A Confidential Source

by Jan Brogan

  Gregory Ayers, head of the lottery, was a small-time crook who had risked his position, his state celebrity, for a penny-ante counterfeit scheme? It seemed too bizarre to believe, but Leonard had obviously known about it. That’s why he’d attacked him on the air—even though Ayers had been his only ally. Ayers reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and handed both the quarter and the ticket to me. “See if you’ve won, Hallie.”

  Despite my intention, my fingers twitched to take the ticket. I was desperate to scratch off the silvery latex, to see the boxes unveiled in my favor. I told myself that I wasn’t committing to anything. I was just agreeing to scratch the card.

  It was a Caesar’s Palace game. The one Barry had been so keen on my buying. I took the ticket and the quarter and scraped off the first box on the roulette side. The winning number was 4. I scraped the first of the played numbers and matched. The price read: $50,000. Another rush of adrenaline moved from my chest in upward spirals till I felt it in my nose.

  “Keep scratching,” Ayers said.

  There was another $50,000 in each of the next four boxes.

  “Congratulations,” Ayers said.

  I held the ticket tightly. All those matching numbers in my hand. A voice inside pointed out that no one else knew I had this tape. Not Dorothy. Not Drew. Not Matt. I could give it to Ayers and no one would ever know.

  My fingers trembled so that the scratch ticket actually shook. I gripped one hand over the other. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. How badly, really, did I want to try to resurrect a failing journalism career?

  I met Ayers’s eyes levelly. “How do I know this one isn’t counterfeit?”

  He turned over the ticket and pointed to scan lines. “You want to come back to headquarters with me right now and we can validate it? Write you the check?”

  I glanced at the Cadillac waiting outside. “Right now?”

  He nodded and I turned the ticket over. Caesar’s Palace was the game Barry had wanted me to buy because it wasn’t one of the counterfeits. I could feel its authenticity in my palms. And how the hell was I going to get out of here if I didn’t take the deal? Two people had already been murdered because of this tape. If I didn’t give it to Ayers, he wasn’t just going to say: Hey, at least I tried.

  “If I give you this tape, and I leave Rhode Island, I’ll never hear from you again?”

  He offered a reassuring smile. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I could pay off all my father’s medical bills.

  Yes, but what would your father say about your taking a bribe? a little voice asked.

  I couldn’t hear my own answer. It was drowned out by a marching band that beat out the figure on the drums. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A nice apartment right in Back Bay. I could run on the Esplanade each morning. Freelance for magazines and write arty essays in the afternoon. How could I turn down this kind of offer? This kind of life?

  I nodded and reached for my knapsack, tucking the ticket inside. As I zipped closed the inner pocket, I spotted my microcassette recorder inside my purse. The silver metal glinted within a fold of paper.

  Ayers smiled that same grandfatherly smile, but behind it I saw the growing impatience. He wanted this deal concluded and was getting anxious. Wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, he created a smear in the oily makeup. “You make your own luck, don’t you?” he said, pointedly looking at my knapsack, as if he’d summed up my greed the day I’d rubbed his arm for good luck.

  Was I really the kind of person who could take a bribe? The voice inside was back. The voice that had been raised in a good home in Worcester and had gone to Mass on Sundays so as not to accrue any mortal sins.

  I thought of Leonard that night in the bar, Leonard who had his own greed for fame and ratings, but who could not have been bribed with money. Leonard had already conquered that demon. “Gambling changes people,” Leonard had said that night with a personal knowledge I had not understood. “They get themselves into all sorts of trouble.”

  Like me, $2,000 in debt and desperate. Driven low enough to consider taking a bribe.

  Leonard was dead because of this man in television makeup, this despicable, corrupt grandpa smiling for the camera and cheating every desperate schnook in the state. I had the sudden urge to tear up the ticket and throw it in Ayers’s face. But with a new shudder, a new spiral of excitement, I understood the real value of that scratch ticket. It was ironclad documentation that Ayers had been trying to bribe me, cover up the counterfeiting scheme, and grab the tape Leonard had dropped off at my apartment on the day he had died. Already I could see the ticket as a fabulous graphic, enlarged in a box on the Chronicle’s front page.

