Paul was making sense. I suppose I was the one who wasn't. I would work as a confidential informant for the federal government without any promises from them.

"They screwed me, Paul. And they're screwing the public, if I needed any further motivation. I'm not going to take that."

"Fine, then work for the feds, but take the damn immunity, Jason. Don't be a hero. Because I'm telling you, son, no one will be standing in line afterward to say 'thank you.' "

But I didn't need a thank-you. I just needed to stick to my principles. I didn't do anything wrong. Taking immunity meant I did. No, if Chris Moody and his thugs wanted to chase after me on a bogus charge, then I'd have to deal with that when the time came. But I couldn't let Charlie Cimino and the rest of them-whoever they were-walk away from this.

If I was going to lose everything, at least I was going to do it on my terms.

Paul grimaced as we stood at the doorway of the Maritime Club. "I don't know how much help I was, my friend. I think you already had your mind made up."

"I needed your input. And you gave it to me. You told me I'm completely nuts."

"You're standing on principle, Jason. I admire that. I do." He offered a hand. "But admirable can still be foolish. Please take my advice and cut a deal. And please let me represent you."

"I hope I'm calling you Your Honor sometime soon, Paul." I shook his hand and pushed through the door, into a wind that was colder than I'd expected.

And I hope, I thought to myself, I'm not doing it from a prison cell.

29.

AT THREE O'CLOCK SHARP THAT DAY, I WALKED INTO the U.S. attorney's office in the federal building downtown. I was shown directly into a conference room. Chris Moody, looking fresh and relaxed, walked in with his government-issue white shirt and red-and-blue checked tie and sat across from me. He was wearing bright blue braces strapped over his narrow shoulders that let everyone know he was a hungry prosecutor. He seemed surprised that I wasn't bringing a lawyer, but so much the better, for him.

He pushed a document in front of me. I took a quick look at it and shook my head.

"I'm not doing a letter agreement," I said.

"Sure, you are."

"Sure, I'm not."

Moody wanted me to sign a letter agreement, in which the government agreed to immunize me from prosecution in exchange for my cooperation, without us ever appearing in court on formal charges. It was standard stuff for people the feds flipped-like Joey Espinoza, for example. They couldn't very well unseal an indictment and arraign a guy in open court if they wanted him to work undercover. This was how they did it outside the public view.

"Get one thing clear, Chris. I will never admit that I did anything wrong. This is voluntary or it isn't happening."

Moody's initial reaction was a smirk, but it faded after a moment.

"This is what's happened so far," I said. "You guys showed up at my door last night, you played me the overhears, it stoked my sense of outrage, and I agreed to help you ferret out this corruption on a purely voluntary basis. You never specifically told me I was being charged with a crime. You never said anything, one way or the other, about what the future might hold. You didn't make any promises to me; I didn't make any promises to you."

This was unconventional, no doubt. Most people jump at the chance to get immunity, a get-out-of-jail-free card. But there was some merit to this arrangement, from Moody's perspective. Every government informant, when testifying at trial, gets cross-examined on the deal he cut with the G. It's standard fare for a defense attorney-you were looking at a severe prison sentence so you cut a deal, and you'd say anything to make those prosecutors happy; therefore, your testimony should be discredited. But what I was proposing to Moody would avoid that problem. I wasn't getting a deal at all. I wasn't getting immunity or a promise of any kind. The United States would be free to prosecute me if it so chose.

But the problem Moody would have with my proposal was the same reason I wanted it in the first place: He couldn't control me. I wouldn't march to his command. If I wanted to shut this thing down, I could, at any time. I'd be risking the prosecutor's ire, and a federal indictment, but the decision would be mine.

"Too risky," Moody said. "You sign this agreement or I convene a grand jury."

"No, you don't," I said. "I'll be your CI, but it will be voluntary. No plea agreement. No admission of wrongdoing. I'm just an ordinary citizen volunteering to help expose government corruption." I leaned forward. "And risky? You want to hear risky? I go do whatever it is you want me to do, and I know that at any time, you can start thinking back to how you got your ass kicked in Almundo, and you can decide to take out your humiliation on one of his defense attorneys. I do all this work for you, you get a hundred-count indictment, and then you are perfectly free to throw in one or two more counts with my name on them. Just because you can, Chris. Just because you can. So don't you talk to me about risky."

