“He waltzed in on day one like he’s Winston Churchill, having absolutely no idea about the legislative process or how to do anything other than issue a press release. He punched everyone in the capital in the face, refused to compromise on anything, and then wonders why nobody likes or respects him. He surrounds himself with yes-men who tell him he walks on water. See, you got me started.” He took a drink of water.
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Jon.”
Jon’s smile quickly evaporated. “The Procurement and Construction Board,” he said. “That was initially something Snow created in the governor lite’s office.”
“The governor-?”
“Sorry, the lieutenant governor’s office. Basically, your job as lieutenant governor is to sit around and be ready if the old man croaks, but the one thing that falls under the lieutenant governor is driver’s licenses. He oversees DMV.”
I’d seen that. Adalbert Wozniak’s company had sought to provide hospitality supplies to the affiliate Department of Motor Vehicles offices.
“So, Snow falls into the governorship, and he decides to use that same model. Only the governor doesn’t just preside over one agency-he oversees dozens of administrative agencies with millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of contracts. Each agency doles out contracts, right? For anything you can imagine. Well, now Snow says, all of those agency contracts-all of them-are going to fall under a single board, the PCB. That’s over a billion dollars in contracts, with five people appointed by Snow deciding who gets what.” He looked up from his salad. “You get this contract through Hector?”
I nodded.
“Right. And who interviewed you? Derek Bruen?”
“Who’s that?”
Jon shook his head. “The guy who’d normally be interviewing you,” he said. “Anyone other than Charlie Cimino?”
I drew back. He seemed to have a pretty good handle on things. “Just Cimino,” I answered.
“Sure.” Jon shook his head and smiled. He seemed to be sensing that he was coming on too strong. “Well, hey, I’ll say this much-there’s lots of work with the PCB. Lots of money for a private practitioner. I’m sure it’ll work out fine.”
“Are you?”
He wiped his hands with his napkin and took a long drink of water. “Jason, you’re a big boy, and a smart guy. Smarter than they’ll be used to over there. Just call it like you see it, and document everything. Paper the files.”
“Cover myself.”
“Cover yourself, exactly.”
“Jeez, Jon, is it that bad?”
He took a long time thinking about that. “The truth is, I don’t know. I hear things. But the capital, I mean, it’s like a sewing circle. Who knows? But when I say names like Governor Snow and Charlie Cimino, I don’t usually use words like ‘ethical’ in the same breath. Know what I mean?”
I wasn’t particularly surprised by what Jon was telling me, but hearing him say these things, I admit, gave me some pause.
“Look, I’ll just say this once, Jason. Because you’re asking. And then I’ll shut the hell up.”
“Okay.” I opened my hands. “Hit me.”
“The second best thing you can do is be careful, like I said. Cover yourself.”
“And the best thing I could do?”
“Walk away,” he said. “Walk away, Jason.” He wagged a finger at me and did not smile.
19
“This is where everybody who wants something comes. And we’re the ones who decide whether they get it.”
Patrick Lemke was the executive director of the Procurement and Construction Board, which meant he oversaw the daily operations and prepared the board for its meetings every other week. Lemke was tall and out of shape, with half a head of unpredictable hair and thick glasses and no shortage of nervous energy. He generally avoided eye contact but, every now and then, those beady pupils shot glances in my direction. His forehead was glossy with sweat, even though I found it rather frigid in this office. I hoped it couldn’t be chalked up to nerves, but after listening to him ramble for a few minutes, I concluded that his natural equilibrium was hot-nervous.
A few minutes turned into ninety, as Lemke gave me an overview that was essentially a repeat of what I’d already read in a thick manual. The state gives out hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts annually, and they can give them out all sorts of ways. They can do the traditional “blind” bid-everyone makes their best offer, under seal, and the lowest bidder gets the bid, regardless of who they are or whom they know. That was the easy part; the rub was all the different exceptions to that rule, where it was impractical, impossible, or unnecessary to go through the sealed bidding process.
Only one of us grew tired during this lecture. This guy was like the Energizer bunny, and I was getting a headache. Finally, after offering to answer any questions several times, and appearing disappointed that I had none, he told me that he was “very busy” and “really had to go,” as if I were clinging to him to stay, and rushed out of my office.
It was my office but I was sharing it, or at least it was big enough to share. There were two desks and five file cabinets and a small window that looked into another building and a radiator with peeling yellow paint that appeared to cough and hiss more often than it provided heat.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Lemke said, bouncing back into the room and startling the bejeezus out of me with that high-pitched voice. “Nothing leaves this office. You can’t take any of the documents out of here. And no emails.”
“No emails? Isn’t this the twenty-first century?”
Patrick didn’t seem to be one for humor. He stared the wall and said, “Don’t email documents or say anything sensitive over email. It can get hacked. Okay, I really gotta go now. Oh, and you have your ID? You have to have an ID to get in and out-”
“I have my ID”
“You have your ID, okay, good. I’m going to be late now-”
Out he went. I’d been given five contracts to review for next week’s meeting. I calculated the amount of time it would take to pore over these specifications, multiplied by how boring it would be, and came up with multiple headaches and many cups of coffee. I had a purpose for this gig, and it wasn’t driven by money, but as I thought about it, I was taking a real flier that any of this would even result in anything that would give me a hint as to who killed Ernesto Ramirez. Well, at a minimum I would do some legal work and make a few bucks-
“Oh, and do you play music loud?”
“God, Patrick.” I turned away from the box I was emptying and looked toward the door. This guy moved around so quickly, his footsteps didn’t even make noise. “Do I-”
“They don’t like it when you play music too loud. If you have a stereo or whatever.” He was staring at the carpet.
“I won’t play music at all.”
“No, you can play it, just don’t play it loud.”
“I’ll just hum to myself.”
“Okay, so, I should go.”
I waited patiently, hands folded, humming to myself quietly, for Patrick to return. It took three minutes.
“Oh, so this is the last thing, unless you have any questions.”
“I do have a question,” I said, startling him. His face lit up. He even looked at me for a brief second. A question!
“How far back do the files go for the PCB?” I asked.
“Okay. The governor just started this board when he took office a year ago. I mean, he had it in the lieutenant governor’s office, but he transferred the PCB-”
“Patrick. I was just wondering, if I needed to refer to past practices, if I would be able to access prior documents. Maybe even back to when the PCB was under the lieutenant governor’s office.”
“Oh, sure you can. I can show you where to look. It’s in one of these cabinets, the hard copies I mean, but it’s also online, and I really have to go.”
“Sure. We can talk about it later.”
“Okay, good.”
I couldn’t be sure if Patrick was gone for good, but I had the sense that I would never know that in this job. I considered closing the door for some privacy, but it was my first day, and the other offices had their doors open, so it didn’t seem like a good idea.