by Joel Goldman
“All right,” he said to Kelly. “What have you got that old Riley’s supposed to break into?”
He rubbed his palms together and his face shone with excitement as Kelly handed him the DVDs and the Johnny Mathis CD. Mason laid out the essential pieces of the puzzle. Riley listened thoughtfully, tugging occasionally at one of the gray wisps above his ears.
“What do you think, Riley?” Kelly asked when Mason finished.
“I like Johnny Mathis. Always made the missus melt. Mind if I keep it?”
“Be my guest. What about the movies?” Mason asked.
“It’s easy enough to hide data on a disk so that an amateur won’t find it,” he answered as he tapped one disk against the palm of his hand. “But I’m no amateur.”
“Diane Farrell told us she checked the list function and didn’t see anything else on them,” Mason added.
“May not have been on the same program as the video. I’ll check it out through the utilities program. That should identify everything on the disks. If someone was really clever, they could hide the data from that too. It may take time, but I’ll find it if it’s there.”
They left and Kelly took them to the shops ringing the courthouse square. An hour later, Blues, Sandra, and Mason had clean clothes. Their next stop was the showers in the county jail; Mason telling the others that it pays to have connections when traveling.
Clean and dressed, he found his way to Kelly’s office on the first floor of the courthouse. She sat in front of her desk digging through six inches of in-basket, shoving it aside when he pulled up a chair next to her. A faint breeze wandered in the open windows, adding the smell of freshly cut grass.
“Blues and Sandra are checking in with Riley. Where do we go from here?” he asked.
“You don’t go anywhere. Stay out of it. You don’t know what you’re doing, and I don’t need any more bodies showing up on my doorstep.”
She answered without looking up from her papers. Her message was clear. Take off.
Mason wasn’t listening. “Why are you so angry with me?”
It wasn’t an innocent question. He knew part of the reason. She had made that plain. He hoped she would tell him that it was his body she didn’t want dumped somewhere. She sat back in her chair, arms folded across her chest, lips pressed flat. She knew what he was asking her, and the answer wasn’t easy. She gave it in a tight, controlled voice.
“Lou, this is a murder investigation, not The Dating Game. You are attractive and fun to be with—in spite of your one-liner approach to life. If we’d met another time, maybe something good could happen. But you’re screwing up this investigation.”
“Which means that you’re using your badge to keep me away. You’re protecting yourself, not me. I’m not your dead partner. I’m not a cop and I’m not dirty.”
She flinched, telling Mason that he had hit home. She had become the one bright light in his suddenly chaotic life. He knew he couldn’t hold her if she didn’t want him. But he wasn’t about to roll away into the darkness.
“You’re way out of line, Counselor!”
She bit off each word and spat them at him. They traded hard stares until hers began to redden and glisten. “Damn you!” she snapped and swiveled her chair around, leaving him to argue with her back.
Mason got up slowly. “Blues can find his way back to the cabin even if it’s supposed to be a secret. I’ll wait for you there. Sandra can stay and work with Riley.” No response. He walked to the door and turned, still talking to the back of her chair. “You might want to run Vic Jr. through one of your crime computers, Sheriff. He’s got to be the link to Chicago. Maybe you’ll find something interesting.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
MASON FOUND BLUES LOADING THREE SHOTGUNS and enough ammunition for a small army into the backseat of his Trans-Am.
“Where in the hell did that come from?”
“Store across the street,” he said pointing to Smith’s Hunting and Fishing Shop.
“Did you get a hunting license?” Mason asked, ever the careful lawyer.
“We’re not going hunting,” he said as he slid in behind the wheel. “Get in.”
Mason closed the door and looked again at the armory in the back. “Well, I guess it’s a nice day for target practice, huh?”
“You ever shoot a gun, Lou?”
“No. Is that important?”
Blues smiled. “All depends on how you feel about getting your ass shot off.”
“I’m feeling very attached to my ass, actually.”
“I’m not going to sit up in those woods waiting for Camaya to come looking for us and not have anything to offer him except coffee.”
“Camaya doesn’t know where we are.”
“You killed one of his boys. It would have been better to kill him. He’s getting paid to kill you, so he’s got to find you. He’ll find Kelly and figure you won’t be far.”
“Thanks a lot. You’re the one who brought us here. If you knew Camaya would figure it out, why didn’t we go somewhere else?”
“Because that won’t solve your problem. He’d still find you.”
“So I’m supposed to become a gunslinger overnight and call Jimmie out for a showdown?”
“You’ll be lucky if you don’t shoot your dick off. Shotgun’s your best bet. Know why?”
“No, but I have a feeling you’re about to educate me.”
“A shotgun fires a pattern of shot that spreads out the farther it gets from the gun. It makes up for a lot of weak stomachs and shaky hands.”
“So why does Camaya use an automatic?”
“Ain’t nothin’ weak or shaky about him. He’s got a lot more experience killing folks. But I’ll take a shotgun every time for close work. The New York City Police Department did a study of shootings involving their officers. The average distance between the shooters was seven feet. At that distance, the cops only managed hits thirty-six percent of the time.”
