Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (17 page)

Mason studied the dry-erase board. In the last three weeks it had become a jumbled patchwork of lawyer’s graffiti. He drew red circles around the keywords and phrases—
Cullan’s secret files—pictures of Beth—blackmail by Fiora—Blues’s fingerprints—Harry and Blues—why kill me?

He was convinced that the identity of the killer lay within those scraps. The last of them, the question about whether he would live or die, shook him more than he cared to admit. Maybe it was the late hour, or maybe it was just that he didn’t have Blues to watch his back this time.

He went down the hall to Blues’s office. The bookshelves, file cabinet, and desk were all gunmetal gray. The floor was bare hardwood and the walls were decorated with a calendar. A digital electric piano sat against one wall. When Blues played, it was like decorating the room with a bucket of rainbow paint.

Mason pushed the piano away from the wall and used a key Blues had given him to open a small safe hidden in the floor. He lingered over the contents of the safe, his hands sweating as he fought with himself. Shivering at the too-recent memory of the river’s cold grip, he reached into the safe and picked up the gun Blues had given him a little over a year ago.

“It’s a .44-caliber semiautomatic with a nine-shot magazine,” Blues told him. “Fits in a holster that goes in the middle of your back. Wear a jacket or a loose shirt over it and no one will notice.”

Mason had barely survived the death of his old law firm and, along the way, had shot a hired killer named Jimmie Camaya, who was supposed to have added Mason to the law firm’s obituary list. Camaya had been arrested but later escaped. Blues had convinced Mason that he should carry the gun for his own protection. Mason had reluctantly agreed, and Blues had taught him how to handle the gun. After a few months, he returned the gun to Blues.

“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life walking around waiting to shoot it out with someone who’s probably forgotten all about me. I’m a lawyer, not a gunslinger.”

“And this isn’t Dodge City,” Blues said. “It’s Kansas City, but you’ve got a real talent for pissing off people who don’t know the difference. I’ll keep the gun for you. My money says you’re going to need it sooner or later.”

Now, alone in his office with his gun and holster, he wished he had a corner man to patch him up, rub him down, and shove him back into the ring when the bell rang for the next round. Blues was his corner man, and Mason needed him. Bone weary, Mason lay down on his sofa and let it wrap its arms around him.

Mason woke to find his aunt Claire sitting in one of the chairs next to the sofa. She was reading the newspaper and sipping coffee from a stainless-steel mug. The coffee’s aroma was strong enough to wake the dead.

“You didn’t answer your phone at home last night or this morning, so I thought I might find you here,” she said.

Mason sat up, running his tongue over his teeth, stretched his arms and legs in a spread-eagle salute, and flopped back onto the sofa. He felt trampled.

“You didn’t consider the possibility that a beautiful woman had taken me home to comfort her?”

He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled toward the dry-erase board.

“Have you looked in the mirror? Anyone who picked you up would take you to the nearest shelter. Make that the nearest animal shelter. And don’t bother with your board. I’ve been here long enough to read it and the newspaper.”

Mason changed course for the refrigerator next to his desk. He was surprised to find a bottle of orange juice.

Without looking up from her newspaper, Claire said, “You’re welcome. By the way, the next time you decide to sleep in your office, lock the door and don’t leave a gun sitting on your desk. Put it under your pillow like all the other action heroes. Just don’t shoot yourself in your sleep. That would be pathetic.”

Mason gulped half the bottle of orange juice before taking a breath and wiping his mouth.

“Any more advice?”

“Sorry, I’m fresh out.”

Claire read the newspaper, and Mason looked out the window, watching the morning sun glance brightly off the windows on the building across the street. She folded the paper and dropped it on the table in front of the sofa. The headline shouted back at her—
Ex-Cop Bound Over for Murder
.

“So,” she said with as much neutrality as she could muster, “someone is trying to kill you again. That’s why you have a gun. Who is it this time?”

Mason drained the last of his orange juice, banking the empty bottle off the wall and into the wastebasket.

“Don’t know.”

