by Jan Brogan
When I told Mocek my reason for calling, she was immediately put off. “I thought this was about our new faux pearl line,” she said.
“I’m sorry, no.”
“Does that mean you didn’t even get our press release?”
“I’m not a business reporter.”
“And you’re not covering the New York trade show next week?”
“Not me, but maybe someone else. Someone in the business department,” I offered. “Maybe it’s already been assigned.”
“I doubt it,” she said, darkly.
“I’m calling about your two years as a Veterans’ Homeless Shelter board member. I’m trying to confirm information I received from another board member, concerning an attempted embezzlement from the fund two and a half years ago.”
There was complete silence on the other end of the phone, but I considered that a good sign. If it hadn’t happened, or if she didn’t know anything about it, I would have heard an exclamation of shock.
The silence continued. Had she hung up? “I’ve been following the murder of Barry Mazursky. Trying to establish the motive.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve been reading the paper.”
Again, the silence, but this time, it was a better silence, as if she were actually contemplating what she should say.
“Please help me,” I said. “I’m trying to get to the truth.”
There was an intake of breath on the other end of the phone. And then: “Who do you know on the business staff?”
Laura Ann was shrewd. She wanted to trade and I had nothing to offer. Even if I were still at the Ledger, where my best friend was the business editor, it wouldn’t do any good. Business reporters were extremely touchy about taking story suggestions. “I don’t know anyone personally, but if you want to fax me the press release, I can at least walk it over to the right desk.”
There was another intake of breath, a long pause, and finally, a request for my fax number. “You were way off track today in the paper,” she said.
“Set me straight,” I replied.
“There was an incident…money was missing…or I guess we thought it was missing. Barry was accused…it was awful, actually. One of the other board members knew about his gambling problem and accused him of screwing with the books. But it all turned out to be a clerical error—more of an embarrassment than anything else. Especially to the board member who was doing the accusing. Of course we apologized to Barry. I personally went to him, pleaded with him to stay on the board, but he was really upset. He resigned, like, the very next day.”
“But there was no embezzlement?”
“No, it was a completely false charge. A terrible mistake.”
Leonard lived in Bristol, an East Bay community less than a half hour from Providence. I’d heard it was a quaint waterfront town, but I never got to see any of it. He lived on the outskirts in one of those enormous apartment complexes on a less-than-scenic highway. I spent fifteen minutes trying to navigate the irrational logic of a dozen or so buildings labeled by number and letter, a system that seemed purposely designed to hide the residents. Finally, I found a groundskeeper who led me to a building superintendent who in turn steered me to the right lobby.
By that time, I was so frustrated that I leaned on the buzzer without mercy. Leonard answered the door in biking tights and a short-sleeved nylon T-shirt, his hair looking sweaty and smashed by a bike helmet. He ran his fingers through his hair and smiled, as if pleased by this surprise visit.
“Tell me about the embezzlement, Leonard,” I said, barging past him into the living room.
It was clearly a bachelor’s pad, with big pieces of tan furniture that looked like they could have been won behind door number three on Let’s Make a Deal lots of electronic equipment, and no knickknacks. I marched past an enormous stuffed chair and pivoted. “Because I have until deadline to prove it wasn’t complete and total bullshit.”
“Calm down,” he said, combing his hair with his fingers for a second time. “Just got back from my workout and I haven’t even showered or had a cup of coffee yet.” He walked in the opposite direction, through the doorway to a kitchen with spotless white cabinets, shiny appliances, and a counter that had nothing on it but a Rolodex and a bike helmet emblazoned with a WKZI emblem. A glass door that went to a small balcony was partially open. An expensive-looking bike with thin wheels was chained to the wooden rail. It was an iridescent red that screamed for attention.
“Did you lie to me, Leonard?” I followed close behind him.
“No, I swear to God, just got back from the workout. I’m religious about it. Thirty miles. Up through Barrington.” He feigned innocence, as if I’d fall for this pretense of misunderstanding.
