A Confidential Source

by Jan Brogan

  Leonard must have read my thoughts. “People like to think the mob is a thing of the past,” he said. “The FBI beat them down with RICO, the old omertà loyalty gone by the wayside. Junior Patriarca not the man his father was. That’s what everyone likes to think. But you know, Junior’s grown up. He’s not so inept anymore. And this is Rhode Island. We don’t change that quick.”

  He looked at me with meaning, and I wasn’t sure if this had to do with the mayor, the casino-gambling referendum, or Barry Mazursky’s murder. I didn’t get a chance to ask him to elaborate, though. We’d pulled up to a restaurant with a faux stone exterior and small neon light that said THE BLUE GROTTO, and a valet was jumping for our car.

  I followed Leonard inside the restaurant, where everything was old-world formal. The waiters wore tuxedos and I could hear the sound of a man crooning what sounded like some kind of love song. Three middle-aged Italian men stood together at the bar drinking what I assumed was Sambuca. After Leonard’s introduction to the neighborhood, it was hard not to think in stereotypes.

  The host led us into a quiet and ornate dining room with brass sconces on the walls and chandeliers with crystal pinecones in them. We had to walk around the balding troubadour singing a mournful ballad to a young couple who had their hands clasped together on the table.

  We sat at a corner table under a framed tapestry of two Roman-looking women. It was almost nine o’clock, and by now I was starved for both food and information. “The swordfish looks good,” I said, snapping shut the menu and folding my arms on the table.

  “Hmm,” Leonard said, studying his menu.

  “You going to tell me what’s going on?” I prodded.

  “With the mayor?” He looked up and smiled, as if I would believe an encounter that had so clearly disturbed him was no big deal.

  The balding troubadour was heading toward our table. I waved him away. “Yeah, with the mayor. With Barry Mazursky. With the mob history of Atwell’s Avenue.”

  “Billy Lopresti wants me to think that nothing I say on my show can touch him,” he said in a low voice. “That he finds my opposition to gambling amusing. That I’m an unworthy opponent.”

  He spoke as if this insult were just a part of the political game, something he’d already shrugged off, but I wasn’t buying it. His eyes had lost confidence and I couldn’t help thinking that he’d taken the mayor’s laughter as a professional slur, one talk-show host snubbing another.

  The waiter arrived and Leonard allowed himself to be diverted. As if to firmly establish the change of subject, he took his time ordering, fussing as he chose an antipasto for us to share, switching into Italian when he ordered the veal, and asking the waiter half a dozen questions about the wine before settling on a Chianti.

  “I’m curious,” I said, after the waiter was gone. “How did you figure out who I was? From that one interview at the fund-raiser for the Veterans’ Homeless Shelter?”

  “I’m a talk-radio guy, I listen closely to voices. They tell me a lot. You have a distinctive voice.”

  Clearly, I was supposed to feel flattered, but even though I knew he was single—divorced from a television news anchor who had left both him and the station for a bigger market—I didn’t get the feeling that he was trying to hit on me. “So why have you gone to so much trouble to look me up? Because of the Mazursky story?”

  “Because what I did was inexcusable,” Leonard continued. “Please accept my sincere apologies for slipping up on the air.”

  He sounded so full of self-reproach that I might have believed him except that I knew there had to be more to it. He wasn’t like Chris Tejian, trying to woo me, but radio talk-show hosts did not go this far out of their way to hunt down their listeners unless they wanted something pretty badly. And I remembered the music. “How about the bimbo theme song?”

  “That, too.”

  He smiled again. Not so broadly. Not so professionally. It seemed real.

  “So what is it you want from me?”

  He put his finger to his lips as the waiter approached the table with our antipasto. Leonard pointed out olives I should try and speared the better-looking pieces of prosciutto and put them on my plate. I forked up a radicchio leaf in silence, impatient for the waiter to leave.

  When he was finally gone, Leonard lowered the deep baritone to a bare whisper. “I’ve got a lead that can help me, help my show, but I need someone to do some legwork. A reporter.”

