by Jan Brogan
Another flash of understanding: Matt must have the Chronicle home-delivered to his apartment. He’d already read my story about Barry Mazursky. Obviously, he wasn’t happy about it.
I crossed my own arms. “I didn’t call you because it was Saturday,” I said.
“I work Saturday,” he said.
Should I have called the attorney general’s office? On a Saturday? Just to get another no comment? “Why should I call you? You never answer my questions.”
“I would’ve liked a chance to respond to this…this…conjecture before you put it in the paper.”
Conjecture. He meant bullshit but was trying to be professional. Suddenly, I was angry. “No comments” like Matt Cavanaugh never wanted to trust you with anything close to real information but always wanted a chance to muck up your story afterward.
“Barry Mazursky’s murder had nothing to do with loan sharks,” he said, sounding so earnest that I almost believed him. Or at least I almost believed that he believed what he said. “Honest.”
Maybe there was too much earnestness, or too much in him that I wanted to trust, but I knew I had to check myself. Matt Cavanaugh, the flirt at the dairy case, the master of sincerity, was a political animal. His job demanded that he work with Providence police day in and day out. If they wanted to stall—or let’s just call it postpone—an investigation for a couple of measly weeks, what difference would it make to him? Justice was slow, anyway.
He was still staring at me, eyes level, determined that I believe him.
Was he trying to charm me? Was I supposed to melt into his sincerity and print a retraction? When I had the victim’s son telling me otherwise? When I had it all on tape?
I returned the same deep, heart-to-heart look and said, “You want to tell me about it? Give me the real reason Barry was murdered? I’ll be happy to do another story. Let’s go back to my apartment; I’ll get my notebook.”
I don’t know what I expected from him, anger or more amusement. I got neither. Instead, he shook his head and in a regretful tone that I wouldn’t be able to get out of my head all day, he said, “Try to believe me, Hallie, the more I tell you, the worse off you’ll be.”
Leonard was all accolades. He called later that morning after I’d already bought the paper and reread my story several times. I’d moved on to more mundane matters, and when the phone rang, I was sitting on my bedroom floor collecting the dirty laundry from the bottom of my closet and sorting it. Not by color, but by urgency.
“My phone lines will be jammed all night!” Leonard’s voice boomed with enthusiasm. “You think I could book you as a guest?”
A guest? The towel in my hand dropped into the nearest pile. “Really?”
“You doing anything tonight?”
My heart was suddenly pounding like a piano. A guest? On Leonard of Late Night? I knew enough to wait until the song settled, to force myself to hear the low, cautionary notes. I didn’t want to make any wrong moves, blow my chances for the investigative team now. “I’ll have to check with my editor.”
“Check,” Leonard said. “But they can’t stop you. Not by contract. We have this issue with the sports reporters all the time. And it’s good advertising for the paper. Just call me by five o’clock, and promise me you won’t do interviews with any other stations, radio or TV, first. Okay?”
Any other radio or television stations? Was he serious? I was soaring somewhere over the apartment building, above Providence, Rhode Island. It might not be Boston or New York, but suddenly, it was a spectacular view.
“You promise?” he pressed.
I gave him my word and threw all my laundry back into a single, unsorted heap on the floor. Then I got dressed in the only clean shirt and pair of jeans I had left and headed down to the newsroom to find someone who knew where I could find Dorothy Sacks on a Sunday afternoon.
Dorothy had no husband, no family, no life outside the newspaper, according to Carolyn, but on this particular Sunday in late October when I desperately needed to talk to her, she didn’t answer her home phone, her cell phone, or her pager.
“Sometimes,” said Roger, the weekend-shift editor who had given me Dorothy’s phone numbers, “sometimes she comes in Sunday night with leaves all over her jeans, wearing these big, ugly hiking boots.”
“Maybe I should try Nathan at home.”
Roger, an extremely thin, lanky man who had worked nights and weekends forever, looked alarmed. “On a Sunday? Nathan? You kidding? He’ll freak.”
