And it didn’t matter. Hector had admitted his participation, which was all that I needed. Hector was going down for Greg Connolly’s murder. It was done now.
“And by the way, Counselor, while you’re lecturing me on being careful? Keep in mind that what I did to Greg helped everyone. Imagine Connolly walking around with a fucking federal wire every day. I saved everyone. Carl, Maddie, Charlie, MacAleer-and you.”
Hector wasn’t completely off the mark here; killing Greg Connolly did help everyone. Who knows what Greg could have helped the government uncover? But in the end, Hector didn’t kill Greg for anyone but himself. Greg posed a direct threat to Hector because Greg, as chair of the PCB, had steered a contract to Hector’s paramour, Delroy Bailey, and because Greg either knew, or had an informed opinion, that what had happened later to Adalbert Wozniak and Ernesto Ramirez was related to that sordid affair. Hector couldn’t risk having Greg Connolly chatting away to the federal government.
“Not that anyone will give me any fucking credit for that,” he went on, seething now. “These assholes running around Carl, they’re cutting me out of shit and taking credit for everything, meanwhile I’m saving their asses by exterminating a rat. They’re fucking oblivious. They don’t even know I got their backs. I take all the risks and they get all the benefit.”
I started nodding along with him, supplying Hector more and more rope with which to hang himself. “That doesn’t seem right,” I said. “They don’t even know what you did for them?”
He sneered at me, took a quick look around, and leaned inward again. “Those pussies think they know what it takes? They don’t know shit. They’d probably piss their expensive little pants if they knew what I’ve done for them. They’ve never had to get their hands dirty. They’ve had everything handed to them on a silver platter. They don’t understand what it means to reach out and take something. I mean, really take something that isn’t supposed to belong to you. Charlie, he understands. He gets it. Nobody gave him nothing. He took it. He gets it. The rest of them? The ones who hang on coattails?”
Still nodding my head, I was. Hector was just warming up.
“Peshke? This guy’s dad was a congressman so that makes him smart? Maddie Koehler? She got some governor elected in Tennessee who could’ve won with his pants down and now she’s a genius? MacAleer? His dad was an old union boss. He’s just a dog who follows his master. And Carl? Carl’s a good guy, but c’mon. This guy was handing out marriage licenses until I came along. Try being a Latino politician for one goddamned second. I mean, sure, you can run in your legislative district, but try running statewide. See how many people are going to line up to help you when you have brown skin. Do any of them have to go to a fucking street gang to get contributions? Do any of them have the federal government targeting them because they’re successful?”
I had a nice comeback to that last question, but I’d let Christopher Moody handle that one. I was done. I really didn’t want to listen to this guy rationalize his behavior anymore. He was the thug I’d always suspected, but it hadn’t mattered to me, because he was my thug. He was my client. He bought the resources of the best law firm in the city and the best lawyer, Paul Riley, with me at his side, and we pulled it out for him. Hector was guilty of masterminding the Cannibals extortion and we’d gotten him off. He was guilty of killing Adalbert Wozniak-not precisely for the reason the feds thought, but guilty nonetheless-and we’d cleared him of that, too.
Just doing my job. It was true. I couldn’t be sorry about providing a zealous defense to a client. But I could be happy that some justice was coming his way now. There would be attorneys, in the coming days, who would criticize me for turning against a former client, but I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over it.
“I’m coming to you,” I said into my cell phone to Lee Tucker.
“Now?”
“Now. Bring another Bird. Ten minutes.”
“Why do I need to bring another Bird?”
I hung up the phone without answering. He didn’t need to know why.
88
I walked into suite 410 fifteen minutes later. Lee Tucker had just shown up, still wearing his coat, his cheeks still pink from the cold outside. “What’s the problem?” he asked. “The F-Bird didn’t work?” I handed it to him. “It worked just fine. I just thought you should have this right away.”
It wasn’t the real reason I was turning in the F-Bird early, but it sounded like a sensible explanation.
Tucker stared at the recording device I’d handed him. “This was your breakfast with Hector Almundo?”
I nodded. “Listen to that. You might be adding a name to that indictment.”
“Well-c’mon. Give me a preview.”
“Let’s just say you’re going to learn a few things about Hector Almundo. I sure did.”
“C’mon, Counselor. Don’t be a putz.”
I smiled, which felt odd. I hadn’t done a lot of that recently, and this surely wasn’t a time for mirth. “Greg Connolly,” I said. “It was Hector. Hector and Charlie.”
Lee Tucker nodded at me, but hardly reacted. Nothing in his eyes, nothing in his movements. “Okay. Anything else?”
“You knew,” I said. “You already knew.”
Tucker wasn’t going to say yes, but he didn’t say no, either.
“The guys he hired?” I asked. “You traced them back to Hector? Forensics? What?”
It felt silly, but I’d been living in my own little world, working up a case for these guys. I hadn’t considered the obvious-these guys were capable of some investigating of their own. They could have swept the place where I was interrogated for fingerprints or DNA-shit, the one goon spilled a pool of blood out of his nose after I clocked him. And they followed the car that dropped me off that night. They probably knew the names of both of those guys and had easily secured search warrants to access phone records and anything else they might need to trace those guys back to Hector.
“Well, now you have a confession, too,” I said.
Tucker paused, debating what he could say to me. “That will help us a lot. Let’s say it will confirm what we strongly suspected. Great job, Jason. Really.”
I held out my hand. Tucker put a new F-Bird in my palm but didn’t release it. “You’ll take one more shot at Snow? You’ll give it the old college try?”
I pried the new F-Bird from his hand. I looked him in the eye but didn’t answer.
“Jason, don’t be an idiot. You’ve done so much for this case. Hell, you risked your ass for us. Chris won’t prosecute you. Not if you take this one last shot. Even if you fail. Just try.”
Mom always said, if you don’t have something to say, keep your mouth shut. So I did.
“But you tell Chris to fuck off now-Jason, c’mon, man, you know he’ll go after you. Don’t throw all your hard work away. Don’t do that.”
I thought Tucker’s impassioned plea was not entirely self-interested. Yes, he wanted to be part of an historic investigation that took down the governor. And yes, he could dutifully play the good cop to Chris Moody’s bad. But I thought Lee meant what he was saying. I’d earned something with him after everything I’d done. He was rooting for me, I thought. He wanted me to avoid prison. That sounded like an okay idea to me as well. But it wasn’t Tucker’s call.
It was Moody’s call. And, as Moody had said to me earlier, it really was up to me.
89
I didn’t go down to the pressroom in the state building for the 11:30 media event. I couldn’t stomach the idea of watching the heads of State and Local Employees United and the International Brotherhood of Commercial Laborers announce their endorsement of Governor Carlton Snow. It was covered over the Internet, however, so I flipped it on in spite of myself and half listened to it, which is to say that it was on in the background as I packed up some of the few personal items I had brought to this office.