“Lousy shots.”
“Nope. Just human. A man can stand on the firing range all day and put ten out of ten slugs in the center of the target. Trouble is, the target is standing still and isn’t shooting back. When it’s real, anyone with a weak bladder can be a lousy shot. All I want you to learn is how to load, point, and shoot. The shotgun will do the rest.”
They dragged a half dozen hay bales that had been lined against the back of the cabin over to the edge of the woods and stacked them two across and three high to create a makeshift shooting range. Blues positioned each layer so that there was a narrow ledge in front of the second and third bales. They scavenged through the cabin until they found an array of tin cans and other junk that didn’t object to being shot to pieces. Blues arranged their targets on the ledges, picked up a shotgun, and started class.
“This is a semiautomatic shotgun. Once it’s loaded and the safety is off, you pump it and pull the trigger. Keep pulling the trigger, and it keeps firing until the magazine is empty. Anybody who gets in the way will have a very bad day.”
“That’s it? Just point and shoot?” Mason asked, reaching for the gun. “This is starting to sound fun.”
“Not exactly, Wyatt Earp. Don’t point it at anybody or anything that you don’t intend to shoot.”
“Sounds reasonable. Let me have it.” Mason hefted the shotgun, raising it to his shoulder and then lowering it to his waist, aiming at the hay bales from his hip.
“What about the safety?”
“If you’re hunting quail, keep it on until you’re ready to shoot. If a man’s hunting you, keep it off. You forget to release it and you’re dead. You take too long to release it and you’re dead. It hangs up and you’re dead.”
Blues made him practice loading and unloading the gun, sighting, and firing without ammunition for an hour before letting Mason fire a live round. He paced off firing lines at ten-foot intervals from the hay bales, telling Mason to begin at the closest mark, fire three rounds, and back up to the next station.
The shot
patterns on the bales vividly demonstrated the spread from each shell. As he backed up, the spread grew into an ever-widening killing field. A blue-gray cloud of acrid smoke hung in the air. Mason had learned how to load, pump, point, and shoot. He just hoped the bad guys were as cooperative as the hay bales.
Afterward they sat on the front steps of the cabin sipping cold beer they’d bought on the drive back. The sun was on the backside of the cabin, leaving the front in comfortable shade. The quiet of the woods had returned and it was hard to believe that they’d just finished their war games.
“So—what are you going to do?” Blues asked.
“Circle the wagons, make ’em pay for every inch of ground—what am I supposed to say?”
“No, man. When this is over, what are you going to do?”
“I’ll treat the question as a vote of confidence. To tell you the truth, I haven’t really thought about it. I guess I’ll have to find a job or take up piano again.”
“You’d be better off joining the foreign legion. Why do you want to keep practicing law anyway?”
“I’m not certain. I had the right motives when I went to law school. Fight the good fight. Protect the individual. But I lost the fire somewhere along the way.”
“But you turned out to be pretty good at it.”
“Sometimes. I lost my last case. It was one of those I couldn’t afford to lose. Maybe I lost my nerve.”
“Fall off the horse, you’re supposed to get right back on. Maybe you should go back to the kind of practice you started with.”
“And maybe I should start doing what I should have done in the first place.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Listen to my aunt Claire. How about you? Are you going to spend the rest of your life as an itinerant Piano Man?”
“Nah. I’ve been making my changes all along.”
“Somehow musician and scuffling PI doesn’t sound like a grand strategy for fulfillment.”
Blues laughed and agreed. “You’re right about that, brother. I’m tired of bouncing from gig to gig. I’m buying my own place.”
“Get out! What kind of place?”
“Used to be a restaurant on Broadway. I’m gonna call it ‘Blues on Broadway.’ It’ll be a first-rate piano joint. I’ll play when I feel like it, and if I don’t feel like it, I’ll get somebody to sit in.” He said it with the satisfaction of a man who’d figured it all out.
“Have you closed the deal yet?”
“Supposed to close in three weeks. That’s why I wanted to have dinner with you last night. My place is across the street from the restaurant and I was going to ask you to look over the paperwork for me.”
“How big is it?”
“The club is a couple of thousand square feet. But I’m buying the whole building. There’s an office upstairs that I need to rent out. Make a nice place for some mouthpiece to hang his shingle. I’ll make you a good deal.”
Mason looked at Blues as he smiled and pulled on a long stem of grass he’d been chewing. Before Mason could answer, Blues said he was going for a walk. Mason watched him disappear into the woods, carrying a shotgun. He looked around for his, checked its load, and climbed back into the love seat on the porch to consider Blues’s offer.
Practicing law was the only way Mason knew how to make a living. He’d chosen the profession because he believed in the law—in its central role in society—in its capacity to heal and make whole. At first, representing injured people gave shape to those values. But the practice of law introduced a different human dimension to living those values. Partners he couldn’t trust; clients whose cases he couldn’t win and who had nowhere else to turn. He had abandoned those values just to keep practicing when he joined Sullivan & Christenson. Some safe harbor. A desk above Blues’s bar might be the right place to start over.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
KELLY PULLED INTO THE CLEARING around five o’clock. Mason was inside trying to scrape more clues from the printouts on O’Malley. She came in carrying sacks of groceries for the night and no signs of baggage from their conversation in her office. Mason wasn’t going anywhere, and so far, she wasn’t throwing him out.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Where’s Sandra?”
