A Confidential Source (33 page)

On an empty stomach, the brandy had done its job. I felt steadier, bolder. “I’m sorry I bothered you. I don’t know what I
was thinking, really. I should probably be getting back to my apartment.” I was halfway to the door when I felt his arm on
mine again, wheeling me around.

“Hallie, you’re going to get yourself killed. Please, tell me you’re smart enough to lay off this story—”

I didn’t answer.

He shook his head at me and let my arm go. For a minute, I thought he was going to let me out the door, but then he changed
his mind again. This time, he put a hand on each of my shoulders with a firm grip.

“Listen, whatever instinct told you not to go back to your apartment tonight was the right one. You look pretty wobbly. If
I let you go back to your apartment and something happened…” He stopped, left the possibility unsaid.

“I’ll be okay.”

“Maybe you will, but I won’t. I’ll be awake all night. Have you even had dinner yet?”

I shook my head.

“I can offer you leftover pizza. Just humor me. Stay here.”

Our eyes met. He deliberately held my gaze. A current flowed between us. I felt it in the grip he had on my shoulders, the
warmth of his hands, and the flow of blood in my arms. For a brief moment, I hoped he would kiss me. I could forget about
Leonard, about Barry, about the investigative team. The brandy in my stomach made me think it might happen. But Matt, always
the professional, knew how to restrain himself. Instead of kissing me, he turned me in the direction of a short hallway.

“I’ll warm up the pizza and get you some clean sheets. You can sleep in the bedroom,” he said, sounding matter-of-fact. “It
has a lock on the door. I fall asleep on the couch half the time anyway.”

When I awoke the next morning, there was a clean, folded towel, a toothbrush, and a newspaper at the end of my bed. Underneath
the newspaper was a note:

“Orange juice and English muffins in fridge. Don’t go anywhere. Be back by eleven.”

I snorted at the
Chronicle’s
front-page story about Leonard’s death. It quoted the Barrington police about the bike accident as if all their theories
were so logical: severe winds, crevice in the winding road, a squirrel that ran out into the bike’s path.

Suddenly, I felt anxious. It was already ten-thirty. I couldn’t waste time hanging around Matt’s apartment. I left him a note
thanking him for letting me stay the night and promising to call him later. Then, I headed directly across the square to the
Mazursky Market.

It was packed with people. A woman I’d never seen was working the cash register, so I headed through the throng to the back
of the store, hoping Drew was behind the counter at the deli. A young man in his early twenties was making sandwiches. I asked
him where Drew was and he told me that he’d had to go home, but would be back in a half hour to relieve him. I ordered coffee,
drank it, ordered another, and wandered around the store. Drew didn’t come back. After the rush cleared out, I finally approached
the woman at the register. She was heavyset and sweating profusely in a sleeveless, silky kimono as she reached on her tiptoes
to get the man in front of me a pack of Marlboro Lights.

“You know when Drew’s going to come back?”

She took a moment to catch her breath, and then she threw her arms up as if to say, who could tell?

“He
is
coming back this afternoon, right?”

“If they don’t keep him all day.”

I gave her a puzzled look.

“That poor family, it never ends.”

“Is his mother okay?” I asked. “No emergency, I hope?”

“Violated is what she is. Husband dead. Murdered in broad daylight.” The clerk caught herself, then amended, “Well, not broad
daylight, but right here, right in his own store. Shot to death. And what do the cops do? They search the victim’s house.
Can you believe that? Last week they searched poor Nadine’s house, this morning she called here all upset. Now they’re searching
her son’s apartment. Can you believe the nerve?”

I shook my head.

No, I couldn’t believe the nerve, the audacity of Matt Cavanaugh, who’d outsmarted me this morning, left me sleeping in his
apartment as he searched for the tape I wanted so badly.

A part of me understood that Matt had a job to do, but the other part, the part that had felt so responsive to his concern
the night before, was furious. I sure as hell wasn’t going to go back to his apartment, and I desperately needed a shower.

