by Joel Goldman
Holt’s name made no sense.
“Kelly Holt?”
“Yeah, why?” McNamara asked.
“She’s the sheriff investigating Sullivan’s death.”
“I wasn’t aware that she stayed in law enforcement,” St. John said as he glared at McNamara, reprimanding him for his oversight. “The paper said that Sullivan drowned.”
“He died during our firm retreat. I helped identify the body. That’s all I know. We’ll have a response to the subpoena in a month.”
Mason was silent on the walk back to the office, trying to piece together fragments that didn’t match. Sandra waited to interrupt his thoughts until they were in the conference room, surrounded by the O’Malley files.
“Are you going to tell me what Kelly Holt has to do with Sullivan’s death or do I have to use my knife?” No response. “Lou, it’s a very sharp knife.”
“Do you believe in coincidences?”
“No. I believe in chaos.”
“O’Malley, Sullivan, and the firm are being investigated by the FBI. Sullivan dies and the sheriff who is investigating his death just happens to be an ex–FBI agent who just happened to be in charge of wiretapping O’Malley. Coincidence or chaos?”
He didn’t add that the sheriff didn’t tell him she’d been involved in the investigation. He hadn’t had time to sort through that piece.
“Chaos—the rule of unintended consequences. Seemingly unconnected events run headlong into each other. It’s like God is using people to play bumper cars. Sullivan drowned. Where’s the connection?”
“Sullivan was murdered. That’s not what I would call an unintended consequence.”
Maggie Boylan and Phil Rosa pushed the door open, wheeling in a portable workstation with a PC, printer, paper, legal pads, calculators, and a lifetime supply of Post-its. Mason and Sandra exchanged looks, agreeing to table the discussion of murder.
“Do you have any idea how many trees will die before we’re done with the paper in this case?” Rosa asked.
“I don’t care,” Mason said, “as long as you finish reviewing O’Malley’s files by Sunday night. I want an analysis of all of the transactions we’ve handled for O’Malley. I want to know what each deal involved, who financed it, what changed hands, and the names of all past and present Sullivan & Christenson attorneys who worked on them.”
“We could really use a legal assistant to set up a database for all that information. We’ve got the software to sort the data, but we need someone who uses it all the time if we’re going to be ready for O’Malley on Monday,” Maggie Boylan said.
“Sorry, we’ve got to keep this team as small as possible. I can’t take the chance of leaks.”
“She’s right,” Sandra said. “There are thousands of documents to review. Diane Farrell was Sullivan’s paralegal. There can’t be anything in these files she doesn’t already know.”
Phil stiffened at the suggestion. “That woman is the biggest pain in the ass in four states. If she wasn’t screwing Sullivan, she had him by the short hairs some other way. Sullivan let her get away with murder. No one can stand to work with her.”
“For Christ’s sake, Phil,” Maggie said, “can’t we wait until the body’s cold before we start shitting all over the grave? She knows this stuff inside and out. Besides, I’d rather have her where I can watch her than wonder what she’s doing to get even for being left out.”
Mason gave in. “All right, I’m convinced by this underwhelming endorsement. Bring her in, but tell her she’s out of a job if she can’t keep her mouth shut. Sandra and I will be in Sullivan’s office.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sullivan had a corner office with glass on three sides, giving him a panoramic view stretching from downtown to the horizon. Bookshelves mounted above file drawers stood behind his wraparound desk.
Mason tackled the file drawers and Sandra poked through the desk. When they were finished, they were no closer to any answers. There was nothing pertaining to O’Malley or St. John’s subpoena.
“Scott said he found St. John’s subpoena on Sullivan’s desk. If Sullivan was hiding that from us, I don’t think he would have left it lying around and I don’t think he would have put it in his out basket so his secretary could file it. He would have hidden it, probably with whatever other files on O’Malley he didn’t want anyone else to see,” Sandra said.
“Makes sense, but it doesn’t look like he kept them in his office.”
“Maybe somebody got here ahead of us or maybe he kept them in an office at home. We should have a look after the funeral. I did find this DVD, but it’s not labeled.”
She handed it to Mason. He booted up Sullivan’s desktop PC and inserted the disk into the CD/DVD drive.
“Man-O-Manischewitz,” Mason said.
They watched as a half dozen naked men and women mixed and matched parts as if they were playing a deviant version of Mr. Potato Head.
“Look at those angles. I better take some notes,” Sandra said.
“That’s all the excitement I can stand,” Mason announced. His face was flushed as he punched the disk out of the computer and returned it to its case.
“What’s the matter?” Sandra teased. “Afraid to walk down the hall with Johnny Rocket ready for liftoff?”
She made a show of letting her eyes slide down his chest to his zipper.
“You are brutal. You know that? But watching a porno flick together is not my idea of bonding with you.”
Sandra wouldn’t let up. “You sure those big boys aren’t making you insecure?”
“Of all people, Sandra, I thought you would know.”
“Know what?”
