"Cut my f.u.c.kin' drinkin' to two six-packs a week. Gave up doughnuts and pizza. Stopped chuggin' Coffee-mate from the bottle at breakfast."

"You drank Coffee-mate from the bottle?"

"It's f.u.c.kin' good, Mulligan. Oughta try it sometime."

"Looks like you've been working out, too."

"Most every day, yeah. Vinny Pazienza lets me use his private gym. Love pounding the heavy bag, man. Vinny says I got f.u.c.kin' talent. Started sooner and I mighta gone pro."

You lost, what, fifty, sixty pounds?"

"Closer to a hundred."

"Good for you, Joseph. So how long you been working here?"

"Since June. First time I had steady work in more'n three years."

The bartender wandered over and tapped Joseph's swollen, pasty forearm. "Friend of yours?" he asked.

"Yeah. Give us a couple of brews, Sonny."

"Sure thing," he said. He drew two Buds from the ice chest, popped the tops, and slid the bottles onto the bar. "Take your time. It'll take me a half hour to clean up."

I pulled a roll of Tums from my pocket, peeled off a couple, chewed them to calm my stomach, and chased them with beer.

"So whatcha doing here, Mulligan?" Joseph said. "Guy like you oughta be able to get his p.u.s.s.y for free. Never figured you for a John."

"I'm not. I'm workin.'"

"Saw you upstairs with Destiny on your lap. Nice work if you can get it."

"The Dispatch doesn't pay much," I said, "but the job does have fringe benefits."

"Mine, too. I watch out for the girls, make sure n.o.body gives 'em a hard time. And they take care of me."

"Complimentary b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs?"

"Complimentary means free?"

"It does."

"Then yeah, every f.u.c.kin' night."

"Do customers give the girls a hard time often?"

"Nah. Most of 'em know better. But every now and then, one of them South Providence pimps comes bopping in and tries to squeeze the girls for a cut. Miss Maniella don't allow that. Says the girls got a right to keep what they make."

"Good for her."

"Last month King Felix came in. Heard of him?"

"We've met." In fact, Felix and I went way back.

"Couple of the girls, Sacha and Karma, used to be in his stable. He seemed to think they still were."

"What'd you do?"

"Told him he was mistaken."

"How'd that work out?"

"a.s.shole went for a little silver pistol stuck in his waistband, so I took it away from him. Always heard he was a tough guy, but when I grabbed him by his f.u.c.kin' dreads and dragged him outside, he screamed like a little girl."

"Knock him around a little, did you?"

"Nothin' major. Smashed his nose. Cracked a few ribs. When I was done, I told him to go back out on the street and spread the word. Then I tossed the f.u.c.ker in the Dumpster."

Joseph picked up his Bud and drained half the bottle in a swallow. The bartender wandered back our way and mopped a wet spot with his bar rag.

"You ain't told me what you're workin' on," Joseph said.

"I'm looking for Vanessa Maniella. Seen her around lately?"

He frowned, and his blue eyes turned to slits. "I don't want to read my name in your f.u.c.kin' paper."

"Okay."

"'Cause if I do, I'll kick your a.s.s."

"Understood."

The bartender was still mopping that same spot. Maybe he was eavesdropping. Maybe he was just being thorough.

"Ain't seen Miss Maniella in weeks," Joseph said. "She's got people what run the place for her. She don't come in much."

"How about her father?"

"Ain't never seen him in here."

"Think he's dead?"

"All I know about that is what you put in your f.u.c.kin' paper."

"No scuttleb.u.t.t about it around the club?"

"Scuttleb.u.t.t?"

"Gossip."

"Nah. n.o.body here knows a f.u.c.kin' thing."

"That beating you gave King Felix. You said it was last month?"

"Yeah."

"Before or after the shooting on the Cliff Walk?"

He took a moment to think about it. "'Bout a week before."

"Think he was mad enough about it to go gunning for Sal?"

"Wouldn't have been in any condition to go after anybody," Joseph said.

"He could have sent one of his peeps."

"King Felix is a f.u.c.kin' moron," Joseph said. "I doubt he even knows who Sal is. And the r.e.t.a.r.ds who work for him? They wouldn't be able to find Newport on a map. Besides, if they had the b.a.l.l.s to come after somebody, it would have been me."

"They still might," I said, "so watch your back."

9.

That night I logged on to iTunes and built a new thirty-song playlist: "Love for Sale" by Ella Fitzgerald, "Teen-Age Prost.i.tute" by Frank Zappa, "Bad Girls" by Donna Summer, "Roxanne" by the Police, "Call Me" by Blondie, "What Do You Do for Money Honey" by AC/DC, "Lady Marmalade" by Labelle, "The Fire Down Below" by Bob Seger, "Honky Tonk Women" by the Rolling Stones, "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" by Tom Waits, and a bunch more.

Musically, the sound track for my latest obsession was a mixed bag. My favorite was "867-5309/Jenny," by Tommy Tutone, who screeched about finding the number written on a wall-"for a good time, call." When the song hit the top of the charts back in 1982, pranksters all over the country called the number and asked for Jenny. I'd dialed it a few times myself, when my kid sister wasn't hogging the phone, and reached a humorless functionary at Brown University. Brown, like scores of other annoyed phone company customers, responded to the onslaught by changing phone numbers.

