Breach of Trust

41

Between my criminal enterprise with Charlie Cimino and the new clients and cases I had as bonus prizes, January and February had been quite busy for me. That was good. I needed busy. Because I tended to keep my head on straighter when my thoughts were occupied. I didn’t pass an hour of the day without thinking of my wife and daughter, but it wasn’t dominating me as much. Part of that was the mere passage of time, I realized, but the constant demands of litigation were a welcome distraction.

The bad part was that I hadn’t had much time to do what I’d originally set out to do when I joined up with the Procurement and Construction Board: find Ernesto Ramirez’s killer. There was a very good chance that the person responsible for his death was my partner in our criminal scheme. But even if I knew that, I didn’t have any proof. I couldn’t very well ask him. It would make for an awkward conversation, and there weren’t a lot of workable segues, either. Hey, speaking of murder, Charlie, by chance did you have a guy named Ernesto Ramirez whacked?

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.