A Confidential Source

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A Confidential Source Page 10

by Jan Brogan


  From the newsroom, I heard the whir of the copy machine and an editor shouting that he needed someone to write a cut line. Nathan checked his watch, his expression suggesting that this meeting had already taken up too much time. “The first thing I want to make clear,” he began, “is that I don’t care how many confidential or independent sources you have, this story doesn’t get off the ground—not one word in print—until you get someone in Mazursky’s family to confirm that he had a gambling problem.”

  I nodded to show I understood libel law and the very real threat of a lawsuit. Nathan’s gaze shifted from me to Marcy and finally to Dorothy. His eyes remained on her, although the answer was meant for me. “All right, then. I’ll give you one week.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  IT WAS MY mother’s suggestion, actually. She’d been phoning me every day since I’d told her about the shooting, and she’d caught me just as I walked into my apartment, Monday night.

  “You’ve got to go to the funeral,” she said, referring to Barry.

  “I’m not sure I can take a day off from work.”

  “The wake, then.”

  Sitting on a stool at my kitchen bar, I reached for the day’s paper, which lay open over several stacks of mail, and began scanning the death notices. “It’s tonight,” I said, “the only viewing.”

  “You’ve got to go,” my mother said. Elsbeth Ahern had never been much for psychology and she’d never utter a word like closure, but I knew, even if she didn’t, that was what she meant.

  But she also meant I had a duty to go. My parents had both been very active in the community in Worcester, and I’d been raised on mandatory attendance at wakes and funerals. My mother, a woman of both big heart and big grudges, kept a running list of neighbors, friends, and relatives who’d failed to show up for wakes or funerals that everyone rightly expected them to attend.

  The Linnehan Ryan Settles Riordan Funeral Home was in the neighborhood, on Waterman, three or four blocks away. It was a clear October evening with a sky scrubbed clean by a cold front of Canadian air. I put on a funeral-appropriate winter jacket that I had to take out of last year’s dry cleaner’s plastic and walked at a runner’s pace. I made it with twenty minutes to spare.

  The parking lot was jammed with cars and minivans, so I’d expected a crowd inside—customers and curiosity seekers responding to the news event—but there were only about a half dozen people. Three I recognized as customers from the store.

  I’d been to more than a dozen different funeral homes and they all looked the same whether they were in Worcester, Boston, or Providence. Neutral-tone rooms with high ceilings, dark, polished tables, and stiffly upholstered chairs that emphasized that no matter how casual the lifestyle, death was a formal affair.

  I made my way to the coffin first, grateful that it was closed and I didn’t have to relive the horror of Barry’s expression or decide if the undertaker had adequately puttied the bullet hole. I kneeled before the gleaming mahogany box and found that I was pleased to see the neatly folded American flag. I wanted to remember Barry as the respected marine veteran, the successful businessman, and the man of strategy and vision. Not the Barry who embezzled from charities and turned to loan sharks for money. I closed my eyes and said three prayers: one for Barry, one for his family, and one for myself. I’d need a few miracles from God to pull off this story.

  Afterward, I introduced myself to Barry’s son, who I’d seen a few times working in the deli section. He was in his midtwenties, with the same marinelike build as Barry. He had a similar brow, low and furrowed, as if he, too, worried too much for too many. He took my hand with a rough, unpracticed palm, thanked me for coming, and said he was Barry’s son, Drew. His voice was the same tone as his father’s, a hardened bass, eerily familiar.

  When I told him my name, his brow lifted. A light of recognition flickered like halogen in his eyes. He interrupted his mother’s conversation with a woman who looked like she could be a grandmother or a great-aunt to introduce me. “She’s the reporter who was in the store,” he said.

  Nadine Mazursky might have been a beautiful woman. She had a trim figure, dark, gleaming hair tied back in a knot, and fine, even features. But today, her face was unnaturally pale, and I knew by her eyes that she was medicated. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said without seeing me.

