Final Judgment

by Joel Goldman

  Avery Fish was the polar opposite of Mason’s aunt. He was devoted in his observance of ritual, attending daily services, keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath and the many holidays on the Jewish calendar. Yet he was a crook.

  Mason had asked him about the obvious contradiction the first time they met. They were in Mason’s office, a one-room layout above a bar called Blues on Broadway in midtown Kansas City. Fish was candid about his guilt and worried about whether he would be able to keep kosher from a prison cell.

  “I grew up in a very observant home,” Fish explained. “I studied Torah with my father every Shabbos. I learned to chant all the prayers and the different melodies of the service. The rituals became my rituals. It never occurred to me not to be an observant Jew.”

  “That part I understand,” Mason said. “What I don’t understand is the government’s indictment of you for mail fraud and the arrest-dodging track record you’ve compiled when you’re not praying.”

  Fish shrugged his shoulders, his chin disappearing into the folds of his neck. “It’s not a perfect world and I’m not a perfect man. But I know who and what I am. God knows too. One day, He and I will settle up.”

  Mason shook his head, uncertain whether Fish was being honest about his imperfections or merely hypocritical about his faith. Mason’s own life was not without contradictions. He defended people accused of crimes, yet had sometimes crossed the line in their defense, leaving others dead or ruined. But his clients had been vindicated, the guilty caught. Who was he to judge Avery Fish? What would he do when it was his turn to settle up?

  SIX

  Mason pulled up in front of Fish’s house. There were two police cars in the driveway and two more parked on the street. A contingent of cops waited at the front door. Neighbors watched from their windows, a few braving the cold for a better view from their front yards.

  Fish quickly took in the scene, groaning as he got out of the car. “Oy, the tsoris I’ve got!”

  The detectives, uniformed cops, and forensics crew spent four hours combing through Fish’s house. They moved every piece of furniture, rolled up every rug, opened every cabinet, drawer, and closet. They unscrewed air-conditioning vents, poked their heads and shoulders into ventilation shafts, and swept the concrete basement floor for any sign of freshly poured cement. They rattled the radiators, jimmied the floorboards for loose panels, and crawled through the attic. They raked the dead leaves that had piled hard against the house and they wormed through the boxes, old clothes, and other leftovers crammed to the ceiling in the garage.

  Griswold and Cates took turns glaring at Fish, who sat at the kitchen table reading a book whose cover promised that a short history of nearly everything lay within its pages, oblivious to the whirlwind around him. Mason had neither Fish’s patience nor his attention span and followed in the wake of the searchers, taking a silent delight in their growing frustration.

  By mid-afternoon, the party was breaking up. The cops had bagged hairs, fibers, and threads so they wouldn’t go home empty handed, but they hadn’t carried out a head or hands packed in ice or buried in dirt. They hadn’t found any bloodied butcher knives or surgical instruments with bits of flesh and blood clinging to the sharp edges.

  The search had been a bust, and Mason read the results in Griswold’s slumped shoulders and Cates’s pursed lips as he dragged on a cigarette, the two of them huddled at the curb next to their unmarked Crown Victoria.

  Mason knew that it was a mistake to treat the detectives as interchangeable parts. Though they were partners and were cut from the same physical mold, there had to be differences between them, and Mason needed to know what they were beyond which one would play the good cop and which one the bad cop. Did one of them have a chip on his shoulder? Was one of them too lazy to dig out the facts? Could he trust either of them?

  He hadn’t seen enough of them to know the answers to these questions. Griswold had given him a business card. His first name was Kevin. Cates hadn’t offered one, though Mason overheard someone use his first name—Tom. Griswold wanted to make an impression. Cates didn’t care. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  “All in and all done?” Mason asked them, the air frosting his breath.

  “Yeah,” Griswold said.

  “For now,” Cates added, the red tip of his smoke weaker than the threat he was trying to make.

  “Don’t be so disappointed. There are lots of other places to look for the killer.”

