Breach of Trust (26 page)

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Authors: David Ellis

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Breach of Trust
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Not unless I decided to accept her offer. That one would require some thought.
45
 
I GOT BACK HOME AFTER MIDNIGHT. I COULDN’T SLEEP.
My limbs were tingling from the reintroduction to sexual intercourse. I wasn’t interested in television. I wasn’t sure what to do with myself.
I didn’t know what to think about Madison Koehler’s offer, either. I’d gone after the PCB to learn about Ernesto Ramirez’s murder, and I worked with Charlie initially for the same reason. I was trying to catch a killer. And then Charlie and Connolly and the rest of them screwed me over with the doctored memos and handed Chris Moody a golden opportunity to pinch me, so my conscience didn’t bother me one bit in helping the government make a case against them.
But neither reason—solving a murder or payback—had anything to do with Madison Koehler, at least as far as I could tell. I didn’t know her. I had no agenda with her. If I accepted her offer, and the job was anything like what she’d subtly suggested, she was going to get into trouble as well.
I decided I would hold on to the idea for the time being.
Nothing better to do, I took a look at the documents I had taken from the state office regarding Starlight Catering. I figured I might as well make myself productive.
I knew two things about the company: They’d won a major contract with the state after Adalbert Wozniak’s company was disqualified, and Charlie Cimino had left them off the list of companies we were targeting. There was no chance it was a coincidence.
After I went through the documents, I knew a third thing about Starlight.
I knew the name of the owner.
Starlight Catering was a corporation whose sole principal officer was a man named Delroy Bailey. He had checked the box for “African American” in the form the state made you fill out to determine whether you qualified as a minority business enterprise. Sure enough, Agent Tucker had been right. Starlight Catering was an MBE.
But I didn’t recognize the name Delroy Bailey. I looked up the name on my laptop’s Internet and got a lot of hits, as the company had a website and had also catered some big events. There was a photo of him at one of the parties. He was a handsome, young, skinny black guy, which didn’t help me one way or the other, but hooray for him.
Here was another hit: Delroy Bailey and his wife, Yolanda, at a fundraiser for some alderman named Diaz. Yolanda looked a little older than Delroy, and she was Latina, not African American. Again, that didn’t really help me.
I froze. Wait.
Yolanda.
I went to my bag and retrieved the computer that Paul Riley had lent me, with the database from the Almundo trial. The more I thought about it, the surer I was, but it took a few minutes to find the right spot on the computer, the background workup on the prosecution’s star witness, Joey Espinoza.
“Will wonders never cease,” I mumbled, something my mother used to say.
Joey Espinoza had a sister named Yolanda Espinoza Bailey.
Starlight Catering was run by Joey Espinoza’s brother-in-law.
 
“SO HOW’D IT GO
last night?” Lee Tucker had a pinch of tobacco in his mouth and his feet up on the table. I’d barely walked through the door to Suite 410 in my office building before he was asking.
“It went.” I took a chair across from him.
“Anything good?”
I made a face. “A roomful of greedy jerk-offs.”
“You make any good contacts?”
“It was a pretty boring affair.”
Tucker watched me for a moment. “That it? Nothing else?”
“The martinis were good.”
He let that comment hang for a long time. Slowly, he nodded. “Okay, then.”
“Okay, then.”
His feet came off the table. “Today you have number sixteen.”
“Right. Hoffman.” Using our code, Charlie had identified the contractor denominated “16” on his master list, Hoffman Design and Supplies, as the next target on the list.
“Okay, and I’ve got the text,” he said, checking a box. The feds were downloading all of the text messages Charlie sent me. The texts were their lifeblood. It was how your basic, stateside fraudulent scheme became a federal offense.
He looked up at me. “So, if that’s it, then I guess you’re good to go.” He handed me the F-Bird recording device.
“Great. It’s been dreamy.” I pushed myself out of the chair. Sometimes these meetings took a while, but we were becoming much more efficient.
“Nothing at all from last night?” he asked me. “You meet the governor?”
“No.”
“Learn any useful information?”
“No.”
Tucker nodded for a long time. He looked disappointed. “Well, that’s too bad,” he said.
46
 
