by David Ellis
Hector held out his hands, like he was displaying himself to me. “You think I’m just some peon? You know I’m going to be the first Latino lieutenant governor?”
I drew back. “You’re not running for lieutenant governor.”
“I’m not running.” He looked away in disgust. Then he leaned into me. “Mickey Diedman’s going to win guv lite, and when Barack or Hillary becomes president, Carl’s going to get Mickey on the federal bench and appoint me as the replacement.”
All of this was news to me. Having become more attuned to politics of late, I was certainly aware that a downstate county prosecutor, Michael Diedman, was running for lieutenant governor as a Democrat and appeared to be the favorite. It was not exactly an unusual path from county attorney to federal judge. Had some deal been struck?
“Wow, that’s great,” I said, only because Hector’s ego seemed to be suffering and I thought it was what he wanted to hear.
“Yeah, so tell that to all those assholes in there. Madison, Peshke, Mac—you think any of them have ever been elected to anything? No, they don’t have the balls. They just stay behind the scenes while we go out there and take the fucking hits. Then they look at me like I’m some fucking puppy dog they have to pat on the head.” He squirmed in his seat, really working himself up now. “Who do you think Carl listens to more than anybody? They think I’m just a fly on the wall but who does Carl listen to the most? Who tells him what to do?”
“You,” I gathered.
“Me. Fuckin-a right, me.” He patted his chest. “You see me tonight? You think I can’t work up a crowd like he can? I’m going to be the first Latino lieutenant governor and then I’m going to be the first Latino governor. They think I’m just some brown face they can parade in front of the Mexicans? Fuck them. Fuck all of them.”
“Hector—”
“Look at what I got for my public service. I got fucking indicted, that’s what I got. I didn’t do anything different from anyone else. But me? The Latino politician? No, the Latino, they can’t have him in power. They have to take him down.”
He took another long sip of his fresh drink, his hand trembling. I’d heard this angle from Hector on occasion, this racial thing. I had my doubts; I thought federal prosecutors were equal-opportunity hunters when it came to politicians. But then again, I was a white Catholic boy. I’d never walked in his shoes. And the persecution complex is a natural reaction when the government comes after you, justly or otherwise. It stops being about what you did to get their attention; it becomes how bloodthirsty they are in their quest to catch you.
“Joey Espinoza fucked you,” I said again, letting him gain momentum, because I sensed something here.
“Joey Espinoza.” He had a physical reaction to the name, spilling some of his drink. “Let me tell you something about Joey Espinoza. I mean, now that it’s over.”
I steeled myself. I didn’t know what was coming next. And I couldn’t control it. I had a recorder in my pocket that would pick up this entire thing. I’d been trying to protect Hector from the feds out of a sense of loyalty to a former client. But I had a number of puzzle pieces that I hadn’t fit together yet, and one of the biggest was Joey Espinoza. FeeBee or not, I needed to hear this.
“I mean, you’re not my lawyer anymore, but you’re still my guy. I mean, am I right or am I wrong? Are you my guy?”
That, of course, was how someone like Hector saw the world. It was like a damn Godfather movie, kissing the ring, pledging fealty to a master. Hector didn’t need to know that our conversation would be protected by the attorney-client privilege. In fact, he was going to tell me something that he wouldn’t tell me when I was sworn to professional secrecy. No, where he sat, being his “guy” was a more sacred bond than being his attorney. He just needed to hear me say it.
“Of course, I’m your guy,” I said.
79
“YEAH, YOU PROBABLY ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW.” Hector chuckled, drained his drink, and reached for the decanter for another refill. He was pretty far in the tank by now, and it had loosened his tongue considerably.
“This fucking guy, Joey,” he said. “You think that guy could spell his name without me?”
Actually, I did. Espinoza had always seemed like a smooth operator. That didn’t necessarily require a high IQ, but he seemed intelligent enough from my observation.
