A Scourge of Vipers (15 page)

“If he was, it's news to me,” Whoosh said. “What was his angle?”

“Apparently, he was working for Atlantic City gambling interests who want to swoop in after legalization and run the show.”

“The governor wants the Lottery Commission to take the bets.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but Alfano was trying to get the bill held up until she agreed to privatization.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Okay, I'll take your word for it. But what's this got to do with Mario?”

“Alfano's bribe offers came with a warning,” I said. “He told the legislators things would go badly for them if they didn't play ball. I think the badly part was Mario.”

Whoosh stubbed out his cigarette and started another, taking the time to consider how much he was willing to tell me.

“Can we talk hyper— What's that fuckin' word?”

“Hypothetically?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Go on.”

“Let's say Alfano did call me. He woulda been careful not to let on what he wanted muscle for, and I woulda been smart enough not to fuckin' ask. And if he decided somebody needed to be tuned up, he never woulda told Mario why. He woulda just given him a name.”

“Okay,” I said. “I get that.”

“We done?”

“Not yet. Whoever sent Alfano must have sent somebody else by now. Any idea who?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Haven't gotten any more calls from Jersey?”

“No.”

“You heard Phil Templeton got shot, right?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“He's one of the guys Alfano tried to bribe,” I said, “but he didn't take the money. He called the state police instead.”

“So?”

“I think that's why Mario shot him.”

“Aw, Christ. You sure it was Mario?”

“I can't prove it,” I said, “but it's more than a hunch.”

“The cops are looking at him for this?”

“I'm not sure if they're on to him yet,” I said, “but they will be. There's surveillance video of him picking Alfano up at the airport.”

“Shit. Is there anything solid connecting the kid to the shooting?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “They don't know where Templeton was killed, and they don't have the murder weapon. The shot was a through-and-through, so they don't have the slug either. Looks like Templeton was grabbed at his house, but according to the Lincoln cops, none of the neighbors saw anything.”

“No prints?”

“None that point to the killer. At least that's what my sources are telling me.”

“Okay then,” he said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

With that, he pulled himself to his feet, shuffled into his storeroom, and returned with a box of Cubans for me.

“Think you could give me a hand with somethin'?” he asked.

“And what would that be?”

“I got no clue what odds to offer on the Vipers' tryouts.”

“People want to bet on
that
?”

“Hell, Mulligan. People bet on every fuckin' thing. You know that. Besides, them stories you been writin' have stirred up a lot of interest.”

“Huh.”

“Thing is, I don't know whether any of the former college players have stayed in shape. And I got no feel at all for the playground guys.”

“You want
me
to figure the odds?”

“Be good practice for you.”

“In case I end up taking over.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Give me a second.”

“Take your time, and get it right.”

“At first, I figured the tryouts were just a publicity stunt.”

“But now you think they ain't?”

“Coach Martin seems to be taking it seriously,” I said. “And a few of the players look pretty good. Do you know if the Vipers actually have a roster vacancy?”

“When the tryouts started, they had one open spot,” Whoosh said. “But from what I hear, Cartwright, the kid from Kent State who's under contract with the Pistons, needs shoulder surgery and is gonna miss at least half the season.”

“Two spots, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'd make it even money that none of these guys make it.”

“With two spots open?”

“Right. There are still a lot of unsigned free agents out there, Whoosh.”

“Okay.”

“Of the ten players still left in the tryouts, I'd make Jefferson the favorite at two to one. I'd put Benton at four to one, Sears at six to one, and Krueger at ten to one. The rest of the guys have no shot, but I'd put them down at fifteen to one to generate some action.”

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I got a bunch of people wanting to lay down a few bucks on you making the team.”

“You've got to be shitting me.”

“Most of them are broads, Mulligan. You know the type. Gals who decide what horse to bet on based on how pretty they look. I'll put you down at twenty to one. Since you got no shot, that'll make me some easy money.”

“Okay.”

“Want a piece of the action?”

“Probably shouldn't.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I'd hate to have anybody think I was doing something shady to influence the outcome.”

“Like playing matador defense against a guy you bet on?”

“That or breaking somebody's arm.”

“Nobody but me will know you placed a bet.”

“Okay. Give me a nickel each on Benton and Jefferson.”

“Done.”

“About you taking over?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Best we wait to see how this legalization thing shakes out.”

“Understood.”

“And Mulligan?”

“Um?”

“I want you to know I didn't see none of this shit about Mario comin'.”

“No?”

“If Alfano reached out to me, and I still ain't sayin' he did, he never mentioned anything about killin'. No way I woulda involved the kid in anything that heavy.”

“Maybe Alfano lied to you,” I said.

“Coulda, I guess.”

“Or maybe Mario was just supposed to rough Templeton up but couldn't control his rage.”

“
Rage?
It was just a job.”

“Templeton was gay,” I said.

“A homo? You fuckin' sure?”

“I am.”

“Aw, fuck.”

On the drive home, I figured I should tell Joseph to put a few bucks on Jefferson. Then I remembered that he didn't have any money.

 

23

It wasn't quite nine
P.M.
when I parked Secretariat on Washington Street outside Hopes, shoved through the door, and found Yolanda perched on that same bar stool.

She was dressed in a mint-green business suit with no blouse visible beneath the jacket, and black high heels she didn't need to make those legs look great. She wasn't wearing any gold tonight. Instead, a sterling pendant dangled from a silver chain and fell between the swell of her breasts. Two empty stemmed glasses rested on the bar in front of her. Yolanda was a sipper. She must have been waiting for a long time.

