A Confidential Source (13 page)

I made my way to the coffin first, grateful that it was closed and I didn’t have to relive the horror of Barry’s expression
or decide if the undertaker had adequately puttied the bullet hole. I kneeled before the gleaming mahogany box and found that
I was pleased to see the neatly folded American flag. I wanted to remember Barry as the respected marine veteran, the successful
businessman, and the man of strategy and vision. Not the Barry who embezzled from charities and turned to loan sharks for
money. I closed my eyes and said three prayers: one for Barry, one for his family, and one for myself. I’d need a few miracles
from God to pull off this story.

Afterward, I introduced myself to Barry’s son, who I’d seen a few times working in the deli section. He was in his midtwenties,
with the same marinelike build as Barry. He had a similar brow, low and furrowed, as if he, too, worried too much for too
many. He took my hand with a rough, unpracticed palm, thanked me for coming, and said he was Barry’s son, Drew. His voice
was the same tone as his father’s, a hardened bass, eerily familiar.

When I told him my name, his brow lifted. A light of recognition flickered like halogen in his eyes. He interrupted his mother’s
conversation with a woman who looked like she could be a grandmother or a great-aunt to introduce me. “She’s the reporter
who was in the store,” he said.

Nadine Mazursky might have been a beautiful woman. She had a trim figure, dark, gleaming hair tied back in a knot, and fine,
even features. But today, her face was unnaturally pale, and I knew by her eyes that she was medicated. “Thank you so much
for coming,” she said without seeing me.

Drew wouldn’t let it go at that. He put his face near hers, forcing her to look him directly in the eye, and spoke louder,
more deliberately, as if to a child. “She’s the one who wrote the story about Dad in the paper. In Sunday’s paper.”

Something wavered in Nadine’s eyes. “Oh yes, of course. A beautiful story.” She took my hand. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

But as I offered my sympathies, I could see her attention already drifting to someone standing behind me. I could feel her
haze, could remember the numbness that followed both my brother’s and my father’s deaths. She’d never remember meeting me.

It didn’t matter, really. The point was to come, pay my respects, and make a first step in putting the actual horror of Barry’s
murder behind me. I walked away from Nadine Mazursky and allowed a man standing behind me to offer the widow his sympathies.
I moved down the line, expressing condolences to family members I was meeting for the first time: a daughter and her husband,
a grandson, and two aunts. I did not introduce myself as the reporter who wrote the profile. I was one of Barry’s customers,
I said. One of his regulars.

Slipping out through a side door, I stood under a streetlight and took a minute to collect myself.
A real Rhode Island tragedy.
One minute, Barry had been giving me the odds on which scratch ticket to buy, and the next, he was dead on the floor. And
all the police cared about was covering up the real reason for his murder until after the casino-gambling referendum passed.

In the dark, my wool jacket seemed insubstantial. I pulled it tight around me and headed up Waterman, the Canadian air now
in my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a car driving down the street slowly, behind me. It was a block of residential-looking
buildings that had all been converted into doctors’ and dentists’ offices, the waiting rooms all empty by now. I picked up
my pace. The car followed, hugging the curb.

Instinctively, I began to scan the buildings for signs of life—a pediatrician with evening hours, an orthodontist working
late—but the windows were dark. The only lights were in entry-ways, illuminated for security. The driveways were empty and
there were hardly even any cars parked on the street. Why hadn’t I driven? Realized how alone I’d feel at this hour of the
night?

The car crept closer. I heard a window open. My rib cage tightened and I felt myself lean forward, ready to push off my toes
if I had to run for it. A familiar voice called my name. I turned to see Matt Cavanaugh behind the wheel of a ten-year-old
Audi. He was wearing a dark-colored suit and looked like he was coming from a courtroom. “Need a lift?”

“Jesus,” I said, feeling both angry and relieved.

“Is that a yes?”

It was cold and late, and now I was a nervous wreck alone on the street. I got in.

The car smelled of Windex and oranges and I noticed a roll of paper towels in the back, as if he had just cleaned up some
kind of spill. A cell phone was charging from a cord in the lighter and an empty Starbucks cup was stuck in the console between
us. A gym bag and basketball were thrown in the backseat.

