A Confidential Source (35 page)

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.”

T
HE 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.