Lou Mason Mystery - 01 - Motion to Kill

by Joel Goldman

  “Listen, Tony,” Mason began. “This isn’t working out like you expected. You probably counted on the cop outside the door but no way could you figure on an FBI agent, the U.S. attorney, and me being here. You kill everyone in this room and your boss is going to catch so much heat you’ll never be able to go home again.”

  Tony considered Mason’s comments. “It is the way it is, pal. Lots of people end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess this is just your time.”

  “Last chance,” Mason said. “Put your guns down and give up or Jimmie will shoot you.” Both gunmen laughed. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”

  Mason stood up, stepping toward Gino and drawing Tony’s attention away from Camaya. Tony froze in astonishment at the gun in Camaya’s hand long enough for Camaya to shoot him in the face. He was dead before he hit the floor.

  Mason leapt at Gino but not before Gino shot McNamara. Gino had weight on his side. Mason had surprise and desperation on his. And he fought dirty. Mason grabbed Gino’s gun with his left hand and Gino’s testicles with his right, squeezing both while he drove his head into Gino’s neck.

  The gun flew out of their grasp as they toppled onto the floor. Gino slammed his knee upward, breaking Mason’s grip on his crotch, and wrapped his hands around Mason’s throat. His fingers were crushing Mason’s windpipe and cutting off his breath. Mason straddled Gino as the bigger man held Mason at arm’s length, strangling him.

  Raising his right hand from Gino’s chest, Mason jammed his forefinger into Gino’s eye, puncturing the outer surface until he felt the hard socket against his knuckle. Gino’s piercing scream nearly shattered Mason’s eardrum as his grip on Mason’s throat gave way. Mason withdrew his bloody hand, leaving Gino’s eye dangling alongside his nose.

  Mason staggered to his feet. McNamara lay on the floor, moaning but alive. St. John had wet himself and assumed the fetal position.

  “My man! My main man!” Camaya crowed, waving Mason’s gun in the air.

  Mason snatched the gun from him and grabbed him by the throat. “I’m not your man, you miserable piece of shit. Now, call the nurse!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  Sunday started with a steady rain pinging against Mason’s windows as he lay in bed long after Harry Ryman’s last questions stopped reverberating in his ears. It was welcome white noise, something to concentrate on when he felt Gino’s blood trickling down his arm again.

  Bright flashes of light sparked against his eyelids when he clenched them against the jarring array of mortal images he had collected. Snapshots of Sullivan’s bloated corpse, Harlan’s gargoyle death mask, Julio’s pulverized face, and Gino’s mutilated eye dotted his mental landscape like unholy billboards.

  He had slipped so easily from a world of rules where uncivil conduct toward an adversary was grounds for sanction to one in which blood ruled and the only sanction that mattered was death. He doubted whether he could return to his old world without a part of him remaining in his new one.

  Dawn, gray and misty, found him pounding the jogging path around Loose Park, two blocks from home. Breathing raggedly, he tried to outrun the demons that had become his new best friends until he dropped facedown in the grass, cool and wet. The rain ran off him as he rolled onto his back, squinting skyward, looking for an opening in the clouds. With no epiphany in sight, he trudged home to find Anna Karelson camped on his doorstep, dry and nosy under her umbrella.

  “For pity’s sake, Lou, you’d have to look better to die!”

  She had bed head and she hadn’t found her mouthwash yet. Her candy-striped housecoat, loosely tied at the waist, was playing peek-a-boo with her heavy bosom.

  “Early morning isn’t your best time of day either, Anna. It’s just the rain. I’m fine.”

  “In a pig’s eye! My two-week-old bananas have better color than you do.”

  “Look, Anna. I appreciate your concern, but I’m really okay. I promise to look better after I clean up and get some rest.”

  “Well, Mr. Celebrity Lawyer, I wouldn’t plan on getting any rest today if I was you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “TV trucks and reporters have been banging on your door since you left this morning. I told them you took a cab to the airport. But they’ll be back; that’s for sure.”