“You live in here?” I asked, as if my own car were clutter free.

“When I’m working on a big case. Kind of late to be walking alone,” he said as he pulled back into traffic. The warning again.

“I’m a grown woman, I can walk alone on the street.”

He didn’t say anything, and I knew I’d been unduly harsh. “I’m coming from Barry Mazursky’s wake,” I finally said.

“You were a pretty good friend of Barry’s, right?”

I thought of the gambling, how little I’d ever known about Barry. “Sort of.”

He must have sensed the dark thought. “You probably needed the closure, right? After the shooting?” His voice was warmer now,
full of understanding, as if he’d dealt with this kind of thing before.

“The closure I
really
needed was seeing Victor Delria,” I reminded him.

His shrug said he was not about to apologize, but his tone was conciliatory. “I thought you understood about that.”

“Not really,” I said. But I did. As a prosecutor, he had a job to do. I couldn’t hold it against him forever.

“How’s Barry’s family holding up?”

He sounded as if he actually cared, and I found myself telling him about the wife being heavily medicated and how few people
had turned out. “It was pitiful really, just a few other customers from the store. The son seemed to be grateful I came—”
I looked at him sidelong. “They’d probably feel better if they knew someone was being charged for the murder. Police said
the crime report still hasn’t come back from the lab. Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“It can happen,” he said, noncommittal. He turned up Wayland Avenue. “Besides, Delria’s still unconscious. There’s no rush.”

No kidding, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut. I knew that in his own way, Matt was trying to mend fences, trying to meet
me halfway. And in the closed car, I was becoming aware of his scent over the oranges. He smelled of some kind of soap that
reminded me of warm laundry from the dryer. I found myself wanting to lean closer to him, to inhale a little deeper, but I
stayed stiffly in my seat, determined to fight off this increasingly inconvenient feeling of arousal. We drove in silence
until we hit Wayland Square. I directed him to turn left. “I live up at the corner, on Elmgrove.”

“Really?” There was something funny in his tone.

“Yeah, why?”

He didn’t answer until I’d directed him to my apartment building, which was on the edge of the square, in the first block
on Elmgrove. He pulled into the parking spot behind my Honda, stopped the car, and pointed diagonally across Elmgrove to a
large Victorian house about a half block from the square. It had a sweeping veranda that had caught my eye last summer because
of all the hanging flower baskets and a real turret. “I live right over there,” he said, with a half smile. “I’ve got the
third-floor unit.”

It seemed strange that I hadn’t seen him on the street before. When I’d first moved in, my mother had come for a visit. An
avid gardener, she had actually climbed up onto that veranda across the street to examine one of the plants. “Since when?”

“Last month.” That meant he hadn’t seen my mother root and clip one of the hanging vines of the wild geranium and stuff it
in her canvas bag. “So you’re a new neighbor, then?”

He nodded, with an amused expression, as if this were, really, quite the development.

There was a long, awkward silence inside the car, and I got the feeling he was waiting for something. It seemed to me that
maybe I should suggest something neighborly. Like inviting him to dinner or at least for a drink.

“You want to come up for a beer or something?” I heard myself ask.

His eyes warmed to the idea and I felt a flicker of something in the car. Surprise? Interest? Desire? He seemed to be mulling
it over, and I got the feeling that, like me, he dreaded going home to an empty apartment. But then, something changed in
his posture, and his hands tightened on the wheel. Immediately, I regretted my neighborliness. “Better not,” he said, shaking
his head and looking away from me.

I knew then that Jonathan Frizell had been right about Matt’s career aspirations. It wouldn’t be a good political move for
a prosecutor in the AG’s office to get too neighborly with a
Chronicle
reporter.

“Yeah, it’s kind of late anyway,” I said, making an effort to sound relieved as I slipped out of the car.

I waited until two days after the funeral to approach Nadine Mazursky for an interview, and even then I felt like a vulture.

