by Jan Brogan
I thought that on a sunny Sunday afternoon, most people would be raking leaves or watching football, but no. Most people were at the Mohegan Sun playing the slot machines.
I’d entered through what was called the Summer Entrance, where I was welcomed with a hopeful carpeting of cheery sunflowers. I’d never been inside a casino before, and I guess I expected it to be dark and glittery, with everyone wearing black and drinking a martini. But this was less Monte Carlo and more Disneyland Kingdom. There was a Native American theme played out in neutral earth tones, fake boulder formations, and an enormous wolf statue looking down on its gambling prey.
As I circled the perimeter of the coliseumlike casino, I stepped to a drumbeat of wailing Indian music and an incessant waterfall of clinking change. The casino reminded me, in turn, of both a shopping mall and an arcade. No one looked particularly sophisticated. In fact, most of the people at the slot machines were senior citizens in patterned sweaters and knit pants.
I could picture Barry here. But then, I could picture anybody here.
I found the blackjack tables, partially hidden behind wrought-iron fencing with leafy designs. Like the slots, the card tables were brimming with late-afternoon business, men mostly, who sat with bottled beer to their sides and smoke rings over their heads. The gaming was vigorous; dealers swiftly went through their decks. I realized that I could not just whip out a picture and ask if anyone around here knew Barry Mazursky. I walked from table to table for about half an hour just watching the play. Eventually, I returned to the path around the casino perimeter and came upon an ATM machine with my own bank’s logo on it.
It seemed like some kind of omen.
It wasn’t as if I wasn’t aware of my troubled finances. Besides the $2,000 I owed my mother for the security deposit on my apartment, I had another couple of thousand in credit card debt and a mere $300 left in my checking account. Somehow, I doubted the newspaper would reimburse gambling expenses, even if it was critical to research. But I’d driven a long way to get here, and, suddenly, it seemed important to blend in. My card slipped easily into the machine. I was conservative, I thought, withdrawing only eighty dollars. I quickly bought some chips and drifted between tables to watch the game.
At last, I found a vacant seat at a friendly-looking table with a female dealer, a couple in their midfifties, and a young man who looked as if he’d had his twenty-first birthday yesterday and decided to drive over today and gamble.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” I said by way of introduction. I took a seat beside the man in his midfifties.
The woman smiled at me. “There’s always beginner’s luck.”
Her husband had a craggy face, full of sorrow. “Worst thing that can happen to you is that you win.”
No chance of that. Within half an hour, the entire pile of chips I’d bought was gone. But there was a pleasant camaraderie at the table. The dealer was a woman about my own age who offered beginners advice on when to hold and when to get hit; the married couple lived in the same neighborhood in Worcester where I’d grown up. The young guy, who wore tight blue jeans, a laundered white dress shirt, and an enormous silver pendant around his neck, turned out to own a chain of hairdressing salons in Bridgeport. He won his first four hands, tipped the dealer, and waved to the waitress to bring everyone a drink.
I withdrew another $100 from the ATM but decided to play more cautiously, lowering my bets and staying away from double downs, even when I had eleven. Dealt a ten of spades and a six of clubs, I clasped my hands on the green velvet table and held steady. I beat the dealer, winning a $25 bet.
I hit twenty-one twice, and later a real, true blackjack. My skin grew warm as I clutched the ace, my palms sweaty. I gulped my club soda with delight, not caring about the bubbles tingling my nose.
I won that hand, lost the next, but beat the dealer four of the next five hands. I was up a full $175 and feeling pretty good. The young guy, Will, his baby face aglow, cheered me on, lauding me for something he kept calling “basic strategy,” and telling me that I was keeping the cards “in flow.”
I had no idea what he meant, but it felt terrific, and when the dealer finished the deck and announced that there was going to be a shift change, I felt a sudden dejection, especially when she leaned over and told me to quit now, while the night was young and while I was this far ahead.
