A Confidential Source (7 page)

“You’re a reporter?” It was part question, part exclamation.

I nodded.

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. Then he put his arms out and backed me completely out the door, so we were standing in
the hallway. He was square in front of me, blocking the door, making me aware again of his height, his shoulders. “How long
after I left?”

“Five, maybe ten minutes.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.” He had a nice voice, a warm tenor that made you want to believe he meant what
he said. I had to make myself focus on the off-center nose instead of the unclouded brown eyes. I took a small step to the
left, trying to position myself to see around him. He immediately shifted his weight in the same direction.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked.

As it turned out, Matt Cavanaugh wasn’t a plainclothes cop, but a prosecutor with the attorney general’s office. “And you
just happened to be at the Mazursky Market last night?” I asked.

“I told you, I live in the neighborhood.”

There was a moan from the bedroom. Matt turned around, glanced at the bed, and then took another step, to back me farther
down the corridor.

“Is that why they assigned you to this case?” I asked.

“One of the reasons.” He looked down the corridor in both directions. We were still alone. “I’m sorry, but you’ve got to get
out of here.”

“I just want to get a glimpse of his face. Just a quick peek to see if it’s him and I’ll get out of here.” I gave him my most
beseeching look: hopeful eyes, pleading smile, air of can-do optimism. He stared at me for a moment, as if he needed a better
read, as if there was something he didn’t quite understand.

Then, I made the slightest gesture, not even a real movement, toward the door, just a change in posture, and his expression
grew hard. Not only was Matt Cavanaugh not going to consider my request, but I’d really pissed him off.

“Are you out of your mind? Completely out of your mind? You’re a potential witness. What if he woke up and saw you? Wouldn’t
his public defender
love
that?”

“I thought he was unconscious,” I said, but it sounded feeble, even to me.

“I don’t care if he’s
dead.
This would taint your testimony.” He stood there shaking his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe that none of this had
dawned on me.

“Hey, I’m a reporter, not a prosecutor,” I said in my own defense.

“No kidding,” he said, but he refrained from a blanket criticism of reporters as a subspecies. Instead, he reached behind
him and pulled Delria’s door shut so it clicked. Debate over. Subject closed.

I started to turn away, but I hadn’t taken two steps when he touched my arm, forcing me to turn around. His anger, his annoyance,
had abated. There was something else in his expression.

I waited, hoping, I guess, for something personal: a reference to our meeting at the Mazursky Market, or maybe an apology
that he had to be so gruff. And for a moment, I saw warmth again in his eyes. He hesitated, as if there was something he wanted
to say but couldn’t.

“What?” I asked.

The warmth disappeared. Instead, I got a grim warning, cool and professional: “And don’t write anything else about this in
the paper. You’re a potential witness, for Christ’s sake. You’re not only screwing up the case, you could be putting yourself
in danger.”

F
ROM THE DATABASE,
I learned that the Mazursky Market was a bigger operation than I’d thought. And that despite the way he acted at the register,
Barry was no longer the owner.

He had been quite an entrepreneur in the eighties, buying and developing a half dozen markets across the state, but he’d sold
out four years ago to a Boston conglomerate. He’d stayed on, working for the new owners, managing three of the Providence
stores and acting like he still owned the joint.

The story didn’t specifically give the dollar figure of the transaction, but it seemed odd that a successful entrepreneur
would want to stay on afterward to work a cash register at night. I hit the button and waited for the printer to whir out
a hard copy of the story.
This is a real Rhode Island tragedy,
Leonard had said, as if there were a lot more to tell me.

I reminded myself that Leonard was a talk-show host, prone to hyperbole. Maybe he just meant it was a tragedy that a guy like
Barry got popped. Certainly there was enough glowing praise about Barry in the database for that story.

