A Confidential Source

by Jan Brogan

  He filled the kettle on the stove with water and wandered back and forth to the window while it heated. “Jesus, it looks like two or three unmarked cop cars are still parked outside there,” he said, peering out at the square. “They must be tearing the place apart.”

  “They call it preserving the crime scene.”

  Walter didn’t answer, but continued staring out the window, intrigued. He was right about Wayland Square. It was a few harmless blocks of upscale shops in a neighborhood that was only halfheartedly urban. Not a place where you’d expect this kind of violence. The kettle whistled. From the kitchen, he came back with two mugs of herbal tea and put one of them into my hand. Then he sat beside me on the couch and pulled off his tooled-leather boots, taking the time to pair them on the floor. Walter tended to dress in Southwestern gear, even when he wasn’t performing. “He was kind of a friend of yours, wasn’t he?”

  I thought of how protective Barry had been, how he had worried about my welfare just minutes before he was killed. “Yeah. A real good guy.” Walter put his arm around me and told me it was okay to cry. But I didn’t cry. I sat there stone-faced,feeling emptied. “I think writing the story for the paper wiped me out.”

  Walter pulled away, leaned into the armrest, and folded his arms. “You went back to the paper to write about it?”

  I shrugged. “I just reacted.”

  “Don’t you think that’s a little dangerous?”

  “It’s what reporters do.”

  “It’s what ambitious reporters do.” Walter’s eyes met mine and held them. He was the only one who knew the real reason I’d quit the Ledger, that I’d done the worst thing a journalist could do, I’d had an affair with Chris Tejian, the subject of my prize-winning profile and a man charged with murdering his business partner. But Walter blamed it all on my vulnerability, my difficulty in coping with my brother Sean’s death. He insisted that I had to learn to forgive myself. Let the past go.

  “Maybe you should move outta this fucked-up neighborhood. Move back to Boston, where it’s safe. Where they just rob convenience-store clerks, they don’t have to kill them.”

  “What, and commute to South County?”

  Walter made a face. “Quit. You know you hate that small-town stuff. And Geralyn says the Ledger would hire you back in a heartbeat.”

  Geralyn, an old friend of mine from the Ledger, was now engaged to Walter. Since, in the end, I’d written the tough story, a profile that exposed the manipulative side of Chris Tejian, no one ever suspected that I’d been in love with him. That I’d let equal parts love and hate cloud my judgment. “They wouldn’t want me back if they knew I broke every journalism ethic there was.”

  He gazed up, as if addressing the ceiling. “Journalism ethics? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

  “Come on, you know what I mean.”

  “I know that that dirtbag deserved what he got. That the world is a better place with Chris Tejian in jail. And I know that whatever amends you had to make have got to be made by now.” He slugged back the last of his tea and rose from the couch as if the argument had been settled.

  “I can’t go back to the Ledger.”

  My plaintive tone stopped him, made him sit back down. “Okay.” The flipness was gone and Walter’s eyes, a solid gray, looked tired, as if wearied by a lifetime of problems he had yet to solve. “But you know you haven’t been happy here…even before tonight.”

  “There’s an opening on the investigative team in Providence,” I said.

  He looked at me levelly. “Yeah?”

  This was a probe. Was I going to put myself out? Go for it? I shrugged as if uncertain, but I knew then how badly I wanted it.

  Walter said nothing, but began wrestling off his watch. Then he removed all his rings and, finally, he stood up to pull his wallet and keys out of his pocket and dropped them into the growing pile on the coffee table. If I wasn’t going to elaborate, he wasn’t going to wrench it out of me word by word.

  What if I screw up again? I wanted to ask. But we’d already had this conversation so many times, I knew what he’d say: Walter thought I’d done the right thing in the end. That my story hadn’t “convicted” Chris Tejian, that justice itself had done that. That whatever role I’d played was over and done with and that I should just move on, for Christ’s sake.

