Final judgment

FIFTY-NINE

“Ed Fiori. You used to work for him?”

She nodded.

“How long?”

“Five years.”

“Were you working for him when he was killed?”

She nodded again, this time more cautiously.

“That’s why you recognized my name,” he said. “It wasn’t because I represent Avery Fish.”

“I never met you before today.”

Her answer was another dodge and he let it slide. “What did you do for Fiori?”

“I was his secretary.”

“Which meant what?”

She straightened in her chair, arms folded across her chest. “That was a long time ago. Why are you interested in that now?”

“I’m going to write his biography.”

She rose and turned toward the door.

“Okay,” he said, holding up a hand. “Take it easy. I’m not going to write his biography.”

“Mr. Mason, do you know what a director of human resources does all day? Deals with other people’s bullshit. I’m not interested in yours.”

She had come to the suite knowing it was a setup, cautious enough to bring two goons along but confident enough to leave them outside the room. He’d kept her off balance, gotten her to laugh, and picked up some tantalizing hints, but he wasn’t going to chitchat her into submission. He played one of his hole cards, mixing it with a bluff, remembering Fish’s lesson that a con works because the mark wants it to whether she knows it or not.

“What if someone at Galaxy was blackmailing Judge Carter into ruling in your favor on Carol Hill’s case? Is that a human resources issue that interests you?”

She stood next to her chair, gripping its high back. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about Carol’s case.”

“I don’t. I’m working on an old case involving Ed Fiori. There may be some splash back on Carol because she was related to him. Vince Bongiovanni says you helped him clean out Fiori’s office after he was killed. Is that true?”

She hesitated, sifting what he’d told her, gauging her reply. “I was there.”

“Fiori taped a lot of his conversations,” he said, treating it as a fact, daring her to deny it. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

“He was a careful man.”

“Careful enough to tell you about the tapes and what was on them?”

“Careful enough to know who he could trust.”

“Did he trust you?”

She looked him full in the eyes, her own slightly moist with a flash of memory that suggested they’d had more than a professional relationship. “Yes.”

“What happened to the tapes?”

“Vince took them.”

“All of them?”

Before she could answer, the door to the suite blew open, banging hard against the wall.

“What the fuck is this?” Al Webb marched into the living room, trailed by the two thugs. Webb was hot, the smooth, honeyed manner he’d shown Mason at the Republican Party dinner gone; his eyes were narrow slits, chest puffed up, shoulders flared back. Lila bolted from her chair, color rising in her neck, the words not coming. Webb pounced again. “I said what the fuck is this?”

“It’s a private meeting,” Mason said. “And you aren’t on the guest list, so get out.”

“I run this goddamn casino and this hotel, Mason, and I’m going to throw your ass out of it.”

“Every square inch except this suite. You don’t own it and I didn’t invite you in. That makes you a trespasser. Vince Bongiovanni doesn’t give frequent-defendant discounts, and I don’t think he’ll make an exception for you.”

Webb aimed a finger at Lila. “Go on. Get back to the office.” Lila ducked her head, her confidence evaporated, the two goons grinning as she walked past them, both of them following her out into the hall. Turning to Mason, he said, “You keep showing up where I don’t expect you. Why is that?”

“Somebody’s bad luck.”

Webb took a deep breath, calm descending on him, the craft of the con man clicking in. “Don’t make it yours. What did you want with Lila? And don’t lie to me because she won’t.”

Mason didn’t know whether she would, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance. He also didn’t want to say anything that would make Webb resist the bait that Fish was about to dangle in front of him. If Webb were suspicious of Mason, he’d be even more suspicious of Fish.

“I’ve got a case that involves Ed Fiori. Lila used to work for him. I wanted someplace private to talk with her. Vince Bongiovanni told me about this suite. I asked him if I could use it. I was afraid Lila wouldn’t meet with me if she knew what I wanted to talk about so I asked Vince to have Carol Hill call her and say she wanted to meet with her to settle her case. Lila showed up with her entourage. One of them belted me hard enough to renumber my ribs. She and I were just getting acquainted when you showed up.”

Webb smiled as if he’d already known that was what happened, renewing Mason’s suspicion that the suite was bugged and confirming his decision not to lie.

“Fiori, huh?” Webb asked. “Wasn’t he the guy that owned the casino before Galaxy bought it? He’s been dead for what, three years?”

“Long before you came to work here. Too bad you never got to meet him. He was an interesting guy.”

“The dead don’t interest me, Mason, because they don’t gamble.”

“So you won’t be interested in me, because I don’t gamble either.”

“Then I guess there’s not much difference between you and a dead man,” Webb said.

“If you don’t count breathing.”

Webb looked around the suite, walked to the door, and closed it. He took his time coming back into the living room, stopping to examine the fruit basket, polishing an apple before setting it down. He ambled over to the windows, gazing at the full parking lot.