"Sign the letter agreement, Kolarich." He pushed it in front of me. "It's the only way."

"It's the only way you control me. And that's never going to happen." I got out of my chair. "You want to indict me now, indict me. And Charlie Cimino, and Greg Connolly, and all those other scumbags? It will take them about one-tenth of one second to realize that they should probably fold up their tents and go home. Your big undercover investigation is halted in its tracks. You're stuck with whatever you have on them as of right now, which I'm guessing is not all that much, or you wouldn't be yanking my chain so hard for my cooperation. Stop me when I'm wrong, Chris."

Moody rubbed his hand over his face. As much as he longed for the day that I'd be behind bars in a federal prison, he clearly had preferred the immunity route. It gave him power over me. But from his perspective, he pretty much had the same power, anyway. If I didn't jump high enough for his liking, he could always turn the screws on me. And if I messed around with his investigation, he could always hit me with obstruction of justice, in addition to the underlying case he might pursue against me. He was a federal prosecutor, after all. He had twenty different ways to fuck me.

I figured this would all come into focus for him, eventually, but either Moody was too cautious to say yes immediately or, more likely, he didn't want to readily agree to something that wasn't his idea. More quickly than I'd anticipated, he let out a small, bitter laugh.

"These guys you decided to lay down with?" he said evenly. "They're scum. They make a joke out of the idea of honest government. And I'm going to take them down, Kolarich. Anyone who gets in my way will be sorry." He got out of his chair and leaned over the table. His voice lowered to a controlled whisper, as our faces were only a few feet apart. "I'll have a chain around your neck so tight it'll hurt when you swallow. And after you're done dancing for me?" He gave me his best Machiavellian smile. "Well, like you said, no promises, right? I guess we'll see what the future holds."

Moody's taunt felt like an appropriate note on which to exit. I was tempted to make another comment about his courtroom skills, should he decide to prosecute me, but it wouldn't make me feel any better and it would only increase the odds that he'd come after me at some point. Like it or not, I was going to have to behave myself around this guy. A little, at least.

I walked outside into a cold, gray dusk, inhaling the frigid air and feeling my head clear, my perspective broaden. I stifled the instinct to second-guess my decision. I felt like I did after I filed a document in court, or turned in a paper in law school, afraid to review my work after I'd turned it in, sure that I would find an error that countless attempts at proofreading somehow failed to catch. I didn't want to think about what I'd just done. I didn't want to reevaluate. I didn't want to think about Paul Riley, the best lawyer I know, who was sure I was making the wrong decision.

You make your own bed, as they say. I'd gone into this with good intentions, hoping to find some clue to the murder of a man I hardly knew, and instead found myself in the middle of a budding political corruption scandal that already had tarnished me, as well. I had to find a way to come out of this intact. I had to find a way to clear my own name, avoid the same fate that befell Ernesto Ramirez and Adalbert Wozniak, and stop these thugs from selling out the state.

And I had to keep my promise to Esmeralda Ramirez to find out who killed her husband.

As I walked, I wondered if I would have to settle for some, not all, of the above.

30.

"THE PROBLEM IS THAT IT'S NOT A FEDERAL OFFENSE TO get around competitive-bidding statutes." Special Agent Lee Tucker looked comfortable in his white button-down shirt, blue jeans, and loafers. He had a wiry frame, a bad complexion, deep-set eyes, a grassy mop of dirty-blond hair. A tin of Skoal tobacco rested in his front shirt pocket. "Or to contribute money to the governor."

"And there's plausible deniability," said Chris Moody. These two people would be my contacts, Tucker, the handling agent from the FBI, and Moody, the assistant U.S. attorney. We were sitting in Moody's office in the federal building, the following day.

The problem, they were explaining, was that to prosecute the things Cimino and the PCB were doing, prosecutors had to show a quid pro quo-that people were buying their way into these state contracts, that the awarding of the state job was directly and intentionally tied to the campaign contribution. Was it suspicious that a company landed a lucrative contract with the state, only to turn around the following week and give the governor twenty-five or fifty thousand? Sure. Red flags everywhere. But illegal? Only if you could read minds, or if you could get them on tape admitting that there was a direct relationship between the two. And that was very, very hard to do.