  “I’m afraid to trust myself with a big story like that again.”

  “I know,” he said, sounding tired. “But you know you’re not going to be happy until you prove to yourself that that loser in Boston was a onetime mistake.” Then he took a few steps to return to the window to take one last look at Wayland Square. “And if you’re determined to live in this fucked-up little state, you should at least be happy.”

  I woke up, startled, at seven A.M. I’d been dreaming about a parakeet I was trying to coax out of a cage. The light on my nightstand still shone and I was propped up on pillows, last week’s Newsweek flat across my stomach.

  I must have fallen asleep reading. After my father died last year, I was so worried about developing another sleep problem, I’d taken Walter’s advice and started running every day. Now, not even a shooting could keep me awake all night.

  But my brain felt gray. I winced at the dim light behind the window shade and scrambled out of the bedroom. I tiptoed to the kitchen to get a glass of cranberry juice, past Walter snoring on the futon. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the colors of the bird I’d been dreaming about: the bright green and yellow feathers were the exact shade of the scratch tickets I’d bought at Barry’s and thrown on the bar.

  I returned to the bedroom and pulled on yesterday’s running tights, jogging bra, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and my favorite sweatshirt and went to the closet to search for my running shoes. I didn’t even stop to brush my teeth, but was outside on the sidewalk within minutes.

  It was a clear, mild October morning, but my legs were stiff and I had run a short couple of blocks against traffic before I began to warm up. The streets were empty, but I found myself checking over my shoulder as I turned onto Butler Avenue.

  I told myself I was being paranoid, that it was still too early for anyone to have read my story; the newspaper was just hitting the stores. No one would have figured out that this solitary figure running alone was the reporter. The one who’d called the cops.

  I scanned the street, looking for hulking figures. The sidewalks were empty, the streets clear of cars. But it wasn’t until Butler Avenue merged into Blackstone Boulevard that my breathing became even. Blackstone Boulevard was a leafy avenue of important-looking homes, with a wide, grassy park that divided the almost two-mile stretch. On weekday mornings, it seemed as if everyone on the entire East Side ran here before work. But this early on a Saturday morning, I was completely alone.

  I ran north on the sidewalk, crossed to the park, and returned down the path in the shady central corridor, looking over my shoulder every time a breeze shook the leaves or I kicked back too much cinder. About halfway home, I finally found a soothing mental blankness, a certain peace underneath the changing autumn trees.

  But it didn’t last. Back at my apartment, the phone was ringing as I swung open the door. Walter was gone, the quilt folded on the futon. I’d hoped he could stay for breakfast, but he must have had an early shift driving cab today. The receiver wasn’t in the recharger. Or on the bar. Or in the bedroom. The ringing continued, distant and muffled. A new round of adrenaline began to surge. I checked under the futon, but it wasn’t there.

  Finally, I found the receiver in the bathroom, ringing under a towel, and put it to my ear.

  “I saw your story in today’s paper. Jesus, you all right?” The baritone slid through me. No mistaking the voice.

  “Leonard?”

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Out of breath.”

  There was a pause.

  “I was just out running.”

  A little beep sounded from inside the phone, warning me that the battery was getting low. Was Le
onard pretending to be concerned about me? Upset because I hadn’t called in after the murder? Or did radio talk-show hosts in this little state regularly call their listeners at home? “I’m fine,” I said.

  Standing in front of the medicine-cabinet mirror, I saw myself: a small woman in sweaty running clothes, cheeks flushed, eyes brightly crazed. It occurred to me that I might have run too far, that maybe I was dehydrated and hallucinating.

  “Did you get my note?” Leonard asked.

  “Yes,” I said. But it seemed so distant now. Sweat clung to me like steam on a shower curtain. I stepped into the bathtub to open the window for ventilation.

  “Are you free this afternoon? Can I take you to lunch?” His voice was growing fainter with the weakening battery.

