by Jan Brogan
I tried to relax. Tried to tell myself that if the story got held another couple of days, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. But my adrenaline had not stopped charging since I’d left the Mazursky Market. Getting this information out of Drew Mazursky was a major accomplishment. A part of me worried that Matt or maybe Nadine Mazursky might get to him. That the phone would ring and it would be Drew trying to take back everything he said.
“What are police saying?”
“Holstrom’s not in today. The guy filling in, Antonelli, said he couldn’t comment, but Evan DiMartino is working on getting me a source inside the police department.”
“But nothing yet?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know, Hallie. I’m not sure how I feel about this.”
It was not a good idea to push her. But this was such a high-impact story; it had to lead the Sunday paper. “Maybe you could call Nathan.”
“I already did. I got his machine.”
“I know it’s risky,” I said. “But this is a big murder. Police haven’t made an arrest, and we have two sources—one the freaking son—saying Mazursky was in trouble with loan sharks. Feared for his life.”
Dorothy pursed her lips in that odd way of hers and began walking back to her desk, rereading my copy the whole way. I picked up the phone and dialed the cell phone number Evan DiMartino had given me.
He was at the dog track with two guys from production. The connection was full of static, and I could barely make out that it was him. I told him I was on deadline and asked if he’d gotten any information for me. There was more static, followed by silence. For a minute, I thought our connection had gone.
“I left you two messages on your cell phone last night,” he said, sounding irritated.
I had a habit of not recharging the battery. It was completely dead inside the glove compartment of my Honda.
“What?”
“How the hell you think you’re gonna be an investigative reporter when you don’t check on your information?”
“I’m checking now. Please, Evan…”
There was another silence. Then he relented. “I got a good source who says the day you saw Errico, that Saturday, he put in a call to Sideways Carpaccia. You know who that is?”
“No.”
“Look him up in the database. He’s a capo for Junior. Runs Warwick. Anyway, word is that Errico put in a personal call to him to find out if Mazursky’s murder was sanctioned.”
“Was it?” I reached for a notebook on the desk.
“No definitive word, but the next day, Holstrom was taken off the case and it was moved into Errico’s office. You remember what I told you about Errico?”
“He only handles organized-crime cases.” I was scribbling furiously, scrambling to keep up.
“Okay, that coupled with the e-mail I sent you, you owe me coffee for a month.”
E-mail I couldn’t have missed. Whenever you logged on to a newsroom computer to write, the message alert blinked like mad until you read all incoming e-mail.
“I didn’t get an e-mail from you.”
“Not on your computer. I put a hard copy in your mailbox, or don’t you check that either?”
“The copyboy didn’t know I was working downtown. He’s been forwarding all my mail to South County.”
“Then drive down there.” Evan’s voice was hard and impatient. “Now.”
Dorothy called Jonathan Frizell in on his day off to help verify the authenticity of the e-mail. With the help of one of his sources, as well as the systems department of the Chronicle, we were able to confirm that the e-mail, sent to the police chief, came from Billy Lopresti’s home server.
Tom,
Release nothing on Mazursky murder until you hear from me. Imperative no leaks. We need to keep a tight lid until Nov. 6 for obvious reasons. Counting on you.
W.A.L.
I wondered if it was Evan’s brother, inside the department, who had such access to the chief’s personal e-mail, but Jonathan said that it could have been anybody, a secretary, a janitor, someone in the systems department. “Tommy boy’s not a real popular chief. He’s an old friend of Billy’s—from the neighborhood. Missing a few key management skills.”
Jonathan was able to get through to his source inside the mayor’s office. She told him that Lopresti had taken an unusual interest in the Mazursky investigation and had called both Police Chief Thomas Linnehan and the attorney general. “He was really worked up about it,” the source said. “Over the top.”
