David Ellis - Breach of Trust

“I’ve heard nothing but good things about you,” he said.

“Pesh is the one with the PhD,” said Hector. “That means he’s smarter than the rest of us.”

The governor clapped his hands together. “Where to now?”

“Darling Theater,” said Peshke.

I knew that place. It was a small auditorium on the near north side. I saw a concert there once. The Pogues, I think. Back when they had mosh pits. Do they still have those?

“Right, right. Okay, good, good.” The governor looked at Madison. “What’s Willie doing?”

“Marinaville,” she said. “Talking about crime and tort reform.”

“And we have that ad?”

She nodded as she checked her BlackBerry. “It’s up tomorrow, unless he gives us something today to throw in. It’s running in every major market downstate.”

When we reached Darling Theater, we were escorted into a side room that I hadn’t known existed. A spread of food lay across some long tables, cold cuts and pastas and fruit. Some others filtered in who were interested in chatting with the governor before he entered the auditorium. Hector and I held back. He seemed interested in being my guide, imparting his expertise to me, the young grasshopper. Also, it didn’t seem like anyone else was particularly interested in conversing with him. The thought crossed my mind once again: What was Hector doing here? I kept falling back on the same conclusion. Window dressing. But it gave me a problem.

“Willie’s playing to his base,” Hector explained to me. “Downstate, conservative Democrats. He’s been talking more about gun owner’s rights and tort reform, the kinds of things you expect a Republican to talk about.”

I thought I was supposed to ask, so I did. “Why?”

Hector shrugged. “He’s made the calculation that it’s how he wins. Moving to Carl’s right is easier than to his left. He’s running against an incumbent. He’s the challenger.”

“Snow isn’t the incumbent,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter. Everyone calls him Governor. Same difference.”

That was a popular line around here.

“Where’s Charlie tonight?” I asked.

Hector shook his head. He didn’t know. “You like working with him?”

I shrugged. “I guess so.”

“But you still remember who got you here, right?” He said it with a hint of playfulness, an elbow in my side, but he meant it. He wanted the finder’s credit, to the extent I turned out to be an asset to the governor. I wouldn’t be, of course. When everything came down, the last thing anyone would want to do is claim credit for bringing me into the fold.

But Hector didn’t know that, obviously, and in fact I was doing my level best to keep him at arm’s length. I couldn’t change the fact that he was here, that for some reason the governor kept him around the inner circle. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to be a player in the illegal stuff. He hadn’t been in on the conversations with Madison, Mac, Charlie, and me about the supreme court appointment or about getting those jobs for the union guy’s people. Window dressing, like I said. A good face to put forward, but not someone who would be counted on for the wet work.

“So what do we have you doing?” he asked, as if he were reading my mind, in tune with my concern.

“Nothing much, yet,” I said.

He didn’t seem to like that answer. “You and Madison and Mac-you had dinner the other night? You’ve been meeting?”

“We’ve talked about a few things,” I said.

“And Charlie, too,” he added. “What, but no one can tell me ?”

“Nothing to tell,” I assured him. I imagined that Chris Moody and Lee Tucker would be none too pleased with my response. I was walling off Hector. I knew what they’d say, what they’d already said about Hector: He’s not your client anymore. He’s as fair game as anyone else. But I just couldn’t see it that way. They were technically correct, but this guy and I had shared his deepest, darkest secrets. I’d stood with him at the abyss, we’d been to war together-choose your metaphor-and no matter what I might have thought of him on a personal level, I couldn’t just shrug off that coat.

Hector was clearly displeased and clearly trying not to reveal that emotion to me. He wanted in on the good stuff. He wanted to be involved. It was, in many ways, the same-old, same-old with Hector. He wanted respect.

“Let’s do it!” Governor Snow said to someone. He was wearing a navy suit and red tie now. I hadn’t noticed him changing clothes. Other than Peshke, the entourage held back in this adjoining room as the governor fixed his hair and walked on stage.

I poked my head into the auditorium and saw the governor doing his hey-nice-to-see-ya-how-ya-doing calisthenics before taking a microphone. I hardly knew the guy, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to know him in the time I had. I was assuming, at this point, that ten days was all I had at the maximum, and possibly as little as a handful of days. How was I going to figure out who was behind the murders of Greg Connolly and Ernesto Ramirez and Adalbert Wozniak?

“Usually this time of year, when you hear Snow’s coming, it’s bad news,” the governor quipped.

Afterward, everyone went to a suite at the Ritz-Carlton downtown. I wasn’t entirely sure why. We were in the city. These people lived here. The governor, as I understood it, had a wife and daughter and a house up here. But maybe they were staying in the mansion in the capital right now.

The governor put his arm on the couch and looked approvingly around the room. Heady stuff, no doubt, holding the highest office in the state, staying in these lush surroundings, having so much power at your fingertips. He seemed to be basking in it. His tie was pulled down, collar open. Downtime. But he never seemed very far removed from the battery being fully charged.

Someone set a bottle of scotch on the ornate coffee table and everyone took a glass. Not my first choice of drink, but this was good stuff, hot and silky.

“Tomorrow, health care,” said Peshke. “Prescription drugs and universal care.”

“Great,” said the governor.

Peshke ran off an impressive agenda for tomorrow. He listed seven stops, mostly up north but some down south as well. Rallies and speeches. Press interviews. Two fundraisers, one at lunch and one in the evening in a wealthy suburb.

“Holly Majors is asking about House Bill 100,” said Madison. “The abortion bill.”

Peshke groaned. The governor seemed to slide down in the couch a notch or two.

“What’s the drop date on that?” he asked.

“Three days from now.”

The governor shook his head. “I’ll have to send a thank-you note to Tully and Wermouth,” he said.

Grant Tully, I assumed he meant by the reference. The senate majority leader. I remembered my talk with Jon Soliday, Tully’s lawyer, who’d tried to talk me out of ever taking a position with the governor’s administration-correctly so, as it happened. From what Jon had told me and from what I’d read recently, there seemed to be no love lost between the governor and the senate majority leader.

Wermouth, I didn’t know, but I was guessing he was the guy who ran the House.

Hector, as always, enjoyed his role as my guide through this process. “The House is Republican. They pass a slate of abortion bills every year. This one is parental consent. Teenagers have to get consent for an abortion.”

“Got it.”

“And the senate passed it, too, even though they have a Democratic majority. Some people see it as a moderate compromise between the hard lines.”

“ Some people,” said Peshke. “Personal PAC and some of the pro-choice groups, they aren’t ‘some’ people. And they’re our biggest supporters.” He looked at the governor. “Bryant came out again today and confirmed he’d sign the bill.”