by Joel Goldman
Mason told Blues about the blood-bank results before showing him a road map he’d dug out of Kelly’s desk. They were about 180 miles south and east of Kansas City. They would take Highway 54 west across the state line into Kansas to Highway 169, then head north on 169 to Rogersville, a small town about sixty miles south of Kansas City.
It was roughly the same distance to Rogersville from the lake as from the lake to Kansas City. It would take three to four hours to get there. Mason didn’t know what they would find there on a Friday night, but he doubted anyone would be watching for them along those roads. They agreed to say nothing to Sandra about their route. They would stop in Rogersville for dinner. Mason hadn’t gotten any further in his thinking when Sandra reappeared.
“Okay, guys. I’m ready,” she said, all trace of hostility gone. “I hope your moms told you to go to the john before going on the highway.”
“You betcha!” Mason said. “Come on, Blues; I’m not stopping every ten minutes for you.”
As they were walking out of the bathroom, Mason noticed a pay phone tucked in an alcove between the sinks and the urinals. He told Blues to take Sandra to the car and he would meet them in a minute. He pretended to have forgotten something in Kelly’s office, and on the way back out stopped to talk to the sheriff’s dispatcher, a greasy-haired kid, probably not yet twenty-one and barely winning the war on acne.
“Were you on duty last night when Sheriff Holt called in from the cabin?”
“Sure was! That must have been one hell of a fire!”
“Lucky thing the troops knew how to get there. I never could’ve found the way on my own.”
“Shit, man!” he said laughing. “Nobody knew how to get to that cabin. The sheriff had to damn near talk the lead deputy all the way in. We all knew she had the cabin, but she was mighty private about where it was.”
“No kidding?” Mason’s stomach tightened with a cold shiver, and he changed the subject. “How do you keep in touch with Sheriff Holt when she’s on the road?”
“Age of the cell phone, man.”
“Mind giving me the number? I may need to get in touch with her.”
“No problem,” he said as he scratched it on a piece of paper and handed it to Mason.
Mason started to leave and stopped. “Just one last thing. I was wondering, do you have any pay phones around here?”
“Yeah. There’s one in each john.”
“Thanks,” Mason said and headed for the car.
Sandra was in the front seat, riding shotgun.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
MASON COULDN’T EXPLAIN HIS SUDDEN SUSPICION of Sandra, yet he couldn’t shake it, and her passive aggressive response didn’t help. He would have preferred ducking her usual barrage of sarcasm and threats than the uncomfortable silence that filled the car. When he turned to look at her, she made a point of staring out the window, not bothering to ask why Blues was ignoring all the highway signs pointing to Kansas City.
Looking back, he realized his doubts began when she told him about her medical background. She knew enough to poison Sullivan. At the warehouse, Camaya threatened him, not her. Tying her up could have been for show, her escape planned rather than fortuitous. And Camaya couldn’t have found them without somebody telling him where to look. He wondered if paranoia made him a clear thinker or just paranoid.
They chased the afternoon sun through the rolling, wooded Ozark hills, across the state line, and into the grassy knolls of eastern Kansas. Highway 54 beckoned westward to the broad, endless plains.
Mason had once driven that road all the way to Liberal, Kansas. Eight hours of seamless prairie, thinking about the pioneers who had dared to cross that land 150 years ago. There must have been moments when they looked in every direction, finding nothing to reveal where they were, where they’d been, or where they were going. Swallowed by their surroundings, they had to press on or go mad where they were.
He was beginning to understand what that felt like. He couldn’t go back, and it was impossible to know whether he was headed the right way. By the time he found out, it could be too late.
An hour and a half later, Blues pulled into the parking lot of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Rogersville, Kansas. After his diet the last few days, those red and white stripes and tantalizing choices of original or extra crispy beckoned Mason.
A weather-beaten phone book dangled on a steel cable from beneath a pay phone planted in a corner of the asphalt parking lot. While Blues and Sandra went inside, Mason lingered at the phone, checking the local listings. There was no listing for Dr. Kenton Newberry. Meredith wasn’t listed either. She may have married, died, or moved away. There were ten different listings under Phillips. He tore out the page, hoping that one of them might be her family.
Blues and Sandra sat opposite each other in a booth. He was eating and she was watching. Mason slid in next to Blues and reached for a chicken thigh. That was as close to dinner as he got.
“Okay, Boy Scouts. I’ve been good and kept my mouth shut. But I’ve had enough. Either I get some answers, or I’m out of here.”
She didn’t have to raise her voice. Sandra had one of those tones that sliced right through you.
“We just thought it would be a good idea to take a different route home in case anybody was watching for us,” Mason said, hoping it was the question she wanted answered. Wrong again.
“I’m not stupid, Louis, so don’t patronize me. We’re having this wonderful bonding-in-the-midst-of-danger experience and you all but accuse me of tipping Camaya off about the cabin. Now, what is that bullshit all about?”
Blues was making quick work of the mound of chicken, gravy, and mashed potatoes on his plate and was not going to bail Mason out. The teenager wiping the counter overheard Sandra and dropped his dish towel, the snap of boiling oil and sizzling chicken fat the only sounds in the Colonel’s house. He thought of every witness who’d blown his credibility by stalling an answer to the tough question and knew his was draining away.
