A Confidential Source (31 page)

The world spun in my peripheral vision, leaves blew around my feet. “Leonard Marianni,” I said softly.

She asked me to spell it for her. I also gave her the phone number of the radio station, which I knew by heart. I turned back
to the EMT. “He’s going to be all right? Right?”

“We’re doing our best,” the EMT replied. Not a prognosis, just something he’d said a hundred times before. But he took a second
to give me a hopeful look that made me think it might all work out. Someone else snapped the back doors shut and I was left
standing with Officer Toland on the sidewalk as the ambulance peeled away, its lights already flashing.

After a failed attempt to get through to a human at the radio station, Officer Toland asked if I knew of any other way to
contact Leonard’s family. I was numb and cold, and wanting to do something that could help. Remembering the pictures of the
nephews on Leonard’s refrigerator and the Rolodex on his kitchen counter, I offered to show her where he lived in Bristol.

“You have a key to his apartment?” Toland asked.

I remembered what Leonard had said the night before about the extra key hidden in the door molding and nodded.

Glancing at her watch, she asked me to wait a minute, went back to her cruiser, and consulted with someone by phone. When
she returned, she asked if she could follow me to the complex. By the miracle of my reserve tank, we made it there.

The apartment complex looked lonelier than I remembered: plain brick buildings with very little landscaping and almost no
grass. I guided Officer Toland through the maze of buildings to the alleyway that led to Leonard’s building. On one of the
second-floor balconies, someone was drying towels on a makeshift clothesline. They flapped like crazy in the wind.

A lone woman carrying an Apex shopping bag was walking out of Leonard’s building and held the outer door for us. Inside, I
stood on my toes and felt above the door frame for the key, trying to act like I let myself into Leonard’s apartment all the
time. Luckily, I easily found the key behind a loose piece of molding.

I took Officer Toland directly into the kitchen. Through the glass slider, I spotted the U-shaped bicycle lock still clinging
to the corner post of the balcony. An image of the mangled bike rose in my head and I had to stop, take a breath, and tell
myself that Leonard was going to be all right. He would probably be conscious by the time I got to the hospital.

But then, as I turned to the refrigerator, I saw that the photograph of the nephews and the sister was gone from the door.
The Rolodex had been knocked off the counter, and half of the little cards were scattered all over the floor. When I bent
to pick them up, I found the photograph underneath the kick plate of the refrigerator.

Behind Toland, I saw that one of the counter drawers had been left slightly open, and I got a tight feeling in my chest. Had
someone been in the apartment? Toland’s expression suggested that she didn’t notice anything odd.

“You can kind of tell he’s a bachelor,” she said, with a roll of her eyes.

“It was a lot neater the last time,” I said, my eyes scanning everything now, trying to remember how it had looked the last
time I was here. My impression had been of pathological cleanliness that bordered on sterility, but maybe that was just in
contrast to my own apartment. Maybe I was overreacting. So far, there’d been no signs of forced entry.

I decided to check the rest of the apartment before I said anything to Officer Toland. “I’m pretty sure his sister’s name
is Ellen, and he said she lives in Connecticut,” I said, handing her the photograph and a stack of address cards from the
Rolodex and excusing myself to use the bathroom.

As I walked through the living room, I saw that one of the decorative pillows was on the floor and one of the back cushions
was pulled away from the couch. A wide-screen television system, DVD player, and several additional shelves of expensive-looking
electronics were untouched in an elaborate wall system, but a magazine had been knocked off the coffee table. I started down
the hallway. I’d never seen the master bedroom before, but something told me Leonard would not leave his nightstand drawer
hanging open. I made a quick check of the bedroom windows. They were both locked tight.

In the spare room, done up as a study, the desk drawers were all pulled open and there were folders and notebooks scattered
on the floor. A bronze wastebasket was upside down, with crumpled papers beside it and tape sticking to the carpeting.

My stomach made a quarter turn. Someone had been searching for the cassette.

Looking down, I saw my name on a crumpled piece of paper on the floor. I picked it up.