  “Maybe,” Griswold said. “But I’m still thinking this is a pretty good place.”

  “Come back any time. We’re always open. Just call ahead and bring a warrant next time. Only the first search is free.”

  Cates flicked the butt to the ground, grinding it with his heel and turning to his partner. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Hang on,” Mason said. “It’s my turn.”

  “For what?” Griswold asked.

  “I let you talk to my client. I let you march through his house without a warrant like Sherman marched through Georgia. The gate swings both ways. I want some information.”

  Cates gave Griswold a look that said, Forget it. Griswold answered with a raised hand. “Gate swings both ways, Counselor. You remember that.”

  “If I don’t, Detective, I’m sure you’ll remind me.”

  “Okay,” Griswold said. “Ask.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “U.S. Marshals deputy patrolling the parking lot with a dog. The dog was trained to sniff out bombs but still had a nose for dead meat,” Griswold said.

  Mason kept a poker face, not wanting to dip into Griswold’s callous pool. “Any blood in the trunk of the car?”

  “Nothing obvious. Won’t know for certain until forensics gets their test results back.”

  “Cut a guy’s head and hands off, the body is going to bleed until the heart stops. Make a hell of a mess. Which means he was killed somewhere else and his body dumped in the car,” Mason said.

  Cates smiled. “You do brain surgery too?”

  Mason ignored the dig. “Any signs of wounds to the body?”

  “Nope,” Griswold answered.

  “Rigor?”

  “Full,” Griswold said.

  “So the victim had been dead at least six to twelve hours. Maybe longer with the cold temperatures. The fatal wound was probably a gunshot or blow to the head, right?”

  “Or broken neck, or strangled or poisoned or smothered or half a dozen other ways you can kill someone without leaving marks on the body, especially if you cut the head and hands off,” Griswold said.

  Mason nodded. “Lot to think about.”

  “You do that,” Cates told him. “Tell your client to think about it too and let us know what you come up with. Make it a lot easier on us cops if you lawyers and defendants would solve these murders for us. Make it even easier if your client just confesses.”

  “Can’t do that,” Mason said. “Then you would have to go back to working the midnight security shift at Walmart.”

  Cates took a step toward Mason, but Griswold cut him off. “Okay, kids. That’s enough for today.” He turned to Mason. “You want it this way, you can have it this way. We’ll be on you and your client twenty-four/seven. You want it the other way, remember how that gate swings.”

  SEVEN

  Mason studied the well-maintained block as the detectives drove away. Not one of the houses was less than sixty years old. All of them hewn from a rock-solid architecture featuring stone and brick, wide front porches, and detached garages at the rear of long, narrow driveways.

  The houses sat on lots raised above street level, giving neighbors comfortable perches beneath broad spreading oaks and elms. More trees lined the street. Stripped of their leaves by winter, they were bare stout sentries. Mason imagined them in the summer, their leafy branches forming a protective canopy over the pavement.

  Cars were parked in driveways and at curbsides in front of many of the houses. Fish’s car would not have been out of
place. Nor would it have been the only one the killer could have chosen. Streetlamps dotted the block, offering enough light in the dead of night to discourage a killer in search of an anonymous random place to abandon a body. Looking at the block, Mason saw what the cops saw. The killer had picked Fish’s car for a reason.

  Fish lived on Concord Avenue in the Concord Historical District. The District was one long block that ran east from Main Street to Wornall Road on the west. Mason never knew it existed until he met Avery Fish even though it was a mile from his own house. Access from Wornall Road to Concord was from Fifty-second Street directly across from the entrance to Loose Park.

  Mason couldn’t remember ever having driven down Fifty-second Street or Concord despite his many visits to the park. He’d grown up in Kansas City and was always surprised when he found pockets that were new to him. They were the city’s secrets.

  He found Fish still sitting at the kitchen table still reading the same book. Fish glanced up at him before returning to the pages

  “Must be some book,” Mason said.

