David Ellis - Breach of Trust

Lots of money. Hundreds of millions, possibly billions. All running through the Procurement and Construction Board.

I looked up the members of this board, hoping that it would net me the initials “IG” or “CC.” No luck. Gregory Connolly was listed as board chairman. The other four members were Alex Morris, James Clark, James Hathaway, and Antonia Harris.

I read through the allegations contained in ABW’s suit against the PCB, which had been dismissed after Wozniak’s death and the close of his company. According to the complaint, ABW had been the lowest bidder on a beverage contract, but the PCB had rejected its bid and given it to the next lowest bidder, Starlight Catering.

I sent an email to Joel Lightner, asking him to take a look under the hood of Starlight Catering. Then I looked through my Rolodex-and by Rolodex, I mean a mess of business cards shoved into the drawer of my desk-and found Hector Almundo’s cell phone number. I dialed it up, not expecting him to answer, and I wasn’t disappointed. I left him a quick message.

“Hector, it’s Jason Kolarich. About that thing we discussed,” I said.

I spent the night in, reading with the television on, but I spent more time simply looking out the window. A light snow had dusted everything, casting a serene blanket over my neighborhood. I don’t ordinarily welcome winter, but the change of seasons felt oddly cathartic. And I’d grown tired of summer and fall. I used to think that if grief were a color, it would be gray. Not black-too extreme, too intense. Gray is that fuzzy compromise, lacking its own identity. But after I lost my wife and child, I colored it green-vibrant, flourishing life mocking us, highlighting our irrelevance, cruel and indifferent to our pain. I wanted to cut down every tree, uproot every plant and flower. I wanted to pull the sun down out of the sky, bathing the earth in darkness. Even the orange and browns of our brief autumn disgusted me, its simple beauty a grotesque and sniggering insult.

But it was becoming different now. Maybe not better, but different. The cymbals did not crash as often between my ears. The nightmares had subsided. The throat-gagging, pulse-pounding, breathtaking pain was replaced with a quiet ache, a soft echo in a large, empty house.

Hector said he could spare fifteen minutes for me in the late morning. I went to the monolithic state building in the city’s downtown and found the Department of Commerce and Community Services on the thirteenth floor. An elderly uniformed man sat at a desk, under a large photo of a beaming Governor Carlton Snow-his thick mane of brown hair and that goofy smile. I showed my identification and he made me fill in my name and purpose-of-visit in a schedule book.

These offices could not be mistaken for anything other than government-thin carpeting, unimaginative beige walls, cubicles made of a cheap cloth. But I’d spent most of my career in the county attorney’s office, so this was more what I was accustomed to than the princely surroundings of Shaker, Riley and Flemming. After winding my way through the maze, I was inside Hector Almundo’s office, nothing fancy but a decent picture-window view of the commercial district’s north side. Hector was done up like always: bright yellow shirt, chocolate-brown braces over his narrow shoulders, a tie the color of a falling sun, propped up by a collar pin.

“The PCB,” he laughed, after I made my request. “You’ve been doing your homework. Definitely where the action is.”

“If it’s a string you can’t pull,” I started, appealing to his ego.

“No, no. No, no.” Hector, I had gathered for some time now, wanted to impress me. I had seen him at his worst, at his most terrified. I had listened to his darkest secrets. If there was anyone in the world who might think ill of Hector-aside from the federal prosecutors-it should be me. He wanted to please me. He also wanted to show me how much power he still had. Hector was in rebuilding mode, having overcome the wrath of the federal government but losing his senate seat in the process. Some people in his situation would just be happy to have avoided prison and would opt for the quiet life. But Hector wanted everyone to know that he was back-or at least on his way.

“How would this work?” I ask. “I put my name on a list? Fill out some application? Do an interview? Do we even know there’s an opening?”

Hector was giving me a paternalistic smile before I’d even finished. “There’s an opening if we say there’s an opening. A list,” he chuckled. “I’m sure Charlie will want to meet you.”

Charlie. None of the PCB board members were named Charlie. “Charlie Cimino,” Hector said, in response to my inquisitive look. “Everything goes through Charlie.”

Charlie Cimino. So maybe the “CC” Ernesto had scribbled on the back of my business card hadn’t been the Columbus Street Cannibals, after all. “He’s some director of something?”

“Charlie? No, Charlie’s the-well, call him an unofficial adviser. Be nice to Charlie, Jason. He can. . make life difficult.”

That last piece of advice was intended to be lighthearted, but I sensed a tension behind the words, that Hector wasn’t really kidding. I didn’t know this guy Cimino, but he already had an ominous aura given his presumed inclusion on Ernesto’s diagram.

I left with the promise that I’d be hearing from someone soon. I got a call later that afternoon, setting something up for tomorrow. So much for inefficient government-it had taken two hours to work my application, such as it was, through the channels. Tomorrow, I would meet Charlie Cimino.

I took a cab over the river the next morning to the near-north side, where the streets were mobbed with shoppers at the high-end boutiques just two weeks before Christmas. I had a headache from lack of sleep and my back was sore from the three-hour interval in the dead of night when I actually did nod off, albeit in the love seat in my family room. I do that a lot these days. Sleep is easier when I’m not in our bedroom. Because now it’s just my bedroom. I knew I’d have to sell that townhouse one of these days-meaning my brain was telling me that, but so far I had resisted.

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas, my first without what we affectionately dubbed Team Kolarich. I didn’t connect any memory of the holiday with Emily Jane, as this would have been her first, but Talia and I always enjoyed that time of year, jealously reserving some time just for us and away from our families. My brother, Pete, was down in the Caribbean right now nursing some wounds from a rough few months-long story-and he’d asked me to join him for that week through the New Year. Maybe. Otherwise, I had no family with which to spend the holiday, unless I drove up north to visit my father in prison, the probability of which I put just below the likelihood I would shave my head and become a Tibetan monk. Although I hear Tibet is lovely this time of year.

I missed the warmth of the cab, though not the smell of body odor, once I stepped into the frigid air outside. What little snow had fallen over the last day had been ground into dirty slush, which I tried to avoid because I hate wearing rubbers over my shoes but I also hate wet shoes. Life’s full of conflict.

Ciriaco Properties was out west, a ways from the lake, away from the boutiques and closer to the trendy lofts and restaurants as the city gentrified west. I signed my name with a doorman and took a gold-plated elevator to the twenty-third floor. I checked the walls for a sign, which direction to turn, when I realized that the entire floor was this one company. I pushed through a glass door and found a woman at a tiny reception area who could have been plucked out of a swimsuit competition.