Final Judgment

by Joel Goldman

  The alcove was deep and dark enough to swallow Mason when he made his way there after parking his car. The kitchen door was propped open, a triangle of light spilling onto the asphalt, garlic breeze escaping the kitchen and seasoning the air. He leaned against the rough brick wall, checking his watch, waiting for Mickey’s call.

  Follow the money, he’d told Blues before they left his office. It was an axiom made famous in political scandals that served equally well in solving crimes. Whether it was the money Webb was skimming from the casino, the money Kelly had hidden in Fish’s coat, or the money Bongiovanni wanted from Galaxy, all he had to do was follow it. When it stopped moving, he’d have his answers.

  Mason’s cell phone rang. “What’s happening?” Mason asked.

  “The coat is moving,” Mickey said.

  “Who has it?”

  “A white guy, mid-thirties, wearing khaki pants and a gray sweater. He’s headed for the front door.”

  Mason called Blues. “Khaki pants, gray sweater and a hundred-thousand-dollar coat coming right at you.”

  “I’ve got him,” Blues said. “Only he’s not carrying or wearing a coat. He’s banging on the door of a minivan. Someone opened up, he got in, and they’re taking off. Here come Fish and Kelly. She’s patting him on the back. He’s squeezing her ass. I’m on the van.”

  “Shit!” Mason said, punching the buttons on the phone again. “Mickey! Where the hell are you?”

  “Here, boss. How we doin’?”

  “Lousy. The guy didn’t have the coat when he got outside. Could he have passed it to someone else?”

  “I don’t know. There was a table full of women wearing red hats. They all got up at the same time as he did and I lost him. He could have handed it off to someone and I wouldn’t have known it.”

  “What’s the next thing you saw after the women got out of the way?”

  Mickey waited a moment before answering. “Not much. Just a busboy carrying a garbage bag.”

  Mason peered at the back door to the restaurant just as the man in the kitchen coat emerged with another garbage bag, adding it to the top of the pile in the Dumpster, looking both ways before he went back inside. A moment later, a sedan pulled up alongside the Dumpster. One of Lila Collins’s bodyguards—the one who had gut-punched him at the hotel—got out, grabbed the garbage bag, and tossed it into the trunk of the car.

  Mason crouched on the ground, pressing himself against the base of the alcove as the car eased past. He stuck his head out far enough to read the license tag on the car, repeating it until he was certain he wouldn’t forget it.

  His car was parked too far away for him to follow the sedan. He doubted the bodyguard would take the money to the casino since video cameras recorded everyone who came or left. His best bet was to trace the tag on the car. He called Blues again.

  “Are you still following the van?” Mason asked him.

  “Yeah. They’re taking their time, stopping for all the yellow lights.”

  “Write the plate number down and let them go,” Mason said, explaining what had happened. “You know anyone who can run a couple of plates after hours?”

  “After hours costs extra.”

  “The guy who charges extra, does he owe you for anything?”

  “All my people owe me. That’s why they’re my people.”

  “Then tell him he’s paid up if he gets us names and addresses tonight.”

  Mason checked his watch. He had fifteen minutes to make it to Abby’s apartment. He’d be late but not too late. He called and told her he was on the way, the relief in her voice enough to warm them both.

  A long line of cars was stacked up almost the length of the parking lot waiting to turn onto Metcalf. Mason decided to look for another exit on the west side of the strip center. He drove back down the service road past the entrance to the kitchen and into the drive around the outer edge of the storefronts. He turned left away from the traffic, trailing a few other drivers who’d adopted the same exit strategy.

  The driver of the car in front of him had a change of heart and turned around, his headlights framing a man and woman standing in the darkened entrance of a vacant storefront. Kelly Holt and Dennis Brewer were wrapped around each other like braided snakes.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  Mason turned his head from them and drove past as if he hadn’t noticed a thing, resisting the temptation to speed away as that would surely draw their attention. He glanced in his rearview mirror, wondering if they had recognized him or memorized his license tag.

