Breach of Trust

by David Ellis

  “This is all very noble of you, Mr. Kolarich. Maybe the governor can thank you while you’re serving time together. I could recommend to the court that you serve in the same camp.”

  Maybe so. Maybe not. I nodded at him. “While it’s just us girls talking,” I said, “what did you think of that tape you heard this morning? Hector’s confession.”

  I thought I saw a smile, or at least some change in his expression. “We already liked Hector for Connolly’s murder. You didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know.”

  He enjoyed saying that, once again having the upper hand. I only knew what they let me know. They’d worked the case from other angles and gotten to Hector on their own.

  “He copped to three murders,” I said. “Wozniak, which you already fucked up, so he walks on that one. And Connolly, for which you now have a confession. But what did you think about Ernesto Ramirez, Chris?”

  He paused. “I’m not sure I catch your meaning.”

  “Sure you do. Ernesto Ramirez had material information about the murder of Adalbert Wozniak. He and a good friend of his.”

  I didn’t know the guy’s name other than the moniker I gave him, Scarface. I wished I did, but I’d have to make do with what I had.

  “I had a long talk with that friend of his,” I said. “He told me that he and Ernesto told their story to law enforcement. He said ‘cops,’ actually, but he didn’t mean cops. He meant federal agents. He meant you, Chris.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes, it is. Ernesto and his friend came to see you during the Almundo trial. They told you they knew who killed Adalbert Wozniak and why. The ‘who’ was a member of the Latin Lords. Kiko. You know him. Every prosecutor’s office knows Kiko. And the ‘why’ was a relationship with Delroy Bailey. The ‘connection to Delroy.’ Wozniak was going to expose someone’s connection to Delroy and that someone had Kiko take Wozniak out.”

  Moody didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t, either, if I were he. But he couldn’t deny it. The feds keep logs of all their interviews. It would be a very simple matter to prove that Ernesto Ramirez and Scarface paid them a visit, and who was in attendance. Hell, there would be surveillance cameras showing the two of them entering the federal building that day. And, above all that, surely Scarface himself—assuming I could ever find him again, but Moody didn’t know that—would identify Chris Moody as the guy who threatened him that day.

  I chuckled, but I wasn’t having fun. “That must have really ruined your day, Chris.”

  I would’ve enjoyed watching Moody that day, seeing the look on his face. He’d spent three months in a trial blaming Wozniak’s death on the Cannibals, when really it was the work of a rival gang, the Lords. He’d spent three months claiming that Wozniak died because he wouldn’t pay the street tax, when in reality it was to cover up the illegal steering of a contract to Delroy Bailey’s catering company—and Delroy’s gay relationship with Hector Almundo.

  “Funny thing,” I said. “Ernesto and his buddy. When Kiko said he killed Wozniak to ‘cover up a connection to Delroy,’ they thought the guy doing the cover-up was your star witness, Joey Espinoza. Delroy’s former brother-in-law. Which, from your perspective, was all the more devastating, seeing as how you cut a deal with Joey for eighteen months, and now he was your star witness at Hector’s trial. How was that going to look? You’re prosecuting Hector for murder and suddenly it’s your star witness who did it?”

  Moody was as still as a statue.

  “Ironic,” I went on. “Turns out, the ‘connection to Delroy’ was Hector’s connection to Delroy. Ernesto and his buddy were handing you Hector on a silver platter, if you’d followed up on the evidence. But you didn’t follow up on it, Chris, did you? You didn’t do one shred of investigation. No, you buried that evidence. You withheld material evidence from the defense. You violated the first ethical rule of an honest prosecutor. Any of that ringing a bell, Chris?”

  “I don’t remember anything like that,” Moody said. “And even if it happened, I’m under no obligation to chase red herrings.”

  “A red herring? Try that one again, Chris. It was true. Most everything they told you. A Latin Lord killed Wozniak, and it was to cover up a relationship with Delroy Bailey. Hard to call that a red herring when it was accurate. Maybe they were wrong on Joey Espinoza being behind it, but they still gave you almost the entire story right there.”