"Cimino's no idiot," said Tucker. "You guys at the PCB-you can't even call him on the phone. Or email or fax or text him. Everything's in person. Right?"

I nodded. Cimino was avoiding all the ways that the feds like to catch people these days. The wire-fraud statute-committing any kind of fraud by way of telephone or electronic communication-was their bread-and-butter nowadays. It was how the feds were able to grab any number of state crimes or other wrongdoing and get federal jurisdiction.

"Christ, he's not even a state employee." Tucker shook his head. "He does everything out of a private office. A guy who's not even on the state payroll is directing traffic."

"Then what's his angle here?" I asked. "He must be getting a cut somehow."

"Oh, yeah." Tucker nodded. In one fell swoop, he scooped tobacco out of the tin in his pocket and deposited it inside his cheek. It seemed to cheer him up. "He has all kinds of companies set up for consulting, things like that. Some company gets a big fat contract from the state, you can bet that company will suddenly hire one of Cimino's companies for some bogus consulting work. It adds up quick. He could make over a million a year this way."

"Let me guess," I said. "On paper, all of those side contracts with Cimino's companies are legit. Actual work is performed. Grossly overpaid work, but work nonetheless."

I could see from their expressions that I'd hit the nail on the head. That would be the smart way to play it. If Cimino were shaking down contract bidders to shoot some consulting work his way, he'd make sure that the contracts held up to superficial scrutiny-that he provided at least some minimal consulting work, albeit for an exorbitant fee.

"Look, we think Cimino is all over the place in the Snow administration," Tucker said. "We think he has a say in almost every significant decision they make. But it's hard to prove."

That explained why they needed me. The tapes they played for me were probably enough to warrant an indictment against Cimino. But they wanted to play the string out. They were expecting, hoping that they could put a lot more on Cimino. And they were betting that I could deliver it.

"He sees you as a potential asset," Tucker told me. "You're not just the everyday lawyer they get. You have a lot more experience. You come from a major law firm. And most of all, you got Hector out of a huge jam. You navigated Almundo through the very same kind of stuff these guys are doing, and Hector never spent a day in prison. You're valuable."

Tucker only seemed to realize after the fact that Hector's prosecutor was sitting in the room while he glorified Hector's acquittal. I like the impolitic, bull-in-a-china-shop types myself. Tucker might not be so bad to work with.

"You heard Greg Connolly on the tape," Moody added. "He said you could be 'useful.' These guys like to keep their circle small and tight, but you could penetrate it, Kolarich. We're counting on your well-earned reputation as a bullshit artist."

I didn't get the sense that Moody meant it as a compliment. But that didn't make him wrong. If there is one thing I learned when Talia died, it's that I am my father's son-I can become another person altogether. I can pretend. I can smile at you and keep my hand steady while I am doing somersaults internally.

I was, in many ways, the perfect person for this job.

And then, over the space of a handful of days, it all came together. Chris Moody and I met with the state supreme court's Division of Attorney Discipline-DAD-to get their blessing for my undercover role as a corrupt lawyer, a necessary protection given that I was going to be breaking laws right and left and didn't want to lose my law license for doing so. For Moody's part, he didn't want my cross-examination at trial to begin with an assault on my professional ethics. And even more fundamentally, Moody needed to be sure that my testimony would be admissible. The first thing any defense attorney would do is try to exclude every recording made by me as a flagrant breach of the attorney-client privilege. We wanted to be sure that my role was clearly defined, limited as much as possible to committing fraudulent acts with Charlie Cimino, Greg Connolly, etc.-which would allow us to invoke the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege.

"Well, Kolarich, I guess you're out of excuses," said Moody, his way of telling me the supreme court had signed off on my undercover role.

And he was right. The federal government and I had agreed that I'd cooperate with them without an immunity deal, and the state supreme court had given the green light. The idea hit me as if it were a fresh notion, despite having dominated my thoughts for the last four days: I was actually going to do this. I was going to be a snitch for the federal government.

31.

THE NEXT MORNING, I MET SPECIAL AGENT LEE Tucker in an "employees only" lounge at a hotel that was midway between my office and Charlie Cimino's. Tucker was dressed pretty much the same as I'd last seen him, a white button-down under a blue sport coat and blue jeans. I'd told him I typically wore a suit when I went to work, and he said that would work fine, so that's what I was wearing.

