Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva Read Free Book Online Page A

asked for a bribe. “Yeah, we got a John and Edna Stinson,” she said. “Got themselves a cabin out by the Deschutes River, about forty miles from town.”
    â€œAny way I can get in touch with them tonight?”
    â€œThis an emergency?”
    â€œNo, nothing like that.”
    â€œWell, then, I don’t see how. They don’t have a telephone, and we’re short a man today so I can’t take a run out there for you.”
    â€œCan I get a message to them?”
    â€œThey come into town about twice a month to stock up on groceries and pick up their mail. I suppose I can stick a note in their mailbox for you. It’s against federal law, of course. Mailboxes are supposed to be just for mail, you see. But I can always tell the postmaster it’s police business.”
    I thanked her, gave her my home, work, and cell numbers, and asked that John or Edna call collect.
    â€œYou know John and Edna well?” I asked.
    â€œPretty much,” she said.
    â€œDo you happen to know if they have a dog?”
    â€œHad a big hairy mutt for a while, but I heard something happened to it. Now what was the story with that dog? Got distemper, maybe? No, that was the Harrisons’ spaniel. I think what I heard was that it just run off.”
    After I hung up, I turned to my computer and pounded out a snappy lead about Ralph, Gladys, and Sassy.

12
    I got to the meeting just as the photographer was leaving. Twenty-four men in identical red baseball caps were milling about the grocery isles. I knew several of them from high school, several more from the police blotter, and a couple from both.
    â€œIt’s on me,” Zerilli was saying as I walked in. “One bag of chips and one can of soda apiece. Aaay, Vinnie! One bag, one bag. Let you eat all the stock, might as well burn the fuckin’ place down myself.”
    The caps were decorated with crossed bats and the words “The DiMaggios” in black letters.
    â€œAre the caps fuckin’ great, or what?” Zerilli said to me. “Got ’em made up special. Your photographer, who’s got great knockers, by the way, she loved those fuckin’ caps. Couldn’t stop talkin’ about ’em, honest to God. Posed the guys out front the market, all lined up with their bats. Guys in the front row down on one knee like a team picture, for Chrisssake.”
    â€œSo why are you doing this?” I asked several of the DiMaggios as the group got ready to head out. Tony Arcaro, who had one of those no-show highway department jobs, muttered a few words about “giving something back to the community.” Eddie Jackson, a police-blotter regular for rearranging his wife’s dental work, said he was “protecting my loved ones.” Martin Tillinghast, a ragged jailhouse tattoo seared into his forearm, said he wanted to “take a stand against crime.” I scrawled their bullshit in my notepad.
    â€œGot names to go with all but one of the faces,” Zerilli said once we were alone, the store eerily quiet now without the sound of seven hundred teeth crushing potato chips. “Only one nobody knows is the chink,” he said, pointing to the photo of Mr. Rapture. “One guy says he thinks he’s seen him around, but he ain’t sure.”
    Zerilli turned the pictures over, showing me where he had scrawled the names along with addresses done in Providence fashion: no street numbers, just landmarks, such as “peeling yellow house on Larch between Ivy and Camp, blue Dodge Ram on blocks in the yard.”
    When I finished with Zerilli it was only quarter to ten. I climbed in the Bronco and drove four blocks to Larch Street.
    *  *  *
    â€œMrs. DeLucca?”
    â€œYes? Who is it?”
    â€œMy name is Mulligan. I’m a reporter for the paper.”
    â€œWe already take the paper.”
    I thought I recognized the voice, but I couldn’t quite place it. It was a voice that