Breach of Trust

25

The Federal Government had descended on my living room. Four agents, all of them straight-faced with faux solemnity, when underneath it all this was what they loved most about the job. A standard deployment, two to the right, two to the left, as I sat on the couch, staring at a laptop computer resting on an ottoman in the center of the room.

When Chris Moody hit “play” on the computer, dialing up the disk drive, the volume popped too loudly, and he quickly adjusted it. The first voice I heard was easy enough to recognize. It was Charlie Cimino, coming in loud and clear in a conversation that had been intercepted by the FBI:

“Okay, what’s next. . oh, the bus contract. Board of Education. That’s the one for Lenny Swift. Okay, here’s the problem with that one. The kid-the new guy, Hector’s lawyer-he says there’s no way to say this is a sole-source and just give it to Lenny’s company. No way to claim there’s something unique about buses. So what he says is, the only way to get around the requirement of competitive bids is to break the contract into pieces, so each piece is small enough to stay below the ten-thousand-dollar threshold.”

“Very creative,” Chris Moody commented as the tape continued.

I didn’t answer. My internal thermometer was rising, but I wanted to see Moody’s entire hand before I said anything.

“How do you do that?” came a second voice over the recording. “How do you take a hundred-thousand-dollar contract and break it down to increments of ten thousand?”

“That voice is Greg Connolly,” said Chris Moody. “The man you met today,” he added, letting me understand how deeply the feds had sunk their fingers.

Cimino’s voice again:

“Break it up by school, the kid says. Give each school a separate bus contract, instead of going through the Board of Ed.”

I shook my head. Cimino was trying to reassure Connolly by invoking my name-the lawyer had said it was okay. The thing was, I hadn’t.

“Yeah, we could do it by school. That would work.” It was a third voice, and it was unmistakable. It was Patrick Lemke. “It would be, like, a dozen contracts, all under ten thousand.”

“Then we’ll do it that way, by school,” said Cimino. “And Lenny gets all of them.”

“He’s talking about Leonard Swift,” said Chris Moody. “Swift Transportation. The same Leonard Swift who’s donated more than thirty thousand dollars to Governor Snow in the last twelve months.”

“I didn’t give Cimino that advice,” I said. “I never said anything about breaking the contract up to circumvent the law.” I was at the boiling point, and without a clear head-I knew better than to be talking to the feds without a sober brain, or a lawyer. My mouth had gone painfully dry, and the buzz I had been enjoying was now an annoying migraine that prevented me from fully focusing on the problem at hand.

Chris Moody, who was now leaning casually against the bookcase, looked at me with amusement. The other agents sat stone-faced on the couch.

Moody nodded to the agent who was now manning the laptop. One click and we were listening to the second installment of my nightmare.

“Next is this thing with Marymount. The prison contract.” Cimino’s voice started the second tape as well.

“Yeah, the, uh, what’s it-sanitation?” said Greg Connolly. “Janitor work?”

“Right, right. Bobby Higgins’s company,” said Cimino.

“Yeah, and what was the deal there? Someone outbid him?”

“Two companies were lower,” said Patrick Lemke.

“Right, but the kid, Kola-what’s it, Kolarich, right?” Cimino asked.

“Jason Kolarich,” said Lemke.

“Yeah, Kolarich.” Cimino coughed loudly, a prolonged, phlegmy gag. “Yeah, the kid did a number on ’em. DQ’d both of ’em.”

Bullshit again. I didn’t disqualify either of those bidders. I wrote a memo doing just the opposite, for God’s sake. It was all I could do to sit silently, fists clenched, struggling to keep my legs still.

“This Kolarich is the one-this was Hector’s lawyer?” Connolly asked.

“Right, right. Sent the G packin’,” said Cimino. “Why?”

“No, I’m just saying,” said Connolly. “This is a pretty smart kid, right? He did a good job on this thing for Higgins. I mean, he could be useful, is all I’m saying.”

“Remains to be seen. Smart enough, yeah, sure. I mean, he pulled Hector’s head out of his ass, and we know how hard that can be.”

Everyone on the tape got a good chuckle out of that. Moody nodded to one of the agents, who turned off the tape. He could have turned off the tape a few sentences earlier, but he wanted me to hear Charlie Cimino diss Hector, as if, being Hector’s former counsel, I would be offended. Under the circumstances, it didn’t even hit the top ten list of things bothering me.

Chris Moody, for his part, was absolutely enjoying this entire affair. He must have been bouncing around all day, awaiting this visit, thinking of all the smart one-liners he’d throw my way.

“My word against Cimino’s,” I said. “And I’ve got paper to back it up.”

“Paper? You mean this paper?” Moody nodded to one of the agents, who handed me a document. It was a memorandum about the school bus contract that bore my name and looked a heck of a lot like the one I wrote. But a few paragraphs had been inserted at the end, with this conclusion:

Thus, provided that the Board of Education contract were reduced to smaller contracts of ten thousand dollars in value or less, the competitive bidding law would not apply, and the contract could be awarded to whatever company the PCB desired.

“I didn’t write that memo,” I said, realizing I should probably keep my mouth shut.

“I see,” said Moody with mock sympathy. “You probably didn’t write this one, either.”

On Moody’s cue, an agent handed me a second document, this one a legal memorandum bearing my name on the prison sanitation contract-once again different in its conclusion:

Neither of the two lowest bidders on the Marymount Penitentiary sanitation contract should be considered “responsible” bidders. Accordingly, the contract should be awarded to the next lowest bidder, Higgins Sanitation.

It was like Cimino had said on the tape. DQ’d both of ’em. But I hadn’t, of course.

“These have been doctored,” I said.

“You’ve been framed?” Moody asked, the question dripping with sarcasm. “Railroaded?”

I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of baiting me. I didn’t know if “frame-up” was the right phrase here. More likely, Cimino was just using me as legal cover to justify what he wanted to do.

But to the federal government listening in, it sure looked like I was playing right along with Charlie.

“Oh, we’re not done, Jason.” Moody nodded to the agent manning the computer. “Play the next one,” he said.