Deadlocked

Chapter 13

Dinner ran long. Mason was in no hurry to go home, checking his voice mail while Rachel went to the bathroom. There was no message from Abby, though he had left one for her. Call when you can. He bet that she wouldn't.

Mason lingered outside Camille's after Rachel left, eyeing the Jazz Museum across the street. A pack of valets hustled cars from the front of the museum to a vacant lot a block away, bringing them back when people began to leave. Young guys sprinted for the lot when a guest handed them a claim check like it was the baton in a relay and they were running the anchor leg. The owners pressed tips into the valets' hands when they returned with the cars, the valets palming the bills, checking them on the sly, grunting at the cheapskates, saluting the swells.

He had no place to go and nothing to do when he got there, so he returned to Camille's, took a table in the front window, picked at a piece of pie, and waited for Whitney King to leave. Whitney had either admitted to the drive-by shooting at Mason's house or teased him with the knowledge that he knew about it. The shooting hadn't made the paper, but that didn't mean it was a secret.

Sandra Connelly left before King did. Mason was glad they were traveling separately, having a hard enough time thinking of Sandra as King's lawyer. Not wanting to add consort to counselor. It wasn't jealousy. Sandra could ignite Mason's lust, but she couldn't sustain his romantic affection. He looked past her sharp-edged, hardball style and saw someone he didn't want taken down by her client. They'd been through enough together that he owed her that much.

Summer light surrendered slowly, the heat sticking around, the valets dripping with each dash to the parking lot as the sky purpled, then blackened. The neon street lit up, the honkytonks honked though not with the wild abandon they must have had when Kansas City was a wide-open town in the days between the World Wars. The people on the street tonight were there to look at the past, not make the present.

King left just after ten o'clock, the lucky valet clicking his heels when King tipped him, turning to his mates before King pulled away, flashing a bill and a grin to match. King drove a BMW 7 series sedan, black, the windows tinted. Mason squinted, crunching his eyes to match the car with his memory of the one on his blacked-out street. It was a definite, tentative maybe.

Mason had gotten lucky when he arrived at Camille's, finding a parking place on the street across from the restaurant, allowing him to fall in behind King, separated by a short string of cars creeping west on Eighteenth Street back to the donors' side of town. Mason didn't plan to follow King. It just happened that way, Mason having no reason other than curiosity, confident that King wouldn't spot him.

King took Eighteenth Street west to Main, turned south on Main, then west on Forty-seventh, cutting through the Plaza, then south on Wornall and west onto Mason's street before it dawned on Mason that King had not only spotted him but was pimping him. King glided to a stop in front of Mason's house.

Mason turned into his driveway, this time not able to ignore King. He parked, got out of his car and leaned against the passenger side, waiting. The driver's door on King's car swung open, King stepping out. They stood silently in the dark, King making his point. He knew where Mason lived.

King broke the silence. "You're out of your league, Mason. Give it up."

"Lucky for me, this is a neighborhood watch area," Mason said.

"Then you better hope your neighbors are watching you all the time," King told him, pointing at Mason's house. "When you get that window fixed, I'd recommend bulletproof glass."

Mason watched King drive away, looking too long at his house before heading for the garage. Mason wasn't hard to find. His address was in the phone book. King could have driven by out of the same curiosity that prompted Mason to follow him, unaware that Mason was behind him, taking advantage of Mason's arrival to jack with him. Or, he could have seen Mason in his rearview mirror, stringing Mason along just to play tough guy one more time. Mason wondered which scenario gave King too much credit.

He wanted to dismiss King's threats, but couldn't. Not if he was going to prove that King murdered Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes, then let his boyhood best friend die for his crimes. King had emerged from the murders without blood on his hands, building a life on a foundation of money, the first floor of a penthouse he inherited. King wouldn't let go easily. He'd fight to keep that life, even if someone else had to die.

Maybe, Mason thought, King was right. Maybe Mason was out of his league, especially with Blues and Harry sitting this one out and Mickey on the road. The clincher hit him as he pulled into the garage. Innocent people let their lawyers deliver threats. Killers don't pass up the pleasure.

Abby was right to leave, he realized. He didn't want her to call, afraid that she would come back before it was over.

Tuffy was pacing in the kitchen, her tail down, greeting Mason with a low whine.

