Part 30 (1/2)

”The p.o.r.nography business will survive.” Sal rubbed his face and looked at me for a moment. ”How much longer do you think the Dispatch will hold on?”

”I don't know. Two or three years, maybe.”

”What will you do then?”

”No idea.”

”Would you consider coming to work for me?”

”Doing what?”

”You are an expert at digging up hard-to-get information,” Sal said.

”So I've been told.”

”I could use somebody like you.”

”What kind of information are you after?”

”That is something to be discussed after you take the job.”

I considered asking Sal about the Chad Brown murders again but then thought better of it. He'd already told me the only thing he knew was what he'd read in the paper. If he wasn't involved, that was probably the truth. If he was involved, he wasn't going to tell me.

I told Sal I'd think about his offer. I shook his hand, and I was on my way out when I ran into Vanessa in the hall.

”Did Dad offer you that job?” she asked.

”He did.”

”Going to take it?”

”I don't know.”

”You should. You'd look good in front of a camera.”

”Oh G.o.d, no!”

She threw back her head and laughed. ”Just kidding,” she said, and walked on by. I turned and watched her step into her father's office.

I continued down the hall, pushed through the door to the outer office, and found it empty. The receptionist had left for the day, or maybe she'd stepped out for a smoke. I walked across the beige carpet and went through the steel door to the peeling green vestibule. Then I stopped, thought for a second, and decided to employ one of those investigative reporting techniques they don't teach at Columbia. I turned back just as the lock in the steel door clicked shut. I punched the first four numbers into the electronic keypad, guessed at the fifth, and hit it on the fourth try. At the receptionist's desk, I found the b.u.t.ton that unlocked the inner door, slipped inside, and crept back to Sal's office. Standing outside the door, I could just make out the voices.

”When did this happen?” Sal said.

”A couple of hours ago,” Vanessa said.

”Where?”

”Pawtucket.”

”Sonuvab.i.t.c.h,” Sal said. ”It's not over.”

Then the phone rang. Sal took the call and started arguing with someone about the price of a new video camera. I tiptoed down the hall, went back out the door, and headed for the Dispatch.

I'd just stepped into the newsroom when Lomax grabbed me by the arm and handed me a printout of a story under Mason's byline: Nine-year-old Julia Arruda of 22 Maynard St., Pawtucket, was abducted at 3:15 p.m. today and remains missing.

Pawtucket police said the child had been playing with friends outside the Potter Burns Elementary School, which she attends, when she was struck in the face with a s...o...b..ll and decided to go home. She had just stepped onto the sidewalk when a van pulled up and the back door flew open. A man wearing a black ski mask jumped out, grabbed her, and dragged her inside. Julia's best friend, Karen Rose, also 9, ran after the van, caught the license plate, and wrote it down in the snow, police said.

Twenty minutes later, police found the van abandoned on a side street a half-mile away. It had been reported stolen yesterday from a U-Haul lot on Harris Street in nearby South Attleboro.

42.

Tuesday at dawn, FBI agents raided houses in Fort Worth, Texas; Naples, Florida; Cape Girardeau, Missouri; Andover, Ma.s.sachusetts; and Edison, New Jersey. They arrested five middle-aged men and seized their computers. By Thursday, all five had been formally charged with possession of child p.o.r.nography, released on bail pending trial, and fired from their jobs. According to Parisi, all five were warned that the charges might be the least of their problems-that someone out there might be gunning for them.

Shortly before noon on Friday, Charles H. Gleason of 43 Carmello Drive in Edison was waiting at a red light at the corner of Lincoln Highway and Plainfield Avenue when somebody driving a stolen Buick Regal pulled up next to him, rolled down the pa.s.senger-side window, and fired three shots from a nine-millimeter Springfield XdM. According to the a.s.sociated Press account, cops found the Buick abandoned a few miles away on the Rutgers University campus. The handgun, reported stolen from a gun shop in Providence a month earlier, was under the driver's seat. Gleason's wife, referring to her late husband as ”the pathetic little pervert,” told the AP he'd been on his way to the state unemployment office to apply for benefits.

I didn't care. I had a date.

43.

I liked to go into Boston for the games. Secretariat had memorized the directions to Fenway Park and the Garden and knew to drop me off at a couple of watering holes along the route. The bars on Yawkey Way always served up just what I needed-cheese fries, entertaining loudmouths, and the occasional Yankees or Knicks fan who wandered into the wrong place. I didn't often bother with the rest of the city. Providence had all the problems I could handle, and it was small enough to fit in my pocket.

Cambridge, just north of Boston, was a schizophrenic little place: halfway houses and mom-and-pop grocers interspersed with pretentious eateries and ivory towers that hummed with possibility. The center of the town was gritty enough to remind me of home.

As Yolanda and I headed to Central Square for Patricia Smith's poetry reading, I pointed out everything I didn't like. ”Another Starbucks,” I said for the fourth time. ”Another grill with an 'e' on the end. And there's another shop with an extra 'pe' on the end. Either folks around here can't spell, or we've wandered into an alternate universe.”

Behind the wheel of her Acura, Yolanda shook her head and laughed, and I felt my breath catch on something.

”MIT and Harvard spell money,” she said. ”What did you expect?”

The Cantab Lounge was in the middle of a block that lifted my spirits a little. Although it held one of those ghastly fern-filled restaurants, there was also a pizza joint that sold sloppy slices and a 7-Eleven with ancient hot dogs spinning on hot rollers-cuisine for the tipsy, late-night connoisseur.

We grabbed a parking spot behind the bar, and I walked behind my date, getting a load of the scenery. Yolanda had tucked a man's blue oxford s.h.i.+rt into faded jeans that looked poured on. On the back right pocket was a familiar logo-True Religion. I don't consider myself a prayin' man, but ...

”Mulligan, c'mon, the show's starting soon. What are you doing back there?” I looked up to see Yolanda smirking at me from beneath the brim of a Chicago Cubs hat. She looked so gorgeous that I'd already decided to forgive her for the ball cap.

She'd finally agreed to go with me because she really wanted to hear Patricia read, didn't want to go alone, and couldn't find anyone else who gave a s.h.i.+t about poetry. Her usual ground rule applied: We were just going together, not goin' together.

We opened the door to the Cantab and were greeted by the smell of cheap whiskey and old fried food, the sound of heartbreak on the jukebox, and dark the way drunks like it. Before my eyes adjusted, I could barely make out the forms of guys who'd probably been glued to their stools since breakfast.

We followed a stream of people down a narrow staircase to the bas.e.m.e.nt, where the poetry reading was set to start in fifteen minutes. The buzz there hinted at an optimism sorely lacking on the first floor. The room was strung with colored lights. The stage was just a small area cleared at the front of the room. A DJ was playing songs that sounded like drums mumbling.