Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (11 page)

“Protect you from what?” he repeated.

She dipped her head, looked away, and then turned her back to him.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have come here. My office would have been better.”

“Maybe not. If you tell me who or what you’re afraid of, I may be able to help you. But you realize the position we’re both in here.”

She stiffened and took a deep breath and went back to her chair. “Let’s stick to your business. I’ll take care of mine. Why did you call?”

Mason didn’t press. He wasn’t looking for more complications.

“Good enough. Tell me about last Friday night. Why were you out with Jack Cullan?”

Beth straightened, her posture saying she was ready to get down to business. “He asked me out. We’re both single. He was a very interesting man, well read and charming when he wanted to be.”

Mason heard the words but didn’t believe them. “You’re telling me that in the middle of a scandal over whether Cullan had you in his back pocket, he asked you out on a date and you said yes? Are you nuts?”

Beth clasped her hands, setting them on the kitchen table. “I’m forty-three years old. I’ve been married and divorced twice and I have no children. I don’t even have a damn dog! Men call me the Ice Queen behind my back, and that’s the nicest thing they say. So when Jack Cullan asked, I said yes. There’s no crime in that.”

“There’s no sense in it either.”

“All the official investigations went nowhere. Rachel Firestone is the only one beating the scandal drum, and no one was paying any attention. We would have had a pleasant evening and no one would have written or said anything about it. We didn’t even talk about the Dream Casino or any other gaming commission business.”

“If it was all so pleasant, why did you throw a drink in his face?”

She took a breath. “I said that Jack could be charming. He could also be crude, especially when he asked me to spend the night with him. I told him I wasn’t interested and he called me a cock teaser, among other things.”

“That’s it? He called you names?”

She reddened. “No. He threatened me. He threatened to ruin me.”

“How? I’ve heard that Cullan collected dirt on a lot of people. Did he have a file on you?”

“He didn’t say and I don’t know. I haven’t led a perfect life, but I never took a bribe. He just said he would do it, that I wouldn’t see it coming, and that no one but the two of us would know that it had been him. That was too much. I’ve had two husbands who tried that crap on me, and I wasn’t going to put up with it from him.”

“So why didn’t you press charges?”

“Having dinner with Jack and going to that bar afterward was a nonevent. Filing criminal charges against him for assault would have been a media circus. No, thanks. It was better to chalk it up to one more bad judgment about the men whose company I keep.”

Mason took the chair next to hers. “The owner of the bar is my client and my friend. He goes by Blues. He saved my life and I’m trying to save his.”

“I’m not sure I can help you.”

“Let me decide that. You threw your drink in Cullan’s face and he came after you.”

“He grabbed me, yes.”

“And Blues pulled him off of you, right?”

“Yes. Yes, he did.”

“And that’s when Cullan scratched the back of Blues’s hands. Am I right?”

Beth thought for a moment and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I was pretty upset. I just don’t remember. All I do remember is Jack telling your client that he was going to put him out of business.”

Mason gave her time to say more, but she didn’t. “Okay. What happened after you left the bar?”

“Jack took me home. He dropped me off. He didn’t apologize and I didn’t invite him upstairs.”

“Did you stay home the rest of the night?”

She stood and circled the table. “My God, Lou! You’re asking me if I killed him?”

“I’m doing my job. I’m sure the police asked you the same question.”

Beth glared at him. “I expected that from them but not from you.”

She headed for the door, picked up her coat, and jammed her arms into the sleeves, twisting a scarf around her neck. “I didn’t kill him. I’m sorry I went out with the son of a bitch, but I didn’t kill him. And, I’m sorry I came here tonight.”

“I’m not sorry. I don’t want it to be you.”

“Neither do I,” she said and left.

Tuffy went into the living room, climbed into her dog bed, turned around three times, and lay down. Mason joined her on the floor, scratched behind her ears, and thought about the last two days.

