by David Ellis
I don’t know how long I was there, staring at the governor’s glass doors. Federal agents came and went, removing computers and entire file cabinets. A crowd, naturally, gathered around the office, and it wasn’t long at all before the cameras began to appear.
The governor hadn’t been arrested and he hadn’t appeared outside his office. Had he the chance to think this over, he probably would have been best served to exit his office as soon as the arrests were made, before the press could arrive. Now, he was stuck. As far as I knew, there was only one way out, and now he was going to have to walk out into a carnivorous media.
My cell phone buzzed. I didn’t recognize the number. I saw from the corner of my phone’s face that I’d missed two calls in the last twenty minutes. I hadn’t even noticed.
Before I could even say hello, Peshke was speaking harshly into the phone. “Jason, where are you? We need you in the governor’s office right now. Don’t you know what’s going on?”
I closed the phone. I didn’t enjoy turning my back, but it was the only option. Funny, it had never occurred to me that, in this dire moment, the governor would be calling his lawyer.
For some reason, I felt bad walking away from his call. It felt cruel. It was, I realized, a very curious reaction, given all the things I’d done to make this day happen.
I left the state building and headed back to my law office.
MARIE, MY RECEPTIONIST EXTRAORDINAIRE, opted to forgo the typical comment about my absenteeism in favor of this: “Did you hear the governor was arrested?”
I walked down the hall to my office and dropped onto my couch. Shauna was in my doorway moments later.
“Did you hear about the governor?” she said.
I turned my head slowly in her direction.
“Was it the governor or just some of his aides? They’re saying both things. Nobody seems to know.”
“Not the governor,” I said. “Not yet.”
“People you know? These were people you worked with?”
I sighed. I dropped my head against the couch and closed my eyes. My head was suddenly ringing. Everything started draining out of my body, all the tension and anger and worry and revulsion. All of that being gone, there was little of me remaining.
“I’m so tired,” I said.
When I heard Shauna’s voice again, she was closer. I felt the couch cushion depress next to me, and then her warm hand on my arm.
“You’re shaking,” she said. “Tell me. Jason, you never tell me anymore.”
“I . . . miss that.” I thought of all of the people with whom I’d come into contact over the last six months, almost all of them poison, ravenous, and unethical. Liars. Cheaters. I needed a hot shower that would last the rest of my life. I wanted to scrub and cleanse and purge all of the venom. I wanted to be anybody but me, anywhere but here.
I reached out for Shauna and found her hand. She covered it with her other hand. I must have fallen asleep there, awakening several hours later with a coat over my shoulder. I didn’t remember letting go of her hand.
95
“THIS IS A SAD DAY FOR GOVERNMENT AND FOR THIS state. The complaint unsealed today exposes crimes in state government ranging from extortion and pay-to-play allegations to murder of a federal undercover witness. The complaint alleges that these crimes were committed at the highest levels of state government in Governor Carlton Snow’s administration. Only hours ago, federal agents arrested Madison Koehler, chief of staff to the governor; Hector Almundo, deputy director of the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs; Brady MacAleer, chief of government administration; Ciriaco Cimino, Governor Snow’s chief fundraiser . . .”
The U.S. attorney looked visibly angry as he spoke to reporters, the tremor in his voice unmistakable. He was flanked by Christopher Moody and other prosecutors, as well as other federal agents, including Lee Tucker.
Chris Moody was playing the sober part, but unlike his boss, I doubted he was truly angry. That wasn’t how he operated. He was thrilled, exhilarated. It was all about personal ambition to him. I wondered if he worried about me at all, if last night was occupying his thoughts. After all, I had an F-Bird in my possession in which Moody had offered to decline to prosecute me if I kept quiet about his indiscretion during Hector’s trial.
I’d never use it, and if he knew me better, he’d have known that. But he didn’t. He lived in a black-and-white world. You were an ally or an enemy, a good guy or a bad one. He would always assume the worst about me. That probably suited my purposes. I would never be charged with a crime for anything related to this, nor had I taken a plea. I’d never admitted to wrongdoing. I would be the one whom they praised for coming forward, for risking my life, all to expose government corruption. I would be the star witness at trial, but I wouldn’t be Joey Espinoza; I wouldn’t be a flipper. I was a voluntary cooperator. I would come out of this better than anyone, at least on paper.
Shauna had found the complaint for the arrest warrant on the Internet and downloaded it. Although I told them they could use my name if they wished—“I don’t give a rat’s ass” was my official position—I wasn’t identified by name in the complaint. Few people other than the defendants, whose names appeared always in all caps, would be named. I was “Private Attorney A” in the complaint. Shauna had already asked me if it was okay to use that as my nickname now.
Governor Snow, Madison, Hector, Charlie, MacAleer—they’d probably come up with other nicknames for me by now. Surely they’d put two and two together by this point. There were at least a dozen people in this city now who wished for nothing more than my violent death.
