Breach of Trust

44

Dear Penthouse forum, I never thought this would happen to me. .

A knock at the door. I put on a robe from the bathroom and answered. We’d ordered champagne and some finger food. I brought it into the bedroom.

The bedroom had been through a rough two hours. One of the lamps was knocked over. The clock radio on the bedside table had somehow taken a spill as well, standing in a vertical position on the carpet. The bedspread was on the floor, as were the sheets. Only two pillows remained on the bed and they were propping up Madison Koehler, who was checking her BlackBerry, wearing only three things: her glasses, my tuxedo shirt and satin panties.

“Did you, like, read a book about male fantasies or something?” I asked.

“I wrote it.” She seemed pleased with herself. She finished reading whatever email or text message was on her phone and looked up at me.

I poured the champagne into glasses, sat on the bed, and handed her one. “I hope this won’t affect our friendship,” I said.

She looked over her glasses at me and took the champagne. “Let’s promise it won’t.”

By my estimate, I had known Madison Koehler for a hundred and forty minutes, and I’d spent a hundred and twenty of those ravishing her body. Or maybe more accurately, she had spent it ravishing mine. She knew what she wanted and hadn’t been afraid to provide direction. And I was generally willing to accommodate, although I drew the line at the Russian accent.

“Am I your first?” she asked.

That question surprised me. I thought maybe I should be insulted.

“Since your wife, I mean.”

That surprised me even more. She’d done her homework. But on me? I wouldn’t have thought she’d even known who I was.

“Yes,” I said.

She put down her BlackBerry, got off the bed, and took some strawberries from the room service tray. I enjoyed the view. I was enjoying myself, generally. Maybe a little conflicted, but this day had to come. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life celibate. And this was probably the way it was destined to happen, an impulsive urge without the opportunity for deliberation and second thoughts. Regardless, the dam had broken. In a small but meaningful way, I had moved on.

“How do you like working for Charlie?” she asked, sitting in a chair, tucking one leg under herself.

“I don’t.”

“You don’t like working for him?”

“I don’t work for him. I work for myself.”

“Oh, I see,” she said playfully. She pushed a strawberry into her mouth, what I would have found to be a somewhat provocative gesture had I not been completely spent at this point. “You’d do well to be clear with him on that point.”

I didn’t comment on that. Charlie had made it clear to me that he didn’t have a sense of humor about disloyalty. You fuck me, I’ll fuck you harder, he’d said. He’d even made a point of mentioning that guy Dick Baroni, someone who apparently had crossed him in some way and who wound up with broken bones and a torched office as a result.

Madison walked into the anteroom and returned fully dressed. She tossed my tuxedo shirt on the bed. “Carlton Snow is going to win this November,” she informed me. “He has the money and the incumbency label.”

“He’s not an incumbent. He fell backwards into the job.”

“Doesn’t matter. Everyone calls him Governor. Same difference.” She primped in front of the bedroom mirror, fixing her hair and her makeup. “We have enough money that we can win the primary without emptying our bank account. Edgar Trotter doesn’t have that luxury in his primary. He has to spend a lot. We’ll have a two-to-one advantage in money, and we’ll win.”

“Okay, so why are you convincing me of this?”

She finished with the mirror and grabbed another strawberry. “Charlie says you’re as sharp as they come. Hector thinks you walk on water.”

“And you listen to them?”

She thought about that. “The governor does. Absolutely.”

That seemed to be true. Hector had gotten me an interview for the job with the PCB in the time it would take me to blow my nose. I figured what Hector did for the governor was all about race. The governor needed the Latinos, and Hector was a celebrity for the time being.

“Do you?” I asked.

She angled her head. “What you did for Hector was plain for all to see. And Charlie, whatever else you might say about him, is cautious. He is very slow to trust. The fact that he trusts you tells me a lot.”

“Okay, so the governor’s going to win and I get a gold star.”

She still hadn’t reached her point. But I sensed she was about to, and I thought I knew what it was.

“I want you to work for me,” she said.

I didn’t know what that meant. My job was with the Procurement and Construction Board and, in a very real sense, with Charlie Cimino. It was a role that suited the FBI’s purposes. What would I be doing working for the governor’s chief of staff?

“Carlton Snow didn’t hire me to be his chief of staff,” she said. “He hired me to get elected to a full term. Everything I do is about that. I’m his chief of staff, but I’m also running the campaign. Do you-do you know anything about campaigns?”

“No,” I conceded.

She sighed. “I’m chief of staff to make sure that Carl doesn’t step on himself. I don’t do anything unless it involves the campaign in some way. I don’t worry about personnel issues or anything technical. I just make sure his policies are right. Otherwise, I’m on the campaign.”

“Okay, and I just told you I don’t know anything about campaigns.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need you for that. I need you to make sure that everything we do receives a lawyer’s blessing.”

Receives a lawyer’s blessing. Lovely, how she put that. Not legal.

“You must have people who do that,” I said.

She made a face. “We have campaign lawyers, obviously. People who can navigate the campaign finance laws. But on the state side? Government work? No, it hasn’t been a priority. Half the people in the office are from Governor Trotter’s staff. Republicans. Remember, Carl got thrown into this job on a week’s notice.”

I hadn’t thought about that. You have an entire staff for the governor, and then mid-term, the governor resigns and the lieutenant governor jumps in. He hadn’t been in office even a full year yet. He was probably stuck with a lot of Langdon Trotter’s people.

“Besides,” she said, “I need someone more. . talented.”

More creative, she meant. More ethically flexible. Better able to take something illegal and give it the appearance of legality. Apparently, I’d come highly recommended in that regard. Quite the name I was making for myself.

“You and Charlie-you can still work with him, but I would take priority.”

I threw her words back at her. “You’d do well to be clear with him on that point.”

“Don’t worry about what I tell Charlie Cimino,” she snapped. “You worry about what I tell you.”

Sometimes I smile when I’m not pleased. This was one of those times. “I don’t recall accepting the offer to work for you. So you might want to take caution in your tone.”

She raised her chin and stared long and hard at me. “Charlie mentioned the attitude.”

“Did he? Good.”

“How long do I have to wait before you say yes?”

Now I was smiling because I admired her brass. “And why am I going to say yes, Madison?”

“You’re going to say yes,” she said, gathering her purse, “because Governor Carlton Snow will make you rich and powerful.”

She had no idea what she was doing. She didn’t know what I represented. She didn’t realize that she was inviting the federal government into the inner circle of the governor’s office.

She slipped a card out of her purse and left it on the bed. “Oh, and one more thing,” she said on her way out. “What happened here tonight? That doesn’t leave this room. Nobody can know about this.”

She didn’t want anyone to know about the sex? Fair enough. Wasn’t my style to kiss and tell, anyway. And since I wasn’t wearing a wire to this event tonight, not only would the feds not know what we did between the sheets, but they also wouldn’t know that she just asked me to work for her, either.

Not unless I decided to accept her offer. That one would require some thought.