by Jan Brogan
“What’s going to happen to that revenue if a casino opens in Providence? With that kind of competition, the lottery will face declining electronic-game receipts, the revenue the state needs most.”
Someone shouted an unintelligible answer from the audience. Ayers pretended to understand.
“Sure, casinos bring in revenue, but for each dollar the state receives in gambling revenue, it costs at least three dollars in increased criminal justice and social welfare expenses. Is that a net gain for Rhode Island?”
“No! No! No!” Ayers’s supporters shouted somewhere on the left-hand side of the auditorium.
“What a hypocrite,” the college reporter said. She looked and sounded like she was about fifteen, with a rose tattoo showing in the small of her back above her low-slung jeans, purposefully messy hair, and a bored tone of voice. “As if there aren’t plenty of uneducated people addicted to those scratch-card games.”
I felt myself bristle. Hadn’t she taken the class on how journalists were supposed to remain detached and objective?
Where was the photographer? I searched the doorway again, hoping to see a familiar figure weighted with cameras stroll in beneath the red and black “VOTE NO on PROPOSITION #3” banner. Instead, I caught a glimpse of Drew Mazursky standing in the crowd of people carrying “VOTE NO” signs and looking around, as if he, too, were searching for someone.
Seeing Drew gave me a guilty feeling. He’d confided in me. My story, my inaccuracies, had let him down, and God only knew the fight he must have had with his mother. But when his eyes found me across the auditorium, he didn’t look away in disgust, or glower. He tilted his head, a greeting of sorts. An acknowledgment of something.
He looked away, resuming his search, scanning for someone else, leaving me with something new in my stomach: curiosity and maybe even a semblance of self-respect. I turned back to the stage, standing a little straighter. Drew might believe that I’d been right, after all.
Gregory Ayers was peering into the audience as if he was trying to make out exactly who was out there. “The casino lobby has tried to bribe seniors for their vote, promising all of you that the money will go strictly to senior programs. But I think we can all see through that. You’re all too smart for that.”
A low booing began in the back of the room. When I turned around to see where it was coming from, I practically smacked my face into Leonard’s. “Shit,” I said.
He took a step backward and smiled. He was wearing a turtleneck jersey and gabardine pants that looked as if they had been pressed. For a moment, I wondered if he was scheduled to go onstage and speak. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
“How come you didn’t return any of my phone calls?”
I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was close enough to hear me tell him to buzz off. The college reporter was looking at Leonard with curiosity.
“Busy,” I said. For the benefit of the college reporter, I affected a professional tone. “I didn’t see your name on the program. When are you going on? After Ayers?”
A look of disgust settled on his face as he shook his head. Apparently, the organizers had failed to invite him. “I wouldn’t stand on the same podium as Gregory Ayers.”
This threw me. “But he’s on your side. You had him on your show as a guest just last week.”
His bottom lip curled. “Mistake.”
The college reporter elbowed me in the side and whispered, “Did you see the six o’clock news? The lottery threatened to pull its advertising from his station unless he tones it down. He was all over television.” She pointed to Ayers at the podium. “He called Leonard irresponsible.”
“He’s just figuring that out now?”
The college reporter grew bolder. “Apparently, Leonard said that Ayers ran the lottery like a compulsive gambler, addicted to action.”
“That’s not what I said,” Leonard said. “That’s what they said I said.”
Leave it to Leonard to attack his only ally a week before the referendum vote.
“I heard Ayers was getting airtime rebuttal on your show tomorrow night,” the college reporter said.
Leonard grimaced. “The station caved in.” I took this as an involuntary confession that Leonard actually had said what he’d just denied saying, and turned from him in disgust.
Suddenly, there was a shift of attention away from the stage and I followed the turned heads to see that Billy Lopresti had arrived. Was he supposed to speak? I flipped my program from one side to the other looking for his name. A quick check of the stage to gauge Ayers’s expression suggested that this was a surprise visit.