Not surprisingly, the Mazursky phone number was unlisted, so I hadn’t been able to call ahead. I drove by the Mazursky Market
first, hoping to find Drew working in the deli, but the market was still closed. I had no choice but to get on the highway
and head to the Cranston address I’d found in the database.

My stomach grew tighter as I passed each exit. At Thurbers Avenue, I looked up at the Big Blue Bug, a ten-foot-tall fiberglass-and-steel
termite that looks down on the highway from a pest-control building, and felt like
I
was the vermin. More than anything, I hated barging in like this on a newly grieving family, but I had no promise of a story,
no shot at the investigative team until I got someone from the family to confirm Barry’s gambling problem. On the record.

Christ.

A part of me hoped that the Mazursky family would slam the door in my face and I could be done with it. The other fantasized
about Nadine inviting me into her home and championing me for my efforts to get to the bottom of her husband’s murder.

Yeah, right.

I studied the small blue Cape on the corner lot of a middle-class neighborhood. The clapboard trim could have used a coat
of paint and the lawn desperately needed to be raked. The shades on the windows were all drawn; there were no mums in planters
or Halloween pumpkins on the steps to make the house look even remotely inviting. I couldn’t bring myself to stop, but drove
down the road to a dead end, where there was a small cove with a boat launch on Narragansett Bay.

I stared out at the water, gray like the sky and choppy from the wind, and steeled myself for the interview ahead. Some people
found it cathartic to talk to reporters about their grief, I told myself. Maybe, the family, like me, was frustrated by the
lack of information the Providence police had revealed about the investigation. Maybe Nadine Mazursky was pissed off that
no one had been charged with Barry’s murder and hoped a
Chronicle
story would spark action.

I turned, parked in front of the house, and forced myself out of my Honda. Because of the positive response I’d gotten at
the wake, there was a good chance the family would let me in the door. But depending on how the interview went, it could be
only a matter of minutes before they tossed me back out again.

I pushed the doorbell and waited. The wind kicked my hair across my face, and I tried to comb it away with my fingers. A couple
of minutes passed. I rang the doorbell again. Another gust of wind and I had to grab my hair into a ponytail to keep it from
flapping all over. Someone peeked out from behind a drawn shade. The inner door opened partway, and I saw Nadine herself peering
at me. An outer storm door separated us.

“Hallie Ahern,” I shouted through the thick glass.

I dropped the ponytail, and instantly, my hair was in my face again. I could see in her expression that she had no idea who
I was. “The
Chronicle
reporter who wrote the profile of your husband in the Sunday paper,” I added.

I’m not sure that made any impression either, but another figure appeared behind her. I heard her mumble something. The door
opened a bit wider. It was her son, Drew.

He swung open the door. “Come in, please.” I was taken again by the timbre of his voice.

As soon as I was inside the house, he closed and locked the door behind me. More creditors, I thought, but said nothing. I
told them I wanted to ask just a couple of questions. They looked at each other for a long moment.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Nadine finally asked. Her tone had the same dull quality as her eyes, and I knew she was still
on some sort of drug to deaden the pain.

We passed through a tidy living room and into a good-size kitchen with harvest-gold appliances that looked as though they
had once been top of the line. There was no sign of Barry’s daughter or her husband, or any of the older female relatives
who had been at the wake, and the way Drew banged around in the cabinets, asking his mother where she’d moved the cups and
sugar, I guessed he didn’t live here anymore either.

I sat opposite Nadine at a long table made of hand-painted tile, while Drew filled a silver kettle with water from the sink.
When I admired the table, Nadine told me that Barry had painted the tiles himself. “It used to be a hobby for him. He was
planning on hand-painting furniture when he retired.”

The kettle clanged loudly as it hit the grid of the stove. Nadine looked up at her son, who did not apologize. “He hasn’t
painted a tile in years,” Drew said.

I left my notebook unopened on the table, so they would know I wasn’t taking notes on their feud. It didn’t seem to matter.
Drew’s gruff movements about the kitchen suggested he was still consumed by his mother’s last comment. He lit a cigarette
with a defiant air. Nadine gave him an annoyed look, but then she shrugged, as if to indicate that she was too exhausted to
quibble with her son.