by David Ellis
“You seem like a winner,” I said, stifling the gag reflex. “I like to go with the winner.”
He watched me, maybe trying to decode what I was saying.
“You have to understand the rules before you play a game,” I went on. “I think you’re a guy who understands what he has to do to win. I want to be with the guy who brings a gun, not a knife, to the gunfight. I mean, you can’t be a good governor unless you’re governor, right?” I’d heard someone else say that. Carlton Snow probably said that to himself every day.
God, I hoped this was working, because it was all I could do not to laugh. I was trying to get him comfortable enough to talk about the things happening under him that fell somewhere outside the legal boundaries. I wanted it to be a source of pride, an emblem of his ambition.
“So, why are you here?” he asked me again.
I thought I caught his meaning, but I didn’t have a clever response. “Why does anyone want to be with a winner?”
The governor moved from the chair to the large window overlooking the north side of the city. The commercial district had gone dark but the area to the north was scattered with lights, the yuppie crowds enjoying late-night dining, theater, the bar scene. Profiled against the cityscape, and notwithstanding the oxford and blue jeans, Carlton Snow looked more like a governor than at any time I’d seen him.
“It’s hard to find people I trust,” he said. “Everyone wants something. Everyone has their own agenda. Mac, I trust him from going back, but he just needs someone to follow, y’know? Maddie and Pesh and Charlie—I trust them because their interests intersect with mine. They only get what they want if I get what I want.” He drank from his glass and looked out over the city.
He was a personable guy. I’d seen that in him from the start. It might have been practiced, but I didn’t think so. That, in fact, seemed to be his chief attribute. I didn’t see anything in him that particularly demonstrated superior intelligence, and certainly no great command of policy, but he could probably enjoy the company of just about anyone. That quality, in some ways, made him perfect for the job of governor, but in other ways made him wrong for it. If I was reading him correctly, he was longing for real relationships and not just lackeys who whisper sweet nothings.
But why was he sharing this with me?
“What about Greg Connolly?” I asked. It was a risk, of course, a cymbal crashing during the mellow music. But what the hell, the booze was making me impatient.
The governor did a quick turn in my direction before returning his gaze to the window. “Greg. Greg, he surprised me. He surprised me.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t know. None of us did.”
Know what? I wanted to say. But I held my tongue, because the governor was already preparing to elaborate.
“I knew that guy my whole life, Greg. He had a great family. He loved his wife. He had this other side to him, and it made him do things like—like skulk around in a park after dark?” He blew out a sigh. “Christ, what a way to go. I looked at Jorie later that day—she wouldn’t even talk to me. I mean, what is she supposed to think? What is she supposed to tell her boys?”
The governor seemed to be getting a bit emotional. And I was getting more and more confused.
After a moment, the governor cleared his throat. “He could have told me. I wouldn’t have cared. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re an elected official, right? But Greg? He was behind the scenes. He could be whatever he wanted, I wouldn’t have cared. He had a job with me for life. I wouldn’t have cared about his damn sex life.”
I didn’t know what to say. I surely wasn’t going to get an admission from him about Greg Connolly’s undercover role with the federal government. And it was becoming awfully damn clear to me that he had no idea about it. I mean, this guy was a politician, a bullshit artist, but he couldn’t fake what he was doing here. Not when he was half in the bag, at least, and not with me watching everything about him to look for signs of a lie.
Jesus Christ. Unless I had lost all ability to read people, neither Governor Snow nor Madison Koehler knew anything about Greg being a snitch. They couldn’t have been behind his murder. Where the hell did that leave me?
“Now Hector,” the governor said, turning to me. His voice had regained something, I wasn’t sure what. “Hector, I trust. He understands me. I can tell that guy anything. That’s a powerful thing, y’know? To know you can trust someone with a secret?”
I nodded. I was still a little flustered here.
He walked up toward the couch and stared at me. He seemed far removed from the guy mourning the loss of his friend only two minutes ago. Some people can turn on and off like that. “So, can I trust you, Jason? Like I can trust Hector?”
I felt some internal detector queue up. This wasn’t a throwaway question, but I didn’t quite get the drift. Regardless, there was no reason not to play along. Besides, I was still playing to a recording device in my pocket, and the feds would expect the same answer from me.
“Of course you can,” I said.
He sat down next to me and turned to me. “Like Hector?”
“You can trust me,” I said, getting annoyed now and more confused.
“So tell me what you want,” he said. “You want to be a judge? You want some director job or something?”
None of the above, but I wasn’t going to rock the boat now, though I wasn’t sure where that boat was heading. Someplace turbulent, I thought, but I was beginning to mistrust my instincts. Or I just was having trouble believing them.
“You just want to be with a winner,” he said, his eyes locking with mine.
I didn’t speak. Something told me I should say something. Or maybe hold up a stop sign. But I didn’t. Not in time, at least.
Not before he put his hand on my thigh.
81
I WAS A WIDE RECEIVER IN FOOTBALL, NOT A DEFENSIVE back, despite the fact that I liked hitting people more than catching a ball, for one simple reason. I didn’t like to backpedal. I didn’t like the feeling of being off-balance as I pumped my arms and legs in reverse gear.