  Drew wouldn’t let it go at that. He put his face near hers, forcing her to look him directly in the eye, and spoke louder, more deliberately, as if to a child. “She’s the one who wrote the story about Dad in the paper. In Sunday’s paper.”

  Something wavered in Nadine’s eyes. “Oh yes, of course. A beautiful story.” She took my hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  But as I offered my sympathies, I could see her attention already drifting to someone standing behind me. I could feel her haze, could remember the numbness that followed both my brother’s and my father’s deaths. She’d never remember meeting me.

  It didn’t matter, really. The point was to come, pay my respects, and make a first step in putting the actual horror of Barry’s murder behind me. I walked away from Nadine Mazursky and allowed a man standing behind me to offer the widow his sympathies. I moved down the line, expressing condolences to family members I was meeting for the first time: a daughter and her husband, a grandson, and two aunts. I did not introduce myself as the reporter who wrote the profile. I was one of Barry’s customers, I said. One of his regulars.

  Slipping out through a side door, I stood under a streetlight and took a minute to collect myself. A real Rhode Island tragedy. One minute, Barry had been giving me the odds on which scratch ticket to buy, and the next, he was dead on the floor. And all the police cared about was covering up the real reason for his murder until after the casino-gambling referendum passed.

  In the dark, my wool jacket seemed insubstantial. I pulled it tight around me and headed up Waterman, the Canadian air now in my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a car driving down the street slowly, behind me. It was a block of residential-looking buildings that had all been converted into doctors’ and dentists’ offices, the waiting rooms all empty by now. I picked up my pace. The car followed, hugging the curb.

  Instinctively, I began to scan the buildings for signs of life—a pediatrician with evening hours, an orthodontist working late—but the windows were dark. The only lights were in entry-ways, illuminated for security. The driveways were empty and there were hardly even any cars parked on the street. Why hadn’t I driven? Realized how alone I’d feel at this hour of the night?

  The car crept closer. I heard a window open. My rib cage tightened and I felt myself lean forward, ready to push off my toes if I had to run for it. A familiar voice called my name. I turned to see Matt Cavanaugh behind the wheel of a ten-year-old Audi. He was wearing a dark-colored suit and looked like he was coming from a courtroom. “Need a lift?”

  “Jesus,” I said, feeling both angry and relieved.

  “Is that a yes?”

  It was cold and late, and now I was a nervous wreck alone on the street. I got in.

  The car smelled of Windex and oranges and I noticed a roll of paper towels in the back, as if he had just cleaned up some kind of spill. A cell phone was charging from a cord in the lighter and an empty Starbucks cup was stuck in the console between us. A gym bag and basketball were thrown in the backseat.

  “You live in here?” I asked, as if my own car were clutter free.

  “When I’m working on a big case. Kind of late to be walking alone,” he said as he pulled back into traffic. The warning again.

  “I’m a grown woman, I can walk alone on the street.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I knew I’d been unduly harsh. “I’m coming from Barry Mazursky’s wake,” I finally said.

  “You were a pretty good friend of Barry’s, right?”

  I thought of the gambling, how little I’d ever known about Barry. “Sort of.”

  He must have sensed the da
rk thought. “You probably needed the closure, right? After the shooting?” His voice was warmer now, full of understanding, as if he’d dealt with this kind of thing before.

  “The closure I really needed was seeing Victor Delria,” I reminded him.

  His shrug said he was not about to apologize, but his tone was conciliatory. “I thought you understood about that.”

  “Not really,” I said. But I did. As a prosecutor, he had a job to do. I couldn’t hold it against him forever.

  “How’s Barry’s family holding up?”

  He sounded as if he actually cared, and I found myself telling him about the wife being heavily medicated and how few people had turned out. “It was pitiful really, just a few other customers from the store. The son seemed to be grateful I came—” I looked at him sidelong. “They’d probably feel better if they knew someone was being charged for the murder. Police said the crime report still hasn’t come back from the lab. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

  “It can happen,” he said, noncommittal. He turned up Wayland Avenue. “Besides, Delria’s still unconscious. There’s no rush.”

