Free Providence Rag: A Liam Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva Page A

front stoop of her modest bungalow, landed in a puddle, and felt the water seep into her flats. A scream rose in her throat. She dashed for her little Ford Focus, stepped into a pothole, twisted her ankle, and nearly fell in the street. She regained her balance, unlocked the car door, closed the umbrella, and collapsed in the driver’s seat.
    She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and repeated the mantra her psychologist had provided: “I am not having a heart attack. The tightness in my chest and the shortness of breath are symptoms of adrenaline overload. My hands are clammy and tingling because I am hyperventilating.”
    She opened her eyes, averted them from the rain-splattered windshield, and began the breathing exercise designed to ward off a panic attack. She took a deep breath, held it for ten seconds, and released it slowly through her nose.
    The night it had happened, it was raining. A little thug in a black ski mask had forced his way into her car, punched her in the mouth, grabbed her keys, and driven her to a deserted street. There, he’d smashed her face into hash with his fists while chanting a mantra more powerful than the one her psychologist had given her: “I’m going to fuck your ass and slit your throat, you nosy picture-taking bitch.” He’d yanked her sweatshirt over her breasts, ripped off her bra, put a Buck knife to her throat, and forced her to remove her jeans and panties. Somehow, she’d managed to pull away from his grasp, bolt from the car, and run bloody and naked through the storm.
    “You beat him,” her psychologist always told her; but to Gloria, that’s not how it felt. The thug had never been caught. Whenever Gloria thought of him, which she tried mightily not to do, she pictured him lurking in the rain, waiting for another chance. Waiting just for her.
    Gloria repeated the breathing exercise ten times until her heart rate slowed. Then she adjusted the rearview mirror and studied her face in it. This was something she disliked doing, because he had left his mark there. But how could a girl live without mirrors? She fixed her lipstick and ran a comb through her damp blond hair. Then she adjusted the pirate-style patch that covered her glass eye.
    She liked to say that she wore the patch because the glass eye made her look deranged, but the truth was that she couldn’t stand looking at the gift he had given her. She remembered how Mulligan once told her the patch was sexy, and her lips curled in a tight little smile.
    She stuck the key in the ignition, fired the engine, switched on the wipers, and suddenly realized she’d left her camera bag on the kitchen table. A news photographer was useless without a camera. There was nothing for it. She’d have to get out of the car and limp back to the house through the rain.
    *   *   *
    The classical music station was playing Rachmaninoff. Edward Anthony Mason III loved Rachmaninoff. If the composition had words, he would have sung along.
    He gunned the engine, and the lovingly restored silver-blue 1967 Jaguar E-Type Series 1 coupe leapfrogged the rainy-morning traffic. He raced up an on-ramp and sped across the majestic Claiborne Pell Bridge that arced over Narragansett Bay’s choppy east passage. The station was playing Dvo ř ák now. Mason didn’t care for Dvo ř ák. He fiddled with the tuner, searching for another classical station. Finding only vapid soft rock, headache-inducing rap, smug Don Imus, and the Mike & Mike sports yakkers, he snapped the radio off.
    Mason was glad it was finally Monday. The weekend had not been a pleasant one at the family manse in Newport, Rhode Island. All day Saturday his father, the publisher of The Providence Dispatch, had cloistered himself in the library and reviewed the paper’s calamitous financials over and over again—as if he could somehow will them to change. But nothing—not even a series of buyouts and layoffs that had shuttered the paper’s suburban bureaus and slashed its