Breach of Trust

60

I would follow Charlie’s lead. He didn’t speak, so neither did I. It wasn’t hard to figure out where he was taking me. We were going to his club, presumably for another game of racquetball. For another chance to strip-search me without strip-searching me.

It hadn’t been that hard to foresee. Tucker and I had discussed it. We’d gone back and forth in Suite 410 earlier today about the F-Bird. We finally decided against it. As much as we wanted Charlie on tape, confessing to the murder of Greg Connolly, there was too large a risk that Charlie would search me for a listening device. If he had even the tiniest lingering doubt about my loyalties, the day after Greg’s murder would be the time to test me.

Charlie’s expression was tight. Controlled. He had a lot of worries at the moment. He knew the feds had been looking at someone-presumably him included-and he didn’t know what the shakeout of Greg Connolly’s murder would be.

We went through the same routine as previously. An attendant gave me clothes and a racquet, and I left my clothes in an unlocked locker. Once again, I had dodged a bullet with the decision to leave the F-Bird at home.

“What the hell, Charlie?” I said to him when we were on the racquetball court. It was an isolated court, but my voice echoed. It hardly seemed the place for this conversation. And he hadn’t received confirmation yet from whoever it was who was going through my clothes, searching for an F-Bird.

“Let’s just play,” he said. So play we did. Each of us, in different ways, had a lot of steam to vent, and this was the perfect setting. I was sore at first for obvious reasons, but the flow of adrenaline helped, and soon enough I was playing like my life depended on it. I felt sorry for the little blue racquetball and for Charlie, if he had any pride in how he played, because I showed him no mercy whatsoever. The first game was over in less than twenty minutes. The second, less than fifteen.

Charlie was grabbing his knees. His gray shirt was stuck to his body with perspiration. I had to admit, I wouldn’t have minded if he’d keeled over right there, but justice wouldn’t work that way. In the end, I think it was good for him, the workout. “Three out of five,” he suggested.

I was just getting loose. I shut him out in the third game.

He grumbled about it, but he had weightier issues on his mind than a racquetball game. We retired to the same parlor area for juice. He excused himself, presumably to meet with the person who had searched my clothes in the locker, and who would give me a clean bill of health. Probably Leather Jacket was not that person this time, or if he was, he wouldn’t want me to see him.

When Charlie returned, it seemed that his load had been lightened slightly. Once again, I had won his trust. I wondered how many more times I would need to do that.

“Christ, this thing,” he said to me, considering a glass of grapefruit juice. “You understand, it wasn’t something I enjoyed doing. I mean, can we get past this? You wanna punch me in the face to make us even or something?”

“What, this thing that happened?” I asked. Never say it outright. A code of the corrupt-say it out loud as little as possible.

“Not something I enjoyed,” Charlie said again. “I wish it hadn’t happened.”

“Hey, Charlie,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder. I leaned into him. “First of all, just to reiterate a thought from last night: Fuck you. Second thing: Fuck you again. You do that to me again, you better kill me. Okay, glad that’s settled.” I took a breath. “I don’t give a shit about some snitch. Greg made his bed. I just want to know what he told them. Is someone going to be knocking on my door?”

Charlie didn’t smile-it was hardly the occasion-but I sensed that he liked my remarks. He didn’t want me playing ethical watchdog or getting cold feet. I had reassured him on both counts.

“I think it’s okay.” He said it so quietly that the F-Bird wouldn’t have picked it up even had I been wearing it.

“Put my mind at ease,” I said.

“What Greg could offer the feds would be earlier stuff.” Our heads were almost touching. “Mostly before you showed up. And then that stuff you did with us, early on. Before you and I branched out. Those few contracts with the buses and the prisons, that stuff.”

I pondered that for a moment, then nodded. “The stuff you did with me, you can say I signed off. The lawyer signed off. What about the stuff before I came aboard?”

Charlie paused. “Don’t worry about what happened before you came aboard.”

“I’m worrying,” I said.

“Don’t.”

I didn’t think I was going to get what I wanted, but I took a shot, anyway. “Who else knows about what happened to Greg?”

“Nobody,” he said. “Nobody knows.”

“I need to know, Charlie. I need to know who to worry about.”

“Worry about yourself. We’ll be fine.” He evened a hand over the table. “We lay low for now. Slow down our operation.”

That much made sense. He wasn’t going to give me any more information. I wasn’t in a position to bargain.

“Until we see where this is going,” he added. “You hear anything, you let me know.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s hope you don’t,” he said.

What he didn’t know is that I’d be hearing from the U.S. attorney’s office very soon.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in my office, eating aspirin and doing not much of anything. Joel Lightner called me near five with some news.

“I found your good friend Kiko,” he said.