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.
Rick Harmoning praised Carlton Snow’s commitment to the working class but forgot to mention how Snow got all of Rick’s family and friends jobs in the administration, veterans and better-qualified candidates be damned. Gary Gardner cited the governor’s support of the federal employee free choice law but not his soon-to-be-announced appointment of Gardner’s brother-in-law to the state supreme court.
I tried to care enough to be mad but I was punch-drunk at this point, numb from overexposure. And I was exhausted. I had done what I’d come to do. I’d found my killer and, only a few hours ago, had taped him over breakfast admitting to the crimes. His co-conspirator, Charlie Cimino, was already in the soup plenty for his role that night—much of which had been captured by my F-Bird—as well as dozens of other felonies Charlie and I committed for months before that.
So in that regard, at least, all was right with the world. It was hard to stay motivated. I listened with only passing interest to the platitudes the governor and the two union leaders heaped upon each other. I removed the two AA batteries from my boom box stereo, threw them in my pocket, wrapped the cord around the stereo several times, and placed it in a gym bag I had brought with me today. Other than the stereo, the only other things I had brought to this office were a bunch of my own pens—I hated the cheap, government-supplied ones—and an oversized coffee cup I bought at the Fiesta Bowl a couple years ago when Talia and I went to Arizona for Christmas. I looked around the office and considered stealing the stapler, which was actually nicer than the one at my office, but stealing is wrong and I decided against it. I did think, however, that after the valuable public service I’d performed over the last four months, the taxpayers of this state could spot me a couple of rubber bands, so I stuffed those in my pocket and called us even.
The boom box and pens safely in my bag, I zipped it up and put it under my desk. It occurred to me that someone might notice that I appeared to vacating my office and might wonder why.
I still had the rest of the day, though. At least I thought I did. Tonight would be Antwain Otis’s last night on this earth, and I was hoping to have at least one more conversation with the governor about it. I had my own thoughts about the outcome but, at a minimum, I wanted to make sure the issue was thoroughly vetted. I wanted to make sure that Carlton Snow actually thought about this. I thought Antwain Otis was owed that much.
And then there was the federal government. Moody wanted the governor so badly he probably tasted Carlton Snow when he belched. And like anyone in his position, he wanted a slam dunk. Yes, he could flip the governor’s people and make them testify against their boss, but having someone on tape was always the best way to win a case, and he wanted Snow to incriminate himself to the F-Bird.
“Happy to take some questions,”
I heard the governor say through the computer. I turned to listen, only because it was such a rare occasion that they allowed the governor to speak to reporters.
“
Governor, twelve hours from now, Antwain Otis is scheduled to be executed. Have you considered the petition for clemency and what can you tell us about your decision?
”
“
It’s a fair question, Nancy, and I’m going to have an announcement later today on that.”
“But, Gov—”
“I can tell you that it’s one of the toughest parts of this job. I’ve been doing a lot of hard thinking about this.
”
Hard thinking. Right. I took a look at the information I’d put together for the governor and Pesh this morning. The woman Antwain Otis killed, Elisa Newberry, was a schoolteacher and mother of four, the youngest of whom was the other victim, five-year-old Austin. Her husband, Anthony Newberry, was a commercial pilot who had to quit his job after Elisa’s death so he could be home more with his three surviving children; he took a lower-paying job as a flight instructor with a community college. The trial judge, in accepting the jury’s recommendation for death at Antwain’s trial, had indicated that Otis had shown “particularly cruel indifference” in spraying gunfire across a crowded thoroughfare; had “repeatedly failed to accept responsibility” for his crime despite “overwhelming” evidence of guilt; and had shown a “singular lack of remorse” during the sentencing phase. The Inmate Review and Release Board, in recommending that Otis’s clemency petition be denied, acknowledged the inmate’s laudable contributions to prison life since he founded his prison ministry but decided that the “utter depravity of his crime” outweighed the good deeds he’d performed “several years afterward.”
I had no appetite for lunch. I spent that hour making phone calls to some of the state contractors Charlie and I had shaken down, the ones who had been dilatory in paying into the governor’s campaign coffers. Madison Koehler was on tape the other night instructing me to call them, to once again threaten the loss of their state contracts if they didn’t pony up. And now I was completing the act, using interstate wires—a cell phone given me by the U.S. attorney’s office—to coerce these individuals to pay. The actions felt robotic, dialing the telephone, mentioning our “concern that the agreed contribution hadn’t been made” and suggesting that a “review of the contract would be forthcoming,” then hanging up and checking a name off a list. I hadn’t even tried to sound convincing. I just needed to say the words. It was like dotting an
i
or crossing a
t.
I’d made seven calls. Seven counts of conspiracy to commit fraud through the use of interstate wires for Madison Koehler.
I didn’t know if I was going to speak with the governor again before everything happened. But I decided I wanted to. The Antwain Otis issue was one reason. But that wasn’t all. What Lee Tucker said to me had made some sense. I’d had my doubts about the governor. I didn’t know if he was an ignorant figurehead whose minions were doing bad things without his knowledge; a
willfully
ignorant leader who simply chose not to know the details, who stuck his head in the sand like an ostrich but knew something illegal was afoot; or a guy who was truly selling out his office for political favors.