Mason marveled at his aunt’s capacity to listen to the most outrageous stories of abuse told to her by her clients without betraying a hint of her own outrage. She explained that her clients had enough emotion invested in their problems without seeing their lawyer lit up as well. He was glad that she employed the same detached interest as he told her about his riverboat adventure.

“You could talk to Harry.”

“Not this time. You were right. It’s too complicated.”

“Can I help?”

Mason considered her offer. His love for her was as unconditional as hers was for him. She was his anchor, his reality check. She never waited for him to ask for her advice or help. She gave it whether he wanted it or not. That she had come to check on him, not demanded that he call Harry, not called Harry herself, and only gently berated him, underscored how delicate the situation was.

“There’s too much going on here that I don’t understand, and I don’t want to be the last one to figure it out. The key players couldn’t be more connected if they were inbred. You could fill in one branch of the family tree for me. Tell me what happened between Harry and Blues.”

“Why is that so important?”

“Harry thinks Blues got away with murder six years ago. He’s using this case as payback. I think somebody knows that and is using Harry to make sure Blues is convicted. I can’t go to Harry unless I know what happened.”

Claire studied the headline in the newspaper, deciding what to do. It was a silent sound bite, incapable of telling the whole story. Yet it was enough for most people, and all that many would read or remember. She realized that wouldn’t be enough.

“Harry and Blues had been partners for a couple of years. Harry had taught Blues at the academy, helped him along when he first got on the street, and recommended him for detective when Blues took the exam. Harry always said that Blues had the best instincts of any detective he’d ever seen but that he also had one of the worst weaknesses.”

“He used violence too easily?”

“It wasn’t just that. The violence came too easily to Blues. He didn’t get worked up or enraged. He just did it and went on. Harry didn’t know why. He worried that Blues had a dead spot that made it too easy to kill. It scared Harry because he didn’t want Blues to get it wrong. Someone would die.”

“So why didn’t Harry wash him out at the academy? Why promote his career and take him on as his partner?”

“I met Harry for the first time at the Nelson Art Gallery. He was sitting on a bench in the Chinese Temple in front of the statue of the Water and Moon Bodhisattva. The Bodhisattva was a Buddhist god that was supposed to protect the faithful from catastrophe. That’s what Harry does. That’s why he became a cop. That’s why he took Blues on as his partner. He’d seen men who had that dead spot, and he thought he could keep it from happening to Blues.”

“That doesn’t explain what happened with the shooting.”

“It was a drug bust. They had an informant who claimed that some Colombians had brought in a substantial quantity of cocaine and were setting up shop on the East Side. Blues was the first one through the door of the apartment. The Colombians were waiting for them. Blues and Harry both would have been dead if they hadn’t been wearing Kevlar vests. Two of the Colombians were killed.”

“I remember when it happened. Harry wouldn’t talk about it, but it was all over the newspaper. The woman Blues shot was a prostitute who had a gun.”

“She was in the back of the apartment. Blues went room to room. He heard a noise. It was Harry’s nightmare come true. Blues said he thought the girl had a gun, but she didn’t, though she wasn’t innocent either.”

“Who was she?”

“She wasn’t a prostitute. She was the daughter of a very wealthy man who used her father’s money as seed capital for her drug business. She hired the Colombians to bring in the cocaine. The father settled for Blues’s badge rather than have the story made public. And there was some question about whether the father knew where his money was going.”

“That’s a pretty tough story to cover up.”

“Not if your lawyer was Jack Cullan.”

Mason came out of his chair. “Harry and Blues went along with the cover-up?”

“They didn’t know. She didn’t have any ID on her. Later, Harry and Blues were fed the prostitute story. The Internal Affairs investigation was kept quiet. Blues was given a choice to resign or be prosecuted. It was a bluff that worked because no one wanted to hang the department’s dirty laundry in public, including Harry and Blues. Blues took the deal.”

“How do you know what happened if Harry and Blues don’t know?”

Claire gathered her coat, finished her coffee, and stood, facing Mason.