  A lunch date with Leonard of Late Night, the man I called almost every evening, waiting endlessly on hold. Yesterday, I would have jumped at this offer, but today, all I could think about was going to work, calling police. “I’m on assignment.”

  “How about tonight? It’s my night off. Any chance you’re free to meet me for dinner?”

  On his night off? What did that mean? “I’m not sure what time I’ll be done,” I said.

  “We can do it near the paper. Eight o’clock, at Raphael’s.” His voice was getting faint. “Look, I know what this kind of trauma can do to people. I think it’ll help you to talk about it.” The phone beeped another warning.

  I wondered if this meant the paper had run my story on page one. Was he going to pump me for more gory details? “What exactly is it you want?” I asked.

  The phone battery was so weak I could barely hear him.

  “What?” I asked. I was still standing in the bathtub and the question echoed.

  Just before the phone went completely dead, I caught the tail end of Leonard’s answer: “I used to know Barry Mazursky,” he said. “And this is a real Rhode Island tragedy.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  ON A SATURDAY MORNING, the newsroom was even lonelier than it had been the night before. Only a single reporter worked on Saturday, and he was huddled over a desk in the far corner of the newsroom. The copy editor must have been outside having a cigarette.

  The reporter, a young-looking guy glued to the telephone, looked up briefly as I entered, then immediately shifted his attention back to his phone call. I headed upstairs to the cafeteria, where I grabbed a cup of coffee and the day’s Chronicle.

  Returning to the newsroom, I settled myself at a desk on the Rim and stared at the paper. My story was on page one, the lower-right corner. I swelled at the sight of my byline.

  I flipped to the jump page. Reading my own version of the story, I tried to figure out what Leonard meant about Barry’s murder being a real Rhode Island tragedy. Involuntarily, I saw the bullet hole in Barry’s forehead again, the way the skin puckered, the dark red of his blood. I took a few deep breaths, trying to exhale the image away. How could murder not be a tragedy?

  I wondered about Barry’s family. I hoped that his wife had kissed him good-bye that morning before he left for work. I thought of how random, how tentative, life was. How in only a minute, a bullet could blow all concerns, all thoughts, all love out of your head.

  A clunking sound startled me. I looked up to see a swivel chair skidding into a desk. The reporter I’d noticed earlier was clearing the path to my desk. He looked like he might be captain of the college wrestling team, with a small, square body and a face full of blond freckles. There was a sense of mission about him.

  He dropped an envelope on my keyboard and leaned toward me conspiratorially, saying, “I can’t believe my luck, but Dorothy told me you’d be willing to do the follow-up today on the Mazursky thing?”

  I nodded.

  He began to introduce himself, but before he got out his last name, I realized that he had to be Jonathan Frizell, the reporter hired away from the New Haven Register. With a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia and a relative on the Chronicle board of directors, he was not a popular guy.

  “I’m being a good sport and covering that antigambling demonstration in Kennedy Plaza. God, how I hate rallies. Good story, today, by the way.” He had an overconfident Connecticut intonation that immediately conveyed privilege.

  He pointed to the envelope on the keyboard and thanked me again for “being a lifesaver,” before walking off. He hadn’t the slightest concern that I was wading into his turf, and I wondered, was that because he felt there were enough murders in Providence to go around? Or that I wasn’t serious competition?

  I slit open the envelope with my pencil, trying not to dwell on the latter possibility.

  Hallie,

  Could use Mazursky profile. First person. The man you knew. But bring in other sources. Will lead Sunday metro page. No more than 20 inches. Also, for Sunday paper call PD for details about Gano Street car accident caught on scanner. Nothing available last night.

  Dorothy

  As soon as I asked the dispatcher about the accident, she put me through to Major Holstrom, one of the detectives who had questioned me about the shooting last night.

  “What’s going on with the car accident?”

  He responded by asking if I would come to the station for more questioning.

  “Now?”

  “That would be best.”

