“The name George Ippolito mean anything to you?” she asked.
I laughed reflexively. Judge Ippolito sat in the trial court up in the city. I’d tried a couple of cases in front of him in my time, pleasant experiences none of them. He was what the ACAs called a “yeller.” The moniker said it all. His judicial temperament fell somewhere on the spectrum between Joseph Stalin on a bad day and a wounded grizzly protecting her young.
Madison couldn’t be thinking what I thought she was thinking.
“You know him,” she said. She didn’t show a trace of apology, or equivocation, in her expression.
“The governor’s going to appoint George Ippolito to the supreme court?” I asked.
“He’s considering it,” said Madison. “The word we have back is that he’s tough on crime. Does that sound right?”
I looked away, incredulous. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. George Ippolito was not the dimmest judge I had stood before, but he was far from the brightest. And that was to say nothing of our state appellate court, which held several excellent jurists.
“I suppose,” I conceded. “Ippolito’s tough on anyone who gets within fifty feet of him.”
“No-nonsense,” she said.
“Unstable,” I answered.
“Independent.”
“Okay, but there are plenty of judges who are tough on crime. Why George—”
Oh. The picture was filling in now. Dots connecting. One plus one equaling two.
“Ippolito’s connected to one of these union guys,” I gathered.
“George Ippolito is Gary Gardner’s brother-in-law,” said Mac.
I suddenly lost my appetite for the Caesar salad. So this was how it would work: Gary Gardner gives the governor the endorsement of the laborers’ union, and the governor puts his brother-in-law on the state’s highest court.
The governor was going to sell a seat on the state supreme court.
“Have we offended your delicate sensibilities?” Madison asked.
Yes, as a matter of fact, she had. I wasn’t so naïve to think that advancement up the judicial ladder was tied, in a direct linear fashion, to merit. Judges were elected in our state, after all; it was impossible to separate out politics. But this—this was too much.
On the other hand, my job wasn’t to talk Madison out of this. I wished it was, but in fact the opposite was true. I had to recover quickly here and get on board. If I started showing reluctance, they’d drop me like a bad habit.
“Look, I won’t lie to you,” I said, which felt ironic given my undercover role. “George Ippolito is a terrible choice for the supreme court. Terrible. But my point isn’t that
I
think that. It’s that everyone will think that. The bar associations will go ape-shit. Lawyers who practice before him do not hold him in high regard, let’s put it that way. I think there’ll be blowback.”
“So?” Madison challenged. “Governor Snow doesn’t need a bunch of lawyers to stop him from appointing a judge who’s tough on crime.”
It was a decent political response, I suppose. The public wasn’t fawning over lawyers these days. Going against them might be a badge of honor. It sounded like Madison had done some homework here. My reaction hadn’t really surprised her. She’d already begun formulating a response to any criticism.
“Aren’t there other judges tied to this union guy Gardner?” I asked.
“She didn’t ask you about other judges. She asked you about Ippolito,” said MacAleer, ever the loyal soldier. I recall about five minutes ago, this guy was calling her Queenie behind her back, and now he was kissing her rear end.
I didn’t have a rebuttal. And I had to continuously remind myself that it wasn’t my place to
have
a rebuttal. It was my job to go along, the FBI riding sidesaddle, with whatever criminal enterprise these guys could conjure up.
“Okay, it’s not my call,” I said. “What do you need from me?”
I noted a slight softening in Madison’s expression. “I need you to make the case for Ippolito,” she said. “Conduct some interviews. Draft an analysis. Whatever you need to do. Just come to the right conclusion and make it look convincing. Do you think you can handle that? I mean, after everything I’ve heard about you, this should be a walk in the park.”
“I can handle it,” I told her.
“And do it fast,” she said. “We want to appoint Ippolito next week.”
“Before the laborers decide their endorsement,” I said, ever mindful of the F-Bird and the need for a clear record.
“Very good, Counselor,” she said. Madison poured herself some wine. She seemed pleased to have checked this meeting off her list.
When he listened to this evening’s conversation, Christopher Moody would be checking off a box of his own. Madison Koehler would now be a codefendant at Charlie Cimino’s trial.
“And what about this other guy? The guy who runs SLEU?” I asked. “Harmon-something.”
“Rick Harmoning,” said Mac. “You’re already working on getting his endorsement.”
“I am?”
“The list,” he said.
The list of jobs, he meant. The people who wanted certain positions in the administration, positions that I was supposed to figure out a way to give them. Madison had told me to talk to Mac about them.
“You fit those people into those jobs, Rick’ll come around,” said Mac.
“I’ll do my best,” I said. “Am I going to run up against lawyers in the different agencies who say that I can’t put these people into these jobs? I mean, that’s why you need me, right? Because you’ve had resistance?”
“Yes,” said Madison, “and yes.”
“Just come up with an argument,” said Charlie. “What you do best. Something plausible to get around whatever hurdles exist.”
I nodded. “And can I overrule these lawyers in the agencies? I mean, if push comes to shove?”
Mac laughed. So did Charlie. Madison smiled and focused on her wine.
“Of course you can,” said Mac, lightly pushing my arm. “We’re the fucking governor.”
68
I RETURNED TO MY OFFICE BUILDING AFTER DINNER
and went to Suite 410, where Lee Tucker awaited me. The box of discarded chicken wings and Diet Pepsi told me that Lee had dined on more modest fare than my horseradish-crusted rib eye and salad and Cabernet. At least I was getting some good meals out of this gig.
