Breach of Trust

93

I watched him from three blocks away, once he turned the corner from the federal building, coming toward me. He was walking slowly. It was late, he had an enormous amount of work left ahead of him, and the temperatures were falling, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Moody was taking his time on his approach.

His gait seemed to slow even more as he got within earshot of me. He stopped at a distance of about ten feet. I wasn’t sure why. It set the appropriate tone, I thought. Pistols and ten paces at dawn, that kind of thing.

“Okay, I’m here. All alone, as you asked. Is there some reason we had to do the hand-off on the middle of the Lerner Street Bridge?”

His distance from me, combined with the poor lighting, made it hard to distinguish his features. His face appeared to be set in a clench, like he was ready for battle. His tone was appropriately hostile but also cautious. He’d listened to my earlier F-Bird from this morning, my conversation with Hector Almundo. He had some reason to question my motives. And I had another F-Bird in my pocket right now, which was recording everything until he turned it off. That, more than anything, would make him careful with his words.

“Well?” he asked. “Do I get the F-Bird or not?”

I reached into the inner pocket of my suit coat, pulled out my little friend, and showed it to him.

Then I threw it into the river.

I never heard it splash. It just vanished into the darkness. Moody followed the arc until it disappeared into the misty gray below. He probably wasn’t happy, but he couldn’t have been totally surprised, either. And he wasn’t going to give me the satisfaction of a visceral reaction. If he was angry, he figured, he’d have plenty of ways to take it out on me.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” he said. “Why?”

“I think you’re wrong about Snow,” I said. “He’s no saint. Maybe he’s even a criminal. Maybe. The people around him? Most definitely. But I see a guy who was in a little over his head. If someone would have just given him the right advice, he might have been able to do better.”

“That’s really sweet.”

“His people kept him in the dark, Chris. Maybe he didn’t want to know, but still-he didn’t know. Not exactly. That’s why they always kept Hector in the dark, too. Because they knew Hector would tell the governor.”

“Very touching, Jason. And what about the governor, all on his own, talking about shaking down those abortion groups? Way I heard it, that was all his idea.”

“Yeah, and look how that turned out, Chris. A whole lot of nothing, that’s what. They blew off what he said. That proves my point. His people are running that program, not him.”

He was quiet a moment. “Well, you’ve got it all worked out, don’t you?”

“Don’t worry your little head, Chris. With the nooses you have around his people, there’ll be plenty of flippers willing to sing. You’ll get the governor. You’ll probably put him away for a long time. It’s just not going to be because of me.”

I saw a faint shaking of the head from the prosecutor. From his perspective, what I was doing didn’t make much sense-for exactly the reason I had just articulated. They were going to get Carlton Snow anyway. It would probably only take one of the dominoes-Charlie, Madison, Hector, MacAleer-to fall before the rest of them did. So why, Moody wondered, would I toss the F-Bird into the river and risk the ire of the man who held my fate in his hands, when ultimately it wouldn’t help Snow all that much, anyway?

“This is all very noble of you, Mr. Kolarich. Maybe the governor can thank you while you’re serving time together. I could recommend to the court that you serve in the same camp.”

Maybe so. Maybe not. I nodded at him. “While it’s just us girls talking,” I said, “what did you think of that tape you heard this morning? Hector’s confession.”

I thought I saw a smile, or at least some change in his expression. “We already liked Hector for Connolly’s murder. You didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know.”

He enjoyed saying that, once again having the upper hand. I only knew what they let me know. They’d worked the case from other angles and gotten to Hector on their own.

“He copped to three murders,” I said. “Wozniak, which you already fucked up, so he walks on that one. And Connolly, for which you now have a confession. But what did you think about Ernesto Ramirez, Chris?”

He paused. “I’m not sure I catch your meaning.”

“Sure you do. Ernesto Ramirez had material information about the murder of Adalbert Wozniak. He and a good friend of his.”

I didn’t know the guy’s name other than the moniker I gave him, Scarface. I wished I did, but I’d have to make do with what I had.

“I had a long talk with that friend of his,” I said. “He told me that he and Ernesto told their story to law enforcement. He said ‘cops,’ actually, but he didn’t mean cops. He meant federal agents. He meant you, Chris.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes, it is. Ernesto and his friend came to see you during the Almundo trial. They told you they knew who killed Adalbert Wozniak and why. The ‘who’ was a member of the Latin Lords. Kiko. You know him. Every prosecutor’s office knows Kiko. And the ‘why’ was a relationship with Delroy Bailey. The ‘connection to Delroy.’ Wozniak was going to expose someone’s connection to Delroy and that someone had Kiko take Wozniak out.”

Moody didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t, either, if I were he. But he couldn’t deny it. The feds keep logs of all their interviews. It would be a very simple matter to prove that Ernesto Ramirez and Scarface paid them a visit, and who was in attendance. Hell, there would be surveillance cameras showing the two of them entering the federal building that day. And, above all that, surely Scarface himself-assuming I could ever find him again, but Moody didn’t know that-would identify Chris Moody as the guy who threatened him that day.

I chuckled, but I wasn’t having fun. “That must have really ruined your day, Chris.”