  “Twenty-twenty hindsight,” he said.

  “Okay, maybe—maybe you couldn’t be sure what he was saying was true, at that moment. But you had an ethical obligation to turn that over to us, Mr. Moody. And you know it. Instead, you threatened Ernesto and his buddy with perjury, obstruction, the whole lot. You scared them into silence.”

  “Is that a fact?” said Moody.

  I removed the Dictaphone from my pants pocket, the same one I used to record my conversation with Scarface in the alley that night. I hit play. Scarface’s words echoed through the quiet city air.

  They said I was a liar, ese. They told me, liars go to prison. We gonna lock you up. One thousand one, they kept sayin’. The fuckin’ brownies, they pull out my sheet, they tell me, who’d believe you, convict? They tell me, ten years, man. Ten years for lying to us, the priors you got.

  It was all there. “One thousand one,” the federal crime for lying to a federal agent. “Brownies,” the gangs’ nickname for federal prosecutors, owing to their hideous brown building downtown. Scarface had never said Moody’s name, but it wasn’t much of a leap. Of course the lead prosecutor in the Almundo trial would have been called in at some point, once it was clear that Ernesto and Scarface had material information to disclose. And the threats Scarface described? They had Chris Moody’s signature all over them.

  Moody’s stare carried beyond the bridge. His posture had become rigid, defensive mode, as if we were about to come to blows.

  “That’s not how it happened,” he said. “You have the word of some scumbag with a sheet as long as my cock, versus a decorated supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office.”

  Moody had obviously done the calculus quickly in his head. His first instinct—to deny the meeting ever took place—wouldn’t fly because of the records of the visit and the other federal agents who undoubtedly attended the interview. He went with his second instinct—admit the meeting took place but deny that it happened the way Scarface had described. He was right about his word versus Scarface’s, but Moody still had problems. Other agents had been involved in the conversation. Someone below Moody would’ve handled the intake interview and would have brought in Moody only after there appeared to be something relevant. Moody would have overpowered the situation at that point and insisted these guys were lying, maybe even kicked out everyone else when he threatened Ernesto and Scarface. But still, given that what Scarface told Moody ultimately was mostly correct, the other agents might well revisit that session and remember Moody as more of a cover-up artist than anything else. If there were ever a reason to revisit that session—if anyone beefed Moody to the Division of Attorney Discipline, and everyone was interviewed. And that was assuming that Moody wouldn’t be criminally prosecuted for misconduct; maybe a stretch but stranger things have happened.

  Moody was boxed in, and we both knew it. His only defense to Attorney Discipline would be that he believed that the information was so lacking in credibility that it wasn’t even worth mentioning to Hector’s defense team. Given its ultimate accuracy, that argument wouldn’t fly. And Moody already would have lost, with the publicity surrounding the controversy. A federal prosecutor withholding evidence in a major public corruption case? A case that he lost? He cheated and still lost? This was, to say the least, the very last thing he wanted. He wanted to go out with glory, having convicted the governor and all his cronies on public corruption charges, and then march into some silk-stocking law firm and reel in the big coin. He didn’t want a very ugly ethics charge against him to stain his big moment.

  And this was to say nothing of the fact tha
t if I, the star prosecution witness in a public corruption trial that was forthcoming, filed an ethics beef against Moody, he’d probably be disqualified from trying the case against the governor. His swan song, his crowning achievement, would go out the window. He’d have to sit on the sidelines while someone else stole his glory. To Moody, that might be worse than anything else.

  “So what do you want?” he asked. His posture wilted.

  I exhaled, only then realizing that I’d been holding my breath. I didn’t know if he’d say these words. There was, I must admit, a small part of me that wished he hadn’t. There was a large part of me that knew he would.

  “You want a walk,” he said, answering his own question. “A get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  Did Moody actually believe what Scarface told him and then blatantly cover it up? I didn’t know and I never would. But I do know this much: The human inclination to believe what you want to believe runs very deep. Moody so deeply didn’t want to believe what Scarface told him that he probably convinced himself it was bullshit and swept it under the rug.

