Breach of Trust

63

Norman Hudzik had spent thirty years representing criminals, mostly of the white-collar and organized-crime variety. He was large in every way: Tall, heavy, with a baritone voice and a charismatic confidence. His hair was a mess of gray and black, a swooping part and too long in the back.

Circumstances notwithstanding, I liked him. I found myself more inclined toward the defense bar these days, probably because I was now a member. Something about standing up to power and being a contrarian found a safe harbor in my soul.

I’d told Norman that the prosecutor who had phoned me was Brian Ridgeway, someone with whom I wasn’t acquainted. Norm had lit up at the mention of the name. “I go back with Brian. We tried Capparelli together. Brian’s a dear friend. I can handle Brian.”

That’s why Chris Moody had picked Brian. We wanted someone Hudzik knew, someone with whom he would feel comfortable. The way I’d heard it, Brian Ridgeway did not exactly consider Norm a “dear” friend, but the relationship was cordial. Good enough. It made Hudzik happy and it made Charlie happy, as the three of us had sat in Norm’s office yesterday. We’d spent several hours, during which time Norm Hudzik had given me about twenty ways to say, “I don’t recall.”

Now we sat in the U.S. attorney’s reception area, Norm and I, waiting for the meeting with Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Ridgeway.

“I think I know this guy!” Norm bellowed, as Ridgeway appeared from a doorway.

“Norm! Good to see you. Good morning, Mr. Kolarich. Brian Ridgeway.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

We went back to a conference room, where prosecutor and defense attorney spent ten minutes catching up, while I bided my time. Norm did most of the talking, which was good, because I wasn’t sure this guy Ridgeway was a very good bullshit artist.

“Jason and I were a little surprised by the call,” Norm said, settling in. “What does Jason Kolarich have to tell you?”

“Well, it’s just one of those things I gotta say I did.” Ridgeway waved a conciliatory hand. “Well, here.” He slid a document in front of me. It was the memo I had written for Charlie, disqualifying the two bidders who should have received the sanitation contract instead of Higgins. It was the final version, the one I rewrote to impress Charlie and gain his trust.

“Mr. Kolarich, did you write this memo?”

“Call me Jason.”

“I’d prefer to call you Mr. Kolarich.”

“I’d prefer you called me Jason.”

Ridgeway looked over at Hudzik, like What the hell?

“The answer is yes,” I said. “I gave this to the chairman of the PCB, my client. That makes this privileged, last I checked.”

Ridgeway hemmed and hawed a moment for good measure. “Greg Connolly gave it to us. So don’t worry about a privilege.”

“Well, Brian, I’m a lawyer, so I’m going to worry about little things like attorney-client privilege, if it’s okay with you.”

Ridgeway paused, shooting another look at Hudzik.

“He told you that the client gave the document to him,” Norm said, putting a hand on my arm. “So let’s go ahead and answer.”

I thought for a moment, or more accurately, I pretended to think. “Okay,” I said. “Yes, I wrote it.”

“Who told you to write it?”

I shrugged. “It would have been a normal part of my job. I was an outside counsel to the PCB.”

“Did anyone-well, here. Did anyone talk to you about your conclusions?”

I shrugged again. “Not that I can remember. You mean, someone disagreeing with something I wrote?”

“Or discussing your conclusions before you made them?”

“Before I reached my conclusion?” I drew back. “You mean, like, telling me what to say?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I would quit first.” I explained to him, briefly, how it was my job to review the qualifications for winning bidders and to memorialize my conclusions in writing. I told him that we had a file on every bidder, including its history with the state, any previous lawsuits or other concerns related to their work, and the like.

“After reviewing everything,” I said, “I reached my conclusion entirely on my own. One of the bidders that was DQ’d might disagree with it, but they always disagree, and they usually sue. But nobody whispered in my ear. Nobody told me to say this or that. I stand completely by what I’ve written here, and the decision was mine and only mine.”

Ridgeway nodded, like that was what he expected me to say. “Okay, good enough. I appreciate you coming in.”

I looked at my lawyer and back at Ridgeway. “That’s it?” I asked.

Norm said, “This is why he came down here?”

“Oh, you know how it goes,” said Ridgeway. “Gotta play out every string.”

“What’s the string?” I asked. “I don’t like anyone questioning my integrity.”

“No, no, it’s nothing like-” Ridgeway raised his hands. He looked at both of us, like he wanted to say more.

“Any chance you can enlighten us?” Norm asked. “It doesn’t sound like there’s much to this.”

Ridgeway let out a laugh. “That’s an understatement.”

“Oh, c’mon, Brian. You brought us all the way down here.”

Ridgeway paused, then out of the corner of his mouth, he said to Norm, “Off the record?”

“Sure, of course.”

“This guy who runs this state board-Connolly? Greg Connolly? You guys friends?”

“Hardly knew him,” I said.

“Well, my take? He’s one of these Johnny-come-lately crusaders. I mean, off the record.”

“No problem,” said Norm. “Completely off the record.”

