by David Ellis
“True.”
“I’m a safety valve. I’m there in case there’s some reason to think, after all the legal process is done, that something is way off. And nothing’s way off. Fair trial. No question of guilt.”
He’d thought about this more than I’d realized. I’d begun to stereotype him as a soulless politician and nothing more.
“Then why am I here?” I asked.
He smiled, even laughed to himself. “Right.”
“I don’t do politics, Governor. You have people who do that, and they’ve told you what they think. And I have to say, I can’t disagree with them. On the politics.”
He drank from his bottle and fidgeted. This couldn’t be easy for him, no matter how assured he was of the decision.
“You know what they call me down in the capital?” he asked. “You probably don’t, do you?”
I shook my head, no.
“The ‘accidental governor.’ I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not one of them. I’m not entrenched. They don’t want me. They want one of their own. They want Willie, because Willie’s someone they know. He’s been down there for twenty years. I’m talking about Democrats, too, not just the GOP. Nobody down there wants me.”
I hadn’t heard any of that. I was completely unplugged from capital politics, and I was sure that I was the better off for it.
“But you know what I am? Accidental or not, I’m the governor. And I’m the only Democrat who can win this thing. Willie can’t win. I mean, we’ve had two Democratic governors in this state over the last thirty-five years. We like Republicans for our governors. The only Democrat who can win is the incumbent, and that’s me. I’m the incumbent because everybody calls me Governor. “
He pointed at the black phone. “I do this—those guys are right. I might as well declare that I’m against the death penalty. Edgar Trotter or whoever comes out of the GOP primary will crucify me with this. I’ll be a pussy liberal Democrat.”
I rested my elbows on my knees and thought about that. I wasn’t sure he was giving voters enough credit. But then, I didn’t live in his political world. You run enough negative ads on one issue, it probably sinks in. It sticks. Carlton Snow, soft on crime. Look at this beautiful white woman and her child, murdered by this black thug gangbanger. Carlton Snow let him off the hook!
“You’re the governor,” I said. “Our constitution gives this power to you, without limitation. You’re supposed to do what you think is right.”
“What I think is right? Is that how you see the world, Jason?” He had turned on me. Something inside him had been stirred. “I get elected by people who want me to do things a certain way. So I do them that way. Do I get to do some things I care about? Yeah, sure I do. Health care for kids, for one. You pick your spots. But you can’t do those things—you can’t be a good governor unless you’re governor.”
The motto of this administration. He wasn’t entirely off the mark, of course, but it depended on your perspective.
“When is enough enough?” I asked. “How much bullshit do you have to swallow to do the things you care about?”
The governor placed his palm on the window, like he was testing the outside temperature. “Good question.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “I mean, Judge Ippolito, Governor. Judge George Ippolito. The guy you’re appointing to the supreme court tomorrow?”
The governor pondered his hand for a moment. “You don’t approve. But people want him. I’m doing what people want. Supporters.”
“Gary Gardner wants him. And he’s willing to trade a union endorsement for it.”
Governor Snow turned to me. His lips parted but he didn’t speak. “Who said that?”
“Who said that? That’s exactly what’s happening, Governor.”
He looked away from me, otherwise immobile. I was having trouble reading this thing. Was he telling me that he didn’t know?
The governor wagged his empty bottle and went to the fridge for another. After pulling a fresh, sweaty bottle out, he looked at me. “Sometimes I don’t need to know all the details,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t want to.”
“You didn’t know,” I said.
The governor came over and sat in the chair across from me. “Did I know that people supporting my candidacy wanted him? Yes. Did I know exactly how that played out? That’s not my job. That’s a detail. Because it’s all the same.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Sure it is. Sure it is. My actions respond to what voters, what supporters want. I get support from gun-control advocates because they know if a concealed-carry bill comes before me, I’ll veto it. If I don’t do what they want, they don’t support me. That’s wrong? That’s how it works.”
“But not an under-the-table deal, Governor.”
“Oh, really?” He drew back. “What is the freaking difference, Jason? Really. See, here’s what you don’t get. Here’s what you don’t get.” He framed his hands in the air. “You get elected governor by showing people you want it. That’s how it’s supposed to be. You have to really want it. You have to be willing to make sacrifices. You have to cut deals. Sometimes do things you don’t want to do. If you aren’t willing to do those things, then you don’t want it bad enough, and you shouldn’t get it. People want their politicians to scratch and claw to get the job.”
“You don’t think people want you to pick the best possible judge to sit on the supreme court?”
“They may want it, but they don’t expect it.” He took a long swallow of water. “They expect me to make a political judgment. They expect me to try to please my supporters.”
“And you think that if they knew how George Ippolito got on the bench, they’d be okay with that? A side deal for a union endorsement?”
He sat back in the chair, crossed his leg, and smiled. “They don’t want to know,” he said.
I pulled on my tie, feeling a little hot and bothered at the moment. I wasn’t sure what I was doing here. Chris Moody, were he listening to this in real time, would be having a heart attack. The last thing he’d want is for me to talk the governor out of appointing George Ippolito to the supreme court. I realized that I was giving the governor some rope here. But I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see if he’d hang himself with it, or if I was trying to decide whether to call off the hanging altogether.