“Like the song says, it ain’t the meat. It’s the motion.” Mason enjoyed Sandra’s silent, red-faced response. “Let’s go,” he added, grabbing the DVD. “I think I’ll keep this so it doesn’t show up in the stuff we turn over to St. John.”
“Just a minute. Let’s try a reality check with St. John.” Sandra unscrewed the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver on Sullivan’s desk. “You’re going to love this,” she said, showing him the miniature microphone attached to the mouthpiece.
Mason ripped the receiver from the phone and fifteen minutes later slammed open St. John’s office door with Sandra and St. John’s secretary on his heels.
“You really are a piece of work, St. John. Did you think we wouldn’t check for bugs just because you said there weren’t any?”
He jammed the mouthpiece under St. John’s nose. Two deputy marshals ran into the office, weapons drawn.
“Sorry, Mr. St. John, but your secretary pushed the panic button,” one of the deputies said.
“They didn’t have an appointment, Mr. St. John. They wouldn’t even let me buzz you first,” his secretary said.
“It’s quite all right, Paula. You did the right thing. Deputies, I’m sorry to trouble you. Mr. Mason and Miss Connelly will be leaving shortly, either with or without your assistance. It makes no difference to me.”
Mason pretended not to notice the guards as they advanced toward them.
“All I want is some answers, Frank. Why are you bugging our offices?”
St. John took the receiver from Mason, studied it, and handed it back to him.
“Mr. Mason, I’m afraid you may have more problems than either of us thought. Even those of us on the public tit can afford better equipment than this. It’s not one of ours. Good day, Counselors.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Wilson Bluestone’s friends called him “Blues,” a name he’d earned playing piano in jazz clubs around Kansas City after he quit his day job as a cop. He and Mason became friends when Mason quit taking piano lessons from him at the Conservatory of Music.
Mason signed up for lessons a couple of years after he’d graduated from law school, and Blues was assigned as his teacher. At his first lesson, Mason told him that if he could play like Oscar Peterson, he’d think he’d died and gone to heaven. After four lessons, Blues told
him to go home, listen to the metronome, and find another route to the pearly gates.
When Mason didn’t show up for his next lesson, Blues called demanding an explanation. Mason told him he got the metronome message and Blues reminded him that he had paid for the first five lessons and that he ought to get his money’s worth.
“Why are you giving up?” he asked when Mason walked into the studio.
It was a small, spare room furnished with an upright piano and a gray metal folding chair. Blues straddled the chair, his arms folded over the back. Mason took the bench, his back to the piano.
“Like I told you over the phone. I got your message. I wasn’t born to be a genius jazz pianist.”
“Why did you sign up in the first place?”
“I love jazz and I think the piano is God’s gift to music.”
“Yeah, but why did you think you could learn to play?”
Mason hadn’t expected this question. “I just assumed anyone who wanted to play could learn to play.”
“What do you like about the music?”
“The way it sounds, I guess. What do you want me to say? Is this some kind of exit interview for failing students?”
“That’s why you’ll never learn to play. It’s not what you hear. It’s how the music makes you feel. If it doesn’t change the way you see the world, you’re just in the audience. And the audience doesn’t play.”
“I guess you’re right. I thought learning to play music was like learning a foreign language. First you learn the alphabet, then the grammar, and then you practice speaking. Keep after it, and you’ve got it mastered.”
“I’ll bet you don’t speak any foreign languages either.”
He was right, but Mason wouldn’t admit it. “Is that all I get for my last lesson?”
“It’s more than you got out of the first four.”
“So is this all you do? Take people’s money to tell them why they shouldn’t take lessons from you?”
“Nope. I’m sort of a freelance problem solver.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Some like yours. Help people realize that they’re better off listening to music than trying to play it. I’m a private investigator. I find people who don’t want to be found and I find out things that people want to know. All depends on what needs to be done.”
He stood up and Mason realized that was the first time he’d seen Blues out of the folding chair. Watching that single movement, Mason began to get an idea of the other kinds of problems he could solve.
Blues was a solid six-three, probably went two-twenty. All of it sleek muscle. But he moved with such ease that it was clear he had power that didn’t depend on size and strength. He had straight black hair and a complexion somewhere between tan and copper. His face was chiseled, with a square chin and dark eyes. The truth was, Mason hadn’t paid much attention to who he was or what he looked like until that moment. And he couldn’t figure who or what Blues was. The one thing Mason was certain of: Blues didn’t belong to his synagogue.
“Mind if I ask you a question?”
“I’m half Cherokee, half Shawnee. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it? You’d do better not to stare.”
“An Indian jazz piano player?”
Mason had said it without thinking, almost choking on the question.
“Used to be. Now I’m a Native American jazz piano player. Political correctness ain’t strictly a black thing, you know. And if you’ve got more fool questions, don’t ask them.”
Mason took his advice and didn’t ask any until six months later, when he needed help tracking down a drunk driver who had run over a client in an intersection and fled the scene of the accident. He hired Blues to find the driver.
A week later, Blues called and said he’d found the driver and asked Mason to meet him at Seventh and Pennsylvania on the northwest corner of the downtown. Mason knew the location. It was called the Lookout because it was on top of a bluff that overlooked the Missouri River as it wound down from the north before turning to the east and heading to its meeting with the Mississippi River in St. Louis.
