Breach of Trust

15

I spent the night in, reading with the television on, but I spent more time simply looking out the window. A light snow had dusted everything, casting a serene blanket over my neighborhood. I don’t ordinarily welcome winter, but the change of seasons felt oddly cathartic. And I’d grown tired of summer and fall. I used to think that if grief were a color, it would be gray. Not black-too extreme, too intense. Gray is that fuzzy compromise, lacking its own identity. But after I lost my wife and child, I colored it green-vibrant, flourishing life mocking us, highlighting our irrelevance, cruel and indifferent to our pain. I wanted to cut down every tree, uproot every plant and flower. I wanted to pull the sun down out of the sky, bathing the earth in darkness. Even the orange and browns of our brief autumn disgusted me, its simple beauty a grotesque and sniggering insult.

But it was becoming different now. Maybe not better, but different. The cymbals did not crash as often between my ears. The nightmares had subsided. The throat-gagging, pulse-pounding, breathtaking pain was replaced with a quiet ache, a soft echo in a large, empty house.

Hector said he could spare fifteen minutes for me in the late morning. I went to the monolithic state building in the city’s downtown and found the Department of Commerce and Community Services on the thirteenth floor. An elderly uniformed man sat at a desk, under a large photo of a beaming Governor Carlton Snow-his thick mane of brown hair and that goofy smile. I showed my identification and he made me fill in my name and purpose-of-visit in a schedule book.

These offices could not be mistaken for anything other than government-thin carpeting, unimaginative beige walls, cubicles made of a cheap cloth. But I’d spent most of my career in the county attorney’s office, so this was more what I was accustomed to than the princely surroundings of Shaker, Riley and Flemming. After winding my way through the maze, I was inside Hector Almundo’s office, nothing fancy but a decent picture-window view of the commercial district’s north side. Hector was done up like always: bright yellow shirt, chocolate-brown braces over his narrow shoulders, a tie the color of a falling sun, propped up by a collar pin.

“The PCB,” he laughed, after I made my request. “You’ve been doing your homework. Definitely where the action is.”

“If it’s a string you can’t pull,” I started, appealing to his ego.

“No, no. No, no.” Hector, I had gathered for some time now, wanted to impress me. I had seen him at his worst, at his most terrified. I had listened to his darkest secrets. If there was anyone in the world who might think ill of Hector-aside from the federal prosecutors-it should be me. He wanted to please me. He also wanted to show me how much power he still had. Hector was in rebuilding mode, having overcome the wrath of the federal government but losing his senate seat in the process. Some people in his situation would just be happy to have avoided prison and would opt for the quiet life. But Hector wanted everyone to know that he was back-or at least on his way.

“How would this work?” I ask. “I put my name on a list? Fill out some application? Do an interview? Do we even know there’s an opening?”

Hector was giving me a paternalistic smile before I’d even finished. “There’s an opening if we say there’s an opening. A list,” he chuckled. “I’m sure Charlie will want to meet you.”

Charlie. None of the PCB board members were named Charlie. “Charlie Cimino,” Hector said, in response to my inquisitive look. “Everything goes through Charlie.”

Charlie Cimino. So maybe the “CC” Ernesto had scribbled on the back of my business card hadn’t been the Columbus Street Cannibals, after all. “He’s some director of something?”

“Charlie? No, Charlie’s the-well, call him an unofficial adviser. Be nice to Charlie, Jason. He can. . make life difficult.”

That last piece of advice was intended to be lighthearted, but I sensed a tension behind the words, that Hector wasn’t really kidding. I didn’t know this guy Cimino, but he already had an ominous aura given his presumed inclusion on Ernesto’s diagram.

I left with the promise that I’d be hearing from someone soon. I got a call later that afternoon, setting something up for tomorrow. So much for inefficient government-it had taken two hours to work my application, such as it was, through the channels. Tomorrow, I would meet Charlie Cimino.