The Last Witness

Chapter Twenty-seven

Friday nights were usually big nights at Blues on Broadway, but business had slowed considerably since New Year's Eve, and the joint was nearly dead when Mason arrived shortly before midnight. Mickey had turned out to be a lousy bartender, and Blues had hired a temp who wasn't much better. Pete Kirby's trio had taken a gig on the road, and Blues hadn't found anyone to take their place. Jazz musicians were used to oddball gigs, but working for someone sitting in jail on a murder rap hadn't proved to be very attractive.

Mason recognized Harry's off-duty car, an old Crown Victoria that had done time as an on-duty detective's ride. Mason made his way through the bar, where three customers were nursing flat beers while the bartender cleaned glasses, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, dribbling ashes into the soapy sink water.

He took the stairs two at a time, his concern for Mickey quickening his pace. Fiora was in the casino business, but he didn't strike Mason as a man who bluffed very often. Mason took Fiora at his word when he said that he'd paid Mickey a visit. Mason knew enough about computers to read his e-mail. He had no idea that an amateur hacker like Mickey would leave an electronic trail that could lead to a beating. Mason was mentally calculating Mickey's Worker's Compensation benefits when he saw Mickey standing in the hall with Harry and his aunt Claire.

"Harry," Mason said, "is everything all right?"

Harry was wearing a warm-up suit and athletic shoes underneath an open trench coat. Claire was also wearing a warm-up suit under her made-for-the-tundra topcoat. It took Mason a minute to realize that they were wearing identical warm-up suits, and that his aunt was wearing house slippers and that her car was not also parked outside. Both of them had a slightly rumpled, just-rousted-out-of-bed look. Mason wasn't certain, but he thought he saw a small hickey on Harry's neck. Mason flushed with a queasy jolt, like a teenager who'd walked in on his parents while they were doing it.

"No, everything is not all right!" Claire snapped. "Someone broke into your office and smashed your computer."

Mason stepped into his office. His computer tower was crumpled as if it had been in a head-on collision, and the top was peeled back as if it had been operated on with a can opener. His monitor was shattered. He looked around the rest of his office, confirmed that there wasn't any other damage, and came back out into the hallway.

"Thanks for coming over, Harry," Mason said.

"Is that all you've got to say?" Claire demanded. "Every time I turn around, you're this close to getting killed or robbed," she said, pinching her fingers together. "I won't have it!"

Mason hadn't seen his aunt this angry in years. "I'm sorry," he told her. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"Well, you have and so has he!" she said, jabbing her thumb at Harry. "It's time you two started working together on this case instead of against each other." Harry and Mason both studied their feet, waiting for Claire's outburst to subside. "I'll wait in your office," she said.

Mickey was grinning so widely that Mason practically forgot to ask if he was hurt. "I would not piss off that woman anymore if I was you," Mickey said.

Mason put his hand under Mickey's chin, tilting his head upward. "You look good with a black eye, Mickey. It gives you that mature look."

Harry referred to the notepad he always carried. "Your neighbor here, Mr. Shanahan, says he was asleep in his office when he heard a commotion next door. He jumped up to see what was going on, and ran into his door and knocked himself out. By the time he came to, whoever had broken into your office was gone. That still your story, Mr. Shanahan?" Harry asked with no effort to disguise his disbelief.

"Yes, sir, Detective. That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

Harry turned to Mason. "Are you satisfied with that story, Lou?"

"It'll do for now," Lou answered.

"Good, 'cause it's bullshit and we both know it, but if you don't care, I don't care. At least we don't need anything else from Mr. Shanahan. Let's you and me go have a talk in your office before your aunt makes us take turns walking into the door and knocking ourselves out."

"Don't think for one second that I'm going to clean up that mess for you," Claire said as Mason closed the door behind him.

Mason raised both hands in surrender, knowing better than to get in her way while she still had a head of steam going. Harry picked up the computer tower and peered inside.

"The hard drive is gone," he told Mason. "You back up your stuff?"

"Not in the last six months."

"How long you had this computer?" Harry asked.

"Six months."

"You're screwed."

"Is that a professional opinion?" Mason asked.

"Worth every cent of the tax dollars you paid for it. Who did it?"

"Ed Fiora."

"Why?"

"He objected to me checking out his personal affairs."

"Hacking? You couldn't hack yourself. That kid, Shanahan-he do the hacking for you?"

"Yup."