“I don’t know,” he said without looking at her, his bad start getting worse. “Somebody had to have tipped him off and you weren’t at the cabin when they came for us. I didn’t mean to imply anything. It just came out that way. I was out of line. I’m sorry.”
She chewed her lip for a moment, eyeing him, then took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, since we’re all friends again, tell me what was so interesting in that phone book you vandalized.”
Blues moved on to the biscuits, the cashier wasn’t moving, and Mason wasn’t fast enough with a response because he didn’t have one that wasn’t a lie she wouldn’t see through.
“Listen, Sandra . . . ,” he stalled.
“No, you listen, Louis! I saved your ass at the warehouse! Or did you forget how we got untied? Blues, Kelly, and me—we’re the ones saving you—not the other way around. And now you treat me like a suspect! You don’t even have the nerve to accuse me to my face.”
She shoved the bucket of chicken in his lap and stormed out. Mason knocked it onto the floor as he followed her outside.
“Wait a minute! Where are you going? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what I should have done in the first place, Louis. Handle this on my own.”
She walked across the street to a truck stop, waving at a trucker about to pull out. He stopped long enough for her to climb into the passenger seat of his eighteen-wheeler. Blues joined Mason as the rig headed north.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
ON THE WAY TO KANSAS CITY, Mason scanned every tractor-trailer rig they passed, looking for Sandra, alternating between feeling guilty for goading her into leaving and relieved that she was gone. When he felt guilty, he kept his eyes open for rape victims lying abandoned on the shoulder of the highway. When he felt relieved, he concentrated on what he would do next.
Blues left him to his thoughts until they reached the southern edge of Overland Park, the biggest of Kansas City’s suburban bedrooms.
“
You make up your mind yet?” Blues asked.
“About what?”
“Whether you want to let trouble keep finding you or whether you want to start running the show.”
“I’m tired of running—that’s why we came back. I’ve got a short list—Pamela Sullivan, Scott Daniels, and Angela Molina. You got any preferences?”
“You’ve been set up. Scott picked you to investigate the firm because he figured he could control you. When you picked Sandra to help you, he knew that he was screwed.”
“There’s a big difference between trying to control the investigation and committing a murder.”
“One’s the beginning and the other’s the end. When Scott found out you had the disks, he told the wrong people. Maybe he knew what he was doing and maybe he didn’t. Either way, you’d have been just as dead.”
Mason didn’t want to confront the possibility that Scott would let him be killed. He could live with the O’Malleys being crooks. He could handle some unknown bad guy sending a slimeball like Camaya to punch his clock. These were people he didn’t know or care about. They presented problems that he would find a way to solve. But betrayal by a friend was another story. He was loyal to his friends and expected no less of a commitment in return. It seemed a modest standard in a world too often covered with shifting sands.
They stopped at a sporting goods store, where Blues bought two boxes of .45-caliber ammunition.
“Scott has a lot of questions to answer,” Mason said when they got back in the car. “He was in on the fixtures deals from the beginning. But he wouldn’t know what rock to turn over to find Camaya, so he’s got to be reporting to someone higher up.”
“If he’s scared enough, he might talk to us,” Blues said.
“Then we’ll give him a chance.”
Mason dialed Scott’s home number. His wife answered.
“Gloria, it’s Lou Mason. Is Scott around?”
She didn’t answer at first. When she did, she struggled to keep her composure. “No—Lou. He’s been working late—every night.”
“Friday nights too? You think he’s still downtown?”
“He called a little while ago—and said he was going for a swim and before he came home.”
“I’ll try him there. If I miss him, tell him I called, okay?”
“Lou—what’s happening? Will we be all right?”
She started to cry. He remembered the dead, flat look in Scott’s eyes the last time he saw him and thought again about what Scott had done to him. Mason owed Scott nothing, and he wouldn’t lie to her.
“I don’t know, Gloria,” he said and hung up.
“Any luck?”
“Not home. His wife is on the edge.”
“They have any kids?”
“Yeah. Three.” Then Mason felt sick as he remembered one of those loose threads, the elusive piece of the puzzle. “And the oldest is diabetic. Let’s try the Mid-America Club. Maybe we can catch him while he’s still wet.”
When Blues stopped in front of the Mid-America Club, he turned to Mason. “You got a plan? Or you just going to ask him to write it out nice and neat for you?”
“I’ll ask nicely, but he’s going to write it down.”
“This isn’t a game. You know that?”
“You forget I already killed someone?”
“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget.” He opened the glove compartment and removed a blue-steel pistol. “It’s a Sig Sauer P220,” he explained as he loaded the magazine and handed it to Mason. “Just in case he doesn’t understand nice.”
Mason looked at Blues and the gun. A freak blow to a stranger trying to shoot him was one thing. Hiding in the woods with a shotgun to protect himself against a killer was doable. Pointing a gun at a friend, even one who’d betrayed him, was in a different league.
“Listen to me, Lou. Nobody is who you thought they were—at least not anymore. Blood changes everybody—there aren’t any rules. Don’t use it if you don’t have to. But don’t take the chance you won’t need it. I’ll catch up to you.”