My heartbeat had ratcheted up a few notches. I felt like I was doing a slow jog and preparing to kick it in for the final mile of the race. My watch said it was ten minutes to eleven.
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” I asked.
The comment surprised him. He wasn’t accustomed, I suppose, to that level of bluntness.
“I mean, seriously, Governor. Why this impassioned defense? Why am I even here? You know what the politics dictate. What do you need me for?”
He rested his head on the chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Interesting question.”
And the answer, I thought, was even more interesting. In the recesses of his soul, where political calculations hadn’t yet infiltrated, he was thinking about commuting Otis’s sentence. I was the guy who represented the opposite of politics, in some ways at least, and he wanted my opinion.
No—he wanted a particular opinion. He wanted me to come to the same conclusion as his political advisers. He wanted to be able to tell himself that he was doing the right thing tonight by letting Antwain Otis die.
“Tell me what you would do,” he said.
I wouldn’t want to be him, I knew that much. My principal objection, prior to tonight, had been the lack of due diligence on the governor’s part. He hadn’t been paying any attention to Antwain Otis, and that, itself, was criminal in my mind. I’d focused on that objection to the exclusion of actually formulating an opinion myself. Now, here it was, and I had to concede it wasn’t easy having to make this decision.
But I knew this much: Carlton Snow still had a chance to pass my internal test. I’d been unsure whether he was a clueless le
ader or one who simply preferred to remain clueless to the crimes going on around him, who buried his head in the sand.
Now, I realized, there was another possibility: He might be someone who never had anyone whispering the right things in his ear. He had political animals around him. Everyone had more or less the same viewpoint; they might disagree about the political angle but it was always the political angle that mattered. He didn’t have a voice of conscience. Maybe if he did—maybe there was something more to this guy.
“That minister who talked to us?” I said. “Remember what he said he preaches to the inmates? ‘Don’t look backward,’ he said. ‘Look forward. Make tomorrow a better day.’ ”
“Right, right.” He pointed at me.
“Do you think tomorrow’s a better day with Antwain Otis dead or alive?”
He watched me for a long time. I broke eye contact only to note that we were inside an hour before the execution.
“If I do what a majority of the people in this state want me to do,” he said, “I don’t touch that phone. Now, what’s wrong with doing what the majority wants?”
“Because the majority wants you to exercise your judgment, not follow their lead like some permanent town hall meeting. You’re supposed to make the tough call.”
“I see.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Even if that tough call is against their wishes.”
“That’s why it’s tough.”
“Even if it fucks me in the election.”
“Right again.”
“You can’t be a good governor unless you’re gov—”
“Oh, Governor, spare me that, okay? I mean, what the hell’s the point of being governor if you can’t be a good one? To do the right thing as much as you can, as often as you can?”
He watched me, tolerating me like he might a child. “You’d commute the sentence.”
“Yes,” I said, “I would. Keep him in prison forever but let him make the world a slightly better place.”
I exhaled. I’d tried to keep an open mind on this issue. I’d really been more concerned with the governor making the decision for the right reason than with any particular outcome. I’d surprised myself with the abrupt answer and with how strongly I held the sentiment, once iterated.
The governor opened his hands. “I just can’t do that, son. I just can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
He gave me a grim smile. “You’re right. I won’t do that.”
I felt the air go out of the room. There was nothing really left to say. I hadn’t given the governor what he’d wanted—validation, reassurance—but it wasn’t going to change his mind. It never was.
He looked at his watch. “I thought I wanted some company, but I’m not sure I do.”
Right. He didn’t want my disapproving eyes boring into him as the hour struck midnight and the venom seeped into the veins of Antwain Otis, strapped to a gurney.
I got up and straightened my suit coat, the F-Bird resting heavy in the inner pocket. I thanked him and walked to the door.
“I’m sorry, Jason,” he said.
I stopped on my way back and turned to him. Antwain Otis aside, he’d probably said enough tonight about Judge Ippolito to buy himself an arrest warrant tomorrow.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said.
92
I STOPPED AT THE HOTEL BAR IN THE LOBBY FOR a drink. I wasn’t in a tremendous hurry to get back. Tucker and Moody would devour the contents of this F-Bird like it was their last meal, which in some sense of the word it was. They’d want to debrief me, and now that my job was all but completed, they might even want me to review the application for the arrest warrants, given that much of the information contained in it had been supplied by me. I didn’t know, but I wasn’t eager for a long night. I wanted to escape. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
The dirty martini was too dirty, too salty, but I drank it fast and then ordered a shot of whiskey, hot and bitter down my raw throat, which somehow felt more appropriate.
I walked from the Ritz toward the federal building. It wasn’t all that cold out tonight, but there must have been rain, a damp musky odor on the emptying city streets. The fresh air helped.
“I’m done,” I said into the cell phone to Lee Tucker.
“And? How did we do?”
“See you in ten minutes,” I said.