I tried Dorothy’s pager again and read the entire Sunday paper from cover to cover waiting for her to respond. It was almost five o’clock when Roger looked over and noticed that I was still there.
Roger was an official of the union and didn’t like it when he thought anyone was working off the clock. “I’m telling you. They can’t stop you, by contract.”
I must have looked unconvinced because he added, “You want to do it, do it. The publisher won’t mind.”
“Really?”
“Why would he? You’re reminding everyone that the Chronicle broke another story. It’ll sell papers.”
With embarrassing admiration, Leonard introduced me to his producer as “the reporter who broke the Mazursky murder.”
Robin, the producer, was in her early twenties, with short, curly hair and about twenty earrings. She cocked her head slightly. Was she supposed to be impressed? With an amused expression, she guided me to a seat in the studio directly facing Leonard and instructed me on the correct way to use the microphone.
There was nothing haggard about Leonard tonight. He was wearing the latest in microfiber warm-up suits, and his face was flush with color, as if he’d just jumped off his bicycle. “After that story of yours this morning, the phones are gonna be lit up like Christmas,” he said, brandishing a copy of the Chronicle. And then, as if it were some kind of mantra, he repeated it to Robin. “Lit like Christmas! Lit like Christmas!”
She offered a nod to his good spirits as she ducked back into the production booth. With the show about to begin, the microphone before me seemed suddenly ominous. “What if I stutter or something?” I heard myself ask.
Leonard grinned. “Stutter? You didn’t stutter once in the three months that you called in, you want to stutter tonight, go ahead and stutter. People don’t care. They’ll forgive a stutter. Just don’t go on and on like some kind of windbag.”
“That’s his role,” Robin called over her shoulder.
Leonard nodded good-naturedly. “Yes, that is my role.” Then, catching some kind of cue from Robin, his expression changed. A look of intense concentration came over his face as he listened intently to whatever was coming through his headset. He began introducing the show. The topic. His guest: Hallie Ahern.
He left out the part about me being the bureau reporter in South County. Instead, he spouted off every award I’d ever won in Boston, startling me with his research, and making me sound like such a big deal “Welcome to the show, Hallie.”
My throat tightened. “Thank you,” I said, barely getting it out. “I’m glad to be here.”
Still standing, with several microphones of various sizes before him, he started reading directly from my Chronicle story. His voice was deep, grave, reverential. Had I really written all that? It sounded so powerful, so earth-shattering, so conspiratorial with all those pauses and added emphasis.
“Didn’t I tell you something wasn’t right in the Wayland Square shooting? Didn’t I tell you cops were dragging their heels, covering something up?” he asked. “Listen to this…”
To Leonard’s right, mounted on the wall, was a computer monitor. Within minutes, text began appearing with identifying bits of information about each of the callers Robin had typed in. The lighting was a dim fluorescent. I squinted to read:
“Magda of North Scituate: ‘Gambling will ruin the state.’”
“Corey of Providence wants state police instead of Providence police to investigate the murder.”
“Ed of Ti
verton says the Chronicle blows everything out of proportion.”
My stomach tightened on that last remark, but Leonard decimated Ed of Tiverton in about two minutes, calling him one of “Billy’s groupies.” With a mischievous smile, he concluded the call with the first few bars of the “Tammy’s in Love” song.
Leonard flailed his arms like a conductor, waving people on in their outrage at the slowness of the police investigation, cutting them off when they voiced doubt that there was a deliberate conspiracy. “Billy will do anything, anything to get this gambling referendum to pass,” he said. “You’ve got to believe he doesn’t want us thinking about the mob being alive and well on Atwell’s Avenue. He doesn’t want us thinking about a successful businessman like Barry Mazursky losing it all, even his life, because of casino gambling. Right, Hallie?”
I was growing uncomfortable. I’d only lived in Providence for four months. Spoken to the mayor only once on the phone. How was I supposed to know what Billy Lopresti thought? “Well, I have heard him admit that compulsive gambling comes with the territory.”
