Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (5 page)

As soon as the judge looked up for the first time that morning, Mason knew he’d hit the wrong nerve.

“Mr. Mason, if you have any basis for suggesting that someone is attempting to improperly influence this court or that I would be susceptible to such attempts, now is the time to share that with me.”

The color rose in Mason’s neck. He refused to look at Ortiz, who, he was certain, was smiling wide enough to suck down a bag of Doritos. He couldn’t look at Blues.

“I didn’t mean any reflection on the court, Your Honor. All I meant was that the state is pushing a lot harder on my client than they would in any other case with this kind of evidence. Whatever the reason for that, it’s not sufficient to deny bail.”

“You can take that up with the circuit judge who gets assigned to this case. Bail denied. We’re adjourned.”

Mason was beginning to believe that Blues was right. Even though he had roused Joe Pistone’s slumbering judicial dignity, the decision on bail had already been made. Mason’s gaffe had given the judge all the cover he needed.

He weaved through the media throng, making his way into the hallway that connected to the judge’s chambers. It was the route by which Blues would be taken back to the county jail. He caught up to the sheriff’s deputies and Blues just as they were getting onto the elevator.

“Mind if I get a word with my client?” Mason asked one of the deputies.

“Make it fast. This ain’t a parade,” the deputy said.

Mason pulled Blues by the arm as far from the deputies as he could without getting them too excited.

“Listen, I’m sorry about what happened in there, but I don’t think it would have made any difference.”

“It’s cool, man,” Blues said. “Like I told you, they’re going to try to squeeze me.”

“We’ll get another chance in front of the circuit court judge. Ortiz can either ask for a preliminary hearing or take the case to the grand jury. I’m betting on the grand jury. That way he doesn’t have to tip his hand. The grand jury meets every other Friday. The next session is a week from tomorrow. Once you’re indicted, we can ask the circuit court judge to set bail.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Don’t ask for bail. If we don’t fight for it, they can’t hold it over me. Spend your time finding out who killed Cullan, not writing motions the judge is going to turn down anyway.”

Mason studied Blues for a moment. “You won’t have any friends inside.”

Blues gave Mason a broad grin. “You’d be surprised how easy I make friends. There’s just two things you need to worry about besides winning my case.”

“What?”

“First thing is you got to find somebody to run the club. Try Mickey Shanahan. He’s the PR guy whose office is next to yours. He’s always behind on his rent. Tell him he can work it off behind the bar.”

“Okay. What’s the second thing?”

“You’re on your own. Don’t get dead. They’ll throw away the key to my cell.”

Mason found Patrick Ortiz talking to the assistant prosecutors. They stopped talking when Mason approached, the younger lawyers looking away to hide their smirks.

“You were way out of line with that shit about Blues being forced to resign from the police department,” Mason said. “You know that there’s no way in hell that comes into evidence. Except now it will be the lead on every newscast and plastered on the front page. You must want me to file a motion to move the trial out of town so my client can get a fair trial.”

“I’m not going to tell you how to try your case. Bluestone already shot one person to death. That may not be admissible to prove he killed Jack Cullan, but it’s sure as hell relevant to the sentence he’s going to get and whether he should get bail.”

“Forget about the bail. You’re lucky that Blues is more patient than I am. He’ll take the county up on its offer of hospitality until the trial.”

Ortiz’s assistants lost their smirks, but Ortiz maintained his poker face. “As long as he’s prepared to sit for a while, maybe he’d like to talk about a plea.”

“Is that how you pump up your conviction record? Squeeze the hard cases until they plead and take the chumps to trial? The only plea my client is going to make is innocent. Be sure to tell that to whoever is yanking your chain on this one.”

Mickey Shanahan’s office was smaller than Mason’s and didn’t have any windows. It did have a lot of posters. Mostly from political campaigns. Mickey didn’t have a desk. Instead, he had a card table and four chairs.

When Mason knocked on the open door, Mickey was straddling one of the chairs, his back to the door, wadding up pages from the morning paper and tossing them at a basketball goal, making the swish sound regardless of whether he made the shot.