The phone at my desk rang at about eight o’clock, and I practically jumped out of my chair. The mayor was away this weekend at a four-day mayoral conference about casino gambling that was being held in Las Vegas. After several attempts to track down his press secretary, I finally got the name of the hotel where Billy Lopresti was staying and left an urgent message with the front desk that he return my call. I’d been waiting for more than an hour.
“Jesus, these conferences are dull,” said the mayor, without introduction. “I’ve only got about five minutes before I got to go to the banquet. The food is not so great out here either.”
I explained that I was working on a story about the Barry Mazursky murder. He was quiet, as if to imply that he couldn’t begin to fathom why I’d have questions about this for him, so I played along. “The murder in the market in Wayland Square. Last week.”
“I know which one it was. Senseless. You’re from the Chronicle? How come I’ve never heard of you before?” He made it sound like an omission on his part.
“I’m new.”
“How new?”
“Four months.”
“Ah,” he said, as if this filled in some very important blanks.
I launched into an explanation for my call, telling him that I’d been in the market the night of the shooting, that it had been especially quick, and that Barry Mazursky’s son was charging that his father’s murder was tied to casino gambling.
The reply was quick. “So you think I shouldn’t be going to conferences, then? Scrap the referendum. And the Pier Project. What the hell? Whose idea was this, anyway?” He was chuckling into the phone.
The sarcasm in this was at just the right level, not so sharp as to be insulting, but not so subtle as to be misread. It had the intended effect of unbalancing me, making me question myself as to how best to proceed.
“I’m sorry about Mazursky,” he said, his tone suddenly respectful. “Horrible thing.”
People who were good at the charm thing didn’t ooze it, they dribbled it so that the personality didn’t overwhelm you so much as catch you off guard. I found myself suddenly liking the mayor and feeling bad about reading his private e-mail.
“But I think whatever questions you have are best answered by the chief,” Lopresti said. “Don’t want to miss the canned fruit cocktail.”
“Just one more question,” I sputtered, reaching for the hard copy of the e-mail memo on my desk. I read from it verbatim. Told him it would be used in a story we were running tomorrow and that I had called to offer him the opportunity to explain.
He muffled the receiver and said something to someone in his hotel room. Whatever he said had the same cadence and number of syllables as “Jesus fucking Christ.” Into the phone, Billy Lopresti said, “I’m not going to comment on a police investigation.”
“Would you care to comment on your e-mail?”
“It has nothing to do with the referendum.”
I read the last line of the e-mail to him again, reminding him that he’d actually specified the November 6 date. There was silence on the other end of the phone line. After a moment, he said, “That wasn’t a reference to the referendum election.”
“Then what is the November sixth date a reference to?”
“This has nothing to do with the referendum,” he repeated.
“Just a coincidence with the dates? Then tell me, what other meaning does November sixth have?”
Lopresti did not like to be grilled. “What d
epartment did you say you worked for?”
“South County bureau.”
“Then how did you get hold of my personal e-mail? That was a confidential memo, not a press release. That little pissant Frizell, I bet he had something to do with this.”
He muffled the phone again, consulting with someone else in the room. The words were unintelligible, but I could hear the emotional rise in Billy Lopresti’s tone as he argued with whatever advice he got.
When a source got heated, you had to respond with excessive calm. “I used to be an investigative reporter with the Ledger, in Boston,” I said, in one of those even, public-radio tones. “And as I said before, I was in the back of the store when Mazursky got murdered. I know it wasn’t an armed robbery.”
“What? That makes you a homicide detective now? Wrong. You’re a reporter who’s got half the story. A reporter trying to get on the front page with some new conspiracy allegation. Well, it’s going to blow up in your face. I’m telling you, that e-mail had absolutely nothing to do with the referendum.”
“Then tell me, what does it have to do with? What?”
But halfway through this question, I realized he’d already hung up the phone.
The Providence Morning Chronicle
Local Businessman’s Death Tied to Gambling
By Hallie A. Ahern
Chronicle Staff Reporter
Barry Mazursky, the man shot to death at the Wayland Square store last week, was a compulsive gambler who feared for his life, according to his son.
