“It’s the only way you control me. And that’s never going to happen.” I got out of my chair. “You want to indict me now, indict me. And Charlie Cimino, and Greg Connolly, and all those other scumbags? It will take them about one-tenth of one second to realize that they should probably fold up their tents and go home. Your big undercover investigation is halted in its tracks. You’re stuck with whatever you have on them as of right now, which I’m guessing is not all that much, or you wouldn’t be yanking my chain so hard for my cooperation. Stop me when I’m wrong, Chris.”
Moody rubbed his hand over his face. As much as he longed for the day that I’d be behind bars in a federal prison, he clearly had preferred the immunity route. It gave him power over me. But from his perspective, he pretty much had the same power, anyway. If I didn’t jump high enough for his liking, he could always turn the screws on me. And if I messed around with his investigation, he could always hit me with obstruction of justice, in addition to the underlying case he might pursue against me. He was a federal prosecutor, after all. He had twenty different ways to fuck me.
I figured this would all come into focus for him, eventually, but either Moody was too cautious to say yes immediately or, more likely, he didn’t want to readily agree to something that wasn’t his idea. More quickly than I’d anticipated, he let out a small, bitter laugh.
“These guys you decided to lay down with?” he said evenly. “They’re scum. They make a joke out of the idea of honest government. And I’m going to take them down, Kolarich. Anyone who gets in my way will be sorry.” He got out of his chair and leaned over the table. His voice lowered to a controlled whisper, as our faces were only a few feet apart. “I’ll have a chain around your neck so tight it’ll hurt when you swallow. And after you’re done dancing for me?” He gave me his best Machiavellian smile. “Well, like you said, no promises, right? I guess we’ll see what the future holds.”
Moody’s taunt felt like an appropriate note on which to exit. I was tempted to make another comment about his courtroom skills, should he decide to prosecute me, but it wouldn’t make me feel any better and it would only increase the odds that he’d come after me at some point. Like it or not, I was going to have to behave myself around this guy. A little, at least.
I walked outside into a cold, gray dusk, inhaling the frigid air and feeling my head clear, my perspective broaden. I stifled the instinct to second-guess my decision. I felt like I did after I filed a document in court, or turned in a paper in law school, afraid to review my work after I’d turned it in, sure that I would find an error that countless attempts at proofreading somehow failed to catch. I didn’t want to think about what I’d just done. I didn’t want to reevaluate. I didn’t want to think about Paul Riley, the best lawyer I know, who was sure I was making the wrong decision.
You make your own bed, as they say. I’d gone into this with good intentions, hoping to find some clue to the murder of a man I hardly knew, and instead found myself in the middle of a budding political corruption scandal that already had tarnished me, as well. I had to find a way to come out of this intact. I had to find a way to clear my own name, avoid the same fate that befell Ernesto Ramirez and Adalbert Wozniak, and stop these thugs from selling out the state.
And I had to keep my promise to Esmeralda Ramirez to find out who killed her husband.
As I walked, I wondered if I would have to settle for some, not all, of the above.
30
“The problem is that it’s not a federal offense to get around competitive-bidding statutes.” Special Agent Lee Tucker looked comfortable in his white button-down shirt, blue jeans, and loafers. He had a wiry frame, a bad complexion, deep-set eyes, a grassy mop of dirty-blond hair. A tin of Skoal tobacco rested in his front shirt pocket. “Or to contribute money to the governor.”
“And there’s plausible deniability,” said Chris Moody. These two people would be my contacts, Tucker, the handling agent from the FBI, and Moody, the assistant U.S. attorney. We were sitting in Moody’s office in the federal building, the following day.
The problem, they were explaining, was that to prosecute the things Cimino and the PCB were doing, prosecutors had to show a quid pro quo-that people were buying their way into these state contracts, that the awarding of the state job was directly and intentionally tied to the campaign contribution. Was it suspicious that a company landed a lucrative contract with the state, only to turn around the following week and give the governor twenty-five or fifty thousand? Sure. Red flags everywhere. But illegal? Only if you could read minds, or if you could get them on tape admitting that there was a direct relationship between the two. And that was very, very hard to do.
“Cimino’s no idiot,” said Tucker. “You guys at the PCB-you can’t even call him on the phone. Or email or fax or text him. Everything’s in person. Right?”
I nodded. Cimino was avoiding all the ways that the feds like to catch people these days. The wire-fraud statute-committing any kind of fraud by way of telephone or electronic communication-was their bread-and-butter nowadays. It was how the feds were able to grab any number of state crimes or other wrongdoing and get federal jurisdiction.
“Christ, he’s not even a state employee.” Tucker shook his head. “He does everything out of a private office. A guy who’s not even on the state payroll is directing traffic.”
“Then what’s his angle here?” I asked. “He must be getting a cut somehow.”
“Oh, yeah.” Tucker nodded. In one fell swoop, he scooped tobacco out of the tin in his pocket and deposited it inside his cheek. It seemed to cheer him up. “He has all kinds of companies set up for consulting, things like that. Some company gets a big fat contract from the state, you can bet that company will suddenly hire one of Cimino’s companies for some bogus consulting work. It adds up quick. He could make over a million a year this way.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “On paper, all of those side contracts with Cimino’s companies are legit. Actual work is performed. Grossly overpaid work, but work nonetheless.”
I could see from their expressions that I’d hit the nail on the head. That would be the smart way to play it. If Cimino were shaking down contract bidders to shoot some consulting work his way, he’d make sure that the contracts held up to superficial scrutiny-that he provided at least some minimal consulting work, albeit for an exorbitant fee.
“Look, we think Cimino is all over the place in the Snow administration,” Tucker said. “We think he has a say in almost every significant decision they make. But it’s hard to prove.”
That explained why they needed me. The tapes they played for me were probably enough to warrant an indictment against Cimino. But they wanted to play the string out. They were expecting, hoping that they could put a lot more on Cimino. And they were betting that I could deliver it.
“He sees you as a potential asset,” Tucker told me. “You’re not just the everyday lawyer they get. You have a lot more experience. You come from a major law firm. And most of all, you got Hector out of a huge jam. You navigated Almundo through the very same kind of stuff these guys are doing, and Hector never spent a day in prison. You’re valuable.”
Tucker only seemed to realize after the fact that Hector’s prosecutor was sitting in the room while he glorified Hector’s acquittal. I like the impolitic, bull-in-a-china-shop types myself. Tucker might not be so bad to work with.
“You heard Greg Connolly on the tape,” Moody added. “He said you could be ‘useful.’ These guys like to keep their circle small and tight, but you could penetrate it, Kolarich. We’re counting on your well-earned reputation as a bullshit artist.”
I didn’t get the sense that Moody meant it as a compliment. But that didn’t make him wrong. If there is one thing I learned when Talia died, it’s that I am my father’s son-I can become another person altogether. I can pretend. I can smile at you and keep my hand steady while I am doing somersaults internally.