Moody was still stewing in the corner.
“And the second reason?” Tucker said, but I think he’d caught on by now.
“The second reason is that the Charlie and Jason Show doesn’t work so well without Jason. Right, Lee? Charlie, he likes me. I provide legal cover for him, or so he thinks. I make Charlie feel safe. I’ve had some swell ideas so far. And I’ve penetrated that very tight inner circle. It would only take you, what, another year or so to find someone who’s gotten as close as I have.”
“We don’t do that,” said Moody. “We don’t give out clean bills of health to potential defendants.”
“You do now.” I got up and walked past Tucker to the door. “You have twenty-four hours,” I said. “You walk Shauna Tasker or I do some walking of my own.”
I pushed through the glass door and headed to the elevator. One of them-not hard to guess which one-had caught the door and was following close behind me. I pushed the elevator button and started whistling. Chris Moody stood close to me and spoke to my profile.
“Score one for you,” he said. “Your girlfriend gets a pass. But I meant what I said in there. I’m going to indict you with Cimino and everyone else. You’ve now guaranteed that. You hear that, rock star? It’s a guaran-fucking-tee. Everything I have on you so far and anything else I can think of.
“Now, you give me one hundred percent cooperation from here on out-I mean one hundred percent, Kolarich, not ninety-nine-and I’ll think about a reduction. But you’ll still spend time inside. Maybe two years, maybe three. All you did in there was dig yourself a deeper hole. You, my friend, are going to prison. It’s just a question of how long.”
His face was a bright crimson. He’d just been served his lunch, but he’d given as much as he’d taken. I’d lost all hope of good faith with him now. I would be standing trial with Charlie Cimino and Greg Connolly and whomever else they would charge.
I’d freed up Shauna, but at considerable cost.
Hell hath no fury like a prosecutor scorned.
DEEPER
February 2008
40
“We’ve always appreciated the chance to work for the department.” Mitchell DeSantis eyed Charlie Cimino and me with some trepidation as we ate seafood. He was talking about the Department of Revenue, with whom DeSantis’s company had a four-million-dollar contract annually to print tickets for the state lottery. “I think we’ve done everything Revenue’s ever asked of us.”
“Well, obviously there’s a new administration,” said Cimino, a standard opening for us over these last two weeks. With a new administration-albeit a year old-came changes, especially with a different political party in charge. It was, at least, superficial cover. “We’re conducting audits and we have some concerns.”
“Concerns. What concerns? I haven’t heard any concerns.” DeSantis was a lanky, nervous man. His chin and nose gave him an academic, almost birdlike quality.
Cimino shot a look of annoyance and boredom-which really meant power. “You’re hearing them now,” he said.
It was my turn. By now, Cimino didn’t even have to look in my direction. We had this down to a formula. “Mr. DeSantis,” I said, “the contract allows the department to terminate the contract without notice, if the termination is for cause. And if it’s without cause, you have as long as it takes the department to rebid the contract, which is about ninety days.”
“What is it?” he asked. “We’ve always kept up our stock. We had one issue once with the new ink-which we fixed right away, and without charge to the state.”
“What my lawyer here is saying, Mitch, is that we don’t need a reason. In which case you have about ninety days left. And if Jason informs the department that cause exists, your contract could be terminated tomorrow. Mitch,” he went on, changing his tone, as if he were now dispensing friendly advice, “I can see a situation where your company finishes out the governor’s term. That’s about a year from today. January 2009. And I can also see your company reupping for another four years, if Governor Snow is reelected.”
DeSantis seized on that. “Obviously, we’d be very grateful, if Governor Snow-”
“If, Mitch. ‘If’ is the operative word here. You realize he’s running in a contested primary. And then the general election.” Cimino shook his head. “These are expensive things, these elections. Did you know that candidates for governor are budgeting twenty million for the race?”
DeSantis sat back, as if flabbergasted at what was occurring. “No, I didn’t know-”
“So Friends of Snow is looking for friends, right, Mitch? You follow me.”
DeSantis pushed his thick glasses back up his nose. “I don’t know that I do.”
“Sure you do. Mitch, I know you got your contract under the Trotter administration. But now you’re working for the Snow administration. So we want to know if you’re willing to help.”
DeSantis’s face colored, as had the faces of several others, sitting in his spot, after hearing our pitch, over the last few weeks. “And if I don’t, I lose my contract?”
“Did you hear me say that?” Cimino delivered the line with a cool glare, no trace of a smile. “You didn’t hear me say that. Did you, Mitch?”
The man deflated. Cimino removed a piece of paper from his pocket and slid it over. The number on it was “25,000.” DeSantis looked at Cimino, who raised his eyebrows. It was clear that certain things would remain unspoken. He took the paper back and said, “And obviously, with Willie Bryant running against Governor Snow in the primary, and Lang Trotter’s son, Edgar, running in the Republican primary, there would be the question of whether you intend to support anyone else. We’ll be sure to keep tabs on any contributions being made to other campaigns, as well. Jason, you check the semiannual reports, right?”
“Like clockwork,” I said. This was part of the routine, too, every time. Governor Snow had a serious challenger in the primary, the current secretary of state, a guy named Willie Bryant. And the Republicans were another concern, obviously; the smart money seemed to be on Langdon Trotter’s kid, Edgar. Charlie was not only shaking down companies for contributions; he was threatening them if they contributed to anyone else.
“Look, Mr. Cimino,” DeSantis said.
“Charlie. It’s Charlie.”
“Charlie.” DeSantis sighed. “Look, Charlie, I have a small company-”
“Mitch, I want to thank you for lunch,” Cimino said, which was probably news to DeSantis, who hadn’t realized he was buying. “I suppose”-he looked at me-“I suppose the decision on the contract could be delayed for a week or so. That would give both of us time to think about our next step. One,” he repeated, “week.”
It was a script we’d worked out. We would start with an idle threat of terminating a contract, and nine times out of ten, that was all it took-a check to Friends of Snow was cut within the next twenty-four hours. On the two occasions, thus far, that anyone had pushed back, I had followed up by meeting with the contractor and showing him a “preliminary” report demonstrating a basis for terminating the contract-basically showing him that we weren’t kidding when we said we were going to shit-can them. At Charlie’s insistence, I never left a copy of that report with the contractor; I always kept it with me. Charlie was extremely careful about leaving bread crumbs.
But he wasn’t being careful with me. I had gained his trust; it was I who had come up with the idea to extort existing state contractors, and I who helped him orchestrate the entire pitch we made. All of this was done under the guise of shielding our scheme from unwanted scrutiny, and Cimino thought of me as the most risk-averse person he’d ever met, which in turn further cemented my credibility with him. I’d even gone so far as to insist that we not move on one particular contractor who seemed more than a little nervous about the whole thing; I told Cimino that the guy just didn’t feel right, and he decided to trust my gut, albeit with a patronizing laugh. It didn’t matter; the point was that he put me down as having as much to lose as he did, which put me squarely beyond the realm of suspicion.