The Last Witness

Chapter Thirteen

Patrick Ortiz called Mason on Monday morning and asked if he could meet with him and Leonard Campbell at eleven.

"What's the occasion? You guys ready to surrender, or what?" Mason asked.

"Eleven o'clock," Ortiz answered, and hung up.

Mason didn't think they were ready to surrender. He did think they were ready to negotiate, or at least make the offer that Tony Manzerio had encouraged him to take during their slow dance in the parking lot.

The meeting with Campbell and Ortiz bothered him for a couple of reasons. He knew Blues wouldn't take a plea, and he didn't want to tell Blues that Ed Fiora had threatened to have them both killed if he didn't. Mason would have to tell Blues about the prosecutor's offer. From there, he wasn't certain what he would tell Blues.

He didn't like the prosecutor deciding to oppose bail or summoning him for a meeting to deliver an offer his client wouldn't accept. Mason was glad that he represented the defendant. He just hated being on the defensive. He slapped his hand on his desk, taking his frustration out on an inanimate object that stung his hand in return. That's solo practice, he thought to himself. Even his desk gave him a hard time.

The prosecuting attorney's office was located on the first floor of the Jackson County Courthouse. Mason signed in at the receptionist's desk when he arrived, printing his name, address, and telephone number and the name of the person he'd come to see. Four other people were already waiting. Two of them were dressed in lawyer's uniforms and were tapping on their Palm Riots as if they were sending SOS signals. The other two were an elderly man and woman who both clutched the prosecutor's brochure on how to avoid home-remodeling scams. From their ruined looks, Mason concluded that they had waited too long to take the prosecutor's advice.

The receptionist was a young black woman with big hair that had been styled into heavily gelled ribbons that flipped and curled like a miniature roller coaster from one ear to the other. Her long fingernails were painted bright yellow. She kept her back to him while playing solitaire on her computer screen and talking on her telephone headset. Her conversation was limited to "Get out!" and "You go, girl!" Had her name been Margaret, he wouldn't have stayed. Fortunately, according to the nameplate on her desk, her name was LaTisha, so Mason decided to gut it out and stand at her desk until she gave in and noticed him.

Their standoff lasted until eleven-fifteen. LaTisha muttered, "Damn this piece of shit!" She shook her head. "Not you, girl," she said into her headset. "This damn computer. Beats me every damn time. I give up."

Mason didn't mind waiting since that meant that Leonard Campbell and Patrick Ortiz were waiting as well. The odds were that they would be more annoyed than he was, since they would assume that he was late. It wouldn't occur to them that the taxpayers were not getting their money's worth from LaTisha.

Mason cleared his throat and LaTisha turned around. "How long you been standing there?" she asked him.

"Just a minute or two," he assured her. "I'm Lou Mason. I've got an appointment with Leonard Campbell and Patrick Ortiz."

LaTisha grabbed the sign-in sheet and saw that Mason had written his arrival time down as eleven o'clock. She gave him a big smile, appreciating that he hadn't given her a hard time for being on the phone. Maybe, Mason thought, she liked keeping Campbell waiting as much as he did.

"He'll be right with you, sir." Mason thought she even meant it.

Moments later, Campbell 's secretary, an attractive Hispanic woman with dark hair and a lavender skirt that had been spray-painted onto her tight hips, appeared and told him to follow her. He wanted to tell her to slow down, but didn't think it was a good idea to make Campbell wait any longer. She ushered him into Campbell 's office with a small flourish of her hand, and held his eyes as he nodded his thanks.

Patrick Ortiz was seated in a chair on the visitors' side of Campbell 's ornate, walnut desk. Campbell stood behind his desk, the phone to his ear. He motioned to Mason to take the chair next to Ortiz and squeezed his thumb and forefinger together to indicate that the conversation would be a short one.

Mason remained standing, smiled at Ortiz, and shook his hand. They didn't speak. Mason had nothing to say, and Ortiz was being deferential to his boss. Mason looked around the office. There were law books on one wall that Mason was confident Leonard Campbell had never opened; pictures of Campbell with various local dignitaries on another; and Campbell 's framed law school diploma on a third. Mason examined it closely to be certain that Campbell 's degree wasn't from the Columbia School of Broadcasting. He was annoyed to learn that he and Campbell had gone to the same law school, though Campbell had graduated twenty-five years earlier.

Campbell finished his phone call, hung up the phone, and greeted Mason. "Good to see you, Lou!" he exclaimed.

He was a trim, well-kept man nearing retirement, a neat white mustache penciled in above his upper lip. His hair was cut short to the scalp and combed slightly forward to cover more ground without looking too obvious. He was wearing a charcoal-brown suit, bone-colored shirt, a necktie with olive and copper rectangles alternating on a black background, and chocolate-colored suspenders. His suit jacket was carefully draped on a valet standing at one end of the credenza behind his desk. Mason wanted to ask him if his middle name was Dapper.