Maybe I’d missed my calling, because nobody, not an All-Pro cornerback in his prime, could have bounced off that couch and moved backward to the door of the hotel suite as quickly as I did.
Neither of us knew what to say. I thought that this was one of those actions-speak-louder-than-words moments. I’d made it pretty clear how I felt about what the governor had just done. I stood looking at the carpet. The governor, from what I could gather, had no idea how to proceed at this point.
“It seems to me, what we have here is a failure to communicate,” he said with an accent, parroting the famous line, hoping to ease the tension. Or just ease his embarrassment. He tried to laugh at his line, but the whole thing had fallen flat. I was hoping a phone would ring or something.
“Listen,” I finally said, “if I did something to make you—”
“No.” He raised a hand. “No need. My fault. I’m just drunk, that’s all. Let’s just forget about this.”
“That’s not a problem.”
The color had drained from his face. It seemed like the intoxication had drained from his body, too. He looked stone-cold sober and completely humiliated. The governor hadn’t just been rebuffed; he’d just revealed something extremely personal about himself to me.
“I should go,” I said, the understatement of the evening.
“Yeah, sure. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. The execution and all.”
I didn’t think I could subtract any more from the painful awkwardness, so I got my ass out of there. I kept a straight face as I passed by the governor’s security detail and essentially held my breath until I made it to the elevator. I ran my hand through my hair a few times, as if that would somehow remove the memory from my brain, and propped myself against the side of the car.
I wanted nothing more than to go home and take a very hot shower and bury myself under my covers, but I had to deliver FeeBee to Lee Tuc
ker, which made me think about how those last couple of minutes in the suite would sound on tape.
Given the lateness of the hour some of these evenings, Lee Tucker didn’t tend to sit around Suite 410 in my building waiting for me. I knew that in advance and called his cell phone when I had a moment. We agreed to meet at my house, with Lee entering through the alley.
He was wearing a sweatshirt and torn jeans, a ripped green hat, and a plug of tobacco in his mouth. His eyes were puffy and his cheek bore the faint sign of a crease. He’d been roused from sleep recently—presumably when I called. He was catching his shut-eye when he could find it these days. His day wasn’t ending here at midnight; it was just beginning. These days, as things were escalating in the campaign and the end of the investigation drew near, these guys were taking the F-Birds and immediately scrutinizing them.
“Anything good?” he asked.
I almost laughed. Tucker, I knew, would get a laugh out of the last few minutes of the recording.
“Not really,” I said, trying to focus. “No great admissions. To listen to this, you’d think neither Madison Koehler nor the governor had any idea about Greg Connolly working for you or the real way he died. You’d think the governor hardly knew the name George Ippolito and only vaguely knew about Rick Harmoning getting jobs for his cronies in the administration.”
“He’s a slippery one,” Tucker said.
“Yeah, but it’s not so much that, Lee. This guy—it’s not like he avoids the topic altogether, he just doesn’t go into detail. And every time he gets near something hot, Madison’s there for a roadblock.”
“Right. Insulating the boss. Classic.”
I wasn’t as convinced as my FBI handler about the insulation Madison was giving Governor Snow. Tucker might be right; it was possible that Snow knew everything that was going on—that he directed it, in fact—and Madison was just making sure he didn’t slip up in public. But I thought it was even money that Madison was the string puller, and she figured the governor didn’t need to know the details. And Carlton Snow sure seemed like a guy who could live with that arrangement.
Tucker nodded. “Anything else?”
“Tomorrow, the unions are endorsing Snow. SLEU and the Laborers. I think eleven or eleven-thirty.”
I saw the urgency in his eyes, the same thing I felt when I heard that news, so I was quick to tell him that the word I received was there would be no Ippolito appointment tomorrow. “Madison thought the timing would be too obvious.”
“She said that? That it would be ‘too obvious’?”
“Yeah, she did. That’ll be a nice admission for you at trial.”
He seemed pleased with that. He should be, from his perspective. Madison, from what anyone could tell, was the closest to the governor. She had the most goods to spill. They’d do the old hard-soft on her. They’d throw everything they had at her, trying to scare the shit out of her, and then offer her a decent plea bargain if she gave up everything she had on Governor Snow. She would likely be the star witness.
I knew that all along, of course, but it hadn’t bothered me until now. I’d assumed that she had a role in Greg Connolly’s murder, which eased my conscience considerably for helping record incriminating conversations about the Ippolito appointment and the jobs-for-endorsement thing with Rick Harmoning. But now I didn’t like her for that murder, and it made the whole picture a little grayer for me.
“Anything else?” Tucker shook the F-Bird in his hand. He was impatient, eager to get back and dissect the contents of tonight’s recordings.
“Nothing major,” I said. I left out the part about Hector admitting to me tonight that he orchestrated the Columbus Street Cannibals’ shakedown of local businesses for campaign contributions. Chris Moody was going to love that part when he listened to the F-Bird. It was like rubbing his face in his courtroom defeat. I didn’t know Hector was going to say that. It wasn’t my intention to rub it in Chris’s face. But it was a nice fringe benefit.
