Cliff Walk: A Liam Mulligan Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

poverty.
    Sitting across the table from her, I felt good to be back on a real story again. Lately, I’d been getting stuck with a lot of routine assignments—duller-than-dirt stories that used to be handled by reporters who were now collecting unemployment checks. “Get used to it,” Lomax kept telling me. “Unless we can figure out a way to blow up the Internet, it’s only gonna get worse.” The last week had been a nightmare of weather stories, obituaries, traffic accidents, and Providence planning commission meetings. Almost made me long for the Derby Ball.
    “Salmonella’s been grooming his daughter to take over the family business, so his murder won’t change much,” Fiona was saying. “The Maniellas have more money than God, and they know how to spread it around. The way I hear it, they own the governor, most of the superior court justices, and half the state legislature.”
    “Only half?”
    “Half is all they need.”
    Fiona got elected last November after turning her campaign into a crusade to outlaw prostitution. Not everyone agreed with her. It was a close election. Since then, she’d made a lot of fiery speeches about the shame of Rhode Island—the only place in the country, outside of a few counties in Nevada, where sex for pay was legal. So far, she hadn’t made any headway in persuading the state legislature to close the loophole. She figured the fix was in.
    “I’ve been combing the campaign contribution lists for the governor and legislative committee chairmen,” I said, “but I don’t see any sign of it.”
    “And you won’t,” she said. “Salmonella conceals his campaign contributions by giving each of his porn actors five thousand dollars a year in cash and having them write personal checks to the politicians of his choice.”
    “How many actors are we talking about?”
    “A hundred. Maybe more.”
    “And we don’t know who they are,” I said.
    “No,” she said. “Not unless their mothers actually gave them names like Hugh Mungus and Lucy Bangs.”
    “How’d you hear about this?”
    “Can’t say, but my informant is reliable.”
    “Good enough to make a case?”
    “No.”
    “With the millions Maniella makes selling virtual sex, why would he still care about a few Rhode Island brothels?”
    “Maybe he’s one of those guys who can never have enough money.”
    I wasn’t much bothered by the Maniellas’ prostitution business. The way I saw it, women could do whatever they wanted with their bodies, and men could do whatever they wanted with their money. But it bothered me a whole lot that the state government was for sale.
    “I’ll keep digging,” I said. “If I can prove the Maniellas are doing what you say they are, it’s a hell of a big corruption story.”
    “Good.”
    “But I gotta tell you, prostitution seems like a victimless crime to me,” I said, and immediately regretted it.
    “Tell that to the Johns’ wives when they come down with gonorrhea or HIV,” Fiona said. “It’s a filthy business. It exploits women, it enriches vile people like the Maniellas, and it’s an ugly blot on the reputation of our state.” Her tone did not invite further discussion.
    She took a swig from her beer and added, “I just hope I can hang on to this job long enough to do something about it.”
    Back in 1980, when a fiery Jesuit priest named Robert Drinan was a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, Pope John Paul II ordered priests and nuns to shun electoral politics. Now, thirty years later, it was still church policy. Fiona had chosen to ignore it.
    “Better hurry,” I said, “if you want to get the job done before the thunderbolt strikes from Rome.”
    “I’m hoping the Holy Father will understand that I’m doing the Lord’s bidding.”
    “What’s the bishop telling you?”
    “That if I don’t resign from public office, I could get excommunicated.”
    “Jesus, Fiona!”
    “Don’t take our Lord’s name in vain in my presence, asshole.”
    She