Final Judgment (37 page)

“I’m on it,” the technician said, his fingers racing across the keyboard. He put on a set of headphones and twirled the dials on the speakers. “Either the transmitter is dead or she’s jamming it.”

Samuelson picked up a two-way radio. “Brewer, Holt,” he said. “We’re calling it off. The audio isn’t working. We’ve got no ears.”

“I know,” Brewer said, his voice audible to all of them. “We’re not getting anything either. But you can’t call it off. She’ll know it was a setup and we’re finished. Besides, we’ve still got the cameras.”

“There are private viewing rooms inside the vault. No cameras in there,” the technician said. “We’ll be deaf, dumb, and blind if they use one of those.”

“The kid is with her,” Brewer said. “He’s our eyes and ears.”

They stared at the computer monitor. Mickey was signing the safety deposit box register.

“This is my call,” Samuelson said. “It’s off. Arrest her.”

“For what?” Kelly asked. “She hasn’t done anything. They’re in the vault now anyway. I’ll take the responsibility.”

Samuelson turned pale, his bald head beading with sweat. “Agent Holt, I’m ordering you to call this off.”

“I don’t take orders from you. Call your boss. Let him decide if he wants to blow up this investigation.”

Samuelson slammed the radio onto the kitchen table, whipped out his cell phone, and marched into the living room. Fish, Mason, and the technician watched the monitor, the camera trained on the inside of the vault. Mickey opened the safety deposit box, removed it, and carried it into a private room with Sylvia behind him.

Mason watched the timer at the bottom of the screen tick off five and half minutes until the door opened again. Mickey returned the safety deposit box and locked it. He went back to the private room and came out again carrying Sylvia’s bag. She followed, closing the door behind her. Samuelson returned just as they exited the vault, sporting a paler shade of pale with matching stooped shoulders.

“Did you reach the U.S. attorney?” Mason asked.

“He was in conference,” Samuelson said. “I told his secretary it was urgent. She said she’d mention that to him.”

Sylvia stopped at the countertop again, buttoning her coat and pulling on her gloves. Mickey stopped alongside her, setting the bag on the floor. Samuelson started to speak, but the technician cut him off.

“I got it,” he said, switching to the overhead camera, zooming in on the books.

“Thank God,” Samuelson said.

“God doesn’t play these games,” Fish said. “But He likes to watch.”

SEVENTY-FOUR

The bank’s camera followed Mickey and Sylvia out the door before losing them to the street.

Samuelson grabbed the radio. “Brewer, do you have them?”

“Big as life. She’s getting in a minivan. The kid is waving good-bye.”

“Follow her,” Samuelson said, “just in case.”

“We’re pulling out now,” Brewer said. “She’s northbound on Main at the traffic light. It just turned green.”

“Maintain radio contact,” Samuelson said. “I want to know every turn she takes.”

“Relax, we’ve got her,” Brewer said an instant before screaming, “Look out, you crazy son of a bitch!”

Samuelson held the radio at arm’s length, the sound of crying tires and crunched steel making his hand shake. He pulled the radio back to his mouth.

“Brewer! What’s happening? Holt, what the hell is going on?”

Kelly’s voice broke in over the radio. “Some asshole ran a red light and broadsided Brewer’s van.”

“Is anybody hurt?” Samuelson asked.

“I don’t think so,” Kelly said.

“What about Sylvia McBride?” Samuelson asked.

“She got away. I’ve got to go before Brewer takes out the guy who hit him. You better get down here.”

Samuelson raced out of the house. Mason followed him, Fish telling him he would be along in a few minutes. By the time Mason arrived, the intersection was clogged with police, tow trucks, and an ambulance. The contingent of FBI agents was gathered on the sidewalk in a tight circle surrounding Mickey. They stood outside the entrance to the bank watching the cops work.

Dennis Brewer and Kelly Holt peeled away from their group when they saw Samuelson approach. Mason caught up to them in the middle of the street.

“I thought you said no one was hurt,” Samuelson said to Kelly.

“The other driver claimed he had a seizure that made him black out and run the light. The cops called an ambulance to take him to a hospital to get checked out.”

“What a mess,” Samuelson said with a deep sigh. “At least the money is safe.”

