Three To Get Deadly

by Lee Goldberg

  Roger kept scooping and dipping and molding the plaster. Patting it dry.

  "Look at these casts," he instructed. "Smooth, eh?"

  "Good workmanship," I agreed.

  "Great hands," Melanie said. "He wants you to say, 'Great hands."

  "You have great hands, Roger," I said.

  "Thank you, Jake. You always had confidence in me. You knew I didn't let the rongeur slip. Not in a million years."

  He leaned over a work table and picked up a small tool, stainless steel gleaming. The rongeur. He twirled it around in one hand, tossed it to the other, back and forth without looking. Great hands.

  He replaced the rongeur in a tray with half a dozen others, all different sizes, from the tiny pituitary model to the bone rongeur that looked like a pair of household pliers. He patted the last of the plaster into place, pausing to wipe his hands.

  "Hurry up," Melanie ordered. "Colder than a witch's tit here. Hey Lassiter, wanna go first?"

  Roger dried his hands and said, "You can if you want, Jake." His eyes were focused on Mars.

  "Rog, I swear I'm going to pee all over your table, you don't hurry up," Melanie said. "Are you hard or you need me to talk dirty? Bring that worm over here."

  Roger untied her bikini bottom and folded it over a chair.

  "That's better," she laughed. "Hurry the fuck up before my tits freeze solid. Hey Lassiter, that's a joke isn't it? Hurry the fuck up.

  Roger looked at me. "Jake, you're my friend, just like Philip. You can have her if you want."

  "Maybe another time, Roger."

  "There won't be another time," he said flatly.

  A chill went through me. Maybe it was the blast of the air conditioner on my overheated body. But maybe it was because I knew. My face must have shown it. Melanie smiled seductively. "Don't worry, Lassiter. He always talks like that. We haven't fucked once the last two years, he doesn't threaten to off me."

  "Only this time, it's real," Roger said.

  She laughed. I didn't.

  Melanie leered at me. "What's the matter, Lassiter? You afraid he'll kill me? He only kills little old ladies."

  "Who do you kill?" I asked her.

  "No one, smart guy. I got men friends always wanting to please me, do me favors."

  "You're wrong about Roger," I told her. She looked puzzled. He hadn't told her. No wonder she was so calm. Thinking he was the same old Roger, her favorite lapdog. "Roger kills more than old ladies, and he's pretty good at dreaming up ways to do it. Painful ways."

  She still didn't get it.

  "Where's your pal, Sergio?" I asked, wanting her to know, wanting her to taste fear.

  "Miami Beach, busting up some boards," she said, doubt creeping into her voice.

  "Wrong. Dead wrong. The morgue's on this side of the bay."

  Her eyes darted to Roger, who worked silently with the plaster. She looked back at me, seeking help. I hadn't moved. I could stop him any time. I was bigger and stronger than Roger, and his mind was diced into an asteroid belt of colliding rocks. He turned his back to me, oblivious. One shot to the kidneys and it would be over.

  I could, but why should I? You are wrong about me, dear old Charlie Riggs. I want her dead. Stop Roger?

  Why should I?

  Roger stood there studying her, ignoring me, that glazed look fading in and out. He unrolled another length of gauze, dipped it into the water bowl, then slapped it into Melanie Corrigan's crotch.

  "Hey, I don't need a chastity belt," she said, the voice a notch higher.

  He slowly stretched out more gauze, soaked it, lifted her a few inches and wrapped it around the top of the left hip and through the crotch. He caressed it into place.

  "She looks just like a little doll, doesn't she, Jake?" Another strip and then another and the two leg casts were joined. Melanie tried moving but could not, the weight was too much.

  Then he pulled a white Dacron stocking out of a metal drawer, walked to the head of the table, brushed her hair back, and slipped the stocking over her head.

  "Makes the plaster set more smoothly," he explained.

  "Stop fuckin' around, Rog," she cried, each breath sucking the stocking into her mouth. "This ain't funny." Her voice rising, the beginning of fear.

  He placed some padding over her mouth, but she shook her head and it dropped to the floor. He didn't seem to notice. He dipped another length of gauze into the water, waited a moment, and then began wrapping it around her mouth. Even through the stocking, her eyes reflected it.

  The realization. The fear.

  I studied that look, snapped it into place. I wanted to remember it. Susan was dead because of her, and now here she was, knowing what was about to happen, the horror of knowing probably worse than the pain itself.

  She spit and coughed. The sticky mess stayed put, covering half her mouth. She breathed greedily through her nose and yelled something, muffled through the gauze. "Laschta, hughme." Lassiter, help me.

