Breach of Trust

58

I sat silent in the backseat of Leather Jacket’s SUV. I didn’t know what Charlie had in store for the snitch he’d caught with the F-Bird. I assumed the penalty for betrayal would be death, Charlie’s denial notwithstanding. Either way, everything had changed now. The G had targeted Charlie Cimino, and now he knew it.

My F-Bird was once again resting comfortably in the pocket of my suit jacket. I’d removed it during the drive to this place with Charlie, once the warning bells went off with his questions about Starlight Catering. I’d faked a sneeze and removed my handkerchief from my pants pocket. Charlie hadn’t noticed that I then placed the handkerchief in the inner pocket of my suit coat, which allowed me to snag the F-Bird and palm it for the remainder of the ride in my right hand. I’d thought about dumping it somewhere in the Porsche, but I figured if they were going to search me, they’d be bright enough to search the car, too. Lucky for me, the F-Bird was light as a feather, so Paulie didn’t feel it when I dropped it in his coat pocket while we were squaring off in the garage.

It was a gamble, sure. Paulie could have discovered it, and I would have been toast. But I didn’t have a better idea. And it didn’t seem likely these guys would ever think to search each other for the device.

I got lucky when Paulie threw his coat over me at the end of the interrogation, allowing me to retrieve it. Otherwise, I’d have had a problem. Sooner or later, Paulie would have found it in the bottom of his pocket. I would have had to intervene before that time. But it would have been a bridge to cross later; the more immediate problem was surviving that room. And now, thanks to sweet Irish luck, I had survived and retrieved the F-Bird in the same sitting.

I paid attention to the route Leather Jacket was taking back to my house. I’d had some vague notion that his job might be to drive me to a remote location and put a bullet between my eyes. But if they wanted me dead, I would have died in that room.

I got out of the SUV without a word to Leather Jacket. When I got inside my townhouse and saw that the SUV had driven away, I pulled out my cell phone. It had been turned off. I powered it up. My plan was to call Lee Tucker. But my phone was already ringing. The caller ID showed “David Hamlin,” meaning Tucker.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “You’re okay?”

“In one piece.”

“Thank God.” He took a breath. “Okay, listen-”

“You better find Greg Connolly,” I said. “Because Cimino has him and he’s going to kill him. If he hasn’t already.”

Silence on the other end of the phone.

“There’s another CI,” I said.

“Jason-”

“Charlie knows that. He showed me his F-Bird-”

“Jason.”

“I assume it was Greg Connolly-”

“Jason.”

I stopped. “What?”

“Greg Connolly is dead,” he said.

I let out a breath. “Shit.”

“Yeah, shit. Go to your back door,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m about to knock on it.”

I went through the kitchen to my back door and opened it up. Lee Tucker was coming up the walk. “They killed him,” I said.

He nodded. He walked past me and closed the door. “Found his body at Seagram Hill almost an hour ago.”

I looked at my kitchen clock. I’d lost all sense of time. It was almost midnight. He threw his coat on the kitchen table and started pacing.

“A car just dropped me off,” I said. “An SUV. Plate number is-”

“We’re on it,” Tucker said. “And we’ve got agents watching your house right now, from all sides. In case someone decides to stop by unannounced.” He looked me over. “They did a number on you. You okay?”

I waved him off. I was anything but okay. My head and neck would be sore for days. I had a permanent chill that would last a long while, too. Even my right hand ached, from punching the one guy in the nose.

“Fuck,” said Tucker. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

I thought that was an accurate summary of tonight’s events.

Two in the morning. Chris Moody had joined us. We were sitting in the kitchen. Tucker and Moody had listened to the contents of my F-Bird several times already on a laptop computer Moody had brought.

Charlie Cimino had returned home shortly after I did, near midnight, and was still there. They’d tailed Leather Jacket’s SUV to some location, though Moody and Tucker didn’t elaborate on where or what had transpired. All was quiet now. Greg Connolly was dead. I was alive and secure. Cimino and his cronies were home in their beds, hopeful that their crime had gone undetected.

Greg Connolly had been found facedown, with his pants at his ankles, in an area of the city called Seagram Hill but more typically known as “Semen Hill.” The Hill was a notorious west-side locale for prostitutes, many of the male variety. Found in the condition he was, the story would be obvious enough: Greg Connolly was jumped and murdered while looking for a ten-dollar blowjob.

Tucker looked at me. “So you slipped the F-Bird out of your pocket in the car, then you dropped it in the goon’s pocket?”

I nodded.

“So they’re searching through your clothes, and meanwhile it’s sitting in the goon’s pocket.” He shook his head. “Ballsy, Jason. I mean, seriously.”

“Desperation is the mother of invention.”

“No, ballsy is right,” Moody said. It was as close as he could come to a compliment.

Tucker said to me, “Cimino never mentioned Connolly by name. How’d you figure?”

