Read A Confidential Source Online
Authors: Jan Brogan
I immediately felt like an idiot. “Not anonymous, I guess. Confidential.”
“A confidential source?”
“Yes.”
“That you trust?” Something in her inflection told me to be wary.
I happened to glance down from the telephone and caught a glimpse of the bronze reporting award in the bottom drawer of my
desk. I thought about what Walter had said, about proving that the Tejian story was a onetime mistake. “I don’t trust anybody
until the information checks out.”
She gave a dry little laugh. “Meet me in the newsroom at four o’clock.”
Although Providence is a smaller city than Boston, the newsroom of the
Chronicle
was larger and better furnished than the
Ledger’s.
It was the same open-office layout—a sea of desks in the middle, with private cubicles along two walls—but the carpeting
was hotel grade instead of industrial, and the computers were brand new, with large, thin screens. Everything on the walls,
even the bulletin boards, was expensively framed.
When I’d first interviewed here, this upscale and oddly tasteful newsroom had comforted me, made me think that maybe my journalistic
progression from the
Ledger
to the
Chronicle
wasn’t such a big step down. And the editors had reiterated that point: The
Chronicle
Company was one of the last remaining family-owned papers in the country, not part of a chain. It had standards. High standards.
Reporters were expected to meet those standards.
Now, as I approached this newsroom, crowded and whirring with industry at four o’clock in the afternoon, I was determined
not to be intimidated by the furnishings or the standards. I had been a member of the investigative team at a much larger
newspaper in a much larger city. This was a good story. And timely. The referendum to legalize gambling was little more than
two weeks away.
I found Dorothy Sacks at her desk in City, on the phone. She waved to me, as if to say to sit down. I looked around. Every
chair was occupied by either an editor or a reporter deep in concentration before a computer screen, so I stood waiting in
the perimeter corridor between the last row of desks and the wall.
I studied one of the bulletin boards. The
Chronicle
had something it called a writing committee, which was a group of reporters who got together to decide what was the best
newspaper story of the month. The winner was posted on the bulletin board.
Carolyn had no use for the writing committee. She said it was made up of a bunch of artistes who put on French berets, drank
espresso, and hid in the cafeteria pretending they were existentialists. I took this to mean that none of her stories had
ever been nominated.
I studied last month’s winner. Jonathan Frizell had gotten an in-depth interview with the mayor after his top aide was charged
with taking kickbacks from a private tow operator who wanted city business. In response, the mayor had insisted that these
kinds of spurious charges were always leveled at city officials, and that in America, “people are innocent until proven guilty.”
The story captured the mayor in all his colorful good humor, but it was clear from the tone of the article that the
Chronicle
wasn’t buying any of it.
“We’re meeting in there,” Dorothy Sacks said. She was off the phone, standing and pointing in the direction of a small conference
room. I followed her down the aisle between desks to the small room, glassed in on three sides.
Dorothy gestured for me to take a seat at the conference table. She glanced first at a utilitarian-looking Timex on her wrist,
then over her shoulder into the newsroom. “Nathan and Marcy want to hear your idea. They should be here any minute.”
Nathan Goldstein was the managing editor who had liked my story. Marcy Kittner was the state editor in charge of the bureaus,
which made her Carolyn’s direct boss. As I peered through the glass and into the newsroom to see if they were coming, I noticed
several reporters leaning forward from their desks, trying to see in.
“Welcome to the Fishbowl,” Dorothy said.
“Loved your story,” said Nathan Goldstein. He walked with a slouch and muttered this praise without looking at me, tossing
a notebook on the conference table. I wasn’t even sure he was talking to me. But then, after seating himself at the far end
of the table, he looked up suddenly, his eyes small, bright arrows.
He was waiting for my reply.
“Thank you,” I said, probably too late.
Marcy didn’t say anything. She had taken the seat next to me and was now writing something on a pad of paper. She was wearing
a rose-scented perfume that was a little too much in this small, windowless room.
“Let’s hear about your tip,” Nathan said, with an expansive hand gesture that might have been an attempt to wave in some fresh
air.
