A Confidential Source (22 page)

“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 lied 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.”

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.”