The mayor was a short, burly man who clearly enjoyed a plate or two of pasta, but he was amazingly light on his feet as he bounded up the aisle on the other side of the auditorium. The television reporters, crew, and the college reporter all headed across the room. I was about to follow them, but Leonard grabbed my arm.
“I’ve got new information,” he said. “Bigger than anything you’ve ever written. The real reason Barry was murdered.”
We were alone now, standing together along the wall. “Why would I want to hear anything you have to say? Why would I ever trust you again?”
He leaned forward, a whisper directly into my ear. “I know you have no reason to ever trust me again. But you don’t have to trust me. Mazursky is supposed to meet me here, and he has proof.”
I needed to get to the other side of the room, get close enough to the mayor to catch his reaction if Ayers ejected him from the stage, but I remembered Drew’s scanning eyes, his search for someone. Despite myself, I stayed another minute to ask: “What kind of proof?”
“An audiotape. His father made it. Apparently, he’d left it in his glove compartment the day he died. Drew came to borrow the car or something. But he didn’t find the tape—one of those microcassettes—until this morning, stuck inside a cigarette pack.”
My thoughts began to race: the police’s reluctance to clear Delria until he was dead, the stalled forensics report, the voice inside that told me Matt had been trying hard to keep me off the story. It all fueled an interest I refused to let Leonard see.
“Look, I could just play this thing on the radio. I’m giving it to you first because I owe you. It’s my apology. My amends.”
Our eyes met. I wanted to believe him, but I had to be wary. Why would Barry make a tape? And if Drew found it, why would he give it to Leonard? But my heart rate kicked up a notch because I knew the answer: Drew didn’t trust the police or Matt Cavanaugh any more than I did.
Leonard saw me waver. “This is Sunday’s front-page story, Hallie. Something I owe you. The vindication you deserve. I was wrong about why Barry was murdered. But it wasn’t an armed robbery, and the cops have known it all along.”
CHAPTER
17
BACK AT THE bureau, I took the precaution of locking the door behind me and closing the blinds so that not everyone who stopped at Fraser’s for a six-pack could watch me typing at my desk. But I was too charged up, too in gear, too single-mindedly focused on my story to have much room for concern. It was as if I were in the final mile of a 6K run: Fixed on the finish line, I lost sight of the road directly in front of me.
Vindication. I told myself that I had to be wary of any information that came from Leonard. That I couldn’t believe anything he said until I’d actually heard the tape. But if he wasn’t jerking me around… if there actually was a tape with evidence on it… a tape I could play for my editors…
I forced myself to focus on the story at hand. To be given a chance at redemption, I’d need to win back the editors’ confidence by doing a good job on this rally. Clear angle, uncluttered language, accurate details.
As it turned out, there wasn’t a lot of leeway on the lead for the rally story. The mayor’s surprise appearance had seen to that.
Narragansett—An antigambling rally turned ugly last night when Providence mayor Billy Lopresti crashed the event and ignited a fight between senior
citizens.
A South Kingstown woman was arrested and a West Warwick woman was injured following the emotional debate. More than 300 people, mostly senior citizens, packed the audience at Edwards Auditorium at the University of Rhode Island.
The clock in this office was old and the humidity had gotten behind the number plate, so that the minute hand scraped as it struggled across each increment of time. I glanced up. It was almost nine-thirty.
Lopresti, an avid proponent of the referendum to legalize casino gambling, was not invited to speak at the event. In a surprise visit, he marched up to the stage shortly after lottery executive director Gregory Ayers concluded his speech.
The audience, which had been cheering Ayers’s anti-gambling rhetoric, grew quiet after Ayers allowed the mayor to take the podium.
“This isn’t about the morality of gambling. Or even the revenue. It’s about fiefdoms,” Lopresti began. “When you go to the polls on Tuesday, don’t do what’s best for the lottery commission, or what’s best for the state, or even what’s best for Providence. Do what’s best for you, the voters!”