I would’ve enjoyed watching Moody that day, seeing the look on his face. He’d spent three months in a trial blaming Wozniak’s death on the Cannibals, when really it was the work of a rival gang, the Lords. He’d spent three months claiming that Wozniak died because he wouldn’t pay the street tax, when in reality it was to cover up the illegal steering of a contract to Delroy Bailey’s catering company-and Delroy’s gay relationship with Hector Almundo.

“Funny thing,” I said. “Ernesto and his buddy. When Kiko said he killed Wozniak to ‘cover up a connection to Delroy,’ they thought the guy doing the cover-up was your star witness, Joey Espinoza. Delroy’s former brother-in-law. Which, from your perspective, was all the more devastating, seeing as how you cut a deal with Joey for eighteen months, and now he was your star witness at Hector’s trial. How was that going to look? You’re prosecuting Hector for murder and suddenly it’s your star witness who did it?”

Moody was as still as a statue.

“Ironic,” I went on. “Turns out, the ‘connection to Delroy’ was Hector’s connection to Delroy. Ernesto and his buddy were handing you Hector on a silver platter, if you’d followed up on the evidence. But you didn’t follow up on it, Chris, did you? You didn’t do one shred of investigation. No, you buried that evidence. You withheld material evidence from the defense. You violated the first ethical rule of an honest prosecutor. Any of that ringing a bell, Chris?”

“I don’t remember anything like that,” Moody said. “And even if it happened, I’m under no obligation to chase red herrings.”

“A red herring? Try that one again, Chris. It was true. Most everything they told you. A Latin Lord killed Wozniak, and it was to cover up a relationship with Delroy Bailey. Hard to call that a red herring when it was accurate. Maybe they were wrong on Joey Espinoza being behind it, but they still gave you almost the entire story right there.”

“Twenty-twenty hindsight,” he said.

“Okay, maybe-maybe you couldn’t be sure what he was saying was true, at that moment. But you had an ethical obligation to turn that over to us, Mr. Moody. And you know it. Instead, you threatened Ernesto and his buddy with perjury, obstruction, the whole lot. You scared them into silence.”

“Is that a fact?” said Moody.

I removed the Dictaphone from my pants pocket, the same one I used to record my conversation with Scarface in the alley that night. I hit play. Scarface’s words echoed through the quiet city air.

They said I was a liar, ese. They told me, liars go to prison. We gonna lock you up. One thousand one, they kept sayin’. The fuckin’ brownies, they pull out my sheet, they tell me, who’d believe you, convict? They tell me, ten years, man. Ten years for lying to us, the priors you got.

It was all there. “One thousand one,” the federal crime for lying to a federal agent. “Brownies,” the gangs’ nickname for federal prosecutors, owing to their hideous brown building downtown. Scarface had never said Moody’s name, but it wasn’t much of a leap. Of course the lead prosecutor in the Almundo trial would have been called in at some point, once it was clear that Ernesto and Scarface had material information to disclose. And the threats Scarface described? They had Chris Moody’s signature all over them.

Moody’s stare carried beyond the bridge. His posture had become rigid, defensive mode, as if we were about to come to blows.

“That’s not how it happened,” he said. “You have the word of some scumbag with a sheet as long as my cock, versus a decorated supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office.”

Moody had obviously done the calculus quickly in his head. His first instinct-to deny the meeting ever took place-wouldn’t fly because of the records of the visit and the other federal agents who undoubtedly attended the interview. He went with his second instinct-admit the meeting took place but deny that it happened the way Scarface had described. He was right about his word versus Scarface’s, but Moody still had problems. Other agents had been involved in the conversation. Someone below Moody would’ve handled the intake interview and would have brought in Moody only after there appeared to be something relevant. Moody would have overpowered the situation at that point and insisted these guys were lying, maybe even kicked out everyone else when he threatened Ernesto and Scarface. But still, given that what Scarface told Moody ultimately was mostly correct, the other agents might well revisit that session and remember Moody as more of a cover-up artist than anything else. If there were ever a reason to revisit that session-if anyone beefed Moody to the Division of Attorney Discipline, and everyone was interviewed. And that was assuming that Moody wouldn’t be criminally prosecuted for misconduct; maybe a stretch but stranger things have happened.

Moody was boxed in, and we both knew it. His only defense to Attorney Discipline would be that he believed that the information was so lacking in credibility that it wasn’t even worth mentioning to Hector’s defense team. Given its ultimate accuracy, that argument wouldn’t fly. And Moody already would have lost, with the publicity surrounding the controversy. A federal prosecutor withholding evidence in a major public corruption case? A case that he lost? He cheated and still lost? This was, to say the least, the very last thing he wanted. He wanted to go out with glory, having convicted the governor and all his cronies on public corruption charges, and then march into some silk-stocking law firm and reel in the big coin. He didn’t want a very ugly ethics charge against him to stain his big moment.

And this was to say nothing of the fact that if I, the star prosecution witness in a public corruption trial that was forthcoming, filed an ethics beef against Moody, he’d probably be disqualified from trying the case against the governor. His swan song, his crowning achievement, would go out the window. He’d have to sit on the sidelines while someone else stole his glory. To Moody, that might be worse than anything else.

