That was certainly a possibility. “You think Moody would let it go?”
“Probably not,” said Paul, with his characteristic frankness. “He’d want everyone pointing fingers. They blame the lawyer, you blame them, and everyone goes down looking dirty.”
My thought exactly.
“Well.” Paul sighed, examined his fingernails. “You could get immunity and see what that costs you.”
“You know what it’ll cost me,” I said. “The supreme court would be very interested, too.” The state bar is controlled by our state supreme court, which handles lawyer misconduct. Even if I got immunity from prosecution, it wouldn’t be immunity from them. “I’d probably lose my license, Paul.”
“Oh, Jason, Jason.” He shook his head. Paul Riley was the best lawyer I’d ever worked with. It was like disappointing a parent. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “You could agree to immunity without stipulating to the charge-”
“Which gets me the same thing,” I said. “I’d still have to plead my case to the supremes.”
He didn’t have a rejoinder. I was right. We both knew it. If I took an immunity deal, I’d probably lose my law license, at least for a while.
Paul shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, so you won’t take immunity. You just sit back and hope they decide against charging you? I mean, that doesn’t sound-”
“Oh, I’m not going to just sit back,” I said. “I’m going to work for them.”
Paul chewed on that, drumming his fingers on the table. Someone told a joke a few tables away that left everyone in stitches. How I wished for that kind of frivolity right now.
“So you cooperate without a deal and hope for leniency later?”
“Fuck leniency,” I said. “I am never, ever going to plead guilty. Never.”
“Then I’m missing something. Why work for the G? Why go undercover? What does that buy you with them?”
Nothing. That’s what it would buy me. Absolutely nothing.
“You don’t want immunity or leniency,” he said. “So what do you want?”
I wasn’t sure what I wanted for myself. I knew what Talia would say, were she here. This would be one of her patient commentaries, with phrases like “hard-headed” finding their way in there.
“Oh,” Paul said. “You’re just pissed off. You want payback.”
I shrugged. “These assholes dragged me into their swamp. I should let them get away with it?”
“Jason. Jason.” Paul reached out a hand toward me. “Don’t do what you’re thinking. You’re mad at those guys-Cimino and the others. I get that. I would be, too. They made you an unwitting accomplice. But you have to look at the bigger picture. You have to think of yourself. Take immunity. Because otherwise, Chris Moody will let you do his bidding as a CI and then fuck you afterward. He will, Jason. You know he will.”
Paul was making sense. I suppose I was the one who wasn’t. I would work as a confidential informant for the federal government without any promises from them.
“They screwed me, Paul. And they’re screwing the public, if I needed any further motivation. I’m not going to take that.”
“Fine, then work for the feds, but take the damn immunity, Jason. Don’t be a hero. Because I’m telling you, son, no one will be standing in line afterward to say ‘thank you.’ ”
But I didn’t need a thank-you. I just needed to stick to my principles. I didn’t do anything wrong. Taking immunity meant I did. No, if Chris Moody and his thugs wanted to chase after me on a bogus charge, then I’d have to deal with that when the time came. But I couldn’t let Charlie Cimino and the rest of them-whoever they were-walk away from this.
If I was going to lose everything, at least I was going to do it on my terms.
Paul grimaced as we stood at the doorway of the Maritime Club. “I don’t know how much help I was, my friend. I think you already had your mind made up.”
“I needed your input. And you gave it to me. You told me I’m completely nuts.”
“You’re standing on principle, Jason. I admire that. I do.” He offered a hand. “But admirable can still be foolish. Please take my advice and cut a deal. And please let me represent you.”
“I hope I’m calling you Your Honor sometime soon, Paul.” I shook his hand and pushed through the door, into a wind that was colder than I’d expected.
And I hope, I thought to myself, I’m not doing it from a prison cell.
29
At three o’clock sharp that day, I walked into the U.S. attorney’s office in the federal building downtown. I was shown directly into a conference room. Chris Moody, looking fresh and relaxed, walked in with his government-issue white shirt and red-and-blue checked tie and sat across from me. He was wearing bright blue braces strapped over his narrow shoulders that let everyone know he was a hungry prosecutor. He seemed surprised that I wasn’t bringing a lawyer, but so much the better, for him.
He pushed a document in front of me. I took a quick look at it and shook my head.
“I’m not doing a letter agreement,” I said.
“Sure, you are.”
“Sure, I’m not.”
Moody wanted me to sign a letter agreement, in which the government agreed to immunize me from prosecution in exchange for my cooperation, without us ever appearing in court on formal charges. It was standard stuff for people the feds flipped-like Joey Espinoza, for example. They couldn’t very well unseal an indictment and arraign a guy in open court if they wanted him to work undercover. This was how they did it outside the public view.
“Get one thing clear, Chris. I will never admit that I did anything wrong. This is voluntary or it isn’t happening.”
Moody’s initial reaction was a smirk, but it faded after a moment.
“This is what’s happened so far,” I said. “You guys showed up at my door last night, you played me the overhears, it stoked my sense of outrage, and I agreed to help you ferret out this corruption on a purely voluntary basis. You never specifically told me I was being charged with a crime. You never said anything, one way or the other, about what the future might hold. You didn’t make any promises to me; I didn’t make any promises to you.”
This was unconventional, no doubt. Most people jump at the chance to get immunity, a get-out-of-jail-free card. But there was some merit to this arrangement, from Moody’s perspective. Every government informant, when testifying at trial, gets cross-examined on the deal he cut with the G. It’s standard fare for a defense attorney-you were looking at a severe prison sentence so you cut a deal, and you’d say anything to make those prosecutors happy; therefore, your testimony should be discredited. But what I was proposing to Moody would avoid that problem. I wasn’t getting a deal at all. I wasn’t getting immunity or a promise of any kind. The United States would be free to prosecute me if it so chose.
But the problem Moody would have with my proposal was the same reason I wanted it in the first place: He couldn’t control me. I wouldn’t march to his command. If I wanted to shut this thing down, I could, at any time. I’d be risking the prosecutor’s ire, and a federal indictment, but the decision would be mine.
“Too risky,” Moody said. “You sign this agreement or I convene a grand jury.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. “I’ll be your CI, but it will be voluntary. No plea agreement. No admission of wrongdoing. I’m just an ordinary citizen volunteering to help expose government corruption.” I leaned forward. “And risky? You want to hear risky? I go do whatever it is you want me to do, and I know that at any time, you can start thinking back to how you got your ass kicked in Almundo, and you can decide to take out your humiliation on one of his defense attorneys. I do all this work for you, you get a hundred-count indictment, and then you are perfectly free to throw in one or two more counts with my name on them. Just because you can, Chris. Just because you can. So don’t you talk to me about risky.”
“Sign the letter agreement, Kolarich.” He pushed it in front of me. “It’s the only way.”