Mickey had been a tenant for six months. Mason liked his scrappy attitude but couldn’t figure out how he made a living. Blues told him that Mickey had graduated from college a couple of years earlier, worked for a big PR firm in town, and then decided to go it alone. That was when he signed a lease with Blues. Mason had yet to see a client walk into or out of Mickey’s office and wasn’t surprised that Mickey was behind on his rent.

“Hey, Mickey. What’s going on, man?”

Mickey glanced over his shoulder, beamed when he saw Mason, and scrambled to his feet.

“You’re asking me?” Mickey picked up the front page of the newspaper with the two-inch headline announcing
Ex-Cop Arrested for Murder of Political Boss
. “I should be asking you. No, I shouldn’t. I should be telling you to hire me to handle the PR on this case. I’m telling you, this case, win or lose—and don’t get me wrong, I’m pulling for you and Blues—this case can make you in this town; Blues too, if you win. It’s all about how you spin it.”

Mickey had an unruly shock of brown hair that fell across his pale Irish forehead. He could pour nutrition shakes down his throat with a funnel and still be invisible when he turned sideways. He was a finger-tapping, pencil-twirling, punch-line machine, all revved up with no place to go.

“I’ll keep that in mind. In the meantime, Blues wants you to run the club for a while. The judge wouldn’t let him out on bail. He says you can work off the back rent you owe him.”

“Outstanding!” He crossed the short distance to the door and gave Mason a fist bump. “Outstanding!”

“I’ll tell Blues you said so,” Mason told him. “Do you know what to do?”

“Haven’t a fucking clue, man. But no one will know the difference. That’s why they call it PR!”

He raced down the stairs, and Mason retreated to his office, stepping over and around the files, clothes, and junk scattered on the floor and furniture, remembering his aunt Claire’s theory of the relationship between men’s stuff and available space.

“No matter how much crap a man has,” she told him when she visited his office, “he will fill every available inch of open space. Put him in a smaller office with just as much stuff, and the stuff shrinks to fit. Add a hundred square feet and his stuff will spread over it like a rising tide.”

Bookshelves lined the wall on either side of the door. Client files were crammed into the shelves on one side and books filled the other. More files, a rugby football, and a pair of sweats competed for room on an overstuffed corduroy-covered sofa on which he’d spent more than a few nights.

A low table and two chairs in front of the sofa formed a seating area. Mason dropped his topcoat on one chair and his suit coat on the other.

A four-foot-by-six-foot dry-erase board enclosed by burnished oak doors was mounted on the wall opposite the sofa. The inside panels of the doors were covered in cork. A rolled screen was mounted above the dry-erase surface. Mason was a visual thinker. He kept track of ideas, questions, and answers by writing them in different colors on the dry-erase board. He pinned notes he wrote to himself onto the cork surface. He studied his board until order emerged from the chaos, and when a problem was solved, he erased it.

His desk sat in front of the exterior wall in a three-sided windowed alcove, flanked on one side by a computer workstation housing a combination printer, fax, scanner, and copier and on the other by a small refrigerator that was usually empty except for a six-pack of Bud. Mason didn’t have enough room or business to support a secretary. He gave thanks every day to his eighth-grade typing teacher, who had threatened to hold him back if he didn’t learn to touch-type.

A faded Persian rug covered the center of the hardwood floor, a gift from Claire, who said the place needed a little class.

Mason opened the doors to the dry-erase board, picked up a red marker, and began writing. Next to Jack Cullan’s name he wrote
victim
/
fixer
and the questions
Who’s afraid of
Jack?
and
Who wins if Jack dies?

Switching to black, he wrote
Blues—at the scene?—connection to Cullan?

Still using the black marker, he wrote on the next line:
Harry—why so certain about
Blues? Who’s pushing Harry?

He wrote Beth Harrell’s name in blue, addin
g—why with Cullan?

His last entry was in red
—who else?

Rachel Firestone knocked on Mason’s door and opened it without waiting for an invitation. He was at his desk, reading the police reports. He looked up, instinctively turning them over.

