by Joel Goldman
“If Sullivan was on to your scam, that’s a good motive for murder.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t do it and I don’t know who did,” Scott said, raising his arms and dropping them in his lap, signaling his surrender.
“Why did you and Harlan leave so early Sunday morning? And don’t tell me it was to get ready for your closing.”
“We wanted to search Sullivan’s office to find out how much he knew. I got there before Harlan. He called me when he found out that Sullivan was dead.”
“Who did you call from the office that afternoon to talk about Sullivan’s death?”
“How do you know about that?”
“Angela bugged your office, you schmuck. You were screwing her, but she was fucking you.”
Scott shook his head. “I trusted her.”
“Imagine that. Who did you call?”
“It was just a number and a voice. No names.”
“And you didn’t find the disks?”
“Didn’t know about the disks on Sunday.”
“When did you find out about them?”
“At Sullivan’s funeral. Angela told me she walked into Sullivan’s office the week before. He was talking to O’Malley about having the records they needed on a CD. Angela was worried that some of our legitimate work for O’Malley would get screwed up and, with Sullivan gone, he’d fire us. None of us could afford to lose O’Malley’s business.”
“You mean she didn’t know what was on the CD?”
“If she did, she didn’t say anything about it. She was just looking after the firm’s biggest client.”
“So how did you know there was anything on the CD?”
“I didn’t know for certain. But it was the only thing that made sense. I knew Sullivan had the information and I couldn’t find it anywhere else. Everyone in the office knew you had the disks.”
“So you told your anonymous business partners I had the disks even though you knew it could get me killed?”
“I didn’t know!”
A husky voice interrupted. “Sure you did.”
It was Jimmie Camaya, standing at the opposite end of the benches, pointing a pistol at them, a silencer screwed into the barrel. Mason tightened his grip on his gun, holding it next to his thigh out of Camaya’s view.
“How do you do it, Jimmie? You always show up just when I’m getting to the good part.”
Camaya flashed his serpentine smile. “You just got bad luck, Mason. I came here to tell Scott about his retirement. Looks like you both can have a going-away party now. Too bad I didn’t get here before Scott got so talkative. But it don’t matter since you’re both dead.”
“If it doesn’t matter, then let me hear the rest of it; maybe you’ll learn something.”
Mason turned back to Scott, hoping to distract Camaya long enough to gain the edge he needed. “Jimmie says you’re lying, Scott. Says you knew they’d kill me? Is that right?”
“I don’t know which one of you is crazier!” Scott shouted. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, Lou, but I was in too deep. They told me to get the disks back—”
“Or else?” Mason asked.
“Or else Scott would end up like your partner, Harlan Christenson,” Camaya said.
Scott’s face froze. The unspeakable meaning of what Camaya said hit Mason head-on.
“You told them Harlan was being audited, and they were afraid he’d make a deal with the feds and turn all of you in, so they killed him,” Mason said.
Scott didn’t answer, but Camaya did.
“Julio snapped that old man’s neck like it was a chicken’s leg. You should have got there early, like Scotty here did. He had a front-row seat.”
Mason listened in disbelief. The tears rolling off Scott’s face and the retreating look in his eyes said it was true.
“He made me watch—,” Scott said. “So I wouldn’t forget to do what I was told.”
“And then you took Julio out with a goddamn toilet! What a fucked-up world, huh, Mason? So, Scott, you want to go first this time or watch another one of your friends die?”
Camaya pointed his gun at Scott. Mason estimated the distance between them at about ten feet.
“Jimmie, do me a favor, come a little closer, will you?”
“Why?”
“Better odds at seven feet,” Mason said, raising his gun and firing three quick rounds.
Mason didn’t know which round hit Camaya, but only one did, the others shattering the mirror behind him. Camaya squeezed off a shot as he fell to the floor, wounding Scott, who toppled onto Mason, knocking him off the bench. Mason looked up to see Blues standing over Camaya.
“He ain’t dead, but he sure bleeds a lot.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Camaya wheezed from the round that caught him in the right side of his chest, pressing a towel Mason gave him against the wound, slowing the bleeding.
“Hey, Mason,” he whispered in a feathery voice. “Why’d you shoot me, man?”
“Gee, Jimmie, I don’t know. Seemed like a better idea than letting you shoot me.”
“Aw, man! I was gonna shoot Scott—I hadn’t made up my mind about you.”
“Yeah, how come?”
“Friend of mine wants to talk to you—besides, you was gettin’ to be good company.”
“Who’s your friend, Jimmie?”
“Man—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“No way—it’s all I got to deal with—”
He started to gag and cough blood just as the paramedics arrived. Mason went to look for Scott when they started talking about establishing an airway.
Camaya’s shot had grazed Scott’s shoulder. One of the paramedics was cleaning a crimson furrow along his upper back when Mason found him sitting mannequin-like on a bench, expressionless as an EMT tended him.
“Scott,” Mason said.
“Forget it, buddy,” the EMT said. “The guy is zoned out.”
“What do you mean? Is he in shock?”
“Way past that. The shrinks got a name for it. I call it ‘zoned.’ Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t.”
