Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness

by Joel Goldman

  Mason had learned from Harry that it was much more effective to question a witness when he showed up unexpectedly. Rachel Firestone had proven the point earlier in the day.

  He doubted that the ambush interview would work with the three people on his list. He’d have to cut through a layer of muscle to get next to Ed Fiora, and a regiment of bureaucrats guarded the mayor. He doubted that Beth Harrell had a gatekeeper, but he knew better than to just drop by. Even in law school, she demanded that students make an appointment to see her outside of class.

  He called Fiora’s office and was told that Mr. Fiora would be unavailable until the next millennium. The mayor’s scheduling secretary said that he didn’t have an opening until after his term expired. He left a message for Beth Harrell. She just didn’t call him back.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mason checked on Mickey Shanahan before leaving for the night. It was past eight and Mickey was behind the bar, giving directions to Pete Kirby’s trio as they set up. Pete looked at Mickey like he was a blind man directing traffic. Mason decided to take a crack at Kirby’s memory.

  “Hey, Pete, how you doing, man?” Mason said.

  Pete Kirby was short and squat, like a fireplug. He played the piano with the enthusiasm of a man whose natural rhythm was eight to the bar.

  “Everything’s cool, Louie, my boy. How’s my man Blues?”

  Kirby was the only person who called Mason Louie, a list Mason wasn’t anxious to expand.

  “He’s doing fine, Pete. I understand you were playing Friday night when Jack Cullan came in.”

  “That’s right, I was. Me and the boys wouldn’t have stuck around since it was such a shitty night and the joint was empty, but we figured, what the hell, we’ll play a set for Blues. Then Cullan comes in with this good-looking broad and the next thing I know, the two of them are playing Frankie and Johnnie.”

  “Blues tells me he busted up the fight.”

  “That he did. Blues grabbed that old man like he was gonna pile-drive the cat right into the goddamn ground. Don’t pay to tussle in Blues’s joint,” Pete added with a deep laugh. “No, sir, it don’t.”

  “I hear Cullan fought like a cat too. Scratched the hell out of Blues’s hands.”

  Kirby tugged at the corner of his beret and stroked his goatee, measuring his response in a firm meter.

  “Like I told the detective, I didn’t see any of that. Now, you lookin’ like your woman just run off with the drummer makes me wish maybe I had, but I just didn’t see none of that. Sorry, Louie.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Pete. It’s not important,” Mason said and left.

  The parking lot behind the bar was covered in old asphalt that had given birth to potholes big enough to swallow women and children. Blues was an easygoing landlord who believed in deferred maintenance. Mason stepped around the craters, afraid that if he fell into one, no one would find him until spring.

  His car was parked at the back of the lot; the front end aimed at the alley behind the bar. Though there was a curb between the lot and the street, Mason planned to ignore it. Otherwise, what was the point of driving a Jeep?

  The wind had calmed from its all-day shriek to a steady howl strong enough to rake tears from the corners of Mason’s eyes. Fine crystals of sleet tattooed his face like asteroid dust. Blues’s deferred-maintenance program extended to the parking lot floodlights, which had been burned out since Thanksgiving. The lights were off in the building across the alley, and the sky had been buttoned down with blackout clouds. Moonlight couldn’t have found its way to Mason’s dark patch even if it had a GPS.

  A pair of high-beam headlights opened up on him as he reached his Jeep, the lights coming from a car parked near his, the sound of its engine muffled by the wind. Heavy boots ground sand and salt into the pavement as a man bigger than Mason’s Jeep stepped from the shadows.

  “Car trouble?” Mason asked, still unable to make out the man’s features.

  When he didn’t get an answer, Mason’s internal wind chill hit bottom. His new best friend stepped in front of the headlights, casting a nightmare’s silhouette. He was wearing a full-length topcoat and a fedora jammed low on his brow, which covered his face but not the frozen gray breath leaking from his mouth like poison gas.

