Final judgment

FORTY

Mason knew a lawyer who described his practice as juggling knives. Every case was a gleaming, razor-sharp blade arcing over his head, waiting for him to grab it and toss it back in the air before he caught the next one in his neck. Mason knew the feeling and the difference between their practices. If his friend took one in the neck, he bled his client’s money. Mason and his clients bled the real thing.

Studying his dry erase board early Monday morning, he saw too many knives to possibly avoid them all. He wrote Galaxy Casino in the upper right-hand corner and Carol Hill in the upper left. Across the top, he wrote Vanessa Carter, connecting her name to both Carol Hill and Galaxy. On the left-hand margin he drew a line down from Carol Hill connecting her to Mark Hill, Ed Fiori, and, at the bottom, Vince Bongiovanni. He listed Charles Rockley, Johnny Keegan, and Al Webb in a vertical parade on the right-hand margin ending in the bottom corner with Lari Prillman. He filled in the bottom margin with Avery Fish in the center.

He stepped back from the board and realized what he’d left out. He wrote Lou Mason in the middle of the board, like a bull’s-eye, then drew more lines, each one a dagger aimed at him. On the line between him and Vanessa Carter he wrote deadline Friday. He connected Ed Fiori, Vanessa Carter, Al Webb, and Lari Prillman to one another and to him with audio tape, then erased it using CD instead.

He wrote Why me? on the line connecting him to Johnny Keegan. He wrote Why Fish? between Fish’s and Rockley’s names. He finished by writing Get out on the line between his name and Fish’s, then added Can’t.

The exercise in visualization didn’t produce any answers. It did make clear how little he knew and how little time he had to figure it all out. The answers wouldn’t suddenly appear if he just sat in his office and waited for them. He closed the cabinet doors over the dry erase board and called Pete Samuelson.

“We’re ready to make a deal,” he told the assistant U.S. attorney.

“Outstanding. When can you come downtown?”

“You come here. Tonight, ten o’clock. We’ll meet you in the bar downstairs. Just you and Kelly Holt.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“What’s the problem? Past your bedtime?”

“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with meeting in an office during business hours?”

“You don’t have to get it. All you have to do is show up.” Mason hung up before Samuelson could protest any more.

The phone rang an instant later. Samuelson’s number flashed on Mason’s caller ID.

“Quit bitching about working late. Just be there,” Mason told him, hanging up before Samuelson could utter a word.

His next call was to Vince Bongiovanni.

“You better have a good reason for stiffing me twice in one day,” Bongiovanni told him.

“What qualifies for a good excuse other than the truth?”

“For you, getting killed; for me, getting laid.”

“I’ll take your lie over mine. Look, I’m sorry. I’ll tell you about it if and when I can, but that’s not today. I need to talk to Carol as soon as possible. You name the time and place and I’ll be there.”

“I don’t know what’s going on here, Mason, but you’re going to have to tell me. Frankly, I didn’t mind that you didn’t show up since I had an appointment with my personal trainer, but Carol went nuts. She wants to talk to you and I mean now.”

“I’m ready. Where? Your office?”

“No, and not at your office either. She wants to meet you at the Galaxy.”

“The casino? Why?”

“Not the casino. The hotel next to the casino. Room 1201. She’s waiting for you.”

“Are you going to be there?”

“Are you kidding? I’d have to get killed and laid before I’d let you talk to her alone,” Bongiovanni said.

Gambling in Missouri was one of the all-time great public relations coups. Promoters promised quaint two-hour riverboat cruises with five-hundred-dollar loss limits. The voters said bring it on and the gaming companies did, transforming riverboats into permanently anchored barges of a hundred thousand square feet or more accommodating casinos rivaling those on any river or reservation in America. Time and loss limits gave way to billboards bragging about which casino had the loosest slots, each ad including a toll-free number for a gambling addiction hotline, written in microscopic print not meant to be read.

The slots were tight enough to finance hotels next door on dry land, the casinos improving on the Field of Dreams prophecy with their own-if you build it, they will come, even if you take their money. Mason had been to the casino when it was owned by Ed Fiori and called the Dream. He hadn’t been back since Galaxy Gaming took it over and he’d never been to the hotel that adjoined the casino. It continued the Galaxy theme, splashing glitter-covered stars and other celestial bodies throughout, tempting customers to blast off.

When Mason arrived, the lobby was packed with a senior citizen group checking out after a weekend extravaganza. Mason couldn’t tell the blue-haired winners from the gray-haired losers. He wound his way through them, finding the elevator and taking it to the twelfth floor.

He assumed that Johnny Keegan’s murder had hit Carol Hill harder than Charles Rockley’s, especially after his warning to Bongiovanni that Mark Hill was a prime suspect and Carol a potential target. His warning must have prompted her to move out of the house and into the hotel.

Mason wondered whether Carol knew why Keegan had Mason’s name in the palm of his hand when he died, but the timing of Keegan’s death made that doubtful. Mason and Blues had braced her husband at the bar in Fairfax just after six o’clock on Friday evening. Dennis Brewer, the FBI agent, and his buddies were working Hill over when Mason and Blues left the parking lot of the bar. Bongiovanni got his tip that Rockley was the dead man in Fish’s trunk at around seven. He was waiting for Mason at Blues on Broadway a little over an hour later. Keegan was gunned down sometime after he got off work at eight while Bongiovanni and Mason were talking. The cops told Mason about Keegan at midnight and Mason broke the news to Bongiovanni after the cops left. Mason couldn’t find any point in that time line for Carol Hill to connect him to Johnny Keegan.