“She’s staying with Riley until they find something.”
The sacks contained K.C. strip steaks, corn on the cob, charcoal, watermelon, and more cold beer. Mason was back in the barbecue business. He built a fire and put the steaks on when the coals turned white on the outside while still glowing red on the inside. Kelly joined him and they watched the flames lick the steaks until Mason decided to test the waters.
“Any news on Vic Jr.?” he began.
“McNamara called again. He’s really pushing me to bring you in.”
“Bring me into what? He makes it sound like I’m a criminal.”
“He isn’t satisfied with the information I gave him. Says he has to talk to you personally. I told him I’d let you know.”
“Great. What else?”
She hesitated to answer. When she did, Mason understood why. Amateurs aren’t supposed to be right.
“Vic Jr. attended the University of Chicago. His senior year, he was charged with drug trafficking and interstate transportation of a minor. Since he crossed state lines it became a federal case. And then it all went away.”
“Daddy buy him out of it?”
“I don’t know. But it puts him in the right place at the right time. Carlo D’lessandro runs the skin trade and the dope in and out of Chicago. He might have hooked up with someone in D’lessandro’s organization and the contact followed him home to Kansas City.”
“So now what?”
“I’m going to Chicago in the morning.”
“Why? The money laundering isn’t part of your case. Leave that to the feds. I thought you wanted to find Sullivan’s killer.”
“We both know they’re tied together. I want to get a look at Junior’s file.”
“That’s it?”
“No. I’ve still got sources in Chicago. I may be able to find out if D’lessandro is running this operation. If he is, I might come up with some way to pressure him to back off.”
“How are you going to do that? Go see him and ask him nicely not to let Camaya kill the poor schmuck who wandered into this mess?”
“Lou, sometimes you make it hard to care about you.”
“Well, that’s just part of my charm.”
“Really? If that’s as good as it gets, I may bring him back here to meet you in person.”
The grill was going up in flames and the steaks were sizzling on the edge of incineration. Mason rescued their dinner just in time. Later, she joined him in the love seat and surprised him by leaning her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her, and she didn’t resist when he pulled her closer. Blues came outside and wisely announced he was going for another walk.
“My dad and I built this cabin,” she said, nestling against him. They were a natural fit. “It was just before he died. He could build anything—do anything. I helped him trim the trees and notch the logs so they’d fit together. Making it together made it really special.”
“It is special.”
“It’s always been my hideout. I come here to heal my wounds.”
The air was clear, the sky a starlit panorama. The love seat rocked them gently as he pulled her face to his. Finally, she breathed his name.
“Do you want to see my trapdoor?”
“I always knew you were a hopeless romantic.”
He fumbled with her belt. She held his hands in check.
“No, you dope. I really do have a trapdoor. I made my dad build it in the cabin. I thought it would be fun to have a secret way out.”
“Oh. Sure, I’d love to see it.” Mason said, slumping against the love seat. “Where is it?”
“In the bedroom.”
She giggled and spun out of his grasp, clinging to
his fingertips. They made it to the bedroom, but Mason never saw the trapdoor. They began to undress each other as the moonlight cast their shadows against the wall. The bed was soft and they rolled to the center, entangled, consumed by the exquisite sense of discovery when two people make love for the first time. Part shyness, part adventure.
Mason traced the freckles on her chest with his fingertips, an abstract pattern caressing her breasts. She stroked the side of his face in a soft gesture that slid past his chest and ended with a grasp both firm and delicate. They paused for a moment, eavesdropping on the night sounds rolling through the woods, catching the sounds that didn’t belong.
Soft but certain footsteps, a discreet tap at the bedroom door, Blues’s cautious whisper as it opened a crack. “We’ve got company.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
“HOW MANY?” KELLY ASKED.
She dressed with an economy of movements, ignoring Blues’s presence. He kept his back to her, but Mason couldn’t. Watching her put her shirt back on was nearly as mesmerizing as taking it off. The sound of shells rattling into shotgun magazines finally got him moving.
“There’s a black Escalade blocking the road right where it comes into the clearing. Four guys got out, one short and heavy. He was giving orders to the other three. I figure we’ve got a couple of minutes, tops.”
Kelly snapped her service pistol around her waist. Blues dumped extra shells into three ammunition bags, slinging one over his shoulder, handing them the other two along with their shotguns as the woods came alive with animal sounds telegraphing news of the advancing party.
The air in the cabin thickened. Beads of sweat dripped from Blues’s neck. Kelly’s hair was matted along the edge of her cheeks. They were wired but under control. Mason’s stomach churned as he picked up his shotgun and ammo pouch.
Kelly slipped into the front room and peered out the edge of a window. The moonlight illuminated the clearing enough to make out shapes but not faces.