  Mason reached for his car door, hoping to put some steel between him and the man, but he was too slow. In the next instant, the man grabbed Mason and spun him around, pinning his face flush to the side of the Jeep, the frozen surface burning Mason’s jaw.

  Mason stiffened, trying to leverage his hands against the Jeep and drive his hips and back against the man, but the side of the Jeep was too slick and the man was too huge. He leaned in hard and close to Mason’s face. The wet wool of his topcoat smelled like a dog left too long in the rain, and his breath tasted of coffee, cigarettes, and licorice.

  “You get one chance, you understand that?” the man said.

  “Right. Sure. One chance. That’s easy enough.”

  “Your client’s gonna get an offer. Make sure he takes it.”

  “What kind of offer?”

  The man jammed his knee into the small of Mason’s back, sending a paralyzing jolt through Mason’s kidneys.

  “The only offer that will keep him and you alive. Got that, smart boy?”

  “Got it,” Mason managed through clenched teeth.

  The man released his grip and Mason crumpled to the pavement gasping for air. When he looked up, the man and the car were gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Mason crawled out of bed Friday morning feeling as if he’d slept in the middle of a rugby scrum. The blow he’d taken to his back had scrambled his internal organs and hardened his soft tissue. He was relieved that there was no blood in his urine. His kidneys had been shaken but not stirred.

  Ed Fiora was the only person Mason knew who had been involved with Jack Cullan and had a charge account at Thugs R Us. When Mason called the Dream Casino the day before and asked for Fiora, his call was transferred to an enthusiastic telemarketer named Dawn.

  “This is Dawn. May I make your dream come true today?”

  Mason had told her, “Absolutely, Dawn. Just connect me to Ed Fiora.”

  “We have a fabulous special offer today. I can sign you up for the Dream Casino’s free Super Slot Ultra-Gold New Millennium Frequent Player Bonus Point card. It’s personal and confidential.”

  “So is my business with Mr. Fiora.”

  “Just swipe your card through the card reader on any of the Dream’s fabulous slot machines, and each time you pull the handle, you’ll receive, absolutely free, ten bonus points. You can redeem your bonus points for fabulous prizes, beginning with two nights at the Dream’s Riverboat Casino Resort in Lake Winston, Mississippi, for only twenty-five thousand points. Isn’t that fabulous?”

  “No, Dawn, it isn’t. Fabulous would be not spending two minutes in Lake Winston, Mississippi. Fabulous would be you putting down your script, listening to me, and connecting me to Mr. Fiora. That would be really fabulous.”

  Dawn sputtered into the phone, caught somewhere between tears and ticked off. “One moment, please.”

  The next voice Mason heard was all New Jersey bent nose. “Sir, do we have a problem here?”

  “Who’s this? One of Frank Nitti’s boys?”

  “This is Carmine Nucci, guest relations. Who the fuck is this?”

  “You’re making that up, aren’t you, Carmine? I mean your name’s not really Carmine and the accent is phony. This is like part of the entertainment. Am I right?”

  Mason was certain that none of it was made up. Not Dawn. Not the bonus points, and not the threat laced through Carmine’s voice like battery acid.

  “Hey, pal. You want to make jokes, call Comedy Central. You want an Ultra-Gold slot card, we’ll give you one. You want to bust my girl’s chops, I’ll stick this phone up your ass you come around here.”

  “How many bonus points is that?” Mason asked, hanging up before Carmine could reply.r />
  Mason called back, this time asking for the business office, identifying himself as a lawyer, and asking to speak with Mr. Fiora concerning a criminal matter. Three underlings later, none of whom sounded as if they’d ever left Nebraska, Mason spoke with a woman whose name was Margaret who said she was an assistant to Mr. Fiora.

  “My name is Lou Mason. I’m an attorney. It’s very important that I speak with Mr. Fiora about a criminal matter.”

  “May I tell Mr. Fiora what the nature of the matter is?”

  Mason couldn’t tolerate people who didn’t take their own calls, who hired other people just to answer the phone calls transferred to them by other people who’d been hired for the same purpose, only to ask the caller the nature of the matter. He pictured Margaret sitting at her computer, scrolling down the list of criminal matters that would be worthy of Ed Fiora’s attention.