"Fiora probably has somebody who runs security for his computer systems, picked up the hacking, traced it back to your computer. Fiora values his privacy. So why does Shanahan give me that crap about running into his door?"

"He's like all law-abiding citizens. He doesn't trust the cops and he thinks he's doing me a favor."

"Why were you investigating Fiora?"

Mason took two bottles of Budweiser out of his refrigerator and handed one to Harry. Claire gave him a long, threatening look, and he handed her the other bottle, then grabbed another one for himself. He threw his parka over his desk chair, sat down on the sofa, and put his feet up on the low table in front of it. Harry and Claire dumped their coats on top of his, and each took a chair at either end of the table.

They all swallowed heavily from their bottles. Claire drank the deepest.

"Cullan's murder, Shirley Parker's murder, and the fire at the barbershop were all about one thing-the secret files Jack Cullan kept on his friends and enemies," Mason said. "Though I suspect he had a difficult time telling one from the other. I was looking for a link, something that would tie Fiora to the files and the murders, or at least the other suspects."

"And who might the other suspects be? Assuming, of course, that we don't count your client?" Harry asked.

Mason tipped his bottle at Harry. "You assume correctly. His Honor the mayor is on the take. He made at least one sweetheart deal with Fiora that lined the pockets of his old wide receiver Donovan Jenkins. Jenkins paid the mayor back by refinancing his house. That deal may have actually been legal, but I think there's more. That's what Mickey was looking for."

"Who else?" Harry asked.

Mason hesitated, swirling the beer in the bottle, concluding that he had only one client, not two. "Beth Harrell. She gets the Head Case of the Year award. On the outside, she's a superachiever public servant. On the inside, she's a bad girl who owned a.38-caliber pistol. She threw it away after Cullan was killed because she thought it would look bad. Especially since Cullan was blackmailing her with dirty pictures."

"Where'd did Cullan get the pictures?" Harry asked.

"She took them herself and gave them to her ex-husband. He sold them to Cullan."

"What kind of a woman would do that?" Claire asked.

"A severely messed-up one," Mason answered. "Beth claims she voted to give the license to the Dream Casino because it was the right thing to do. Then she got suspicious that Fiora had bribed the mayor. She was about to start an investigation when Cullan threatened her with the pictures."

"What makes you think she's telling the truth?" Claire asked.

Mason got up from the sofa and retrieved the envelope of pictures from an inside pocket in his parka. He dropped them on the table in front of Harry and Claire. "I've seen the pictures. Fiora gave them to me tonight. He was trying to convince me that he wasn't blackmailing Beth and that he had nothing to do with Cullan's or Shirley Parker's deaths."

Harry reached for the envelope, but Claire snatched it and opened it first. "I am never surprised what we will do to get even with ourselves," she said before passing the photographs to Harry.

Harry looked at the photographs without betraying any reaction. He returned them to the envelope and said, "Shirley Parker was killed with a.38-caliber bullet, but it was fired from a different gun than the one that was used to kill Jack Cullan. It sure would have been nice to have a look at Harrell's gun. Where does all this leave Ed Fiora?"

"Fiora says he wasn't worried about Cullan's files because Cullan couldn't take Fiora down without taking himself down. That makes sense. Fiora wants his file before it winds up with someone he can't do business with. That makes sense. He tried to hire me to find the file for him. That makes sense too. Killing Cullan and Shirley Parker doesn't make sense."

"What about the mayor?" Claire asked.

"Yeah," Mason said to Harry. "Did you ask the mayor if he had an alibi for the time of Cullan's murder?"

"Sure," Harry replied. "Right after we asked him for semen samples so we could clear up some open rape cases."

Mason finished his beer in a final swallow. "All I've done in this case is chase my tail. I'm getting absolutely nowhere."

"Maybe you're just digging up a lot of dirt but no killers because your client is guilty," Harry said.

"Maybe. And maybe you and Zimmerman and the prosecuting attorney and the mayor are sweeping a lot of dirt under the rug because you want Blues to be guilty. It's obvious that the mayor was pressuring you to make a quick arrest."

"Sure he wanted a quick arrest. He also wanted a conviction, not a botched case."

"When did you first talk to the mayor about Cullan's murder?" Mason asked.

"Right after we identified Cullan's body. I called the chief and the chief called the mayor. The mayor told the chief he wanted to meet with me and Carl, which really frosted the chief."

