Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (10 page)

“Okay. You’ve got a deal. Now tell me about the casino.”

“Sorry to disappoint you. There’s no story there. The casino deal is clean. The U.S. attorney, the prosecuting attorney, and the gaming commission have all blessed it. Ask me something I really can help you with.”

“That doesn’t mean the deal was clean. It only means they couldn’t prove anything. When was the last time you spoke with Jack Cullan?”

“Last Friday night, but that won’t help your client.”

Mason leaned toward her. “Let me make that decision. Besides, I’d rather know the bad facts now. Finding out in court ruins my day.”

Amy pressed her back against the passenger door and took a deep breath.

“Okay. Jack called me at home Friday night. It was late, about midnight. He told me that he wanted a copy of the liquor license for a club called Blues on Broadway and he wanted to know all about the owner.”

Mason felt the inside of the Jeep shrink as the case against Blues got a little tighter.

“What else did he say?”

“He told me that the owner had roughed him up and that he was going to shut the bar down, teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget. I told him that I’d get him the records on Monday morning.”

“Is that a service the mayor’s office routinely provides?”

“Favors are what I do. It wasn’t illegal to provide him with records that are available to anyone who wants to walk into the office of the director of liquor control.”

“Do the police know about this?”

“Yes. I told them when they came to see the mayor about Jack. I hadn’t had a chance to request the records before we found out that Jack had been killed.”

“How did you find out about Cullan?”

“The chief of police called the mayor and said he had something important to discuss. He came to the mayor’s office around ten o’clock Monday morning with a couple of detectives.”

“Harry Ryman and Carl Zimmerman?”

“That’s right. The mayor was very upset. In spite of what you might think, Jack and the mayor were really close. The mayor cross-examined the detectives as if they were on trial. He told them to keep him informed of the progress of the investigation.”

“Which means keep you informed?”

Amy nodded. “I’m paid to be his eyes and ears.”

Amy’s story added credibility to Cullan’s threat that he would punish Blues for interfering in his fight with Beth Harrell.

“Could Cullan have gotten Blues’s bar shut down?”

Amy shrugged. “Depends on what he came up with. Jack had a lot of influence, but he wasn’t king.”

Mason decided to switch gears. “Do you know Ed Fiora?”

Amy gave him her cocked-head look again. “Yes, I know Ed Fiora and the mayor knows Ed Fiora.”

“Do you know any of the people who work for him?”

Amy hesitated. “A few.”

“How about a big guy, roughly the size of New Jersey, with breath that smells like licorice?”

Amy frowned. Mason assumed that she wasn’t trying to decide whether she knew him. Rather, he figured she was deciding whether to give him up.

“Tony Manzerio,” she said at last. “I met him at Fiora’s office. He sits outside the door like a guard dog. Ed must give him licorice instead of dog treats. Why do you ask?”

“Can’t tell the players without a program. I’ll let you know if I find the mayor’s file.”

“I’m counting on you,” Amy said.

The door to Mason’s office had a slot in it for mail delivery. He scooped Friday’s delivery off the floor, tossed it on the sofa, and opened up the dry-erase board. Using a green marker, he drew a short line down from Ed Fiora’s name and added Tony Manzerio’s name to the board. He wrote Amy White’s name in parentheses next to the mayor’s name and underscored Rachel’s reference to Jack Cullan’s secret files.

His conversation with Amy had convinced him that Cullan’s files did exist. He couldn’t decide whether the files were the motive for Cullan’s murder or the reason for the determined effort to railroad Blues—or both.

The words he’d written on the board didn’t suddenly come to life and rearrange themselves into the answers to his questions. It was, he reminded himself, a dry-erase board and not a Ouija board.

He found an envelope buried in the stack of mail from the Jackson County prosecutor’s office marked
Hand Delivery
. It contained a motion filed by Patrick Ortiz asking the court to set a preliminary hearing in Blues’s case and an order signed by Judge Pistone setting the hearing on January 2. The judge’s order was not a surprise, but Ortiz’s motion made as much sense as folding with a full house when no else had placed a bet.

