Final judgment

THIRTY-NINE

Fish sat with his hands on his knees, his fleshy face pinched with seriousness, his eyes filled with worry. Mason sensed that Fish was as concerned about him as he was himself. Mason didn’t understand this, but it made him want to answer Fish’s questions.

Fish’s pitch was tempting. It was the same one he’d made to Lari Prillman. She had turned him down and he needed to do the same to Fish. Though, if anyone would understand Mason’s predicament without judging him, it was Fish. A con man’s instincts may be just what Mason needed. Yet he couldn’t forget that Fish was a con man, someone not to be trusted. Claire had warned him.

Mason stood and stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. “I’ll call you tomorrow with the names of some other lawyers.”

Fish leaned back in his chair, hands making a steeple on his stomach. “I expected more from you.”

Mason bristled at Fish’s comment. He shouldn’t have cared what Fish’s expectations of him were, but somehow he did.

“Why? Because of what you’ve read about me in the papers? I’ve had some high-profile cases, but that doesn’t mean I leap tall buildings in a single bound.”

“No. You don’t look like much of a leaper to me.”

“Then is it because we’re both Jewish? Does that mean I’m supposed to treat you differently than any other client? It doesn’t work that way.”

“We Jews have to look out for one another. That’s one lesson we’ve learned after more than five thousand years. But that’s not it either. I expected more from you because of who you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I knew your father and he never would have given up as easily as you.”

Mason felt like the air had been sucked out of Fish’s living room. His head spun for an instant until he realized that he wasn’t breathing. He’d never met anyone who had known his father besides his Aunt Claire. She hadn’t talked much about him over the years except to assure Mason that his father had been a good and decent man. She stuck to that description even after Mason learned the details about his parents’ deaths. She said his father had made a mistake and couldn’t put things right and that Mason should leave it at that. Some things just couldn’t be fixed, she had told him. His father’s betrayal of his mother was one of them.

He knew his father only through photographs and Claire’s limited references. He hadn’t pushed for more, content to grow up with Claire as his mother and Harry Ryman the closest thing he had to a living father. He wasn’t like an adopted child who decided to search for his birth parents to complete his identity. He had found Brenda Roth and Judith Bartholomew more by accident than design. Afterward, he confronted Claire, demanding to know more about how his parents had died. When she told him what had happened, he saw in Judith a possible link to his father, an indirect way to connect with him without confronting who he was. Fish was offering the direct route and Mason wasn’t certain he wanted to go there.

Mason stared at Fish and started to breathe again. The old man smiled at him. “You knew my father?”

“Sit down and I’ll tell you a story. You were what-three, four years old when your parents died?”

“Three,” Mason said, sitting and leaning forward in his chair, hands wrapped around his cup of tea.

“Who took you in?”

“My Aunt Claire.”

“A very disagreeable woman,” Fish said, his hand raised to blunt Mason’s reply. “I know, I know. You think she hung the moon. Maybe she did, but I guarantee the moon didn’t appreciate it.”

Mason laughed. “She is tough and she’s not a member of your fan club either.”

Fish perked up, arching the folds of skin above his eyes into canopies. “You told her about me?”

“She invited me to dinner for tonight, but I told her you got to me first.”

“What did she say?”

“That you didn’t deserve a lawyer like me.”

“Hah!” Fish slapped his palm hard against his knee. “She’s still the sanctimonious keeper of all that’s sacred. Your aunt and I had a go-round or two. She never cared for me and I never lost sleep over her. What do you think? Do I deserve a lawyer like you?”

“So far. How did you know my father?”

“I met your father, mother, and aunt through the synagogue. I was on the membership committee and they were new members. You might say I took them in, made them feel at home-introduced them to other people. A few years later, I got into some difficulty with a few of my fellow congregants. They were unhappy with an investment I’d recommended and wanted to run me out of the synagogue for duping them. The bylaws said I could be kicked out for acts of moral turpitude, which, being very religious, these people defined by the amount of money they lost.