I didn’t want to quit, but they were all looking at me, nodding their heads at the dealer’s good advice. Ed, the husband from Worcester, was especially vigorous in his endorsement of this wisdom. The cocktail napkin under my drink was wilted and the corner shredded. I glanced at my watch and realized I’d spent an hour and a half playing blackjack and had failed to ask a single question about Barry.
“Before you go, can I ask you a question?” I asked the dealer as she finished tidying her shoe of cards.
She looked at me quizzically, and I pulled out Barry’s picture. “Do you by any chance know this guy? Does he look familiar?”
Her expression was cool. I noticed everyone pull back just slightly from the table.
“He’s a friend of mine,” I said swiftly. “He died Friday. I told the family that since I was coming here anyway, I’d try to contact his friends.”
The dealer’s expression did not change.
“They’re planning a big memorial,” I heard myself lie.
More silence. Everyone was looking at me. I’m not sure if it was with sympathy or amazement. I had the feeling that you weren’t supposed to talk about death or funerals in a casino.
“I’ve never seen him,” the dealer said at last.
As soon as the new dealer seated himself at the table, the married couple excused themselves. They were going to dinner at the Bamboo Forest, one of the casino restaurants, and wanted to get there early. Will, the big winner of the evening, decided to move up to a high-stakes table and I was left sitting alone with the new dealer, a silver-haired man with a neatly clipped beard. He looked right past me, to the hall, for more players. I showed him the news clip of Barry. “I don’t suppose you know him?” I asked. He didn’t even look at the picture.
I’d cashed in my chips and was headed over to the food court to grab something for dinner when I came upon a cove of exclusive-looking restaurants hidden behind another boulder formation. At the end of the wall, I glanced at the glass display of menus and scanned one from Pompeii and Caesar, a fine-dining spot with expensive entrées. In contrast to the food court, which at six o’clock was clogged with lines of hungry retirees, the small, elegant restaurant was almost empty. It occurred to me that while the casino might be brimming with amateurs, the real gamblers, the high rollers like Barry, were probably a fairly small club. My mistake, I realized, was my random approach. The most likely place to find someone who might have known Barry was at a high-stakes table.
I purchased new chips with my winnings, made another $100 withdrawal from the ATM, and hoped like hell that rubbing Gregory Ayers’s arm for luck really worked. Back at the blackjack tables, I found Will sitting at a crowded table where bets opened at $50. As I approached, he looked up from his cards with a curious expression and frowned when I took the empty seat beside him. “You sure you’re ready for this?”
“Feeling lucky,” I said in a whisper, knowing that saying this too loudly would certainly be a jinx. It was an all-male table, from the dealer, a wiry man who looked like he smoked a lot of cigarettes, to the two middle-aged men who sat to the left of Will and eyed me as I sat down, to the elderly gentlemen to my right. I noticed that they all sat at attention, guarding an imposed distance. A new tension filled the air and it took me a minute to figure it out. Will’s eyes met mine and I caught an expression of resigned annoyance. And then I realized that I’d misread Will’s fine features as youth, while all the men at the table understood that he was gay.
Not exactly an enlightened crowd, the men didn’t seem pleased about me, either. They focused intently on their cards and talked to each other without looking at us
, as if we were a distraction that would negatively affect their game.
I waited for the dealer to start a new shoe and played a $50 bet, the minimum, and held at sixteen. The temperature of my skin rose with the bet, my breath got caught somewhere above my stomach, and my palms were sweaty, but there was a tingling sensation in my shoulders, too—excitement rather than fear. Time was suspended as I waited for the dealer’s hand.
When the dealer broke with two sixes and a ten, Will tapped my arm and smiled. Riding the luck I must have gleaned from Gregory Ayers’s sleeve, I won the next two hands. Will seemed to enjoy my winnings more than his own, and the two middle-aged men sitting to his left started to pay attention. It was a heady feeling, this flow of blood, this run of luck. I proceeded to lose the next two hands, but was not discouraged. Everyone lost a hand or two, Will told me. And I could feel luck in my stomach. Feel that it was going to be my night. I won another hand, gained confidence and raised my bet to $75. I won four more hands and was up a net $450 for the evening; this was profit above the money I’d withdrawn from my checking account.
