David Ellis - Breach of Trust

Just doing my job. It was true. I couldn’t be sorry about providing a zealous defense to a client. But I could be happy that some justice was coming his way now. There would be attorneys, in the coming days, who would criticize me for turning against a former client, but I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over it.

“I’m coming to you,” I said into my cell phone to Lee Tucker.

“Now?”

“Now. Bring another Bird. Ten minutes.”

“Why do I need to bring another Bird?”

I hung up the phone without answering. He didn’t need to know why.

I walked into suite 410 fifteen minutes later. Lee Tucker had just shown up, still wearing his coat, his cheeks still pink from the cold outside. “What’s the problem?” he asked. “The F-Bird didn’t work?” I handed it to him. “It worked just fine. I just thought you should have this right away.”

It wasn’t the real reason I was turning in the F-Bird early, but it sounded like a sensible explanation.

Tucker stared at the recording device I’d handed him. “This was your breakfast with Hector Almundo?”

I nodded. “Listen to that. You might be adding a name to that indictment.”

“Well-c’mon. Give me a preview.”

“Let’s just say you’re going to learn a few things about Hector Almundo. I sure did.”

“C’mon, Counselor. Don’t be a putz.”

I smiled, which felt odd. I hadn’t done a lot of that recently, and this surely wasn’t a time for mirth. “Greg Connolly,” I said. “It was Hector. Hector and Charlie.”

Lee Tucker nodded at me, but hardly reacted. Nothing in his eyes, nothing in his movements. “Okay. Anything else?”

“You knew,” I said. “You already knew.”

Tucker wasn’t going to say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.

“The guys he hired?” I asked. “You traced them back to Hector? Forensics? What?”

It felt silly, but I’d been living in my own little world, working up a case for these guys. I hadn’t considered the obvious-these guys were capable of some investigating of their own. They could have swept the place where I was interrogated for fingerprints or DNA-shit, the one goon spilled a pool of blood out of his nose after I clocked him. And they followed the car that dropped me off that night. They probably knew the names of both of those guys and had easily secured search warrants to access phone records and anything else they might need to trace those guys back to Hector.

“Well, now you have a confession, too,” I said.

Tucker paused, debating what he could say to me. “That will help us a lot. Let’s say it will confirm what we strongly suspected. Great job, Jason. Really.”

I held out my hand. Tucker put a new F-Bird in my palm but didn’t release it. “You’ll take one more shot at Snow? You’ll give it the old college try?”

I pried the new F-Bird from his hand. I looked him in the eye but didn’t answer.

“Jason, don’t be an idiot. You’ve done so much for this case. Hell, you risked your ass for us. Chris won’t prosecute you. Not if you take this one last shot. Even if you fail. Just try.”

Mom always said, if you don’t have something to say, keep your mouth shut. So I did.

“But you tell Chris to fuck off now-Jason, c’mon, man, you know he’ll go after you. Don’t throw all your hard work away. Don’t do that.”

I thought Tucker’s impassioned plea was not entirely self-interested. Yes, he wanted to be part of an historic investigation that took down the governor. And yes, he could dutifully play the good cop to Chris Moody’s bad. But I thought Lee meant what he was saying. I’d earned something with him after everything I’d done. He was rooting for me, I thought. He wanted me to avoid prison. That sounded like an okay idea to me as well. But it wasn’t Tucker’s call.

It was Moody’s call. And, as Moody had said to me earlier, it really was up to me.

I didn’t go down to the pressroom in the state building for the 11:30 media event. I couldn’t stomach the idea of watching the heads of State and Local Employees United and the International Brotherhood of Commercial Laborers announce their endorsement of Governor Carlton Snow. It was covered over the Internet, however, so I flipped it on in spite of myself and half listened to it, which is to say that it was on in the background as I packed up some of the few personal items I had brought to this office.

Rick Harmoning praised Carlton Snow’s commitment to the working class but forgot to mention how Snow got all of Rick’s family and friends jobs in the administration, veterans and better-qualified candidates be damned. Gary Gardner cited the governor’s support of the federal employee free choice law but not his soon-to-be-announced appointment of Gardner’s brother-in-law to the state supreme court.

I tried to care enough to be mad but I was punch-drunk at this point, numb from overexposure. And I was exhausted. I had done what I’d come to do. I’d found my killer and, only a few hours ago, had taped him over breakfast admitting to the crimes. His co-conspirator, Charlie Cimino, was already in the soup plenty for his role that night-much of which had been captured by my F-Bird-as well as dozens of other felonies Charlie and I committed for months before that.

So in that regard, at least, all was right with the world. It was hard to stay motivated. I listened with only passing interest to the platitudes the governor and the two union leaders heaped upon each other. I removed the two AA batteries from my boom box stereo, threw them in my pocket, wrapped the cord around the stereo several times, and placed it in a gym bag I had brought with me today. Other than the stereo, the only other things I had brought to this office were a bunch of my own pens-I hated the cheap, government-supplied ones-and an oversized coffee cup I bought at the Fiesta Bowl a couple years ago when Talia and I went to Arizona for Christmas. I looked around the office and considered stealing the stapler, which was actually nicer than the one at my office, but stealing is wrong and I decided against it. I did think, however, that after the valuable public service I’d performed over the last four months, the taxpayers of this state could spot me a couple of rubber bands, so I stuffed those in my pocket and called us even.

The boom box and pens safely in my bag, I zipped it up and put it under my desk. It occurred to me that someone might notice that I appeared to vacating my office and might wonder why.

I still had the rest of the day, though. At least I thought I did. Tonight would be Antwain Otis’s last night on this earth, and I was hoping to have at least one more conversation with the governor about it. I had my own thoughts about the outcome but, at a minimum, I wanted to make sure the issue was thoroughly vetted. I wanted to make sure that Carlton Snow actually thought about this. I thought Antwain Otis was owed that much.

And then there was the federal government. Moody wanted the governor so badly he probably tasted Carlton Snow when he belched. And like anyone in his position, he wanted a slam dunk. Yes, he could flip the governor’s people and make them testify against their boss, but having someone on tape was always the best way to win a case, and he wanted Snow to incriminate himself to the F-Bird.

“Happy to take some questions,” I heard the governor say through the computer. I turned to listen, only because it was such a rare occasion that they allowed the governor to speak to reporters.

“ Governor, twelve hours from now, Antwain Otis is scheduled to be executed. Have you considered the petition for clemency and what can you tell us about your decision? ”