Next morning, I sat at the counter at my favorite Providence diner and skimmed the Dispatch's sports section while sipping coffee from a chipped ceramic mug. Jerod Mayo, Matt Light, and Wes Welker were all doubtful for the Patriots' game on Sunday, making me regret the latest bet I'd phoned in to Zerilli.

Charlie, the short-order cook who also owned the place, bent over the grill and cracked eggs for my breakfast. Somebody's pancakes looked about ready. Beside them, strips of bacon popped and sizzled.

I flipped to the front page and saw that Fiona was back in the news, calling the governor a wh.o.r.emaster because he wouldn't back her antiprost.i.tution bill. Blackjack Baldelli and Knuckles Grieco, the two lunkheads who ran the Providence Highway Department, also made page one. A jury had convicted both of grand larceny, conspiracy, and income tax evasion for buying fifty thousand dollars' worth of manhole covers with city money, reselling them to a sc.r.a.p dealer for fourteen thousand, and pocketing the cash. Two members of the Sword of G.o.d had been arrested for throwing rocks through the windows of the Planned Parenthood clinic on Point Street. And the Rhode Island unemployment rate had reached almost 12 percent, second highest in the nation after Michigan.

Charlie turned toward the counter to top off my coffee and noticed the headline on the unemployment story. "d.a.m.n," he said. "Why can't we ever be number one at anything?"

"We are," I said. "Rhode Island leads the nation in doughnut shops per capita."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We've got one for every forty-seven hundred people-nine times the national average."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I read the paper," I said. "You ought to try it sometime."

"No wonder Rhode Islanders are so fat."

"Your cuisine isn't helping any, Charlie."

He chuckled, turned back to the grill to flip my eggs, and tossed me a question over his shoulder.

"Anything new on Maniella?"

"There isn't."

"Think he's dead?"

"Looks like, but I can't swear to it."

He turned back to me and leaned his forearms on the counter. "Who would want to kill him?"

"Could be anybody," I said. "Business rivals. Born-again Christians. A p.o.r.n actress's angry father." Or the Mob, I thought to myself. Gra.s.so and Arena could hold a grudge for a long time. The pope might be miffed about those condoms, but since the Borgias pa.s.sed into history, murder wasn't the Vatican's style ... as far as I knew.

"Or maybe it was just a robbery gone bad," I said. "The cops didn't find a wallet on the body."

"In the old days, Sal used to come in here," Charlie said. "Back before he could afford champagne and caviar for breakfast. Seemed like a decent guy, but I guess he wasn't."

My eggs were ready now, so he turned back to sc.r.a.pe them onto a plate. Outside the diner's greasy windows, rays of morning sunshine broke through low, scattered clouds and turned the Beaux-Arts faade of city hall to gold. Seagulls had strafed the building again overnight, continuing their war of t.u.r.ds with the current administration. I shoveled Charlie's masterpiece into my mouth and tried to think things out.

Poking into the Maniellas' prost.i.tution business wasn't getting me any closer to proving they were paying off the governor. The mystery of Scalici's pig looked like a dead end, too.

Last night, I'd spent hours Googling investigative stories on Internet p.o.r.n. The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post had unearthed details about some of the big operators, but they'd run into a black hole when they looked at the Maniellas. They were too good at hiding their money and covering their tracks. The Times and Post had far more time and money to devote to the story than I did. If they couldn't find anything, there was no point in me trying.

Lomax could see I'd run dry and responded by jamming me up with a diet of obits, press conferences, and weather stories. I was starting to hate the job I'd always loved. I needed to find something big to work on to get Lomax to ease up, but I had no idea what that something might be. Cash for inspection stickers was a scandal, but it didn't qualify as news. Everybody already knew about it. Besides, for working people trying to keep clunkers on the road, it was a public service. A little graft was the only thing standing between Secretariat and the glue factory.

I opened the paper to the metro front and read a police story under Mason's byline. Providence vice cops had kicked in the door to a second-floor apartment on Colfax Street last night and confiscated a computer containing hundreds of child p.o.r.n videos. The occupants, who had rented the place under a phony name, were nowhere to be found.

I read the story carefully twice, but I couldn't see anything in it for me. The Maniellas had never stooped to child p.o.r.n-as far as I knew. I doubted they had moral scruples about it, but with the millions they were making on adult p.o.r.n, why would they get involved in something that would bring down so much heat?

Back at the office, I went over the computer printouts of the governor's campaign contributions again, looking for anything I might have missed the first five times. It was still just a blur of hundreds of names, addresses, and dollar figures. I learned nothing. I shoved it aside and started in on the stack of obits Lomax wanted by three o'clock.

"Hi, Mulligan."

"What's up, Thanks-Dad?"

"Need help with anything?"

"Want to try your hand with a few obits?"

"Not really, no."

Hadn't worked the last time I'd tried it, either. The publisher's son, surprise surprise, never got stuck with scut work.