His working theory was that Cullan’s murder was linked to the Dream Casino deal, a theory that led to three suspects—Ed Fiora, Billy Sunshine, and Beth Harrell. Fiora refused to talk to him but sent Tony Manzerio to deliver a message. The mayor played politics and sent Amy White to plead his case. Beth Harrell made a house call, asking for his help without offering anything in return.

Though she was long on motive and short on alibi, Mason meant it when he told her that he hoped it wasn’t her. He slipped his hand under Tuffy’s face and aimed her head at his.

“What do you think? Can I save Blues and still get the girl?”

Tuffy raised her paw and pushed his hand away, then pawed him again until he resumed scratching behind her ears.

“It’s all about you, isn’t it? Well, at least you’re honest about it.”

Patrick Ortiz called Mason on Monday morning, asking Mason to meet him and Leonard Campbell at eleven.

“What’s the occasion? You guys ready to surrender, or what?”

“Eleven o’clock,” Ortiz answered, and hung up.

Mason didn’t think they were ready to surrender. He did think they were ready to negotiate, or at least make the offer that Tony Manzerio had encouraged him to take during their slow dance in the parking lot.

He wasn’t looking forward to getting an offer Blues wouldn’t take. Telling Blues about the offer was the easy part. Telling him that Manzerio had threatened both their lives if Blues didn’t take the offer was the hard part. Blues wouldn’t take the deal to save his own life, but he might do it to save Mason’s, and that was a debt Mason didn’t want on his books.

Mason liked representing defendants. He just hated being on the defensive. He slapped his hand on his desk, taking his frustration out on an inanimate object that stung his hand in return.
That’s solo practice,
he thought to himself. Even his desk gave him a hard time.

Mason signed in at the receptionist’s desk when he arrived at the prosecutor’s office, printing his name, address, and telephone number and the name of the person he’d come to see. Four other people were already waiting. Two of them were dressed in lawyer’s uniforms, thumb-typing on their BlackBerrys. The other two were an elderly man and woman, the man clutching a brochure on how to avoid home-remodeling scams. From their ruined looks, Mason concluded that they had waited too long to take the advice.

The receptionist was a young woman with big hair and long fingernails painted bright yellow. She kept her back to him while playing solitaire on her computer and talking on her headset, saying “Get out!” and “You go, girl!” as if that was the limit of her vocabulary. Had her name been Margaret, he wouldn’t have stayed. Fortunately, according to the nameplate on her desk, her name was Tina, so he stuck it out.

“Damn this piece of shit! Not you, girl,” she said into her headset. “This damn computer. Beats me every damn time. I give up. Someone’s waitin’ on me anyway.”

She scanned the sign-in sheet, pressed a speed-dial button on her phone, and announced Mason’s arrival. Moments later, Campbell’s secretary, an attractive woman with dark hair and a lavender skirt that had been spray-painted onto her heart-shaped bottom, appeared and told him to follow her. He wanted to tell her to slow down. She ushered him into Campbell’s office with a small flourish of her hand and held his eyes as he nodded his thanks.

Patrick Ortiz was seated in a chair on the visitors’ side of Campbell’s ornate walnut desk. Campbell stood behind his desk, the phone to his ear. He motioned to Mason to take the chair next to Ortiz and squeezed his thumb and forefinger together to indicate that the conversation would be a short one.

Mason remained standing, smiled at Ortiz, and shook his hand. They didn’t speak. Mason had nothing to say, and Ortiz was being deferential to his boss.

Mason looked around the office. There were law books on one wall that Mason was confident Leonard Campbell had never opened; pictures of Campbell with various local dignitaries on another; and Campbell’s framed law school diploma on a third. Mason examined it closely to be certain that Campbell’s degree wasn’t from the Columbia School of Broadcasting. He was annoyed to learn that he and Campbell had gone to the same law school, though Campbell had graduated twenty-five years earlier.

Campbell finished his phone call, hung up the phone, and greeted Mason.

“Good to see you, Lou!”

He was a trim, well-kept man nearing retirement, a neat white mustache penciled in above his upper lip. He shook Mason’s hand with both of his, the left clamped over the right in a firm commitment of fellowship that Mason took as a sign that Campbell was about to screw his lights out. Claire had once warned him that the two-handed shake was the male equivalent of a woman’s air kiss, a gesture of phony intimacy and a warning to keep your hand on your wallet and a close eye on your virtue.