Mason got out and stood in front of the revolving-door entrance to the club, shirt untucked to cover the gun stuck in his waist, pressed flat against his belly and pointed at his crotch. He was more afraid of tripping than anything else.
As the door spun around depositing him inside, Mason began to fear something else—his own anger. Knowing that someone wanted him dead scared him at first and still did. But his anger balanced his fear, giving him a chance to do what he had to if he was going to live. And that made him afraid of who he would be if he did survive. The gun was fast becoming an easy answer. Mason’s growing sense of the inevitability of that answer—and his acceptance of it—was terrifying. Blues was right. Nobody was who he thought they were anymore, including him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
SCOTT WAS ALONE IN THE POOL, doing the backstroke, his long arms looping rhythmically overhead like twin paddle wheels, his legs knifing through the water. Mason watched from the deep end as Scott swam away, staring back at him as if Mason was a stranger.
Mason waited for his return lap, and before Scott could tuck, turn, and swim away again, he grabbed him by the hair and slammed his forehead onto the edge of the deck. Scott grunted and slid backward into the water. Mason slipped his hands under Scott’s arms and pulled him out of the pool and onto the deck, where he lay, coughing and bleeding.
“Jesus Christ, Lou! Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
“Pretty fucking close, buddy. Swimming is a dangerous sport. You should get out of the water before you get hurt.”
Scott sat up, holding his head in his hands. Blood trickled through his fingers, pooling on the floor. Mason tossed him a towel, yanked him to his feet, and shoved him into the locker room.
“Come on, let’s check the damage.”
Wooden lockers lined three walls and filled a half dozen aisles furnished with benches. One wall was all mirrors and sinks split by a doorway that led to the toilets and showers.
Scott leaned on Mason, woozy from the blow, as Mason leaned him up against the wall by the sink and cleaned the cut. Mason wrapped a bath towel around Scott’s neck and gave him a hand towel to hold against his forehead. When the bleeding slowed, Mason sat him on a bench and propped him against a locker. He pulled a bench from another row of lockers parallel to Scott’s and sat across from him.
“So how long have you and Vic Jr. been using the firm to launder money?”
“You’re not just crazy, Lou. You’re out of your fucking mind!”
“I just want to get out of this alive. And I don’t much care if you do. Help yourself and answer my questions.”
Scott laughed. “You don’t have it in you, Lou. Give it up and go away while you still can.”
Mason stood and grabbed the ends of the towel around Scott’s neck, choking him. Scott clawed at the towel, but Mason twisted it tighter and whipped Scott’s head against the locker, reopening the cut over his eyes. Holding the towel with one hand, Mason drew his gun and jammed into Scott’s cheek, his finger tightening around the trigger. Bug-eyed, Scott blinked as blood ran into the corners of his eyes.
“Now, Scott, I’m not having a very good day. Frankly, I’m more than a little edgy. Been doing some really weird shit. Help me out, will you? Talk to me. It calms me down. Okay?”
“Okay, sure, just put the gun down, please.”
Mason let go of the towel and sat on his bench, lowering the gun to his side. “I’m not going to ask again.”
“Okay, okay. It was Vic Jr.’s idea. He got hooked up with some mob guys while he was in college in Chicago. They bailed him out of a jam and he agreed to help them out.”
“How?”
“Laundering their money.”
“So why did you get into it?”
“Money. They let Junior take a cut, and Junior needed Harlan and me to cover the deals, so we got a piece too.”
Mason wasn’t surprised that Harlan had been involved. The
fixtures deals must have been the source of the unreported income that caught the attention of the IRS.
“That’s what the fixtures deals were for?”
“Yeah. Quintex bought the fixtures and leased them back. The lease payments were the dirty money.”
“What were the fixtures for?”
“Strip joints and porno shops. The rent was pumped way up to provide the cash flow.”
“And the fees for work that was never performed?”
“We had to get the money out of Quintex, and the firm was the easiest place.”
“But how did you get it out of the firm?”
“Consulting fees paid on behalf of Quintex.”
“To whom? Who’s behind the whole thing?”
“I don’t know who got the fees and I don’t know who was running the show.”
Mason grabbed the towel again.
“Okay! I knew but I didn’t know. Sure, it had to be the mob but I never heard any names. Please, Lou! I’m telling you the truth!”
Mason let go. “Tell me what you did know.”
“We always dealt with a Chicago law firm. They had power of attorney. The principals were never identified.”
“Who got the consulting fees?”
“Don’t know. We just made out the checks to corporations and mailed them. Everything went to a post office box.”
“Angela had to cover the billings for you. You had to cut her in. And you had to pay the money back out. Seems like a lot of trouble for the amounts involved.”
“The firm was only a piece of it. We set up separate corporations to contract with Quintex for phony services. Ran a lot of the money through them. Harlan thought it would be fun to run some through the firm since O’Malley was Sullivan’s client.”
“Harlan?”
Mason thought of that gentle man getting a kick out of setting up Sullivan’s biggest client. Every partner has his secrets, Mason realized. Harlan’s secret must have been that he hated Sullivan.