  “Doesn’t the station have its own reporters?” I asked, but I knew the answer. Radio news stations reported news, debated news, but rarely unearthed news.

  “Last fall, we cut back to two people on the news staff,” Leonard replied. “They barely have time to read the Chronicle’s headlines.”

  I sipped my wine without tasting it. “Why me? You must know a lot of other reporters.”

  “Not like I know you; I’ve talked to you every day for, what, two or three months? I know your opinions, how you think. I mean, what? You think because all that conversation is on the radio, it doesn’t count or something?” This wasn’t rhetorical; his eyes were fixed on mine, a funny, insecure expression on his face as he waited for an answer.

  I was startled by his wounded tone and heard myself almost apologizing. “It’s just that…well, I’m new in Providence. Unproven.”

  “Oh,” he said, smiling again and eager to comfort. “Don’t say that. You’re not unproven. I read your story this morning. You’re a real good writer.”

  He sounded as if he might actually mean it, and I felt oddly embarrassed. As if he were trying to give me a little pep talk. Reluctant to trust anyone’s flattery, I pushed back in my chair, determined to establish some distance. “If I did follow up on this lead, any news I dug up would have to be for the Chronicle. What do you get out of it?”

  He smiled, as if delighted by my directness. “I get to suspect, on the air, that something’s not right with the Wayland Square murder investigation. I can light up all phone lines for weeks with speculation. Then, when your story breaks, I look like a soothsayer. A genius.”

  “Your listeners already think you’re a genius,” I said. “At least Andre does.”

  “Andre?” He sounded surprised that I remembered another caller’s name. “Yeah. Well. Late-night listeners maybe, but as you can see from the mayor’s disdain, that’s not exactly a power audience. I don’t want to be Late Night Leonard forever. I want to be Drive Time Leonard. I want to be Nationally Syndicated Leonard. For that, I need to be more of a genius.”

  This surprising candor was both disarming and a little scary. Did he confess his ambitions to everyone? I wondered. Did he often refer to himself in the third person? “But I don’t get how suspecting the deal behind Barry’s murder does all that for you.”

  “Barry’s murder is tied to gambling—”

  “How?” I interrupted.

  He held up one hand, a gesture for me to hear him out. “Trust me a moment, it’s tied to gambling. The point is that our mayor will do everything in his considerable power to keep this quiet until after the referendum. He wants to make sure casino gambling passes, and he’s going to lean on the Providence police. The investigation will be like molasses.”

  I thought of Sergeant Holstrom, his reluctance to answer even the most basic questions. And then of Matt Cavanaugh warning me not to write anything. “But how about the AG’s office? The mayor can’t slow them down, can’t tell the state prosecutor what to do—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “But the prosecutors are overloaded. They’ve got a ton of cases they’re working on and have to rely on the cops for information. They’re not going to push too hard—it’s not like the AG has come out against the referendum.”

  Silently, I processed this.

  “Except for Ayers at the lottery commission and a couple of church groups, I’m pretty much alone in my opposition. And as you may have noticed, I never shut up about this particular subject. I’ve staked my career on it.”

  The ego in thi
s was so overwhelming that I was suddenly grateful I’d never wanted a career in radio. Still, news tips often came in bizarre forms. And if Barry’s murder really was tied to gambling, and the mayor really was trying to suppress it because of the referendum, it would be a huge story, maybe my shot at the investigative team. “So explain to me how Barry’s murder is tied to gambling,” I said.

  “First you’ve got to promise me confidentiality. You’ve got to protect my identity.”

  Like you protected mine? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. It wasn’t unusual for reporters to promise to protect the confidentiality of their sources—and all sources, not just Leonard, had their own agenda in offering information. I nodded my agreement, but Leonard reached across the table and made me shake hands on our deal.

  It was the moment he’d been waiting for. The moment he had set up, perhaps from the moment he’d let my real name slip on the air. Leonard released my hand and leaned back in his chair, settling in for a story. “You know I’m a board member of the Veterans’ Homeless Shelter. Barry Mazursky used to be treasurer.”