  There was weight to his voice. There’d been a development since last night. Could they actually have caught this guy in a car chase? I wanted to ask him for more information, but he was a terse man who seemed even more stilted over the telephone. Instinct suggested I just get the hell up there.

  It was a three-block walk from the newspaper to LaSalle Square. I grabbed a fresh notebook from the supply closet, threw on my jacket, and headed up Fountain Street to the station, an aging building with duct tape over the outer-door lock. The dispatcher buzzed me in, and I was ushered to the second-floor detectives’ office where I’d given my statement last night.

  The city was putting up a new $50-million public safety complex a few blocks away, on the other side of the highway. Returning to this old station by daylight, I could see it was none too soon. The linoleum floors were cracked and dirty, and the windows, coated with some sort of inner smog, let in only a dingy light.

  Holstrom was at the doorway, waiting for me. He wasn’t a particularly large man, and he was only a few years older than me, but he had an easily bristled quality that was a little intimidating. Even last night, when he was trying to be gentle in his questioning, he seemed to be containing his impatience—as if he sensed there were thought processes going on in my head that ran counter to his investigation.

  He wore that same expression now. Was there some error in my story? Something I’d written but failed to tell the police last night?

  He dropped into a chair behind a desk and gestured for me to sit on one of the straight-back metal seats that felt as if it was designed to torture prisoners. “You really shouldn’t be writing this stuff in the newspaper,” he said. “You put the case and yourself in jeopardy.”

  “I’m a newspaper reporter.”

  “You’re a witness.”

  I raised my hands to the ceiling. “It’s not like I planned it this way.”

  He looked as if he were about to argue with that, but decided it was futile. He sighed, as if he’d already wasted too many precious moments arguing with newspaper reporters, and that getting one as a witness was colossally unfair. “I want you to look at more pictures,” he said.

  “Don’t you already have the guy?”

  “That’s what we gotta see.”

  He explained that the police had chased a white Toyota Camry with a missing taillight and dented fender up Gano Street to the I-95 entrance, where it had hydroplaned on a puddle. The driver lost control of the car, smashed into the cement abutment, and catapulted through the windshield. The suspect had been transported to the emergency room at Rhode Island Hospital and was now lying there unconscious.

  I thought of the enormous
man in the parka, the hard, evil look in his eyes, and felt a wave of relief: unconscious, as in lying helpless in a hospital bed. I offered a silent thanks for heavy rain and slick roads.

  Because the accident had followed a police chase, it required an official review, which would make Holstrom and the department less than forthcoming. “Is there any kind of issue with the police chase? Any kind of internal investigation because it ended in a car accident?”

  He looked slightly insulted. “There’s always a review, but we have plenty of witnesses at the scene. The pursuing officers were well within the speed limit. The driver had an elevated blood-alcohol level and lost control of the car because of the rain. It’s pretty clear-cut.”

  “Is he charged with murder?”

  Holstrom shook his head. “Driving while under the influence of alcohol, driving to endanger, and resisting arrest.”

  “Did you find anything in the car? Cash? A gun?”

  “Can’t give you any details until the forensic report gets back from the URI lab.”

  “Can you at least tell me if this guy is a suspect in the Mazursky murder?”

  “I just told you, we don’t even have the forensics report back yet.” Holstrom was growing irritated. “Right now, we’ve got no proof linking this guy directly to the murder.” Then, he reached for a three-ring binder that was at his elbow. He picked it up, leafed through it, stopped, and pushed the open binder toward me.

  I grabbed for it. More than anything, I wanted to give Holstrom his proof. I wanted to find the hulking frame, the mean eyes that I could still feel boring into me.

  “Take your time,” Holstrom said, leaning back in his chair with a Sports Illustrated.

  I scanned the pages of mug shots, mostly Polaroids in plastic sleeves. They were all young men, all with the same black-and-white rawness to them no matter what race they were. Their expressions varied, from irritated to sullen to exhausted. Intelligence did not shine on their faces. I finished one book and started another.