by Lee Goldberg
"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 th
e 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.
"I've never had someone watch my back before. Is that a hard thing to do?"
"Easier than teaching you to play the piano."
"Do I get more than one hour a week?"
"I'll be around as much as I can. Most of the time, you won't know it, but I won't have you covered all the time. You'll have to be careful."
"I'll just talk into my collar so the bad guys will think I've got backup around the corner. In the meantime, I don't have a clue who planted the bug. St. John says it's not one of his."
"He's right about that," Blues said as he rolled the microphone in his palm. "Every low-life PI in town has a drawer full of these."
"Sullivan's funeral is at one o'clock today. The office will be closed. Find out if any more of these toys are lying around. Where are you playing tonight?"
"I've got a gig at The Landing."
"I'll see you there around nine."
"Any suggestions if someone decides to skip the funeral to catch up on paperwork?"
"Anyone who's there instead of the funeral will have more explaining to do than you. The elevator to our floors will be locked out and you'll have to use our access code." Mason handed Blues a slip of paper with a series of numbers on it. "Use that sequence on the elevator control panel. It's the only way to get to our floors."
"Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?"
"I hate being the last to know what's going on."
"What about your partner who found the bug?"
"Sandra Connelly. We agreed not to say anything to anyone else."
"But you didn't tell her about me, did you?"
"No, and don't start interrogating me. I'm being careful, just like you told me. See you tonight."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Mason decided to skip the office and visit Ellen Philpott instead. He knew that dropping in on a witness unannounced was better than calling for an appointment. It was easier to hang up than it was to close the door in someone's face.
He had followed the same rule when he met Kate for the first time. He was at a lecture, which was thin cover for a chance to meet women who didn't like getting picked up at bars. He stared at her from the moment she walked in. She was slender and slick, with thick, wavy black hair. And she knew how to move. She didn't walk. She shimmied and shimmered. What she lacked in cover-girl credentials, she made up in mystique.
It was a combination of things; the arc of her smile, the promising cup of her hands, the scent that lingered on her very kissable throat. Some of these things he guessed at that night and some he discovered in the fever of their time together.
She didn't notice him that night until after the speaker had shared her life experiences, none of which he could repeat since he didn't hear a word the speaker had said. He introduced himself like a thirty-second commercial, probing her education, career, and relationship status, closing the sale by asking her out, figuring it was harder to say no in person than over the phone a couple of days later when she'd struggle to remember they'd ever met.
When she said yes, he peeled the name tag off of his sweater and stuck it on top of hers, making certain she wouldn't forget his name. Later that night, he looked at himself in the mirror, toothpaste still leaking from the corner of his mouth, and declared that Kate was the woman he would marry.
Ellen Philpott didn't surrender as easily. She didn't even come to her door. She summoned Mason from within.
The Philpotts lived in Crystal Lakes, a gated community in the suburbs of south Kansas City that offered neither crystal nor a lake. Gated community meant a high-dollar development enclosed by an eight-foot wrought-iron fence to keep out the 99 percent of the economic food chain that weren't otherwise admitted to visit or clean. So much for surprise, Mason thought.
Each resident's name was engraved on a burnished brass panel mounted on a limestone post outside the automated gate barring the private entrance. A white marble button was provided beneath each name so that a visitor could announce his or her presence. Mason pressed the button below the Philpott name and waited.
"Speak," a disembodied sharp-toned female voice commanded from the speaker.
"It's Lou Mason to see Mrs. Philpott."
"Of course it is. Third house on the left past the gate. I'm on the patio."
The first house on the left past the gate was a Country French limestone McMansion. The second house on the left was a pale pink Mediterranean stucco with a tiled roof. The third house on the left was a rounded two-story white brick structure that looked more industrial than residential. Flower beds were paved with lava rocks. Stainless-steel figure eights skirted the high-gloss ebony front door. Home is where the bunker is, Mason thought as he walked around to the back of the house.
