Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (14 page)

She draped her mink coat over him. “Take off your clothes.”

“Does this mean you’ve changed teams?”

“Not in this lifetime. I just don’t want you to freeze to death in my car. Makes a lousy obituary.”

She drove and Mason did as he was told. The heater and the fur coat restored the feeling in his hands and feet by the time they reached his house. He got another chill when he saw an unfamiliar car parked in front.

“Don’t worry,” Rachel said. “She’s a friend of mine.”

Rachel’s friend turned out to be a doctor who made house calls before sunrise on New Year’s Day. She had a soothing, confident touch as she palpated and prodded him, not once asking him what had happened. He followed her instructions to take the hottest shower he could stand, after which she dressed the wound in his side, gave him an injection of antibiotic, and left samples of more antibiotics, to take over the next five days.

Mason dressed in sweats and heavy wool socks before coming downstairs to thank her, only to find that she had left. Rachel was alone in the kitchen, sitting at the table with two large mugs of steaming tea.

“Where’s your friend?” He sat at the table and took a sip from his mug. “I didn’t get to thank her.”

“I thanked her for you.”

“She didn’t even tell me her name.”

“You didn’t need to know it. ”

“Why? Is that another secret of the sisterhood?”

Rachel slapped her hand on the table, shaking her mug so that tea spilled onto the table.

“Damn you, Lou! I drag your ass out of the river before you drown and find you a doctor in the middle of the night on fucking New Year’s Eve so that you don’t have to go the hospital, where you belong, and you’ve got to crack dyke jokes.”

Mason raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. She was terrific. You redefine terrific.”

Rachel grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen counter and wiped the tea that had spilled from her mug.

“Yeah, well, she is terrific and she couldn’t exactly send a bill to your insurance company.”

“I am suitably humbled. Tell her the door swings both ways. Make sure she knows where to find me if she needs me.”

“I’ll do that. Now, tell me what in the hell happened out there.”

“Off the record?”

Rachel threw the dish towel onto the table in surrender. “Off the record.”

“It was about a quarter to twelve and I was coming to look for you when Beth Harrell appeared out of the crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. She asked me to take a walk with her.”

“And since you are cursed with a penis, you had no choice.”

“Jealous?”

“Of her? Not a chance. She’s not my type.”

“You don’t give a guy any hope, do you?”

“Get this through your testosterone-drenched brain. No guy has any hope with me.”

Mason sighed. “You have made me a believer. So Beth and I take a walk. We end up out on the end of the prow. She snuggles up, the rockets red glare, and she makes a pass at me.”

“A beautiful woman comes on to you and you decide to jump into the river. Are you sure you’re not gay?”

“You should live long enough to find out. In spite of what you might think about the curse of the penis, I turned her down. It wasn’t pretty. She’s got a fair dose of self-loathing inside that perfect body. She left and I gave her a good head start. The next thing I know, someone is shooting at me. The river was my only way out. How did you find me?”

“I guess it’s time for my little confession.” Mason’s eyes widened. “No, you moron, I didn’t shoot you, but that’s starting to look like an attractive option.”

“Latent heterophobia?”

“More like overt smart-ass phobia! Ed Fiora sent a bunch of invitations to the newspaper. I took one so that I could ask you to go. I threw you in just so I could watch what happened. I didn’t think you could resist going after Fiora. I thought I could get a good story.” She looked down and away, a red stain creeping across her checks. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “I’m really sorry.”

Mason let out a long, slow breath. “You didn’t make me come with you and you didn’t make me go out on that prow with Beth Harrell. But you did save my life, and that should balance anybody’s books. How did you manage that?”

Rachel looked up. “My God, you are a mess of a human being! You come on to any woman with a pulse, you can’t go two minutes without being a smart-ass, and you forgive way too easily.”

“Makes you want me for a brother, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “It really does.” They sipped from their mugs for a moment. “I saw Tony Manzerio fetch. I want to hear all about that, by the way. Then I just kept my eye on you. When you went outside with Beth, I went out another exit, figuring I could get close without being seen.”