I opened the outer door of my building and stood listening for sounds on the staircase. In the bright light of a sunny November
day, it was a little easier to be brave. It was a little easier to believe that if I stood there long enough, confirming the
absence of shifting feet, of movement in the hall, that I could make it upstairs, lock the door behind me, and be safe.

My mailbox was overflowing with several days’ worth of mail. I couldn’t deal with all the bills—the mounting debt I’d never
be able to repay—so I left it in the box. Upstairs, I checked the apartment thoroughly, triple-locked the door behind me,
and headed for the shower. Under the hot steam, I allowed myself a few blank moments before I turned my thoughts to the
Chronicle
and whether I’d ever be able to convince the editors to believe there had actually been an audio-tape.

I stepped out of the shower and into a puddle of lukewarm water that had leaked onto the floor. Dorothy had gone out on a
limb trusting me with my story about Barry’s compulsive gambling, and where had it gotten her? Without the tape to back up
my claims, no one was ever going to believe that Leonard’s death was murder.

I stood in the bathroom after I’d dried off and listened through the door before I opened it. From the bathroom, I could see
no signs of entry. I stepped far enough into the living room to get an angle on the door; it was still triple bolted. My running
shoes were where I’d left them on top of the coffee table. I picked them up, ran to the bedroom, and locked the door behind
me to change.

I put on a turtleneck and squeezed into blue jeans in record time, but by the time I’d laced up the running shoes, I began
to relax a little. I made a quick bowl of tomato soup and grilled cheese and actually finished it. My mother called and I
forced myself to sound calm, collected, as if this was just another Saturday afternoon, listening patiently to the update
of my cousin Susan’s wedding plans. It was almost three o’clock when Matt called. I let the machine pick it up. He apologized
for getting “delayed at the office,” and not calling sooner. “Don’t go to work before I get a chance to talk to you,” he said.
“I need to talk to you.”

To gloat? To keep tabs on me to make sure I couldn’t get anything about his search in tomorrow’s paper? I grabbed my yellow
running jacket from the closet and decided I should get out of the apartment before Matt decided to make a personal visit.

Downstairs, as I was headed out of the hallway, my gaze caught the mailbox again. It was so completely crammed with uncollected
mail, I wondered if the postman might refuse further delivery.

I stopped, wrestled with the envelopes, twisting the paper to extricate it from the box. As I expected, they were all bills,
four from credit card companies, one from the phone company with the red-warning delinquency band across the top, and a handwritten
envelope that no doubt had been left by Hal the landlord.

If only I’d actually won $10,000, all these problems would be gone. If only the big winner of my life hadn’t been a freaking
counterfeit. I didn’t want to think about my luck or my finances, so I stuffed the mail under my arm and headed outside to
my car.

As I threw the pile onto the passenger seat, it scattered, several envelopes falling to the floor to reveal the larger, thicker,
hand-addressed envelope on the bottom. Familiar handwriting. Not my landlord’s.

I locked the car doors and ripped open the envelope.

Hallie,

Nail him to the wall Page one. Call me and tell me you forgive me. ASAP.

Leonard

Inside, wrapped in a single sheath of bubble packing, was a tiny microcassette.

I
CHECKED TO
make sure my microcassette recorder was inside my knapsack, and then quickly pulled out of the parking space before Matt
could look across Elmgrove and spot me inside my car.

I fumbled with the tape at the first red light, twice popping it into the recorder backward before settling it into the machine.
And then suddenly, Barry’s voice, eerily alive, filled the car, as if he were in the passenger seat beside me. “Jesus, this
is a lot of inventory.”

I felt the shock of his voice. My lungs got tight trying to draw air and my eyes began to get blurry. The road dissolved.
A horn behind me honked and I snapped off the machine, letting it fall off my lap and onto the seat. I’d get killed if I tried
to listen to this while driving.

The car honked a second time and I put the car into gear, following a Volvo station wagon carefully down Angell Street, trying
to pay attention to my driving so I wouldn’t sideswipe anyone. But I was wild inside, a frantic mess, trying to keep it together
until I was downtown, safely parked, where I could listen, rewind. Listen again.

