Free A Scourge of Vipers by Bruce DeSilva Page B

forsake God, and as governor she has renounced freedom. She’s as evil as the Kenyan-born Muslim tyrant who illegally occupies the White House.”
    Swell. I killed the engine, fed the parking meter, crossed the park, and slipped into the diner near city hall. As I grabbed a stool at the counter, Charlie, the fry cook who owns the place, cracked three eggs on the grill without taking my order and slapped five strips of bacon down beside them.
    â€œSo whaddaya think about the governor’s plan to legalize bookmaking?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t have an opinion. You?”
    â€œMy three brothers all work for the state. If this’ll bring in enough dough to save their pensions, I’m all for it.”
    We kicked that around for a while as I ate, then chatted about how the Red Sox were shaping up. We finished critiquing the starting lineup and had just started in on the bullpen when Frieden, the kid city hall reporter, pushed through the door.
    â€œMulligan? I thought you were supposed to be sick.”
    â€œI’m feeling a wee bit peaked,” I said. “Not sure I’ll be able to keep Charlie’s bacon and eggs down.”
    â€œLiar.”
    â€œOkay, you caught me,” I said. “But maybe this can be our little secret.”
    â€œNo worries. I won’t tell.”
    â€œSo, how are you doing?”
    â€œFine, I guess.”
    â€œWhy was Chuckie-boy on your case the other day?”
    â€œHe gave me three times more work than I could finish and then yelled at me because I didn’t finish it.”
    â€œDon’t let him get you down, Kate. The man’s a bully.”
    She plopped down on the stool next to me. Without meeting my eyes, she said, “Working for a newspaper isn’t what I thought it would be.”
    I was pretty sure she didn’t expect a reply, and I was in no mood to nurture. I drained my coffee and wiped the grease from my mouth with a paper napkin. Then I dropped a ten on the counter, turned up the collar of my jean jacket, put on my Red Sox cap, and stepped out into a light morning rain.
    *   *   *
    The Turk’s Head Building was located in a modest cluster of office towers that Mayor Carozza called the Providence financial district. He actually said this with a straight face. The sixteen-story, V-shaped structure, loosely modeled after New York City’s Flatiron Building, was the tallest in Rhode Island when it was erected in 1913. A century later it was a dwarf, but it remained one of the state’s most fashionable business addresses.
    I sloshed down Westminster Street toward a snarling concrete figurehead suspended three floors above the main entrance. Adorned with a turban and a Fu Manchu mustache, it was supposed to represent a Turkish sultan. I thought it was a dead ringer for Flash Gordon’s arch-enemy, Ming the Merciless.
    I ducked through the revolving door, shook the rain from my cap, and scanned the tenant directory: TD Ameritrade, Janney Montgomery Scott, the BankRI Art Gallery, Café la France, a pride of life insurance companies, a bloat of boutique law firms … Then I rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor and strode to the end of a spit-shined hallway. There I found a frosted-glass door discreetly labeled in gold paint:
    McCracken & Associates
    CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIVE SERVICES
    Inside, a secretary who resembled Rihanna stabbed at a keyboard with glitter-polished nails. Putting my own investigative skills to the test, I deduced from the nameplate on her desk that this was not the actual pop star but rather a pretender known to her friends and colleagues as Sharise Campbell. Behind her were three oaken doors. A golden metal plate on one of them said “Mr. McCracken.” The other two doors were blank.
    â€œGood morning, sir,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”
    â€œI don’t, but I was hoping your boss might be able to squeeze me