David Ellis - Breach of Trust

I dropped Cimino’s master list of major state contractors on the desk in front of him, a copy of which he’d had ever since I got mine. “Page two,” I said. “You see there, about a third of the way down. Starlight Catering. They don’t have a number assigned. Like they’re not one of the targets. Any idea why they get a pass?”

I watched Tucker’s eyes. If he didn’t really look, it meant that he’d already noticed it. If he did, it meant he hadn’t.

Tucker’s eyes followed down the page and stopped, presumably, at Starlight. So that probably meant he didn’t know. It could also make him a good bullshit artist.

“Why?” he asked.

“I’m asking you why.”

“But why do you care?”

“Why do you guys always answer questions with questions? I’m just curious.”

“Why don’t you ask Cimino?” Tucker was pleased with himself. Another question.

“You’ve been a font of information, Agent Tucker.”

He got a chuckle out of the whole thing. “That company-Starlight-is an MBE,” he said. “A minority-owned business. There are laws covering them, right? So even Cimino’s not dumb enough to start shit-canning the MBEs.”

That made sense, I guess. But Cimino wasn’t really planning to shit-can any of these companies. He wanted to strong-arm these contractors and was willing to push it to the brink if necessary, using me to threaten termination of their contracts, but I didn’t think Cimino was sold on the idea of actually pulling the trigger. Too messy. The threat, alone, had been enough so far.

Starlight Catering might have been a minority-owned business, but that wasn’t why Cimino had held off targeting them. There was something else there. I had to figure out what that was.

And the federal government wasn’t going to be any help. And I couldn’t use Joel Lightner to help, or any other private investigator.

So I would have to go to the source.

The fundraiser was held in a downtown hotel in one of their extravagant ballrooms. A nice enough setting. Too nice, for my taste. I never really understood why things had to be so opulent. It always struck me as a waste of money and little more than a jerk-off to people’s egos. Couldn’t we all agree on less humble homes, hotels, offices, whatever-and just give the extra money to starving people in Africa or something?

Altruistic and philanthropically minded was I, in my tuxedo, nursing a martini.

I was more than a fish out of water. I was a fish who didn’t know any of the other fish. The place held about a thousand and it was near capacity, and I doubted that I had made the acquaintance of any of them.

I engaged in people watching for a while, but it wasn’t all that interesting. Everyone there was the same. They all wanted something. A job. A piece of legislation signed. If nothing else, to be seen. After about half an hour, I was working on a decent buzz from the martinis when the room seemed to shift. Nearly everyone turned in the same direction, something out of a Hitchcock movie, and then broke into applause.

So I looked, too, because I knew it meant the guest of honor had arrived, and if somebody from the crowd assassinated him, the FBI would review the tapes afterward and see that I was the one person who didn’t turn-like that guy who opened the umbrella on a sunny day before JFK was shot-and I’d be a suspect.

This is how my mind works when I’m bored and getting drunk.

He had entered through the main doors and was now inching along the crowd, shaking hands and waving. His security detail followed close by, several men in dark suits with earpieces attached to cords disappearing into their suits, which added to the overall effect.

From a short distance, I could say this much about Carlton Snow: He looked the part. He was rather tall and fit, with a nice head of hair and one of those robotically sincere smiles. He had all the movements down. He’d clearly been doing his politician’s exercises. Wave, thumbs-up, point at someone, shake a hand. Wave, thumbs-up, point, shake. Sometimes he overlapped his left hand so he could shake two hands at once. He mixed in different facial expressions, too. Pleasant surprise to see you. Familiar grin for the “old friend.” I wasn’t a lip reader but he seemed to have the phrases down, too. Hey-how-are-you-great-to-see-you-thanks-for-coming.

“Jason, there you are.”

I turned to see Greg Connolly, the chairman of the Procurement and Construction Board. A man who didn’t have as much going on these days, at least not of an illicit nature, thanks to me. Someday-like when the indictments came down, and he saw himself included in far less counts than Charlie-he’d thank me.

But, I suspected, not now.

“Greg,” I said, with some equivocation, like I wasn’t sure who he was, given that we’d only met once. We shook hands. He looked like me, in a penguin suit, but shorter and with a much thicker midsection. His bow tie was crooked but I didn’t point it out. Mine probably was, too.

“We miss you,” he said.

“Right back atcha.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Yeah. Small talk. I don’t like it.

“Charlie’s keeping you to himself these days.”

I had to play the role of the cautious confidant to Cimino, so I just said, “He’s a good man.”

“Sure. Sure.”

Sure. Greg didn’t seem too happy about my arrangement with Charlie. Charlie had mentioned it could be a problem, should Connolly run to the governor to complain. I didn’t really care if that happened. My reason for proposing the new and improved scheme to Charlie was to gain leverage and get Shauna off the hook. I’d already accomplished that. Shauna would now be free.

Free to come visit me in prison.

Unless I pulled a rabbit out of my hat. I was still working on that.

“Maybe there’s a way we could keep doing business?” he said to me. It was in the form of a question. I wasn’t sure if he had an idea or was looking for one.

I smiled. “You’re asking the wrong guy, Greg.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” He patted my shoulder. “I think you have Charlie’s ear like nobody else.”

I wondered if that was true. I’d only known Charlie for a short time. But he didn’t seem to have a lot of people close to him, and I’d hatched a plan that was accomplishing his twin goals of enriching himself and getting the governor reelected, the latter purpose having the ultimate goal of enriching himself, too. I mean, it was all about money in the end. I was making him richer and more important to the governor, which in turn would make him richer still.

The governor ended up standing on a dais in the middle of the room that allowed him to see into and over the crowd. I didn’t recall ever hearing him speak, though I must have, at some point, over the last year that he had served as governor.

“Thank you, everyone. Thank you. I don’t want to-thank you. If I could just-I love you, too. Thank you.”

It took the man a while to calm the crowd, to snap them out of their feigned adoration. He started and stopped a few times, as people shouted sweet nothings to him. Actually, he didn’t try very hard to stop them. He was basking in the glow, standing in his crisp tuxedo, holding a microphone with one hand and raising a steadying hand to the crowd with the other like the pontiff in Rome.

“You go back with him,” I said to Greg Connolly.

“Oh, sure. Grew up with him on George Street. Took every class together from kindergarten to graduating from State.”

It sounded like a line Connolly had recited many times in the last year, his connection to the governor. This guy was a hanger-on if I ever saw one.

“I went to State, too,” I said.

“Yeah? When did you-” He stopped on that. It dawned on him and he looked over at me. “Jason Kolarich. Wide receiver?”