  He held his course, turning out of the lot, crossing into a residential neighborhood, and losing himself in the winding streets. No backup cars appeared behind him or cut him off, his cautious meandering giving him cover and time to think.

  When he’d first met Kelly, she had recently left the FBI after becoming involved with another agent who’d turned out to be on the take. Her lover had been killed and she’d been suspected of being corrupt as well. Though she was eventually cleared, the suspicion and her lover’s death were enough to make her quit. Now she was back with the FBI, involved with another agent, both of them with too much to explain. She reminded him of a woman who kept marrying alcoholics and complained that all the good ones were taken, not realizing that she was the one who was making the same mistake again.

  He remembered her differently, as beautiful, brave, and unfairly accused. It was who he wanted to see and, at the time, who he had wanted to love. She’d walked away from him then; Mason had believed that she had too many wounds to heal to make a permanent place for him in her life. Now he realized he just wasn’t her type. He checked his bitterness with the knowledge that she might think otherwise if she knew about Judge Carter. If he was going to step on the toes of people with clay feet, he’d have to start with himself.

  The side street he’d chosen led him into a subdivision. He didn’t think Kelly or Brewer was following him and he doubted they had backup for that purpose. Whatever they were up to, they had to be doing it on their own. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances. His cell phone rang as he made another unnecessary turn.

  It was Kelly Holt. “Where are you?”

  “Just leaving my office.”

  “For a guy with two dinner dates, you’re getting a late start.”

  “Lucky for me, one of them cancelled.”

  “Cancel the other one. We need to talk.”

  “Call Mickey and make an appointment. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow. Maybe end of the week.”

  “Stubborn and stupid could get you hurt,” she said.

  “Then you should be right there with me.”

  “It was you!”

  “Yeah,” he said softly, dropping any pretense. “And it was you too.”

  “It’s not the way it looks.”

  “Like the song says, who should I believe? You or my lying eyes?”

  “It’s complicated,” she said.

  “I’ve hung too many things on that hook and I don’t have room for anything else.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Too late. We already did,” he said and hung up.

  His cell rang a moment later, this time Rachel Firestone’s name was displayed on the screen. He’d turned her loose on Dennis Brewer the night before but doubted that she’d found out more in the last twenty-four hours than he had found out in the last twenty minutes.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “That seems to be everyone’s favorite question. What happened to hello?”

  “What’s the matter? Are you lost? Who else is looking for you?”

  “You’re the only one that matters. I was lost until you found me. Any luck with Dennis Brewer?”

  “You know what happens when a reporter starts asking if anyone knows whether an FBI agent might be dirty? Phones start ringing and none of them are mine. The publisher doesn’t like hearing from the U.S. attorney.”

  Mason had met the publisher, David Phelan, a passionate man who was rumored to hav
e ink in his veins instead of blood. “Roosevelt Holmes called David Phelan?”

  “And demanded that the paper kill my story and that I turn over my notes and sources or get ready to tell the grand jury why I won’t.”

  “What did Phelan tell him?”

  “He told Roosevelt to go fuck himself. Then he told me that I better be right or I could go fuck myself too. Am I right?”

  “It’s looking that way. There are still a lot of loose ends.”

  “That’s why I was calling you. One of them may have just gotten nailed down.”

  “Which one?”

  “The reporter whose desk is next to mine covers the cops. All he does is listen to the police scanner waiting for something to happen. A little while ago, he picked up a report of a dead body and went to the scene. He called in and told the editor to save him some room for tomorrow’s Metro section. I overheard the editor’s end of the conversation. The editor asked if the victim had been identified, and then he repeated the name out loud. That’s when I called you.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Mark Hill.”

  He caught his breath. Blues had been right. “Where was the body found?”

  “Troost Lake. Meet me there?”

