Part 17 (1/2)

Or had I imagined it?

24.

”Yes,” I said, ”I am a member of Joseph DeLucca's immediate family.”

”And exactly how are you related?”

”He's my brother.”

”Why is it, then, that you have a different last name?”

”We're half-brothers.”

”I'm skeptical,” the hospital n.a.z.i said.

”You are?”

”Yes.”

”And why would that be?”

”Because I recognize you. You're that reporter from the Dispatch.”

”Reporters can have brothers,” I said.

”I imagine so,” she said. ”But this is the fifth time this year you have tried to get into a shooting victim's room by claiming to be a relative.”

”The fifth that you know of,” I said.

”You mean there were more?”

”Would you believe my family is having a run of bad luck?”

”No.”

”Give me a break,” I said. ”He's a friend, and I really need to talk to him.”

”Get out of here before I call security.”

”By security do you mean the geriatric rent-a-cop with a limp who waved to me in the lobby, or are you talking about the fat retired beat cop who's munching a cruller in the coffee shop?”

She reached for the phone. I shrugged and headed for the door.

It took a couple of hours, but I managed to piece together the story of what happened to Joseph by reading between the lines of the police report and chatting up three off-duty cops, two hookers, and a bartender. Of the sixty or so people who were in the Tongue and Groove when the shooting started, they were the only ones willing to talk to a reporter with a notepad. Logan Bedford, the a.s.shole from Channel 10, had better luck. A few dozen witnesses had queued up for the opportunity to talk into his microphone. Anything to get on TV.

From what I gathered, it went down this way: By the Budweiser clock on the wall, it was a little after nine P.M. when Jamal, King Felix's nervous triggerman, entered the club, pimp-walked up to the bar, and asked where he could find Joseph DeLucca. Jamal's full name, it turned out, was Jamal Jackson; and he was a little younger than I thought-just fourteen. The boy's father wasn't in the picture. His mother worked the day s.h.i.+ft as an orderly at Rhode Island Hospital. Nights, she made beds at the Biltmore. No, she told police, she didn't know Jamal hadn't been to school all year.

Jamal made the bartender nervous. He didn't like the tic in the kid's left eye, and he especially didn't like the fact that he was a kid.

”Far as I know, there's no state law against a kid buying a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b,” the bartender told me later, ”but he's not permitted to be in an establishment that serves alcohol. If Attila the Nun ever found out he was in here, the b.i.t.c.h would have another excuse to scream b.l.o.o.d.y murder.” I didn't like his choice of words for my friend, but I needed to hear the rest of the story, so I didn't make an issue of it.

He told Jamal to get out, the bartender went on. His exact words, if he remembered them right, were ”Get lost and come back when you're eighteen.”

”Ain't leaving till I see DeLucca,” Jamal said, the twitch in his left eye growing more violent.

What the h.e.l.l, the bartender figured. Joseph was the bouncer. He asked Chloe, the plump waitress with the green hair, to fetch Joseph from the all-nude room so he could throw the kid out.

Two minutes later, Joseph walked up to the bar and said, ”Somebody lookin' for me?”

”You DeLucca?” Jamal asked.

”Yeah,” Joseph said. ”Who the f.u.c.k are you?”

Jamal didn't answer. He just reached into his waistband and pulled out his little silver pistol.

He had not picked the best evening for this.

There were twenty-two hookers and roughly forty customers in the club. Eighteen of the customers were there for Mike Scanlon's bachelor party. The festivities had just gotten under way, so the celebrants hadn't drunk themselves into a stupor yet. They'd had one beer apiece, and the first round of tequila shots had just arrived at their tables. Most of the guys had strippers on their laps. The girl who called herself Sacha, a couple of the celebrants told me later, was on her knees in front of the groom-to-be, her head bobbing up and down.

”Can you keep that part out of the paper?” Scanlon asked me. ”My fiancee would f.u.c.kin' kill me.”

”Sure thing,” I said, ”as long as you fill me in on what happened next.”

When Sacha's work was done, Scanlon expelled a sigh of satisfaction, opened his eyes, and saw the glint of bar light on nickel as Jamal's pistol emerged from his waistband. Scanlon shoved the hooker aside and reached for the revolver in his ankle holster. His pals weren't sure what was happening at first, but instinctively they went for their guns, too.

Scanlon was a Providence cop. So were his buddies.

In the next fifteen seconds, approximately a hundred rounds were fired, according to the official police estimate. One slug grazed Joseph's thigh. Another ricocheted off a metal post and tore a ragged hole through the impressive rump of a stripper named Jezebelle. Dozens more slammed into the mahogany bar and the club's black-painted walls. And some hit what the room full of sharpshooters were aiming at. An a.s.sistant medical examiner was still counting the holes in Jamal's body. Every time he counted, he told me, he came up with a different number.

The cop who recovered Jamal's gun at the scene told me the kid never got off a shot.

25.

Friday morning the executive editor, Marshall Pemberton, sent an all-hands e-mail directing the staff to a.s.semble in the newsroom for a mandatory late afternoon meeting. I didn't figure he was about to announce that we'd won a Pulitzer, so it had to be more bad news. Maybe he was finally going to tell us the old girl was closing down for good.

Once, Smith Coronas clicked and clacked here on long banks of dented metal desks. Teletype machines chattered day and night, spewing AP copy onto long rolls of yellow paper. Copyboys sorted it by subject and hightailed across the ink-stained tile floor to hang it in streams from spikes by the business, sports, and national desks. Every time the door to the back shop swung open, the football fieldsized newsroom rattled with the clanking from the linotype machines. That was all before my time, but I loved listening to the old-timers on the copydesk, the three that were left, reminisce about the old days.

When the paper's miserly owners finally got around to buying computers, the clicking and clacking ceased. Some of the old guys grumbled. Some had trouble adjusting. ”Where do you put the paper in this d.a.m.n thing?” Jim Clark had famously asked. But there was no arguing with progress.

Even after the typewriters and linotype machines were ancient history, the newsroom I loved was never quiet. Reporters relentlessly worked the phones. a.s.sistant city editors scuttled from desk to desk, handing out a.s.signments that were not always gratefully received. Photographers and photo editors huddled at the picture desk, arguing about what shots to use. Sports editors bellowed the latest scores. Copy editors cracked wise about bad leads. Some reporters needed earplugs to write their stories, but I liked the racket.