David Ellis - Breach of Trust

“Christ, he’s not even a state employee.” Tucker shook his head. “He does everything out of a private office. A guy who’s not even on the state payroll is directing traffic.”

“Then what’s his angle here?” I asked. “He must be getting a cut somehow.”

“Oh, yeah.” Tucker nodded. In one fell swoop, he scooped tobacco out of the tin in his pocket and deposited it inside his cheek. It seemed to cheer him up. “He has all kinds of companies set up for consulting, things like that. Some company gets a big fat contract from the state, you can bet that company will suddenly hire one of Cimino’s companies for some bogus consulting work. It adds up quick. He could make over a million a year this way.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “On paper, all of those side contracts with Cimino’s companies are legit. Actual work is performed. Grossly overpaid work, but work nonetheless.”

I could see from their expressions that I’d hit the nail on the head. That would be the smart way to play it. If Cimino were shaking down contract bidders to shoot some consulting work his way, he’d make sure that the contracts held up to superficial scrutiny-that he provided at least some minimal consulting work, albeit for an exorbitant fee.

“Look, we think Cimino is all over the place in the Snow administration,” Tucker said. “We think he has a say in almost every significant decision they make. But it’s hard to prove.”

That explained why they needed me. The tapes they played for me were probably enough to warrant an indictment against Cimino. But they wanted to play the string out. They were expecting, hoping that they could put a lot more on Cimino. And they were betting that I could deliver it.

“He sees you as a potential asset,” Tucker told me. “You’re not just the everyday lawyer they get. You have a lot more experience. You come from a major law firm. And most of all, you got Hector out of a huge jam. You navigated Almundo through the very same kind of stuff these guys are doing, and Hector never spent a day in prison. You’re valuable.”

Tucker only seemed to realize after the fact that Hector’s prosecutor was sitting in the room while he glorified Hector’s acquittal. I like the impolitic, bull-in-a-china-shop types myself. Tucker might not be so bad to work with.

“You heard Greg Connolly on the tape,” Moody added. “He said you could be ‘useful.’ These guys like to keep their circle small and tight, but you could penetrate it, Kolarich. We’re counting on your well-earned reputation as a bullshit artist.”

I didn’t get the sense that Moody meant it as a compliment. But that didn’t make him wrong. If there is one thing I learned when Talia died, it’s that I am my father’s son-I can become another person altogether. I can pretend. I can smile at you and keep my hand steady while I am doing somersaults internally.

I was, in many ways, the perfect person for this job.

And then, over the space of a handful of days, it all came together. Chris Moody and I met with the state supreme court’s Division of Attorney Discipline-DAD-to get their blessing for my undercover role as a corrupt lawyer, a necessary protection given that I was going to be breaking laws right and left and didn’t want to lose my law license for doing so. For Moody’s part, he didn’t want my cross-examination at trial to begin with an assault on my professional ethics. And even more fundamentally, Moody needed to be sure that my testimony would be admissible. The first thing any defense attorney would do is try to exclude every recording made by me as a flagrant breach of the attorney-client privilege. We wanted to be sure that my role was clearly defined, limited as much as possible to committing fraudulent acts with Charlie Cimino, Greg Connolly, etc.-which would allow us to invoke the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.

“Well, Kolarich, I guess you’re out of excuses,” said Moody, his way of telling me the supreme court had signed off on my undercover role.

And he was right. The federal government and I had agreed that I’d cooperate with them without an immunity deal, and the state supreme court had given the green light. The idea hit me as if it were a fresh notion, despite having dominated my thoughts for the last four days: I was actually going to do this. I was going to be a snitch for the federal government.

The next morning, I met Special Agent Lee Tucker in an “employees only” lounge at a hotel that was midway between my office and Charlie Cimino’s. Tucker was dressed pretty much the same as I’d last seen him, a white button-down under a blue sport coat and blue jeans. I’d told him I typically wore a suit when I went to work, and he said that would work fine, so that’s what I was wearing.

Tucker looked at his watch. “You’re late,” he said. “It’s almost eight-thirty. Okay.” He sized me up. “How you doing?”

How was I doing? I was about to wear a wire for the federal government. These guys were sinking their hooks in me and threatening me and my best friend if I didn’t play ball. Whether his question was small talk or sincere, it deserved a sincere response.

“Fuck you,” I said.

He looked at me for a moment. He was appraising me, the entire situation. What kind of a witness would I be? I didn’t doubt my importance to the operation. A lawyer could take them places they couldn’t otherwise infiltrate. He had two choices: Come on strong, with continued threats, or go easy. I figured he’d choose the latter.

Tucker opened his palm and showed me the recording device, which looked like one of those pagers people used to wear, before everyone had cell phones, only it was even thinner; it was about the size of three AA batteries strapped together with black tape. “This is an F-Bird,” he said. “Put it inside your suit pocket.”

It was even lighter than the weight of three batteries. I dropped it inside my suit pocket and didn’t even know it was there.

“This is audio only?” I asked.

He nodded. “A simple recording device. No eyes. No transmission signal.”

I didn’t know what that meant.

“I won’t be listening in, real time,” he explained. “It’s not transmitting any signal to me. I won’t know what’s said until you bring it back when you’re done.”

“And then you’ll grade my performance.”

“Don’t think of it as a performance, Jason. Just be yourself. Act like the recorder isn’t even there.”

I shot him a look.

“I’m serious. If you think about it, it’ll make you edgy. Just relax. Don’t force the conversation. Let him come to you. It might take a long time, Jason. That’s okay.”

“How do I turn it on?”

“You don’t.”

“How do I turn it off?”

“You don’t. We do those things. We start letting CI’s turn those things on and off-”

“Right.” The government couldn’t trust the cooperator to turn the recorder on and off; it would lead to claims of selective editing by defense lawyers at trial: You turned it off when my client said something that exonerated him; you turned it on, out of context, to capture something damning. It made sense. Better to have the thing running all the time.

Tucker looked at his watch again. “Now you better get going. And next time we’re supposed to meet at eight, make it eight you show up.”

Tucker was worried about my showing up late to the meeting with Cimino, but that was already my intention. I’d been late every time I’d visited him, and I didn’t want to stray from character.

I arrived at his posh offices at a quarter past nine. One of the supermodel receptionists made me wait a good twenty minutes before she showed me back. As I followed behind her, I thought that Tucker should regret not wiring me for video.