  He exhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he answered, thinking of Samantha Greer’s birthday celebration while not looking forward to calling Abby.

  “Remember,” she said, “it’s on Paseo, not Troost.”

  “I know, and it’s not really a lake either.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Abby hung up in the middle of Mason’s explanation. Right after he told her that a key witness had just been found murdered. She wasn’t interested in the details or why he had to go the scene instead of reading about it in the paper like everyone else. He knew why but couldn’t tell her because she didn’t give him the chance and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

  If she’d let him, he would have told her that a case is a living, breathing organism conceived in conflict. It is a wild, uncontrollable adolescent while the facts are being fleshed out by the rule of unintended consequences. As it matures, lawyers may rein it in with pleadings and tactics and courts may squeeze it with orders until it surrenders its last gasp, but those days were weeks or months away. Tonight, he had no control over it. All he could do was hold on.

  Troost Lake was a triangle of brown water lying between Twenty-seventh and Twenty-ninth Streets, the long leg of the triangle parallel to Paseo. The full name of the street was The Paseo Boulevard, though Mason had no idea what the north–south artery had done to earn that formal distinction.

  The lake was a quarter mile east of Troost Avenue, both the lake and the street the legacy of a Dutchman, Benoist Troost, one of Kansas City’s earliest physicians and civic boosters. Defeated for mayor in 1853, he had organized the city’s premier newspaper in 1854 and helped found the Chamber of Commerce in 1857. Mason read the doctor’s abbreviated biography on an historical marker near the south end of the lake well behind the yellow crime scene tape that kept him away from the cops working Mark Hill’s murder.

  Mason doubted anything would be named after him, though, given a choice, he preferred a couple of kids to a strip of concrete or a muddy patch of water. Troost Lake may have been named to memorialize the good doctor, but it had become a favorite burial ground for dead bodies owing to the terrain and the demographics. The Paseo was elevated above the lake and the surrounding trees provided additional good cover. The area was part of the urban core where too many people saw violence and death through eyes dulled with repetition. Outrage succumbed to resignation as the city shrugged its shoulders.

  Rachel met him, wearing a sheepskin coat and a muffler knotted at her throat. The night had turned damp, moisture seeping through his jacket with the cold. He shifted his weight from side to side to keep warm.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  “Samantha Greer is working the case. That’s her over there,” Mason said, pointing to the right angle of the triangle. It was the heaviest wooded corner of the lake, least likely to give up its victims until fishermen returned in the summer. “I can’t get close enough to talk to her.”

  Mason felt a hand on his back and turned around. “How about I take you a little closer?” Detective Cates said. “Sorry,” he said to Rachel.

  Klieg lights mounted on ten-foot stands illuminated the site where Hill’s body had been found, warming the water enough to boil a ground-hugging fog. A forensics team moved slowly across the invisible grid they had laid down over the scene, lifting each square by its roots, shaking and sifting it for evidence. A diver in a glistening black wet suit waded out of the water, carefully pinching the butt of a gun between two fingers. An ambulance waited at the north end of the lake, its back end open and ready to receive the body.

  Samantha Greer stood with hands on her hips, watching her people work. She nodded as they reported to her, took notes, and resumed the position.

  “Wait here,” Cates told Mason when they reached the yellow tape.

  Cates ducked beneath the tape, walked over to Samantha, and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned and looked at Mason, listening as Cates spoke. When he finished, she brushed her hair with her hands and made her way to Mason, keeping the tape between them.

  “Happy birthday, Sam,” Mason said.

  “And I don’t feel a day older. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already know it was Mark Hill, so who told you?”

  “A reporter at the Star picked it up from the police scanner, checked it out, and called it in to his editor. Rachel Firestone overheard and called me.”

  Samantha looked past Mason at Rachel, who waved and smiled. Samantha ignored the gesture.

  “Why did she call you?”

  “She’s working Avery Fish’s case.”

  “I read the article,” Samantha said. “Big help.”