The
Chronicle
had no parking lot. I drove around the building three times looking for a space, my heart pumping louder and more recklessly
each time. It was Saturday, for Christ’s sake. Saturday, and no street parking? Finally, I began to see beyond my windshield
and noticed the people walking together in clusters on the sidewalks. And then I remembered WaterFire. Tourists were already
beginning to gather for the evening’s event.

I couldn’t think about WaterFire now. All I could think about was listening to the tape. I turned and began heading away from
the river and the tourists to what was sometimes called the DownCity section. It was only five or six blocks from WaterPlace
Park, but it might have been on a different planet. This old commercial district was still in transition. Abandoned department-store
buildings, only partially restored, housed funky nightclubs and the kind of social-service agencies that were closed on the
weekend. The streets would be empty at this hour.

There were plenty of spaces on Westminster Street and I parked in front of Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel, a nightclub that was especially
dark and barren in daylight. I locked my car doors and grabbed the tape recorder from the seat and rewound the tape, starting
all over again.

“Jesus, this is a lot of inventory,” Barry began.

I didn’t go cold this time, didn’t give way to chills from the dead. Instead, I turned up the volume and closed my eyes to
listen.

“Your sales slacking off?” another male voice responded. It was a mature bass that sounded seriously concerned.

“No. Just… you know… well, maybe a little,” Barry replied.

There was a long silence. “The fifty-dollar winners in the same place in the book?” Barry asked. There was a shuffling sound.

“Yeah,” the other male voice replied.

“You sure these were checked?”

“We had one bad print run. Don’t worry. We threw the entire batch out. The problem’s been fixed,” the man said, sounding annoyed.

There was a skeptical chortle from Barry. A horn honked in the background and I realized they must be in a car driving somewhere.
And then it got quiet, as if the car had entered a garage. I heard something mechanical and then the sound of something being
tossed on a dashboard. “Fucking rates in here,” the other man said. A couple of seconds of silence and then: “There’s a space.”

I couldn’t tell who was driving, but I imagined Barry parking the car. The car engine was shut off. The other man spoke in
a harsh, accusatory whisper: “There’s a lot more money to be made on this. You losing your nerve?”

“I’m not losing my nerve,” Barry whispered back. “Just make sure there are no more screwups.”

There was a click and then empty tape. I found myself marveling at Barry. Not his criminality, but his acting ability. If
he was making this tape, he was already in league with Matt, wired for the attorney general’s prosecution, but he sounded
like a crook with legitimate crook concerns, pissed off rather than defensive.

There was another click and then a different voice thanked Barry. After a minute, I heard the sound of coins hitting the dashboard.
The engine noise grew louder and I heard traffic sounds again. “Did you see that article in the
Chronicle?
Business section. It was about this high-tech scanning equipment you guys just bought,” Barry said after a bit.

You guys.
I stopped the tape, rewound it, and played it again. I remembered a story about some Rhode Island technology company leading
the Sunday business section not that long ago. The company that made all sorts of lottery equipment.
You guys.
Did that mean the unidentified male voice actually worked for the lottery?

The buttons on this machine were so tiny that I always worried about hitting the wrong button and recording over the tape
by mistake. I checked three times before hitting play.

“That scanning equipment isn’t going to affect these tickets. No one is going to scan a losing ticket,” the male voice said.
“I’m telling you, we got rid of the bad batch. Stop being a pussy.”

“I’m not worried about the Smith Hill or South Providence stores. But I’m not gonna sell any more of these in the square.
There’s a reporter for the
Chronicle
lives across the street, she’s buying more and more tickets here all the time.”

Shit. That was me.

“The fucking president of the printing company that makes the legit tickets couldn’t tell the difference. These are exact
copies. And the focus group went wild for this game. This fucking little green leprechaun. I’m telling you, there’s money
to be made.”

There was a shuffling sound, the rustling of paper, followed by more empty seconds on the tape. “Okay. This looks good. I
gotta get back to the office; drop me off at my car,” the man said.