“He wasn’t a victim of a random armed robbery,” said Andrew Mazursky of Cranston. “My father was a victim of compulsive gambling.”
Barry Mazursky had been beaten up twice in the last eight months by thugs associated with loan sharks and was determined to defend himself the next time he was assaulted. “That’s why he had that gun in the store,” the younger Mazursky said. “For self-defense.”
More than a week after the shooting, Providence police still won’t confirm whether the man they have in custody, Victor Delria, of Central Falls, is a suspect. Delria was thrown from the windshield of his car following a police chase and is in a coma at Rhode Island Hospital.
Police have said they believe Mazursky was murdered resisting an armed robbery, but have not released the results of forensics reports. But off-the-record sources inside the Providence Police Department say that the investigation was transferred to the organized-crime unit after mob sources were queried about whether Mazursky’s murder was a sanctioned hit.
A confidential source aligned with the antigambling forces charged that the mayor was stalling the results of the investigation until after the November 6 referendum election. The Chronicle yesterday obtained a confidential memo from Mayor Billy Lopresti, a proponent of the casino-gambling referendum, to Police Chief Thomas Linnehan, asking that the matter be kept quiet until after November 6.
Lopresti denied the memo had anything to do with the referendum election, but would not offer an alternative explanation of the November 6 date.
Opponents argue that both compulsive gambling and personal bankruptcies will rise dramatically, and that the Mazursky murder is typical of the kind of crime that will escalate if Providence becomes home to a new casino.
“Casinos bring violent crime. They bring organized crime and they bring white-collar crime,” Marjorie Pittman, chairwoman of Citizens for a Stronger Rhode Island, said yesterday. “For obvious reasons, the mayor doesn’t want anyone reminded of that a week before the referendum election.”
According to a confidential source, Mazursky, a regular at both Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, got into trouble with loan sharks two years ago, shortly after an alleged $75,000 discrepancy was found in accounting books when he was treasurer of the Veterans’ Homeless Shelter Foundation in Providence.
Board minutes confirm that the issue was raised at two separate meetings, and Mazursky resigned his position as
See Gambling Ties, page B-24
CHAPTER
12
SUNDAY MORNING AT six A.M. it was so dark that I turned over to go back to sleep. But then, an ignition clicked, the engine turned inside, and thoughts began to rev: My story was running page one today.
It was too early to buy the paper, so I found my thicker running tights in an unpacked box of winter clothes, put a turtleneck underneath my sweatshirt, and searched for my running shoes. Dressing for a cold-weather run was tricky. You had to wear enough warm clothing to get yourself outside, but not so much that you wanted to throw it all off by the time you reached the boulevard.
I was met by a bracing wind just outside my door, but for the first quarter mile, it was at my back, an extra push going my way. My brain was still fuzzy from sleep and my feet drifted across the sidewalk without detailing the distance or effort of my legs. There was nothing quite as satisfying as a story that would run above the fold. With a 24-point headline. On an issue that would galvanize an entire city. Hell, maybe an entire state.
The miles seemed to pass quickly, painlessly. By the time I’d turned onto the boulevard and begun the trek homeward, my muscles had warmed up so nicely that my stride grew long and fluid.
Another pleasant thought occurred to me: Carolyn had told me a couple of days ago that there was actually a step-wage increase of almost $150 a week for reporters on the investigative team because they worked longer, more irregular hours. Six hundred dollars a month would go a long way to help me pay off the loan to my mother and some of those credit card bills.
If only I hadn’t blown all my Mohegan Sun winnings that night in Foxwoods. But I didn’t like thinking about losing, so I fastened my gaze on an enormous maple tree in the distance, increased my speed to a sprint, and silently vowed never to gamble anywhere near my mother again.
