David Ellis - Breach of Trust

I guess the little charade that we’d orchestrated with my visit to the U.S. attorney’s office with Charlie’s handpicked lawyer, Norm Hudzik, had convinced Charlie that the feds had no idea what he and I had been up to. That, and his overall greed and desire for maximum credit with Governor Snow, made him eager to squeeze every single dollar of campaign contributions out of his schemes.

“You want me to call them and remind them we can pull their contracts if they don’t pony up?” I asked. It was a bit on the nose, I thought, once it came out of my mouth.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” said Madison with her typical sweetness. “Or do you have a moral objection again?”

Close enough, I figured, for Chris Moody’s purposes. Madison Koehler had just directed me to use interstate wires for the purpose of coercing campaign contributions, which probably made her a co-conspirator in the shakedowns Charlie and I had performed for the last two months.

And now I had an opening to raise a subject I’d been wanting to tap, the whole reason I was doing this damned undercover work.

“Not a moral objection,” I said. “It’s just that, after Greg Connolly, I wasn’t sure if we wanted to keep a lower prof-”

“What about Greg Connolly?” Madison’s head snapped in my direction. “What does he have to do with this?”

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” said Charlie. “He just means, after Greg died, we-we were worried-y’know, that maybe they might investigate him or something.”

“For getting a blowjob on Seagram Hill and then getting jumped? What does that have to do with us?” Madison looked alternatively at Charlie and me. She seemed genuinely puzzled.

Genuinely so. I like to think I can read a lie, and she wasn’t lying. She didn’t know, I decided. She didn’t know the truth about Greg Connolly. She didn’t know how he’d really died, and she didn’t know that he’d been wearing a wire for the feds.

Wow.

“Forget about Greg,” said Charlie. “He has nothing to do with this.”

Madison wasn’t following, but she also didn’t care. “Collect on that money,” she said.

Madison stalked off, and Charlie shot me a look. “The fuck are you doing?” he whispered.

“I thought she knew,” I said. “The thing with Greg?”

“She knows what I fucking let her know,” he said. He was whispering but also drawing in close to me, practically speaking into FeeBee. “ No, she doesn’t know.”

“Well, maybe if you’d tell me who does know, I could avoid putting my foot in my mouth.”

“Another way is you just don’t mention it, period, smart guy.”

Charlie broke away. He was angry. I was surprised. Madison Koehler didn’t know that Greg Connolly had been exposed as an undercover informant? She didn’t know that he’d been murdered? I hadn’t thought that was possible. I’d thought everything went through her. I’d been working under the assumption that she was a part of this whole thing.

“Hey, all the secret stuff in the corner!” Governor Snow was calling out to us. “How about you join the party already?”

I returned to the fold, to the group sitting in the main area of the suite. Hector and Peshke and Madison were arguing about what to do with the abortion bill, the thing about parental notification for teenagers. The governor would have to sign it or veto it in the next forty-eight hours.

“I’m with Maddie,” said Hector. “Veto it. You’re pro-choice, Carl. Act like it.”

“You can be moderately pro-choice.” Peshke was sounding like a broken record. “Sign it and neutralize the topic during the primary. You still own the abortion issue in the general.”

The governor looked bored with the discussion. He nodded at Charlie, who was now joining us. “Hey, Ciriaco,” he said, using his formal name, “what’s with your guys not paying? Maddie says we’re still short about a hundred and fifty thousand from your people?”

“Working on it, Governor.”

“Well, can you work on it some more?”

“Yes, sir.”

I channeled Christopher Moody, wondering if these statements got him anything. By themselves, I thought, they didn’t. This was the second time they’d have the governor on tape talking about what Charlie and I had done. The first time, the governor had just told me that he’d heard I did a good job. And this second reference just now, a little closer to the fire but still not on the nose. Still no admission. Neither of his statements indicated that he knew precisely the nature of what we’d been doing-the illegality, the extortion. For all anyone would know, the governor was just talking to a fundraiser about fundraising.

It would produce more than one clenched jaw in the U.S. attorney’s office. The governor, without knowing it, was walking on a tightrope and constantly threatening a misstep, but thus far had managed to stay upright. He’d referenced a few of our schemes-George Ippolito; the jobs in his administration; and Charlie’s and my shakedown-but never with any admission that he knew we were doing something illegal.

The only thing he’d come out and said that would be illegal, as I thought about it, was his suggestion the other day that we shake down the pro-choice groups for a hundred thousand each in exchange for his veto of the parental-notification abortion bill. And I hadn’t heard him mention it again. I had no idea if that was even a “go.”

Someone pulled a television front and center. We started watching campaign commercials the governor was planning to air in the last days of the primary. Some of them were the stars-and-stripes positive ones; more of them were negative ads that showed unflattering photos of Secretary of State Willie Bryant with sinister background music and assorted innuendo and spin.

After debating the merits of various ads and strategizing over the amount of ad buys in the various television markets over the coming days, the group was flattened and drunk, with much to do tomorrow. Everyone got up to retire, either to the hotel suites or to home.

I looked over at Madison, who’d been sitting next to me and was now preparing to exit. I was still rattled by the realization that she didn’t know about Greg Connolly. She’d seemed like the puppet master behind everything. I’d been sure she was a part of the decision to eliminate Greg, that something like this wouldn’t have happened without her sign-off.

Now, to my continued amazement, I had to cross her off my list. I’d have to reevaluate everything. Because my operating premise was that the person ordering the murder of Greg Connolly was higher on the food chain than Charlie Cimino, and after eliminating Madison, there was only one person left who fit that description.

I looked at him, Governor Snow, who it so happens was looking at me. “Stick around,” he mouthed to me.

Sounded like a good idea to me. “Sure,” I said.

“Hey,” Hector said to me, turning me and walking me toward the door. “If you’re tired, just take off. You don’t need to stick around if you don’t want.”

Interesting that Hector would say that. Maybe he liked keeping tabs on me-his “guy,” after all-and didn’t want me getting one-on-one face time with the governor.

“No, it’s okay,” I said. I thought a little one-on-one was just what I needed right now. With his defenses down thanks to the liquor, this might be the best chance I’d have to find out what the governor knew, and when he knew it.

The room felt empty and large with everyone gone, all the aggressive banter evaporated. The governor poured himself another glass of champagne and offered me one, which I accepted. Anything to encourage dialogue.