I told him about the charity embezzlement and about my trip to Mohegan Sun, which confirmed that Barry was a compulsive gambler.
“My source says Mazursky told him he had to go to the street for loans to cover the embezzlement. He says Mazursky was a deadbeat
and a cheat. And that his murder was a hit, a message to all the other deadbeats out there.”
Nathan’s way of not looking directly at you made his response difficult to read. Marcy was transparent. “Please?” she asked.
This was a Rhode Island expression that meant, Excuse me? What? And in this case, Could I possibly be hearing right? “Didn’t
your profile about Mazursky talk about what a wonderful community volunteer he was?”
“It did,” I said, striving not to sound defensive. “This tip came in a few hours after deadline. By someone who knew the other
side of Barry—”
“Someone willing to go on the record?” Nathan asked.
I shook my head. “It’s a confidential source.”
Marcy gave Nathan a look. Theoretically, newspapers didn’t like the use of confidential sources. In practice, the
Chronicle
stories quoted confidential sources all the time.
“If you read her original story about the shooting, a hit makes sense,” Dorothy interjected. “Even when I was editing it,
it struck me; it all seemed so fast. And police are being incredibly tight-lipped. They haven’t even confirmed how much cash
was stolen.”
Nathan’s head tilted slightly, an indication that he was listening, but his eyes had dropped to a note he’d written himself
on a legal pad. “How much a part of the criminal investigation is she?” he asked Dorothy. “I don’t want her reporting if she’s
the prosecution’s key witness.”
“I’ve been told I’m very low level,” I said. “I was in the back of the store. Didn’t see it happen. Can’t make a credible
ID.”
That seemed to settle something for him. He made another note. “So what exactly do you propose?”
Unsure who he was addressing, Dorothy and I looked at each other. After a moment of confused silence, Nathan’s eyes darted
between us impatiently, as if wondering why the delay.
“I’d like to be put on special assignment to do an in-depth investigation,” I began. “See if I can get my hands on a credit
report and confirm Barry’s debt problems. Interview his wife—if she’ll talk to me, tell me if there were any threats. See
if she’s willing to go on the record about Barry’s gambling.…”
Nathan scribbled something on his legal pad.
“How do we know this source of hers is reliable and not just stringing us along?” Marcy asked Dorothy.
“Well, you never really know, do you?” Dorothy replied. “You always take some risk that you might waste time traveling up
the wrong road. It’s called the newspaper business.” To Nathan she said, “Hallie isn’t some neophyte. She won awards for her
investigative work at the
Ledger.
She knows she has to confirm everything independently.”
“How much time will
that
take?” Marcy asked.
“The story would have to run before the referendum. So we’re talking two weeks, on the outside.” Dorothy addressed this to
Nathan, who appeared to check this against the calendar in his Day-Timer.
On the other side of the dome of silence, I could see that several other reporters had gathered at the nearest desk and were
unabashedly watching our meeting. I wondered how many of these reporters’ pitches went on in a day, and if these spectators
had a betting pool on who got the assignments.
Marcy was not about to concede. “Shouldn’t Jonathan be following this? It’s not like I have so much staff I can spare to take
a reporter out of South County for a couple of weeks.”
“I’m short staffed because of all the referendum rallies. And Jonathan’s wrapped up in his own investigation.” Dorothy and
Nathan exchanged a meaningful look. Then she added, “Besides, Hallie was the on-scene reporter.”
They all nodded at this, and I guessed this was some sort of
Chronicle
policy—something along the lines of finders keepers, losers weepers. Finally, Marcy wrote something on her notepad, ripped
out the piece of paper, and pushed it across the table to Nathan. It appeared to be a list of names, possibly names of reporters
already committed to various assignments. He studied it thoughtfully and turned to Dorothy. “Stateside does have a manpower
issue.”
“We all have manpower issues,” Dorothy said matter-of-factly. “We still have to cover the news.”
Nathan considered Marcy’s list for another minute and slipped it into his legal pad. Then he capped his pen and used it to
scratch vigorously behind his ear. “Frankly, I’m not sure I see the point in directing any manpower at all to this story.”
