Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness

by Joel Goldman

  “An art gallery. They had a big opening last month. It was vacant a long time before that. Care to guess who the last tenant was before the art gallery?”

  “And rob you of the pleasure of telling me? Never.”

  “You are so thoughtful. Would you believe it was the Committee to Reelect Billy Sunshine?”

  “Get out!”

  “Get in and get in deep.”

  “Man, is there anybody in this whole mess who isn’t in bed with one another?”

  “Just you and me, babe. Just you and me.”

  “Don’t you hate being left out?”

  “No. Deal with it.”

  He laughed. “That should be my biggest problem. Thanks again for last night.”

  “It was nothing. Keep in touch,” she added before hanging up.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  With Cullan’s files either destroyed or stolen, Mason was back at the bottom of the hill, still trying to push the boulder to the top. He would let Mickey continue plowing fields in cyberspace while he dug at ground level.

  He logged on to the county’s civil-lawsuit database and punched in Beth Harrell’s name. Both of her divorce cases showed up. Husband number one was Baker McKenzie. Mason recognized his name. He was the senior partner in the McKenzie, Strachan law firm. Husband number two was Al Douglas, a name Mason didn’t recognize. According to Beth, one of her ex-husbands had snapped nasty pics of her and had given them to Jack Cullan. Mason’s best idea of the day was to find the exes and ask which one of them was the shitbag.

  Mason didn’t want to ask Beth which of her ex-husbands was the shitbag because he wasn’t convinced that she was telling the truth. If Beth knew he was checking out her story and she was lying, she would backpedal or find some way to distract him, and he wasn’t up to being distracted. If she were telling the truth, she would start crowding Ed Fiora’s pole position on the suspect track.

  He called the clerk of the circuit court to locate Beth’s divorce files. The voice-mail system cast him into a menu of choices that he accepted and rejected until a human being answered. When the woman said her name was Margaret, he knew she didn’t mean it when she asked how she could help him.

  “My name is Lou Mason. I’m a lawyer and I’m trying to locate two divorce files.”

  “Are they on-site or off-site?”

  Mason swallowed. “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “If they are on-site, they might only be available on microfilm. That would mean that we shipped the hard copy off-site. If the files are off-site and you want the hard copy, it will take one to three business days to retrieve the files from off-site storage. Hold, please,” she added before he could respond.

  Mason imagined dozens of different torture scenarios for bureaucrats named Margaret during the three minutes and twenty-seven seconds she left him on hold.

  “This is Margaret. May I help you?” she asked when she returned to his call.

  “Margaret this is Lou Mason. We’ve already met. I’m looking for two divorce files and I know the on-site, off-site drill. Let me give you the case numbers so you can find out where they are.”

  “We can’t give that information out over the phone. You’ll have to come to the clerk’s office and sign a form.”

  He took a deep breath. “Should I ask for you, Margaret?”

  “Yes. I’ll be at lunch.”

  Thirty minutes later, Mason cautiously approached the court clerk’s office. He was less concerned that Margaret would actually be at lunch than he was that she would be there and he’d end up a suspect in another homicide. He passed through the double glass doors of the court clerk’s office. A long white counter laminated with Formica separated Mason from the employees processing the county’s civil and criminal cases.

  He had concluded from past experiences that they had been trained not to look up unless it was at the clock. It was ten minutes to noon when Mason rang the bell on the counter under the sign that read Ring for Service. The woman at the nearest desk raised her eyes at him; her resentment at his interruption shot through her glare.

  “I’m here to see Margaret.”

  She picked up her phone, stealing glances at him until he was certain that she’d called the sheriff’s office. She hung up, put the cap on her pen, and disappeared to the back of the office.

  Mason waited. There was a large clock on the wall to his right. He watched the second hand sweep around the dial and the incremental march of the minute hand to twelve o’clock high. The other people in the office, as if in response to an inner clock, rose in turn from their desks, vanishing into the depths of the clerk’s office.