I was charged with luck, feeling both giddy and wildly competent. I had a kinship with the cards, a sense of what would be dealt, a knack I never knew for numbers. I could have played all evening, but when Will said he was going to the food court to get something to eat, I felt the rumbling in my stomach. It was already eight o’clock, and I’d forgotten about dinner. When the two middle-aged men beside him looked at each other and said they’d take a break, too, I knew I had no choice.
“Can I go with you?” I asked Will.
“Sure,” he said, looking pleased.
I took my time, rounding up my knapsack and tipping the dealer to give the two middle-aged men time to get up from the table. They were a few yards behind Will and me, but we were all headed in the general direction of the restaurants. I slowed my pace to let the two men catch up. It was late, and I no longer cared if I was breaking casino etiquette. I whipped out the news clip of Barry, shoved it toward them, and repeated the story about rounding up his friends for a memorial service.
I got the same cool response I’d experienced earlier. The two men barely looked at the news clip before insisting that they had never heard of him. “He was a good guy. Experienced player,” I said, making up new details in the hopes that this would jog their memories.
They shook their heads, determined not to even look at the picture.
I turned back to Will, expecting him to ditch me, too. But instead, he looped his arm through mine and asked if I’d rather go to the steak house or the Italian place for dinner.
Suddenly, I was more exhausted than hungry. “You know, maybe I should just call it a night,” I said. “I’ve got to drive all the way back to Providence.”
“Providence? I thought you said you were from Worcester.”
“I grew up in Worcester. I live in Providence.”
As it turned out, Will, whose last name was Poirier, had worked for a few years as a hairdresser in Rhode Island. He grimaced so I could see what a horrible experience that had been. Another thought occurred to him. “Is that where you know that guy from? The guy who died? From Providence?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Did he own some kind of convenience store?”
I looked at him with surprise. “He used to.”
“Yeah, I think I know who he was,” Will said. “A lot of people from Rhode Island gamble here. But this guy…” He took the picture from me and for the first time really looked at it. “This guy used to be around here a lot. Mostly blackjack, some roulette. He liked to talk like he was a big deal, but you could kind of see he was on a losing streak.”
He returned the picture and stopped to study me for a moment. “So what’s up? Are you a PI?”
I shook my head. “Newspaper reporter—but Barry really was a friend of mine.”
Will considered this for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to believe it. “I’m sorry, then,” he finally said, sounding sincere. “How did he die?”
“He was shot, working the cash register.”
Will shook his head at the violence of the world, and then grew thoughtful. “I would have figured a suicide.”
Victor Delria was lying on the wooden floor in the Mazursky Market, his face completely hidden in bandages. I thought he was sleeping, and that I was safe. But as I stepped over him to get to the register, I looked down. The gauze around his face began unraveling. His eyes flew open. “You bitch,” he said, low and mean.
I sat up in bed. The low, mean sound was my alarm clock, which growled its wake-up call. It was Monday morning, and I was alone in a cold apartment.
I was tired from my trip to Connecticut and worn down from the bad dream. As much as I didn’t want to go running this morning, I knew I had to get out there. It was the only way to blot out the pictures in my brain.
I threw off my sleep sweatshirt and pulled on long tights, a T-shirt, and a completely different sweatshirt—the one without stains. I found my running shoes, with socks still stuck inside them, right by the door.
It was colder than yesterday, with a gray sky that looked like it would not provide sunshine all day. My hands were freezing, so I headed up Angell Street at a fast clip to try to warm up quickly. A few early-morning commuters were driving cars or waiting for buses, but it was still a half hour or so before rush hour, so the street was mostly mine.
In high school, I’d been on the swim team and had never even considered cross-country or track. That was probably a mistake, because I’m much faster on dry land than I ever was in the water. Maybe it’s the adult anxieties that drive me; the faster I run, the harder it is for me to think. I cruised onto Blackstone Boulevard pretty quickly, breathing in cold air, breathing out fear.