  Instead of reaching into my pocket for the tape of Barry’s conversation, I began scrounging inside my knapsack, fingers raking through papers and pens, bits of lint and grit collecting underneath my nails. I found it deep in the corner of my knapsack: the tape I’d pulled out of the machine earlier, the one I’d used to record my conversation with Nadine Mazursky two weeks ago.

  I handed it to Ayers, one counterfeiter to another.

  I forced myself to walk slowly out of the restaurant, as if I were a woman who’d made peace with her compromise. But I knew that as soon as Ayers heard my voice on the tape, heard me ask Nadine the first question, he’d know what had happened. Outside, on the sidewalk, I glanced back and saw that the black Cadillac was still parked on Union Street.

  I picked up my pace, heading toward the newspaper, praying to God that it would take Ayers a couple of minutes to find a microcassette recorder to play the tape. I was forced to stop at Fountain Street, a one-way street filled with tourist traffic racing at full speed toward the green light. Across the street, I noticed that none of the Chronicle employees who usually gathered underneath the canopy to smoke cigarettes were there and realized that on Saturday, the front door would be locked. I’d have to run around the building to the employee entrance on Sabin Street and hope my card key was somewhere in my knapsack.

  Traffic whizzed by on Fountain Street at a pace that kicked wind and grit into the air. I had to wait for the light to turn red and bring the cars to a halt. Glancing back again, I saw the door to Murphy’s open and Gregory Ayers walk hurriedly across the street to the Cadillac. The car window lowered, Ayers handed the driver something and leaned into the car.

  The enormity of what I’d just done hit me. Ayers had already had Barry and Leonard killed; what were the odds he’d let me get away? I stepped off the curb and onto the road, ready to make a run for it, but traffic continued to fly down Fountain, trying to beat the light, which had now turned yellow. I looked over my shoulder again. Ayers was still leaning into the car, a huddle of some sort. Suddenly, he backed away and began gesturing angrily with one hand and pointing toward me with the other.

  The driver got out of the car. He was over six feet tall and all in khaki, a hulk of shoulders starting after me. The traffic light turned red, but even if I made it across Fountain, I’d never make it to the Chronicle’s back door, never find my card key and get the door unlocked in time.

  I scanned the streets, looking for help, and saw a police cruiser in front of Union Station, waiting for the light. Tucking my knapsack under my arm, I ran down Fountain Street and across Dorrance. On the other side of Dorrance, I came to a stop. The sidewalk was filled with pedestrians headed toward WaterFire, a clog of slow-moving tourists taking in the sights. By the time I got to Union Station, the light had changed. The police cruiser was already a dozen car lengths away, turning left onto the highway.

  Over my shoulder, I saw the man in khaki crossing Dorrance Street. The world flashed around me in bright, moving bits. Nerve impulses replaced thoughts. My legs took orders from adrenaline. I raced toward WaterPlace Park. It had to be teeming with police assigned to crowd control. There had to be cops there I could call for help.

  On the other side of the Wall of Hope underpass, walking paths lined both sides of the river. Turning left would bring
me to a dead halt of people gathered around the water basin waiting for the procession of boats to begin the lighting. I headed down the right side of the river, toward the East Side.

  The sky was growing dim and the sheer volume of people in the park narrowed the already narrow walkway. I looked nervously behind me. The man was just coming out of the tunnel, scanning the crowd. Almost instantly, he spotted me. My jacket, I realized, was neon yellow, designed to alert cars that a runner was crossing the road. I began pulling it off.

  Five teenagers stood together, blocking one side of the path. Coming toward me, on the other side, a young mother pushed a double stroller, creating gridlock. “I need to get by!” I shouted at the teenagers. They looked up sharply, angrily, but did not budge.

  “Please, it’s an emergency, I need to get by!” I shouted again. The jacket was almost off, twisted around one arm. I turned around again. The man was close enough now that I could begin to make out his features. Even from this distance, I recognized him, the hulk of the shoulders, the one drooped eyelid thickened by the sty. The man I’d seen at Barry’s in front of the dairy case. The Parka.

