Breach of Trust

by David Ellis

  Ridgeway paused, shooting another look at Hudzik.

  “He told you that the client gave the document to him,” Norm said, putting a hand on my arm. “So let’s go ahead and answer.”

  I thought for a moment, or more accurately, I pretended to think. “Okay,” I said. “Yes, I wrote it.”

  “Who told you to write it?”

  I shrugged. “It would have been a normal part of my job. I was an outside counsel to the PCB.”

  “Did anyone—well, here. Did anyone talk to you about your conclusions?”

  I shrugged again. “Not that I can remember. You mean, someone disagreeing with something I wrote?”

  “Or discussing your conclusions before you made them?”

  “Before I reached my conclusion?” I drew back. “You mean, like, telling me what to say?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I would quit first.” I explained to him, briefly, how it was my job to review the qualifications for winning bidders and to memorialize my conclusions in writing. I told him that we had a file on every bidder, including its history with the state, any previous lawsuits or other concerns related to their work, and the like.

  “After reviewing everything,” I said, “I reached my conclusion entirely on my own. One of the bidders that was DQ’d might disagree with it, but they always disagree, and they usually sue. But nobody whispered in my ear. Nobody told me to say this or that. I stand completely by what I’ve written here, and the decision was mine and only mine.”

  Ridgeway nodded, like that was what he expected me to say. “Okay, good enough. I appreciate you coming in.”

  I looked at my lawyer and back at Ridgeway. “That’s it?” I asked.

  Norm said, “This is why he came down here?”

  “Oh, you know how it goes,” said Ridgeway. “Gotta play out every string.”

  “What’s the string?” I asked. “I don’t like anyone questioning my integrity.”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like—” Ridgeway raised his hands. He looked at both of us, like he wanted to say more.

  “Any chance you can enlighten us?” Norm asked. “It doesn’t sound like there’s much to this.”

  Ridgeway let out a laugh. “That’s an understatement.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Brian. You brought us all the way down here.”

  Ridgeway paused, then out of the corner of his mouth, he said to Norm, “Off the record?”

  “Sure, of course.”

  “This guy who runs this state board—Connolly? Greg Connolly? You guys friends?”

  “Hardly knew him,” I said.

  “Well, my take? He’s one of these Johnny-come-lately crusaders. I mean, off the record.”

  “No problem,” said Norm. “Completely off the record.”

  “I think he didn’t like how he was treated over there, for some reason. So he comes to us and shows us this thing and tells us he wants to be a whistle-blower. He tells us there might be something screwy with this contract. What he didn’t tell us is that an outside lawyer had performed a legal analysis of the whole thing and signed off.” He nodded in my direction. “A lawyer who we know around here as being pretty good, even if some people are mad about the outcome of a particular case.”

  I thought he was laying it on a little thick. But as I thought about it, this guy was vouching for my credibility by referencing Hector’s trial. The feds thought that my word counted for something, he was telling Norm Hudzik, which of course would get back to Charlie. It would make me more valuable still.

  “Anyway,” Ridgeway said, “this guy Connolly, he’s something else. He wants to wear a wire and be the guy who shakes up the system. Meanwhile,” he said, nodding toward me, because he figured I already heard the news, “on his way home from work, Mr. Crusader likes to go over to Seagram Hill and get yanked off for five dollars a pop. He gets jumped out there and killed.”

  Norm, who of course knew of Connolly’s demise, feigned surprise.

  “So,” Ridgeway said, “not that there ever really was anything here, but with Connolly gone—I mean, I had to follow up. Now I have. Sorry for your troubles. You can keep the memo if you like. I won’t be needing it.”

  Norm Hudzik, for his part, bought in all the way. He was laughing that gregarious laugh of his as soon as we walked out of the federal building. “Ridgeway’s okay, like I told you,” he said. “They’ve got nothing, my boy. It’s a dead end. That memo you wrote locked it down, if there was any doubt. You want to tell Charlie, or should I? This will make his week.”

  “He’ll want to hear it from you,” I said.