He finished bandaging Scott and unfolded him onto a stretcher. Scott never blinked as they rolled him out to the elevator.
Harry Ryman questioned Mason in one corner of the locker room while another detective quizzed Blues in a different corner. A forensics team methodically gathered evidence, taking photographs and measurements to preserve the scene. An hour later, they were ushered downstairs through a gauntlet of reporters. Their police scanners had picked up the report of the “Mid-America Club Shoot-out,” as one overheated journalist dubbed it. Mason managed a tight-lipped “no comment” before their squad car pulled away.
The homicide squad room was a collection of grimy steel desks, gunmetal gray chairs, and matching filing cabinets overstuffed with the statistical residue of the city’s violence. Mason sat in a chair next to Harry Ryman’s desk while Ryman banged away on his keyboard.
“You leave out any details you want me to know about, Lou?” Harry asked him when he finished typing.
Mason had told Harry almost everything. He didn’t tell Harry that he’d killed one of Camaya’s henchmen with a toilet. That was too twisted a road to go down.
“I hit the high points, Harry. When can I get out of here?”
“Pretty soon. It’ll be up to the prosecutor to decide whether to charge you with anything, but I don’t think he will. It’s a pretty clear case of self-defense. You might get some heat for carrying a weapon without a license, but that won’t play too good. You’ll come out of this a hero.”
Mason shook his head. “That I don’t need.”
“There is one other thing. Couple of nights ago, we got a call about a dead body in a warehouse down in the West Bottoms. Only thing was, there was no dead body. We found some blood on the floor at the front of the warehouse and some more in a bathroom in the back. Turns out the warehouse is owned by this Victor
O’Malley you been telling me so much about. You got any clues for me on this situation?”
“Sorry, Harry. I can’t help you with that.”
Harry studied him closely. “Your aunt Claire and me got something nice going. She cares a lot for you. Talks about you all the time. Don’t do anything that might mess that up for any of the three of us. Are we clear?”
Mason nodded. “We’re clear, Harry.”
“Try that sofa over there. They’ll be done with Bluestone pretty soon.”
Mason moved to the faded, dust-soaked couch and closed his eyes while he waited for Blues. He didn’t expect to sleep. He just wanted to hide for a few minutes.
The hardened footsteps of cops and perps played an uneven cadence on the linoleum floor. Tired questions and angry answers swirled around him in a haze of faded aftershave and street smells. A door slammed but Mason didn’t peek until he heard a familiar feminine voice.
“No-good pencil-necked son of a bitch!”
Sandra Connelly tripped over Mason’s outstretched legs, unable to catch herself before falling onto the sofa next to him.
“Bad day?” he asked.
“Are you the victim or the suspect?” she asked. “Never mind, I don’t care.” She started to get up, but he grabbed her arm.
“Hold on. What the hell are you doing here?”
She yanked her arm free and stood up. “Touch me again, Louis, and I’ll perform your second circumcision.”
“Just a little off the sides, please.” Mason was scrambling, but she hadn’t left yet. It was progress. “I plead temporary insanity. I don’t blame you for walking out. I won’t blame you for leaving again. And I’m sorry and I’m glad you’re all right. Sullivan’s illegitimate kid was born in Rogersville, Kansas. The mother was named Meredith Phillips. She’s not in the phone book but her relatives might be. I’m here because I shot Camaya. What are you in for?”
“Depends. Burn any of your friends at the stake today?”
“Close. Camaya made Scott Daniels watch Julio kill Harlan. Scott got the message and gave me up. How was your day?”
“Lousy. Angela is dead,” she said, and she sat down next to him.
Mason couldn’t respond. For a minute, he thought he would join Scott in his twilight zone.
“The cops think she committed suicide, but I don’t buy it,” she continued.
Images of Angela flashed in Mason’s mind; lover to Sullivan and Scott, amateur spy, embezzler, manipulator. Whatever she was, she was a risk taker, not a quitter. He couldn’t picture her taking her own life.
“How did she die?”
“Some kind of overdose. They won’t know for certain until they do the autopsy. It just happened tonight.”
“Who told you?”
“Nobody. I was the one that found her.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Sandra’s anger softened with the telling of the story. “I told you I would figure this out myself, and I decided to start with Angela. I went to that bar she took you to, The Limit, and waited. She showed up around eight.”
Mason glanced at the classroom clock on the opposite wall. It was one a.m.
“She was alone,” Sandra said. “I told her that if you figured out the wiretaps, the wrong people could too.”
“Thanks for the endorsement.”
“She was really shaken when she heard what happened to you at the lake, and she started to talk. She knew from the wiretaps that Sullivan had the goods on Scott and Harlan and that he was keeping the information on a CD. She wanted the disk for blackmail and guessed that the information was on one of the CDs you had. So she copied them.”
“Then the bad guys would chase me, never knowing she had a copy. She could blackmail them, and they’d never know what her sources were.”
“Exactly.”
“Scott found religion tonight too.” He told her what happened at the Mid-America Club. Sandra gave him a sympathetic look that showed more compassion than he gave her credit for. “Is that all Angela told you?”