The audience remained silent, except for one person in the back who began to clap. A woman sitting in the second row with members of the antigambling organization Citizens for a Stronger Rhode Island immediately rose to her feet. Turning to address the anonymous person clapping for the mayor, Marilyn Caruso, 75, of West Warwick, shouted, “Don’t believe a word he says. He’s a crook!”
Lopresti folded his arms but appeared largely unaffected by the insult. But Hildagard Vettner, 81, of South Kingstown, who was sitting in a wheelchair near the wall, took off her shoe and threw it at Caruso.
“You learn to behave,” she called out, shortly before her shoe hit Caruso in the face.
Campus police immediately removed both Mrs. Vettner and Mrs. Caruso from the audience. Mrs. Caruso was treated and released for minor injuries at South County Hospital. Mrs. Vettner was taken to the Narragansett police station and released in the custody of her son, Anthony, a probate lawyer in Washington County.
I finished the first ten inches of the story and printed it out to get an idea of length. In an urge to be thorough, I circled everything that had to be double-checked and was in the midst of verifying the capitalization of the antigambling group’s formal title when I heard a car door slam outside.
It sounded unusually loud, as if it were just on the other side of the office door. With a tight feeling in my stomach, I found myself thinking about Matt and his warnings. I got up and checked the window, peeking between the louvers of the blind.
But it was only a Ford Taurus parked in front of the liquor store with the engine running. A man sat behind the wheel, and after a minute, a woman appeared in the doorway of Fraser’s and gestured to him. He got out and helped her carry out a case of wine.
I stood there feeling like an idiot as I watched them put the case in the trunk and drive away. Returning to the desk, I vowed to put all thoughts of the man in the parka from my mind. A minute later, the phone rang. It was Dorothy Sacks, who told me the story was slated for page one.
I felt a little boost of confidence, which was swiftly deflated.
“I’d like to see the copy as early as possible,” Dorothy added. This might seem innocuous, but I knew her real meaning. She wanted to see the copy as early as possible so she could catch all the factual errors my story was likely to contain.
I struggled hard to keep any strains of resentment out of my voice. “Ten minutes.”
“Fine.” Her tone was distant, professional, as if we’d never worked together or previously felt a rapport. “Oh, and make sure to include a reaction from all camps,” she added.
Was she kidding? That was standard event reporting 101. Nothing an intern wouldn’t know. “Of course.”
As she hung up, I realized that if the story was going Page One, it wasn’t because of any confidence in me, but because of the art. The photographer, who’d finally shown up, had gotten a shot of the shoe in flight, just before it hit poor Mrs. Caruso’s face.
In an interview following the debate, Lopresti called the incident unfortunate and blamed it on gambling opponents who have made the issue “so damn emotional.”
Asked for his reaction, Ayers suggested that Lopresti limit his speaking engagements to progambling events, but added that no public speaker should be subjected to verbal abuse.
Marjorie Pittman, chairwoman of Citizens for a Stronger Rhode Island, criticized Lopresti for “crashing our rally” and said she hoped that he had learned a lesson about “turning up uninvited.”
She added, however, that Caruso was not an official of the antigambling organization and had attended only one meeting. “We don’t condone name-calling,” Pittman said, “even in politics.”
It took me a couple minutes longer than I thought it would to decipher my notes and double-check Marjorie Pittman’s title. I was deep into editing the final copy when I was jerked to attention by the phone ringing a second time.
I picked it up, expecting it to be Dorothy asking what was taking me so long. It was Leonard. “Don’t come to the station tonight,” he said.
I felt an unpleasant stab of suspicion. Was this some kind of trick? “Something happen to the tape?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the tape. Some car’s been following me since I left URL It’s been hanging around in the parking lot all night.”
“Is it still there?”
“Yeah, but now the lights are off. I’m not taking any chances. I’m going to leave with the rest of the staff tonight. You want to meet me at my place after work? If you get there before me, there’s a key hidden in the molding over the door.”