  Shit! I blasted between the teenagers, knocking one in the shoulder. A new surge of fear pumped through my heart and into my legs. I heard swearing, shouting, but kept running. The Parka. The Parka was going to kill me. Some Beethoven symphony was piped into the air, pounding to its crescendo. I tried to outrun the pounding and the fear, outpace the nightmare that had been lying in wait.

  With each stride, I could feel the metal Altoids box in my pocket digging into my leg, a little stab, a reminder of what was at stake. Nerve impulses connected. A thought. A strategy. I realized that the tape was my only real protection. The Parka wouldn’t kill me until after he’d secured the tape.

  I tried to concentrate on getting a level step on each cobblestone. There was some kind of ramp or stairway to Memorial Boulevard on the other side of the footbridge. If I could get to it quickly enough, escape from the path without the Parka seeing me, maybe he’d get caught up in the crowd and keep running beyond Steeple Street, toward the East Side.

  Underneath the footbridge, it was completely black except for a faint light from a strange, formal chandelier suspended over the water. I flung my jacket into the river and saw it begin to float away. Strong urine fumes wrestled with the pinewood smoke of the braziers. I coughed and my foot landed badly on a cobblestone. My ankle twisted and I tumbled to the ground.

  Instinctively, I broke my fall with my arms, landing on the path to the side of the footbridge. The skin at my elbows burned and I felt a shock of pain in my ankle. The crowd parted around me, murmuring concern. As I pulled myself to my knees, I spotted some dense ground cover along the river—just within reach. Quickly, I grabbed the Altoids box out of my pocket and threw it into the foliage.

  I pulled myself to my feet and winced through the next few steps. To the right were stairs to Memorial Boulevard. I took three steps forward, feeling the pain of my bruised ankle all the way up my leg. The Parka was gaining on me, but I couldn’t move any faster.

  “Do you need help?” a woman asked. She was in her mid-forties, standing with a group of about five other women, all dolled up in cocktail dresses, high heels, and full-face makeup.

  “Yes, I need help!” I gestured behind me. “A man is chasing me.”

  I struggled up the stairs, crouching low, trying to pretend I was at the end of a road race, gutting through the pain. Behind me, I saw women teetering on high heels, closing in around the stairs, blocking the exit. I hobbled across Memorial, searching for a cop or a cruiser.

  I made it to the entrance to Union Station, stopped for breath, and allowed myself to turn and look. Two college-age boys were standing beside a parked car. A mother with a baby on her hip and a father carrying a toddler in a backpack walked toward me. No Parka.

  I slid around the building and leaned against the wall to get a couple more breaths. Could those women really have blocked him from the stairs? Could he not have seen the stairs or figured I’d kept running along the river? I had to get out of here before he figured out his mistake.

  I checked up and down the sidewalk. No cops anywhere, but no Parka either. The newspaper was only a couple of blocks away. At the corner, I didn’t wait for the light to change. At the first break in traffic, I limped across Dorrance, angling my path so that I crossed onto Sabin Street. I was so dizzy with pain that the painted-tile display on the Chronicle building wavered like a flag in a storm.

  At the employee door, I pulled my card key out of my knapsack and flailed it under the reader. A red light blinked at me. I heard the sound of a car driving up Sabin Street, waved the card key into the reader a second time, and pulled the door. Nothing.

  Slower, I told myself, slower so the code could be read. But my hand wouldn’t obey. It shook uncontrollably. A car door shut. Over my shoulder, I saw a black car stopped at the curb. I waved the card into the reader again and saw the light blink green. I could hear the click of the lock giving way, feel the security of the door opening.

  Something hard was thrust into my back and a large hand clenched over my mouth. A male voice ordered, “Get into the fucking car.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  THE BACK OF the Cadillac smelled of leather, smoke, and a heavy male cologne that made me want to vomit.