  “Sure.” Hudzik eagerly agreed. Everyone likes delivering welcome news. It would give Hudzik the chance to embellish, to make himself the big hero in his version. “You’re a real ballbuster, y’know that, kid? ‘I’ll worry about little things like the attorney-client privilege.’ I love it.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “Be well, son.”

  When I got back to my office, I went down to Suite 410. I opened the door and found Lee Tucker. I could see he’d already heard from Brian Ridgeway. He had a big smile on his face.

  “They bought it,” I said. “I’m in.”

  “Ridgeway said you acted like an asshole.”

  “It came naturally.”

  Tucker drummed his fingers on the table and shook his head. “Well, let’s see what Mr. Cimino has to say.”

  WE DIDN’T HAVE TO wait long. I had dinner that night with Charlie. He was like a little kid, giddy with relief. As he now saw it, the murder of Greg Connolly was being chalked up as a garden-variety mugging in a very seedy part of town. The corruption probe, initiated by Greg Connolly, was a dead end. He would sleep well tonight.

  The pair of three-hundred-dollar bottles of Cabernet would help him sleep, too.

  “You were a real ballbuster, Norm said,” Charlie told me. “He said you gave that prosecutor an earful.” He winked at me. “I could learn to like you, kid.”

  I decided to say as little as possible, else I might screw something up with the mild buzz I was enjoying. It was becoming difficult to keep up with the layers of deception. The man with whom I was dining on New York strip steaks and expensive Cab was probably a killer. And he was now feeling at ease, courtesy of a fake interview with a federal prosecutor, in which my fake legal memorandum, used to perpetrate a fraud, was being used to exonerate the two of us.

  I didn’t know whom to trust. I just had to make sure I could keep trusting myself.

  “You’re the golden boy,” he said, slurring his words. “Norm said, when these guys saw your name on the memo, they figured everything was on the up-and-up. You bought yourself some credibility with Hector’s case.”

  I could see that our little charade in the U.S. attorney’s office had worked perfectly.

  “But this thing we have,” Charlie went on, “better we stop it, all the same. No point in pushing our luck.”

  It’s what I expected Charlie to say. The heat was off as far as he knew, but Charlie had been very close to the flame and hadn’t enjoyed it. He’d be back someday, in his mind, but he was still feeling the aftereffects and would stay on the sidelines for the foreseeable future. If he hadn’t suggested we abort our current scheme, I would have done so. But better that it was his idea.

  “I told Maddie she can use you.”

  I looked at him. “Madison Koehler?”

  “Yeah, that position she offered you, right?” He leaned into me with typical intoxicated bluntness. “Didn’t think I knew about that? Well, I know you stiff-armed her, but go ahead and do it. It’ll be good for you.”

  Translation: It would be good for him. He’d get the finder’s credit on Jason Kolarich, I figured. I told Maddie she can use you. I was still his guy, but he was loaning me out.

  “Help ’em work the system,” Charlie said. “He gets elected to a full term, we can really make us some dough. There’s a fuckin’ sea of money out there for us, Jason. A sea of it.”
r />   Not where you’re going, I wanted to say. I wanted to ask him if he felt the least bit bad about Greg Connolly’s death. I wanted to reach over the table and smack the drunken grin off his face. But I was still in role. I could down a bottle of wine and stay in role. I could be tied up, with a gun pointed at me and a knife about to slice off my finger, and stay in role.

  I had found my calling. I was a liar. A fake. A pretender. And now, for my final act, I was going to help take down a sitting governor.

  THE GOVERNOR

  March 2008

  64

  CHRIS MOODY STOOD BEFORE A POSTER BOARD THAT looked exactly like the kinds of flow charts the FBI used for organized crime, or we at the county attorney’s office used to make for the street-gang hierarchy. In this case, the chart bore the heading KITCHEN CABINET, and it listed the people closest to Governor Carlton Snow.

  “Madison Koehler, chief of staff,” said Chris Moody. “You’ve already made her acquaintance. She’s run several political campaigns around the country. Moved here to work on the mayor’s last race. Governor Snow hired her when they took the ‘lieutenant’ off his title and he knew he’d be running for a full term. Divorced, one kid in college. She’s tough. She doesn’t suffer incompetence or disloyalty. She fires people all the time, in fact.”