There were a number of steps in the life of a criminal case once a suspect was arrested. The first was the arraignment, which was to officially inform the defendant of the charges against him and to set bail.

The next step was for the prosecutor to establish that there was probable cause to believe that a crime had been committed and that the defendant had committed it. The prosecutor could meet that burden by presenting the case to the grand jury and asking for an indictment. Or the prosecutor could ask the associate circuit court judge to hold a preliminary hearing, at which the state would present its evidence and ask the judge to bind the defendant over for trial. If the judge found the state’s evidence sufficient, the case would be assigned to a circuit court judge for trial.

The grand jury met in secret. Witnesses could be subpoenaed to testify and forced to appear without a lawyer to represent them. Taking the Fifth Amendment was the criminal equivalent of a scarlet letter. Hearing only the state’s side of the case ensured that the grand jury would issue whatever indictments the prosecutor requested.

A preliminary hearing was public. The defendant had the right to attend and listen to the case against him, and his lawyer had the right to cross-examine the state’s witnesses and present evidence of his client’s innocence. Prosecutors hated preliminary hearings because they were forced to show too many of their cards to the defendant. Secret justice was more certain.

Patrick Ortiz would rather rip out a chamber of his heart than give up the grand jury. He didn’t care about politics or appearances. He fought the battles and let his boss take the credit. Leonard Campbell was a politician first and a lawyer last. He must have made the decision to give up the grand jury, and Mason knew why.

Rachel Firestone’s article, and the media frenzy it had launched, had forced Campbell’s hand. He needed to use the preliminary hearing to defuse Rachel’s accusation that Blues was a victim of political expediency.

The date of the hearing meant that Mason would be working on New Year’s Eve instead of celebrating, though he didn’t mind. He didn’t have anyone to kiss at midnight, and now he had an excuse to skip the sloppy embraces of people he didn’t know at parties that he didn’t want to attend alone.

New Year’s Eve was an annual take-stock moment for Mason, demanding an honest appraisal of where he’d been and where he was going. The best New Year’s he’d ever celebrated had been the first one with Kate. They’d been married a month and were still giddy. She’d surprised him with tickets to Grand Cayman, a second honeymoon before they’d finished paying for the first one. They danced as if they were possessed, shouted and laughed with strangers, and marveled at the magic in their lives. Minutes before midnight, Kate led him onto an empty beach glowing with the reflection of the moon and stars, where they had made love as the New Year dawned.

Three years later, she left him, telling him she had run out of love for him. It was a concept he couldn’t understand. Love wasn’t like oil, he told her. You don’t wait for the well to run dry and start digging someplace else. Unless you were Kate.

Since then, Mason had done his share of digging, though his relationships had proved too shallow or fragile to last. He was glad to use work as an excuse to skip New Year’s Eve and the annual audit of his personal account.

Mason capped his evening with another ten-thousand-meter row across his dining room, his strokes rough, his timing off. Blues’s case had the same effect, both making him sweat.

His punctuated his ragged breathing with deep grunts each time he hauled the rowing handle deep into his belly. Tuffy, not liking what she saw, paced back and forth, ears up and tail down. He finished as the doorbell rang, mopping his face and neck with a towel as he staggered to his feet.

His house was fifty years old. The front door was a massive arched slab of dark mahogany set into an entry vestibule with a limestone floor. When he opened it, a woman was standing on the stoop, head down and her arms bundled around her. He didn’t recognize her until she raised her chin. It was Beth Harrell.

He’d last seen her at a bar association lunch or law school alumni dinner—he couldn’t remember which, only that it was a couple of years ago. Sophisticated, beautiful, and playful, she was also the smartest person in the room, a combination that drew people to her. In law school, everyone wanted to take her class, the guys so they could drool and the girls so they could learn how to be more like her, traits that made her and Billy Sunshine soul mates.