  Mason ignored the dig. He wanted to find out what he could as quickly as possible and get out of there so he could salvage the evening with Abby.

  “I told her about Carol Hill’s lawsuit against Rockley and Galaxy. She thought I’d want to know about Mark Hill.”

  “You think there’s a connection between the deaths of Rockley and Hill?”

  “Hill smacked Carol around. Rockley came on to Carol. She didn’t like either one of them. Makes Carol a suspect.”

  “Women don’t generally mutilate bodies or drag them to lakes in the middle of the night. When they kill someone, they leave them where they fall.”

  “Then again,” Mason said, “Hill could have killed Rockley for harassing his wife and somebody killed Hill to balance the books. Give me enough time and I’ll come up with plenty of options.”

  “All of which will conveniently point the finger away from your client for killing Rockley, huh?”

  “That’s one way to look at it. In fact, that’s a pretty good way to look at it. How did Hill die?”

  “Bullet to the brain.”

  “Did he do it by himself or did he have help?”

  “Coroner says it’s too early to tell.”

  “Time of death?” Mason asked.

  “Somewhere in the last twelve to twenty-four hours.”

  “Talk to your client. Tell him he better be able to account for his whereabouts,” Detective Cates said.

  Mason turned to him. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you hear Detective Greer say that Hill’s death points the finger away from Avery Fish?”

  “I make a point to keep bullshit out of my ears,” Cates said. “The way I see it, your client could have killed Hill just so we’d look somewhere else on Rockley. Bring him downtown tomorrow morning. Don’t make us come and get him.”

  “Sam,” Mason said. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Rockley isn’t my case, Lou. Hill belongs to me unless it turns out they’re related. If they are, Cates and Griswold will take it. Right now we don’t know one way or the other. Either way, we’re going to need to talk to Fish. Might as well make it tomorr
ow morning.”

  Dennis Brewer was meeting with Mickey at 9 A.M. to prepare him for the tour of Fish’s safety deposit box. Mason wanted to sit in on that session, which shouldn’t take more than an hour.

  “We’ll be there at eleven,” he said.

  Mason told Rachel what he’d learned, thanked her for the tip, and declined her offer for a late dinner, telling her he was already late for dinner with Abby. His cell phone rang again before he reached his car. He let it ring while deciding whether to answer it or throw it in the lake, choosing the former when he saw Blues’s name on the screen.

  “What do you have?” Mason asked him.

  “One address for both cars at Lake Lotawana. Place is owned by someone named Ernie Fowler. Got the phone number too.”

  “I’ll bet the rent money that Ernie Fowler’s phone is answered at Sylvia McBride’s call center in Minneapolis.”

  “One way to find out,” Blues said. “Call him.”

  “What if he doesn’t answer?”

  “Then we knock on his door.”

  “I was thinking of something more discreet. Besides, have you ever tried finding an address at a lake?” Mason asked. “You practically need a guide.”

  “I’ve got one. This BMW has a GPS system. I’ve already punched in the address. It’s only twenty-four-point-thirty miles if we pick the route for the fastest time and the most use of freeways. Damn, being rich is a fine thing.”

  “Pick me up at the office,” Mason said. “Ten minutes.”

  SIXTY-SIX

  Troost Lake was an oversized pond, home to no one. Lake Lotawana was the real deal: a pastoral haven far enough from Kansas City to feel like you left. Mason didn’t expect to find any bodies floating there, but that didn’t make him feel any better about making the trip. The case was swallowing him whole, the dark water lapping against his chin. He had an image of Abby turning her back as the water closed over his head.

  The first twenty miles were easy. They took Highway 71 south, picked up I-470, and got off at Colbern Road. A handful of quick turns later, they were on Lake Lotawana Road, passing the Lake Lotawana Police Department, which served and protected the two thousand people who lived in homes surrounding the lake, according to the brightly lit sign outside the station.