A Confidential Source (28 page)

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?

I didn’t even hear Walter’s key in the lock, just the door swinging open. “You been ransacked or something?” he asked, glancing
at the newspaper mess I’d made on the floor.

“Very funny.” But I didn’t elaborate or try to explain. Walter looked like he’d had a hard night, his eyes red from the cigarette
smoke, his lips chapped and bitten.

“Tough crowd?” I asked.

“The worst. At least three requests for ‘Leather and Lace.’ As if I could sing that sappy duet alone.”

Not the best time to ask for money, I decided. Let him relax first.

Besides his two guitars, Walter also had a small amplifier and a PA system that he didn’t want to leave overnight in his cab,
so he had to go back down the stairs to get the rest of his equipment. I made a quick search for the tickets when he was gone,
hoping to scratch myself a winner before he finished unloading. No such luck.

At least the panicky feeling had begun to subside. Walter wasn’t a huge guy, but he was smart and street savvy, and the silver
bracelet he wore looked like it could hurt somebody. I felt safer now that he was in the apartment.

Walter was about to fling his cowboy hat on the bar, but spotted my bowl of tomato soup. “Fine dining again?”

It occurred to me that this was the perfect opening to ask to borrow money, but I decided to wait. Let him relax. Have a cup
of tea. Put his feet up on the coffee table. I dropped to the bar stool and picked up the spoon. My long-ignored tomato soup
was now completely cold. “Want some?”

He shook his head. He was working an early cab shift tomorrow morning and was going straight to bed. He took his overnight
bag with him into the bathroom, which meant he’d be in there for a while.

I sat there, mindlessly stirring the cold soup as I prepared my speech.
Walter, I’ve had a setback, and I was wondering… Walter, I know I should have listened to you and found a meeting first thing
when I moved here, but… Walter, I’ve learned the hard way that I really have to stay away from casinos.…

My stirring grew agitated. When I looked down, there was a puddle of red broth encircling the bowl. Grabbing a sponge from
the sink, I returned to the bar and lifted both the bowl and the place mat to wipe up. Five scratch tickets were lying underneath,
about a quarter inch from where I remembered putting them.

A miracle. A symphony. A shaft of sunlight streaming through my ceiling. It was as if the tickets were some kind of gift from
heaven and not something I’d misplaced all along. I scooped up a Caesar’s Palace ticket, the one Barry had recommended, found
a quarter in a teacup on the counter, and scraped off the latex. It was a complete dud. I slipped it back under the place
mat and listened for the sounds in the bathroom.

Sometimes when he had to get up really early, Walter showered at night. Often, he sang songs from his show, mid-seventies
Eagles, Jackson Browne, Steve Miller. But tonight, not a peep. Not a good night to ask for money. I started scratching the
next ticket. So much for Barry’s good advice: The second and third Caesar’s Palace tickets were duds, too.

The last two tickets were Green Poker Game tickets, the ones Barry hadn’t wanted me to buy. But the leprechaun who had been
lucky before came through a second time. I won $50 on the fourth ticket.

Gratitude rose in my chest. Thank you, Barry, I said softly. But luck was a greedy thing. I couldn’t possibly stop here. Fifty
dollars was not enough. The gray latex on the last ticket was especially stiff. I scraped relentlessly. The green leprechaun
was holding a flush. I had to match diamonds.

I scraped off my first two boxes: a king and a deuce, both diamonds. The bathroom door opened, but I didn’t even bother to
look up. The third and fourth boxes both revealed diamonds and I slapped myself in the head.

Walter walked toward the bar, draped in a towel. “What are you doing?”

I didn’t answer. I had one box left. The quarter, now coated with bits of latex, had lost its edge. I had to put all of my
weight into it, angling the coin into the cardboard.

Walter was looking at me with a curious expression, trying to figure out what I was doing; why I was gasping without taking
in air, why I kept smacking my forehead, and opening and closing my eyes.

I didn’t try to explain it to him, I just pointed to the scratch ticket, begging him to read me back the cards, to verify
what I saw. To make sure I was awake. Because unless I was dreaming, I’d just won $10,000.

T
HE LOTTERY OFFICE
was an impressive one-story brick building with intensely manicured shrubbery and mulched gardens. It also had an enormous
parking lot that was empty at seven-fifteen in the morning.

It was a cold day that promised a clear sky. I parked in the space closest to the building and sat in my car, doors locked,
heat on, staring alternately from the ticket to the front door, waiting for it to open. Walter had been happy for me—nothing
like a winning scratch ticket to squelch a lecture on gambling—but he’d had to leave at six
A.M
. for his cab shift. So once again, I was alone, completely alone for what had to be one of the single biggest moments of my
life. But I didn’t care. Every time I glanced at the ticket in my hand to make sure it was still there, I won all over again.
I could feel elation in my fingers, my elbows, my toes.

I was afraid to put the ticket down on the console, or even zipper it inside my knapsack for fear it would disappear, dissolve,
or self-destruct in some way uniquely tragic to me. A winner. A little piece of cardboard worth $10,000. Still here, still
safe.

Thank God I’d found the scratch tickets. Thank God I hadn’t thrown them out in an antigambling purge. As I fingered the cardboard
ticket, I daydreamed about driving to Worcester tonight and handing my mother $2,000 in cash. I imagined the look of surprise
on her face, which would be followed by an instinctive, suspicious concern about where the money had come from. This would
be followed by relief, then joy. She’d love the story about finding the winning scratch ticket under the place mat and would
be at the senior center in no time telling her friends about it.

Two Toyota Camrys pulled in and parked next to each other about a hundred yards away. Two middle-aged women got out of their
separate cars and I could tell by the familiar way they walked together toward the building that they were employees. One
of them looked over her shoulder at my car and said something to the other. I guessed I wasn’t the only winner who’d arrived
at the lottery office at the crack of dawn.

I checked my ticket again, making sure it was still a winner. The five red diamonds were still there, no mistaken heart smuggled
in. The cardboard was getting damp from my palm, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to put it in my pocket or in my knapsack.
I sat there holding the ticket as the cars filled the employee spaces and the digital clock in my car finally snapped to eight
o’clock. Still clutching the ticket, I checked to make sure no one suspicious was walking around the parking lot, turned off
the car, and ran to the door.

Out of breath, I entered a reception area with a polished marble floor and a bottled-glass floor-to-ceiling window that let
in a flood of morning light. I felt as if I were walking into a stage set where the director had cued the sunlight. Soon there
would be music as the camera followed me, recording this momentous event.

Beyond the reception area was a tall counter, walled off, with a protective glass shield, like a bank. No one stood at any
of the terminals. I wondered if Gregory Ayers was back there. Maybe he’d come out from some office to award me my check in
person. I felt myself getting giddy. Maybe he’d want to do it on TV.

The reception desk was empty, too. A door to the walled-off bank area opened and a man walked out. He glanced at the empty
desk. “She’s probably in the ladies’,” he told me. “Just be a minute.” I forced myself to settle down, check out the framed
photographs of previous lottery winners that adorned the walls: Raymond Olson of Cranston, $100,000 in Powerball. Norman Picard
of Cumberland, $47,000 in Lot-of-Bucks. I glanced back at my ticket. Hallie Ahern of Providence, $10,000 in the Green Poker
Game.