Breach of Trust

92

I stopped at the hotel bar in the lobby for a drink. I wasn’t in a tremendous hurry to get back. Tucker and Moody would devour the contents of this F-Bird like it was their last meal, which in some sense of the word it was. They’d want to debrief me, and now that my job was all but completed, they might even want me to review the application for the arrest warrants, given that much of the information contained in it had been supplied by me. I didn’t know, but I wasn’t eager for a long night. I wanted to escape. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

The dirty martini was too dirty, too salty, but I drank it fast and then ordered a shot of whiskey, hot and bitter down my raw throat, which somehow felt more appropriate.

I walked from the Ritz toward the federal building. It wasn’t all that cold out tonight, but there must have been rain, a damp musky odor on the emptying city streets. The fresh air helped.

“I’m done,” I said into the cell phone to Lee Tucker.

“And? How did we do?”

“See you in ten minutes,” I said.

I passed a couple arm in arm, drunk and amorous. I passed a homeless guy sitting against the wall of a building and handed him a crumpled five from my pocket. He made some noise, but I couldn’t make out words. So much suffering in the world. So few people-including me-who did anything to help. That was what these guys were supposed to be doing, the governor and his crew. They were supposed to be helping the rest of us. Trying, at least. Giving us their honest best.

I gave Carlton Snow a chance tonight. I gave him a chance to show me that he could be the right kind of governor, that if pushed in the right direction he could take that path. He didn’t take it. Maybe his ultimate decision was right. Plenty of people would believe that Antwain Otis’s death sentence was just. Good people. Well-intentioned people. But deep down, Carlton Snow wanted to give Otis a reprieve, and he denied it anyway. No matter the correctness of his decision, he did it for the wrong reasons.

I walked along the bridge over the river that divided the commercial district from the near north side, which put me about three blocks south of the federal building. I didn’t walk on the concrete pedestrian walkway but on the bridge surface itself, a grid design, a checkerboard of steel. I remember walking on this bridge as a kid with my father. My dad said the grid design was to prevent skidding. I didn’t know if that was true, but I remembered getting on my hands and knees and poking my fingers through the diamond-shaped holes made by the grid and looking through the bridge down to the river itself.

I stopped on the bridge, hopped up on to the concrete walkway, and leaned over the railing, watching the misty fog that covered the river. I’d done the principal thing that brought me into this mess. I could always say that much. I found Ernesto’s killer. In the process I’d played a role I never thought I would play, a snitch, a rat for the government. I suppose it was fair to say that I had performed a valuable service, but it didn’t feel that way.

When I checked my watch, it was three minutes after midnight. It didn’t matter anymore. I pushed off the railing and headed over the river.

My cell phone buzzed. I couldn’t imagine being in the mood to talk to anyone, but I checked the phone. It was Madison Koehler. I had nothing to say to her but I answered, anyway.

“Hi, Madison.”

“What the hell did you do?”

I sighed. I’d eaten a lot of shit from her for the greater good, but I’d hit my limit.

“I don’t know, Madison, what did I do now?”

“You tell me,” she said. “Please explain to me why the governor just halted the execution.”