“You saw what happened?”

She shrugged. “I’m in the voyeur business. When she left, I was going to hustle back to the front of the casino and wait for you. Then I heard the shots and saw you jump in the water. I’d been to that casino a lot and I knew there was a boat tied up at the pier. There wasn’t time to call the Coast Guard. I ran for the dock, which wasn’t easy in this body condom I’m wearing. The rest is commentary.”

“Did you see who was shooting at me?”

Rachel shook her head. “All I know is that it wasn’t coming from my side of the deck. Whoever it was couldn’t have been much of a shot. It would have been hard to find an easier target.”

“Unless the shooter wasn’t trying to hit me. Maybe the idea was to get me to jump, let the river do the rest.”

“I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t go to the hospital and let the police take care of this.”

Mason didn’t say anything. He drained the rest of his mug and set it down on the table.

“Yes, I do. I am so dumb sometimes. You don’t want to involve Beth Harrell in another scandal. You think she might really have something that you want.”

“I do, but it’s not what you think. You were watching me all night, but I don’t think Beth was. The casino has video cameras everywhere, and Fiora monitors them. That’s how Tony Manzerio knew where to find me. If Fiora had me on videotape making love under the stars with a key witness against my client, the court would kick me out of Blues’s case in a heartbeat. When that didn’t work, he went to plan B.”

“Then the whole thing is on videotape. The shooting, everything.”

“I’ll take odds that those tapes are gone by now. I have to find out what’s going on between Ed Fiora and Beth Harrell.”

“Of course. You’ll drop by, talk about old times, and she’ll spill her guts.”

“Something like that.”

“This I’ve got to see.”

“Sorry. No press. Don’t pout. You’ll still get your exclusive when it’s all over. There is just one thing you may want to think about.”

“What’s that?”

“If Fiora saw Beth and me on videotape, he saw you too. I’d be very careful.”

“Happy New Year to me,” Rachel said.

Mason didn’t know whether Beth Harrell would see him, but he liked his chances when the doorman at her building turned out to be named Jim and not Margaret.

He hadn’t slept, too jazzed by his near-death experience. Unshaven and carrying bags under his eyes that been packed for a long trip, he didn’t look like someone on the guest list for a New Year’s Day breakfast. And it was seven a.m., too early for company. Jim squinted at him, ready to tell him that they didn’t have a public restroom.

“Would you tell Beth Harrell that Lou Mason is here to see her?” Jim hesitated. “It’s okay. We were together last night and I’ve got something I promised I’d return this morning on my way home.”

Jim’s raised eyebrows said he didn’t believe a word of it, but he called Beth on the house phone, telling her she had a guest. “I’ll send him right up, Ms. Harrell.”

Riding the elevator, Mason wondered if she would tell him the truth and whether he’d recognize it if she did. She was a witness and suspect in Jack Cullan’s murder and a possible conspirator in the attempt to kill him. She was also beautiful, troubled, and borderline irresistible, a combination that made him want to hold her close and keep her at arm’s length at the same time. Rachel would have told him to leave his penis in the car.

She answered the door wearing a long white robe, tied loosely at the waist, and nothing else, finger combing her tousled hair.

“It’s a beautiful morning.” Mason said.

“The best so far this year.”

She stepped aside, inviting him in, closing the door after him. She leaned against the door, letting her robe fall open for an instant before gathering it around her.

“If you’ve changed your mind about last night, I’m afraid I have too,” she said. “I behaved very poorly. I hope you’re not too disappointed in me.”

It was the most contradictory rejection and apology Mason had ever received. The more he learned about Beth, the less he understood her. The more he saw of her, the more he wanted her.

“We need to talk. You should get dressed first.”

Beth waited a fraction of a minute, letting him reconsider, nodding when he didn’t. “Of course. I’ll only be a minute.” She left a renewed chill behind as she disappeared down a hallway.