“Well,” Kelly said. “Not all of it.”

Samuelson blanched. “What do you mean, not all of it?”

“I mean Sylvia took a little over eight hundred and fifty thousand. It was all she could fit in her bag and still cover the top of it with a few books.”

“You’re kidding me!” Samuelson said. “What the hell was Mickey doing?”

Kelly smiled. “He packed it up for her. The kid would make a good sacker at a grocery store.”

Mason shot a look at Mickey, who raised his cuffed hands in greeting. He started toward him when Kelly put her hand out. “You’ll have to wait here,” she said.

“What for?” he demanded.

“Where’s Fish?” she asked.

“On his way,” Mason said. “I’m going to talk with Mickey.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m his lawyer,” Mason said. “You can’t stop me.”

“We have a rule, Counselor,” Kelly said. “We don’t let suspects talk to one another until we’re done talking to them separately.”

“Suspects? What the hell are you talking about?” Mason asked.

“I told you that Fish was going to try to steal the money. You didn’t believe me, and you let him suck you and Mickey into his scam.”

“Have you gone completely nuts? Exactly how were any of us involved in stealing the money?”

“Mickey said Fish called him on his cell phone while he and Sylvia were in the private room. He told Mickey there had been a change in plans and that he was supposed to let Sylvia take as much of the money as she could stuff into the bag.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. Fish didn’t make that call. Samuelson and your technician were with us the entire time. They’ll tell you that. Pete, tell her,” Mason said.

Samuelson shook his head. “We were set up in the kitchen, but I was in the living room trying to reach Roosevelt Holmes when Mickey and Sylvia were in the vault. I’ll call the tech and ask him if Fish left the kitchen,” he said, stepping away.

Mason said, “Mickey’s story doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want you talking to him. If that’s his story, I’m going to make him stick with it. At this point, all three of you are suspects.”

Samuelson rejoined them. “The tech said Fish was in the kitchen the entire time Mickey and Sylvia were in the vault so he couldn’t have made the call. He also said Fish left the house right after Mason did. He should be here by now.”

“Then where is he?” Kelly asked, hands on her hips, her chin aimed at Mason.

“How the hell am I supposed to know? Look, either arrest me or get out of my way,” Mason said, glaring at Kelly, needing both hands to count the different faces she had shown him.

Kelly returned Mason’s heat, her chest heaving slightly. Samuelson stepped between them, pointing a finger at Kelly.

“You don’t have probable cause to arrest Mason. You do have enough to take Mickey in for questioning, but if you deny him his right to counsel, nothing you get from him will be admissible in court. Plus, Mason knows I told you to cancel the operation and that you blew me off. What do you think he’ll do to you when he gets you on the stand? On top of that, he’ll make me testify that this was the second time today that you disregarded my advice. If you would have listened the first time, there wouldn’t have been a second time.”

Kelly’s eyes now blazed on Samuelson, but he didn’t back down. She’d pulled rank on him when he told her to call off the operation. Now he’d outflanked her with a deft maneuver that forced Mason to reconsider his appraisal of the assistant U.S. attorney.

“What about Fish?” she asked Samuelson. “Do we have your permission to take him in for questioning?”

Samuelson nodded, ignoring her sarcasm. “Absolutely, based on Mickey’s statement that Fish called him and told him to let Sylvia have the money.”

Kelly said to Brewer, “Tell one of the other agents to work with the police on an APB for Fish. I want him found fast. Tell the others to take Mickey to the detention center at the Federal Courthouse.” Turning to Mason, she said, “You can talk to him there. With any luck, we’ll have Fish in custody by then and save you a second trip.”

“See you there,” Mason told her. He crossed the street to the sidewalk, stepping into the circle of FBI agents who cut him off from Mickey. “Back off,” Mason told them. “I need to speak with my client.”

The agents exchanged looks with Kelly and Brewer, who were watching from the middle of the street, then widened the perimeter around Mason and Mickey, giving them space without giving them a way out.

“What the hell is this?” Mickey asked, lifting his cuffed wrists. “Fish called me and said there’d been a change in the plan. He said I was supposed to let her take the money.”

“Keep your voice down. I never gave Fish your cell phone number. Did you?”