As she stood in his doorway, bowed by the winter wind, something was missing. The certainty that the world was hers had vanished. Her eyes flickered and her lips were pressed in a tight half smile.

“Beth?” She nodded. “Come on in before we both freeze to death.”

Mason closed the door as she pulled off her gloves, rubbing her hands along her arms and then pressing them against her face to warm her frozen cheeks. Her body shook with a final shiver.

“Thanks. I don’t remember when it’s been so cold.”

She unzipped her coat. Tuffy trotted to her side, sniffed her, and planted her front paws on Beth’s stomach. Beth stroked the back of her head. Satisfied, Tuffy dropped her paws, circled behind Mason and lay down.

“My dog is shameless and will give herself to anyone who scratches her behind her ears.”

“Love and loyalty should be so easy to come by.”

Mason knew that the only reason Beth Harrell would come knocking at nine o’clock on a Friday night cold enough to freeze her face off was to talk about Jack Cullan and Blues. Figuring that she chose the time and place so that no one would know, he decided to let her get around to Cullan’s murder in her own time.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“That would be great. Something hot would do the trick.”

Mason led her to the kitchen. Tuffy figured out where they were going and raced there ahead of them.

“I’ve got tea. Never developed a taste for coffee, so I don’t keep it in the house.”

“Tea would be good, perfect.”

Mason boiled a cup of water in the microwave, and a few minutes later they were seated at his kitchen table. Beth stirred her tea, pressing the tea bag against the side of the cup. Mason drank from a long-necked bottle of beer and pressed the cool glass against his neck.

“I read about you in the paper last year. That thing with Sullivan & Christenson,” she began. “We didn’t teach you that in law school.”

“We’ve both been in the papers. All things considered, I prefer the comics.”

“Amen to that.”

A faint patchwork of crow’s-feet and laugh lines had crept onto her face since he was her student, changes she wore well. She was five years older than him, a gap that mattered then but was now a distinction without a difference.

“Was it difficult?” she asked him.

“Was what difficult?”

“Killing that man. The article in the newspaper said that he would have killed you if you hadn’t. I suppose that made it easier, but it still had to be a hard thing to do.”

Mason had come to understand the reluctance of men who’d gone to war to discuss their battles. Heroes were for bystanders. Soldiers killed so that they could live. That’s what he’d done, and he’d found no glory in it.

“That’s all old news. I left you a message yesterday. You could have just called back. I would have come to your office.”

“I was out of town. When I got home this evening, I read the paper and saw you and the mayor on the news. I decided a house call would be more private. I live at the Alameda Towers and the press has practically camped out in the parking lot.”

“How did you get past them?”

“Our building is connected to the Intercontinental Hotel. I parked in the hotel garage and walked through the hotel. The press can’t get past my doorman and they haven’t figured out my secret entrance.”

“Gee, that’s a better setup than having Alfred and the Batcave.”

Beth laughed. “You were always good at that in law school. I used to watch you with your friends. You were always the one who made everyone laugh.”

Mason grinned. “If you were watching me, you know I was watching you. If only I’d have known.”

Beth shrugged. “I was your teacher, but I wasn’t dead.”

“Is it too late for extra credit?”

“It’s too late for that, but I hope it’s not too late for you to help me.”

Mason drained his beer and carried it to the sink. He leaned back against the counter and studied her.

She had drawn him in with a mix of vulnerability and flirtation that he found engaging, flattering, and, under other circumstances, irresistible.

“The governor appointed you because you were an expert on ethics, on right and wrong. You know who my client is and why I called you. When this case is over, I could represent you. But not now.”

“I’m not asking you to be my lawyer. I know better than that.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Protection.”

“From who?”

She crossed the room to him, stopping within arm’s reach, trembling, begging to be held without saying a word. Mason clamped his hands on the counter’s edge.