I was not about to drive to Bristol and wait hours alone in an empty apartment for Leonard to get off from work. Especially when he thought someone was after him.
“Okay, okay. How about we meet tomorrow for coffee? Somewhere public. A restaurant, near you maybe.”
“Rufful’s at ten o’clock?” I suggested, but I was struck both by how worried he sounded and by the need for us to meet in a public place. Suddenly I was grateful that Walter was coming to stay at my apartment tonight.
I didn’t want to be alone tonight, tomorrow, or the next day. God, when was this going to end? I couldn’t even run by myself in the morning anymore and that was my only form of relief. Involuntarily, my back arched, remembering the car that had almost hit me on Rochambeau Avenue. “What does it look like? The car?”
“Nothing special. It circled the parking lot for a while before it parked. It’s some kind of sedan.”
There were a zillion sedans. Christ, practically everything that wasn’t a minivan or a sports car was a sedan. But I couldn’t help think of the silver sedan. “What color, could you make it out?”
“Yeah, it was sort of a silver gray. You could see a little damage to the right-rear bumper.”
At home, I found a note the landlord had slid under the door: “Missed you today. Be by tomorrow. Hal Andosa.”
One day late. One day and I was already getting overdue notices. I crumpled the note and threw it on the counter.
I’d have to ask Walter to loan me the money. I’d have to tell him the whole story, steady myself for all that compassionate understanding, and agree to find myself a twelve-step meeting. Sometimes I wondered if the real reason Walter came to stay at my apartment after his gigs was to keep an eye on me. Make sure I wasn’t floundering.
Well, I was floundering, all over and in a completely new way; I’d have to own up to it. But Walter would give me the money, I was pretty sure of that. And I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the month trying to duck Hal the Landlord.
I threw off my jacket, made myself a bowl of tomato soup, buttered some saltines, and sat at the counter, forcing myself to eat. I listened for the door, wondering when Walter would arrive. I both dreaded his arrival and was impatient for him to show. More than anything, I just wanted to get the confession over with.
I tried to
take consolation in the fact that there’d been no sign of any silver sedan in the strip-mall parking lot, and that no car had followed me home. But I didn’t feel consoled, I felt panicky. I needed a distraction.
I moved a stack of bills on the counter, hoping to find the scratch tickets I’d bought from Barry underneath. Where could I have put them? If they’d been inside the apartment once, they had to still be here, somewhere. Matter could not just disappear.
This was more a theory for me than a conviction. Letters, news clips, files, a desk at the Boston Ledger. All of that stuff had been matter in my life. All of it had disappeared.
I emptied the contents of my knapsack onto the coffee table and searched the inner pockets. Nothing. I flipped over a pile of newspapers on the floor, next to the couch, knowing full well there was no way the lottery tickets could have ended up there. But still, they had to be somewhere, right?
In the midst of this, the phone rang. I stepped over the scattered newspapers on my way to grab the cordless on the bar. It was Leonard checking to make sure I’d made it home safely. He said that the sedan was gone before he left the station and that no one had followed him home. “I keep thinking about that whack job who called and threatened you the night you were on my show. You got a security alarm or anything where you live?”
“I have a friend coming to stay with me tonight,” I told him. “I’ll be okay.”
“Maybe I’m overreacting,” he said.
“What’s on the tape?” I asked. “What’s got you so freaked out?”
“Are you on a cordless?” he asked.
“Yeah, so…”
“So I really don’t want to talk about it on a cordless. You can hear it all for yourself tomorrow morning.” There was a pause, and then he added, “Don’t worry, Hallie, I promise you that I’m not going to let you down again.”
He hung up and I put the phone on the counter. Amends. I was starting to believe he was sincere, but still, it was frustrating. I wanted to know what was on that tape and I didn’t feel like waiting until the morning. I began pacing the living room again, kicking up newspapers. What kind of evidence were we talking about? What kind of story did I have? Where could I have put those scratch tickets?
