Final judgment

FORTY-SIX

Mason knew about Kelly’s history with the FBI, though it was Kelly’s version-wrongfully accused and brokenhearted. He didn’t know what had brought her back to the Bureau, into Fish’s case, and back into his life. Griswold had his slant. The facts were the same. The slant was everything.

He assumed Kelly would play hard and play to win but that she knew where to draw the lines. She probably assumed the same about him, though her assumption would collapse if she knew what he’d done to Judge Carter. Maybe they didn’t know each other as well as they thought. It was all in the slant.

Samantha Greer fell in alongside Mason as he walked down the stairs from the bullpen.

“Sorry about the lineup,” she said.

“Don’t be sorry. You were doing your job.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean I like it. Especially when I’m working with Cates. That boy is a P-I-G pig.”

“ Animal House, right?”

“Yeah. I went out with this guy who claimed there was no situation in life that couldn’t be explained by that movie. It was his philosophy and his religion.”

“How inspirational. Was there a second date?”

“No. The guy was a total loser, but I rented the movie and, you know what, there’s something to it. In fact, there’s one line that works better than any of the others.”

“Which one?”

“It’s right after they wreck the fat kid’s car, the one he borrowed from his older brother. One of the guys says to him, ‘You fucked up. You trusted us.’ Now there’s a lesson.”

“And the rest is commentary.”

“Hey, are you buying me dinner tomorrow night or what? It’s my birthday.”

They stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Samantha ducked her chin and fingered the ends of her hair as a couple of detectives walked by, giving them a knowing glance. She was acting like they were kids on the playground and he was asking her out. Except it wasn’t a date even if she thought it was. It was an obligation-one he wished he didn’t have especially now that she was involved in his case and even more so since it was her birthday.

“I’ve been saving up. How about that Italian place in the Freight House? Meet you there at eight.”

She smiled, but only enough to hide her disappointment that he didn’t offer to pick her up. For an instant, he thought she was mouthing the line from Animal House.

“Sounds great,” she said instead, giving his hand a quick squeeze before heading back up the stairs.

Mason stood on the sidewalk outside police headquarters. It was a cloudy day, cold enough to make him want to keep moving, but he jammed his hands in his jacket pockets and ignored the temperature, concentrating on Kelly Holt.

She’d told Mason about Rockley but denied that she’d leaked the information to the press when Griswold asked her if she had. Mason believed her since keeping the lid on Rockley’s identity a while longer was part of her pitch to him and Fish. Pete Samuelson had nothing to gain by leaking the information. Nor would he have had any reason to tip off Vince Bongiovanni.

That left someone else in the U.S. attorney’s office or the FBI as the source of the leak. Mason could come up only with one candidate. Dennis Brewer, the FBI agent who’d appeared on the scene after Hill clipped the sedan on his way out of the parking lot at Easy’s. That was a card he’d play when he and Fish met with Kelly and Samuelson later that night.

Fish had persuaded Mason not to quit representing him. It was time instead, as Fish had put it, to get in the game. That meant telling the feds they were ready to play. They’d figure out what to do after the feds told them what they wanted from Fish. Mason had agreed, but told Fish that he’d prefer to know what game he was playing, who was playing it, and what the rules were. Fish had laughed.

“The name of the game,” he had said, “was Fuck Your Buddy. Everyone was playing it and there weren’t any rules. That’s what makes it so much fun.”

Mason had parked his car in a lot on the opposite side of City Hall. He crossed Oak and continued walking west on Twelfth Street, passing the courthouse just as Vanessa Carter came off the courthouse steps onto the sidewalk. He had his head down, and he nearly bumped into her. She was wearing a full-length black wool coat with a fur collar, a flat-brimmed hat cast to one side of her head, and dark glasses. He took a step back when he recognized her.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she told him. “They still let me in the Courthouse.”

Mason struggled for the right thing to say. “Good for them.”

“Good for me and good for you. I get a call now and then to fill in pro tem if one of the judges is sick. It’s almost funny. They don’t really know what to do with me. I was a damn good judge and everyone knows that, but the rumors about why I quit hang around like a bad smell. It’s like they’re letting me stick one toe at a time back into the water to make sure I don’t clear out the whole damn pool.”

Mason sighed, relieved that another piece of her life was falling back into place. “That’s great. Really great.”

“You better believe it is, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to let some two-bit blackmailing piece of scum ruin it for me again.” She took him by the arm, her fingers piercing his jacket. “I can’t afford to lose this all over again. You’ve got to make this go away. I don’t care what you have to do. Now, promise me,” she said, holding his eyes.

He felt a greater responsibility for Vanessa Carter than he did for many of his clients, most of whom were guilty. Even the ones who weren’t had usually done something stupid enough to make them suspects. They were in trouble because of what they had done. Even so, he worked the cops, the case, and the system to get them the best result he could. But Vanessa Carter was in trouble because of what he had done. That she could have told Ed Fiori no when he pressured her to release Blues on bail didn’t matter. Mason had put her in the position of having to make that choice. That was his burden, not hers.

He nodded. “Whatever it takes.”

When Mason got back to his office, there was a message on his voice mail.

“Lou, it’s Lari Prillman. I called all of Keegan’s former employers. Every one of them said he was a good employee they’d like to have back. One woman even cried when I told her he’d been killed and asked where she could send flowers. Let me know if I can do anything else.”

Mason saved the message and called her.

“Is that unusual?” he asked her.

“Is what unusual?”

“For employers to give out that kind of information about former employees. I thought they were too worried about getting sued to give references.”

She paused before answering. “I admit it’s not typical, but when I told them that Keegan had been murdered and that I represented his last employer, they didn’t hesitate at all. Why should they?”

“No reason, at least not that I can think of. Do me another favor?”

“At my hourly rates, you can’t afford my favors.”

“Then charge it to Galaxy. Saturday night when we first got to your office, one of your phone lines was lit up. Whoever took the CD from your safe made a call. Check with the phone company. Let’s see who he called.”

“Since that may be a favor for both of us, I won’t even charge you. I’ll fax the records to you when I get them.”

He stared at the phone after he hung up, debating whether to call Abby. He ran through the litany of reasons. He’d been unfair, too hard and too jealous. Josh Seeley’s wife was probably guilty of the same behavior toward the senator. Maybe Abby hadn’t chosen the best way to defuse Mrs. Seeley’s jealousy, but that didn’t mean their day together had been a sham. Abby just wasn’t that type.

What griped him, and kept his hand from the phone, was that she hadn’t told him what was going on and asked for his help. It was all about honesty, he told himself with puffed-up pride. Then he thought about Vanessa Carter and realized he’d never told Abby what he’d done to the judge. It was a lot easier to insist that someone come clean if it was their laundry instead of his. He chided himself for setting the bar higher for Abby than he had for himself, then dialed her number.

He was only partially disappointed when she didn’t answer. At least he got to hear her voice ask him to leave a message. He told her he was sorry about Saturday night and that he had jumped to the wrong conclusion and wanted to see her again before she left town. He left his cell phone number and said that he had a late meeting with a client that night.

Just before he left his office, he opened the dry erase board and studied the hieroglyphics he’d written in an effort to make sense out of everyone and everything. Picking up a black marker, he wrote two words in large block letters across the maze of names, questions, and lines that connected them- ANIMAL HOUSE.