Campbell reached across his desk and shook Mason's hand with both of his, the left clamped over the right in a firm commitment of fellowship. Mason took it as a sign that Campbell was about to screw his lights out. Mason's aunt Claire had once warned him that the two-handed shake was the male equivalent of a woman's air kiss. It was, she insisted, a gesture of phony intimacy that was nothing more than a warning to be on guard.

Mason withdrew his hand and sat down next to Ortiz. He smiled politely, waiting for Campbell to tee it up, determined to avoid small talk.

"So, how's your practice these days, Lou? You've got such a high profile, I imagine you've got to use a club to keep the clients away!"

"What do you want, Leonard?" Mason asked. He phrased the question with such a neutral tone, it was impossible for Campbell to be offended or ask him another idiot question. Ortiz stifled a small chuckle with a hand over his mouth, converting it to a cough.

"Very well," Campbell answered. "Let's get to it then, shall we?"

"Let's get to it indeed," Mason concurred.

"Patrick tells me we've got your man dead to rights. No sense in putting the taxpayers through an expensive trial. We've got a proposal for you. Let your client put this whole thing behind him, do his time, and start over while he still has something to look forward to."

Mason thought Campbell was entertaining, but only to a point that had come and gone. "Patrick is too good a lawyer to have told you that you've got my client dead to anything, Leonard. Your case sucks. You've got two guys pissing at each other in a bar. All of your forensics evidence got under Cullan's fingernails when he scratched my client's hands while my client was stopping him from beating up Beth Harrell. That's all you've got. You can't even put my client at the murder scene. The only deal you should be offering me is a dismissal and an apology in return for a promise not to sue your ass."

"We can put him at the scene," Ortiz said.

Mason looked at Ortiz, ready to call him a bullshitter, but he stopped when he saw the determined confidence in Ortiz's dark eyes. Ortiz wasn't a dandy. He was a bulldog. He wouldn't bluff Mason with something that Mason could so easily call him on.

"What have you got, Patrick?"

"Your client's fingerprints. On Cullan's desk in the study where the maid found his body. Still think my case sucks?"

Mason refused to be baited. He needed to talk to Blues. "I'm obligated to convey any offer you make to my client. You're still a long way from home on this case and we all know that."

Campbell flashed Mason his most sincere smile. Mason wanted to sew his lips shut.

"We'll accept a plea to second-degree murder and we won't make any recommendation on the sentence. Your man will probably be sentenced to twenty years to life and be paroled in seven years."

"That's not much of a deal. Even with the fingerprints, second degree is the worst that he's likely to be convicted of on your best day in court. This isn't the kind of deal that makes anybody lose any sleep if we turn it down."

Campbell unleashed another smile. "This is our best deal, Lou. It's on the table until the preliminary hearing. After that, it's off the table and there won't be any other deals offered. This deal is in everyone's best interests."

"Does that include your best interests too, Leonard? Why don't you check back with Ed Fiora and ask him if he wants to reconsider? I'll take this to my client but, if I were you, I'd plan on working New Year's."

Twenty minutes later Mason was in a visitors' room at the county jail with Blues.

"They found your fingerprints in Cullan's study. On his desk," Mason told him.

Blues showed no emotion at the news. He didn't curse and he didn't deny.

"Did you hear what I said?" Mason asked him. "Patrick Ortiz told me they found your fingerprints. They can put you in Cullan's house the night he was killed."

"I wasn't there," Blues told Mason.

"Fine. I'll tell them that. I'm sure they'll just throw the fingerprints out. That will take care of everything."

"I wasn't there," Blues repeated.

Mason studied Blues as he spoke. There was no artifice, no subtle tics born of a liar's stress. There never had been with Blues. Mason couldn't think of a single time that Blues had ever lied to him. About anything. Blues knew it would do him no good to lie now. Just as it would do Ortiz no good to lie. They couldn't both be telling the truth.

"Maybe the forensics people just made a mistake. It wouldn't be the first time," Mason said.

"If that's supposed to make me feel better, it doesn't," Blues said. "They want me for this, Lou. They've got to make it be me."

"I don't buy it, Blues. I don't care what happened between you and Harry. I don't buy it."

"Doesn't matter if it is Harry. You've got to go after all of them, Lou. If you don't, I'm a dead man."

Mason sighed deeply, feeling the walls close in on him as if he were the prisoner. " Campbell offered you a deal. Second degree, no recommendation on sentencing, out in seven years."

"No," Blues said without hesitation.

"I know. I told Campbell that was the worst that you would get in a trial. Campbell said it's the best deal you'll get and that it's off the table once the preliminary hearings starts."

"No deals, Lou. Tell Campbell to go fuck himself. Tell him today-now. I don't want that punk bitch to believe I'm even thinking about it."

"I will, Blues," Mason said.

Mason used his cell phone to call Patrick Ortiz after he left the jail.

"Patrick, it's Lou Mason. My client says he'll take a pass on your deal."

"Have a nice life," Ortiz told him and hung up the phone.

Sure thing, Mason thought to himself. Whatever is left of it.