“Okay, so—that’s it?” Tucker asked.
I thought for a moment. “I might as well tell you, you’re going to hear it, anyway,” I said. “The governor made a pass at me tonight.”
“He made a—” Lee Tucker stared at me with innocent, unassuming eyes. A burst of uncertain laughter escaped. “Seriously?” he asked. “What did he do?”
“He sidled up to me and put his hand on my knee.”
Tucker put his hands on top of his head. He got a real rise out of that.
“My thigh, actually,” I said. “The inside part. There was . . . no doubt.”
That made him laugh harder. It was probably a combination of stress release and sleep deprivation, but soon he had to use the door to prop himself up. “You’ve gotta be . . . kidding me.”
“I wish I was, believe me.”
My cell phone buzzed. The caller ID said it was Hector Almundo. I could imagine why he was calling, but I wasn’t in the mood. I was hoping Tucker would stop laughing sometime soon.
“Eight tomorrow?” Lee said to me, catching his breath, his face the color of a tomato.
“See you then.”
I could hear his laughter as he walked down the alley. I allowed myself a brief chuckle, as well, more an acknowledgment of the bizarre than pure comedy. But the frivolity didn’t last. I was getting close to the end of my run with the governor’s people, and I had done a lot for the federal government, but I had completely struck out on my personal mission. I’d set my sights on two people—the governor and Madison—as the people behind Greg Connolly’s murder, and I had turned up a goose egg.
Maybe I’d been wrong about Charlie not running the show that night when Greg and I were interrogated, with only one of us surviving. Maybe there wasn’t someone above him. Maybe I was doing nothing more than serving as a good old-fashioned snitch without a higher purpose.
My cell phone rang again. Hector a second time. No doubt now—he’d heard from the governor. He was being called in to play intermediary, to damp down any brewing fire.
I watched the phone as it played out its four rings, then silence, then a slight quiver of the phone and a buzz telling me a second voicemail message had been left.
Then I decided to call Hector back.
82
HECTOR ANSWERED ON THE SECOND RING. “HEY,” HE said, clearly relieved to hear from me. “I talked to Carl. I heard about, y’know, what happened.”
“I figured.”
“I told you that you didn’t have to stick around, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, a little more specificity would’ve been nice, Hector.”
“Carl feels terrible. He’s really embarrassed.”
“It’s fine, Hector.”
“Listen—this is something you can keep to yourself, right? I mean, you can keep this a secret?”
That, clearly, was the purpose of the call, not the apology.
“Who would I tell?”
“I know,” he said, “but Jason, I’m serious here. This kind of thing gets out, it’s over for Carl. He’s finished.”
In this day and age? “Oh, come on,” I said, but I was reconsidering my reaction before I’d finished speaking. In many contexts, it seemed like it had become downright fashionable to swing from the other side. But, now that I thought about it, what was true for movie stars or baristas at Starbucks might not be true for governors of large Midwestern states. There wasn’t exactly a sea full of outwardly gay politicians anywhere, actually. There had been the governor out east, Jersey I think, who’d held that press conference to out himself, but that presser was quickly followed by a resignation. Maybe that old line was still true, the only things that will end your political career are being caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
“You have to tell me that you understand what I’m saying,” said Hector.
“I thought I already did.”
Silence. Then, “Tell me what you want, J. You can have whatever you want. Seriously.”
“I want the vacancy on the
supreme court,” I said.
“The sup—” He spent a moment with that, to my surprise. “I mean, that’s pretty—could we talk about the appellate court maybe?”
“Hector, I’m kidding. A Porsche 944, yellow with black interior, will be more than enough.”
“I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”
“I can see that.”
“Jason. Jason. You understand, you’re holding his whole political future in your—”
“I understand you’re serious, Hector. I’m not going to mention this to anybody, all right? I’m probably more embarrassed than he is.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
In the background on Hector’s side of the phone call, there was the sound of something breaking, a glass it sounded like, followed by cussing. Hector covered the phone and said something I couldn’t make out, save for the scolding tone. The voice of the person cussing was a man’s voice.
Right. Those of us on Hector’s defense team had always suspected; Lightner had been absolutely sure of Hector’s sexual preference. And now I had a much more informed idea why Hector was so close to Governor Snow. I’d always thought it was window dressing for Latino voters. Instead, it seemed they shared a common trait. I wondered if there was any kind of relationship between the two of them, but it was hard to imagine. More than likely, they were just two very public men who bonded over a shared, very private personal predilection.
Yesterday, I thought maybe I knew one gay politician; now I was sure I knew two.
“Hector, no bullshit, I wouldn’t—”
My throat closed involuntarily. I couldn’t finish the sentence. My heart started racing, my instincts outpacing my brain.
I asked myself a simple question, and I thought I knew the answer.
“You still there?” Hector said. “Hello?”
I braced my arm on the kitchen counter and played it out in my head.
Hector said, “I told Carl, if there was anyone I knew who could keep a secret, it was you. So I’m not gonna be wrong about that, am I? Jason. Am I gonna be wrong?”