Endorphins: the bonus prize for exercise. Sometimes I can run five miles and never feel that lightness of being, that goodwill toward men. Today, I’d run a marathon if it meant I could outrace the images, the unraveling gauze.
On a weekday, the run-before-work crowd starts at daybreak, and at seven A.M. I had plenty of company on the boulevard. Quickly, I gained on two women who chatted too much to achieve any real speed. I passed them and another single male runner. Instead of returning the same way I’d come, I decided to do a five-mile loop, leaving the cinder path and overhanging trees to continue north until Blackstone merged with Hope Street.
By the time I’d run through the mostly residential section and onto the commercial block, the city had awakened. I had to stop and wait for commuter traffic at each intersection.
But physical exertion worked its magic. My pace was even, my head clear, and I felt at peace with the world. I had $450 in winnings and a sense of leftover luck. I loved the East Side of Providence with its mix of funky shops, historic homes, and the occasional lavender two-family. This was my neighborhood, I thought, drunk now with endorphins. I loved this run.
I had just passed the CVS pharmacy and stopped at the red light at the intersection of Rochambeau Avenue when the ultimate in civilization occurred. The light turned green and a man driving a silver sports sedan waiting to turn left motioned for me to go first. I waved a brisk thank-you and headed out onto the street.
I was halfway across. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flicker of motion. The silver sedan. Was it turning? The guy who had waved me on was coming right at me. A hunk of moving steel.
I bolted forward in panicked acceleration. The car kept coming, barreling through the turn. Didn’t he have brakes? A horn shrieked in my ear. I made a final leap. The car came within inches, so close I could feel the air displaced, a rush of pressure at my back.
I barely made the curb. I screamed at the driver. He looked confused, but the car didn’t stop. He didn’t pull over to apologize. The silver sedan sped away. There was some minor damage to the right-rear bumper, suggesting a previous accident. I tried to make out the license plate, but the only thing I could see was that the last number was seven.
&
nbsp; “Asshole!” I screamed.
The glint of silver disappeared at the end of the street. Pedestrians emerged on the corner. The flow of traffic resumed. I bent forward, hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. Was I crazy? Hadn’t the driver waved for me to go?
One of the pedestrians, a man with a bakery bag, stopped at my side. “Are you all right?” he asked.
I couldn’t answer, couldn’t right myself or pull words out of my throat. The sidewalk swayed beneath me; my head throbbed with confusion. I tried to sort out events. The traffic light switched from red to green. I saw the driver wave for me to go. The car took the corner, the metal aimed at me.
“You’re lucky,” the man with the bakery bag said. “This is such a dangerous intersection. A twelve-year-old boy got hit trying to cross here just a couple of months ago. He died.”
CHAPTER
8
I STOOD IN the shower longer than I should have, with my eyes closed, trying to let the hot water melt the clenched feeling in my bones. It was a dangerous intersection with a blind spot; cars and bicycles collided there all the time.
I replayed those words like a mantra as I dressed for work: dangerous intersection, dangerous intersection, dangerous intersection. I couldn’t allow myself to think about Matt Cavanaugh’s warning. I couldn’t start believing that friends of Delria’s were already after me. Delria wasn’t even charged with the murder, for Christ’s sake. All kinds of accidents occurred at that corner. All the time.
I reminded myself that I’d won $450 the night before, and that confirming Leonard’s tip about Barry was good news, not bad. I told myself that the difference between good reporters and bad reporters was their level of boldness: If I gave in to fear, I’d spend the rest of my life in the bureau, resentful, like Carolyn. Or worse.
I arrived at the South County bureau office just after eight A.M., knowing I’d have to get the local police and fire checks out of the way before I could call Sergeant Holstrom to see if the forensics report had come back. I worried that if I didn’t act fast, the city editor in Providence was likely to reassign it to Jonathan Frizell as a routine follow.