  No kidding, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew that in his own way, Matt was trying to mend fences, trying to meet me halfway. And in the closed car, I was becoming aware of his scent over the oranges. He smelled of some kind of soap that reminded me of warm laundry from the dryer. I found myself wanting to lean closer to him, to inhale a little deeper, but I stayed stiffly in my seat, determined to fight off this increasingly inconvenient feeling of arousal. We drove in silence until we hit Wayland Square. I directed him to turn left. “I live up at the corner, on Elmgrove.”

  “Really?” There was something funny in his tone.

  “Yeah, why?”

  He didn’t answer until I’d directed him to my apartment building, which was on the edge of the square, in the first block on Elmgrove. He pulled into the parking spot behind my Honda, stopped the car, and pointed diagonally across Elmgrove to a large Victorian house about a half block from the square. It had a sweeping veranda that had caught my eye last summer because of all the hanging flower baskets and a real turret. “I live right over there,” he said, with a half smile. “I’ve got the third-floor unit.”

  It seemed strange that I hadn’t seen him on the street before. When I’d first moved in, my mother had come for a visit. An avid gardener, she had actually climbed up onto that veranda across the street to examine one of the plants. “Since when?”

  “Last month.” That meant he hadn’t seen my mother root and clip one of the hanging vines of the wild geranium and stuff it in her canvas bag. “So you’re a new neighbor, then?”

  He nodded, with an amused expression, as if this were, really, quite the development.

  There was a long, awkward silence inside the car, and I got the feeling he was waiting for something. It seemed to me that maybe I should suggest something neighborly. Like inviting him to dinner or at least for a drink.

  “You want to come up for a beer or something?” I heard myself ask.

  His eyes warmed to the idea and I felt a flicker of something in the car. Surprise? Interest? Desire? He seemed to be mulling it over, and I got the feeling that, like me, he dreaded going home to an empty apartment. But then, something changed in his posture, and his hands tightened on the wheel. Immediately, I regretted my neighborliness. “Better not,” he said, shaking his head and looking away from me.

  I knew then that Jonathan Frizell had been right about Matt’s career aspirations. It wouldn’t be a good political move for a prosecutor in the AG’s office to get too neighborly with a Chronicle reporter.

  “Yeah, it’s kind of late anyway,” I said, making an effort to sound relieved as I slipped out of the car.

  I waited until two days after the funeral to approach Nadine Mazursky for an interview, and even then I felt like a vulture.

  Not surprisingly, the Mazursky phone number was unlisted, so I hadn’t been able to call ahead. I drove by the Mazursky Market first, hoping to find Drew working in the deli, but the market was still closed. I had no choice but to get on the highway and head to the Cranston address I’d found in the database.

  My stomach grew tighter as I passed each exit. At Thurbers Avenue, I looked up at the Big Blue Bug, a ten-foot-tall fiberglass-and-steel termite that looks down on the highway from a pest-control building, and felt like I was the vermin. More than anything, I hated barging in like this on a newly grieving family, but I had no promise of a story, no shot at the investigative team until I got someone from the family to confirm Barry’s gambling problem. On the record.

  Christ.

  A part of me hoped that the Mazursky family would slam the door in my face and I could be done with it. The other fantasized about Nadine inviting me into her home and championing me for my efforts to get to the bottom of her husband’s murder.

  Yeah, right.

  I studied the small blue Cape on the corner lot of a middle-class neighborhood. The clapboard trim could have used a coat of paint and the lawn desperately needed to be raked. The shades on the windows were all drawn; there were no mums in planters or Halloween pumpkins on the steps to make the house look even remotely inviting. I couldn’t bring myself to stop, but drove down the road to a dead end, where there was a small cove with a boat launch on Narragansett Bay.