Leonard gave me an exasperated look, and I could see that evenhandedness was not a part of the program. “You don’t have to set aside a special fund for compulsive gambling if you don’t create more compulsive gambling in the first place. Legalizing a casino is just going to mean more Barry Mazurskys. Gloria from Warwick, welcome to the program.”
Gloria from Warwick began by gushing about how great Leonard was, how he alone really cared about Rhode Island, and about how he was going to save the state from corruption. Leonard rolled his eyes as if embarrassed, but I noticed that he didn’t cut any of it off. Through the glass window, I could see Robin, in the production booth. She put her finger to her temple in a gesture to Leonard that said: If she had to listen to much more, she’d shoot herself.
“What I wanna know,” said Gloria, finally getting to the point, “is how many other people steal from these charities that are always hitting the rest of us up for money? How come they let board members just put the money back? How come they don’t get arrested for that? Doesn’t anybody in this state care about the little guy who sends in the donation checks?”
Praised or not, Leonard didn’t want to talk about Barry Mazursky’s crimes. He immediately started scanning the computer monitor for new callers. “Compulsive gambling does crazy things to people, Gloria. Remember, Barry Mazursky was a victim, let’s let him rest in peace.” He hit another button and clicked her off the line. “Tony from Providence, welcome to the program.”
“How did this reporter find out the mayor was involved in this?” Tony asked. “I mean, how do newspaper reporters get their hands on the mayor’s personal e-mail, anyway? Isn’t that a violation of privacy? And how do we know for sure that Providence police aren’t just screwing up by themselves?”
“Sources have their own reasons for leaking information to the newspapers,” I began. “As a public figure—”
“Because who else but the mayor has his entire career riding on this?” Leonard said, cutting me off. “Who else glides around town with casino executives and has this kind of influence with the police department? You think Billy wants to bite the bullet and reduce his bloated budget? Oh no. He needs cold, hard cash to keep pushing the renaissance and promoting himself. He’s like a slot machine himself, he craves casino revenue.”
“So how did the Chronicle find out?” Tony asked.
I opened my mouth to answer, but Leonard waved me silent. “Our guest, Hallie Ahern, is the reporter who was actually there in the store when Barry Mazursky was murdered. She’s been saying from the very beginning that this wasn’t just an armed robbery. That whoever killed Barry Mazursky that night came in with the express purpose of shooting him. That police are not being aggressive enough in this investigation.”
“I didn’t actually say that—”
“Oh, I read that story,” Tony said. “You stepped in the blood, right?”
“Uh, yes, but—”
“Thank you, Tony, we have time for one more call before Hallie Ahern from the Chronicle has to leave. George on a cell phone, you’re on WKZI with Leonard of Late Night.”
“I want to talk to the reporter—” I thought I heard him say. But his voice was low, and static cut off the last part of his sentence.
“George, we have a bad connection,” Leonard said.
“—Chronicle,” was all I could hear.
“George, you must be in a dead area,” Leonard said. “Maybe you should call back tomorrow night.”
“I’m not calling back tomorrow,” George said. “I’m just calling today to tell that Chronicle reporter—” His words dissolved, and for a moment, there was complete blankness. But I’d caught something hostile in his tone. Through the glass window of the production booth, I could see that Robin, too, had gotten the drift. She stood up and gestured to Leonard with a slice across the neck to cut off the caller. He ignored her.
“We’re running out of time here, George, and this static is terrible,” Leonard said. “News is up next. Quickly, George, what did you want to say?”
Robin was waving at him, but Leonard didn’t sever the connection, didn’t hit the button to disconnect the phone and cue the news. He gave George another second, another chance at the last word.
There was more static and then startling clarity. “I’ll give you news to report,” George said. “You tell that Chronicle bitch, she’s next.”
The station had a five-second delay and Robin edited the threat from the air. “Just some nut,” Leonard said.