"A hungry dog is not a happy dog," Mason told her, filling her dish, going outside with her when she was finished eating.

Mason took a slow tour of his house, treading in the shadows the brick walls cast on the grass, picking up the dusty smell of parched ground and the sickly sweet decay of wilting flowers. There was a story in the paper that day of an elderly couple overcome by the heat, not found until the smell gave their death away. The mayor reminded everyone to check on their neighbors and not water their grass or flowers. Weather forecasters said they were sorry, but there was no end in sight. Mason touched the wall of his house, still radiating the day's warmth, bricks and mortar the only things that could stand up to the weather. Living things were out of their league.

He rattled his first-floor windows to make certain the locks were secure, knowing that the protection they offered was illusory. He'd had an alarm system installed a few years ago when thugs broke in and redecorated; giving in to Claire's insistence that he wasn't Superman. The alarm system was down until the living room window was replaced and the motion sensor reinstalled.

"Be another week," the guy from the alarm company had told him. "They don't make your system anymore, so we had to find the part on E-bay."

"Why did they quit making it?" Mason asked.

"Didn't sell enough. People wanted something with a louder siren," the alarm guy had told him. "Keep your doors locked in the meantime," he had advised.

Mason slid around the overgrown shrubs that wrapped around the house, making a mental note to find a neighborhood kid to trim them back, remembering Claire's description of Sonni Efron's house. Shrubs like a wall, giving her killer all the cover he needed. Mason stood in his front yard, absently rubbing the scar on his chest, sweat lubricating the raised flesh.

He was chasing middle age, worrying about bushes, locks, and alarms, trading trash talk with a killer ten years younger. The smart way out was to quit. Let someone else or no one else represent Mary Kowalczyk and Nick Byrnes. Prove to Abby that he'd changed. Reassure Blues and Harry that he didn't blame them for an innocent man's execution. Take the advice everyone had given him. Move on. Let it go. Give it up.

He was alone and he was scared, but he couldn't quit. It wasn't about testing his limits or tempting the fates. It was about the voice he kept hearing. Ryan Kowalczyk's last gasp. Innocent.

Mason dragged his rowing machine up from the basement, shoved his dining room table into the living room and docked the equipment where the table had been. He'd moved the rowing machine into the basement in deference to Abby's conventional views on interior decorating, bringing it back now that he was more likely to get that kind of advice from Martha Stewart than from Abby.

He changed into gym shorts, shoes, no shirt, and brought the fan downstairs from the bedroom. He opened the dining room window and turned the lights off. He settled into the seat of the rowing machine, losing himself in the half-light. He started out with a long, slow series of strokes, driving back with his legs, pulling the handle into his gut, letting the flywheel carry him forward, starting again. Rowing was monotonous, almost hypnotic, the rhythm soothing. Breaking him down, building him up.

The fan whirred behind him, drying his back and neck, leaving the rest of him soaked, picking up the pace as his muscles found their groove. Meters and minutes passed, Mason trying to out run Kowalczyk and King, grunting with each stroke, his calves burning, his chest aching, his arms trembling when he finally quit nearly an hour later. Staggering off the machine, sucking air, Mason walked laps around the first floor, betting Tuffy whether she would outlast him, the dog anxiously sticking her nose in his hand.

Grabbing two bottles of water and his cordless phone, Mason led the dog onto the patio where he collapsed into a vinyl lounge chair, his body temperature finding equilibrium with the night, both overheated. His breathing was still ragged. He gagged on the humid, musk air like it was bad medicine. He started to call Abby, tell her she was right, don't come back. Please come back. Instead, he drank one bottle of water, pouring the other over his head, closing his eyes, the phone on his belly, Tuffy at his side.

A few hours later, Tuffy barked, a short burst like shots fired, waking him. The dog was on point at the foot of the lounge chair, her hair bristling. Mason sat up, straddling the chair, the phone in his lap. Peering into the darkness. Listening. Nothing there. Not convinced, the dog edged toward the far corner of the house, growling.

The phone rang. Mason snatching it, answering on the first ring. "Hello."

Dead air. Mason slapped the phone against his thigh.

"Asshole!" the best he could do.

Jumping from the chair, he raced to the front of the house, the dog beating him by a step. The block was deserted. The phone rang again.

"This is your neighborhood watcher. You can go inside now," Whitney King told him.