“Wow. Fucking wow.” That was a pretty accurate summation, I thought, after Lee had listened to my debriefing. Selling a seat on the supreme court and placing cronies on the payroll, all for precious union endorsements, would make nice headline charges in an everexpanding indictment. I’d been on this new assignment for one day, and already Madison Koehler and Brady MacAleer had been snared.
“Time frame is one week?” he asked me.
That’s what it had sounded like, based on my conversation with Madison and Mac. I wasn’t sure what that meant for me. Would the federal government sit back and let George Ippolito take a seat on the supreme court? Or would they intervene before it happened? If it were the latter, it meant I didn’t have much time left in solving my own private puzzle. I might have as little as one week to figure out who was behind the murder of Greg Connolly and, presumably, the others—Adalbert Wozniak and Ernesto Ramirez—as well.
I checked my watch. It was close to ten o’clock. I went home. I had a headache from the wine and my mouth was dry. I wasn’t in a very good mood, either, but I wasn’t sure why. I no longer held reservations about what I was doing. One or more of the governor’s people—if not the governor himself—had ordered people murdered to cover up their crimes. They deserved everything they had coming.
When I got home, I didn’t want to be there. There were times, like now, where the emptiness was so explosive, so maddening that I just couldn’t stay in this townhouse. There had been nights since Talia’s and Emily’s deaths that I’d gone to a hotel, just for a different place to sleep.
I looked at Talia’s picture on the bookshelves in the living room. College era. In the bigger photo that had been truncated, Talia was refusing a bite from a chocolate sundae that I’d offered her in jest, after she’d spilled half of it down her shirt. She’d thought it was funny, and my offer of another bite funnier still. She’d turned away from the spoonful of ice cream and shut her eyes, with a crooked smile on her face. I’d isolated the photo on her face and blown it up. I loved that expression. It showed the essential Talia, carefree and self-effacing and—
And beautiful.
“I’d give anything,” I said.
I dialed up Shauna, with whom I hadn’t spent much time over the last few weeks. I didn’t know if our separation owed more to my involvement in this sordid criminal enterprise or to her involvement with her new beau.
“
Hey,
stranger danger,” she said. In the background was music—the Counting Crows, one of her favorites—and a man’s voice.
“Just seeing what’s up,” I said.
“We just went bowling, if you can believe it. It was actually a blast. You want—you want to come over? Roger’s dying to meet you.”
I did the retreating dance—tired, big day tomorrow, just calling to say hi. The last thing I wanted to be was a third wheel.
Roger must have said something funny because I heard Shauna laugh. She sounded good. She sounded happy. For a reason I couldn’t quite pin down, that made me unhappy.
I hung up and put on some music, most of it from my college days, most of it dark and dreary. I fell asleep with the phone in my hand. I woke up when it rang.
“Hello?” I said, shaking the remnants of a dream. I lost the detail as soon as I opened my eyes. Something about exotic dancers and a car wash.
“Hello—Jason?”
“Mrs. Ramirez.”
“Essie.”
“Right, Essie. How are you? Everything okay?”
“I should have called earlier. My oldest was having trouble sleeping tonight. I hope it’s not too late—”
“Not at all.”
“I wanted to say thank you. Again. I got the job.”
“With Paul?”
“Yes, with Mr. Riley. He seems like a nice man.”
“He’s the best.”
“I don’t know how to be a paralegal. I told him that.”
I’m sure she did. Essie didn’t pull punches. It was one of the things I liked about her. But it wasn’t the only thing.
“You’ll learn fast. Paul wouldn’t have hired you if he didn’t think you could handle it.”
“I’m not sure that’s true, Jason.”
“All I told him was to interview you, give you a shot. All I got you was a foot in the door. You got that job on your own. Scout’s honor.”
She laughed. “Were you a Scout?”
“Nope. But I understand they’re honorable.”
“I want to buy you dinner one night. My treat. No arguments.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“I know it’s not necessary. I want to.”
It occurred to me that Essie, since her husband’s death, probably hadn’t had a lot of fun, either. Me, I could disappear into a nightclub, or go hang with Shauna, or have a night of drunken debauchery with Madison Koehler. Essie was anchored at home with two children.
“Sounds great,” I said.
Essie made me think of her dead husband, Ernesto. Ernesto made me think of his buddy, Scarface. Scarface made me think of the man who killed Adalbert Wozniak, and probably Ernesto, too: Federico Hurtado. Kiko.
I put on my coat and some gloves. I was still in my suit, which might come in handy. I drove to the southwest side of the city. The temperatures were near freezing and it was dark, so the activity level was low on the streets. There were a few bars over on this side of town that seemed to be doing good business, but this wasn’t a trendy area, not yet. This was still a heavily Mexican neighborhood and generally poor. The condos were small and stacked atop each other, almost no yards of grass or driveways around the buildings. The cars were parked up and down the streets, mostly beaters taking punishment on a daily basis from these neglected roads, pockmarked with potholes.
It got a little nicer as I moved southward. The apartment buildings and stacked townhouses became single-family homes, even a few yards with gates and small gardens. I looked for street numbers along the way and found it easily enough. Kiko’s house. It was nothing to write home about. It was on the same half-acre lot as the other homes, two stories, some brick and some siding. That’s where these guys lived, same as the old-time Mafioso around here—housing that was facially modest, but with extravagant interiors and high-priced accessories.
I drove around the block a couple of times. I went down the alley twice. I thought I had a pretty good feel for the place. I knew how I would want to proceed—if I decided to exercise that option. A big if. Confronting this guy wasn’t at the top of my list. I didn’t want to make Kiko my enemy any more than I wanted to jump out of an airplane without a parachute. But I thought I was running out of time before the federal government closed in on Charlie Cimino and company, and when that happened, it would be too late.