“Hallie, listen to this carefully. You’ll forgive me.”

The next line was crossed out. Then:

“If this doesn’t nail”

The note broke off here, unfinished. I put it in my pocket and scoured the floor for another, more complete version, but found
none. I thought about Leonard’s phone call last night:
Don’t worry, Hallie, I promise you that I’m not going to let you down again.

“I think I got it!” Toland shouted from the kitchen. I walked softly into the bathroom. Then I flushed the toilet and closed
my eyes, struggling to breathe slower, think clearly. If someone had found the tape and read this note, they would know Leonard
had been intending to give me the story.

“You said she lives in Connecticut?” Toland asked.

“Yes!” I shouted through the door.

I ran the water in the sink, trying to figure out what to do. Should I tell Toland that I thought the apartment had been searched?
What would Leonard want me to do?

I still hadn’t seen any signs of forced entry. No open windows, cracked storms, or broken screens. And the electronic equipment
hadn’t been stolen. If I told the police that the apartment had been ransacked, they’d start asking me all sorts of questions.
Like what intruders had been searching for. Where Leonard had gotten the tape. Why critical evidence was being withheld from
the police. I was pretty sure that was considered its very own crime. I decided that the best thing was to go to the hospital
first, see what kind of condition Leonard was in. If he’d regained consciousness, I’d ask him what he wanted me to do.

Back in the kitchen, Toland had an index card in her hand that she wanted to show me. Leonard had written “Ellen,” with no
last name. Several addresses were crossed out and a Connecticut address scribbled in. Four different phone numbers suggested
a close, communicative relationship. “I’m pretty sure that’s her,” I said.

Although anxious to get to the hospital, I had to wait for Toland to finish her call. Pacing the small kitchen with the receiver
pressed against her ear, she looked uncomfortable waiting for someone to answer, and I was struck again by how young she looked.
But I was surprised by how mature and experienced she sounded once she got Leonard’s sister on the phone. Keeping an even,
no-nonsense tone, she suggested that family members get to the hospital as soon as possible, but she did not speak in a way
to incite hysteria.

I gave Toland my phone number, in case she had more questions, and left her to lock up. Racing to my car, I slammed my key
into the ignition, twisting it so fast that it locked midway. Calm, I told myself. Control. I turned the key again. The engine
turned. I forced myself to back out of the space slowly, carefully.

The world around me grew sharper, clearer, as I forged ahead. Adrenaline pumped me to the closest gas station where I bought
$5 worth of fuel. As I waited for the tank to fill, I said a prayer that Leonard would pull through. Then I snapped the gas
cap back on and drove as fast as I could to Rhode Island Hospital.

For such a big hospital, the emergency room waiting area was small and looked as if it had been set up to discourage contact.
Receptionists were practically hidden within smoked-glass booths and patients were called into closetlike offices with thick
oak doors that shut behind them. At the far end of the room, I spotted a nurse standing at what looked like a triage desk,
but it was behind an observation window. The door to this area was locked.

I knocked on the glass to get the nurse’s attention, startling a man nearby lying on a stretcher. Frowning, the nurse walked
to the door and opened it a crack.

“Is Leonard Marianni conscious yet?” I asked her.

“Are you his wife?”

“A friend.”

“I’m sorry. I have to wait for the family. It shouldn’t be too much longer.” She gestured toward the rows of chairs in the
waiting room and backed away from the door, letting it lock.

I hung at the window for a few more minutes, scanning the faces of patients on stretchers, none of them Leonard. A teenage
girl propped herself up on her elbows and twisted toward the window, looking beyond me for someone in the waiting room. She
looked bored, irritated to be here. How I hoped Leonard’s injuries were like hers, an annoyance: stitches over the brow, a
cast for the ankle or forearm.