  “You can’t record a conversation with that guy without his consent,” he said, but his voice had weakened. He was flailing.

  “Who said it was without his consent, Chris? You want to open an investigation and find out? You want your office to handle it? Attorney Discipline?”

  I pulled out my cell phone and started dialing.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Moody asked.

  “Tucker,” I said into the cell phone, “we’re on the Lerner Street Bridge. Come down right away.” I closed up the cell phone and put it back in my pocket.

  I’d caught Moody off guard. He was losing control of the situation. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I ejected the tape of Scarface’s conversation. “You can have the tape. Catch,” I said, and catch he did, wrapping it in his arms in a bear hug. He almost fell over doing so.

  “That’s my only copy of that tape,” I said.

  Moody stuffed it in his pocket. “Bullshit. You have a copy.” He said it like he hoped he was wrong.

  “I don’t.”

  “What the fuck do you want, Kolarich?”

  “From you? Nothing. I think you should turn yourself in to Attorney Discipline for withholding material evidence from Hector’s defense team, but I’ll leave that up to you. I’m not going to turn you in for that. Really. Even if you prosecute me.”

  “You made a copy,” he said. “You want me to pass on prosecuting you, then when it’s all over, you beef me to Attorney Discipline.”

  “No. Prosecute me,” I said. “If that’s what your conscience tells you to do. I’m not going to beef you, either way, for what you withheld in Almundo.”

  Moody watched me for a long time. This didn’t make sense to him. I’d just hung this thing over his head, and now I was handing him my leverage. But all things considered, he was feeling a little better with the tape in his possession.

  Finally, he let out a low chuckle.

  “Okay, superstar. You’ll get your pass. But you remember this. If you decide to go to DAD later, I’ll fucking bury you. I’ll be on you like ugly on a pig. Same goes for your girlfriend, Shauna, and your brother and anyone else I can think of. I’ll be your worst fucking nightmare. Are we clear?”

  “I’m not asking for a pass,” I said. “I’m not blackmailing you. I’m advising you of this and hoping you’ll do the right thing and turn yourself in to Attorney Discipline. But that’s up to you, Christopher. I’m not a threat to you.”

  I looked over his shoulder. About three blocks away, someone—presumably Lee Tucker—had turned the corner and was heading toward the bridge. Moody turned and saw the same thing, then spun back and walked toward me so that his features came more fully into view. His eyes shone with an intensity I’d never seen. That was because I’d never seen Chris Moody scared.

  “Now I guess we need to explain to Lee why there’s no F-Bird tonight,” he said. “How about we say it fell through the grid here on the bridge? That work for you, sport? A fumbled hand-off.”

  I snapped my fingers. “Glad you reminded me. I mean, that was the whole reason I came here, to deliver the F-Bird.”

  Chris Moody’s eyes grew the size of Ping-Pong balls as I removed the F-Bird from my pocket.

  “Handing off the F-Bird from tonight as promised,” I said. “As always. Y’know, you guys really should have taught me how to turn this thing off.”

  Moody stared at the recording device in my hand, which was doing just that—recording our every word. Hey, to be fair, I never told him that I threw the F-Bird into the river. Moody just made that assumption. Can’t a guy throw away a couple of used AA batteries from a stereo, wrapped together by some state-issued rubber bands, if he wants to? Sure, maybe my fingers were covering the rubber bands when I showed it to him, so from a distance it looked just like FeeBee, but who said I had to play fair?

  In that short span of time, it must have crossed Moody’s mind to lunge for it, try to get FeeBee away from me. But Tucker was well within sight distance now and would have seen the whole thing, and Moody was still far enough away that he’d have to struggle with me.

  “Should I give the F-Bird to Lee?” I asked him. It was very hard not to smile.

  “Put that fucking thing away,” he said in a harsh whisper. He turned as Lee Tucker approached.

  “You’re the boss,” I said.

  “Hey. How we doing?” Tucker had walked out without a coat and was regretting it now. “What’s—what’s up?”