“You know,” he said at last, “that story you told Lila about working on a case involving Ed Fiori is pure bullshit, but I liked that you told it so well. You made it believable. That’s talent. Then, you didn’t lie to me. That’s judgment. Those are two important qualities in a man. Now what’s all this about someone at Galaxy trying to blackmail Judge Carter?”

Mason had taken a chance throwing that comment at Lila, hoping to shake her up. He expected her to press him for details. Instead, she let him change the subject to Fiori’s tapes. He had a sudden image of Webb and Lila scamming him. Lila’s job was to draw him out, find out what he knew. Webb would then burst in like a jealous husband at the first mention of blackmail. Only Webb cut them off before they got into any of the details. Maybe Lila wasn’t involved and Webb didn’t want her asking any questions. Everything in this case had at least two sides and everyone had at least two faces. The permutations were making him crazy, reminding him not to trust anyone.

“Just talk.”

“Just talk,” Webb repeated. “Who’s doing the talking? Bongiovanni? That’s the kind of rumor he’d spread. He probably hopes it gets back to the judge and makes her rule in his favor just to prove there was no blackmail.”

“Can’t help you. Client confidentiality.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Webb said, waving his hand at Mason. “Everything is confidential until you need something that’s more important than keeping the client’s secrets secret. Believe me; I know how you lawyers work. Anyway, from what I read in the paper, I would think you’ve got your hands full with Avery Fish’s case.”

Webb was back in full huckster mode, his voice silky, his manner ingratiating, and his outburst at Lila the impetuous act of another man. He dismissed Mason’s blackmail claim, more interested in talking about Fish. Mason wondered whether Sylvia McBride had already spoken with Webb, pitting Webb’s greed against the prospect of exposing his real identity. He knew that Webb was playing him, probing for anything that would help him measure the odds. Mason decided to give him something he hadn’t read in the papers, knowing that inside information was the hallmark of credibility.

“The prosecuting attorney and the U.S. attorney have ganged up on my client. They think he murdered your late employee, Mr. Rockley. They’ve offered to dismiss the federal charge and not seek the death penalty if he’ll confess to Rockley’s murder.”

“Sounds like the framework for a deal,” Webb said.

“Not this time,” Mason answered. “My client had nothing to do with Rockley’s murder and the police have no evidence that he did except that the body was found in his car. That won’t get them a conviction. He’ll never take a deal that makes him look like a killer. The state will have to back off on the murder charge and we’ll beat the federal charge.”

“Seems like quite a risk. Your client could go to jail for the rest of his life.”

Mason understood Webb’s concern. If Fish was willing to make a deal, Webb couldn’t trust him. If Fish wouldn’t deal, his proposition to Sylvia would have more credibility. He invoked Fish’s appeal to Sylvia about his grandchildren.

“My client is at an age when any prison sentence is likely to be a life sentence. If he pleads to murder one, he never gets out. If he pleads to murder two, he does fifteen years, which is the same thing. If the state drops the murder charge, the U.S. attorney says he won’t make a deal on the mail fraud. There are enough counts in the federal charges that they add up to a life sentence if he’s convicted. So, there’s no deal he can make that keeps him out of prison. His only real concern is his four grandkids. All he cares about is making certain they are taken care of.”

“Do you do estate planning as well as criminal defense work?”

Mason shook his head. “Not me. I leave that up to bean counters.”

“Mr. Fish must have a lot of money to protect if he can afford you,” Webb said.

“One thing you learn in my business is not to ask questions about how much money your client has or where he got it. All I care about is that he has enough to pay me. The rest is none of my business.”

“Another honest answer,” Webb said. “It’s trite but true. We all have a price, don’t we?”

“We are a nation of buyers and sellers,” Mason said with a tight-lipped smile, his eyes locked on to Webb’s.

“So, then. That brings us back to this business about blackmail. You wouldn’t answer my question before when I didn’t offer you anything in return. That was rude. I suppose that makes me the buyer and makes you the seller.”

“It’s trite but true,” Mason said. “There are some things that money just can’t buy.”

“That doesn’t mean they can’t be bought though, does it?”

Mason looked at him. “No, it doesn’t.”

“Then name your price.”

History was repeating itself. Webb was standing a few feet from Mason, his suit jacket open, a smartphone clipped to his belt.

Mason eased out of his chair, closing the distance between them, flashing his take-me-home-with-you smile. Webb grinned until Mason’s hand shot out, clamping Webb’s lips together. Mason shoved him against the wall while he yanked the phone from Webb’s belt. Pressing his forearm against Webb’s neck to pin him in place, he tapped the audio record app icon and listened to his conversation with Lila followed by the one he had been having with Webb. He pressed erase and turned it off.

“You figure it out,” Mason said, releasing his grip and dropping the phone to the floor.