  I nodded, recalling that from the database.

  “About two and a half years ago, right after the big fund-raising campaign, when Barry was treasurer, seventy-five thousand dollars mysteriously disappeared.”

  Barry embezzling from a homeless shelter? If I’d had anything in my mouth, I would have choked. Instead, I took a moment to mentally digest. “I didn’t see any clips in the database involving embezzlement,” I finally said.

  “A prosecutor from the AG’s office was called in, but Barry was never charged. One of the other guys on the shelter’s board got wind of Barry’s gambling problem and conducted his own little in-house audit. We gave Barry an opportunity. Repay within the month and we’d cover for him. The money reappeared the next week. No charges were filed, but I could get you the minutes from the board meeting.”

  I had a sudden vision of Barry’s expression when I was impulsively buying more lottery tickets. One addictive personality to another. No wonder I had liked him.

  “He was forced to resign as treasurer, of course. I felt bad for the guy. I always liked him. We went out for drinks and I asked him, If you had the money, why the hell did you do it?

  “He was drunk by then, or maybe he wanted to ensure my sympathy, so this never came out. He told me he was broke. All the money from the sale of the stores was gone. Apparently, Barry had a real bad run at the blackjack tables at Mohegan Sun. He’d had to go to the street for the loan. They were threatening his family. He was scared shitless about how he’d repay them.” Leonard stopped for effect, a pause so I could take it all in. Then, he asked, “You still think legalized gambling doesn’t hurt anyone?”

  I couldn’t answer. The prosciutto I’d eaten was turning in my stomach.

  “The boys on the street are a little less forgiving about late payments than the bank. You try to cheat them, they don’t play nice like the boys on the board of a homeless shelter. The first couple of times they beat you up, they threaten your family. But Barry was an ex-marine, a tough guy who’d run out of options. He kept a loaded gun in the store.” He paused. “I’m willing to stake my career on the fact that that wasn’t any random armed robbery last night. That was a hit.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  I WASN’T EAGER to read my story about Barry Mazursky the next day. Not eager to see how naive, how incomplete it might be. But I forced myself to walk down to the square and pick up the Sunday paper at the pharmacy.

  The sun was a little too ambitious for midmorning, a hard, bright light that made me wonder if I was hungover, even though I hadn’t been drinking. I pushed my way past several young families with strollers and backpacks and toddlers who appeared to be on leashes, trying to feel unencumbered instead of alone.

  The CVS pharmacy was four doors past the Mazursky Market, which was still closed, the door locked tight. I tried to walk past it. I didn’t want to see the cash register or the toppled magazines or even the hanging philodendrons thirsting for water, but I was drawn to the window despite myself. I pressed my face against the plate glass and peered into the darkness.

  At first, I could see little beyond the yellow tape except the top of the cash register, the drawer still hanging open, and the handle of the broom Barry kept behind the counter. But as my eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight of the day to the dusty gloom of the store, I could see the phone I’d used to call the police, just where I’d dropped it onto the counter. For a moment, I was back inside, trapped in the minutes it took for the cruiser to arrive, pacing the store aisles, trying not to look at Barry, yet returning to the counter, to the body, again and again.

  If Barry’s murder was a mob hit, that made Victor Delria a hit man. Maybe that’s what Matt Cavanaugh had been trying to warn me about. Maybe the mob didn’t care if I didn’t actually see the hit man’s face. Maybe they’d kill me because I could ID the getaway car.

  Behind me, car brakes screeched. I froze instinctively, pushing myself into the alcove of the market’s front door, pressing against the smudged glass, waiting. I heard voices. “Fucking A!” someone shouted. I turned slowly. A Trans Am had skidded into a Volkswagen that was stopped in the middle of the street. “Fucking A!” the Trans Am driver shouted again. He jumped out of his car and headed toward the stopped Volkswagen. The cause of the accident, a golden retriever, stood in the middle of Angell Street, stunned by the commotion.