“So what do you want?” he asked. His posture wilted.

I exhaled, only then realizing that I’d been holding my breath. I didn’t know if he’d say these words. There was, I must admit, a small part of me that wished he hadn’t. There was a large part of me that knew he would.

“You want a walk,” he said, answering his own question. “A get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Did Moody actually believe what Scarface told him and then blatantly cover it up? I didn’t know and I never would. But I do know this much: The human inclination to believe what you want to believe runs very deep. Moody so deeply didn’t want to believe what Scarface told him that he probably convinced himself it was bullshit and swept it under the rug.

“You can’t record a conversation with that guy without his consent,” he said, but his voice had weakened. He was flailing.

“Who said it was without his consent, Chris? You want to open an investigation and find out? You want your office to handle it? Attorney Discipline?”

I pulled out my cell phone and started dialing.

“What the hell are you doing?” Moody asked.

“Tucker,” I said into the cell phone, “we’re on the Lerner Street Bridge. Come down right away.” I closed up the cell phone and put it back in my pocket.

I’d caught Moody off guard. He was losing control of the situation. “What the hell are you doing?”

I ejected the tape of Scarface’s conversation. “You can have the tape. Catch,” I said, and catch he did, wrapping it in his arms in a bear hug. He almost fell over doing so.

“That’s my only copy of that tape,” I said.

Moody stuffed it in his pocket. “Bullshit. You have a copy.” He said it like he hoped he was wrong.

“I don’t.”

“What the fuck do you want, Kolarich?”

“From you? Nothing. I think you should turn yourself in to Attorney Discipline for withholding material evidence from Hector’s defense team, but I’ll leave that up to you. I’m not going to turn you in for that. Really. Even if you prosecute me.”

“You made a copy,” he said. “You want me to pass on prosecuting you, then when it’s all over, you beef me to Attorney Discipline.”

“No. Prosecute me,” I said. “If that’s what your conscience tells you to do. I’m not going to beef you, either way, for what you withheld in Almundo.”

Moody watched me for a long time. This didn’t make sense to him. I’d just hung this thing over his head, and now I was handing him my leverage. But all things considered, he was feeling a little better with the tape in his possession.

Finally, he let out a low chuckle.

“Okay, superstar. You’ll get your pass. But you remember this. If you decide to go to DAD later, I’ll fucking bury you. I’ll be on you like ugly on a pig. Same goes for your girlfriend, Shauna, and your brother and anyone else I can think of. I’ll be your worst fucking nightmare. Are we clear?”

“I’m not asking for a pass,” I said. “I’m not blackmailing you. I’m advising you of this and hoping you’ll do the right thing and turn yourself in to Attorney Discipline. But that’s up to you, Christopher. I’m not a threat to you.”

I looked over his shoulder. About three blocks away, someone-presumably Lee Tucker-had turned the corner and was heading toward the bridge. Moody turned and saw the same thing, then spun back and walked toward me so that his features came more fully into view. His eyes shone with an intensity I’d never seen. That was because I’d never seen Chris Moody scared.

“Now I guess we need to explain to Lee why there’s no F-Bird tonight,” he said. “How about we say it fell through the grid here on the bridge? That work for you, sport? A fumbled hand-off.”

I snapped my fingers. “Glad you reminded me. I mean, that was the whole reason I came here, to deliver the F-Bird.”

Chris Moody’s eyes grew the size of Ping-Pong balls as I removed the F-Bird from my pocket.

“Handing off the F-Bird from tonight as promised,” I said. “As always. Y’know, you guys really should have taught me how to turn this thing off.”

Moody stared at the recording device in my hand, which was doing just that-recording our every word. Hey, to be fair, I never told him that I threw the F-Bird into the river. Moody just made that assumption. Can’t a guy throw away a couple of used AA batteries from a stereo, wrapped together by some state-issued rubber bands, if he wants to? Sure, maybe my fingers were covering the rubber bands when I showed it to him, so from a distance it looked just like FeeBee, but who said I had to play fair?

In that short span of time, it must have crossed Moody’s mind to lunge for it, try to get FeeBee away from me. But Tucker was well within sight distance now and would have seen the whole thing, and Moody was still far enough away that he’d have to struggle with me.

“Should I give the F-Bird to Lee?” I asked him. It was very hard not to smile.

“Put that fucking thing away,” he said in a harsh whisper. He turned as Lee Tucker approached.

“You’re the boss,” I said.

“Hey. How we doing?” Tucker had walked out without a coat and was regretting it now. “What’s-what’s up?”

“You’re never gonna believe this,” Moody said. “Jason was handing me the Bird and we dropped it.”

I eased between the two of them and started walking north.

“Oh, you gotta be-it fell through? It’s in the river?”

“Craziest thing. A total accident.”

Before I’d hit the other side of the bridge, Chris Moody was calling to me.

“Jason,” he said. “Seriously, I want to thank you for everything you’ve done for us. You’ve performed a valuable service.”

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t break stride. I didn’t even smile, until I’d jumped into the back of a cab.