The minute she promised turned into thirty. While he waited, Mason explored her apartment. There was a portrait in the living room of a brooding young girl set in shadow, her long blond hair hanging loosely over a thin white gown, open at the neck. The girl’s fingers were wrapped in strands of her hair, her lips half open with wistful longing. Her features were soft, her eyes both dreamy and sad. The artist had captured an ache that reverberated throughout the girl, as if she’d seen her future and wished she could turn from it. He realized that the girl was Beth.

“I was fifteen. My mother was the artist,” Beth said from behind him. “She painted portraits while my father took his secretary on business trips. She told me how he had cheated on her since before I was born but that she couldn’t afford to leave him. Then one day, he left her. She said she wanted to paint me while I was still young and no one had crushed my heart like he had crushed hers.”

She was dressed and had brushed the kinks out of her hair but wasn’t wearing any makeup. She still looked beautiful, but for the first time, she also looked brittle, as if one more jolt would fracture her. The girl in the painting had seen her future.

“You said we needed to talk,” she reminded him. “What about?”

“Why did Ed Fiora send you to find me last night?”

“Why do you think?”

“Then he did send you?”

“You won’t consider the possibility that I was there alone, that I saw you and wanted to be with you?”

Mason hesitated, choosing his words. “I did consider that. It may even be true, but it’s not the entire truth.”

“A concession to your ego and my weakness, Lou?” He didn’t answer. “It would be less humiliating if it weren’t true at all. Then I’d just be a victim instead of a fool and you might be willing to help me.”

“I can’t help you if I don’t know the truth, and I may not be able to help you even then.”

She walked over to the painting. “My mother wasn’t a prize either. She was cold and aloof, even toward me. She put her feelings in her paintings, stroking her brushes instead of my father and me. My father needed constant reassurance that he was wonderful and wanted. They made each other’s weaknesses worse.”

“It’s a little late in life to be blaming dear old Mom and Dad, isn’t it?”

Beth folded her arms over her chest. “You bet it is. I just got some of the worst from both of them, and I ended up looking for love in all the wrong places.”

“That song has been covered by a lot of people.”

“Listen, this isn’t easy. I was so determined not to screw up like they did. I put everything into school and my career. I graduated first in my class, got a job with a top firm, went back to teach law school, got appointed to the gaming commission. I did everything right in public, but I made some bad choices in private.”

“Including taking a bribe to approve the license for the Dream Casino?”

She shook her head. “No. I really thought Fiora’s application was the best one. The key to it was the lease with the city for the location at the landing. It was the best deal for the taxpayers.”

“What about Fiora’s background?”

“We checked him out every way possible. He’s rough around the edges, but we found no compelling evidence that he was dirty.”

“Then why the scandal?”

Beth looked at Mason, her lips pursed, then made her decision. “Fiora bribed the mayor. Jack Cullan set it up through a secret ownership in the Dream Casino.”

“Can you prove that?”

“I heard enough whispers that I was going to have the gaming commission investigate it. I think we could have made the case.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t have time. Jack invited me to dinner. I assumed he wanted to ply me with liquor to find out where our investigation stood. I agreed to go because I thought I might learn something.”

“Did you?”

“Yes. I learned what it was like to be offered a bribe. He let me know that I would be well taken care of if the investigation just went away.”

“You turned him down?”

“I told him that we couldn’t discuss commission business and he let it drop until we got to Blues on Broadway. Then he brought it up again. Only this time he threatened me.”

“With what?”

Beth sat down on a sofa, sinking into the cushions. “I told you that I had made some bad choices. One of my husbands was the worst. I let him take some photographs of me.” She dipped her head, bit her lip, and looked away. “Doing some things.” She rubbed her palms across her eyes. “Jack said that he’d bought the pictures from my ex and had given them to Ed Fiora. He promised to get them back from Fiora if I played ball. That’s when I threw my drink in his face.”