“He couldn’t come up with an idea like the Cannibals. You think he could figure out something like that?”
“It was your idea,” I said.
Hector took a drink and licked his lips, took a breath. “I didn’t think they were going to muscle people. I figured they wouldn’t have to. Just them asking would be enough.”
That stood to reason, I guess. A gangbanger wouldn’t have to come out and explain the consequences of noncompliance. A simple request for a monthly street tax—or political contribution to Hector—followed by a sinister grin, would probably get the job done.
“And if anything ever blew back, you could just deny it,” I said. “Chalk it up to the Columbus Street Cannibals exercising some street advocacy, without your knowledge.”
He smiled at the summary. He wasn’t going to come out and say it. “And all I asked was that Joey set it up. He couldn’t even do that.” He wagged his finger at me. “I gave that kid everything. Shit, I’m still giving to that cocksucker, even after what he did to me.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I had an idea. “You mean Charlie giving Joey’s wife a job. I saw her at Charlie’s office once.”
Hector nodded. “Six figures,” he said. “Six figures and all Lorena does is show up and polish those long fucking nails of hers. The job is hers until Joey gets out.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why do that for Joey?”
“Because Joey sticks his nose—hold on.” Hector reached into his pocket and looked at his cell phone. “Ah, shit. Hang on.” He opened his phone and lowered his voice. “Dame un minuto, querido. Te veré pronto.”
Hector closed the phone and placed it in his suit pocket. “Ah, I’m drunk.” The momentum had broken. I just had him on the verge of an explanation.
“Don’t leave me hanging, Hector,” I said, as he began to move toward the limo door.
“I don’t want to talk about that anymore,” he said, grunting as he bent down to step out into the cool night air. Since I was his “guy,” that meant I was supposed to accept that decision without comment. “C’mon, Carl wants us up there.”
Dame un minuto, querido, he’d said to whoever had called him. Te veré pronto. My summer studying in Seville hadn’t gone for naught. Give me a minute, dear. I’ll see you soon. Hector had been talking to someone he cared about.
“Vámonos,” Hector called to me.
I pulled up alongside him and we got in the elevator. I didn’t get what I wanted, but at least now, I’d have an opening in the future to raise the topic again.
Peshke answered the door to the suite when we knocked, talking in his earpiece to someone and holding a glass of champagne in the other. The governor was out of his suit, wearing an oxford and blue jeans. The governor pointed at me when I walked in. “Jason, quick—the center fielder for the ’seventy-six Yankees?”
“Mickey Rivers,” I said.
The governor waved a hand toward Brady Mac. “That’s one of the easiest questions ever. I mean, that was before free agency changed everything, Mac.”
In one corner of the suite, Madison Koehler and Charlie Cimino were having a more serious conversation. Madison seemed to be dishing out and Charlie receiving. I couldn’t imagine about what; Charlie had largely relegated himself to the sidelines since his brush with law enforcement. He saw me out of the corner of his eye and motioned me toward him.
“Madison and I were just discussing that some of the contractors we contacted about contributions haven’t ponied up yet,” he said. “We were thinking another phone call from you would be in order. Remind them of their commitment and their nice fat state contract that they wa
nt to keep.”
It was true—some of the contractors still hadn’t paid the extortion money to preserve their current contractual relationship with the governor’s office. But the vast majority of them had, and given how spooked Charlie had become after learning that Greg Connolly was wearing a federal wire, and his subsequent decision to lie low, I figured we would let those few stragglers go.
I guess the little charade that we’d orchestrated with my visit to the U.S. attorney’s office with Charlie’s handpicked lawyer, Norm Hudzik, had convinced Charlie that the feds had no idea what he and I had been up to. That, and his overall greed and desire for maximum credit with Governor Snow, made him eager to squeeze every single dollar of campaign contributions out of his schemes.
“You want me to call them and remind them we can pull their contracts if they don’t pony up?” I asked. It was a bit on the nose, I thought, once it came out of my mouth.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Madison with her typical sweetness. “Or do you have a moral objection again?”