“Nice to see you too.”

“Have a seat.”

“I don’t think I’ll be here that long.”

Campbell gave him the toothy grin he reserved for voters. “You might change your mind after you hear what we’ve got to say.”

“I’m listening.”

“Patrick tells me that we’ve got your client dead to rights. No sense in putting the taxpayers through an expensive trial. We’ve got a proposal for you. Let your client put this whole thing behind him, do his time, and start over while he still has something to look forward to.”

“Patrick is too good a lawyer to have told you that you’ve got my client dead to anything. Your case sucks.”

“Your client’s skin and blood were found under the victim’s fingernails. The victim threatened to shut his bar down, and your client responded by threatening to kill him. And, he doesn’t have an alibi.”

“My client stopped Jack Cullan from beating the crap out of his date. The rest is trash talk. You can’t even put my client at the murder scene. The only deal you should be offering me is a dismissal and an apology in return for a promise not to sue your ass.”

Campbell smiled again and nodded at Ortiz.

“We can put him at the scene,” Ortiz said.

Mason looked at Ortiz, knowing he wouldn’t bluff on something like that. It would be too easy for Mason to call him on it.

“What have you got, Patrick?”

“Your client’s fingerprints on Cullan’s desk in the study where the maid found his body. Still think my case sucks?”

Mason refused to be baited. He needed to talk to Blues. “I’m obligated to convey any offer you make to my client. You’re still a long way from home on this case and we all know that.”

Campbell chuckled. Mason wanted to sew his lips shut.

“We’ll accept a plea to second-degree murder and we won’t make any recommendation on the sentence. Your client will probably be sentenced to twenty years to life and be paroled in seven years.”

“That’s not much of a deal. Even with the fingerprints, second degree is the worst that he’s likely to be convicted of on your best day in court. This isn’t the kind of deal that will make anybody lose any sleep if we turn it down.”

“This is our best and only deal. It’s on the table until the preliminary hearing. After that, we go to trial. Believe me, this deal is in everyone’s best interests.”

“Including yours? Is that what Ed Fiora told you?”

Campbell’s face purpled, his eyes narrowing. Ortiz jumped in before he could answer.

“You’re way out of line!”

“We’ll see. In the meantime, be careful you don’t step in your boss’s shit bucket.”

Twenty minutes later Mason was in a visitor’s room at the county jail with Blues.

“They found your fingerprints in Cullan’s study. On his desk.”

Blues showed no emotion. He didn’t curse and he didn’t deny.

“Did you hear what I said? Patrick Ortiz told me they found your fingerprints. They can put you in Cullan’s house the night he was killed.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Fine. I’ll tell them that. I’m sure they’ll just throw the fingerprints out. That will take care of everything.”

“I wasn’t there that night or ever.”

Mason studied Blues as he spoke. There was no artifice, no subtle tics borne of a liar’s stress. There never had been with Blues. Mason couldn’t think of a single time that Blues had ever lied to him. About anything. Blues knew it would do him no good to lie now. Just as it would do Ortiz no good to lie. They couldn’t both be telling the truth.

Mason shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the forensics people just made a mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t. I told you they want me for this. They’ve got to make it be me.”

“I don’t buy it. I don’t care what happened between you and Harry. I don’t buy it.”

“Doesn’t matter if it is Harry. You’ve got to go after all of them. If you don’t, I’m a dead man.”

Mason sighed, feeling the walls close in on him as if he were the prisoner. “Campbell offered you a deal. Second degree, no recommendation on sentencing, out in seven years.”

“No.”

“I know. I told Campbell that was the worst that you would get in a trial. Campbell said it’s the best deal you’ll get and that it’s off the table once the preliminary hearings starts.”

“No deals, Lou. Tell Campbell to go fuck himself. Tell him today—now. I don’t want that punk bitch to believe I’m even thinking about it.”