She looked first at Mason and then at the board before she even said hello. Mason couldn’t prevent her from reading everything he’d written, so he pretended not to care rather than give her the satisfaction of thinking she’d seen something she shouldn’t have.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking you if you had an appointment.”

“I don’t suppose there was any reason to ask for one since you’d just tell me no.”

“Can’t argue with that. How about I just tell you no anyway and you leave?”

“Give it up, Lou. I’m on this story and you’re on this case. We can’t avoid each other. It won’t be that bad. You’ll get used to me. You’ll probably even get a crush on me, make a stupid pass, and I’ll break your heart and make your testicles shrivel like raisins.”

Mason took a good look at her as she posed for him, hands on her hips, her chin punched out at him in a devilish, take-your-best-shot angle. She was luminescent, inviting, and somehow unattainable. Mason felt a surge that had been dormant since he’d broken up with Kelly Holt, the woman who had investigated the murders of his former partners. It was the jolting combination of need, desire, and unexpected opportunity. He’d dated a few women since Kelly, but the only connection he made with them was glandular.

“And why would you do that? The testicles part, I mean.”

“Can’t be helped, Lou. I’m gay. I’m a boots, jeans, flannel-shirt-wearing, short-haired lipstick lesbian, and I’m a knockout in a simple black dress I keep in my closet for special occasions. If women got me the way guys do, I’d be fighting them off.”

“That would do it,” he conceded as his rising sap retreated to its roots. “Thanks for sparing me.”

“Not a problem. I like getting that out of the way up front. Fewer complications,” she added as she picked up the football and made a place for herself on the sofa. She tossed the ball back and forth between her hands, frowning at its odd feel.

“It’s for rugby.”

“That’s a hard-hitting game. You play?”

“Not as much as I used to. I’m getting a little old to dive into the middle of a bunch of maniacs going after the ball. I’ll take you to a game in the spring,” he offered without understanding why.

“Great. I’d like that,” she said with a smile that filled him with regret. “So Beth Harrell was with Jack Cullan the night he was killed,” Rachel said, pointing to Mason’s board.

“You heard that too?”

“Yup. I tried to talk with her, but she keeps her door locked. Any idea why they were out together?”

Mason hesitated. He felt as if he were walking on an active fault line with Rachel that could cleave open and swallow him at any moment. She was beautiful, flirtatious, and completely unavailable. She knew she had him off balance and was enjoying his disadvantage.

“I think we need some ground rules.”

“So do I. Here’s freedom-of-the-press rule number one. Everything’s on the record unless you tell me in advance that it isn’t on the record.”

Mason shook his head. “Here’s defense-lawyer rule number one. Nothing is on the record unless I say so. Rule number two—burn me and I’ll cut you off at the knees.”

Rachel folded her arms over her chest. “You’re just angry about the lesbian thing. Hey, it wasn’t my idea. A girl doesn’t get to choose. Not that I’m complaining.”

Mason got up and started to close the doors to the dry-erase board.

“Okay, okay,” she told him. “Nothing is on the record unless you say so.”

“Good. I don’t know why they were at the bar, but I think she’ll tell me.”

“Why?”

“First, because I’m not going to print it on the front page of the newspaper in a story accusing her of being a crook. Second, I can put her under oath and make her tell me, and third, we know each other.”

“How?”

“I took ethics from her when she taught at the law school. I was a first-year student and it was her first semester teaching. We hit it off pretty well, but I’ve only run into her a few times since I graduated. Alumni functions and that kind of thing.”

Rachel nodded. “Is your client guilty?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me so.”

“That’s not good enough for an acquittal.”

“It’s good enough for me. All I have to do is figure out who did kill Jack Cullan. The cops are done looking. Any suggestions?”

“I’ve been chasing Jack Cullan for three years. He was into everything important that happened or didn’t happen in this town. Want to get elected? Go see Jack. Want to cut a deal with the city? Need tax increment financing? How about the concessions at the airport? Go see Jack. He always delivered the goods.”