  One woman remained. She walked slowly to the counter, eyeing the clock, timing her advance.

  “I’m Margaret.”

  “I’m Lou Mason. We spoke on the phone. You said I had to fill out a form to request a couple of divorce files.”

  She reached into a drawer and handed Mason two forms, one for each file. He filled them out and flashed her his best smile when he handed them back to her. He followed her gaze to the clock.

  “It’s noon. I’m on my lunch break. Come back at one o’clock.”

  Mason watched helplessly as Margaret carried the forms back to her desk, dropping them on her chair, never looking back.

  He returned exactly sixty minutes later. Seventy minutes later, Margaret presented him with both files, neither of which had been off-site or on microfilm. He filled out additional forms to check out the files, which meant that he could take them into a small adjoining room and look at them. He would have to fill out another form to request copies, and he could not under any circumstances, Margaret explained in the severest of tones, remove the files from the clerk’s office.

  The files were one-dimensional ledgers of dates and dollars, the final accounting of dead relationships. He thought about his own marriage, about the passion and pain that had swept both him and Kate along for three years until Kate called it quits, depriving him of the choice to fight or surrender.

  There was no exuberance in the dry recitation of the dates of Beth’s marriages and no regret in the hollow entries of the decrees of divorce. It was history without humanity, irreconcilable differences code words for hearts empty and broken.

  Beth Harrell had married Baker McKenzie shortly after graduating from law school. She was twenty-five and he was twenty-five years her senior. They had met when Beth worked as a summer intern at McKenzie’s firm. The marriage had lasted two years. There had been no children, and she hadn’t sought alimony or any of his property, asking only for the restoration of her maiden name.

  Five years later, she married Al Douglas, an architect fifteen years older than her. She kept her maiden name, and they signed a prenuptial agreement that prohibited either of them from seeking any monetary settlement from the other in the event of a divorce, with the exception of child support if they had a family. Irreconcilable differences had again been diagnosed, like a recurring cancer. The court entered the decree of divorce on their fourth wedding anniversary.

  It was impossible to draw any conclusions about Beth’s marriages other than that they had had a beginning and an end. What had taken place in the middle was not a matter of public record. Mason would have to ask Baker McKenzie and Al Douglas to find out which of them was the shitbag.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Mason had learned one thing about celebrity. It cleared a lot of scheduling conflicts. Both Baker McKenzie and Al Douglas agreed to see him that afternoon. He started with McKenzie.

  Baker McKenzie was the third generation of McKenzies in the firm his grandfather and Matthew Strachan had founded seventy-five years earlier. None of Strachan’s heirs had followed their ancestor in the law, though no later generations of interloping partners had suggested removing the Strachan name from the door. McKenzie, Strachan was the oldest and largest law firm in the city, its bloodlines were the bluest, and its stockings were woven of the finest silk.

  Baker McKe
nzie sat comfortably at the top of the firm, worrying more about his putting stroke than about the firm’s clients. He had hidden mediocre legal skills and a civil service work ethic beneath the legacy of his grandfather and father. Mason had run across him once or twice in cases where the client had expected the name partner to show his face. McKenzie had shown it just long enough to make certain he didn’t get it dirty before begging off because of pressing matters in the case of Tee v. Green. He was a society-page regular, never seen in public without a beautiful woman on his arm.

  McKenzie greeted Mason as if they were asshole buddies. “My God, man! How the hell are you? I swear to Jesus that you are turning our profession into one dangerous contact sport.”

  McKenzie gleamed as if he’d just been washed and waxed, his teeth and hair both bleached to a high sheen. McKenzie was Mason’s height, broad where Mason was lean and fit for his age or any other, shaking Mason’s hand vigorously enough to make the point.

  He led Mason to his forty-first-floor corner office with a panoramic view of the city.

  “You’ve got a helluva view.”