Close enough, I figured, for Chris Moody’s purposes. Madison Koehler had just directed me to use interstate wires for the purpose of coercing campaign contributions, which probably made her a co-conspirator in the shakedowns Charlie and I had performed for the last two months.
And now I had an opening to raise a subject I’d been wanting to tap, the whole reason I was doing this damned undercover work.
“Not a moral objection,” I said. “It’s just that, after Greg Connolly, I wasn’t sure if we wanted to keep a lower prof—”
“What about Greg Connolly?” Madison’s head snapped in my direction. “What does he have to do with this?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing,” said Charlie. “He just means, after Greg died, we—we were worried—y’know, that maybe they might investigate him or something.”
“For getting a blowjob on Seagram Hill and then getting jumped? What does that have to do with us?” Madison looked alternatively at Charlie and me. She seemed genuinely puzzled.
Genuinely so. I like to think I can read a lie, and she wasn’t lying. She didn’t know, I decided. She didn’t know the truth about Greg Connolly. She didn’t know how he’d really died, and she didn’t know that he’d been wearing a wire for the feds.
Wow.
“Forget about Greg,” said Charlie. “He has nothing to do with this.”
Madison wasn’t following, but she also didn’t care. “Collect on that money,” she said.
Madison stalked off, and Charlie shot me a look. “The fuck are you doing?” he whispered.
“I thought she knew,” I said. “The thing with Greg?”
“She knows what I fucking let her know,” he said. He was whispering but also drawing in close to me, practically speaking into FeeBee. “No, she doesn’t know.”
“Well, maybe if you’d tell me who does know, I could avoid putting my foot in my mouth.”
“Another way is you just don’t mention it, period, smart guy.”
Charlie broke away. He was angry. I was surprised. Madison Koehler didn’t know that Greg Connolly had been exposed as an undercover informant? She didn’t know that he’d been murdered? I hadn’t thought that was possible. I’d thought everything went through her. I’d been working under the assumption that she was a part of this whole thing.
“Hey, all the secret stuff in the corner!” Governor Snow was calling out to us. “How about you join the party already?”
I returned to the fold, to the group sitting in the main area of the suite. Hector and Peshke and Madison were arguing about what to do with the abortion bill, the thing about parental notification for teenagers. The governor would have to sign it or veto it in the next forty-eight hours.
“I’m with Maddie,” said Hector. “Veto it. You’re pro-choice, Carl. Act like it.”
“You can be moderately pro-choice.” Peshke was sounding like a broken record. “Sign it and neutralize the topic during the primary. You still own the abortion issue in the general.”
The governor looked bored with the discussion. He nodded at Charlie, who was now joining us. “Hey, Ciriaco,” he said, using his formal name, “what’s with your guys not paying? Maddie says we’re still short about a hundred and fifty thousand from your people?”
“Working on it, Governor.”
“Well, can you work on it some more?”
“Yes, sir.”
I channeled Christopher Moody, wondering if these statements got him anything. By themselves, I thought, they didn’t. This was the second time they’d have the governor on tape talking about what Charlie and I had done. The first time, the governor had just told me that he’d heard I did a good job. And this second reference just now, a little closer to the fire but still not on the nose. Still no admission. Neither of his statements indicated that he knew precisely the nature of what we’d been doing—the illegality, the extortion. For all anyone would know, the governor was just talking to a fundraiser about fundraising.
It would produce more than one clenched jaw in the U.S. attorney’s office. The governor, without knowing it, was walking on a tightrope and constantly threatening a misstep, but thus far had managed to stay upright. He’d referenced a few of our schemes—George Ippolito; the jobs in his administration; and Charlie’s and my shakedown—but never with any admission that he knew we were doing something illegal.