  I stared out at the water, gray like the sky and choppy from the wind, and steeled myself for the interview ahead. Some people found it cathartic to talk to reporters about their grief, I told myself. Maybe, the family, like me, was frustrated by the lack of information the Providence police had revealed about the investigation. Maybe Nadine Mazursky was pissed off that no one had been charged with Barry’s murder and hoped a Chronicle story would spark action.

  I turned, parked in front of the house, and forced myself out of my Honda. Because of the positive response I’d gotten at the wake, there was a good chance the family would let me in the door. But depending on how the interview went, it could be only a matter of minutes before they tossed me back out again.

  I pushed the doorbell and waited. The wind kicked my hair across my face, and I tried to comb it away with my fingers. A couple of minutes passed. I rang the doorbell again. Another gust of wind and I had to grab my hair into a ponytail to keep it from flapping all over. Someone peeked out from behind a drawn shade. The inner door opened partway, and I saw Nadine herself peering at me. An outer storm door separated us.

  “Hallie Ahern,” I shouted through the thick glass.

  I dropped the ponytail, and instantly, my hair was in my face again. I could see in her expression that she had no idea who I was. “The Chronicle reporter who wrote the profile of your husband in the Sunday paper,” I added.

  I’m not sure that made any impression either, but another figure appeared behind her. I heard her mumble something. The door opened a bit wider. It was her son, Drew.

  He swung open the door. “Come in, please.” I was taken again by the timbre of his voice.

  As soon as I was inside the house, he closed and locked the door behind me. More creditors, I thought, but said nothing. I told them I wanted to ask just a couple of questions. They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Nadine finally asked. Her tone had the same dull quality as her eyes, and I knew she was still on some sort of drug to deaden the pain.

  We passed through a tidy living room and into a good-size kitchen with harvest-gold appliances that looked as though they had once been top of the line. There was no sign of Barry’s daughter or her husband, or any of the older female relatives who had been at the wake, and the way Drew banged around in the cabinets, asking his mother where she’d moved the cups and sugar, I guessed he didn’t live here anymore either.

  I sat opposite Nadine at a long table made of hand-painted tile, while Drew filled a silver kettle with water from the sink. When I admired the table, Nadine told me that Barry had painted the tiles himself. “
It used to be a hobby for him. He was planning on hand-painting furniture when he retired.”

  The kettle clanged loudly as it hit the grid of the stove. Nadine looked up at her son, who did not apologize. “He hasn’t painted a tile in years,” Drew said.

  I left my notebook unopened on the table, so they would know I wasn’t taking notes on their feud. It didn’t seem to matter. Drew’s gruff movements about the kitchen suggested he was still consumed by his mother’s last comment. He lit a cigarette with a defiant air. Nadine gave him an annoyed look, but then she shrugged, as if to indicate that she was too exhausted to quibble with her son.

  I pulled a tape recorder out of my knapsack and put it on the table. Nadine glanced skeptically at the small machine, which was why I normally didn’t like to use a tape recorder for interviews. But Nathan’s concern about a libel suit made me decide to be extra careful.

  “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “Just some follow-up,” I said, turning on the machine and speaking into it. “I’m taping our discussion to make sure not to misquote you. Is that all right?”

  At the mention of a tape recorder, Drew turned around from the sink. “You sure that’s okay, Mom?” he asked.

  “What are you going to be quoting me about?” she asked.

  About your husband’s gambling problems? No, I couldn’t start there. “Just some questions about the investigation. If you don’t want to answer them, or if you want me to shut off the tape at any point, I will. I just wanted to ask if you were bothered that there hasn’t been an arrest yet.”

  I was hoping that after enough questions, Nadine would get so caught up in the flow of her thoughts, she’d forget all about the tape recorder. Now, her gaze remained fixed on the machine. “I have faith that the police are doing the best job they can,” she said.

 

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