a burgundy Acura ZDX.

Snow crunched under my Reeboks and the ex-SEAL's Timberland boots as we trudged west toward the dike, our hands buried in our jacket pockets. It was an eight-hundred-yard walk to the house, and my nose was already numb from the cold.

"Where's the forty-five at?" the ex-SEAL asked.

"Tucked inside my jacket."

"I won't undress you now, but when we get to the house I'll have to take it away from you."

"Still want to beat me up?"

"If I did, you'd already be turning the snow red."

We walked on in silence. New ice hugged the edge of the lake. The tracks of a lone coyote danced across the snow cover.

Crack!

The big guy spun toward the sound, a Glock 17 suddenly in his right hand. Another crack, and then another as pine boughs snapped under their heavy burden of snow. The ex-SEAL smiled to himself and slipped the weapon back into his deep jacket pocket.

A drift blocked the Maniellas' wide front steps. We bypa.s.sed them, entered through the side door to the garage, and stomped the snow from our feet. I raised my arms without being asked, and the big guy unzipped my jacket, stuck his paw inside, and pulled out the Colt. We removed our jackets, shook the snow from them, and hung them on a row of bra.s.s pegs mounted on the garage wall. Then he led me inside and turned me over to the stout maid.

"Mr. Maniella say wait in library," she said, and led me across the marble floor of the foyer to a large room with a wood fire crackling in a fieldstone fireplace. I walked across a black-and-tan Persian carpet and knelt before the flames. When the feeling returned to my nose and feet, I stood and took a good look around. One wall was floor-to-ceiling windows with a panoramic view of the frozen lake. The other three walls were lined with built-in cherry bookcases that held the last thing I expected to find in a p.o.r.nographer's house. Books. Many of them were bound in what appeared to be original eighteenth- and nineteenth-century calf and Moroccan leather. t.i.tles stamped in gilt glittered on the spines. In a corner of the room, a spiral staircase led to a gallery, where more built-in bookshelves covered all four walls.

I turned to the nearest shelf and ran my finger along a row of books by Mark Twain: Following the Equator, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Innocents Abroad, Letters from the Earth, and a dozen more. I slid Life on the Mississippi from the shelf, opened it to the t.i.tle page, and found "S. L. Clemens" scrawled in brown ink. A signed first edition. I gingerly returned it to its place.

I strolled the room, stopped at a section filled with period books on the Civil War, and took the first volume of Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant from a shelf. In the center of the room, two easy chairs and a sofa upholstered in matching chocolate calfskin surrounded a low marble-top table. The table had been set with a sterling coffee service and dainty blue-and-white cups and saucers. Beside them were two crystal decanters filled with amber liquid. I sat on the sofa and looked longingly at the decanters. Then I poured a cup of hot coffee, cut it with lots of cream, and downed it in a swallow. Beside the couch, a lamp with a stained gla.s.s shade rested on an antique cherry side table. I switched it on and nothing happened. The power was out. The day was fading now, the last gray light filtering through the wall of windows. I opened the book and could make out the words on the first page: "Man proposes and G.o.d disposes." There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice....

I was four pages into the first chapter when a deep voice rumbled: "I see you've made yourself at home."

I glanced up to see Salvatore Maniella, dressed in pressed jeans and a tan cardigan sweater, peering down at me with a kindly look on his face. I knew him to be sixty-five years old, but he looked younger thanks to good genes, clean living, or a skilled plastic surgeon. He sat beside me on the couch and stretched out his hand. I took it and didn't give it back.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Checking for a pulse."

The right corner of his mouth curled in a half smile. Then he took the book from my lap, checked the t.i.tle, and handed it back to me.

"I always meant to read this," I said, "but I never got around to it."

"When we're finished here, why don't you take both volumes home with you," he said. "Just return them when you're done."

"I wouldn't dare," I said. "What if something happened to them?"

"Grant's memoir was the bestselling book of the nineteenth century," he said. "It's not a rare book."

"But some of these are."

"Yes," he said.

"How long have you been collecting?"

"When I was a student at Bryant College, I picked up a Fitzgerald first edition for fifty cents at a library sale, and it got me hooked."

"I know what you mean," I said. "I found a stack of Black Mask and Dime Detective pulp magazines at a flea market when I was a teenager, and I've been looking for more ever since."

"You must have ama.s.sed quite a collection by now."

"Not really. A hundred, maybe, and a lot of them are chipped and torn."

"That the only thing you collect?"

I cast my eyes across the shelves and said, "Nothing that would interest you."

"Everything interests me."

I poured myself another cup of coffee. He poured himself a drink from one of the decanters and then looked at me expectantly.

"Over the years," I said, "I picked up about fifty old blues records from the 1940s and '50s. I also acc.u.mulated several hundred vintage paperback crime novels: Brett Halliday, Carter Brown, Richard S. Prather, Jim Thompson, John D. MacDonald. It's all gone now, though."

"Why is that?"

"The woman I've been trying to divorce for two years is keeping my stuff out of spite."

"That must upset you."

"Only when I think about it."

The maid waddled into the room carrying two silver candelabra. She placed them on the marble-top table, lit the candles, and exited without speaking. Then Vanessa Maniella entered, nodded to me, and sat facing us in one of the easy chairs.

"So, Sal," I said. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been?"