As I took the stool next to her, she caressed the pendant with the fingers of her left hand and fixed her eyes on me.

“This was sweet,” she said.

“But did it work?”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves.”

“It was Rosie's idea,” I said.

“You still talk to her?”

“All the time.”

“Does it ever worry you that she talks back?”

Oh-oh. How could I make the woman I wanted a relationship with understand my relationship with a dead woman? Buying time to find the words, I waved the bartender over and ordered another martini for Yolanda and a Killian's for me.

“Better make mine a club soda,” Yolanda said. “Martinis are like breasts. One is too few, but three is too many.”

“I disagree.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“There can never be too many breasts—as long as they come in even numbers.”

“Mulligan, you're such a boy.”

“Um.”

“So can we get back to Rosie?”

“Sure. The way it works is, I talk and Rosie listens.”

“What do you talk about?”

“I tell her what's going on in my life. I ask for her advice.”

“And she gives it?”

“We knew each other so well, Yolanda. I can always sense her answer.”

“But do you actually hear her voice?”

“Not the way the Son of Sam killer heard a demon whisper orders in his ear. I mean, it's not like I'm psychotic. But whenever I need her, she's there. In fact, she's with me now.”

Yolanda leaned back to look at the empty stool on the other side of me. “She's keeping a pretty low profile. What's she saying?”

“She's warning me not to say anything stupid.”

“Too bad she didn't tell you that the last time.”

“Maybe she did. Koko Taylor's wailing from the jukebox probably drowned her out. That's another woman who speaks to me from the grave.”

“You really remember what was playing on the jukebox? Or did you just make that up?”

“Yolanda, I remember everything that happens when we're together.”

“Smooth line, white boy. Ever use that one before?”

“Never. I swear. You're the only Yolanda I know.” My nerves were bringing Mulligan the smartass to the surface again.

She sipped, smiled slightly, and stared at me over the rim of her glass.

“You look hungry,” she said.

I was sure I did.

She laughed then. “For food, I mean. Eat yet?”

“Not since breakfast.”

“Me either. I'm famished.”

I tossed some bills on the bar, and we strolled to the Trinity Brewhouse, our hands tangling. We took a table by the mullioned windows that look out on the Providence Public Library.

Over drinks, hers another club soda and mine a Pickman's Pale Ale, we talked about work until the food arrived. The calamari appetizer and a Cobb salad wrapped in a tortilla for her. The nachos appetizer and cowboy burger for me. Yolanda reached across the table, plucked a gooey nacho with her fingers, and popped it between those lips I longed to kiss. She'd always helped herself to my plate whenever we dined together.

“Mulligan?”

“Um?”

“Did I ever tell you about my parents?”

“No, you never did.”

“They met in a Chicago candy factory where they both worked the line. Mama always smelled like sugar. Daddy smelled like sugar and cigarettes.”

“How sweet,” I said.

“Please. No more jokes tonight.”

“I'll try.”

“They'd moved up north in the early sixties, Mama from Mississippi and Daddy from East Texas. They must have had it rough down there because I could never get them to talk about it. Daddy's gone now, and my mama still won't talk.”

“Probably didn't have it all that easy up north either,” I said.

“They found steady work, but we never did have much. Clothes somebody else wore first, furniture handed down by church folk, and an apartment on the second floor of a walk-up on the West Side. Every damned day, we had to fight the roaches for it.”

That sounded like the way I was living now, but I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.

“The city was split into black and white back then. Still pretty much is, I guess. The only white folks I knew growing up were the teachers at the for-shit public schools I attended. White cops were on patrol, but they never got out of their cars unless they were looking to shoot somebody. To get to my elementary school, I had to cross West Madison, which hadn't been rebuilt since a twenty-eight-block stretch was looted and burned ten years before I was born.”

“On the night of the King assassination,” I said.

“That's right. My folks never talked much about that either.”

She paused to nibble at her Cobb salad and perhaps to consider how much more of her past to share with me.

“For my first eighteen years, white folks were a mystery to me,” she said. “I'd decided not to trust them. I didn't have any white friends at all till I got to Illinois State.”

“Your parents must have given up a lot to pay for that.”

“They did what they could, but I still had to take out twenty-five grand in college loans.”

She stopped talking again and toyed with her food.

“I'd like to hear more,” I said. “I want to know it all. But I can't help wondering why you're telling me this now.”

“I'm getting to that,” she said. “At college, the black kids mostly kept to themselves. Hardly anyone dated outside of that circle. The few white boys who did ask black girls out mostly treated them like whores.”

“Did that happen to you?”

“No. But to a couple of my friends.”

“That's why you vowed not to date white guys?”

“It was more than that. Interracial dating wasn't just rare back then. A black guy risked his life just being
seen
with a white girl. In some places that's still a sin. But black girls were expected to stick to their own kind, too. Sisters who dared to date white boys were either pitied or scorned. Older black folks, especially, thought they were letting themselves be used and saw them as traitors to their race.”

“Times have changed, Yolanda.”

“Maybe that's true,” she said. “But time changes slower for some folks. A lot of older black people, like my mama, still think stirring the pot is a mistake.”

She paused for a moment to sip from her drink.

“These days, some black women seek out white men out of desperation,” she said. “With so many brothers behind bars, it's a numbers game. But mostly, most young people don't think about race as a barrier anymore. Somebody looks good, they go for it.”

“But not you,” I said.