  The world outside the car spun past, as if I were on some kind of screeching roller-coaster ride that you prayed would end. Only this was never going to end. Gregory Ayers sat behind the wheel, driving the Cadillac, and there was a man next to me, sticking the nose of a gun into the base of my neck.

  The man next to me had the same kind of hard, uncompromising features as the man who’d been chasing me, but he was smaller, with thick, dark hair on his head, his arms, and where his shirt was open at the chest. I shivered remembering this man’s hair from the night Barry was murdered. He was the man who’d been wearing the gray cap.

  He didn’t introduce himself, but Ayers called him Reuben. When the car stopped at a corner, the Parka got in beside Ayers. Ayers told him he was an “idiot,” and Reuben upbraided him in some sort of Eastern European language. The Parka answered in English. “Fuck both of youse. You try to get through that crowd. And fuck you!” he added, twisting in the front passenger seat to glare at me.

  “You don’t look so good,” Ayers said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. He put his finger on a button and rolled down my window. “If you’re going to puke, puke on other cars. Not in here.”

  “I’m not going to puke,” I said, wishing I had a full stomach to retch all over them, or at least the courage to jump through the window. But we were going too fast, weaving through lanes, cutting off cars on the highway. Reuben closed the window when we slowed down to get off the ramp and turn into a part of Providence I’d never seen before. It was a neighborhood of old, listing buildings with boarded-up windows and few streetlights.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled into a parking lot behind a narrow two-story building on a corner, a faded sign on the front saying BOOTSIE’S ROAST BEEF. Reuben hauled me out of the car, pushing me toward the building. I tried to picture where we were. Somewhere south of the hospitals, but I wasn’t even sure if we were still in Providence.

  Ayers and the Parka got out of the front of the car and I was marched to a back door. We climbed a dark staircase, my ankle aching with each step. I was desperate for the sound of customers or of cooking smells, any sign of life, someone to call for help. But Bootsie’s looked like it hadn’t served roast beef in years. There was no one besides Ayers, the hairy little man with the gun, and the enormous refrigerator shoulders of the Parka.

  Upstairs, we passed through a narrow hallway into an apartment that looked like someone had pounded their fists into the walls. Linoleum curled up from the plywood and there were stacks of sealed boxes all over the floor. I was shoved into the center of the living room, where there was a card table with torn plastic matting and two shaky-looking fo
lding chairs. A shade with a water stain was pulled partway down a window streaked with bird droppings.

  The only light came from a shadeless floor lamp that was plugged into a wall outlet near the back of the apartment, where there was a hallway and a kitchen with stacks of sealed boxes on the floor. The bald, high-wattage bulb cast a harsh light in the middle of the apartment and left the corners in darkness.

  My ankle ached, but I was too afraid to sit down, so I stood at the table while Ayers yelled at the two men for almost losing me. The Parka folded his arms and looked sheepish as Reuben echoed a browbeating in that other language and held the gun.

  Much of Ayers’s makeup had worn off, but he still looked surreal. He’d changed his jacket for the cardigan sweater he’d been wearing that night at Raphael’s. He looked like Mr. Rogers. Only not so nice. He grabbed my knapsack from my shoulder and turned the contents onto the card table. My wallet, tape recorder, dead cell phone, keys, supermarket receipts, brush, notebook, and several crumpled-up papers landed in a heap. Two pens and a lipstick rolled off the end of the table and onto the floor.

  “Where is it?” he shouted. “Where’s the tape?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Holding the knapsack upside down, he beat it like a rug against the wall. Eraser crumbs, Tic-Tacs, Post-it notes, and the winning scratch ticket rained to the floor. He picked up the scratch ticket, put it into his pocket, and beat the knapsack against the wall again until it was clear nothing else was coming out. Frustrated, he threw the knapsack and it skidded across the linoleum. “Tell us what you did with the tape!”

  My brain tried, but failed, to direct thought. I opened my mouth, but couldn’t speak. Ayers gestured to the Parka, who suddenly stepped behind me, imprisoning me with his loglike arms, pulling my back into his chest. His hot breath was in my ear. “I wonder where it could be.”