  Fish laid the book down. “It’s about the origins of life and a lot of other things. The author says it’s an incredible long shot that life exists at all and that the odds of any one of us even being born are even longer.”

  “Does that make you feel lucky?”

  Fish shrugged. “Makes me feel religious. But, if you’re asking me, I could use a little good luck. No?”

  “More than a little. I don’t think the cops found anything, but that doesn’t mean they won’t keep looking.”

  “So what were they going to find? I didn’t kill that poor schlimazel.”

  “Did you leave your car unlocked last night?”

  “I’m sure I didn’t. I always lock it, but it’s easy enough to break into. All you need is a long piece of stiff wire. Slide it in between the door and the frame along the window and then push it against the lock button and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Voice of experience?”

  “I’ve locked my keys inside the car more than once. There’s another button that opens the trunk.”

  “Let’s hope the killer didn’t know that and jimmied the trunk. Maybe scraped the paint or left some other evidence of forced entry.”

  “The police can’t seriously think I killed that man!” Fish said, smacking his hand against the table.

  “They can and they do and they’ll keep thinking that until they come up with a better idea.”

  “So what happens to me now? What about our deal with the U.S. attorney?”

  “Everything is on hold until the prosecuting attorney decides whether to charge you with murder.”

  “U.S. attorney, prosecuting attorney—how am I supposed to keep all the lawyers straight?” Fish asked, slumping in his chair.

  “Pete Samuelson is the assistant U.S. attorney. He’s federal and he wants you on the mail fraud charge. Patrick Ortiz is the prosecuting attorney. He’s state, not federal. He’ll decide about the murder charge.”

  Fish let out a long sigh. “Samuelson. Mr. Federal Attorney. You were right about him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I cheated people out of their dream vacations. I admit that. So I’ll pay them back and they’ll take a vacation next year instead of this year. I’m an old man. Why send me to jail for something like that? There must be something else that they want.”

  “You keep telling me that you’re just an old man,” Mason said. “What do you have to offer the government?”

  Fish stood up, laying a heavy hand on Mason’s shoulder. “You don’t get to be an old man in my business without finding out a few things. Go ask Mr. Samuelson what he wants so I don’t have to die in jail.”

  EIGHT

  Mason didn’t run back downtown to ask Samuelson what it would take to get probation for Fish. It was the right question but the wrong time to ask it. Cases were like relationships. Some Mason had to push along and others came to him if he sat back and waited. This was one to wait for.

  Fish’s trial date on the mail fraud charge wasn’t until late June. Winter had yet to breathe its last. March Madness was a month away. The first pitch on opening day was even more remote. The NBA play-offs would still be going on when Mason picked the jury that would decide Fish’s fate. If he tried to put the plea bargain back on the table now, Samuelson would think he was too anxious to deal.

  Mason also knew that Samuelson wouldn’t make a move until he knew what was happening with the murder investigation. The corpse in Fish’s trunk could lead to valuable information for Samuelson. Samuelson would want a direct feed from the police.

  Griswold and Cates would want the same from the FBI. The Bureau’s file on Fish could be a rich source for motive and the identity of the murder victim.

  Mason knew that neither law enforcement agency would get all that they wanted from the other because the relationship between cops and the FBI was dysfunctional on a good day. With every reason to work together, they usually didn’t unless forced.

  Cops thought the FBI didn’t know their ass from third base when it came to investigating street crime. The Bureau was equally certain that the police were too far behind the twenty-first-century law enforcement curve to ever catch up. Their sibling rivalry only got worse when a turf battle broke out, and Avery Fish guaranteed such a conflict.

  The feds would try to leverage Fish’s mail fraud charge if they thought Fish knew something they could use to nail someone else. The cops might want Fish for murder. Neither would give up the prize for the other. Both would designate a liaison with the other to coordinate their investigations, either Griswold or Cates for the cops and probably Dennis Brewer for the FBI. Each liaison would talk with the other just enough to keep up appearances, exchanging scant information and less trust.