I passed a couple arm in arm, drunk and amorous. I passed a homeless guy sitting against the wall of a building and handed him a crumpled five from my pocket. He made some noise, but I couldn’t make out words. So much suffering in the world. So few people—including me—who did anything to help. That was what these guys were supposed to be doing, the governor and his crew. They were supposed to be helping the rest of us. Trying, at least. Giving us their honest best.
I gave Carlton Snow a chance tonight. I gave him a chance to show me that he could be the right kind of governor, that if pushed in the right direction he could take that path. He didn’t take it. Maybe his ultimate decision was right. Plenty of people would believe that Antwain Otis’s death sentence was just. Good people. Well-intentioned people. But deep down, Carlton Snow wanted to give Otis a reprieve, and he denied it anyway. No matter the correctness of his decision, he did it for the wrong reasons.
I walked along the bridge over the river that divided the commercial district from the near north side, which put me about three blocks south of the federal building. I didn’t walk on the concrete pedestrian walkway but on the bridge surface itself, a grid design, a checkerboard of steel. I remember walking on this bridge as a kid with my father. My dad said the grid design was to prevent skidding. I didn’t know if that was true, but I remembered getting on my hands and knees and poking my fingers through the diamond-shaped holes made by the grid and looking through the bridge down to the river itself.
I stopped on the bridge, hopped up on to the concrete walkway, and leaned over the railing, watching the misty fog that covered the river. I’d done the principal thing that brought me into this mess. I could always say that much. I found Ernesto’s killer. In the process I’d played a role I never thought I would play, a snitch, a rat for the government. I suppose it was fair to say that I had performed a valuable service, but it didn’t feel that way.
When I checked my watch, it was three minutes after midnight. It didn’t matter anymore. I pushed off the railing and headed over the river.
My cell phone buzzed. I couldn’t imagine being in the mood to talk to anyone, but I checked the phone. It was Madison Koehler. I had nothing to say to her but I answered, anyway.
“Hi, Madison.”
“What the hell did you do?”
I sighed. I’d eaten a lot of shit from her for the greater good, but I’d hit my limit.
“I don’t know, Madison, what did I do now?”
“You tell me,” she said. “Please explain to me why the governor just halted the execution.”
93
I WATCHED HIM FROM THREE BLOCKS AWAY, ONCE HE turned the corner from the federal building, coming toward me. He was walking slowly. It was late, he had an enormous amount of work left ahead of him, and the temperatures were falling, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Moody was taking his time on his approach.
His gait seemed to slow even more as he got within earshot of me. He stopped at a distance of about ten feet. I wasn’t sure why. It set the appropriate tone, I thought. Pistols and ten paces at dawn, that kind of thing.
“Okay, I’m here. All alone, as you asked. Is there some reason we had to do the hand-off on the middle of the Lerner Street Bridge?”
His distance from me, combined with the poor lighting, made it hard to distinguish his features. His face appeared to be set in a clench, like he was ready for battle. His tone was appropriately hostile but also cautious. He’d listened to my earlier F-Bird from this morning, my conversation with Hector Almundo. He had some reason to question my motives. And I had another F-Bird in my pocket right now, which was recording everything until he
turned it off. That, more than anything, would make him careful with his words.
“Well?” he asked. “Do I get the F-Bird or not?”
I reached into the inner pocket of my suit coat, pulled out my little friend, and showed it to him.
Then I threw it into the river.
I never heard it splash. It just vanished into the darkness. Moody followed the arc until it disappeared into the misty gray below. He probably wasn’t happy, but he couldn’t have been totally surprised, either. And he wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of a visceral reaction. If he was angry, he figured, he’d have plenty of ways to take it out on me.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “Why?”
“I think you’re wrong about Snow,” I said. “He’s no saint. Maybe he’s even a criminal. Maybe. The people around him? Most definitely. But I see a guy who was in a little over his head. If someone would have just given him the right advice, he might have been able to do better.”
“That’s really sweet.”
“His people kept him in the dark, Chris. Maybe he didn’t want to know, but still—he didn’t know. Not exactly. That’s why they always kept Hector in the dark, too. Because they knew Hector would tell the governor.”
“Very touching, Jason. And what about the governor, all on his own, talking about shaking down those abortion groups? Way I heard it, that was all his idea.”
“Yeah, and look how that turned out, Chris. A whole lot of nothing, that’s what. They blew off what he said. That proves my point. His people are running that program, not him.”
He was quiet a moment. “Well, you’ve got it all worked out, don’t you?”
“Don’t worry your little head, Chris. With the nooses you have around his people, there’ll be plenty of flippers willing to sing. You’ll get the governor. You’ll probably put him away for a long time. It’s just not going to be because of me.”
I saw a faint shaking of the head from the prosecutor. From his perspective, what I was doing didn’t make much sense—for exactly the reason I had just articulated. They were going to get Carlton Snow anyway. It would probably only take one of the dominoes—Charlie, Madison, Hector, MacAleer—to fall before the rest of them did. So why, Moody wondered, would I toss the F-Bird into the river and risk the ire of the man who held my fate in his hands, when ultimately it wouldn’t help Snow all that much, anyway?