  “Hell, I can see from here to next week,” he said, laughing at a line he’d used a thousand times. “It’s really something during a lightning storm, especially at night. I’m telling you, Lou, it’s like standing next to Zeus throwing thunderbolts. It electrifies women of a certain erotic sensibility—like, their nerve endings get supercharged and they’ve just got to plug something into all that current.”

  “And I’ll bet you know how to throw the switch.”

  McKenzie took a deep breath, swelling his chest. “I could light up a Christmas tree, my friend.”

  “I’ll bet those are some moments to remember.”

  “Indeed they are. Indeed they are.”

  “All that excitement, it must be hard to remember one woman from another. You ever keep any souvenirs?”

  McKenzie’s boasting gave way to suspicion. “You didn’t ask to see me to talk about my love life. What’s on your mind?”

  It had taken Mason only a few minutes to bait Baker McKenzie and less time to hate him. Mason didn’t want him to mistake diplomacy for deference.

  “Beth Harrell says she’s being blackmailed with some dirty pictures either you or her other ex-husband took and gave to Jack Cullan. If she’s telling the truth, that means she’s a suspect in Cullan’s murder and the ex-husband is a shitbag. I need to know if the pictures are real and I need to know if you’re the shitbag.”

  McKenzie looked out over the horizon for a moment before turning toward Mason, his face besotted with angry blood. He closed the distance between them before Mason realized that he wasn’t coming to shake his hand again, and launched a right cross at Mason’s chin. Mason couldn’t get out of the way, and he spun around once before toppling at McKenzie’s feet.

  “Dartmouth boxing team, light-heavyweight division,” McKenzie said as he stepped over a stunned but conscious Mason and opened the door to his office. “Call maintenance,” McKenzie said to his secretary. “Tell them to clean up the shitbag on my floor.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Al Douglas’s office was in a suburban office park surrounded by woods and ringed by a bike path. Banners hung from light poles in the parking lot, depicting festive winter scenes that clashed with the barren trees. Mason sat in his car for half an hour, ministering to his chin with an ice bag he bought at a convenience store, before going inside.

  He was prepared to take a more temperate approach to husband number two when Al Douglas looked up at him from a drafting table. Douglas worked in an office without walls, where no one had a private office. Mason assumed that the design was intended to build camaraderie, but judging from the beehive hum that greeted him, it bred whispers and rumors.

  “You must be Lou Mason,” Douglas said, extending his hand. “Baker called me. He said he’d already taken out your chin but that I could have the rest of your face unless I was the shitbag you were looking for. Let’s talk someplace quiet.”

  Douglas slid off his drafting stool and led Mason into a break room where two other people were huddled over a crossword puzzle. Douglas cleared his throat and waited. The puzzle people took their cue and left, closing the door behind them.

  He was round-shouldered, thin on top and thick around the middle. He wore half-glasses that had slid two thirds of the way down his nose. He took off the glasses, letting them drop to his chest, where they dangled from a thin chain that looped around his neck.

  “He really tagged you, didn’t he? The sucker punch is Baker’s specialty. He tried it once with me, but he misjudged how short I am and missed. If he misses the first punch, he’s finished. I kicked him in the nuts and he cried like a girl.”

  Douglas’s story about Baker McKenzie was a verbal sucker punch, letting Mason know he wouldn’t be intimidated even though he looked like the only thing he’d ever thrown in anger was a fit.

  “I’ll try to remember that when we have the rematch.”

  “You really should put some ice on that before you grow a second chin.”

  “I’ll do that. No offense, but you and Baker aren’t exactly cut from the same cloth. Baker has two last names and you have two first names. Other than that, I can’t see the connection. How did both of you end up married to Beth Harrell?”

  “She’s a woman of extremes, and Baker and I are at the opposite end of several masculine scales. She tried both ends. The next guy will probably be in the middle. Strong, tough, but likes sunsets. I suppose you want to know about the pictures.”

