“I see you filed an appearance in the Hauser Construction case today,” he said to me.
My jaw did a few rotations. I couldn’t see it, not yet, but I had an idea.
“Jack Hauser,” he said. “The guy who hired you today? Minority partner in Higgins Sanitation? His other business, the construction company, needs a lawyer and suddenly turns to a guy with absolutely no experience in construction law? And, lo and behold, the lawyer he picks is the same lawyer who just helped him bypass two lower bidders to get a sweetheart prison sanitation contract.”
I was overcome with anger—at Cimino and at myself. Looking back, Hauser had seemed to be coming to me as if I were his only option. What had he said, when I’d quoted him three hundred an hour?
Well, you’re hired, obviously,
he’d said.
I mean, okay, fine, I’ll hire you, but—any way to knock that number down?
It was like he knew he had no choice, and he was pleading for mercy on the hourly rate.
And when I’d asked him how he got my name, he looked at me like we both knew that answer, like he couldn’t understand why I’d be asking.
Jack Hauser, it was now clear, had been sent to me. Cimino had told him that there would be a price to getting that prison contract—besides a campaign contribution to the governor—and that price was legal business for me, the lawyer who supposedly had made it happen. Cimino was cutting me in. This was how it worked. Everyone got a piece. Apparently, I was supposed to understand that.
I’d just taken a kickback without even knowing it.
Moody took the only remaining empty seat, nearest me, and leaned forward on his knees. “This is a criminal enterprise that makes Hector Almundo and the Cannibals look like the Girl Scouts of America. Connolly and Cimino are steering state contracts away from deserving companies to people who contribute to the governor’s campaign fund. I know it, Kolarich. I fucking
know
it. And I’m going to prove it. And you’re going to help me. Because if you don’t, you’ll be sitting next to all of them at trial. You can try to convince the jury that you’re the only honest one of the bunch of scumbags. You, the one who
asked
to be part of this—who used Hector Almundo to get you inside. Maybe you’ll be the one guy at the table who walks. But I wouldn’t like your chances, Counselor.”
I watched Moody, thinking through my options.
“What’s Cimino going to say at trial?” Moody went on. “And Connolly. ‘Advice of counsel,’ that’s what they’re going to say. They’re going to say they relied in good faith on you, their lawyer, for the actions they took. Everyone at that defense table is going to take a big dump on Jason Kolarich.”
He was right, of course. I’d be lined up at trial with a ring of criminals, all of whom would be busy pointing the finger at me.
“Chris,” I said, “you missed a spot on your face.”
He drew back. He fought every instinct to wipe at his face. “What?”
“You still have a little egg on your face from blowing the Almundo case. I mean, that’s what this is all about, right? You’ve had a hard-on for me ever since the not-guilty.”
Moody didn’t crack, not for a second; he had way too much of an upper hand here. Instead, he smiled. “If it eases the pain, Kolarich, go ahead and fantasize. But I wouldn’t want to be you right now.”
I looked away, my mind racing. I found a picture of my wife and child on the bookcase and stared it a long time.
“Looks like I’m going to have to beat your ass in court,” I said. “Again.”
Moody’s eyes did that rapid-blink thing I remembered. He thought for a moment and nodded. “Hope you can say the same for that partner of yours—what’s her name, Agent Tucker?”
“Tasker,” said the FBI agent. “Shauna Tasker.”
“Right, Shauna Tasker. Sounds like she got a taste of that Hauser Construction work, too.” He scratched his chin in mock contemplation. “What do you think, Jason? Does that make her a co-conspirator?”
I steeled myself, kept my voice low and even. “Keep her out of this. She has nothing to do with this.”
“She does now.”
We locked eyes. This was the highlight of Christopher Moody’s year, putting the screws to me. He wasn’t even trying to hide it.
Shauna.
