I didn’t have much to go on, other than my gut. Ernesto’s wife, Essie, didn’t know anything. Ernesto’s scribbling on the back of my business card wasn’t any kind of proof. The only thing I had to go on was that lawsuit that Wozniak’s company had filed when they lost that beverage contract. It could lead to something, but I didn’t have the resources to follow up. I didn’t want to use Joel Lightner; I didn’t want to get him anywhere near this thing. Christopher Moody was just looking for ways to fuck my friends, and I’d been lucky to get Shauna out of it with a nice letter from the U.S. attorney’s office, acknowledging that Shauna Tasker was not suspected of having any role in this thing whatsoever and was not a target of the investigation. I wouldn’t get another one of those.
So I couldn’t use Lightner, and I didn’t have a whole lot of spare money to hire an investigator, anyway. Once the money from some of this legal work started coming, maybe. But not at the moment.
But then I caught a break. Charlie had sent me a text message that included a number, which I then matched with the list he’d written up of major state contractors. My job would be to pull the contract and look for ways to terminate it, should the contractor refuse to pay the ransom. As my eyes wandered over the list, I noticed that virtually all of the biggest state contractors had already been paid a visit from Charlie and me.
But one very significant one had not. And even more important, Charlie hadn’t even assigned it a number. That company would not be receiving one of our visits.
The company was Starlight Catering, the very same company that had won the beverage contract after Adalbert Wozniak’s company had been disqualified.
Life’s full of coincidences.
And now I had an opening.
I went to my office at the state building and pulled the contracts currently held by Starlight Catering. Then I returned to my law offices and got a motion on file in one of my new cases. At five o’clock, I went down to Suite 410 and used the key I’d been given to walk in.
Special Agent Lee Tucker, who had documents spread out all over the office he was using, seemed pleased to learn of my invitation to the fundraiser. From his perspective, it suggested potential. It could open new doors for me. But he didn’t ask me to wear a wire and I didn’t volunteer.
“Hey,” I said. “I have a question.”
“Wow. Usually you’re the guy with all the answers.” Tucker and I got along okay. We’d had a rocky start, but I was eligible for a gold star after these last two months. The government had solid evidence of twenty-three separate shakedowns by Charlie Cimino and me. That kind of success seemed to smooth over any differences. Plus it was part of Tucker’s job to manage me, and he’d come to realize that I didn’t respond to threats.
I dropped Cimino’s master list of major state contractors on the desk in front of him, a copy of which he’d had ever since I got mine. “Page two,” I said. “You see there, about a third of the way down. Starlight Catering. They don’t have a number assigned. Like they’re not one of the targets. Any idea why they get a pass?”
I watched Tucker’s eyes. If he didn’t really look, it meant that he’d already noticed it. If he did, it meant he hadn’t.
Tucker’s eyes followed down the page and stopped, presumably, at Starlight. So that probably meant he didn’t know. It could also make him a good bullshit artist.
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m asking you why.”
“But why do you care?”
“Why do you guys always answer questions with questions? I’m just curious.”
“Why don’t you ask Cimino?” Tucker was pleased with himself. Another question.
“You’ve been a font of information, Agent Tucker.”
He got a chuckle out of the whole thing. “That company-Starlight-is an MBE,” he said. “A minority-owned business. There are laws covering them, right? So even Cimino’s not dumb enough to start shit-canning the MBEs.”
That made sense, I guess. But Cimino wasn’t really planning to shit-can any of these companies. He wanted to strong-arm these contractors and was willing to push it to the brink if necessary, using me to threaten termination of their contracts, but I didn’t think Cimino was sold on the idea of actually pulling the trigger. Too messy. The threat, alone, had been enough so far.
Starlight Catering might have been a minority-owned business, but that wasn’t why Cimino had held off targeting them. There was something else there. I had to figure out what that was.
And the federal government wasn’t going to be any help. And I couldn’t use Joel Lightner to help, or any other private investigator.
So I would have to go to the source.
42
The fundraiser was held in a downtown hotel in one of their extravagant ballrooms. A nice enough setting. Too nice, for my taste. I never really understood why things had to be so opulent. It always struck me as a waste of money and little more than a jerk-off to people’s egos. Couldn’t we all agree on less humble homes, hotels, offices, whatever-and just give the extra money to starving people in Africa or something?
Altruistic and philanthropically minded was I, in my tuxedo, nursing a martini.
I was more than a fish out of water. I was a fish who didn’t know any of the other fish. The place held about a thousand and it was near capacity, and I doubted that I had made the acquaintance of any of them.
I engaged in people watching for a while, but it wasn’t all that interesting. Everyone there was the same. They all wanted something. A job. A piece of legislation signed. If nothing else, to be seen. After about half an hour, I was working on a decent buzz from the martinis when the room seemed to shift. Nearly everyone turned in the same direction, something out of a Hitchcock movie, and then broke into applause.
So I looked, too, because I knew it meant the guest of honor had arrived, and if somebody from the crowd assassinated him, the FBI would review the tapes afterward and see that I was the one person who didn’t turn-like that guy who opened the umbrella on a sunny day before JFK was shot-and I’d be a suspect.
This is how my mind works when I’m bored and getting drunk.
He had entered through the main doors and was now inching along the crowd, shaking hands and waving. His security detail followed close by, several men in dark suits with earpieces attached to cords disappearing into their suits, which added to the overall effect.
From a short distance, I could say this much about Carlton Snow: He looked the part. He was rather tall and fit, with a nice head of hair and one of those robotically sincere smiles. He had all the movements down. He’d clearly been doing his politician’s exercises. Wave, thumbs-up, point at someone, shake a hand. Wave, thumbs-up, point, shake. Sometimes he overlapped his left hand so he could shake two hands at once. He mixed in different facial expressions, too. Pleasant surprise to see you. Familiar grin for the “old friend.” I wasn’t a lip reader but he seemed to have the phrases down, too. Hey-how-are-you-great-to-see-you-thanks-for-coming.
“Jason, there you are.”
I turned to see Greg Connolly, the chairman of the Procurement and Construction Board. A man who didn’t have as much going on these days, at least not of an illicit nature, thanks to me. Someday-like when the indictments came down, and he saw himself included in far less counts than Charlie-he’d thank me.
But, I suspected, not now.
“Greg,” I said, with some equivocation, like I wasn’t sure who he was, given that we’d only met once. We shook hands. He looked like me, in a penguin suit, but shorter and with a much thicker midsection. His bow tie was crooked but I didn’t point it out. Mine probably was, too.
“We miss you,” he said.
“Right back atcha.”
“Yeah. Yeah.”
Yeah. Small talk. I don’t like it.