Breach of Trust

68

I returned to my office building after dinner and went to Suite 410, where Lee Tucker awaited me. The box of discarded chicken wings and Diet Pepsi told me that Lee had dined on more modest fare than my horseradish-crusted rib eye and salad and Cabernet. At least I was getting some good meals out of this gig.

“Wow. Fucking wow.” That was a pretty accurate summation, I thought, after Lee had listened to my debriefing. Selling a seat on the supreme court and placing cronies on the payroll, all for precious union endorsements, would make nice headline charges in an everexpanding indictment. I’d been on this new assignment for one day, and already Madison Koehler and Brady MacAleer had been snared.

“Time frame is one week?” he asked me.

That’s what it had sounded like, based on my conversation with Madison and Mac. I wasn’t sure what that meant for me. Would the federal government sit back and let George Ippolito take a seat on the supreme court? Or would they intervene before it happened? If it were the latter, it meant I didn’t have much time left in solving my own private puzzle. I might have as little as one week to figure out who was behind the murder of Greg Connolly and, presumably, the others-Adalbert Wozniak and Ernesto Ramirez-as well.

I checked my watch. It was close to ten o’clock. I went home. I had a headache from the wine and my mouth was dry. I wasn’t in a very good mood, either, but I wasn’t sure why. I no longer held reservations about what I was doing. One or more of the governor’s people-if not the governor himself-had ordered people murdered to cover up their crimes. They deserved everything they had coming.

When I got home, I didn’t want to be there. There were times, like now, where the emptiness was so explosive, so maddening that I just couldn’t stay in this townhouse. There had been nights since Talia’s and Emily’s deaths that I’d gone to a hotel, just for a different place to sleep.

I looked at Talia’s picture on the bookshelves in the living room. College era. In the bigger photo that had been truncated, Talia was refusing a bite from a chocolate sundae that I’d offered her in jest, after she’d spilled half of it down her shirt. She’d thought it was funny, and my offer of another bite funnier still. She’d turned away from the spoonful of ice cream and shut her eyes, with a crooked smile on her face. I’d isolated the photo on her face and blown it up. I loved that expression. It showed the essential Talia, carefree and self-effacing and-

And beautiful.

“I’d give anything,” I said.

I dialed up Shauna, with whom I hadn’t spent much time over the last few weeks. I didn’t know if our separation owed more to my involvement in this sordid criminal enterprise or to her involvement with her new beau.

“Hey, stranger danger,” she said. In the background was music-the Counting Crows, one of her favorites-and a man’s voice.

“Just seeing what’s up,” I said.

“We just went bowling, if you can believe it. It was actually a blast. You want-you want to come over? Roger’s dying to meet you.”

I did the retreating dance-tired, big day tomorrow, just calling to say hi. The last thing I wanted to be was a third wheel.

Roger must have said something funny because I heard Shauna laugh. She sounded good. She sounded happy. For a reason I couldn’t quite pin down, that made me unhappy.

I hung up and put on some music, most of it from my college days, most of it dark and dreary. I fell asleep with the phone in my hand. I woke up when it rang.

“Hello?” I said, shaking the remnants of a dream. I lost the detail as soon as I opened my eyes. Something about exotic dancers and a car wash.

“Hello-Jason?”

“Mrs. Ramirez.”

“Essie.”

“Right, Essie. How are you? Everything okay?”

“I should have called earlier. My oldest was having trouble sleeping tonight. I hope it’s not too late-”

“Not at all.”

“I wanted to say thank you. Again. I got the job.”

“With Paul?”

“Yes, with Mr. Riley. He seems like a nice man.”

“He’s the best.”

“I don’t know how to be a paralegal. I told him that.”

I’m sure she did. Essie didn’t pull punches. It was one of the things I liked about her. But it wasn’t the only thing.

“You’ll learn fast. Paul wouldn’t have hired you if he didn’t think you could handle it.”

“I’m not sure that’s true, Jason.”

“All I told him was to interview you, give you a shot. All I got you was a foot in the door. You got that job on your own. Scout’s honor.”

She laughed. “Were you a Scout?”

“Nope. But I understand they’re honorable.”

“I want to buy you dinner one night. My treat. No arguments.”

“That’s not necessary.”

“I know it’s not necessary. I want to.”

It occurred to me that Essie, since her husband’s death, probably hadn’t had a lot of fun, either. Me, I could disappear into a nightclub, or go hang with Shauna, or have a night of drunken debauchery with Madison Koehler. Essie was anchored at home with two children.

“Sounds great,” I said.

Essie made me think of her dead husband, Ernesto. Ernesto made me think of his buddy, Scarface. Scarface made me think of the man who killed Adalbert Wozniak, and probably Ernesto, too: Federico Hurtado. Kiko.

I put on my coat and some gloves. I was still in my suit, which might come in handy. I drove to the southwest side of the city. The temperatures were near freezing and it was dark, so the activity level was low on the streets. There were a few bars over on this side of town that seemed to be doing good business, but this wasn’t a trendy area, not yet. This was still a heavily Mexican neighborhood and generally poor. The condos were small and stacked atop each other, almost no yards of grass or driveways around the buildings. The cars were parked up and down the streets, mostly beaters taking punishment on a daily basis from these neglected roads, pockmarked with potholes.

It got a little nicer as I moved southward. The apartment buildings and stacked townhouses became single-family homes, even a few yards with gates and small gardens. I looked for street numbers along the way and found it easily enough. Kiko’s house. It was nothing to write home about. It was on the same half-acre lot as the other homes, two stories, some brick and some siding. That’s where these guys lived, same as the old-time Mafioso around here-housing that was facially modest, but with extravagant interiors and high-priced accessories.

I drove around the block a couple of times. I went down the alley twice. I thought I had a pretty good feel for the place. I knew how I would want to proceed-if I decided to exercise that option. A big if. Confronting this guy wasn’t at the top of my list. I didn’t want to make Kiko my enemy any more than I wanted to jump out of an airplane without a parachute. But I thought I was running out of time before the federal government closed in on Charlie Cimino and company, and when that happened, it would be too late.

So, not tonight. But maybe soon.