  Mason had one more rock to turn over before he was ready to go to the cops with Sullivan’s and Angela’s killer. If the media started shining their light on him now, he’d lose the privacy he needed.

  “Anna, mind if I shower at your house?”

  “Lou!” she said as she blushed and clutched her gown to her chest. “Jack’s still asleep!”

  “Don’t worry, I’m a quiet scrubber.” He ran upstairs and grabbed clean clothes, a black Windbreaker, a Beaver Creek cap, and Vernon’s Bible. “Drive my car around the block behind your house,” Mason said when he came back and handed her the keys to the TR6. “I’ll be in the shower.”

  Anna came in through her back door, dripping and cursing Mason as water ran off her neck and between her breasts. “Honestly, Lou, I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.”

  He was sitting at her kitchen table, tying his shoes while scanning the front page of the morning paper. McNamara would live. St. John announced that his investigation into organized crime would continue.

  “That’s what neighbors are for, Anna. I owe you one.”

  Mason glanced out her living room window. Camera crews for the local affiliates of the major networks were setting up shop in his front yard, their logos emblazoned on the rain poncho of each crew member. The clock was running on his fifteen minutes of fame.

  Mason kissed Anna on the cheek and went out the back door, cutting across lawns to the next block and his car. It was eight o’clock, early for house calls. Mason hoped he wasn’t too late.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  Pamela’s newspaper was still in the driveway and there were no lights on in the house. It felt as though more than twenty-four hours had passed since he’d last knocked on her door. Vernon’s Bible lay heavily against his side, protected from the rain by his jacket, as he leaned on the doorbell. Five minutes of chimes brought protesting footsteps that stopped on the other side of the peephole in the door.

  “Lou, what are you doing here at this hour?” Pamela asked in a voice muffled by the thick oak door.

  “I’ve got to talk with you. It’s very important.”

  “I had a late night. Can’t it wait until later, or tomorrow?”

  “Pamela, please open the door. I can hardly hear you.”

  Mason hoped that it would be harder to send him away face-to-face than separated by the heavy door. The dead bolt slid back. Pamela pulled the door open enough to peer around the edge. Mason stepped sideways through the narrow opening before she could protest.

  She had the same puffy-eyed, just-rousted-from-bed look as Anna Karelson had. He could taste the stale, smoky aroma that hung on her, and he could smell the booze in her sweat. She hunched her shoulders inside the velour red robe she had zipped to the neck. She was close enough to rock bottom to touch it with her tongue.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. I know who killed your husband. I thought you would want to know.”

  She slumped against the door, pushing it closed, as she covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes asking questions that she refused to speak.

  “I don’t want to go to the police until I’m certain,” Mason continued. “There are a few details about Richard’s past that I need to clear up. Let’s talk in the study.”

  Mason led the way, not giving her the chance to object. He hoped that taking charge in her own house would keep her off her guard. The study reeked of Pamela’s long night. She didn’t smoke. Mason wondered who did.

  The sofa cushions had been left in casual disarray, with two of them piled at one end. Pamela sat on the sofa, holding a cushion in her lap, her arms wrapped around it. Mason chose the wingback chair opposite the sofa, settin
g his jacket next to the ornamental letter opener on the small table next to the chair, the Bible tucked inside the jacket.

  A dark walnut butler’s table separated them, adorned with an empty wine bottle and two glasses turned on their sides. Two streaked glasses, one with lipstick on the rim. He pretended not to notice. It wasn’t any of his business if Pamela skipped the grieving-widow stage and jumped into friendly arms.

  Pamela squeezed the cushion in her lap as if she were trying to pull herself inside it. She hadn’t uttered a sound since he’d told her why he was there. Not even a monosyllabic “Who?” The silence was so puzzling that he decided to wait her out and make her ask him who did it.

  Smiling at Pamela, Mason stood and began a quiet survey of the books lining the shelves behind Sullivan’s desk. He had a theory that you could learn a lot about a person by the books they kept. Some people kept them for show, while others intended to read them someday, though they never would. Still others read them, loved them, and took comfort in being around them. The bindings on Sullivan’s books were crisp and virginal. Having them was what counted. Not knowing them.