I thought I was paying her back, for once, by including her in some legal work I had drummed up. Instead, she was possibly in the soup along with me. I wasn’t sure of that, and neither was Moody, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that he could dirty her up without even prosecuting her. The same day he slapped the PCB with a federal subpoena, he’d hit Shauna with one and make sure the newspapers didn’t miss the connection. And if he had any kind of a good-faith basis to do so, he’d indict her and effectively ruin her career. Whether she was guilty or innocent would be a lost detail. He knew all of this, and he knew I knew, too.
“Keep her out of this, Chris,” I said.
He shrugged. “That decision isn’t mine. It’s yours.” He looked at the other agents in the room. “Let’s give Jason some time to think about this, guys.” He pushed himself out of the chair. The lot of them moved toward the front door. Moody stopped at the edge of the living room and flipped a business card in my direction. “But I better be hearing from you tomorrow, Jason,” he said. “Or you and your girlfriend will be hearing from us.”
27
I DIDN’T EVEN TRY TO SLEEP THAT NIGHT. I DID LAPS
around my townhouse, pacing everywhere, even taking a long walk outside in the below-freezing temps. Throughout it, I kept telling myself that I should be afraid. Afraid of prison. Afraid of losing my law license. But I wasn’t. With each passing hour, I only grew angrier. Angry at myself, for dipping a toe into that cesspool and then being surprised when it came out dirty. But most of all, angry at Charlie Cimino. He had given me instructions to do things I shouldn’t do, and when I refused, he’d doctored documents and misrepresented my words.
The federal government wasn’t flying blind here; this was no bluff. Clearly, they’d placed eavesdropping devices in Greg Connolly’s office and on someone’s phone—either his or Charlie Cimino’s. They were Title III intercepts, meaning the government was intercepting these conversations without the knowledge of any of the participants. That’s hard to do. It’s an easier task when one of the parties to the conversation consents to wearing a wire, but when the feds want to eavesdrop without anyone’s knowledge, they have to go under Title III and get the approval of the chief federal judge as well as the top levels at the Department of Justice. They have to clear about ten different hurdles. They have to already have a pretty solid case.
And I was their gift-wrapped package, the insect that walked right into the spiderweb.
Maybe you’ll be the one guy at the table who walks.
Those words from Christopher Moody, more than anything else he’d said or shown me, were the essence of my problem. The evidence he had on me, at this point, wasn’t that great. And if he really thought I was dirty, he would have waited for more. He could have waited weeks, months, to catch me deeper in the soup. But he didn’t do that, because he knew I wasn’t part of this thing. Maybe he even knew I was on the verge of quitting, after getting a sniff of the stench. Maybe that’s why he was here tonight, before I got out. He was scooping me up before I left the sandbox.
But none of that changed the fact that he had a basis for charging me, and that I would be one of several defendants sitting at the defense table, when the prosecution tried a multiple-defendant case featuring scumbags like Charlie Cimino and Gregory Connolly. I’d be part of the conspiracy. And I’d be trying, probably in vain, to separate myself from these other pieces of garbage, trying to persuade the jury not to flush me down the toilet with the lot of them. By the time the jury got down to me on the verdict form, they’d be so disgusted that they’d just check “guilty” and hand the slip to the bailiff.
The one guy at the table who walks.
It was possible, sure. But guilt by association is a cliché for a reason. It happens all the time, which is why the prosecution likes to try defendants together in these cases. And this is to say nothing of the very real possibility that some of these assholes would plead out and, in exchange for a lenient sentence, point the fingers at everyone they could. Cimino surely would swear that I advised him on how to evade the public-bidding requirements for the bus contract. He and Connolly and Patrick Lemke would be happy to swear that I wrote up a memo disqualifying the obviously qualified bidders who beat out Higgins Sanitation, and they would probably throw in a little bonus fabrication—like how I demanded getting outside legal work from Higgins’s partner, Jack Hauser, in exchange. I would tell the jury that I had no idea that Jack Hauser came to me as part of a kickback, but after hearing months of testimony about sordid dealings from the likes of Charlie Cimino and Greg Connolly, would a disgusted jury believe me?
