David Ellis - Breach of Trust

“Oh, gosh, Lee, I’ll bet you say that to all the informants.”

Tucker seemed to be getting a kick out of this. That made one of us. He had withheld information from me and didn’t bat an eye in the process. He would tell me only what he wanted me to know. He would manipulate me and hide the ball and watch me fall when he was done squeezing every last drop of usefulness out of me.

“Maybe I just walk away from this whole thing and roll the dice,” I said.

He gave me a yeah-right smirk.

“Hey, you want to be a cowboy, go for it. But just remember,” he said, “you’re making that decision for Shauna, too.”

That Friday night, Shauna and I went to dinner and a movie. I made the mistake of picking the food (steak house), which allowed her to choose the flick (romantic comedy). I was shocked to discover that the two beautiful leads, after quarrelling throughout an agonizing ninety minutes of cinematic torture, realized that the true love they’d been looking for had been right there in front of them, all along! Fade to credits with a Top 40 adult contemporary love song.

We shared a cab and dropped her off first. I watched her until she was inside her condo building. She gave me a small wave and I nodded back.

She was my responsibility. The feds had her in their sights, however unfairly, because of me. I had to solve that problem. And I thought I knew how.

“Pensions,” Cimino said to me, as we hummed along in his Porsche the next morning. “State employees have pensions,” Cimino went on. “Pensions have a lot of money to invest. Everyone wants a piece of that. Next month, the PCB’s going to put out a solicitation for three hundred million.”

“Someone’s going to get three hundred million to invest?” I was wearing a sweater and a black jacket Talia had bought me last Christmas. The F-Bird was resting in my shirt pocket underneath my sweater, courtesy of Lee Tucker, who had come by my house at half past eight this morning through my back gate.

“I’ve got someone in mind. That’s where we’re going now. The commissions on this thing-they’re unbelievable. We can get a hundred thousand for the governor and something for us, too.” He looked over at me, noticing my lack of enthusiasm. “What?”

“Charlie, we can’t just pick whatever investment banker we want. I mean, there are all sorts of criteria in the statute that the board will have to consider. We’re locked down pretty tight on this.”

“What are you telling me, kid? You telling me we can’t handpick someone? You can’t come up with some fancy legal argument?”

I sighed for Charlie’s benefit. “I’m telling you, one, I can’t make a good argument. And two, with this kind of money at stake, the spotlight on this, if we fuck around, will be huge. Every major player’s going to go after this kind of money. They’re not going to let us waltz in and fix this thing.”

Charlie went radio silent. He looked like he was going to crush the steering wheel with his grip.

“I have a better idea,” I said.

He looked over at me.

“Look,” I said, “the way you’re doing this now-it’s hard. It’s hard and it’s risky. I mean, you have to comb through all the contracts that will be issued soon, and you have to recruit companies that are willing to contribute to Governor Snow’s campaign in exchange for getting the contract and maybe even throw in a little side business to you or me or whomever. So you have to spend a lot of time looking for people who end up saying no, and you run the risk that one of them might do more than just say no-they might decide to report what they know to a news reporter or, even worse, the trench coats. And even if nobody talks, you got some bidder who thinks he should’ve gotten the contract instead of our handpicked guy, and then there’s a lawsuit. Which means they shine a light on what we’re doing. It means people testifying under oath. I mean, do I have this right so far, Charlie?”

Cimino had been nodding along with me. “That about sums it up.”

“So at best, it’s inefficient. And at worst, it’s risky. I can live with inefficient, but not with risky.”

“Okay, and you got a better idea.”

“I do,” I said. “Let’s stick with current state contracts.”

“Current ones.” He looked at me. “Contracts already in place?”

“Right. Instead of looking all over the place for people bidding on new contracts, we just go to the people right in front of us-the people feeding at the public trough right now.”

“And why would someone pay us squat if they already have a contract with the state?”

“Because,” I said, “they want to keep it.”

Cimino was silent for a moment, his eyes in a squint. “They want to keep it.”

“The principle’s the same, Charlie. We tell them the same thing: It’s time to pony up. Only instead of offering them a contract with the state, we threaten to take away the one they already have, if they don’t pay up.”

“Huh.” Cimino thought about that. “A stick instead of a carrot.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Every contract has some kind of termination clause. The state always has some reason why it can fire a contractor. I’ll be able to find something to threaten them with. And here’s the best part, Charlie: It’s all under the radar. There’s no disgruntled bidder who lost out on the contract. There’s no bending and twisting of the Purchasing Code. There are no losing bidders. The people we’d be approaching already have contracts. Hell, we don’t even need the PCB. We narrow the number of players to you and me.”

“Right,” Cimino said equivocally. “And if they tell us no?”

“Some might. But most won’t. This is their livelihood. They have a state contract, probably worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions. They won’t say no to a thirty-thousand-dollar contribution. And even those that do say no-they’re not going to run to the feds over this. Why piss off the new governor and jeopardize their prized contract?”

Cimino kept thinking, but I could see that my idea was finding a warm landing. It made all kinds of sense from his perspective.

“They won’t say no,” I said.

“No, they won’t.” Cimino broke into laughter. “Brilliant.” He slapped the steering wheel. “Fucking brilliant, Jason.” He reached over and grabbed my arm. “You done good, kid.”

I’ve never been one to shy away from praise, but this was a new one for me. I was being lauded for coming up with a new and improved criminal scheme, congratulated by someone whom I distrusted and disliked, whom I was screwing over in the biggest way. But it wasn’t lost on me that I had accomplished my goal, which was to add value, to prove my worth, to further cement Cimino’s trust in me. I wasn’t going to have to worry about Cimino checking me for a recording device any time soon.

Famous last words.

After that day with Cimino, I spent the weekend before Christmas alone. Shauna’s family had come into town on Saturday so she was occupied, and I resisted her invitation to join in any number of things they had planned. She’d pushed me hard to be a part of Christmas dinner, but so far I’d refused, and I figured once they were staying with her, she’d get caught up in all things family and leave me alone.

That was fine. I wasn’t in the mood for a crowd. I did okay with loneliness, which is to say that I didn’t pine for the company of others. Racquetball with Cimino had whetted my appetite for sweat, and I fell back into my bachelor routine of intense workouts, which included long runs in the frigid outdoors, my way of proving to myself how tough I was. My diet that weekend consisted of pizza and potato chips. Workouts and junk food, the staples of a contradictory bachelor lifestyle. I threw in a couple of crime novels and movies, though I didn’t enjoy the sidelong glances from people when I went to a movie alone. I never really got why moviegoing had to be a shared experience. You go into a dark theater and watch something on a screen; why do you have to know the person sitting next to you?