  I took a breath to steady myself. I couldn’t let myself get spooked, couldn’t give in to the fear. If what Leonard said was true, if Barry had been killed because of his gambling debts and the mayor was deliberately delaying the police investigation because of the referendum, then this was a helluva story. This was my chance, maybe my only chance to get out of the bureau and onto the investigative team.

  If what Leonard said was true. He was extreme in his opinions, hyperbolic on the radio, most of it a ruse to work up the audience. Could I really trust that what he said was true?

  I thought of my past misjudgments, my colossal error with Chris Tejian. But this was different: Leonard wasn’t putting the moves on me, and he wasn’t pretending to grieve with me over the death of my brother. His manipulations, at least, were transparent. And Walter was right. I wouldn’t be happy until I proved to myself that Tejian was a onetime mistake.

  I pushed onward to the pharmacy and bought the paper. Then I turned the corner into Rufful’s. Wayland Square was an affluent neighborhood, a demographic for pretentious bistros and European cafes. But Rufful’s belonged to a simpler era, with lumpy homemade pies under glass at the counter and only one kind of coffee. The booths along the walls were brimming with the young families of the sidewalk, the toddlers sucking on packets of jelly and twisting out of high chairs.

  I found an empty stool at the counter, where I settled in with a BLT on rye and a large cup of coffee. The thing I liked about this restaurant, aside from the clean, homey atmosphere, was the rye bread. Real caraway seeds. They made a difference.

  I bit into my sandwich and stared at a two-column photo of Barry Mazursky. The newspaper had pulled a file picture of him from the library, one that must have run on the business page when he sold his chain of markets to YourCorner Corporation. He was only a few years younger, but his hairline looked decades thicker, his forehead smoother, the jaw angled to the camera. There was no hint of debt or failure in his expression, just triumph.

  “Slain East Side Entrepreneur—Credit to the Community”: I reread the headline to my story. Had my sympathy for Barry blinded me? Was he really a compulsive gambler who stole money from charities?

  “Gambling changes people,” Leonard had said last night as he drove me back to the Chronicle parking lot. “They get themselves into all sorts of trouble.” He’d sounded so sad about it, so uncharacteristically subdued. But should I really trust Leonard of Late Night?

  The waitress, a woman who was either in incredibly good shape for her age or prematurely gray, walked ove
r with the coffeepot. She glanced at the paper, and then looked past me to the young families sitting in the booths. “Can you believe it? In this neighborhood?”

  I shook my head sadly.

  “Before I quit, I used to buy my cigarettes there. Barry was so full of advice. He’d say, ‘Livia, you sick of serving people coffee all day? You gotta get a job at one of those four-star restaurants like Al Forno where the tabs are high. Where people buy wine and cocktails. You gotta do better for your family, for yourself.’” She laughed dismissively. “But you know, they don’t hire just anyone in those places. You gotta know someone. And besides, I don’t wanna work till midnight waiting on a buncha tourists snapping at me because the wine isn’t opened right.”

  I could actually hear Barry trying to sell her on the higher tabs and bigger tips, knew what words got the emphasis, which he swallowed. Underscoring it all was a dogged belief that with just the right move, everyone could be rich.

  As the waitress walked away, I remembered something Leonard had said about Barry being a card counter who thought he’d had an infallible system to beat the odds. Blackjack had been his game. And he’d had a couple of favorite tables at the Mohegan Sun.

  I told myself that the issue wasn’t whether to trust Leonard, but whether his information could be confirmed. I had to find out for myself whether Barry had been a compulsive gambler.

  My stomach began to churn the way it did sometimes late at night, when I remembered an overdue bill I had to pay or a phone call I’d forgotten to return. Lying still in bed became a special kind of torture. I looked down at Barry’s photo in the newspaper. His eyes spoke to mine: Jesus, the taxes I pay, don’t let them get away with this, Hallie.

  I tore both the article and picture of Barry out of the page and left the rest of the paper on the counter. I threw money on the check and went straight to my apartment to change clothes. An hour later, I was headed for the casino, in Connecticut.