David Ellis - Breach of Trust

On my way back out, I passed an office where a woman was talking on the phone while she typed on a computer keyboard. Something struck a chord, but I couldn’t place her, on the cloudy periphery of my memory. She didn’t notice me, providing me a moment to stare at her. Nothing particularly remarkable about her-late twenties, light-brown skin, pretty features, typical work attire. Something told me not to linger, to avoid a face-to-face with this woman, which made me even more curious-my subconscious was signaling me but I didn’t know why.

I stepped past the doorway and approached the front desk, with the beauty queen. She was on the phone and ignoring me, providing me a moment to linger. I did my best impression of someone waiting patiently to ask a question, while my eyes scanned the desk around her until I found a list of phone extensions on a white piece of paper taped to her desk. I ran down the twenty-some list of last names opposite the extensions. Before I’d reached the bottom, my eyes popped back to a familiar name.

Espinoza.

Right. The woman in the office was Lorena Espinoza, wife of Joey Espinoza, the principal witness against Hector Almundo. She was in court every day that Joey was on the stand, always wearing a defiant expression and ready with a scowl for any lawyer.

We’d looked hard at Joey as we prepared for trial, and looking hard at someone includes looking at his family. Lorena, if memory served, was a stay-at-home mother of three whose education was limited to high school. As far as we could tell-and we looked closely at Joey Espinoza’s finances for evidence of bribes-Lorena had not worked or contributed any income to her family for a decade.

But now here she was, sitting in an expansive, elaborately appointed office, hired by one Ciriaco Cimino.

Life, it seemed, was full of coincidences.

The next day, at the state office, I was looking over the Department of Corrections contract Charlie Cimino had mentioned when Patrick Lemke jumped through my doorway.

“You’re looking at the DOC sanitation contract,” he said. “The top two bidders.” He dropped a couple of big files on my desk. “This is the background information. Looks like each of them has had some problems on jobs in the past. It probably won’t be hard to find them not responsible.”

Another term of art in this world. All bidders who won contracts had to be found “responsible.” Otherwise, anyone could put in a lowball bid and win a lucrative contract, and then have no idea how to perform it.

I looked up at Lemke, though he was staring at the wall, that eye-contact problem he had. “Who said I was going to find them not responsible?”

“Well. .” Patrick shifted his feet, stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I mean, why else would Mr. Cimino want you to-”

“So let me see if I have this right,” I said. “Cimino wants to eighty-six the two lowest bidders. I take it, then, that Cimino has some reason that he wants the third lowest bidder to get the contract?” I flipped through some papers. “Higgins Sanitation is the third lowest. So Charlie wants to fix it so that Higgins gets the contract, and he wants me to make it happen?”

Patrick didn’t seem to like my framing matters so on-the-nose. But it was clear that my summary was accurate.

“Patrick, what’s with this guy, Cimino? I mean, how’s he in charge of this?”

Patrick stood still and said, “He’s an adviser to the governor. Unofficially. He offers guidance. Our direction is to follow it.”

It felt like he’d said this before, like it came right after name, rank, and serial number.

Patrick pranced to the door again but put on the brakes so abruptly that I thought he might pull a muscle. “Jason?” he said to the wall, though I think he was talking to me.

“Yes, Patrick?”

“You should do what Mr. Cimino says,” he advised me, before disappearing.

During Hector Almundo’s trial, which centered around contributions to Hector’s campaign fund, I became acquainted with the website administered by the State Board of Elections. Through its searchable database, you could track campaign contributions made by any particular person, as well as receipts by any particular campaign fund.

I did a search for the company Charlie Cimino was trying to help, Higgins Sanitation.

The database showed that, prior to this calendar year, Higgins had made a grand total of zero campaign contributions. Not a dime.

But in the past year, Higgins had become more generous in opening its wallet. In the last nine months, Higgins Sanitation had made two contributions to our new governor, Carlton Snow, to the tune of thirty thousand dollars.

Another coincidence, I’m sure.

Next I turned to the other fix that Charlie wanted from me-the school bus contract, which I was supposed to say was so unique that only a single company in the entire state could perform it. The company Charlie wanted for the job was Swift Transportation.

I searched the database and got no hits for Swift Transportation. No political contributions from that company.

But then I searched the campaign fund of Governor Carlton Snow. When I searched for “Swift,” I didn’t get that company, of course, but there were contributions from “Swift, Leonard J.”

Turned out that Leonard J. Swift had also contributed thirty thousand dollars to Governor Snow. And it only took two minutes on Google to confirm that Leonard J. Swift was the founder and CEO of Swift Transportation.

Yet another coincidence. Companies contributing thirty thousand dollars to Governor Snow’s campaign fund were becoming remarkably proficient at obtaining lucrative state contracts.

“Enough,” I said aloud, though I was alone. I got the picture.

I thought again about Jon Soliday’s words: Cover yourself.

Now it was time to do the work Charlie wanted me to do. I reviewed the prison sanitation contracts, the documents Patrick Lemke had left me, and some court decisions on the subject of what it meant to be a “responsible” bidder in this state. In the end, it wasn’t a close call. Each of these bidders was more than amply qualified, and my two-page memorandum summarized it as follows:

Each of the two lowest bidders for this contract qualifies as a “responsible” bidder under the Code. Either of them is perfectly qualified to be awarded this sanitation contract.

Next it was the school bus contract. This one took even less time. How could anyone argue that driving kids in a school bus is a unique skill? My conclusion:

As multiple, qualified bidders could provide the busing services identified in this contract, the contract is subject to sealed competitive bidding. Swift Transportation, Inc., is by no means the only company capable of performing this contract.

I smiled when I printed out the two memos-no emails, I was told-and threw them into my bag. I just wished I could see the look on Cimino’s face when he read them.

Sorry, Higgins Sanitation. Sorry, Leonard J. Swift.

Sorry, Charlie.

I went back to the state building after regular business hours. I was hungry and I longed for a burger and milkshake, but I was short on time. Charlie Cimino would be bouncing me from this job any day now, after I defied his orders. Before that happened, I wanted some private time with the PCB files. It took me a while to find the cabinets that held that “old” PCB files, from back when the board fell under the lieutenant governor’s office, but eventually I got there.

Once I found the old files, it didn’t take me long to navigate them. The scope of the PCB under then-Lieutenant Governor Snow was relatively small compared to its gargantuan reach under Snow as governor. It didn’t take me long to find the contract for beverage supplies that Adalbert Wozniak’s company, ABW Hospitality, had tried to secure.