Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel by Bruce DeSilva Read Free Book Online

opened my eyes to see Captain Parisi knocking on the glass with his knife-scarred knuckles. Across the lake, the sun had crept over the horizon and was peeking through the pines.
    “Mulligan?” he said as I rolled down the window. “The hell you doing here?”
    “Same thing you are.”
    I’d known Steve Parisi for years. Despite Fiona’s grousing about the lack of results, he was a damned fine detective, although he did tend to be tight-lipped with the press. There was often a five-second delay before anything he said to me, as if he were afraid some juicy official secret would slip.
    “House still empty?” he asked.
    “It is.”
    “Doesn’t explain why you’re sleeping in a junk car in our favorite pornographer’s driveway.”
    “I got caught in the storm last night and didn’t dare risk the dike.”
    “Got an inspection sticker on this heap?” He checked and found it on the windshield. “How much of a bribe did you pay to get that?”
    “The going rate is forty bucks.”
    Five seconds ticked off before he sighed and said, “Yeah, that’s what I hear, too.”
    “If Rhode Islanders would stop killing each other for a week or two,” I said, “maybe one of us could look into it.”
    That five-second delay again. Talking with Parisi was like conversing by radio signal with somebody on the moon.
    “If I tell you not to come out here again,” he said, “it won’t do any good, will it?”
    “It won’t.”
    “How ’bout giving me a call if you find them before I do?”
    “Sure,” I said. “And if you find them first, you’ll give me a heads-up, right?”
    “I’ll think about it. Watch yourself on the way out. The edge of the causeway broke away in a couple of spots last night, and from the skid marks in the mud, it looks like someone damn near went into the drink.”

 
    8
    I was sitting at the bar nursing a six-dollar can of Bud when a bottle blonde sashayed up in a G-string and stiletto heels, thrust a pair of store-bought tits in my face, and said, “Want a blow job?” Well, sure, but not at these prices. I shook my head, and she stamped her heel in frustration. Then she spun away and scanned the room for another mark. I took a good look at her ass. Some habits are hard to break.
    It was a slow Thursday night at the Tongue and Groove. There were no chartered buses in the parking lot, and the twenty hookers taking turns on the stripper poles outnumbered the paying customers. Most of the men looked as if they’d already had their fun. Now short on cash and stamina, they hunched over beers at the cocktail tables or slumped on stools by the stage to review the choreography. The girls gyrated in G-strings, but ten dollars would get you into the “all-nude room” upstairs. In the name of research, I pulled a Hamilton out of my pocket. As I handed it to the palooka watching the door, I wondered how I should phrase the entry on my expense account.
    The room at the top of the stairs was dark except for the stage, where two naked women, one black and one white, were on their hands and knees, shaking their asses to the beat of a romantic mood setter by 50 Cent:
    I’ll take you to the candy shop,
    I’ll let you lick the lollipop …
    Their genitals gyrated inches from the noses of two men sitting on barstools in a row of otherwise empty ones at the edge of the stage. One guy thrust a dollar in a garter and reached out to fondle the merchandise.
    The Tongue and Groove was my last stop on a three-night tour of Vanessa Maniella’s strip clubs. I’d been hoping to find out how they operated—and maybe pick up some gossip about the family’s whereabouts. But the main thing I’d discovered was that Vanessa had learned a thing or two about merchandising at URI.
    On Tuesday night, I’d hung out at Shakehouse. There, the cover was twenty dollars, which a large gentleman in a Joseph Abboud suit politely requested at the door. A poster-size photo of three naked stunners mugging with a linebacker from