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WHEN HE FINISHED READING the story Richardson gave him, Dan McMurphy had a big smile on his face. “Great stuff, Jenna,” he said. “This is going to sell some papers. And it will cut into that big lead Fiore has in the polls. How much, remains to be seen. But now you’ll have everyone wondering whether Fiore got into this campaign because he believes in the issues he’s talking about or whether he’s just a shill for the Tarantinos to stop casino gambling. Yup, you’ve got a winner here, but we’re not quite ready to run with it yet.”

His last words put Jenna on her feet, and she reached for the story he was handing back to her. “Why not, Dan?” she asked. Her voice reflected her exasperation.

McMurphy just smiled. He understood how anxious a good reporter was to get a dynamite story into print. But he got paid to make sure it was the best it could be before it went to press. “Because I think you ought to take a day and see if there are any more loose ends out there,” he told her. “We know Fiore went to law school, and I seem to remember hearing that young Tarantino is also a lawyer. Take a look. See if it leads to anything else. Today’s Thursday. Let’s shoot for Saturday or Sunday.”

* * *

The first new connection came easy. Richardson put a call into the Rhode Island Bar Association. She learned from that office that Tarantino graduated from Boston University Law School in 1971 and became a member of the bar later that year. A call to the registrar’s office at BU elicited the information that Sandy entered as a second-year student, transferring from Columbia Law School.

As soon as she heard that, Jenna recalled that Fiore’s campaign literature included the fact that he obtained his law degree at Columbia. Within the hour, having to work her way from the clerk who answered her call, to the assistant registrar, and finally to the law school registrar himself, she confirmed what she already suspected: that the two of them resided at the same off-campus address during their only year together at Columbia.

Logic immediately took her to the next step, causing Jenna to wonder whether the Tarantino family used Walters, Cassidy & Breen as their lawyers. She assumed it was probably information the firm wouldn’t give out—the lawyer-client relationship thing—although she couldn’t see any harm in a law firm just answering “Yes” or “No” to that kind of question. Jenna remembered that lawyers often boasted in public or in their marketing brochures about particular clients they represented, especially if they were well-known industry leaders.

“If I don’t ask, I’ll never find out,” she whispered out loud. Moments later, she obtained the firm’s number from a local telephone operator and dialed it.

The receptionist who answered put her through to the billing department, as she requested. A clerk there listened to Richardson’s question and said she would transfer her to Janice Rossman, the office manager. When the connection was made, Jenna repeated what it was she was looking for.

“Let me check,” Rossman said, and called up the master client listing on her computer. “No, we’ve never represented anyone by the name of Salvatore Tarantino or any other Tarantino.”

“Do you have a listing under ‘241 Atwells Avenue Associates?’” Jenna asked.

“No, we don’t,” Rossman said moments later.

“Do you have anything at all that begins with the numbers ‘241’ or with ‘Atwells Avenue?’”

Again, after a long pause, the answer was negative. Richardson thanked her for looking.

“You know, it just occurred to me that I probably shouldn’t have given out that information without asking the managing partner if it was okay. Oh, well,” Rossman said, “have a nice day,” and hung up.

Jenna was disappointed but continued her search. She recalled that the Herald periodically published the names of all individuals or companies that contributed one hundred dollars or more to the candidates for the various offices. She tracked down the dates on which the financial supporters of the gubernatorial contenders were listed, and picked up copies of those papers in the library.

The Tarantinos, father and son, each sent $250 to the Fiore campaign during the primary, she discovered, and supplemented those donations with an additional $300 each before the end of September. Richardson was forced to conclude that their contributions were relatively small compared to the amounts received from many persons and businesses all over the State. She figured it was a dead end.

At that point she decided to forget Fiore for a while and spend some time fleshing out her story on Bruce Singer. Jenna liked him, and remembered vividly how his sincerity came through in each of the speeches she watched him give. Clearly though, he was far less charismatic than Fiore. She suspected that a number of voters would want to take a closer look at Singer once they read her article about the past connection between Fiore and Sandy Tarantino and considered its implications. She resolved to carefully consider and report everything she learned about the Democratic candidate and his campaign.

The personal aspects of Singer’s life were sprinkled throughout Richardson’s draft of his campaign style and oratory. It wasn’t until she almost finished writing it that the two years he spent in Vietnam after graduating from Brown University in 1970 suddenly meant a lot more to her. She wondered how Fiore and Tarantino managed to go directly on to law school after finishing their studies at Princeton in 1968 while Singer’s matriculation at Harvard Law was postponed by the draft until after his wartime service.

It was worth looking into, Jenna thought. Maybe I’ve got a draft dodger or two on my hands.

* * *

The Providence and Narragansett draft boards no longer existed, but their records and logs were available for inspection. At Providence City Hall, an unattractive granite building facing Kennedy Plaza, Richardson discovered that Sandy Tarantino was classified 1-A after graduating from college in 1968. She also learned that most other young men his age sharing that classification were inducted into the Army between June and December of that year.

Tarantino’s status, however, was changed to “Continue student deferment.” Jenna could find no letters addressed to the draft board from family, friends or clergy urging the deferment. But there were two notes of interest to explain what happened. The first, written in longhand on the bottom of the agency form, indicated that his father had no regular income, and that on becoming a lawyer Tarantino would be able to support his parents. Someone also wrote the words, “Defer, per A. B.” in the margin of the log next to Sandy’s name.

Jenna copied the documents she needed. Her follow-up search to locate the three men who were the draft board officials in Providence at the time took her back to the Herald library. She discovered their names in a book containing a series of legal appeals from some of the board’s decisions.

It took two hours of frustrating research on the telephone before she finally learned their status. One of the officials was dead. A second had moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1979. She located the Florida phone number and spoke to a housekeeper who was caring for the former official’s wife. The housekeeper informed her that the woman’s husband resided in an institution for Alzheimer’s patients. The status of the third draft board member offered some hope. He was in a nursing home in North Scituate, a 20-minute drive from the Herald.