  “Point being,” Lee Tucker said, “play nice with her or you’ll be out on your ass and no good to anybody.”

  They knew, presumably from Greg Connolly, that Madison had propositioned me for this job but they didn’t know the breadth or scope of that encounter. They didn’t know that I’d seen Madison Koehler perform feats of gymnastic agility that would make women half her age green with envy.

  Below Madison, there were several people on the same level. “Brady MacAleer,” said Moody, pointing to the name in the first square. “‘Mac’ or ‘Brady Mac.’ Chief of government administration. Grew up on the north side of the city. He ran a labor union and then went to work for the city clerk’s office under Snow. Followed him to the lieutenant governor’s office. Always a paid position, always hard to pin down what it was he did to earn that paycheck. He’s one of the operators. Favors and fixes, they like to say.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, specifically. Moody seemed to pick up on my reaction.

  “Fundraising. Jobs for cronies. Side deals for contributors. Opposition research. Not a lot different from Cimino, except Cimino has outside wealth. Brady Mac is no financier. You’ll probably deal with him a lot. Especially with Cimino cooling his heels a bit.”

  “Got it.”

  “Next: William Peshke. ‘Pesh’ to everybody. His title is ‘special adviser to the governor.’ That’s just an excuse to get him a six-figure salary on the government’s dime. He’s the policy guy. He’s known Governor Snow since college. He wanted to be running the campaign. He doesn’t get along so well with Madison Koehler but the governor likes him. So there’s a turf battle there.”

  “Okay.”

  After Brady MacAleer and William Peshke were three names I recognized. Greg Connolly, now deceased. Charlie Cimino. And Hector Almundo.

  Moody paused only briefly over Connolly’s name. “All respect to the dead, the way we saw it, Greg was just riding coattails. He didn’t provide much value. He ran that board, but he just followed orders. Charlie, obviously—but we don’t expect much from him, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. “But you never know. I’m not sure he can help himself. I’m not sure he can stay away for long.”

  “Our thinking as well,” Moody said. “Either way, we expect him to stay close to the action. You stay away too long, they forget about you, that kind of thing.”

  I fully concurred in that assessment. Charlie was looking at me as one of his guys, and that’s why it was so important to him that I be near the action, if he couldn’t be.

  I looked at the final name. Hector Almundo.

  “You and I would have different opinions on this one,” said Moody.

  I wasn’t so sure about that. My take on Hector Almundo probably didn’t vary all that much from the federal government’s view. I assumed they were right when they alleged that Hector had orchestrated that shakedown by the Columbus Street Cannibals for campaign contributions. I was relatively sure, in fact, that Hector would shake down his own mother if it suited his purposes.

  “Why’s he a part of this inner circle?” I asked. I’d had my own thoughts on this question. But I wanted to hear Moody’s.

  He shook his head. “A Latino face for the Latino voters, I guess? Politics is not my game,” he added, using a tone he might normally reserve for mass murderers.

  “We don’t know,” said Lee Tucker. “Chris’s guess is a pretty good one. He’ll be out front getting out the vote in his community. He’s not the brightest of the bunch.”

  “He’s a political animal,” said Moody. “But his utility to the governor? Not clear.”

  “Why does Snow need help with the Latino vote?” I asked. “I thought that was a reliable Democratic voting bloc.”

  Moody shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. But even if that’s true, there’s the primary.”

  Right. That was a good point. Carlton Snow still had to win a primary. The secretary of state, a Democrat named Willie Bryant, was seeking the nomination as well. He had some money and he had name recognition. But nobody had ever called him Governor.

  “Do you know what they have in mind for me?” I asked.

  Moody took a seat. I could see that the answer was no. “Greg Connolly—you can probably imagine—he wasn’t the world’s greatest informant. He let on like he knew every step the governor took, but we were pretty sure he was left out of some of the meetings. The truth is,” he said, like it was a concession, “until you, we weren’t making much headway.”

