Breach of Trust

80

The room felt empty and large with everyone gone, all the aggressive banter evaporated. The governor poured himself another glass of champagne and offered me one, which I accepted. Anything to encourage dialogue.

“Sometimes it’s nice just to talk with regular people,” the governor said. “You strike me as regular. I mean, nonpolitical.”

“That I am.” I sat on the couch. He took the chair across from me. His face was flush and his eyes were bloodshot. He was drunk. Drunk but content. He loved everything about being governor.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. He nodded toward the television. “That ad-the one about Willie Bryant, that supervisor in his office who was caught taking bribes? What did you think of that?”

I knew what I thought, but I didn’t want to rock the boat. “He’d do the same to you,” I said. “Rough-and-tumble politics.”

He sipped his champagne and eyed me. “Give me the honest dope.”

“I don’t like negative ads,” I said. “I mean, if everyone under Bryant is committing crimes, then okay, it’s a relevant point.” I stopped for one moment to consider the irony of that statement.

“But,” I went on, “I take it from this ad that it was just one bad egg in his office. So I wouldn’t read much into this, other than Willie Bryant’s opponent is running a negative ad, trying to blame him for one rogue employee.”

Governor Snow smiled. “Y’know, I pay these people a lot to think like a regular voter. But the truth is, they’re so close to this-I mean, these guys hate Willie-I’m not sure they see things right. I think I agree with you.”

“They get people elected,” I said. “I don’t.”

“Right.” He drained his drink and poured himself another. He rolled his neck, seemed to be unwinding after a day of being on camera. “How come you quit playing football?” he asked.

“I was kicked off the team after that fight.”

“Right, but-why didn’t you go somewhere else? You could have gone anywhere.”

I shrugged. “Inertia, I guess. I was an idiot.”

“Okay, then, why are you here?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. He seemed to respond well to the no-bullshit, regular-guy talk, so I didn’t want to light him up with sweet nothings. On the other hand, you can never underestimate the human ego, the capacity to believe favorable things about yourself.

“You seem like a winner,” I said, stifling the gag reflex. “I like to go with the winner.”

He watched me, maybe trying to decode what I was saying.

“You have to understand the rules before you play a game,” I went on. “I think you’re a guy who understands what he has to do to win. I want to be with the guy who brings a gun, not a knife, to the gunfight. I mean, you can’t be a good governor unless you’re governor, right?” I’d heard someone else say that. Carlton Snow probably said that to himself every day.

God, I hoped this was working, because it was all I could do not to laugh. I was trying to get him comfortable enough to talk about the things happening under him that fell somewhere outside the legal boundaries. I wanted it to be a source of pride, an emblem of his ambition.

“So, why are you here?” he asked me again.

I thought I caught his meaning, but I didn’t have a clever response. “Why does anyone want to be with a winner?”

The governor moved from the chair to the large window overlooking the north side of the city. The commercial district had gone dark but the area to the north was scattered with lights, the yuppie crowds enjoying late-night dining, theater, the bar scene. Profiled against the cityscape, and notwithstanding the oxford and blue jeans, Carlton Snow looked more like a governor than at any time I’d seen him.

“It’s hard to find people I trust,” he said. “Everyone wants something. Everyone has their own agenda. Mac, I trust him from going back, but he just needs someone to follow, y’know? Maddie and Pesh and Charlie-I trust them because their interests intersect with mine. They only get what they want if I get what I want.” He drank from his glass and looked out over the city.

He was a personable guy. I’d seen that in him from the start. It might have been practiced, but I didn’t think so. That, in fact, seemed to be his chief attribute. I didn’t see anything in him that particularly demonstrated superior intelligence, and certainly no great command of policy, but he could probably enjoy the company of just about anyone. That quality, in some ways, made him perfect for the job of governor, but in other ways made him wrong for it. If I was reading him correctly, he was longing for real relationships and not just lackeys who whisper sweet nothings.

But why was he sharing this with me?

“What about Greg Connolly?” I asked. It was a risk, of course, a cymbal crashing during the mellow music. But what the hell, the booze was making me impatient.

The governor did a quick turn in my direction before returning his gaze to the window. “Greg. Greg, he surprised me. He surprised me.”

“How so?”

“I didn’t know. None of us did.”

Know what? I wanted to say. But I held my tongue, because the governor was already preparing to elaborate.

“I knew that guy my whole life, Greg. He had a great family. He loved his wife. He had this other side to him, and it made him do things like-like skulk around in a park after dark?” He blew out a sigh. “Christ, what a way to go. I looked at Jorie later that day-she wouldn’t even talk to me. I mean, what is she supposed to think? What is she supposed to tell her boys?”

The governor seemed to be getting a bit emotional. And I was getting more and more confused.

After a moment, the governor cleared his throat. “He could have told me. I wouldn’t have cared. I mean, it’s one thing if you’re an elected official, right? But Greg? He was behind the scenes. He could be whatever he wanted, I wouldn’t have cared. He had a job with me for life. I wouldn’t have cared about his damn sex life.”

I didn’t know what to say. I surely wasn’t going to get an admission from him about Greg Connolly’s undercover role with the federal government. And it was becoming awfully damn clear to me that he had no idea about it. I mean, this guy was a politician, a bullshit artist, but he couldn’t fake what he was doing here. Not when he was half in the bag, at least, and not with me watching everything about him to look for signs of a lie.

Jesus Christ. Unless I had lost all ability to read people, neither Governor Snow nor Madison Koehler knew anything about Greg being a snitch. They couldn’t have been behind his murder. Where the hell did that leave me?

“Now Hector,” the governor said, turning to me. His voice had regained something, I wasn’t sure what. “Hector, I trust. He understands me. I can tell that guy anything. That’s a powerful thing, y’know? To know you can trust someone with a secret?”

I nodded. I was still a little flustered here.

He walked up toward the couch and stared at me. He seemed far removed from the guy mourning the loss of his friend only two minutes ago. Some people can turn on and off like that. “So, can I trust you, Jason? Like I can trust Hector?”

I felt some internal detector queue up. This wasn’t a throwaway question, but I didn’t quite get the drift. Regardless, there was no reason not to play along. Besides, I was still playing to a recording device in my pocket, and the feds would expect the same answer from me.

“Of course you can,” I said.

He sat down next to me and turned to me. “Like Hector?”

“You can trust me,” I said, getting annoyed now and more confused.

“So tell me what you want,” he said. “You want to be a judge? You want some director job or something?”

None of the above, but I wasn’t going to rock the boat now, though I wasn’t sure where that boat was heading. Someplace turbulent, I thought, but I was beginning to mistrust my instincts. Or I just was having trouble believing them.

“You just want to be with a winner,” he said, his eyes locking with mine.

I didn’t speak. Something told me I should say something. Or maybe hold up a stop sign. But I didn’t. Not in time, at least.

Not before he put his hand on my thigh.