Soon after I passed the maple, endorphins began to take over. I entered a state that’s called the zone, a place of pleasantly narrow focus that obliterates the periphery of all possible agitations. I’m not sure how long I remained there before awareness crept in and I again felt my legs lifting, lungs expanding, heart pounding. And then, in an instant, I became aware of the world, of another presence, of the faint sound of other footsteps displacing the cinder on the path.
The cinder crackled in the distance. Whoever he was behind me, he was increasing his speed. Turning slightly, I spotted a man hooded in gray sweats on the path, running fifty yards back. Men hated it when you ran faster than they did, and always tried to catch up and pass.
The morning was stubbornly dim, as if the sun would never fully rise, and the gold and red leaves were already beginning to look muted. I looked over my shoulder and made out that the other runner was tall. Long legs would give him an advantage.
Something about the long legs made me turn a third time. It wasn’t just another runner. It was Matt Cavanaugh in gray sweats. I shifted up a gear. I was feeling particularly light today, and if there was anybody I’d like to leave in the dust, it was Matt Cavanaugh.
I was running into the wind now, and the cold air was a force to be reckoned with. I kept my head down, fighting the resistance. I wondered how much of a runner Matt was—I’d never seen him running on the boulevard before. Of course, a lack of experience wouldn’t stop him from trying to prove he could beat me. I focused on my elbows, bringing them behind me faster to increase my foot speed.
The path ended and I plunged onto the asphalt of Butler Street. In the distance, I could make out a single car, stopping for the traffic light on Angell Street. My side was beginning to ache and my lungs felt tight. I glanced over my shoulder again. Matt was only about fifteen yards away. The needle in my side began to shoot pain down my legs. Stay cool, Hallie. Focused. Sprint speed.
Crossing the road, I headed to the sidewalk. I had to slow down to slip my body sideways between two parked cars. I cleared the hedge of metal and jumped onto the curb.
Gnarled tree roots had grown through the cement, and I stumbled on a crack. Throwing my hands in front of me, I struggl
ed for balance. Please, God, don’t let me fall on my face in front of Matt Cavanaugh. I caught myself and righted to center. As if in slow motion, the earth settled underneath me.
“Hallie!” The hood of Matt’s sweatshirt was pushed back, revealing the dark eyes and the off-center nose. Sweat had collected on his forehead and he wiped it with his forearm. Bending forward, he put his hands to his knees, as if to baby a cramp. “Jesus, you’re fast,” he said between breaths.
My heart was still running the race, but I sucked in measured amounts of air and tried not to sound winded. “Well, I wasn’t going to let you beat me.”
He was standing erect now, taking me in, the whole picture: racing tights, sweatshirt, ponytail. He seemed to find something about it amusing.
“What?” I asked. “Don’t you ever race people on the street?”
“Just a little competitive?” he asked, but he was smiling and sounding appreciative.
“I guess.” I made an effort to sound casual, but I was pleased. He was looking at me with sincere admiration, appropriately impressed with my foot pace. I bent down as if to check a shoelace and played with the knot an extra minute to get my breathing fully under control. He stood over me, waiting. His legs were really long.
I took another breath and stood up. “You run a lot?”
“Every day,” he said, “but usually in the evenings.”
“That’s why I’ve never seen you before. Didn’t know you were a runner.”
“If you did, would you have stopped?” he asked. “Or run even faster?”
At first I thought he was still joking, but then I noticed that his tone had changed. He was looking at me with meaning, a meaning that eluded me. Flushed with new heat, I looked down at my sneakers, unsure of what he meant by this or how I should respond.
And then: “How come you didn’t call me?”
He made it sound so plaintive, so personal, that for one brief moment, my thinking blipped: Had I missed a cue? He was the one who’d taken my number, not the other way around. But luckily, I kept my mouth shut, resisted the temptation to blather. Because when I looked up from my sneakers, I saw that he’d shifted his posture and crossed his arms. I realized that we were talking business.