  “You may tell Mr. Fiora that the nature of the matter is the murder of his lawyer, Jack Cullan, and what he might know about it.”

  “I see,” Margaret said with more disappointment in Mason than concern for her boss. “I see,” she repeated as if the words had cured her astigmatism.

  “So, if you’ll just connect me to Mr. Fiora, I’m sure he’ll want to talk with me.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Mason, Mr. Fiora is not available.”

  “And when will he be available, Margaret?”

  “I don’t believe that he will ever be available, Mr. Mason. I’m so sorry.”

  “Margaret, you aren’t even close to sorry. You aren’t in the same zip code as sorry. Sorry would be that Mr. Fiora had a terrible accident on the way to the office, was rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery, but can work me in this afternoon. That would be sorry. This is just a mistake. A big mistake. You tell Mr. Fiora I said so.”

  “If you insist, Mr. Mason.”

  Mason replayed his conversations with Dawn, Carmine, and Margaret as he settled into his rowing machine and slowly began easing the kinks out of his back. He set the digital readout for ten thousand meters and gradually lost himself in the soothing repetitions of the stroke.

  The seat slid backward with each leg drive and rode forward with each pull of his upper body. He imagined that he was sculling downriver, the ripple of his lean wake cutting the water as he slipped unnoticed through the morning’s enveloping mist.

  A quick look around reminded Mason that he was in the middle of his dining room and that his rowing machine occupied the space that had been home to a table that seated eight. Not long ago, the Kansas City auxiliary of the Chicago mob had reduced the table, the chairs, and the rest of his worldly possessions to a pile of broken legs, glass, and splinters. It was their way of saying he shouldn’t have taken work home from his last law firm, Sullivan & Christenson.

  Mason lived on the money his homeowner’s insurance company paid for the loss of his personal possessions, using part of it to pay the expenses for his childhood friend Tommy Douchant’s lawsuit. By the time Mason settled Tommy’s case and could afford to refurnish the house, he didn’t want to. Instead, he bought only the things he needed, which turned out to be the only things he wanted.

  He finished his row. The mist, the lake, and the ache in his body were gone. “Plan your row and row your plan” was the rower’s creed. He hadn’t followed that simple rule when he tried to reach Ed Fiora. Instead, he’d smart-assed his way into a one-punch knockdown that underscored what to expect if he insisted on not getting the message.

  After downing a bottle of Gatorade, he went outside for the morning paper. The wind had moved on to punish some other part of the country. A light cover of snow crunched under his feet. The subzero air was bracing. His dog, Tuffy, a German shepherd–collie mixed breed, joined him on the short walk to the end of his driveway. Her blond and black German shepherd colors were layered through her winter coat in a collie’s pattern, complete with a pure white thatch under her chin.

  Tuffy raced through the front yard, nose to the ground, sniffing for anything interesting. She found nothing and followed Mason back into the house, where the phone was ringing.

  “Hello.”

  “It’s Rachel Firestone. What did you think of my story?”

  “What story?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t get the paper. The story is on the front page, above the fold.”

  “I just brought the paper in,” he said. “Give me a minute.”

  Rachel’s story recited Judge Pistone’s refusal to grant bail to Blues and Mason’s implied charge that unknown persons were applying pressure to get either a conviction or a plea bargain that would close the case of Jack Cullan’s murder as soon as possible. It tied Ed Fiora, Mayor Sunshine, and Beth Harrell into a tight circle around Cullan’s body and speculated aloud whether any of them would cooperate with Lou Mason in his defense of Wilson Bluestone, Jr., against a first-degree murder charge and possible death penalty. Fiora, the mayor, and Beth Harrell declined to comment.

  “You left out one thing,” he told her.

  “What?”

  “Off the record.”

  “Fine, fine. What?”

  “I think Fiora commented privately,” he said, telling her about his parking lot encounter.

  “Holy shit! Did you call the cops?”