CHARLIE WAS IN A RARE GOOD MOOD TODAY. I DIDN’T
know what market-driven event had lightened his capitalistic heart—maybe landing an anchor tenant on one of his commercial properties—but I thought it would be good to take advantage.
“Missed you last night,” he said. The Porsche was humming down the interstate to the south side.
“I was there.”
“Yeah? Well, that place was a mob house. So who are we doing today? Hoffman, right? Eric Hoffman?”
“Right,” I said.
“We’re blowing through that list.”
It was true. Knowing Charlie, he had the whole thing charted out. Someday, he might want to compare his chart with the one on a conference room in the U.S. attorney’s office.
“Hey, I was noticing,” I said. “I saw on the list that one of the companies didn’t have a number next to it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Starlight Catering. Any particular reason we’re leaving them alone? Or was it an oversight?”
He didn’t answer right away. He was thinking about his response.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
Charlie grew quiet. I had snapped him out of his uncharacteristically good mood back to the angry, aggressive one. That told me something right there.
Charlie made an aggressive move with the Porsche, switching into the right lane and then swerving onto the off-ramp.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. We took a right after the ramp. He found the nearest gas station and parked at the far end, where we were alone.
“Get out,” he said.
I paused, but too long a hesitation could be lethal. I got out and met him at the rear of the Porsche.
“Open your coat,” he said.
My heart did some gymnastics. I had hit a nerve with Charlie.
And now he was going to search me.
I unbuttoned my winter coat. My suit coat, the left inner pocket of which was holding the F-Bird, was already unbuttoned. I raised my arms. Charlie put his palms on my shirt at the chest and then ran his hands down to my belt.
“Spread your legs.”
“Jesus, Charlie.”
“Spread your legs,” he repeated.
I did. He did a quick pat on my thighs.
“You want me to empty my pockets, too?” I asked with indignation. I wasn’t eager to do it, of course, but I knew that was his intention so it only made sense to appear willing. Better than unwilling. Indignant, insulted, offended was fine. But not unwilling.
I didn’t try to stall or talk him out of it. I pulled my car keys out of my right overcoat pocket and then turned the pocket out. There was nothing in the left coat pocket and I turned it out, too.
Charlie didn’t seem inclined to stop me. He threw my keys to the ground and put his hand out.
I didn’t want to think about what might happen next. I couldn’t seem the least bit apprehensive. I tried not to think about the fact that after my pants pockets, there was nothing left but my suit jacket and the F-Bird.
From my right pants pocket, I removed my cell phone and money clip before turning that pocket out. Charlie threw the money to the ground but held on to my cell phone.
One more pocket until we got to the suit coat and the F-Bird.
From my left pants pocket, I removed my wallet and a crumbled photograph I carry around of Talia and Emily. Charlie dropped the wallet but took a look at the photograph.
His expression relaxed. He struggled a moment.
“This is your wife and daughter,” he said.
I nodded. “Please don’t damage it,” I said. “It’s irreplaceable. It—means something to me.”
Charlie let out a sigh and dropped his arms. As I hoped, the photo, combined with my clear willingness to comply with his search, had taken the wind out of his sails. “Okay, kid, sorry—sorry.” He handed me the photo, then the cell phone. He bent down and retrieved my wallet and money and car keys. “Just—you with your questions. It makes me nervous.”
“Charlie, I’m going to try real hard not to be offended.”
He reached for my shoulder. He felt bad now. “Just being careful. The questions and all.
“Sorry,” he said again, as he got back in the car.
47
 
LAST NIGHT, I’D ONLY KNOWN TWO THINGS—STARLIGHT
had leapfrogged Bert Wozniak’s company for a big project, and Starlight was being given a pass by Charlie in our shakedown scheme. Now I knew more. Joey Espinoza’s brother-in-law was the owner of Starlight. And that brought back this little tidbit from the first time I visited Charlie’s office back in December, when I passed by her office: Joey Espinoza’s wife was on Charlie’s payroll.
And now I knew how sensitive a thing it was for Charlie. Raising the topic with him almost cost me everything.
Here was how I figured it. Joey wanted his brother-in-law’s company to get the sweetheart state contract. He talked to Charlie. They probably cut a deal. The PCB does what it does, manufacturing a reason why the lowest bidder—Adalbert Wozniak’s company—isn’t qualified.
Voilà,
Starlight gets the contract. Wozniak feels cheated. He starts making some noise. He even goes to the state’s inspector general to complain. It comes back to Charlie. He and Joey decide that Wozniak has to be silenced. Especially because, at this point, Joey is already securely in the grasp of the federal government. They’ve already sunk their hooks into him. The absolute last thing Joey needs is more trouble. So Charlie handles the details. Wozniak is gunned down. It looks like one of those gang things that happen far too often. A tragic, senseless loss. An unsolved murder. Terrible, but not unusual, not in the part of town where Wozniak had his offices.
Only there’s a problem: The murder is pinned on a teenage member of the Columbus Street Cannibals, the same gang that Joey Espinoza has been tied in to. The heat actually turns
up
on Joey. So Charlie does what he can to keep Joey from singing about the Wozniak shooting, and the Starlight Catering deal, to the feds.
I’ll hire your wife while you’re inside,
he tells him. Maybe he offers to cover Joey’s mortgage, too. Maybe a job afterward. Joey won’t lose his house or his wife while he’s serving time. Probably other promises are made, too. Whatever it takes, to keep Joey quiet from his new federal friends.
Damage control.
Adalbert Wozniak wasn’t murdered because he refused to pay the Cannibals’ extortion demands. He was gunned down because he was about to expose a pay-to-play scheme involving Joey Espinoza, Charlie Cimino, and the Procurement and Construction Board.
I felt sure of it. But there were still things I was missing. I was missing the connection to Ernesto Ramirez.
And I was missing proof of any of this.
48
 
I MET ESMERALDA RAMIREZ FOR LUNCH AT A DINER
near her home. I got there first. The place wasn’t crowded. The economy was slipping further. People were worried.
The weather matched the mood of the country. Typical Midwest February, cold and wet and gloomy. No snow had fallen in several weeks, but sheets of ice lined the streets and sidewalks. I almost took a header walking into the place. Everything was harder to do this time of year.

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