  Mason stopped in front of a volume half-hidden by the vertical molding at the end of the middle shelf. The top half of the letters in the title was visible enough along the book’s spine that he could read Rogersville H.S. 1973 Yearbook. He sat down in Sullivan’s desk chair and began leafing through the book. Pamela was still mute.

  “Did you and Richard get back to Rogersville very often?” Mason asked, looking at Pamela as she rocked back and forth on the sofa. Her eyes bore down on the intricate pattern in the Persian rug as if the answer could be divined in the weave.

  “Pamela, over here,” he said, breaking her spell. She jerked her head up and raised her lids halfway in his direction. “Did you and Richard get back to Rogersville very often?”

  “Not in years.”

  Mason found Sullivan’s senior class picture and index of achievements. Crew cut, shiny cheeks, cocked, arrogant smile, head tilted at a jaunty angle. Look out, world, here he comes. Lettered in track and cross-country. Choir. Junior Achievement.

  “Why not?”

  Flipping through the pages, Mason ran his finger under the names beneath the pictures, stopping at Meredith Phillips’s photograph. Pageboy, wide nose, wider face, crooked smile, square chin. Unremarkable, yet vaguely familiar. Home Economics Club.

  “No reason to,” she said to the floor. “We wanted out.”

  The girl in the photograph next to Meredith’s had long dark hair tucked behind her ears, bangs pulled across her forehead, oval face with perfectly aligned teeth, dimpled cheeks. Cheerleader, Homecoming Queen. Pamela Phinney. Mason looked up. There was no doubt. Pamela Phinney Sullivan lay back against the couch, her eyes raised to the ceiling.

  “You knew Meredith Phillips?”

  “We were best friends,” she said softly.

  “And you didn’t know about the baby?” Some best friend.

  “Best friends in high school—not later.”

  “What happened?”

  “She and Richard dated all through school. No one could figure it out. Great-looking guy and the homely girl.”

  “No competition. Maybe Richard was insecure in spite of his good looks.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, she was a small-town girl. Richard and I couldn’t wait to escape.”

  “And you ended up with Richard.”

  “I chased him for four years in high school. That’s why Meredith and I were best friends. She kept me close to Richard. Back then, he was loyal. But I got him in the end.”

  “But not before he and Meredith had one last stroll around the park.”

  “No—not before.”

  “And you didn’t know about the baby until I told you yesterday?”

  She hesitated an instant before answering. “Not before—”

  “Not before what?” Diane Farrell asked, one hand on her hip, the other on the entry to the study. She was wearing a half-buttoned man’s pajama top that fell to mid thigh and, nearly as Mason could tell, nothing else.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Pamela paled and shook at Diane’s appearance, growing smaller behind her pillow. “Diane—please don’t do this to me.”

  Smiling voraciously, Diane walked toward her. “Pamela dear, I told you last night that I wasn’t like the society lesbians you cheated on Richard with.” She stood in front of Pamela, reaching down and stroking her hair. “You didn’t tell me we were having company for breakfast.”

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “Pamela, you’re ruining my new dress under those pillows.” She reached behind a cushion and extracted the wrinkled dress Pamela had given her on her birthday.

  “Please, Diane—no,” Pamela managed, her lips barely moving, her face downcast.

  “But, Pamela, it’s all I’ve got to put on. After all,” she giggled, “I didn’t pack my overnight bag.”

  She shook the wrinkles out of the dress and looked at Mason again. “If you don’t mind, Mason. I’m a little modest around men.”

  Nodding, he stood and turned his back, placing the yearbook on the credenza behind Sullivan’s desk. Trusting that Diane had her eyes on Pamela, he set his smart phone down and turned on the voice-recording app.

  “Okay, Mason, you can turn around. I’m decent.”

  “Not by half,” he said as he pushed Sullivan’s desk chair back, blocking her view of the credenza.

