David Ellis - Breach of Trust

Norm Hudzik, for his part, bought in all the way. He was laughing that gregarious laugh of his as soon as we walked out of the federal building. “Ridgeway’s okay, like I told you,” he said. “They’ve got nothing, my boy. It’s a dead end. That memo you wrote locked it down, if there was any doubt. You want to tell Charlie, or should I? This will make his week.”

“He’ll want to hear it from you,” I said.

“Sure.” Hudzik eagerly agreed. Everyone likes delivering welcome news. It would give Hudzik the chance to embellish, to make himself the big hero in his version. “You’re a real ballbuster, y’know that, kid? ‘I’ll worry about little things like the attorney-client privilege.’ I love it.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “Be well, son.”

When I got back to my office, I went down to Suite 410. I opened the door and found Lee Tucker. I could see he’d already heard from Brian Ridgeway. He had a big smile on his face.

“They bought it,” I said. “I’m in.”

“Ridgeway said you acted like an asshole.”

“It came naturally.”

Tucker drummed his fingers on the table and shook his head. “Well, let’s see what Mr. Cimino has to say.”

We didn’t have to wait long. I had dinner that night with Charlie. He was like a little kid, giddy with relief. As he now saw it, the murder of Greg Connolly was being chalked up as a garden-variety mugging in a very seedy part of town. The corruption probe, initiated by Greg Connolly, was a dead end. He would sleep well tonight.

The pair of three-hundred-dollar bottles of Cabernet would help him sleep, too.

“You were a real ballbuster, Norm said,” Charlie told me. “He said you gave that prosecutor an earful.” He winked at me. “I could learn to like you, kid.”

I decided to say as little as possible, else I might screw something up with the mild buzz I was enjoying. It was becoming difficult to keep up with the layers of deception. The man with whom I was dining on New York strip steaks and expensive Cab was probably a killer. And he was now feeling at ease, courtesy of a fake interview with a federal prosecutor, in which my fake legal memorandum, used to perpetrate a fraud, was being used to exonerate the two of us.

I didn’t know whom to trust. I just had to make sure I could keep trusting myself.

“You’re the golden boy,” he said, slurring his words. “Norm said, when these guys saw your name on the memo, they figured everything was on the up-and-up. You bought yourself some credibility with Hector’s case.”

I could see that our little charade in the U.S. attorney’s office had worked perfectly.

“But this thing we have,” Charlie went on, “better we stop it, all the same. No point in pushing our luck.”

It’s what I expected Charlie to say. The heat was off as far as he knew, but Charlie had been very close to the flame and hadn’t enjoyed it. He’d be back someday, in his mind, but he was still feeling the aftereffects and would stay on the sidelines for the foreseeable future. If he hadn’t suggested we abort our current scheme, I would have done so. But better that it was his idea.

“I told Maddie she can use you.”

I looked at him. “Madison Koehler?”

“Yeah, that position she offered you, right?” He leaned into me with typical intoxicated bluntness. “Didn’t think I knew about that? Well, I know you stiff-armed her, but go ahead and do it. It’ll be good for you.”

Translation: It would be good for him . He’d get the finder’s credit on Jason Kolarich, I figured. I told Maddie she can use you. I was still his guy, but he was loaning me out.

“Help ’em work the system,” Charlie said. “He gets elected to a full term, we can really make us some dough. There’s a fuckin’ sea of money out there for us, Jason. A sea of it.”

Not where you’re going, I wanted to say. I wanted to ask him if he felt the least bit bad about Greg Connolly’s death. I wanted to reach over the table and smack the drunken grin off his face. But I was still in role. I could down a bottle of wine and stay in role. I could be tied up, with a gun pointed at me and a knife about to slice off my finger, and stay in role.

I had found my calling. I was a liar. A fake. A pretender. And now, for my final act, I was going to help take down a sitting governor.

March 2008

Chris Moody stood before a poster board that looked exactly like the kinds of flow charts the FBI used for organized crime, or we at the county attorney’s office used to make for the street-gang hierarchy. In this case, the chart bore the heading KITCHEN CABINET, and it listed the people closest to Governor Carlton Snow.

“Madison Koehler, chief of staff,” said Chris Moody. “You’ve already made her acquaintance. She’s run several political campaigns around the country. Moved here to work on the mayor’s last race. Governor Snow hired her when they took the ‘lieutenant’ off his title and he knew he’d be running for a full term. Divorced, one kid in college. She’s tough. She doesn’t suffer incompetence or disloyalty. She fires people all the time, in fact.”

“Point being,” Lee Tucker said, “play nice with her or you’ll be out on your ass and no good to anybody.”

They knew, presumably from Greg Connolly, that Madison had propositioned me for this job but they didn’t know the breadth or scope of that encounter. They didn’t know that I’d seen Madison Koehler perform feats of gymnastic agility that would make women half her age green with envy.

Below Madison, there were several people on the same level. “Brady MacAleer,” said Moody, pointing to the name in the first square. “‘Mac’ or ‘Brady Mac.’ Chief of government administration. Grew up on the north side of the city. He ran a labor union and then went to work for the city clerk’s office under Snow. Followed him to the lieutenant governor’s office. Always a paid position, always hard to pin down what it was he did to earn that paycheck. He’s one of the operators. Favors and fixes, they like to say.”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, specifically. Moody seemed to pick up on my reaction.

“Fundraising. Jobs for cronies. Side deals for contributors. Opposition research. Not a lot different from Cimino, except Cimino has outside wealth. Brady Mac is no financier. You’ll probably deal with him a lot. Especially with Cimino cooling his heels a bit.”

“Got it.”

“Next: William Peshke. ‘Pesh’ to everybody. His title is ‘special adviser to the governor.’ That’s just an excuse to get him a six-figure salary on the government’s dime. He’s the policy guy. He’s known Governor Snow since college. He wanted to be running the campaign. He doesn’t get along so well with Madison Koehler but the governor likes him. So there’s a turf battle there.”

“Okay.”

After Brady MacAleer and William Peshke were three names I recognized. Greg Connolly, now deceased. Charlie Cimino. And Hector Almundo.

Moody paused only briefly over Connolly’s name. “All respect to the dead, the way we saw it, Greg was just riding coattails. He didn’t provide much value. He ran that board, but he just followed orders. Charlie, obviously-but we don’t expect much from him, right?”

“Right,” I agreed. “But you never know. I’m not sure he can help himself. I’m not sure he can stay away for long.”

“Our thinking as well,” Moody said. “Either way, we expect him to stay close to the action. You stay away too long, they forget about you, that kind of thing.”

I fully concurred in that assessment. Charlie was looking at me as one of his guys, and that’s why it was so important to him that I be near the action, if he couldn’t be.