It had to be Connolly. There weren’t that many options. And he’d been upset about being pushed out of the loop when I’d hatched this new plan with Charlie. It also explained why Tucker and Moody were so pissed off when I’d called that audible. You cut out the board, they’d complained. Sure. They’d flipped the chairman of the PCB to be their eyes and ears, and I waltzed in and cut him out of the action.

I explained all of that to him. Moody said, “Connolly wasn’t good at this. He never was.”

“Greg knew about me, didn’t he?” I asked. “I didn’t know about him, but he knew about me.”

Moody nodded. I wasn’t sure if he’d let me in on that piece of information. He probably figured it didn’t matter at this point. “Yeah, he knew.”

That stood to reason. Connolly recorded the conversation with me that the feds used against me, when they first confronted me. I had thought, at the time, that the feds had to go through the extraordinary procedure of bugging his office and tapping his phone without his consent. I’d been wrong. Greg had been working with them all along.

That was a significant point for me, in particular, but now wasn’t the time to raise it.

“Where was Greg headed today?” I asked. “With the F-Bird?”

“He had an assignment,” Moody said.

“Obviously. But where? With who?”

Moody didn’t answer right away. He looked so unusual, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, like a totally different person tonight. “I can’t reveal that,” he finally said. There was a trace of apology in his voice, which was uncharacteristic. But this was an unusual situation, to say the least. Everyone was tired and strung out. The operation had crash-landed over the last several hours.

I got out of my chair. I had two blankets draped over me and I was chugging coffee, not for the caffeine or the taste but the warmth. I’d spent the better part of two hours, wearing nothing but boxers, in temperatures that were probably just above freezing. It was hard to imagine that there would be a time when I would feel warm again.

I filled another cup, held it in my hands, and watched Tucker and Moody roll their necks and mumble to themselves.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked. “You going to pick up Charlie and his crew?”

Moody shrugged. “Connolly’s dead, so there’s no urgency. Unless we think he’s coming after you.”

“He’s not,” I said. “He had his chance tonight.”

The prosecutor stretched his arms, working out the anxiety. “I don’t know yet.”

“How do you vote?” Tucker asked me. “You’re the big hero tonight. Do we roust Cimino tonight? Do we wait?”

I’d been thinking about that for a long time. I thought about what had happened tonight.

Who said you could do that? Charlie had said, when he walked into the room and saw that Paulie had thrown his first forearm into my face.

We’ll handle this, Leather Jacket had replied.

Give him a coat, Charlie had said.

No, pretty boy’s doing just fine.

“I think we hold off,” I said to Tucker and Moody. “I don’t think we’re done yet.”

And when Leather Jacket and Paulie had turned up the heat at the end, putting the knife against my hand. Stop, that’s enough, Charlie had said.

Nah, Leather Jacket had said. It’s not enough yet.

“The cover’s blown,” said Tucker. “Cimino knows we’re onto him.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” I said.

And Charlie’s words when the interrogation was over. Sorry about that. They had to be sure.

I paced around the kitchen, into the living room, my neck stiff and sore, my head throbbing, the eternal chill throughout my body.

Who said you could do that?

We’ll handle this.

Give him a coat.

No, pretty boy’s doing just fine.

“We might be able to put Charlie’s mind at ease,” I said. “If we can do that, we can keep the operation going.”

“What operation?” Tucker said. “Cimino’s been spooked, at the very least. He’s not going to keep up that scheme of yours.”

“He’s not talking about Cimino,” Moody said. “You’re talking about moving up the ladder. You’re talking about accepting Madison Koehler’s offer to work for the governor.”

“Chris wins the prize,” I said.

“Wait a second,” Tucker chimed in. “You tell us no, over and over again, when we want you to go inside the governor’s inner circle. Now, tonight, you come this close to getting your ass killed, and now you want to do this?”

“Lee has a point,” Moody said. “We know for certain that Cimino would kill you if you were ever burned. We have a federal witness lying facedown in the mud on Seagram Hill to tell us that much. And you can figure you’ll be watched more closely than ever. So why now?”

It was a valid question. Like many things, there was more than one answer. Moody was right. We couldn’t be sure what Charlie knew. He definitely knew the federal government was sniffing around, at a minimum. And now we knew, firsthand, that Charlie Cimino did not have a high tolerance for risk. I’d have to watch my back, more than ever. But I thought it was worth the risk. And I was the only person who could do this.

And I still had a murder to solve. I still wasn’t sure I had the answer to that one. Charlie Cimino was looking pretty good as the puppet master behind the murder, but I wasn’t totally convinced. Not after tonight.

Who said you could do that?

We’ll handle this.

Give him a coat.

No, pretty boy’s doing just fine.

Stop. That’s enough.

Nah. It’s not enough yet.

“So?” Tucker asked again. “Why now, all of a sudden, you’re willing to go work for the governor?”

Sorry about that, Charlie had apologized to me. They just needed to be sure.

They.

I looked out the window in the kitchen. Somewhere out there, FBI agents were guarding every exit to my house. This would be risky, no doubt.

“Because Charlie wasn’t calling the shots tonight,” I said. “And I’m going to find out who was.”