“The board of directors called a closed meeting to decide what to do. Your father found out about the meeting and asked to speak to the board on my behalf. No one else did. I had no idea he was going to be there. He just marched into the meeting and asked to be recognized. He was a tall man, your father, like you, and he had a quiet way of speaking that made people listen. The board members were so surprised, they didn’t know what to do, but they let him talk. He said that he didn’t know me that well but that I’d been kind and good to him and his family. He talked about how easy it was to get caught up in something that was never intended; how things could go wrong in an instant without anyone ever intending for that to have happened, and how all of us deserved a second chance so we could set things right.”

The image of his father filled Mason with pride, restoring polish to a tarnished memory.

“What happened?”

Fish hauled himself out of his chair and picked up Mason’s cup. “Refill?” Mason nodded. “I’ll tell you what happened. Your father left the room. I told the board I would pay the people back and they let me stay. I never got the chance to thank your father. That was the night your parents were killed in a car accident. It was raining like hell when I drove home. Nearly had a wreck myself.”

Mason was numb, his arms and legs pinned to his chair as Fish lumbered toward the kitchen and disappeared. The newspaper account of the accident said his father had lost control on a slick, wet road; that their car had crashed through a guardrail and run down an embankment, and his parents had been pronounced dead at the scene. The investigating police officer blamed his father, calling it intentional.

Claire had explained when he finally forced her to tell him the truth. His father had been having an affair with Brenda Roth. He tried to break it off and she accused him of rape. He was supposed to turn himself in to the police the next day. None of that ever made the papers. It was a different time in journalism.

Fish came back, carrying two steaming mugs, the mixed aromas of tea and coffee rousing Mason.

“What did you hear about my father after he was killed?”

Fish lowered himself into his chair, careful with his coffee, sipping it before he answered. “There are always stories, especially after a tragedy. People love them. When they tell enough of them about you, you stop listening. So, I don’t listen and I don’t remember. What I do remember is that your father took a chance for me when he had bigger problems of his own.”

“Maybe was talking about himself when he stood up for you.”

“Maybe he was talking about both of us. What matters is that he was there when no one else was. That was enough for me. I repaid the people who wanted to throw me out. I never had the chance to repay your father until now.”

Mason paced the room, setting his cup on the mantel above the fireplace next to a photograph of Fish with his daughters and grandchildren. “Where are their husbands, your sons-in-law?”

“Always out of town on business. My daughters hated me for being gone all the time, then they married men who do the same thing.”

“I thought they hated you because you were a con man.”

“Of course they do. But people will forgive a lot if you are there for them when they need you. I never was.”

Mason looked at Fish. He saw a lonely old man filled with regret who was looking for a way to balance the books even if the credits wouldn’t match the right debits. He looked around the living room. It wasn’t a storehouse of memories so much as it was a reminder of lost opportunities. He caught his reflection in a mirror hanging in the front hall. The low light and distance made his image shimmer and shift as if he might disappear in an instant only to materialize thirty years from now, heir to Fish’s regret.

“There is a woman named Vanessa Carter,” he began.

Fish listened as Mason told him about Blues, Ed Fiori, and Vanessa Carter. He interrupted occasionally with questions, grunted at some of the details, chuckled when Mason told him that Vanessa Carter would have granted bail for Blues anyway. He nodded with understanding when Mason explained again why the photograph of Blues outside Rockley’s apartment made it impossible for Mason to continue representing him. He let out a long sigh when Mason finished, pushed himself out of his chair, and disappeared into the kitchen, coming back with a fresh cup of coffee.

“So, this conflict of interest you’re so worried about-I don’t think it’s a conflict at all.”

“Then you weren’t listening. The FBI has to give the photograph of Blues to the cops sooner or later. When they do, the cops will be convinced you killed Rockley. I can’t explain the photograph without turning myself in.”

“So we’ll find the real killer. Problem solved.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. There’s an angle to all of this that ties the blackmailand the murder together. We have a lot better chance of figuring it out if we work together. I’ll take the U.S. attorney’s offer. It’s the only way to find out what they’re up to. You have to stay on my case because that’s the only way we can help each other.”

“Avery, a lawyer has to put his client’s interest above his own. I can’t do that if I’m trying to save my ass and yours at the same time.”

“Look at it this way-if you save one of our asses you’ve got a lot better chance of saving the other.”

Mason looked down at Fish, whose wide body filled the chair as if he’d been poured into it. “You’re taking a big chance.”

“I don’t think so. You trusted me with the truth. Who does that? It’s good enough for me.”