  All of which was good news for Mason, who believed in the military salute—confusion to the enemy. That’s why Mason spent the next morning cleaning off his desk instead of bird-dogging Pete Samuelson or nagging Griswold and Cates for information.

  He had mail to open and answer, motions to file and respond to, bills to collect and pay. It was the life of the solo practitioner. He was a one-man band and it suited him just fine. He’d practiced law in other firms, large and small, but settled into his own practice five years ago. He liked the freedom to pick and choose his cases, knowing that he could hold a partners’ meeting in a phone booth or bathroom.

  Technology allowed him to get by without a secretary. His Aunt Claire, who had raised him from the age of three, had insisted that he take typing in the eighth grade, the single most useful course he ever took. That was before computers replaced slide rules as the indispensable educational tool.

  Mickey Shanahan had been the only person on Mason’s payroll, working as his legal assistant. Mickey had hated the job title, preferring wingman because it had more Gen-X appeal. The position was currently open since Mickey had joined the staff of Josh Seeley when Seeley was elected the previous November as Missouri’s newest United States senator. Mickey hungered for a career in politics like a junkie with a jones on.

  Abby Lieberman, Seeley’s chief of staff, had hired Mickey. Mason carried his own pained longing for Abby. They had been in love, still were as far as Mason was concerned. Abby didn’t deny it. She just said love wasn’t enough to overcome Mason’s penchant for violent cases.

  She could accept that he defended people charged with heinous crimes, but she couldn’t live with the violence that poured out of his cases and into his life and hers. More than that, she couldn’t understand why he so willingly dove into the dark water floating around his cases. He couldn’t explain something to her that he scarcely understood himself.

  He hadn’t seen Abby since they had dinner just after the election in November, four months ago. She’d told him she was moving to D.C. Driving home, he had turned on the radio, catching Tina Turner asking, What’s love got to do with it? The lyric stuck with him, surfacing whenever he thought of
Abby. He shoved the song out of his head one more time and refocused on the stacks of paper littering his desk.

  One of the things Mason liked most about his law practice was its sheer unexpectedness. The uncertainty of where the next case would come from, the unpredictability of the story the client would tell him, the jaw-dropping impact when most of it turned out to be true. None of which prepared him for the knock at his door.

  “It’s open,” Mason called out, looking up from his desk.

  Vanessa Carter opened the door, standing in the frame, waiting a moment to be certain that Mason recognized her. She was black, handsome though not beautiful, with a close-cropped Afro flecked with traces of silver. She was neither slim nor thick, but solidly midlife, dressed in a conservative navy suit, a long winter coat slung over one arm.

  The last time Mason had seen her was in her chambers. She had been Judge Vanessa Carter then, a conservative judge on everybody’s short list for promotion from the state trial court to the federal bench, and she had been presiding over the murder case of Wilson “Blues” Bluestone, Jr.

  Blues was Mason’s closest friend, landlord, and tour guide to the world of violent dispute resolution. At the time, he was being held without bail for a murder he hadn’t committed. Mason had asked for a gangland favor to pressure Judge Carter into letting Blues out on bail so he could help Mason find the real killer.

  The favor was given and Mason cleared Blues’s name. Judge Carter quit the bench the day she released Blues, rumors trailing her like poisonous vapors. The last thing she told Mason still haunted him. She would have granted bail anyway.

  In the years since then, she had quietly rebuilt her career as a private judge specializing in mediation and arbitration, a low-cost alternative to expensive civil litigation. The practice provided a second career for retired judges, and Judge Carter had gradually won a significant following with her balanced handling of cases.

  Mason had taken comfort in her success, his guilt assuaged but not forgotten. He handled a few civil cases from time to time, and when the parties elected alternative dispute resolution, he’d always managed to convince the opposing lawyer to select someone besides Judge Carter. While Kansas City may seem like a small town to those who didn’t know it, it was more than large enough for Mason not to have crossed Judge Carter’s path since that last hearing in her chambers.