“I represented the wife when she divorced her husband six months later. He told her what had happened, and she couldn’t spend another moment under his roof. She told me.”

“What she told you was confidential. Why are you telling me?”

“The purpose of the attorney-client privilege is to protect the client. My client committed suicide last month. The privilege didn’t do her much good.”

“Did you tell Harry?”

“Yes. I told him this morning. I should have told both of you sooner. I’m sorry.”

“What did Harry say when you told him?”

“He thinks Blues found out that Jack Cullan had cost him his badge and had been waiting for a chance to get even. He thinks Blues used the incident at the bar with Beth Harrell as cover.”

“That makes no sense. Blues has been charged with the murder, not Beth.”

“Harry says that Blues got careless when he left a fingerprint in Cullan’s study. Otherwise, Beth Harrell would have been the number one suspect. Harry thinks Blues is using you to get him off. Harry says that you’ll try to convince the jury that Beth Harrell killed Cullan.”

“That’s a hell of a risk for Blues to take.”

“Harry says that a man with a dead spot takes risks no one else would consider.”

“Does Harry know that you’ve told me all of this?”

“He asked me to tell you. He’s afraid that Blues will take you down with him. He wants you to convince Blues to take a plea.”

“I’m Blues’s lawyer, not his coconspirator. How can Blues take me anywhere except to the poorhouse when he doesn’t pay my fee?”

Claire walked over to Mason’s board, picked up the black marker, and drew a large circle around Mason’s question
why kill me?
“Someone knows the answer to that question, Lou. Don’t take too long to find out.”

Mason decided it was time to connect the dots instead of waiting for someone else to draw the picture for him. He’d spent the last three weeks scrambling to get ready for the preliminary hearing even though the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The trial was in sixty days, and he would have to use that time to make something happen, beginning with getting Blues released on bail.

He called Judge Carter’s chambers to request a bail hearing. He was surprised when the judge’s secretary informed him that Judge Carter would send out an order that day setting a hearing for the following Monday, January 7, at eight o’clock. Shortly after he hung up, his fax machine rang and whirred as the judge’s order arrived. He was reading the order when Mickey Shanahan knocked at his open door.

“This is not a good look for you, Lou,” Mickey told him. “You’ve got to be perma-pressed and lightly starched, wrinkle-free, know what I mean, man? No worries. Everything is cool. That’s what the people expect. This I-spent-the-night-in-a-Dumpster look isn’t going to cut it. Listen to me. It’s all about image.”

“Turn around.” Mickey hesitated. “Turn around now.”

Mickey saw the gun on Mason’s desk, blanched, and did a quick pivot. “I’m just trying to help, for chrissakes. That’s no reason to go ballistic, man.”

Mason walked over to the dry-erase board and closed the cabinet doors. He was tired of people walking in and reading his mind.

Returning to his desk, he picked up the gun, balanced it in his palm, and shoved it into the holster. It felt like a prop, not a part of him. He couldn’t decide whether to put it away or put it on. The fear he’d felt the night before had receded as he hid the attempt on his life behind the closed cabinet doors. He shook his head at the image of himself as a heat-packing action hero. Carrying a concealed weapon was the road to Palookaville, the punch line to a bad joke. He put the gun in a desk drawer, slamming it shut loudly enough to make Mickey jitterbug in the doorway.

“Dude! Give a guy some warning that you’re gonna make him piss his pants for saying hello.”

“At ease. About face.”

Mickey peered over his shoulder at Mason, taking care to look for the gun, before turning completely around.

“Hey, you still look like shit. You know that, man. That’s not good, not good.”

“I’m not interested in your fashion advice. How good are you on the Web?”

Mickey brightened as if he’d just added a thousand gigabytes to his game. “A Web site is just what you need. I can have it up for you by the end of the day.”

“I don’t want a Web site, Mickey. I want every word ever written about Ed Fiora. Can you do that?”

Mickey locked his fingers together and stretched his arms out. “Any six-year-old can do that in his sleep. I can do better than that.”