  “If you don’t mind. Do the pictures really exist?”

  Douglas poured a cup of coffee and took a chilled bottle of water from a refrigerator and handed it to Mason. “Here. Put that on your chin, and yes, the pictures are real.”

  Mason rolled the bottle across his chin. “Did Baker take the pictures?” Douglas shook his head. “You?”

  “Neither one of us took them. Beth did. She put her camera on a tripod and used a timer. We were both into adult entertainment and she wanted to shock me, stir me up in some different way. I won’t lie to you. It worked. She’s a beautiful woman and the pictures were quite graphic. I hadn’t gotten off like that since my first Playboy.”

  “Did she do the same thing with Baker?”

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it. Beth always said that Baker screwed around, but only in the missionary position.”

  “You sound awfully philosophical for a guy who got dumped. You don’t even sound angry with her.”

  “Guys like me never end up with women like Beth for very long. When she left me, it was like the clock struck midnight and I was back to being Al, the invisible man with the boffo porn collection. Except I had the pictures. So I didn’t get mad; I got off and then got even.”

  Douglas was blasé enough about his relationship with Beth that Mason pegged him for a sociopath interested only in his own needs and indifferent to anyone else. His casual, unemotional vengeance was creepy.

  “You gave the pictures to Jack Cullan?”

  Douglas smiled. “I sold them. I guess that really makes me the shitbag.”

  Mason resisted the impulse to shove Douglas’s chalky face into the back of his skull.

  “When did you sell the pictures to Cullan?”

  “You want to hit me. I can tell from the way your jugular vein is throbbing. But you won’t do it. I can tell that too. You’re stuck with your conventional ethics. That’s why people like me are able to do the things we do.”

  Mason measured his breathing. Douglas was a gut-sucking parasite with a sunny disposition. He bellied up to Douglas, crowding him into a corner. Douglas backed up, his hands shaking, causing him to spill his coffee on the front of his pants.

  “You don’t know me, Douglas, so don’t assume too much. When did you sell the pictures to Cullan?”

  “Okay, okay,” Douglas said, holding up his hand in protest. “I sold him the pictures a couple of months ago. Satisfied?”

&n
bsp; “Barely. If I find out you kept any copies of those pictures, or sold them or gave them away or posted them on the Internet, I’ll come back here and turn you inside out.”

  Douglas found more courage when he realized Mason wasn’t going to smack him. “I’d be more worried about Beth, if I were you. I kept the pictures, but she kept the gun.”

  Mason couldn’t tell if Douglas was pimping him, but he couldn’t resist the next question. “What gun?”

  “Baker gave her a present when they got divorced, since she wouldn’t take any money. He told her she should use it with her next husband to get a better settlement. I settled very cheaply.”

  “Do you know what kind of gun it was?”

  “A .38-caliber pistol,” he answered with a grin that said he’d just gotten even with Beth all over again.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Mason’s new theory was that Ed Fiora, Billy Sunshine, and Beth Harrell had all killed Jack Cullan, drawing straws to see who would hold him down while one of them shot him. They had such a good time that they played their game again with Shirley Parker. As a theory, it sucked, but it was easier than trying to pick a favorite.

  Returning to his car, Mason called his office, curious whether Mickey had ever come back.

  “Lou Mason and Associates,” Mickey said.

  “Associates are young lawyers who are overpaid and underworked. I don’t recall hiring any associates. I’m sure I would have remembered.”

  “Chill out, boss. It’s branding, like Coke or Kleenex. Gives the name some flair. Tells people we’re going places.”

  “I catch you playing lawyer, I’ll give you some real branding. Understood?”

  “No problemo, dude. Hey, you got a call from Judge Carter’s administrative assistant, reminding you that she wants to see you and Ortiz first thing Monday morning, eight o’clock.”

  “The judge’s assistant wasn’t named Margaret, was she?”