  This time, Roger fashioned a longer piece and swaddled it twice around her head, covering both mouth and nose. She bucked up and down, involuntary thrusts from the diaphragm lifting her, the lungs searching for air. In another minute she would lose consciousness. Three minutes after that, irreversible brain damage. Then …

  She looked toward me, eyes pleading, mouth working, the words unintelligible, her fear filling the room.

  Why should I?

  I didn't know. I just reacted the way I do to most things. Moved without thinking it through, doing what seems right at the time, listening to some voice inside, a smarter guy than me, someone who didn't want me to scream myself awake, seeing Melanie Corrigan turn blue under all that white.

  I came up behind Roger, grabbed him by the left arm, and spun him around. From the way his right shoulder pivoted, I saw the punch coming but not the rongeur, the large one, in his right hand. His arm came hard and fast. I was going to take his punch and give back one that would sit him down. What I took was a fistful of stainless steel. It caught me on the left temple. Solid.

  In the movies, guys get hit on the head all the time. Usually with a gun. Their knees buckle, they say oooh, and they gently fall and go to sleep. It doesn't work that way. There's a thunderclap, a blaze of lights behind the eyes, and a shooting pain, a loss of equilibrium. Then a gray fog settling.

  I didn't fall down. I stumbled across the room on shaky pins, a wounded buffalo, bouncing off cabinets. Roger was standing to my left, my right, and straight in front. I took a drunk's swing at the guy in front but it wasn't him. He pushed me to the floor. I hooked an arm behind his knee and brought him down on top of me. On a good day, I could bench press him twenty times, then throw him from short to first. This wasn't a good day. He was back up and I was on one knee like a fighter trying to make the ten-count.

  Then I felt the jab in my upper arm. Déjà vu, his thumb pushing the plunger on a hypodermic. I swatted at it and missed. He emptied it into me and I tore away from him, the needle still stuck in me, the world's largest voodoo doll.

  I came at him again and took a swing in slow motion, my arms bulky girders. I didn't hit him and he didn't hit me. I just sat down at the end of the punch, then rolled onto my side, my face resting on the cool, clean tile. Then, just like in the movies, I said, oooh, and went to sleep.

  * * *

  My mouth was dry and my head was filled with barking dogs. I was cold. My face was still on the tile. It could have been hours or days. It must have been hours. Roger was sitting in a swivel chair next to me, splotches of plaster in his hair, on his face, on his gown. From the floor, I could see only the bottoms of Melanie Corrigan's bare feet sticking out of the casts. Nice feet, finely arched, clean dainty lady feet.

  The feet weren't moving. I didn't need to see the rest.

  "I'll help you up," Roger said hoarsely. "Don't worry about the Pentothal. You'll just be groggy for a while."

  I tried to stand but he had to boost me. If he wanted to, he could finish me right there. I finally looke
d toward the table. The face gone, wrapped from forehead to chin, a mummy. Only the ends of her hair stuck out from beneath the plaster.

  I sagged against a metal cabinet. Roger said, "You didn't mean it last night, did you, Jake?"

  "Mean what?" My voice was thick; my head weighed a ton.

  "That you're no longer my lawyer or my friend."

  "What difference does it make?"

  He swiveled in the chair to face me, his eyes dancing to a silent tune.

  "Because I need you, Jake."

  "Now? You need me now. What for?"

  "To prove it, Jake. That I'm one of the good guys."

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The author of 14 novels, Paul Levine won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and was nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, and James Thurber prizes. A former trial lawyer, he also wrote more than 20 episodes of the CBS military drama "JAG" and co-created the Supreme Court drama "First Monday," starring James Garner and Joe Mantegna The internationally acclaimed "To Speak for the Dead" was the first of the best-selling Jake Lassiter series, which also includes "Night Vision" and "Riptide."

  Books To Watch Out For

  Night Vision

  Jake Lassiter is appointed a special prosecutor when women in a sex-charged Internet chat room are targeted by a serial killer. Enlisting a brilliant female psychiatrist and assisted by retired coroner Doc Charlie Riggs, Lassiter wades into a maze of lies and corruption to discover and face down the murderer. http://amzn.to/rtzoZy

  "Mystery writing at its very, very best." – Larry King, USA TODAY

  Riptide

  Lassiter chases a beautiful, deadly woman and $2 million in stolen bonds from Miami to Maui, where in an explosive finale, he learns lessons never taught on the football field or the courtroom.

  "One part John Grisham, two parts Carl Hiaasen." – Tulsa World

  Impact

  A billion-dollar lawsuit is at stake when a passenger jet crashes in the Everglades. In a legal thriller with echoes of Grisham and Turow, the defense is simple: Kill anyone, even a Supreme Court Justice, to win the case.