  “Mason,” she said, sticking out her lower lip in a mock pout, “I sense your disapproval. How provincial. This is the new millennium.”

  “Leaving someone their dignity never goes out of style.”

  “Noble horseshit. Now, tell me what you and Pamela were talking about. She seems to have lost her spark. Probably needs a drink to get her motor going.”

  “I was asking her if she knew where you worked before you came to the firm.”

  “You came here at eight o’clock on Sunday morning to ask Pamela about my work history? You can do better than that.”

  “Actually, I’ve taken up genealogy. I’m trying to figure out if pathological behavior is a generation-skipping phenomenon.”

  He returned to the wingback chair and picked up his jacket. She held her ground by the sofa, warily appraising his comments, calculating her response. Pamela’s muted sobs were buried in her pillow, the undercard to the main event about to begin.

  “In that case, my family wouldn’t interest you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Every generation has been pathological,” she said without a trace of humor.

  “Tell me about them. Maybe I’ll change my approach.”

  “Oh, Mason, you’re being so coy. Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?”

  Diane sat next to Pamela, draping her arm around her. Pamela froze at the gesture, then shook her off and stood, smoothing her robe and glaring at Diane, who smiled serenely in reply.

  “You should leave her alone,” Mason said to Diane.

  “She’s a big girl. She can make her own choices.”

  Pamela moved to the windows and turned to look at Mason, her eyes searching the room as if to find someplace else to go. Diane smiled at her like a mother encouraging her shy child. Pamela sighed and made her way back to the sofa, accepting Diane’s outstretched hand.

  Mason ignored Diane’s triumphant grin. “What did you do before you came to the firm?”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I went to school. Penn Valley Community College. Paralegal degree with distinction.”

  “And before that—where’s home?”

  “No place special. A little town you’ve probably never heard of.”

  “Family?”

  “None anymore.”

  “So your first job was with Sullivan?”

  “You are a quick study, Mason. I’ll bet you’re terrifying on cross-examination.”

  “I like to let things build. What did you think of
Sullivan?”

  “He treated people like dirt, but I didn’t have a problem with him.”

  “The two of you must have had a special relationship.”

  Her eyes flickered for an instant. She leaned forward, legs crossed, her chin cupped in one hand, elbow resting on her knee. She was studying. Diane was no fool and wouldn’t allow him to trap her easily. But Mason knew more than she could suspect, and he was better at this than she was. And she was living on lies, which made for a foundation with deep faults. Not the kind that would withstand much stress. Her outrageous treatment of Pamela told Mason that she felt safe—beyond his reach. Now doubt was creeping in, filling the faults and pushing them into wider cracks.

  “I knew what he wanted and I did it.”

  “Including figuring out what Scott and Harlan were doing with Quintex and the phony fees?”

  She sat back, leaving her legs crossed at the ankles, arms extended across the back of the sofa. “Including Quintex. Sullivan asked me to check into it. I put it all together for him. Including the Cayman Island accounts. It wasn’t difficult. Scott and Harlan weren’t very clever crooks.”

  “But why hide it on the Johnny Mathis CD?”

  “That was my idea. Nobody listens to Johnny Mathis. It was the perfect hiding place. All I needed was a scanner and a CD burner. Sullivan didn’t want anyone to know he had the information. Except for the U.S. attorney. But I guess he didn’t get the chance to rat out his partners and poor Vic Jr.,” she added with a quick laugh.

  Mason connected the last dot. “You knew Sullivan was going to make a deal with St. John?”

  “I figured it out. It was the only way he could avoid going to jail,” she said with a thin-lipped smile.

  Pamela tried to shrink farther into the sofa, but Diane clamped her hand on Pamela’s thigh, keeping her close.

  “Why did Sullivan revoke his will?”

  Diane shrugged. “He changed his mind about the charities. The codicil gave him time to decide what to do with the money.”

  It was a practiced reply. The kind that is believed if repeated often enough but doesn’t make sense to anyone else.