Breach of Trust

19

“This is where everybody who wants something comes. And we’re the ones who decide whether they get it.”

Patrick Lemke was the executive director of the Procurement and Construction Board, which meant he oversaw the daily operations and prepared the board for its meetings every other week. Lemke was tall and out of shape, with half a head of unpredictable hair and thick glasses and no shortage of nervous energy. He generally avoided eye contact but, every now and then, those beady pupils shot glances in my direction. His forehead was glossy with sweat, even though I found it rather frigid in this office. I hoped it couldn’t be chalked up to nerves, but after listening to him ramble for a few minutes, I concluded that his natural equilibrium was hot-nervous.

A few minutes turned into ninety, as Lemke gave me an overview that was essentially a repeat of what I’d already read in a thick manual. The state gives out hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts annually, and they can give them out all sorts of ways. They can do the traditional “blind” bid-everyone makes their best offer, under seal, and the lowest bidder gets the bid, regardless of who they are or whom they know. That was the easy part; the rub was all the different exceptions to that rule, where it was impractical, impossible, or unnecessary to go through the sealed bidding process.

Only one of us grew tired during this lecture. This guy was like the Energizer bunny, and I was getting a headache. Finally, after offering to answer any questions several times, and appearing disappointed that I had none, he told me that he was “very busy” and “really had to go,” as if I were clinging to him to stay, and rushed out of my office.

It was my office but I was sharing it, or at least it was big enough to share. There were two desks and five file cabinets and a small window that looked into another building and a radiator with peeling yellow paint that appeared to cough and hiss more often than it provided heat.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Lemke said, bouncing back into the room and startling the bejeezus out of me with that high-pitched voice. “Nothing leaves this office. You can’t take any of the documents out of here. And no emails.”

“No emails? Isn’t this the twenty-first century?”

Patrick didn’t seem to be one for humor. He stared the wall and said, “Don’t email documents or say anything sensitive over email. It can get hacked. Okay, I really gotta go now. Oh, and you have your ID? You have to have an ID to get in and out-”

“I have my ID”

“You have your ID, okay, good. I’m going to be late now-”

Out he went. I’d been given five contracts to review for next week’s meeting. I calculated the amount of time it would take to pore over these specifications, multiplied by how boring it would be, and came up with multiple headaches and many cups of coffee. I had a purpose for this gig, and it wasn’t driven by money, but as I thought about it, I was taking a real flier that any of this would even result in anything that would give me a hint as to who killed Ernesto Ramirez. Well, at a minimum I would do some legal work and make a few bucks-

“Oh, and do you play music loud?”

“God, Patrick.” I turned away from the box I was emptying and looked toward the door. This guy moved around so quickly, his footsteps didn’t even make noise. “Do I-”

“They don’t like it when you play music too loud. If you have a stereo or whatever.” He was staring at the carpet.

“I won’t play music at all.”

“No, you can play it, just don’t play it loud.”

“I’ll just hum to myself.”

“Okay, so, I should go.”

I waited patiently, hands folded, humming to myself quietly, for Patrick to return. It took three minutes.

“Oh, so this is the last thing, unless you have any questions.”

“I do have a question,” I said, startling him. His face lit up. He even looked at me for a brief second. A question!

“How far back do the files go for the PCB?” I asked.

“Okay. The governor just started this board when he took office a year ago. I mean, he had it in the lieutenant governor’s office, but he transferred the PCB-”

“Patrick. I was just wondering, if I needed to refer to past practices, if I would be able to access prior documents. Maybe even back to when the PCB was under the lieutenant governor’s office.”

“Oh, sure you can. I can show you where to look. It’s in one of these cabinets, the hard copies I mean, but it’s also online, and I really have to go.”

“Sure. We can talk about it later.”

“Okay, good.”

I couldn’t be sure if Patrick was gone for good, but I had the sense that I would never know that in this job. I considered closing the door for some privacy, but it was my first day, and the other offices had their doors open, so it didn’t seem like a good idea.

After giving Patrick ten minutes to pop back in, I started looking through the files for the contract Adalbert Wozniak’s company, ABW Hospitality, bid on in 2005. I looked through all of the file cabinets and even made a passing attempt at finding things on the computer, but I was out of luck. I’d have to wait for Patrick to scare the shit out of me again and show me where to look.

I had to prepare memoranda on the five contracts by the day’s end. If you had looked up “bureaucratic hell” in the dictionary, you would have found my assignment, which included these thrilling topics: “Asbestos Abatement Materials” for the Department of Corrections; “Collection Cups for Random Drug Testing” for the Department of Corrections; “HIV-1 Oral Fluid Transmucosal Exudate Collection Devices” for the Department of Public Health; “Asphalt Crack and Joint Filler” for the Department of Transportation; and “Passenger School Buses and Wheelchair Lift Buses” for the State Board of Education. I would’ve had more fun watching water freeze. The Internal Revenue Code was a coloring book by comparison.

Just as I’d finished the final memorandum for Patrick, he popped back into my office. “One more thing, Jason, okay? Mr. Cimino might call for you sometimes. He likes you to go to his office.”

“He has some official position here?”

That one stumped Patrick. He stared at the carpet for a long time before saying, “He’ll give you instructions sometime.”

“At his office.”

“Yeah, you have to see him in person. He doesn’t like phones.”

“A man of mystery,” I said.

His eyes shot up, briefly, to meet mine. “Okay, I have to go.”

He vanished. I’d have to wait to access the ABW file I was seeking. I gathered my stuff together, including the memoranda I had drafted, calculating a full day’s work at three hundred an hour-a nice pocket of twenty-four hundred dollars, which rivaled what I was making in a month thus far in my erstwhile law practice.

As I was gearing up to leave, my phone rang. I hadn’t even noticed the archaic black contraption in the corner of my desk.

“Mr. Kolarich?” A woman’s voice. “Mr. Cimino would like to see you tomorrow at ten A.M.”