“Not about your workout, and you know it. About Mazursky. Did you set me up?”
“Set you up?” More innocence. “Are you kidding?”
“Because I have a source on the board who is telling me it never happened. That another board member, probably you, accused Barry of embezzling money from the charity, but it turned out to be a big mistake.”
“That’s not true,” he said, reaching for the handle of the refrigerator. A photograph of a woman standing with her arms around two young boys slipped from a magnet and fell to the floor. He picked it up slowly. “My sister, Ellen,” he said, as if I cared. Then he took his time returning the photo to its original position and securing it with two magnets. “She and the boys moved to Connecticut. Horrible state. Terrible restaurants.” He pulled out a pound of Starbucks, inhaled the aroma of the coffee with obvious pleasure, and put it on the counter. “Who did you call on the board?” he finally asked.
“It was you, wasn’t it? It was your mistake?”
He turned back toward me. “It wasn’t a mistake,” he said, raising his voice for the first time. “Fucking Mazursky. I couldn’t prove it, though. Mazursky was quicker with the accounting shit than I was.”
“But he wasn’t forced to resign, like you told me.”
“I’m not sure I even said that.”
“You’re not sure you said that? Well, let me help you out.” I reached into my knapsack, pulled out my notebook, and turned to the pages I’d reread just a half hour ago. “‘He was forced to resign as treasurer, of course. I felt bad for the guy. I always liked him.’”
A cloud of something crossed Leonard’s face. Was it guilt? Remorse? “He was forced. I mean, he knew I knew what was going on. That knowledge alone forced him out.”
“He never confided in you about the loan sharks, either, did he?”
“I knew he was going to loan sharks.”
“But he didn’t confide in you, did he? The part about going out for drinks and him getting drunk and spilling his guts, that wasn’t true, was it?”
“It was metaphorically true.”
“‘Metaphorically true’? What the hell does that mean? It was true in a fucking poem?”
Leonard had the gall to look indignant. “I knew he was in over his head. He knew I knew. He didn’t have to tell me over drinks in a bar, because I knew.”
“So I reported some kind of psychic communication between you two?”
Leonard looked at me for a long moment and then shook his head, as if I’d never understand. Then he turned back to the bag of Starbucks on the counter, and began measuring tablespoons into the coffee filter.
“You made it all up, didn’t you?”
He moved to the sink to fill the coffeepot with water. I watched as he filled the pot, rejected something about the quality of the water, and poured it down the sink.
“Did you ever think that I could lose my job over this? That the Chronicle could get sued for libel?”
He sighed heavily and turned from the sink. “That’s all bluster. The shelter won’t sue the Chronicle. They don’t have the legal budget for that. And they can’t suffer a dry period of no press coverage. Believe me, it’s an empty threat.”
“Believe you? Because you thought it all out before you l
ied to me? Believe you?” Was he insane?
He put the coffeepot on the counter as if it were the heaviest carafe he’d ever carried. “Barry Mazursky was a compulsive gambler, in over his head with the mob. You found other sources saying that, not just me.”
“But you were my only source on the embezzlement.”
“Look, I know he took money from the fund. He could fool everyone else, but he couldn’t fool me. I knew how desperate he was.”
“How do you know? Your psychic powers again?”
Leonard didn’t lash back, didn’t return my caustic tone. Instead, he said, “Listen, Hallie, I didn’t mean for this to get you into trouble. I consider you a friend.”
“Friend?” I was both dumbfounded and outraged.
He ignored the outraged part. “Yes, a friend.”
Was I supposed to feel honored? He was a shameless con man. All that crap about trusting me to be a good reporter. I felt a surge of blood rise to my cheeks. “Do you always lie to your friends?”
“I didn’t lie.” Then he looked away, a moment of internal consultation, and back again. His voice grew quiet. “Did you ever wonder how I got to be so against casino gambling? Why I’m so determined to stop that referendum?”