A clip from the early nineties cataloged Barry’s impressive civic activities. Two years before he’d sold the convenience-store
chain, he’d received an award from the South Providence Neighborhood Association for making improvements to a city block where
one of his largest markets did business. In the early 1990s, when a winning Powerball ticket had been sold from his Smith
Hill market, he’d donated his 1 percent share of the winnings to a family that had been burned out of their home at Christmas.
He’d also helped raise $250,000 for the Veterans’ Homeless Shelter.

I gathered all my printouts from the machine and headed back to the newsroom. Screw Matt Cavanaugh. Trying to tell
me
what to write or not write about. Did he think that was the appropriate role of the attorney general’s office? Or maybe he
thought he had special powers over me because I’d been foolish enough to give him my phone number.

I got mad thinking about his warning. Of course he wanted to scare me into silence. The tighter control he had on the information,
the easier it was for him in court. I could not let fear of a small-time, inept, and
unconscious
crook keep me from a story that could get me a spot on the investigative team.

I must have stomped across the newsroom, because after I dropped my files on the desk, I noticed that two copy editors, the
weekend city editor filling in for Dorothy, and Jonathan, who’d just come back from his assignment, were all looking up from
their desks.

“Trouble with the story?” Jonathan asked. All four men seemed to be waiting for my answer.

“No,” I said, and sat down. I stared at the blank computer screen in continued fury. After their attention had drifted back
to their computer screens, I turned back to Jonathan. “You know anything about Matt Cavanaugh?”

“From the AG’s office?” His mouth twisted into a winking sort of half smile. “Yeah, I’ve dealt with him a couple of times.”

He wanted me to beg for information from his vault. “And?”

“Tight with the cops,” he said. “Political, they say.”

The twisted half smile, combined with the pause, gave the impression that he was just brimming with inside information. “Aren’t
they all political?”

He chuckled at my simplicity. “No. A lot of prosecutors are there just to get enough experience and connections to get something
high-paying at a private firm. This guy is a career guy. Wants to move up the ladder. Got his eye on the big prize.”

He meant attorney general, an elected position. Suddenly the reason for my interest dawned on him. “Cavanaugh handling the
Mazursky murder?” He sounded surprised.

“Something strange about that?”

“Not like him to be handling a piddling little street crime like that.” Jonathan had a very natural way of conveying disdain.
Then: “But maybe he’s stuck on the weekend shift. You know, like me, relegated to covering a fucking political rally.”

Another reporter might have gone to Barry’s home and tried to get a response from his wife or son, both of whom I’d seen around
the store, or the older daughter I knew he’d adored. But after my brother, Sean, died suddenly of acute cardiac arrhythmia
at age thirty-five, abbreviating a brilliant legal career, a brilliant life, I lost all heart for barging into a newly bereaved
family’s home and asking them how they “felt” about losing their loved one.

Just terrific? I mean, what were they going to say? You never got over it; certainly I’d never stop missing Sean, the older
brother I’d looked up to, the friend I’d loved above all others, and it had taken me two years and a twelve-step program to
finally come to peace with the abruptness of his death. But the next day? After a mere twenty-four hours of trying to believe
the person you love, with your very DNA, no longer exists? Most of what Barry’s family was feeling right now was pure physical
shock.

Since it was Saturday, no one would be working at the offices of the Your Corner Corporation, the Boston company that had
bought the markets from Barry. I found the name of the company’s top officials on the company’s website and tracked down the
vice president at his Back Bay home. He told me Barry was a “great entrepreneur and a great manager,” and said there were
no problems or surprises after the purchase.

I drove to the Mazursky Market, which was still closed to the public, and hunted Wayland Square for a neighboring merchant
who had known Barry. The woman who owned the bookstore where I’d bought my maps of Providence when I first moved was more
than happy to talk to me. She was outraged that something like this could happen in a safe neighborhood and wanted to talk
about what a great guy Barry was. “Such a good husband to Nadine, such a good neighbor.”

A short-order cook behind the counter at Rufful’s, a luncheonette where I often went for my BLT breakfast, recognized me from
my preference for rye bread. “You knew Barry, right?” he asked.