The only thing he’d come out and said that would be illegal, as I thought about it, was his suggestion the other day that we shake down the pro-choice groups for a hundred thousand each in exchange for his veto of the parental-notification abortion bill. And I hadn’t heard him mention it again. I had no idea if that was even a “go.”
Someone pulled a television front and center. We started watching campaign commercials the governor was planning to air in the last days of the primary. Some of them were the stars-and-stripes positive ones; more of them were negative ads that showed unflattering photos of Secretary of State Willie Bryant with sinister background music and assorted innuendo and spin.
After debating the merits of various ads and strategizing over the amount of ad buys in the various television markets over the coming days, the group was flattened and drunk, with much to do tomorrow. Everyone got up to retire, either to the hotel suites or to home.
I looked over at Madison, who’d been sitting next to me and was now preparing to exit. I was still rattled by the realization that she didn’t know about Greg Connolly. She’d seemed like the puppet master behind everything. I’d been sure she was a part of the decision to eliminate Greg, that something like this wouldn’t have happened without her sign-off.
Now, to my continued amazement, I had to cross her off my list. I’d have to reevaluate everything. Because my operating premise was that the person ordering the murder of Greg Connolly was higher on the food chain than Charlie Cimino, and after eliminating Madison, there was only one person left who fit that description.
I looked at him, Governor Snow, who it so happens was looking at me. “Stick around,” he mouthed to me.
Sounded like a good idea to me. “Sure,” I said.
“Hey,” Hector said to me, turning me and walking me toward the door. “If you’re tired, just take off. You don’t need to stick around if you don’t want.”
Interesting that Hector would say that. Maybe he liked keeping tabs on me—his “guy,” after all—and didn’t want me getting one-on-one face time with the governor.
“No, it’s okay,” I said. I thought a little one-on-one was just what I needed right now. With his defenses down thanks to the liquor, this might be the best chance I’d have to find out what the governor knew, and when he knew it.
80
THE ROOM FELT EMPTY AND LARGE WITH EVERYONE gone, all the aggressive banter evaporated. The governor poured himself another glass of champagne and offered me one, which I accepted. Anything to encourage dialogue.
“Sometimes it’s nice just to talk with regular people,�
�� the governor said. “You strike me as regular. I mean, nonpolitical.”
“That I am.” I sat on the couch. He took the chair across from me. His face was flush and his eyes were bloodshot. He was drunk. Drunk but content. He loved everything about being governor.
“Let me ask you something,” he said. He nodded toward the television. “That ad—the one about Willie Bryant, that supervisor in his office who was caught taking bribes? What did you think of that?”
I knew what I thought, but I didn’t want to rock the boat. “He’d do the same to you,” I said. “Rough-and-tumble politics.”
He sipped his champagne and eyed me. “Give me the honest dope.”
“I don’t like negative ads,” I said. “I mean, if everyone under Bryant is committing crimes, then okay, it’s a relevant point.” I stopped for one moment to consider the irony of that statement.
“But,” I went on, “I take it from this ad that it was just one bad egg in his office. So I wouldn’t read much into this, other than Willie Bryant’s opponent is running a negative ad, trying to blame him for one rogue employee.”
Governor Snow smiled. “Y’know, I pay these people a lot to think like a regular voter. But the truth is, they’re so close to this—I mean, these guys hate Willie—I’m not sure they see things right. I think I agree with you.”
“They get people elected,” I said. “I don’t.”
“Right.” He drained his drink and poured himself another. He rolled his neck, seemed to be unwinding after a day of being on camera. “How come you quit playing football?” he asked.
“I was kicked off the team after that fight.”
“Right, but—why didn’t you go somewhere else? You could have gone anywhere.”
I shrugged. “Inertia, I guess. I was an idiot.”
“Okay, then, why are you here?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that. He seemed to respond well to the no-bullshit, regular-guy talk, so I didn’t want to light him up with sweet nothings. On the other hand, you can never underestimate the human ego, the capacity to believe favorable things about yourself.