Did I ever care? “Because it made good radio?”
He did not respond to my cynicism. Instead, he gave me a long, meaningful look, as if to say: Think, Hallie, think.
The meaningful look was followed by a meaningful silence. A second later, I got my first glimmer. Something about the all-knowing tone, the lines in his face, all that holier-than-thou passion. I’d seen it before. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said.
He nodded his head to affirm my conclusion. This was why he had been willing to trust me with the tape, willing to risk his career. He was one of the reformed. A zealot.
“Did you gamble alongside Barry or did you meet him at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Okay then, if Barry Mazursky confessed to you that he embezzled from the charity, if it really happened, I need you to go on the record. I need you to save my reputation at the paper. I need a former board member I can quote, someone who can stand up to the shelter’s denial in print.”
“I can’t go on the record. I can’t talk about anything I heard at a meeting. It’s anonymous.”
I didn’t tell him I knew all about the rules of twelve-step support groups. That I’d spent two years going to substance-abuse meetings in Boston. I didn’t want him to know there was anything we had in common or to think for one moment that I cared. If he’d told me the truth in the first place, I would have known I couldn’t put it in the paper. “I commend you on your integrity,” I said, with as much sarcasm as I could wring from the words. “But you owe me this.”
The demand hung in the air. An hour seemed to pass in the minute that he stood there, pretending pain as he mentally calculated his choices, his debts. His eyes met mine. For a moment, I thought I saw some sort of compromise. But then his expression changed. He wasn’t offering compromise, but seeking it. “Please try to understand.”
With that, I turned and walked out of the kitchen and headed toward the front door.
“Hallie, everything I told you today was off the record,” he called after me.
I wheeled around. “Off the record? Because you told me in confidence? Or off the record because it’s complete and total bullshit? Jeez, with you, Leonard, it’s hard to tell.”
“Hallie, you can’t print anything I just told you,” he said.
There was just enough authority in his voice to infuriate me, and for a moment, I considered scaring the living crap out of him by telling him I was going to run a bold headline on page one. “Leonard of Late Night COMPULSIVE GAMBLER.”
But it would be an empty threat. Leonard would fight back, call the paper before I got there and talk to an editor. I couldn’t risk anyone suspecting that I’d had anything to do with Leonard of Late Night that I’d been stupid enough to rely on a guy who specialized in exaggeration.
So instead I said, “Because of you, I have to go back to the Chronicle, throw myself at the mercy of my editors, and beg them to forgive me. Because of you, I have to go back to the newsroom and write a retraction. Because of you, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life in a bureau writing up school lunch menus. So don’t worry, Leonard, your secret is safe with me. I will never, ever print another word you say.”
CHAPTER
14
Chronicle Reports in Error
Because of a reporting error, a front-page article in Sunday’s Chronicle incorrectly stated that Barry Mazursky, the victim of a Wayland Square market shooting a week and a half ago, had embezzled money from the Veterans’ Homeless Shelter in Providence when he was treasurer there.
The Veterans’ Homeless Shelter yesterday released a statement that confirmed that Barry Mazursky was treasurer and board member of the fund from 1995 to 1999, but said at no time did he or any other board member misuse funds from the charity.
“The Providence Veterans’ Homeless Shelter has an exemplary history of using charitable donations for charitable work with very little administrative overhead,” lawyers for the organization stated.
Interviews with current and past board members confirm that Chronicle reporter Hallie A. Ahern used inaccurate information in the story.
The Chronicle deeply regrets the error.
Generally, the Chronicle ran its corrections on an inside page. Only a screwup of this magnitude could bump a correction to the front page. Everyone knew it.
I folded the paper on its crease, then in quarters, and pushed it to the far corner of my desk. I was back in the South County bureau, off the Mazursky murder forever. Staring out the office window, I felt heat burning deep in my eye sockets. I wanted to crawl under one of the cars in the parking lot and let someone back over me.