“She said there was something else that she didn’t want to talk about in public. She said she was meeting someone else at nine, so we agreed to meet at her place at eleven. When I got there, she was dead.”
“So why do the cops think it was suicide?”
“No signs of forced entry, no visible signs of violence. I found her slumped over her PC with a suicide note on the screen. The cops found a syringe in her bathroom that they think she used to overdose.”
“What did the note say?”
“Something about Sullivan exposing her to AIDS and not wanting to die that way. I tried to tell the cops that she wouldn’t have killed herself, but they like the easy way out.”
Before Mason could ask another question, Blues joined them, nodding a noncommittal hello to Sandra.
“You done?” he asked Mason, who nodded his reply. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Any news on Camaya?”
“Yeah, he’s gonna make it. Scott’s been admitted to Western Missouri Mental Health.”
Blues didn’t say a word when Sandra walked out with them. Mason was glad that Camaya would survive. He preferred the threat of Camaya to more blood on his hands.
A weak storm front had coasted through the city while they were inside. The air smelled wet, and tepid steam rose from the pavement beneath the streetlights. Ghost clouds draped the moon as they walked to the cars.
“Mine’s this way,” Sandra said to Mason, motioning to a parking lot across the street. “We’ve had a rough ride, Lou. We both could use some company.”
Mason needed some company, but not Sandra’s. “I can’t. But thanks.”
She forced a bright smile. “That’s okay. Say hi to the sheriff for me.”
Blues dropped Mason at home, where he found his TR6 in the driveway. “Did you arrange that?” Mason asked.
“I been too busy to worry about your damn car. There’s a note on the windshield.”
Mason got out of Blues’s car and pulled the note from beneath the windshield wiper.
“It’s from Harry Ryman. It says, We traced this car to your neighbor, who says she sold it to you. Claire made me get it back for you. Be glad she don’t ask for too many favors.”
Blues shook his head. “You should have been dead at least three times in the last two weeks, man. Somebody is looking out for you.”
Mason watched him drive away before going inside. His empty, forlorn house couldn’t slow the spring in his step as he bounded inside, buoyed by the return of his TR6. The message light was blinking on his answering machine. He realized he hadn’t been home in days. The first ten messages were from reporters promising a flattering exclusive. Mason was in the fast lane of his fifteen minutes of fame. The last was a message from Kelly. She left a number for him to call and ended by saying she missed him.
He called the number, tapping his fingers against the kitchen counter until she answered.
“Hi, it’s Lou.”
“I know who it is, you dope,” she said softly. “I recognized your number.”
Mason warmed at the sound of her voice. “What’s the latest?”
“You made CNN. Are you all right?”
He filled her in on the details of the shoot-out, answering her pointed and professional questions.
“Now it’s your turn,” he told her.
“I’ve still got some friends in the bureau’s Chicago office. They let me have a look at Vic Jr.’s file. He was busted in 1996, just like the computer records said.”
“Could you tie him to D’lessandro?”
“He was represented by Caravello and Landusky. That’s the same firm that represents D’lessandro and that signed off on the fixtures deals.”
“Seems like too much of a coincidence.”
“The FBI got involved because he was transporting across state lines.”
“Drugs or girls?”
“Both. And you don’t do that in Chicago without D’lessandro�
��s permission.”
“So, that’s it? There’s nothing else to tie Vic Jr. to the mob?”
“Maybe—not exactly—I don’t know for certain.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
The line was lifeless for a moment, and then she answered, raising more questions.
“My partner, Nick, busted Vic Jr. I was off that weekend and he was working alone. He claimed that he got a tip, thought it might be a link to D’lessandro, and ended up with Junior.”
Her voice was heavy with sadness and uncertainty. Her partner—and dead lover—had arrested the son of Sullivan & Christenson’s biggest client. Then he ends up gut shot on a sidewalk in Kansas City, Junior disappears, and Mason becomes a moving target. No matter how he arranged these pieces, he couldn’t make them fit.
“Did D’lessandro make Nick dump the case against Vic Jr.?”
“I don’t know. But a week after the bust, McNamara took him off the case and reassigned it to himself.”
“Gene McNamara? St. John’s lapdog?”
“The same. I told you, we were all in Chicago at the same time.”
Sandra’s chaos theory was in full bloom, bumper cars in a major pileup.
“What about the bank accounts and passwords?”
“I’m still working on it. I’m on the Southwest flight that gets in at five fifty-five Sunday night. Will you pick me up?”
“No problem.”
“Lou, be careful. This isn’t over yet,” she said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Mason got up before dawn, too wired to sleep. After a run and a shower, he decided it was a great top-down day and took the TR6 for a drive. He headed south, through the suburbs and into the country, following the same route he’d taken six days earlier to Harlan Christenson’s farm, shutting out everything except the sun and the breeze until he pulled into Harlan’s gravel drive.
Mason had missed Harlan’s funeral, so he’d come to the farm to pay his respects. Harlan was the one partner who had reached out to him, whose friendship seemed genuine. When he came to Mason for help, he still had a chance to find a way out, but Mason didn’t pay enough attention. Mason knew he’d carry that burden for a long time.