That might be viscerally pleasing to them but not tactically advantageous. Virtually everything I contributed to the case was caught on tape. The tapes would be the star witness. If I fell off the face of the earth, the United States could still bury everyone they’d charged.
Everyone, by the way, included more than the four top aides to the governor. Patrick Lemke, the nervous Nellie staffer at the Procurement and Construction Board, had been arrested. Top union officials Gary Gardner and Rick Harmoning were arrested. Judge George Ippolito was walked out of his courtroom in handcuffs. Four other men were charged for the murder of Greg Connolly and the assault committed on me, one of whom was Paul Patrino—Paulie, one of the guys who’d worked me over. Another of those guys surely was Leather Jacket, but I didn’t know him by name.
Federico Hurtado—Kiko—was not named in this arrest warrant. Apparently he hadn’t been involved in Greg Connolly’s murder. But the feds would be looking at him hard on Ernesto Ramirez’s murder, itself the murder of a potential government witness, but one that hadn’t been charged yet. That could, theoretically, mean that Kiko would view me as a threat, but it would be a misplaced notion. The evidence against Kiko came, at the end of the day, principally from one man. If I were Hector Almundo, waiting in lockup on a federal murder charge, I’d be watching my back.
“I would like to add one more thing,” said the U.S. attorney. “Greg Connolly was not the only person willing to cooperate with us to uncover corruption. Another individual agreed to cooperate with us at the early stages of this investigation and granted us windows into this political corruption that we otherwise wouldn’t have had. He did so at great personal risk to himself, on one occasion narrowly escaping the same fate as Mr. Connolly. It’s fair to say that we wouldn’t be here today were it not for this individual. The people of this state owe him a debt of gratitude.”
“Hey, look at you.” Shauna flipped the back of her hand against my arm.
I almost laughed. That platitude to me, no doubt, was at the insistence of a certain assistant U.S. attorney who wanted to make sure I understood that we were still pals, and I wouldn’t ever need to use that F-Bird I still kept from our friendly chat on the Lerner Street Bridge.
“I’m going home,” I said, forcing myself out of a chair in Shauna’s office.
“You probably need a lot of sleep.”
“I don�
��t need to sleep,” I said. “I need to pack.”
96
FIVE O’CLOCK THE FOLLOWING DAY. I’D JUST RETURNED from my second run of the day, the first taking place in the morning—a 10K, give or take—this follow-up shorter but more punishing. But still good, the cleansing from the cold fresh air and sweat and adrenaline.
Essie Ramirez was standing at my front door. Still with that sky-blue puffy coat, but this time no hat. Her silky hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
When she saw me, her expression eased but she didn’t smile.
Inside, I helped her out of her coat, smelling her shampoo as her ponytail brushed against my mouth.
She turned to me. She was dressed in a blue suit, nothing fancy but formfitting, and her form was fit.
She looked up into my eyes, not faltering for a second. She put a hand on my cheek. A jolt of electricity ran through me.
“I’m ready,” she whispered.
I didn’t move, but internally, it was a different story. I felt a barrier break down, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
Those wondrous dark eyes narrowed slightly. “But you’re not. Did you lose your way, Jason Kolarich?”
I put my hand on hers. I was pretty sure I’d lost the map altogether.
“I told my children today that they caught the man who killed their father. And I told them that in catching him, they caught a lot of other people who were doing very bad things.”
Her eyes glistened with tears, but she didn’t falter. This was one strong woman.
“Something good came of it,” she said. “Something always does.”
I held my breath. I didn’t know what to say or think.
She removed her hand from my cheek. She nodded as if something had been decided. Then she grabbed her coat and walked out the door.
CLOSING STATEMENT
“We’re all good, Mr. Kolarich. See you over there?”
“Sure. Great,” I said.
I looked out the window of my empty townhouse at the moving van parked at the curb. The back door was closing up, and all my possessions were moving about five blocks south. The only thing I hated more than packing was unpacking, so I wasn’t looking forward to the next few weeks.
It would be Thanksgiving soon, and then of course Christmas, and I wasn’t looking forward to the 2008 holiday season any more than I had the 2007 season, back when I’d been starting up with Charlie Cimino and everyone. It felt like more than eight months since the arrests. I wasn’t sure I could pin down a sensation of time and distance. The whole thing felt, in many ways, like it had never happened.
But happened, it had. Three days ago, Edgar Trotter won election to the governor’s mansion, having defeated Secretary of State Willie Bryant in an upset. Many people thought it would be a Democratic year, thanks to Barack Obama, but the scandal had tainted the Democrats too fiercely. We only had a Democratic governor for eighteen months, the argument went, and they managed to fuck it up that quickly with a sensational scandal.
Governor Carlton Snow had lost the primary, of course, after the scandal broke less than a week before the voters went to the booths in March. I didn’t really follow the details but I recall a landslide. Many were surprised that Snow even stayed in the race, but the ballots were already printed, et cetera, and of course he denied any guilt.