  "Relentlessly entertaining." – New York Daily News

  And be sure to check out all of Paul Levine's books!

  MOTION TO KILL

  A NOVEL

  JOEL GOLDMAN

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  About the Author

  For Hildy, the wife of my life

  CHAPTER ONE

  A dead partner is bad for business, even if he dies in his sleep. But when he washes ashore on one side of a lake and his boat is found abandoned on the other side, it's worse. When the sheriff tells the coroner to "cut him open and see what we've got," it's time to dust off the résumé. And the ink was barely dry on Lou Mason's.

  The time was seven thirty on Sunday morning, July 12. It was too early for dead bodies, too humid for the smell, and just right for the flies and mosquitoes. And it was rotten for identifying the body of a dead partner. These were the moments to remember.

  Mason's dead partner was Richard Sullivan, senior partner in Sullivan & Christenson, his law firm for the last three months. Sullivan was the firm's rainmaker. He was a sawed-off, in-your-face, thump-your-chest ballbuster. His clients and partners loved the money he made for them, but none of them ever confessed to liking him. Though in his late fifties, he had one of those perpetually mid forties faces. Except that now he was dead, as gray as a Minneapolis winter and bloated from a night in the water.

  Sullivan & Christenson was a Kansas City law firm that employed forty lawyers to merge and acquire clients' assets so they could protect them from taxation before and after death. When bare-knuckled bargaining didn't get the deal done, they'd sue the bastards. Or defend the firm's bastard if he was sued first. Mason's job was to win regardless of which bastard won the race to the courthouse.

  The U.S. attorney, Franklin St. John, had been preparing a special invitation to the courthouse for Sullivan's biggest client, a banker named Victor O'Malley. The RSVP would be sent to the grand jury that had been investigating O'Malley for two years. Sullivan asked Mason to defend O'Malley the day Mason joined the firm as its twelfth partner. Mason accepted and Sullivan spoon-fed him the details of O'Malley's complex business deals.

  Mason figured out that O'Malley had stolen a lot of money from the bank he owned. He was having a harder time figuring out how to defend him. Fifty million dollars was a lot to blame on a bookkeeping mistake.

  Two days earlier, Sullivan took Mason to lunch and, over a couple of grilled chicken Caesar salads, casually inquired what would happen to O'Malley's defense if certain documents disappeared.

  "Which documents?" Mason asked.

  Sullivan studied Mason for a moment before answering. "Let's assume that there are records that show O'Malley and one of his business associates received favorable treatment from his bank."

  Mason didn't hesitate. "That's what the whole case is about. There are too many of those documents to lose even if I didn't mind going to jail with O'Malley. Which I do."

  "Lou, I only care about the documents with my name on them. Do you understand?"

  Mason nodded slowly, wiping his hands with a white cloth napkin more than was needed to clean them.

  "I'm not going to jail for you e
ither. Show me the documents, and we'll figure something out."

  Sullivan gave him the pained look of a disappointed parent and changed the subject. Mason knew then that he'd never see the documents. In the same instant, he also knew that his career at Sullivan & Christenson was over. He had failed Sullivan's test but passed his own. He decided to think it over during the firm's annual retreat that weekend, but he knew what he would do come Monday morning. Quit.

  The retreat was at Buckhorn resort at the Lake of the Ozarks in southern Missouri. It was a long weekend of golf, drinking, and leering for the lawyers and staff.

  Mason went for a walk after the Saturday night poker game, stopping at the beach, a kidney-shaped plot filled with sand along a retaining wall at the water's edge. A slight breeze rolled off the water, just enough to push the air around. A young couple was braided together at one end of the beach. He lay down at a discreet distance on the only lounge chair, turned his back to them, and felt the loneliness of the voyeur.

  He didn't realize that he'd fallen asleep until a voice interrupted the recurring dream of his last trial before he joined Sullivan & Christenson. Tommy Douchant, his client and best friend, looked up at him from his wheelchair, eyes wild, tears beading on his cheeks, as the jury announced its verdict against them. Mason begged the jury to come back, to listen to him, as they filed out of the courtroom, their faces dissolving as a voice sliced through his dream.

  "Excuse me . . . are you Lou Mason?"

  Tommy rolled back into Mason's subconscious as he opened his eyes. The voice belonged to a woman standing over him, backlit by the glare of the morning sun. The glistening effect was a mixture of a Madonna halo and a Star Trek transporter. He thought about asking her to beam him up while he rubbed any leftover drool from his chin stubble.