“I think he didn’t like how he was treated over there, for some reason. So he comes to us and shows us this thing and tells us he wants to be a whistle-blower. He tells us there might be something screwy with this contract. What he didn’t tell us is that an outside lawyer had performed a legal analysis of the whole thing and signed off.” He nodded in my direction. “A lawyer who we know around here as being pretty good, even if some people are mad about the outcome of a particular case.”

I thought he was laying it on a little thick. But as I thought about it, this guy was vouching for my credibility by referencing Hector’s trial. The feds thought that my word counted for something, he was telling Norm Hudzik, which of course would get back to Charlie. It would make me more valuable still.

“Anyway,” Ridgeway said, “this guy Connolly, he’s something else. He wants to wear a wire and be the guy who shakes up the system. Meanwhile,” he said, nodding toward me, because he figured I already heard the news, “on his way home from work, Mr. Crusader likes to go over to Seagram Hill and get yanked off for five dollars a pop. He gets jumped out there and killed.”

Norm, who of course knew of Connolly’s demise, feigned surprise.

“So,” Ridgeway said, “not that there ever really was anything here, but with Connolly gone-I mean, I had to follow up. Now I have. Sorry for your troubles. You can keep the memo if you like. I won’t be needing it.”

Norm Hudzik, for his part, bought in all the way. He was laughing that gregarious laugh of his as soon as we walked out of the federal building. “Ridgeway’s okay, like I told you,” he said. “They’ve got nothing, my boy. It’s a dead end. That memo you wrote locked it down, if there was any doubt. You want to tell Charlie, or should I? This will make his week.”

“He’ll want to hear it from you,” I said.

“Sure.” Hudzik eagerly agreed. Everyone likes delivering welcome news. It would give Hudzik the chance to embellish, to make himself the big hero in his version. “You’re a real ballbuster, y’know that, kid? ‘I’ll worry about little things like the attorney-client privilege.’ I love it.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “Be well, son.”

When I got back to my office, I went down to Suite 410. I opened the door and found Lee Tucker. I could see he’d already heard from Brian Ridgeway. He had a big smile on his face.

“They bought it,” I said. “I’m in.”

“Ridgeway said you acted like an asshole.”

“It came naturally.”

Tucker drummed his fingers on the table and shook his head. “Well, let’s see what Mr. Cimino has to say.”

We didn’t have to wait long. I had dinner that night with Charlie. He was like a little kid, giddy with relief. As he now saw it, the murder of Greg Connolly was being chalked up as a garden-variety mugging in a very seedy part of town. The corruption probe, initiated by Greg Connolly, was a dead end. He would sleep well tonight.

The pair of three-hundred-dollar bottles of Cabernet would help him sleep, too.

“You were a real ballbuster, Norm said,” Charlie told me. “He said you gave that prosecutor an earful.” He winked at me. “I could learn to like you, kid.”

I decided to say as little as possible, else I might screw something up with the mild buzz I was enjoying. It was becoming difficult to keep up with the layers of deception. The man with whom I was dining on New York strip steaks and expensive Cab was probably a killer. And he was now feeling at ease, courtesy of a fake interview with a federal prosecutor, in which my fake legal memorandum, used to perpetrate a fraud, was being used to exonerate the two of us.

I didn’t know whom to trust. I just had to make sure I could keep trusting myself.

“You’re the golden boy,” he said, slurring his words. “Norm said, when these guys saw your name on the memo, they figured everything was on the up-and-up. You bought yourself some credibility with Hector’s case.”

I could see that our little charade in the U.S. attorney’s office had worked perfectly.

“But this thing we have,” Charlie went on, “better we stop it, all the same. No point in pushing our luck.”

It’s what I expected Charlie to say. The heat was off as far as he knew, but Charlie had been very close to the flame and hadn’t enjoyed it. He’d be back someday, in his mind, but he was still feeling the aftereffects and would stay on the sidelines for the foreseeable future. If he hadn’t suggested we abort our current scheme, I would have done so. But better that it was his idea.

“I told Maddie she can use you.”

I looked at him. “Madison Koehler?”

“Yeah, that position she offered you, right?” He leaned into me with typical intoxicated bluntness. “Didn’t think I knew about that? Well, I know you stiff-armed her, but go ahead and do it. It’ll be good for you.”

Translation: It would be good for him. He’d get the finder’s credit on Jason Kolarich, I figured. I told Maddie she can use you. I was still his guy, but he was loaning me out.

“Help ’em work the system,” Charlie said. “He gets elected to a full term, we can really make us some dough. There’s a fuckin’ sea of money out there for us, Jason. A sea of it.”

Not where you’re going, I wanted to say. I wanted to ask him if he felt the least bit bad about Greg Connolly’s death. I wanted to reach over the table and smack the drunken grin off his face. But I was still in role. I could down a bottle of wine and stay in role. I could be tied up, with a gun pointed at me and a knife about to slice off my finger, and stay in role.

I had found my calling. I was a liar. A fake. A pretender. And now, for my final act, I was going to help take down a sitting governor.