Carolyn sat at her desk sorting through a stack of mail: one letter pushed to a must-do pile on the desk, one to a maybe-later pile on the computer keys, three dropped directly into the trash. Now, she turned, breaking her rhythm. “We all make mistakes,” she said.
Yes, reporters all made mistakes, and newspapers ran some form of correction every day. But each correction was a stain, and a correction like this—on the fundamental facts rather than a minor detail of a story—was like a gallon of grape juice that would never wash out. I would forever be known at the Chronicle as the reporter who’d royally screwed up the Mazursky murder.
“You don’t want to work for her anyway,” Carolyn said. “She’s a real bitch.” She meant Dorothy Sacks, who had been the one to officially send me back to the bureau. The one to reassign the Mazursky murder follow to Jonathan Frizell.
“She isn’t a bitch.” Dorothy had gone out on a limb for me. I was the one who screwed up. I was the one who put my trust in a loudmouthed talk-show host.
Carolyn shrugged and turned back to her computer screen. She’d been struggling all morning, trying to come up with something that would comfort me. Now, when bad-mouthing the downtown editors didn’t help, she was thoroughly frustrated. “You want more coffee?” Without waiting for an answer, she started toward the kitchen area in back. “Because I’m going to make another pot.”
From the kitchen, I heard her banging around, opening drawers. Water ran as she filled the carafe from the sink. She switched on the radio and I heard the cutting off of songs as she flipped stations. Finally, she settled on something that sounded like news.
After a couple of minutes, she came back with two mugs of coffee. She’d left the radio on and the volume increased as it shifted from news to a commercial. I heard the familiar jingle of the lottery advertisement first, and then a promotion for Leonard’s show. I’d let myself be used. Used by a man who cared more about ratings than the truth. And worse than that, I’d let Barry down. I put my hands over my ears.
“You all right?” Carolyn asked.
I dropped my hands to the desk. “Fin
e.”
She put the coffee on my desk. “You might need some extra caffeine today. Final round of the middle school spelling bee starts at three-fifteen. Marcy wants a full feature for Thursday’s regional education roundup. I’ll need you to cover.”
I was afraid that if I said anything, my voice would crack, so I just nodded an okay. Carolyn couldn’t bear to meet my eyes but moved quickly past me to her own desk. “It shouldn’t go much past four-thirty or five o’clock,” she said, in an apologetic tone, as she picked up the pile of mail from the keyboard and began typing the photo assignment into the computer.
Something about the keystrokes got to me. The throbbing in my head started again, and I had to force the tears back into my eyes with the heel of my palm. It was no good. Carolyn looked up. “You sure you can do this?”
“Sure.”
Carolyn opened her mouth to say something, but sensing that sympathy would just make the moment worse, she stopped herself. Soon she began typing again, the pink acrylic nails clicking on the keyboard, officiating the assignment on the day’s news budget: “Spelling Bee at the Middle School.” My life had come to that.
I don’t know why exactly, but I drove to the casino right after the spelling bee. It might have been the word that tripped up the last of the finalists: catastrophe. Misspelled with an f. instead of a ph. I sat in the front row of the auditorium spelling it correctly over and over in my head, knowing that seventh-grader Jocelyn Rascher had the bee in the bag. That she would, with complete confidence, spell catastrophe with the ph, and that the headline for the story would have to read: “Seventh-Grader Wins by Catastrophe!”
Somewhere in the middle of all that spelling, it came to me: I couldn’t go home alone. I couldn’t face the emptiness of my apartment, the failure of my furniture, or the radio that I wanted to throw across the room. There was only one way to avoid the reality of my own personal catastrophe. A win at the casino. Even a small win would help turn my mood. And a big win, say, a $50,000 win—and I’ve heard that it happens—would let me pay off my mother’s loan and quit the bureau. I could say fuck you to all the editors at the Chronicle and tell Nathan that I never really wanted a spot on his stupid investigative team.