I had a sudden picture of Barry the first day I’d walked into the market. His left arm was in a sling and he insisted on bagging
my purchase with his one hand, all the while telling me about his car accident and treatment at the hospital. Then he leaned
across the counter and extended his cast, an inky maze of names. “I can tell you’re gonna be a regular customer. You have
to sign or it won’t be complete,” he’d said.

“He was a good guy,” the cook told me. He was about my age, but had an air of responsibility about him, as if he had a stake
in the business. “A good guy who did a lot for the community. And what thanks did he get?”

I used the quote for the last line in my profile: Barry Mazursky, family man, entrepreneur, pillar of the community. I felt
uneasy, rereading it, all that unmitigated praise. It was hard to get anyone to say anything remotely critical about a dead
guy. I tried for balance, pointing out in my story that although I was friendly with him, I didn’t know him well.

By five o’clock, Jonathan had filed his story on the antigambling rally and gone home. I’d already sent my five-paragraph
follow on the car accident, Victor Delria, and police refusal to name him as a suspect; but my story about Barry, technically
finished, remained open on my computer screen.

I picked up the phone and tried Leonard at the radio station, but the woman who answered the phone wouldn’t give me his home
phone number. If he really knew anything truly newsworthy, why would he share it with me? Wasn’t I competing media?

I reread my profile about Barry one more time, closed my eyes, and hit the send key.

My uneasiness about Barry’s profile was short-lived. Roger, the weekend city editor, loved the story, and pooh-poohed my suggestion
that we hold it a day so I could get to more sources.

“This is perfect. He comes alive. A human,” he said. “It’s like you can see him behind the cash register.”

More important, it was a slow news day. Aside from the antigambling rally, nothing had happened anywhere in the state. Originally
slotted for the metro page, my profile of Barry was needed on page one. The adrenaline rush carried me through the copyediting.

Afterward, I still had a couple of hours to kill before I was supposed to meet Leonard. I was outside, headed to my car, when
I noticed the throngs of people walking toward Union Station. Six o’clock was too early for it to be a dinner crowd.

Then I remembered Water Fire. It was a semiregular evening event in warm weather, and I’d heard there was an autumn performance
scheduled for tonight: one hundred small, floating bonfires on iron braziers were lit up and down the river after sunset,
with music piped into the air. It was something like fireworks, only classier. Carolyn liked to take her dates there in the
summer to stroll along the riverside park in the crowd, and had been after me to check it out. Raphael’s was spitting distance
from the river. It seemed a good way to kill time.

It was unusually warm for an October evening. On the other side of Dorrance Street, police were shepherding herds of pedestrians
through the intersection. By the time I cut through Union Station to the Wall of Hope, an underpass to the park, it was clogged
with people stopping to admire the memorial of hand-painted tiles that decorated each wall of the tunnel. I was trying to
politely maneuver around a family with two double strollers when I heard the striking of a gong.

Suddenly, music filled the air. A haunting opera gave me chills despite the cotton sweater I wore. I followed the people ahead
of me into the park and pushed to the rail to look down on the water basin.

The river, which ran through the downtown to the bay, was narrow and still, so much like a canal that the effect was Venetian,
especially with the gondolas transporting tourists around. Five slim black boats slinked through the still water toward the
wood-piled braziers, which were maybe ten feet apart, up and down the entire length of the river. Each time the people aboard
these boats leaned out to light another brazier with a torch, a cheer erupted from the crowd. The lighting and applause created
their own path down the river.

I stood there, watching the flames, embers escaping and reflecting on the water, creating a mournful orange glow. The music,
piped into the air by unseen speakers, was moving and I felt the sadness of it in my bones. I missed Boston, and thought of
all the times I’d gone to hear the Pops on the Esplanade. In Boston, if I looked into a crowd like this long enough, I could
find someone I knew.

A young couple, arms slung around each other, stopped next to me along the rail to watch the procession of the boats. I thought
of Matt Cavanaugh, the feeling of his hand on my shoulder, the way he’d hesitated, as if there was something else he wanted
to say.