Tucker looked at his watch. "You're late," he said. "It's almost eight-thirty. Okay." He sized me up. "How you doing?"

How was I doing? I was about to wear a wire for the federal government. These guys were sinking their hooks in me and threatening me and my best friend if I didn't play ball. Whether his question was small talk or sincere, it deserved a sincere response.

"Fuck you," I said.

He looked at me for a moment. He was appraising me, the entire situation. What kind of a witness would I be? I didn't doubt my importance to the operation. A lawyer could take them places they couldn't otherwise infiltrate. He had two choices: Come on strong, with continued threats, or go easy. I figured he'd choose the latter.

Tucker opened his palm and showed me the recording device, which looked like one of those pagers people used to wear, before everyone had cell phones, only it was even thinner; it was about the size of three AA batteries strapped together with black tape. "This is an F-Bird," he said. "Put it inside your suit pocket."

It was even lighter than the weight of three batteries. I dropped it inside my suit pocket and didn't even know it was there.

"This is audio only?" I asked.

He nodded. "A simple recording device. No eyes. No transmission signal."

I didn't know what that meant.

"I won't be listening in, real time," he explained. "It's not transmitting any signal to me. I won't know what's said until you bring it back when you're done."

"And then you'll grade my performance."

"Don't think of it as a performance, Jason. Just be yourself. Act like the recorder isn't even there."

I shot him a look.

"I'm serious. If you think about it, it'll make you edgy. Just relax. Don't force the conversation. Let him come to you. It might take a long time, Jason. That's okay."

"How do I turn it on?"

"You don't."

"How do I turn it off?"

"You don't. We do those things. We start letting CI's turn those things on and off-"

"Right." The government couldn't trust the cooperator to turn the recorder on and off; it would lead to claims of selective editing by defense lawyers at trial: You turned it off when my client said something that exonerated him; you turned it on, out of context, to capture something damning. It made sense. Better to have the thing running all the time.

Tucker looked at his watch again. "Now you better get going. And next time we're supposed to meet at eight, make it eight you show up."

Tucker was worried about my showing up late to the meeting with Cimino, but that was already my intention. I'd been late every time I'd visited him, and I didn't want to stray from character.

I arrived at his posh offices at a quarter past nine. One of the supermodel receptionists made me wait a good twenty minutes before she showed me back. As I followed behind her, I thought that Tucker should regret not wiring me for video.

Cimino, as always, was pacing in his airplane hangar of an office and talking on the phone. He pointed to a chair when I walked in, and I planted myself. The tiny recorder felt like a hundred pounds in my jacket pocket. I felt like a siren was going off. Every word that he and I were about to say would become part of a record. It was like having your mother in the room with you.

"When I say I'm tired of excuses, do you think I'm speaking another fucking language?" he said, as always abusing whoever was on the other end of the call. "What's this thing you have with tardiness? I say eight-thirty, you be here at eight-thirty."

It took me a minute to realize that he had segued from rebuking some poor building contractor to scolding me. He snapped his fingers at me. "Hey, am I talking to you?"

"Are you?"

"Yeah, I'm-okay, listen, Arthur. Are you listening? No ... more . . . excuses. Get it done by the end of the week or I find someone else." He tore off his earpiece and sat down behind his desk. "And you," he said. "You're very aggravating, kid, you know that? People say you're fucking smart, but you can't tell time so good, can you?"

I had a few responses in mind, but none of them seemed appropriate.

"And I tell you to do something, you fucking do it. Are you working for me or are you working for me?"

He was referring, I thought, to my refusal to write that memo disqualifying the two bidders on the prison contract, but he hadn't said so explicitly. I was hoping he'd elaborate. I'd love to have Charlie Cimino admit, on tape, that he'd had someone doctor the memo I had written.

I handed him the document I'd worked on yesterday at the state office. It was a memo on the prison contract with the conclusion Cimino wanted, but written by me.

He looked at it for two seconds. "What's this?" he asked.

"That," I said, "is a memorandum I wrote yesterday, detailing why the two bidders who beat out Higgins Sanitation for the prison contract were not 'responsible' bidders, and therefore Higgins should get the contract."

"We already have one-"