Advice of counsel. It’s what all of them would say. We’re not lawyers; we relied on Kolarich to tell us what to do.
And even if I did manage to beat the rap, I was looking at a good twelve, eighteen months under the federal spotlight, my reputation ruined, my career shattered. People don’t equate “not guilty” with “innocent
.
” The burn heals with time, but it leaves a real nasty scar that I would wear forever. I would just be the guy who got away with it.
And then, for the kicker, there was Shauna. Would Chris Moody go after her, just to hook me in? I had no doubt that he would. When the government wants you, they get you, whatever it takes. She would get hauled in for questioning, her one-person law firm hit with a federal subpoena, and I couldn’t rule out the possibility of an indictment. All because she gave an office down the hall to an old friend, and I just happened to invite her to that meeting with Jack Hauser.
I couldn’t let that happen. I just couldn’t.
Moody had me, and we both knew it.
28
I MET PAUL RILEY AT THE MARITIME CLUB, WHERE
only about a week ago I’d had lunch with Jon Soliday, who had warned me not to go near the Procurement and Construction Board. I longed for a do-over where I took Jon’s advice and tried a different angle for discovering who killed Adalbert Wozniak and Ernesto Ramirez. But I hadn’t, and now I was dealing with the mess.
“Anyplace but the law firm,” I’d said to Paul. I had not walked into Shaker, Riley since the day Talia and Emily died. I couldn’t stomach the pity or the awkward small talk. Someone there, at some point, had gathered together all my personal items from my office and delivered them to my house. I couldn’t even remember who it was. My memory of that entire stint with Shaker, Riley was much of a blur at this point.
When he showed up at the Maritime Club, Paul looked the same as I remembered him, fit, tan, well-dressed, comfortable in his own skin, quick with the self-deprecation when I asked about his nomination to the federal bench, pending before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “They’ve been trying to find people to say something nice about me,” he said, when I asked him about the delay. Closer to the truth was a hostile senate, slow-footing the judicial nominations of a president from the opposing party.
“You know you have a standing invite to return,” Paul told me, when we took our seats for lunch. “I won’t belabor it, but it’s there for the taking.”
My laugh was uneasy. Surely, Paul would rethink that invitation after this conversation.
In his lengthy career as a lawyer, Paul had done a lot, and there was very little he hadn’t seen. I don’t know where my plight fell on the spectrum, but as I began to explain it to him, I sensed it was personal to him, particularly as I mentioned characters from our trial together, not the least of whom was the prosecutor, Chris Moody. His face went tellingly blank when I told him I’d gotten involved with the PCB—he held his tongue-lashing, I suspect, because he knew it was going to get worse—and he was white as a sheet when I recounted my conversation last night with federal agents. I ran through everything while Paul listened silently. It was clear that he felt sorry for me, which was the last thing I wanted. I would have preferred a glass of cold water in the face, which I probably deserved.
“Well, we could fight it,” he said, after I’d rehashed everything. I appreciated the use of the word “we.” I had no doubt that Paul would step in to help me if asked. But I wouldn’t ask.
“This guy Cimino has made you the fall guy, Jason. My guess is, the feds know that, and if Chris had an ounce of decency, he’d let this go. You could tell him to go scratch his ass and see what happens. If he charges you, you fight it.”
That was certainly a possibility. “You think Moody would let it go?”
“Probably not,” said Paul, with his characteristic frankness. “He’d want everyone pointing fingers. They blame the lawyer, you blame them, and everyone goes down looking dirty.”
My thought exactly.
“Well.” Paul sighed, examined his fingernails. “You could get immunity and see what that costs you.”
“You know what it’ll cost me,” I said. “The supreme court would be very interested, too.” The state bar is controlled by our state supreme court, which handles lawyer misconduct. Even if I got immunity from prosecution, it wouldn’t be immunity from them. “I’d probably lose my license, Paul.”