  “You’re never gonna believe this,” Moody said. “Jason was handing me the Bird and we dropped it.”

  I eased between the two of them and started walking north.

  “Oh, you gotta be—it fell through? It’s in the river?”

  “Craziest thing. A total accident.”

  Before I’d hit the other side of the bridge, Chris Moody was calling to me.

  “Jason,” he said. “Seriously, I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for us. You’ve performed a valuable service.”

  I didn’t turn around. I didn’t break stride. I didn’t even smile, until I’d jumped into the back of a cab.

  94

  I WAS CALLED TO THE GOVERNOR’S OFFICE AT ELEVEN-fifteen the next morning. I’d slept in and hadn’t arrived at the state building until about ten. The governor had been running from a prayer breakfast to a domestic violence shelter to a bill signing, and now he was briefly in his office before heading off to a fundraiser and then a downstate fly-around.

  I’d spent the last hour or so reading the headline story in the paper as well as the follow-ups this morning online. The governor’s dramatic, eleventh-hour reprieve of convicted double murderer Antwain Otis had overtaken everything else newsworthy that day. “Eleventh-hour” was an understatement; Governor Snow had made the call at four minutes to midnight. There was the predictable mix of jubilation and disgust. Antwain’s mother and uncle were quoted as saying that Antwain had been touched by the hand of God; Anthony Newberry stated that he felt as if his family had been victimized one last time.

  I was met with some glares as I walked into the governor’s office. Madison was shooting daggers in my direction; Brady MacAleer mentioned something, meant for me to hear, about how the dramatic reprieve “stepped on our message” yesterday about the union endorsements and “probably cost us two percent downstate.” I caught a glimpse of the governor, looking fresh and relaxed at his walnut desk, in his leather high-backed chair, as Peshke spoke to him.

  “Good morning,” said Madison, delivered with enough ice to sink the Titanic.

  I simply nodded in return. I looked around the room. Madison, Hector, and Brady were all here, right here, with the governor. Charlie wasn’t around.

  “Jason, come in, come.” The governor waved at me. He signed a document and handed it to me. It was his official appointment of Judge George Henry Ippolito to the state supreme court.

  “So I can do some
good things once in a while,” he said to me, winking. “Okay, what’s next?”

  I turned to Madison, holding the document in my hand. “I’ll file it,” I said. I hadn’t been sure it would be me, but I was hoping.

  I paused for a moment, wondering if I should offer some parting words, but no particular Solomonic pearl of wisdom came to mind so I excused myself. I took the stairs down to the secretary of state’s office, where the index department received official filings such as the appointment of a supreme court justice.

  I reached the door of the office and stopped. There, I handed the document to Special Agent Lee Tucker of the FBI, wearing his finest blue suit, pressed collar, and tie. He took the document with his left hand and offered me his right. I shook it and looked into his eyes a moment. Neither of us spoke. One of us was excited.

  Tucker nodded. He put the document in his briefcase. Then he put on the blue jacket he’d been holding in his arm, the back of which said FBI in white block letters. He said something into his collar, and not three minutes later, six men and two women, all very serious customers in the same blue jackets, marched up the stairs and joined him.

  “Let’s do it,” said Tucker.

  The federal agents then walked up the same set of stairs I’d just descended, into the governor’s office, armed with warrants to search and seize and warrants to arrest. I leaned against the wall and watched. It felt like a day’s time, staring at the glass office doors bearing the state seal, the words CARLTON SNOW, GOVERNOR below it, before federal agents marched out with Madison Koehler, Brady MacAleer, and Hector Almundo in handcuffs.

  I was a floor below, looking up. None of them could see me. I only saw their faces briefly, though I assumed the images would be burned into my memory forever, the humiliation and indignation in their expressions—but more than anything the look of being simply stunned. Each of them was experiencing something akin to having your life flash before your eyes. They were wondering what, exactly, were the bases for the criminal charges; how they’d been caught; how much the FBI knew; how they could escape the jam. They were calculating all the damage done to their lives and careers and how much of it was reparable. They were praying that they would open their eyes and discover that this had all been a dream.