Robin agreed. “Usually, they threaten to kill Leonard.”
But I was completely rattled, and they both knew it. Leonard offered to follow me home if I was scared, but I declined. I wasn’t about to spend the night alone in my apartment wondering if George-on-the-cell-phone would make good on his threat. So instead, I called my mother from the station and told her the heat in my building wasn’t working. Then I drove to Worcester in under forty-five minutes, watching my rearview mirror for lights the entire ride.
My mother still lived in the same modest colonial I’d grown up in, and she’d left a door to the garage open. I crept in, immediately locked the door behind me, and set the alarm before I climbed the stairs to my old room.
The quilted bedspread was turned down and my mother had put the day’s Worcester Telegram on the nightstand, but I took no comfort in the welcome. I pulled down the blinds of both windows and left the light on in the closet. Just like when I was a kid, only now the monsters weren’t in my head, they were threatening me on the radio.
Fully clothed under the blankets, I slept fitfully, waking up with a lurch at three A.M., wondering where I was. I sat up, hand on my heart, as if I could control the panic from the outside. Finally, my eyes adjusted to the dark and I made out a pleated lampshade on the bureau and three trophies lined up, side by side: high school swimming; sophomore, junior, and senior year. I was at home in my bedroom in Worcester. Safe.
But it took a full hour of talking to myself, reminding myself of how fear expanded at night, before I could pull my hand off my heart and trust myself in a horizontal position. Eventually, I drifted back to sleep.
Luckily, my mother had a garden-club meeting in the morning, so she had only a few minutes to scrutinize the dark circles under my eyes before she had to head to the senior center. “You’re not sleeping again?” she asked, gathering her files and a foil-wrapped loaf of her apple bread.
My mother, who considered Walter her own personally canonized saint for having helped me through my sleeping-pill problem, would still never stop worrying about my insomnia, no matter how many years had passed.
I blamed my dark circles on the “buzz” of working late. In the old days, this would have elicited a lecture about my unhealthy “obsession” with my career, but ever since my hiatus from the business, my mother had decided I was happier and healthier obsessed. Luckily, it never occurred to her that I could write a story that might pro
mpt a death threat.
In the middle of the night, it had seemed absolutely clear that someone was out to get me. If Barry Mazursky’s murder was a hit, it meant there was an organization behind it: an organization that would want to protect its members from being identified in court by a witness. But in daylight, with the sunlight streaming into my mother’s orderly kitchen, I was more inclined to believe Leonard and Robin. Surely it was a crank call. I mean, would a real, true mobster bother to tip you off ahead of time? On the radio? Wasn’t that just a little unprofessional?
“Come back tonight if that landlord doesn’t fix the heat,” my mother said. “I’ll make your favorite stuffed cabbage leaves with caraway seeds and we’ll get a movie.”
I nodded and she turned to go. But as she did, a pamphlet fell from one of her folders and slid on the floor. I picked it up and saw that it was from a real estate company. It was an assessment of how much my mother’s house was worth.
My mother grabbed the pamphlet from me a little too swiftly and I got a strange feeling in my stomach. “You’re not thinking about selling the house, are you?”
“It’s getting to be a lot of work,” she said matter-of-factly. “And they say those Briarwood condominiums are very nice.”
Briarwood, an elderly housing complex? I was incredulous. “You’re going to leave your gardens?”
She shrugged to express that at a certain age, one must accept such things. But there was something about the way she avoided my eyes and turned to the door. Something nervous and out of character. A lot of work? My mother could spend three solid hours wheeling piles of dirt from one garden to another and then come inside and cook a turkey dinner. She was also deadly suspicious of condominium fees, and I’d heard her say several times that she’d rather die than live anywhere surrounded by a bunch of old people. And then, I realized: My mother, a woman who never lied, was lying to me.
As she took her taupe-colored trench coat from the closet, my mother’s usual steady movements were rushed. The belt to her coat fell to the floor and she scrambled to pick it up.