"Because that made the chief look like he wasn't running the investigation?" Claire asked.

"Exactly. There's more politics in the police department than the Catholic Church," Harry said. "The mayor told me and Carl that he wanted daily reports on the case until the son of a bitch who killed his lawyer was found guilty."

"So you've been on the phone with the mayor every day?" Mason asked.

"Not me and not the mayor. Carl is the politician. The mayor told Carl to report to his chief of staff, Amy White. She told Carl he was on twenty-four call and his cell phone better be on all the time." Harry laughed before continuing. "She's driving Carl crazy."

"There's one thing I don't get," Claire said. "Where did Cullan get all his dirt? I doubt that everyone was as stupid as Beth Harrell. Maybe whoever was supplying Cullan with information decided to go into business for himself-or herself-which meant putting Cullan out of business."

Mason and Harry stared at Claire, slack-jawed at her insight. Claire smiled, careful not to smile too much, and set her empty bottle on the table. "I love both of you, but sometimes you are thick as fence posts. Let's go home, Harry, before that beer drowns out what little spark I've got left."

Mickey walked into Mason's office as soon as Harry and Claire hit the street. "Hey, boss," he said before Mason cut him off with a raised hand.

Claire had come at the case from a completely different angle than Mason or Harry. Both of them had made the mistake of focusing on the explanations that best suited their bias. Harry wanted it to be Blues. Mason wanted it to be someone Cullan was blackmailing. They both wanted it to be easy, and the truth was seldom that easy.

Mason opened the doors to the dry-erase board, wiped out a week's worth of now meaningless notes, wrote Cullan's source for dirt in large red letters on the board, and sat down in his desk chair. He rocked and swiveled, steepled his fingers beneath his chin, rubbed his temples, and thumped his desk with the palms of his hands.

Mickey tried again, "Lou, I've got-"

"It'll have to wait," Mason said. "Have a seat." Mason shuffled through the papers on his desk until he found the initial police report on Cullan's murder. The dispatcher had recorded the call from Cullan's maid, Norma Hawkins, at 8:03 a.m. Mason remembered that the first cop on the scene had been a uniformed patrol officer. Mason scanned the report for his name, finding it at the bottom of the report.

Officer James Toland had arrived at the scene at 8:10 a.m. Harry and Carl Zimmerman had arrived at 8:27 a.m.

Mason was beginning to think that Toland was like the guy who showed up at every major sporting event wearing a rainbow wig and holding a sign that said john 3:16. Toland had been first on the murder scene; he'd been at the bar to arrest Blues; and he'd busted Mason in Pendergast's office just in time to prevent Mason from reading Cullan's files. Nobody had timing that good. Not without help.

Mason picked up the phone and dialed Rachel Firestone's home number. He tapped a pencil on his knee while the phone rang five times.

"What?" Rachel said, her voice thick with sleep.

"It's me, Lou."

"Whoopee," she said.

"I need you to do something for me. It's important."

"I hope it's important enough to die for because I'm going to kill you if it isn't."

"I want you to check for any reports of a body found in Swope Park on Thursday evening any time in the three hours before the fire at the barbershop."

"Of course. Then I'll run a check for Jimmy Hoffa when I'm done."

"This is serious, Rachel."

"This is the middle of the night. Call me tomorrow," she said, and hung up.

Mason was jazzed. He had a hunch that felt so right it had to be wrong, and if he was right, it could still go down very wrong. He smacked his hands together. "Okay, Mickey. What have you got?"

"This," Mickey said, holding up a floppy disk.

"And that is?" Mason asked.

"A copy of the bank records of Ed Fiora and the mayor, plus a few dozen money-laundering stops in between that show a steady stream of cash from Fiora to the mayor. The total is around a hundred and fifty thousand bucks. It began a month before Fiora got his casino license and goes right up to last week. I backed up the hard drive onto the disk just before Fiora and his trolls did a tap dance on my face. I stuffed it down my pants when they busted in here."

Mason jumped out of his chair, pulled Mickey up, and embraced him. "I love you, man," Mason said, punch-drunk from the whirlwind of the last two days.

"Don't go there, Lou. I'm telling you, man," Mickey said, shoving Mason away and dusting himself off. "Now what?" he asked Mason.

"First of all, you're hired. Second of all, we work weekends. Tomorrow night, we're going to the Dream Casino."

"We gamble on the job?"

"Only for high stakes," Mason told him.