It was the first week of October, and an early cold snap had sucked the last remnants of summer from the air, leaving behind a sharp, crisp sky overhead and small clouds of exhaust from the thousands of cars that flew past on the highways that wrapped around the base of the bluff. Mason parked his car and met Blues at the edge of the Lookout.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Hey, good to see you,” Mason said, his hand outstretched. It was a friendly gesture. Appropriate for greeting someone he hadn’t seen in six months and who had agreed to help him out without even negotiating a fee in advance.
Blues ignored his hand, his gaze locked on the distance.
“What are you going to do to him?” Blues asked.
“Who? The guy who hit my client? I’m going to sue the son of a bitch.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing. That’s why I wanted you to find him. I need to find out who his insurance company is so I can put them on notice.”
Blues swept his hand across the view. “What do you see out there?”
Mason started to make a smart-ass remark, like “Not the guy you were supposed to find for me,” when he remembered his last piano lesson. There was a message here and he wasn’t getting it.
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Over there,” Blues said, pointing to the west. “That’s the Kansas River. The Indians called it the Kaw, and that spot, where it pours into the Missouri—right where the Missouri bends to the east—they called that Kawsmouth. Not very original. But it makes the point. Down there, where I-70 cuts across the downtown, that was all bluffs—just like this. Right down to the banks of the Missouri. Back in the 1870s, they dug out those bluffs to make the streets. At first they just cut the streets out of the bluffs, like gullies. They even called it Gullytown for a while, instead of Kansas City. To the west, over there, in those old warehouses that are used for haunted houses at Halloween—that’s the West Bottoms. More hogs and cattle were slaughtered there than you could ever imagine. Ten thousand people worked there when the meatpacking business was booming. Lot of people got rich. Not one of them an Indian.”
“I know there’s a point to this and I do appreciate the history lesson, but where’s my drunk?”
Blues made another quarter turn to the southwest. “Over that way, back into Kansas—you can’t really see it from here—is where the government put the Shawnee tribe to get them out of the way of all that progress. They kept moving the tribes farther west, each time promising them that they could have those lands forever. Course, it didn’t work out that way.”
“Look, if this is some kind of sensitivity test, let me know. I’ll tell you the story about my Jewish ancestors sneaking out of their Lithuanian village in the middle of the night so that they wouldn’t be killed in the monthly pogrom. They ended up here with a set of candlesticks and nothing else. My great-grandfather helped cut the stones they used for those streets and my grandfather slaughtered his share of those animals. Nobody said it was fair. I don’t need for you to know about that or to give a shit. I just want to know if you found my drunk.”
Blues looked at him with a half smile. “Just wanted you to know, that’s all.”
“Know what?”
“I’ve got more faith in my system of justice than in the one you’re going to use to squeeze a few bucks out of your drunk’s insurance company. I’ll help you when I want to and you’ll pay me. I don’t like what you’re doing or I decide I don’t like you—that’s it. That’s my justice system.”
“Fair enough. But if I don’t get my drunk, you don’t get paid.”
“I’ve got your drunk. By the way,” he added with mock surprise, “I didn’t know Mason was a Jewish name.”
Mason couldn’t hold back his grin. “Yeah? Well, I guess that means we’re even since I didn’t know there were any Indian piano players.”
Their arrangement had worked well over the years. Blues could find just about anyone who didn’t want to be found and find out most things that people didn’t want someone else to know. And he did it with a confidence and fearlessness that made it difficult for people to resist. When they did, they regretted it.
Blues didn’t volunteer much about himself. Eventually Mason strung together enough bits and pieces to know that he’d been married and divorced before he was twenty, served in the army special forces, and spent six years as a cop in Kansas City.
He quit the police force after he shot and killed a woman suspected of smothering her baby to stop her from crying. Blues never went into the details except to say that the brass gave him the choice to quit or be fired. He quit being a cop but kept playing piano and moonlighting as a freelance problem solver.
Mason suspected that something more than reading history had shaped Blues’s uncompromising solutions for the problems people brought to him. But Mason had yet to turn over that rock. Nor could Mason explain why Blues had agreed to help him with the drunk and his other cases he’d needed help with since he quit playing piano. The one time he’d asked, Blues told him it was the only way he could make certain that Mason didn’t start playing again.
They met for breakfast Wednesday morning at a midtown diner where the upwardly mobile have breakfast and the down-and-out spend hours with a cup of coffee.
“Sounds like you and your pinstriped partners are in deep shit, man,” Blues said after Mason finished telling him what had happened over the last three days. “You want me to watch your back until this is over?”
“You think my back needs to be watched?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve got one dead partner and somebody wants you to either join him or be convicted for killing him.”
Mason couldn’t ignore the warning in Blues’s offer. His willingness to accept it after he’d turned down a similar offer from Kelly was more than a little sexist. He resolved to work on his gender insecurity just as soon as people stopped trying to kill him.