He addressed this to Dorothy. “We run the real risk of defaming a dead man. Upsetting the family. Possible libel. For what?
Another story about a compulsive gambler? Who cares?”
Marcy practically gleamed in triumph. Dorothy looked struck.
I took a deep breath and could taste the rose scent of Marcy’s perfume on my teeth. “Billy Lopresti cares,” I heard myself
say.
All eyes shot up at once. Nathan halted in the middle of an ear scratch and used the pen to gesture to me to continue.
“My source is convinced that Lopresti is exerting pressure on the police force to stall this investigation until after the
referendum vote.”
Dorothy gave Nathan a piercing look, which did not escape Marcy’s attention. She narrowed her eyes, knowing she’d been left
out of the loop on something, and folded her arms, waiting for Nathan’s response. He studied the pen for a minute, as if there
were writing on the side he was trying to interpret, and then clasped it in the palm of his other hand. “Does your source
have any proof of this?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. “It’s just a tip. But as you know, Billy Lopresti has a lot riding on the referendum outcome, a lot of jobs
and contracts to dole out with the Pier Project. I’d need to work with the city hall reporter to flesh it out. Or someone
who can guide me to some good inner sources.”
“She could work with Jonathan,” Dorothy said quietly.
Nathan nodded, and I remembered what Dorothy had said earlier about Jonathan being already tied up with an investigation.
I began to understand the meaningful looks. Frizell must already be working on something that tied into Leonard’s theory about
Lopresti’s tight hold on the police department.
From the newsroom, I heard the whir of the copy machine and an editor shouting that he needed someone to write a cut line.
Nathan checked his watch, his expression suggesting that this meeting had already taken up too much time. “The first thing
I want to make clear,” he began, “is that I don’t care how many confidential or independent sources you have, this story doesn’t
get off the ground—not one word in print—until you get someone in Mazursky’s family to confirm that he had a gambling problem.”
I nodded to show I understood libel law and the very real threat of a lawsuit. Nathan’s gaze shifted from me to Marcy and
finally to Dorothy. His eyes remained on her, although the answer was meant for me. “All right, then. I’ll give you one week.”
I
T WAS MY
mother’s suggestion, actually. She’d been phoning me every day since I’d told her about the shooting, and she’d caught me
just as I walked into my apartment, Monday night.
“You’ve got to go to the funeral,” she said, referring to Barry.
“I’m not sure I can take a day off from work.”
“The wake, then.”
Sitting on a stool at my kitchen bar, I reached for the day’s paper, which lay open over several stacks of mail, and began
scanning the death notices. “It’s tonight,” I said, “the only viewing.”
“You’ve got to go,” my mother said. Elsbeth Ahern had never been much for psychology and she’d never utter a word like
closure,
but I knew, even if she didn’t, that was what she meant.
But she also meant I had a duty to go. My parents had both been very active in the community in Worcester, and I’d been raised
on mandatory attendance at wakes and funerals. My mother, a woman of both big heart and big grudges, kept a running list of
neighbors, friends, and relatives who’d failed to show up for wakes or funerals that everyone rightly expected them to attend.
The Linnehan Ryan Settles Riordan Funeral Home was in the neighborhood, on Waterman, three or four blocks away. It was a clear
October evening with a sky scrubbed clean by a cold front of Canadian air. I put on a funeral-appropriate winter jacket that
I had to take out of last year’s dry cleaner’s plastic and walked at a runner’s pace. I made it with twenty minutes to spare.
The parking lot was jammed with cars and minivans, so I’d expected a crowd inside—customers and curiosity seekers responding
to the news event—but there were only about a half dozen people. Three I recognized as customers from the store.
I’d been to more than a dozen different funeral homes and they all looked the same whether they were in Worcester, Boston,
or Providence. Neutral-tone rooms with high ceilings, dark, polished tables, and stiffly upholstered chairs that emphasized
that no matter how casual the lifestyle, death was a formal affair.