I thought everyone deserved to know. The governor’s political career was about to end, regardless, and people staring at long prison terms were liable to say anything to reduce their sentences. All of them—Madison, Charlie, Mac, even Hector—would know the direction to point their finger, and that direction was up. The U.S. attorney’s office would be cutting deals for dirt on the governor, and I wasn’t confident that the truth was going to remain intact during those desperate interactions.
At four o’clock, my phone rang, and I knew I’d at least have a chance to figure all this out. The governor wanted to meet with me when he arrived back in the city at nine tonight.
90
THE F-BIRD FELT LIKE A PAPERWEIGHT IN MY SUIT
pocket when I stepped into the elevator at the Ritz-Carlton. It reminded me of the first time I wore it in Charlie Cimino’s office. It had felt odd then, like performing before a hidden camera; I was self-conscious, off-balance, even nervous. But after a while it had felt as natural as wearing a watch, just another accessory when I dressed for the morning. I’d become so good at pretending that it was sometimes hard to tell the difference when I was not.
I felt a flutter of nerves as the elevator opened on the top floor. I wasn’t sure why. This was old hat to me. Maybe because this was finally ending. But I didn’t think so. The difference was that I cared about the outcome of this evening.
I nodded to the security detail planted outside the governor’s suite. Bill Peshke answered the door and handed me a document, a press release. “I want you to take a look at what I’ve written up. We’re issuing this thing in a half-hour. And listen,” he added, making sure we had eye contact now, “we don’t need any drama on this one. Okay?”
I didn’t really know what that meant, and my expression must have given me up.
“It means the decision’s made, and nobody needs second-guessing now,” Pesh went on. “The governor needs to be focusing on other things right now. We’re less than a week from the primary and he needs to be sharp. I don’t need him up all night agonizing over this.”
I didn’t really see the governor agonizing over anything, certainly not Antwain Otis. I did a quick read of the press statement and told him it was factually accurate, meaning he got the names and ages of Otis’s victims correct and the like.
Inside the suite, some technicians were working in the corner on a phone. A man in a blue jumpsuit was explaining things to Madison Koehler and Governor Snow. “We’re all set,” he said. He gestured to a black phone sitting in the corner of the suite. “That phone is piped directly into the chamber. You pick it up and dial zero, Mr. Governor. Zero. The red phone in the chamber will ring. The warden will answer.”
The technician placed a call on his cell phone. “Okay, ready for the check. Okay.” He hung up the cell phone. He walked over to the black telephone, hit a button—presumably zero—and waited. “Okay, all clear? All clear from this end. Give me the time. Okay, nine-o-six and thirty-two seconds. Good. We’re in sync. Thank you.”
The technician placed a timepiece on the small table with the black phone. “That watch is synchronized with the execution chamber at Marymount Penitentiary. When it’s twelve midnight on that watch, it’s twelve midnight on the clock in the death chamber. Down to the second.”
I checked my own watch. I had nine-o-seven, so I was about dead-on with the official time clock.
“Any questions, Governor? Ms. Koehler?”
“Can I order a pizza on that phone?” The governor patted the guy on the back. “Bad joke. No, we’re clear. What’s your name again?”
“Craig.”
“Great job, Craig. Thanks for your good work.”
All the regulars—Madison, Charlie, Hector, Mac, and Pesh—remained quiet as the technicians filtered out.
The governor walked in a circle, then moved toward the black phone, keeping his distance like it was quarantined or something. “I mean, Jesus Christ.”
He looked at Madison. It was my first shot of him head-on tonight. He still had the blow-dried, polished campaign thing going on, but he looked somewhat out of sorts, a weight to his shoulders. The run of the day’s campaign events over, the final hours now drawing near, it was now dawning on him, the awesome power he held in his hands.
It occurred to me that he’d probably never had such a moment during his one-year reign as governor. He was a backbencher, a lieutenant governor who didn’t have much to do; then suddenly he was the supreme executive officer of the state in the space of a few weeks. It had probably felt like a whirlwind, like a dream. Suddenly his every action made the news, his public appearances were heavily attended, and he was in constant demand. No doubt, any governor of a Midwestern state, in his mid-forties with a full head of hair, was dreaming presidential aspirations.
Heady stuff. And surely he’d made consequential decisions before now, but most of them were filtered through professionals who would lay out the policy and, more important, political nuances for him. But this, this was different. You could tell him a hundred times over what the right political call was, but it didn’t change the fact that a man would either live or die, depending on whether the governor picked up that black phone.
“We have a lot to do—let’s get started,” said Madison, who, like Peshke, was trying to move on from the topic that seemed to be dominating the governor’s thoughts. She was right, I thought, as everyone settled into his or her position for the nightly post-campaigning strategy, and she was wrong. In all likelihood, tonight was going to the last night this group would meet. Other than Bill Peshke, who as far as I know hadn’t done anything wrong, everybody in this room was probably going to be arrested tomorrow, with the possible exception of Carlton Snow.