I sat down in the middle of a row of chairs, staring intermittently from the television set to an illuminated ad for the hospital
featuring several competent-looking doctors and nurses standing together in team formation. The slogan read: “It Isn’t Just
Our Technology That’s State of the Art.” I felt a yearning somewhere in my stomach, wanting to believe those doctors and nurses
were all determined to save Leonard, to wake him up, make him well. With a little good technology and good care, he’d be home
in no time.

There were a couple of phones near the entryway door and it occurred to me that I should call the paper and tell Dorothy about
the accident. Accident? I found myself scoffing at my own choice of words. My heart began beating rapidly. I kept imagining
that silver sedan lying in wait for Leonard, following him from his apartment, driving him into the tree. I didn’t care whether
there were skid marks or not.

I was standing at the phone searching my bag for a quarter when a small, dark-haired woman with a lot of jewelry walked in
with an elderly woman who had been crying. Even from this distance, I could see the resemblance. Leonard’s sister and mother.

I turned, openly staring as they approached the first window. The receptionist stood up and gestured for them to continue
to the other door, where they were whisked into the treatment area. The paper could wait. I sat down on the nearest seat.
About ten minutes later, they reappeared. Both women were crying and clutching each other.

I knew that expression, which had been on my own face twice in my life. I couldn’t bring myself to approach them, to verify,
or to offer sympathy. But I knew. I felt it in the same hollow space that had yearned so badly for everything to be okay.
There was no more point in yearning, or praying, or putting desperate faith in a hospital billboard. It was over. Leonard
was dead.

I returned to my car and sat there behind the wheel, unable to move. Across the parking lot and a mass of construction, I
could see the entrance to the emergency room and found myself staring at the four ambulances parked side by side. Others would
be rushed in, unloaded on stretchers. Others with much worse injuries, with cardiac arrests and hemorrhages, would be whisked
behind that glass window. They would be treated by those competent-looking doctors in the ad and would survive. Why not Leonard?

The nurse had not wanted to answer any of my questions, but I could tell by her expression, her hand gestures, her silence
that she considered it strange, medically baffling even, the same way my brother Sean’s death had seemed. Minutes dissolved
into a thick, gray background. I finally became aware of how cold it was in the car. When I looked up, the afternoon had become
a grim evening and my fingers were numb on the steering wheel.

I started the car and turned on the heat, waiting to feel blood in my feet and toes. Slowly, anger began to heat through the
shock. Leonard’s death wasn’t a freak accident. Someone had murdered him. Probably the same someone who had followed him last
night in the silver sedan. The someone who had searched his apartment. The someone who’d threatened to kill me.

On Eddy Street, I stopped at the first gas station that had a phone booth. After a few transfers, my call finally reached
Dorothy. She told me the East Bay bureau reporter had already gotten the details on the accident from police.

“It wasn’t an accident,” I said.

“How would you know?” she asked.

I offered her the abbreviated explanation: When I’d interviewed Leonard Marianni at the vote-no rally in Narragansett, he’d
told me about the audiotape from Drew Mazursky. The tape spelled out the reasons for Barry’s murder.

There were a couple of seconds of silence then. “You know, Hallie, Leonard has always been known for blowing things sky-high,
for trying to manipulate the news.”

“I know. I know, but there’s more.” I told her about the counterfeit scratch ticket I’d bought at Barry’s, about my suspicion
that Matt had been involved in a long-term investigation involving the market.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier today?”

I explained that I wanted to have all my facts together, that I was on my way to meet Leonard and then had stumbled upon the
accident scene. I added that I’d gone to his apartment and that it looked like it had been searched.

“Did you tell any of this to police?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

There was another silence. She didn’t urge me to come forward, drive to Barrington and spill it all to police, though she
must have thought about it. There was calculation, an exhale, and a swift change of tack. “I hate to wait a day on this counterfeit-ticket
story. How sure are you that there’s a connection?”

“I know there’s a connection,” I said.

“Jesus. You think there’s a copy of that tape anywhere? Any other place it could be?”

I thought suddenly of the brown cardboard box in Leonard’s studio, his archive. “Maybe.”

“What exactly did Leonard say was on this tape?”