“I’m the deputy director for the Department of Commerce and Community Services,” he said. “Say that three times fast.”
I couldn’t even say it once. I had no idea what it meant, but I wasn’t surprised that Hector had landed a bureaucratic post. I couldn’t imagine him doing an honest day’s work.
“State government,” he said. “Governor Snow tapped me for the post.”
Carlton Snow had been our governor for all of a year. The previous governor, Langdon Trotter, had resigned from office when he was appointed the U.S. attorney general. Unlike Trotter, Snow was a Democrat; in our state, the lieutenant governor runs separately from the governor, and in our typical political schizophrenia, we elected a governor and lieutenant governor from different parties. When Trotter took the federal job, Snow became the governor for the remainder of the term.
“You know,” he said, “I wouldn’t have made this offer while you were at Shaker, Riley. But since you’re out on your own and all-there are opportunities for lawyers in state government. I could work out a contract for you, if you like.”
Right. I imagined a guy in a short-sleeved shirt and polyester tie, denying a claim because someone forgot to check a box, and therules-clearly-state-that-if-you-don’t-check-the-box-we-can’t-process- the-application.
Hector seemed amused. “You can stay in private practice,” he said. “The state would just be another client you have. You have any idea how many outside law firms have contracts with the administration?” he asked me. “Litigation. Transactional work. There’s a lot of money to be made there. And some of the work is interesting.”
“I suppose. How does that work, exactly? Is there a list?”
A waiter took our orders. Hector had a chef salad. I had a turkey sandwich and soup. When the waiter left, Hector sliced open a roll and buttered it. “No list,” he said, as if that were an understatement. I didn’t catch the point and didn’t ask.
“Now, a referral from someone the governor trusts,” Hector said. “Someone who thinks you’re an excellent attorney and who would be happy to sponsor you. That would help.”
“Now I just have to find someone like that,” I quipped. It was nice of Hector to make the offer. He probably felt like he owed me. In fact, he did not. He’d paid his considerable legal fees to the firm, and that was all that was required. But I could see it from his perspective. We did more than perform good legal work. For all practical purposes, we saved his life. He surely felt the same toward Paul Riley, but Paul was wealthy beyond need and had a nomination to the federal bench pending. I, on the other hand, had just suffered a personal tragedy and, from an outside viewpoint, my life probably seemed to be off-track. Actually, that sounded pretty accurate from an inside viewpoint, too.
“Snow is the new game in town,” he said. “He’s going to run for a full term and he thinks he’s going to be president someday.”
“Is he right about that?”
Hector deferred on that. “He’s raising a helluva lot of money,” he answered, which seemed to be his way of saying, maybe. “It might not be a bad train to get on, Jason. Just as it’s leaving the station.” He nodded to me. “Are you a Democrat?”
I drew back. “Does that matter?”
“Yes, of course it does. Are you?”
“I’m a south-side Irish Catholic, Hector. It’s a prerequisite to baptism.” The real answer was, I generally dislike both political parties and don’t feel loyal to either one.
“In the primaries,” he said. “Do you pull a Republican or a Democratic ballot?”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever voted in a primary.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Hector shook his head, as if I were hopeless. “Okay, well, I’ll see what I can do. This is something you’d want?”
I told him the truth: I wasn’t sure. But the clients weren’t exactly streaming through the door, and maybe Hector could find me something interesting.
I had no idea just how “interesting” it would be.
13
That afternoon, I put in a call to Joel Lightner, private eye extraordinaire-just ask him-and put in for a favor. Then I stared at the ceiling and thought about Adalbert Wozniak and Ernesto Ramirez. I had to start with the safe assumption that their murders were related. And the federal government had more or less conclusively fingered Wozniak’s actual killer. It was that teenage Cannibal-Eddie Vargas was the name, if memory served. But a sixteen-year-old gangbanger didn’t commit that murder without say-so, without some direction. And that same person saw Ernesto as a threat and ordered his death.
Good. I had mastered the obvious. Also, one plus one equals two.
What had Essie said? She thought my initial visits with Ernesto had been successful. I’d appealed to him. But then one day he returned home upset. Decepciono. Disappointed. Upset. La verdad no importa, he’d told his wife. It wasn’t worth prison, he’d told her. Prison-for Ernesto? Had he been part of something illegal? I didn’t know. But clearly, my powers of persuasion had moved him to talk to somebody. And more to the point, somebody had talked to him. Threatened him. He’d gone from wanting to come forth with his information to sealing the vault. He’d cut me off at the knees when I’d called him.
The truth doesn’t matter. It’s not worth prison.
Whatever it was, clearly someone, at that point, knew that Ernesto had information and had discouraged him, to put it mildly, from sharing it with me.
And then I’d returned. I caught him at the YMCA working out with some friends. I walked into Liberty Park and slapped a subpoena against his chest. Highly visible, each of those encounters. A mistake on my part. A fatal mistake. Born of necessity at the time, I thought.
I had three avenues of pursuit. One was to figure out who ordered the hit on Bert Wozniak. Find him and I’d find Ernesto’s killer. No problem, right? Piece of cake. Except that the federal government had marshaled all of its considerable resources and couldn’t pin it on anyone. Christ, they even knew who the shooter was, and still they couldn’t crack that nut. And that’s to say nothing of our investigators, led by one Joel Lightner. We would have loved to come up with an alternate theory for Wozniak’s murder, obviously, and we’d come up dry.
The second line of pursuit was to figure out what information Ernesto possessed. Same result, if successful. But difficult. He didn’t tell his wife, presumably for her own protection. Maybe he told a friend. But if that person were any kind of friend, he would have told the policia investigating Ernesto’s murder. Even anonymously. One way or the other, he would’ve gotten the word to the cops. So it felt unlikely that Ernesto had told anyone at all.
The third avenue was to forget about Wozniak and answer this question: Who knew that I was hounding Ernesto at the end of the trial? That was a critical two-day period of time. After all, nobody killed Ernesto after I first spoke with him. It seemed, in fact, that someone gave him a stern warning. But they didn’t kill him. Then, suddenly, come Friday, June 22, they take him out in a drive-by at Liberty Park. The intervening cause was me. So they got word, somehow, that I reinitiated contact.
I remembered two gangbangers, Latin Lords, standing with Ernesto at the basketball court at Liberty Park. One stockier guy in a tank top with a scar across his forehead; one younger, scrawny kid in blue jeans. Could I remember their faces if I saw them again? Maybe. Then there was the YMCA. A handful of guys there, at least one of whom knew Ernesto well enough to be spotting him during bench presses. I didn’t know their faces well at all. But I could find them again easily enough and get their names, unless they dropped out of the Y.
And what about that diagram Ernesto had written on the back of my business card:
ABW > PCB > IG > CC?
“ABW” was Wozniak’s company. “CC” probably meant the Columbus Street Cannibals. Other than that, I was at square one. I don’t like being at square one.