Morning sun baked the inlaid Spanish tiles and red bricks that crisscrossed the patio. Ellen sat on a high-backed, red-lacquered oval stool, her slender shoulders ramrod straight, her wide eyes fixed on a canvas stricken with ill-matched strokes of black and blue acrylic paint, brushes and palette at her feet. Sodden men's clothes, reeking of mildew, were heaped in a pile behind the easel.
"Painting is supposed to soothe me, but I don't want to be soothed," Ellen said. She brushed her close-cropped auburn hair with both hands. "All things considered, I'd rather be crazy."
"Go with your strengths," Mason said.
She laughed so hard she slipped off the stool, stepped on her paints, cursed, and wiped her shoes on an Armani shirt at the edge of the pile. Warren Philpott may have been tough, Mason thought, but he couldn't compete with crazy.
"Now, that's real good advice," she drawled after catching her breath. Her Missouri twang was just another contradiction. Though he'd not heard her speak during the trial, Mason would have guessed that she was more city than country.
"Thank you for seeing me."
"That's not much to thank someone for. It doesn't take much effort and the payoff can be kind of skimpy."
"Mrs. Philpott, I'll be honest with you. I'm still working on the case against your husband's company for Tommy Douchant. I know that you're divorcing him. I was hoping you might be able to help me."
"Warren already kicked the snot out of you once. What makes you think I can help you or that I would?"
"I don't know if you can. That's what I'm here to find out. I read the story in the newspaper about your divorce and thought you might be willing to try."
She squared up and glared at him, hands on bony hips, elbows flared like a human pelican, the veins in her long neck pulsating. Captain Queeg would make a better witness.
"You must think I'm no better than he is. Yes, my husband did me dirty. Shamed me with women no better than twenty-five-dollar whores. And you want me to get my revenge by telling you his secrets. Betray him to get even. Is that what you want me to do, Mr. Mason?"
"Tommy Douchant is my best friend. He's got a wife and two kids who don't eat if his social security disability check is late. You can call it betrayal or getting even. I call it doing the right thing."
She gave him a calmer, more studied look. "Do you think I'm crazy?"
He laughed. "No, I don't. I think you're one powerfully pissed-off woman who's trying to figure out what to do with a pile of wet clothes."
"Are you married?"
"Divorced. My wife left me. She
said she just woke up one day and was out of love with me."
Ellen chewed her lower lip, digesting Mason's answer. "I don't know which would be worse. At least Warren claimed he still had feelings for me. He said he just wasn't built to be faithful."
"I think the worst one is the one that happens to you."
"You are surely right about that." She picked up her palette and brushes. "What would you need to help your friend?"
"The jury decided that there was nothing wrong with the design of the safety hook on Tommy's belt."
"So wouldn't you have to prove that something went wrong when it was manufactured?"
"Exactly."
"So why didn't you do that at the trial?"
"My expert witness said that the hook was made just like the design called for."
"Then you'd have to prove that your own witness was mistaken, wouldn't you, Mr. Mason?"
Ellen Philpott's crazy act evaporated. Her country-cousin accent vanished. And her questions cut to the bottom line. Mason wondered if she was leading him along, hoping he would ask the right question and relieve her of the burden of outright betrayal.
"Not necessarily. Tommy's employer turned the safety belt over to your husband the day of the accident. I didn't see it until after I filed the lawsuit. If there was something wrong with the hook, he could have switched it for a good one and no one would ever have known."
"Why, Mr. Mason," she said, her drawl fully engaged. "That would be dishonest and deceitful. It would be the act of a man who had no honor."
"Would it also be the act of a man who would dishonor a fine woman?"
Bending over, she reached beneath the pile of clothes and pulled out a metal cash box.
"Warren is a collector. He fancies bad women and bad hooks. I suppose a psychiatrist would have a field day tying those two passions together."
She handed the box to him. It contained ten hooks just like the one on Tommy's belt. Mason couldn't tell one from the other. He looked up. She was sitting on the stool, her back to him, adding strong brushstrokes of paint to her canvas.