The governor’s indictment a few weeks ago couldn’t have helped Willie Bryant, either. Turned out, everyone around Governor Snow flipped. Charlie Cimino, to my surprise, was first on board the federal bus in early April, but I understand he’s not pleading guilty to the murder, only the extortion stuff that he and I did. Hector Almundo cut a deal in May—again, not to the murder but agreeing to testify to the governor’s knowledge of certain wrongdoing. By the summer, Madison Koehler and Brady MacAleer were spilling their guts to Christopher Moody as well. I lost track of the order, but the two union guys, Gary Gardner and Rick Harmoning, have also been seen going in and out of grand jury rooms at the federal building.
The governor saw his indictment coming, naturally, and the word is his lawyers are trying to work something out with the feds as well. I don’t know how that will play out.
Charlie and Hector will probably spend the rest of their lives in prison on the murder charges, which I highly doubt they can beat. Madison and Mac will probably do somewhere between five and ten. The governor? Probably the high side of that same range.
I probably will never have to testify. The corruption stuff will probably all go down in plea bargains, without a trial ever taking place. Perhaps I’ll have to testify at a federal murder trial against Hector and Charlie, but my guess is that those guys will take a plea on that at some point. The evidence against them is overwhelming, my testimony aside, including the cooperation of all four of the goons who pulled off Greg Connolly’s death. Hector and Charlie are toast.
Federico Hurtado—Kiko—is literally toast. Apparently the Latin Lords decided that he’d become a liability, given the federal government’s interest and Kiko’s depth of knowledge of criminal wrongdoing in their empire. Someone put a bullet in his brain, then doused him in gasoline and lit a match.
Me? I’m just “Private Attorney A.” The papers had a field day with the arrest warrants issued back in March and the subsequent indictment, decoding all the described participants—“Lobbyist 1,” “Public Official D,” “State Contractor 39”—and they guessed correctly about me. I’ve never admitted it or offered comment of any kind, but I actually received some favorable coverage, in any event. The U.S. attorney’s office had made me the big hero, after all.
“Okay, kiddo.”
I turned back. Shauna had her coat on. One look at me, and she knew I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. She walked up to me and lightly grabbed my arm.
“You okay?” she said. Her eyes moved to the mantel in the living room, the framed photograph of Talia in the hospital, holding Emily Jane, the only item of mine still remaining in the house.
She took the frame and handed it to me. “They’re always with you, right? They always will be, Jason. Wherever you go. This is just a house.”
I tried to smile. I couldn’t find words.
“I’ll be in the car,” she said, breaking away from me. “Take all the time you want.”
I took a deep breath. “No, that’s okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”
I took Shauna’s hand and walked out of the townhouse, the picture frame clutched against my chest.
Acknowledgments
I never stray too far into matters of federal law enforcement without consulting one of my closest friends, and one of the best lawyers I’ve ever known, Dan Collins, an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago. Dan helped me understand the basics of a federal undercover operation, circa 2007-2008. He did not review this material before publication, and any mistakes I have made are purely my own.
For my knowledge of federal wiretap and surveillance technology, I must credit the testimony of former Assistant U.S. Attorney John Scully at the House Impeachment hearings concerning Governor Rod Blagojevich and at the Senate Impeachment Trial. It is sometimes scary what the federal government can do, but it’s heartening to know that they have to jump through many legal hurdles and safeguards to do it.
My good friend Matt Stennes, a former federal prosecutor, gave me insight into prosecuting a political corruption case and patiently answered my questions. Again, any mistakes I may have made in translation are entirely my own.
I want to thank the federal prosecutors with whom I collaborated during the impeachment proceedings for their courtesy and professionalism, and for teaching me things without realizing it: U.S. Attorney Pat Fitzgerald and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gary Shapiro, Tom Walsh, Dave Glockner, Reid Schar, and Ed Chang. Special thanks as well to FBI Special Agent Dan Cain. The prosecutor depicted in this novel bears absolutely no resemblance to these individuals.
Thank you to Ivan Held, for your friendship, confidence, and support. Thank you to Michael Barson and Summer Sm
ith, for doing your best to make me look good. Thank you to Rachel Kahan, for an incredible eye for nuance, pace, and atmosphere and for putting up with me, and to the paperback publishers at Berkley—Leslie Gelbman, Susan Allison, and Tom Colgan—for making sure readers come back year after year. Thank you, as always, to Larry Kirshbaum and Susanna Einstein and everyone at LJK Literary for your enthusiasm and guidance.
Abigail and Julia are my oxygen, the two little human beings in this world who can lift me skyward with a smile or a hug. And Susan: Every day with you is better than the last. You ladies are my universe.
Author’s Note
Good fiction mirrors reality. But writing about actual events isn’t fiction at all. This book is fiction. The events depicted in this novel did not happen. The characters in this novel are not people I know. Like most fictional characters, they are a composite of a number of different people plus a very healthy dose of my own imagination. This is a work of fiction.
ALSO BY DAVID ELLIS
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Line of Vision