David Ellis - Breach of Trust

Alone on a night like this, I thought, not cold but rainy, slippery, poor visibility.

I was past the why questions I’d asked for so long afterward. Why didn’t Talia scrap the trip when it started raining so hard? Why didn’t she slow down at the curve? I was past it as a pure function of a time cushion, and I was past it because I knew I was just transferring, because I was bitter and angry and everyone was to blame, me included but not alone.

I took deep breaths as the blackness mounted, coloring everything around me. I was trembling, white-knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel, my teeth grinding so furiously that I was tasting blood on my tongue.

I’d never been to this place, this townhouse, but I had the address courtesy of Joel Lightner. It wasn’t hard to find. The area had exploded in the last few years, before the housing bubble burst, but these were not the homeowners who defaulted on their loans and left their homes in disarray. This was the near-west side, the lofts and condos all new, purchased by the young professionals and artists.

I stood next to the mailbox, a cold shower of rain pelting me, forcing me to squint as I peered at the three-story home. At two in the morning, all the interior lights in the townhouse were out. I removed my cell phone from my pocket and dialed the number. It rang four times and went to voicemail.

I hung up. Then I dialed it again.

A light went on up on the third floor, presumably the bedroom. That’s really all I needed to know.

“Yeah, hello? Jason?”

“Hey,” I said into my cell phone. My voice was even and flat. “I think the reception was bad on the phone before. Just wanted to tell you, I’m not going to say anything to anybody.”

I could hear Hector clearing his throat, shaking out the cobwebs. “Okay, good. That’s good. Hey, breakfast tomorrow, eight-thirty? Apple Jacks?”

“Breakfast tomorrow.” I punched out the cell phone.

Five seconds later, the light went out in the third-floor bedroom again.

Hector was down for the night, sleeping more peacefully now that I had reassured him that I would not divulge the secret held by Hector’s political coattails, Governor Carlton Snow. I wondered how often Hector stayed out here at this townhouse. For a guy who liked to keep his private life private, I suppose it made more sense to stay at his partner’s place, not the other way around. He probably parked his car in a garage, maybe slinked out in the early morning hours before anyone could see him. Or maybe he figured he was sufficiently anonymous out here in the artsy-yuppie near-west side, several miles from the legislative district he used to represent.

I looked at the mailbox marked D. BAILEY. According to Joel Lightner, Delroy Bailey had moved here after his divorce from Joey Espinoza’s sister. Lightner, in his typical flair for completeness, had even noted the grounds for divorce in the petition filed by Joey’s sister: irreconcilable differences. Yeah, I guess it’s pretty irreconcilable when your husband is gay.

If it wasn’t hard for me, it wouldn’t have been hard for Adalbert Wozniak, either. He was claiming that he’d been treated unfairly by the Procurement and Construction Board when the beverage contract was given to Delroy’s company over his own. Did he actually figure out that someone very close to the PCB, Hector, was sleeping with the contract award winner? My guess was no. If Wozniak had gotten that far, there would have been some documentation of his finding. But no doubt, in his lawsuit, he was going to seek depositions of the interested parties, including Delroy Bailey. Wozniak and his lawyers would be sniffing around, and Hector would be in jeopardy. The story, from Hector’s viewpoint, would be devastating. Not merely allegations of influence peddling-politicians live with those accusations all the time-but something that would be far more controversial to someone who was, at the time, seeking the Democratic nomination for the office of attorney general. It would be hard enough to become the first Latino statewide officeholder; the first Latino and gay statewide officeholder would probably be too much.

What had Hector said tonight about Governor Snow? He’s finished, if word got out about his sexual preferences. Hector would have thought the same thing about himself. He was looking at a revelation that would end his statewide political ambitions. He didn’t know that was coming, anyway, thanks to a federal indictment. He didn’t know the feds were all over him, that they had flipped Joey Espinoza and were investigating the Columbus Street Cannibals.

What to do with Adalbert Wozniak, the man who could ruin him? Hector didn’t turn to the Cannibals. He didn’t know them. He admitted as much to me last night in the limo. The Cannibals shakedown was his idea, but he needed Joey Espinoza to deliver the message, to orchestrate everything with the Cannibals. And Hector couldn’t turn to Joey for the Wozniak problem. He couldn’t very well tell Joey, I’m sleeping with your ex-brother-in-law, and it’s about to be exposed if we don’t kill this Polish guy.

So he turned to a different street gang, the one that didn’t dominate his legislative district, that wouldn’t be so easily connected to him. He went straight to the top. He went to Kiko, the top assassin for the Latin Lords. He needed Adalbert Wozniak dead to keep him quiet.

To cover up Hector’s connection to Delroy.

Hector. Hidden in plain sight, right in front of me. I must have missed about fifty clues along the way. An attorney’s instinct, I guess, for his own client.

The moments shot out at me now like asteroids from my subconscious: During Hector’s trial, when I told Hector and Paul Riley about this witness I liked, Ernesto Ramirez, a guy who seemed to know something and who was close to the Latin Lords. Maybe the Lords killed Wozniak, I said. Why would they do that? Hector responded, doing a very good job of playing dumb. I might as well have signed Ernesto’s death warrant at that moment.

And the night my world changed, as I waited impatiently in my office for a call from Ernesto Ramirez. The call from Paul Riley, asking me why I was still at the office, and my response-that I was waiting on this witness, this long-shot, Ernesto. Hector in the background with Paul, laughing, knowing that the call from Ernesto would never come, knowing that I’d sit there all night.

I reached into my trench coat pocket and felt the gun, caressed it, pondered it.

The rest made sense, too. Greg Connolly was the chair of the PCB. He’d been the one Hector turned to for the favor, skipping over Adalbert Wozniak’s company to give the beverage contract to Delroy Bailey and Starlight Catering. Surely Greg was aware of the lawsuit filed by Wozniak’s company. Surely it gave him some amount of unrest, at the very least, to know that a legal process was under way to sniff around this sordid affair. And surely, it caught his attention when the plaintiff in that lawsuit, Bert Wozniak, wound up dead from multiple gunshot wounds.

Did Greg know that Hector was behind the Wozniak murder? Hector wouldn’t have had to say it outright, though he might have. Hector liked to flex his muscles. I wouldn’t put it past him to tell Connolly straight up. Or just as likely, something vague enough for Hector to take credit without making an admission- Took care of that problem or Don’t worry about that thing.

Did Greg know about Ernesto Ramirez, too? Hard to say, but I assumed so. Probably when Hector first heard the name from me, he reached out to Greg to see if he knew anything. This was in the heat of a trial whose headline charge was the Wozniak murder. Hector would have panicked upon learning that someone knew the truth about that murder.