  “What for? There were no witnesses. I couldn’t ID the guy or the car. Besides, I wouldn’t expect to get a sympathetic response. The cops are more likely to look for a cat stranded in a tree than for someone who kicked my ass. And I don’t want to read about that in tomorrow’s paper. I’ll figure some other way to get to Fiora. I don’t think he’ll respond well to being accused in the paper of ordering someone to assault me.”

  “My editor would be even less interested in getting sued. Did you have any luck with the mayor or Beth Harrell?”

  “Nope. I figure the mayor is the most likely to respond to bad press. I think Beth Harrell will see me because I was an irresistible student.”

  “Don’t sit by the phone. You’ll grow old. Listen, the mayor is speaking at the Salvation Army Christmas luncheon at the Hyatt today. I understand that the baked chicken is to die for.”

  “Any chance you’ll be stalking the mayor along with me?”

  “You can bet on it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Mason’s first stop was the Jackson County Jail, a redbrick building on the east side of police headquarters. The exterior was perforated by longitudinal rows of rectangular windows big enough to satisfy court-mandated quality-of-incarceration living standards and small enough to make certain the inmates stayed there to enjoy them.

  The receptionist was a civilian employee who wore olive slacks and a pale blue shirt with epaulets on the shoulders to give the ensemble an official appearance. Her bleached blond hair was pulled back tight enough to raise her chin to her lower lip, freezing her mouth in a scowl, though she might have just made an awful face as a child and it froze that way.

  According to the tag on her blouse, her name was Margaret. He rejected the likelihood of a conspiracy by the World Federation of Margarets to make his life miserable but clenched his smart-ass impulse just in case.

  “Good morning,” he told Margaret. “I’m Lou Mason and I’m here to see my client, Wilson Bluestone.”

  He handed her his driver’s license, his Missouri Bar Association membership card, and one of his business cards.

  Margaret scanned Mason’s card collection like a bouncer checking for fake IDs. “You didn’t sign the back of your bar card. I can’t accept it without a signature,” she said, handing the bar card back to Mason.

  Mason felt the first wave of intemperance ripple through his back and neck. He resisted the urge to vault the counter separating them and smiled instead.

  “Of course. Sorry about that,” he said as he signed his name and handed the card back to her.

  Margaret held the bar card alongside Mason’s driver’s license, comparing the two signatures like a Treasury agent looking for counterfeit t
wenties.

  “Bar card is expired. Can’t take an expired bar card. You should have paid your dues.”

  She handed the bar card back to Mason. He gripped the counter with both hands to keep them from her throat and decided to appeal to her sense of reason.

  “Margaret, consider what you’re saying. The bar card only means that I’m a member of the Missouri bar. It’s a form of identification. There’s nothing in the law that requires me to belong to the bar association or even be a lawyer to visit an inmate. Now, it happens that I am a lawyer and I have a client who’s locked in a cell upstairs who is entitled to the effective representation of his chosen counsel. If he’s deprived of that representation because you won’t let me see him, the judge will have to dismiss the charges. My client happens to have been charged with murder, which most people think is a pretty serious deal. So why don’t you call the prosecuting attorney and tell him that his case is going to get dismissed because you, Margaret, are refusing to let me see my client because my bar card has expired?”

  “Jeez. Are you a tight-ass or what? I’m just doing my job here. Pay your damn dues like everybody else.”

  “Trust me, Margaret. I’ve paid my dues. Now, open up.”

  Mason passed through a series of security checks that fell one pat down short of a body-cavity search and was ushered into a cramped room divided by a narrow countertop that served as a table. A reinforced double pane of glass cut the room completely in two. A circular metal screen was mounted in the glass, which allowed conversation to be heard on both sides.

  Mason stood, pacing in the small room until Blues entered through a door on the inmates’ side. They looked at each other for a full minute. Mason saw a defiant man, ramrod straight, ragged coal black hair hanging over his tawny brow, piercing eyes searching Mason for good news. Blues touched his closed fist to the glass, holding it there, Mason returning the gesture.