  I imagined that the federal government had entertained high hopes for Mr. Gregory Connolly, being one of the governor’s oldest friends. Seems that what they got instead was a tag-along, a hanger-on. He was perfect for the role he served in the administration, a loyal follower who wielded power over the awarding of state contracts exactly in the manner he was dictated. But dictated by whom? Charlie Cimino, to be sure—but the feds were hoping the direction came from higher.

  “Greg couldn’t put the governor next to all those bogus contracts, could he?” I asked. “All the stuff the PCB and Charlie were doing. You can’t link the governor to any of that, can you?”

  Moody paused. He hadn’t been particularly good about sharing. I understood his thinking to a point. I’d worked with undercovers. Sometimes, it’s better they not know certain things. I would be cross-examined heavily at Charlie’s trial. Everything that Chris Moody, Lee Tucker, and I discussed would be fair game. The less information I had from the feds, the better. But there were limits.

  “Listen, guys,” I said, “you’re going to have to be a little more forthcoming with me. You didn’t tell me Greg Connolly was your guy, and it could have cost me my life. You want me to do this, I’ll do it, but I need to know what you know and what you have in terms of people and resources. I need to know that.”

  Moody looked over at Tucker, but this was Moody’s call. Our relationship had defrosted a little over the last week. We’d lost an informant, and that wasn’t something they took lightly. And now I was volunteering to keep going at considerable risk to my ability to continue breathing.

  Moody nodded to Lee Tucker, who left the room. That made sense. Lee Tucker would be a witness at trial. He’d be an especially valuable witness if I somehow didn’t survive through trial. So it was better that Lee not be a part of this conversation, on which he could be cross-examined.

  “Start with informants,” I said.

  “Just you,” Moody said. “You and Connolly. Now just you.”

  “Bugs,” I said.

  Moody shook his head. “We had a bug in Greg Connolly’s office with his consent. He locked the door when he wasn’t in there. We tapped his cell phone with his consent. He was the only one wh
o used that phone. That’s it, Counselor.”

  “Wires,” I said.

  “F-Birds,” Moody answered. “You and Connolly.”

  “Tell me what you have on these guys so far.”

  Moody pushed himself out of his chair. “If Greg Connolly could put Governor Snow, or Madison Koehler, or any of those people next to those shady contract awards, you think I’d let you risk your life going in there?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He watched for a beat before a reluctant smile emerged on his face. “Greg was a talker. A blowhard. He answered to Cimino. Not the governor. Not the chief of staff. He talked a good game to us, but he couldn’t give us anyone else. We had some decent stuff on Cimino before you arrived and now we have Cimino over a barrel, thanks to you. I still have half a mind to pinch him right now and see if he wants to deal. At least I won’t lose another cooperator.”

  That cooperator being me. I was glad to see he was viewing me as a statistic on his scorecard, as opposed to, say, a living, breathing human being.

  “I don’t have them,” he concluded, drawing circles on the desk with his finger. “Not the governor or anyone else. Just a gut call—which I’d take to my grave, by the way—that there was no way Charlie Cimino and Greg Connolly were doing all this stuff without the governor’s knowledge.” He looked up at me. “You don’t think Cimino would deal with us?”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe eventually. I mean, most of them do eventually, right? But his initial reaction would be to tell you to go scratch, so you’d have to arrest him and make it public, and everyone would clam up. Down the road, looking over the charges and counting the number of months he’ll spend in the pen, he might decide to cooperate and finger the governor, but you’d have no tapes, no anything but Cimino’s word against the governor’s. And they’d hire a lawyer like me and argue that Cimino and Connolly were doing this stuff for personal enrichment, getting side consulting contracts and hoping to curry favor with the governor without his direct knowledge of what they were doing. The governor would do the classic ostrich defense and even if you got an ostrich instruction—which I’m not sure a judge would give you here—the defense would have a strong argument. Cimino’s damaged goods, looking at twenty years in the pen, versus the word of public officials who have no record. That, Christopher, is why you need me.”