Breach of Trust

23

I went back to the state building after regular business hours. I was hungry and I longed for a burger and milkshake, but I was short on time. Charlie Cimino would be bouncing me from this job any day now, after I defied his orders. Before that happened, I wanted some private time with the PCB files. It took me a while to find the cabinets that held that “old” PCB files, from back when the board fell under the lieutenant governor’s office, but eventually I got there.

Once I found the old files, it didn’t take me long to navigate them. The scope of the PCB under then-Lieutenant Governor Snow was relatively small compared to its gargantuan reach under Snow as governor. It didn’t take me long to find the contract for beverage supplies that Adalbert Wozniak’s company, ABW Hospitality, had tried to secure.

I knew most of the facts from the lawsuit ABW had filed when it lost the contract. The contract had been let under sealed, competitive bidding, and ABW had been the lowest bidder. But the PCB had made the decision that ABW was not “responsible” because of some prior lawsuit that had been filed over a previous catering contract. Sound familiar?

The legal memorandum in the file disqualifying ABW was crap. Everyone sued everyone these days. It was just another part of doing business. I had no doubt that the lawyer who wrote this was doing so at the direction of Charlie Cimino or someone like him.

The next part of the file was even more interesting: It was a legal document prepared by the Office of the Inspector General-I didn’t have great familiarity with that office-detailing an interview with Adalbert Wozniak over his concern with the bidding procedures for this beverage supply contract. Wozniak had apparently pleaded his case to the inspector general, who ultimately concluded, in typical bureaucratic/law enforcement jargon, that “no credible evidence existed” to indicate any impropriety in the sealed bidding process, and that the legal counsel’s determination that ABW was not a responsible bidder appeared to be “sound and even-handed.” The inspector general concluded that the matter would be “closed without referral.”

Interesting. While preparing for Hector’s corruption trial and poring over all the documents and digital records and appointment books we had reviewed from Adalbert Wozniak’s office, I had never known that Wozniak had met with the state’s inspector general. Maybe it was there and we just missed it, or maybe Joel Lightner had followed up on the lead without success. I would have to ask.

And maybe it didn’t mean a thing. But it seemed like Ernesto Ramirez thought so. I now had the “IG” to complete the nebulous initials on Ernesto’s note:

ABW > PCB > IG > CC?

ABW Hospitality had bid on a contract before the PCB; it had been the lowest bidder, which normally would have meant it got the contract, but then it was denied when the PCB determined the company was not “responsible.” Then Wozniak turned to the inspector general after being rejected. And the inspector general, if I was deciphering Ernesto’s notes correctly, had turned to Charlie Cimino. And then somebody turned to Adalbert Wozniak and pumped seven bullets into him.

I wasn’t surprised by any of this. After having spent just a few days with the Procurement and Construction Board, it was clear to me that this place was a cesspool. Adalbert Wozniak had smelled a rat and hadn’t kept quiet. He went to the inspector general and made some kind of noise-what, exactly, he’d said, I couldn’t be sure. This brief report from the inspector general, dismissing Wozniak’s claims, looked like a whitewash.

I needed to know more. And with Charlie Cimino sure to can my ass any day now, I was running out of time.