Mickey’s face reddened. “Shit! I am too stupid to live.”

“We’ll see,” Mason said in a low whisper. “They’re going to take you to the Federal Courthouse. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but I may have to send someone else for a little while. In the meantime, don’t answer any questions and don’t try to win any votes.”

Mason called his Aunt Claire from the car and gave her a quick rundown on what had happened.

“Can you go the Federal Courthouse and hold Mickey’s hand until I can line up someone to represent him?”

“Of course. But, aren’t you going to be his lawyer?”

Claire had raised him to do the right thing, often telling him that recognizing it was a lot harder than doing it. It was the single highest virtue in her world. He had yet to tell her that he wouldn’t be representing Mickey or anyone else for quite a while because he had fallen short of her standards. He owed her an explanation in person, not over the phone.

“There may be a conflict of interest with my representation of Avery Fish. I’ll call B. J. Moore. He’s almost as good as I am,” Mason said, hoping the joke would distract Claire.

She didn’t laugh. “You’ve got enough to do. I’ll call B.J.”

“Thanks.”

“Lou,” she said, a fresh concern in her voice. “Is there anything else?”

She was his aunt, not his mother, but she had a mother’s intuition, sensing when there was something else. She often told him that she could see it in his eyes or hear it in his voice. Sometimes, she said, she could just feel it.

“Yeah. I’ll tell you about it as soon as I can.”

“I’ll be here,” she said.

SEVENTY-FIVE

The subconscious mind was the brain’s buried treasure. It was where memories, dreams, and other evanescent flotsam and jetsam lay hidden until synapses short-circuited, allowing a particle of past knowledge to escape and pop into one’s head. Sometimes a song lyric became lodged against an ear, looping over and over. Sometimes it was the starting lineup of the 1963 Dodgers. Sometimes it was a scene from a movie.

As Mason drove away from the bank, he had such a moment, flashing on another scene from
Animal House
, the one where a member of the fraternity takes a freshman pledge to the grocery, throwing items over his shoulder to the pledge, who tries to keep up, catching as many as he can, until he is finally overwhelmed and slides to the floor in surrender. The frat boy doesn’t care whether the pledge catches a single thing. He just wants to keep the pledge’s hands full.

Mason felt like the pledge when he realized that Kelly was throwing as many things as possible at him so that he couldn’t keep up with her. He was certain that Mickey was telling the truth about the phone call and he was equally sure that Fish hadn’t made the call. The combination was enough to get Mickey arrested and an APB issued for Fish, both of which would tie Mason up long enough that she and Brewer could finish what they’d started—whatever that was.

He focused on the call he knew Fish had made to Sylvia McBride setting everything in motion. Kelly had been there and had heard Fish reminisce about how his late great friend Wayne could mimic Fish’s voice well enough to fool Sylvia. Fooling Mickey, who barely knew Fish, would have been easy. Kelly could have obtained Mickey’s cell phone number simply by flashing her FBI badge and invoking the Patriot Act.

All of which made Kelly and Webb, nee McBride, partners in a bank robbery. Hardly a matter of national security and hardly worth the risk. But there it was. Kelly had set him, along with Fish and Mickey, up to take the fall for the robbery.

Along the way, Rockley, Keegan, and Hill had been murdered and Judge Carter had been blackmailed. As the day wound toward dusk, Mason couldn’t get away from Al Webb as the trigger man. Rockley and Keegan must have turned on him, or given him reason to think they had, and he killed them. Mark Hill must have gotten drunk enough to go after Webb to avenge his wife’s honor and met the same fate. Webb also had to be the blackmailer despite his protest that he had nothing to gain since the other likely candidates were dead and the blackmailer was still pushing Judge Carter’s buttons.

The pieces didn’t fit perfectly together, but criminals were not models of rational behavior. While economists contrive mathematical models to explain what rational people should do, real people persist in their refusal to act as predicted. The models fail because they are stripped of the emotions that drive people to buy high and sell low. Or, in the case of blackmailers and murderers, sell out and kill often.

The rational thing for Mason to do was to get Mickey released and spend a quiet night with Abby. By the time Fish turned up, he’d have a new lawyer in place for him as well. But there was one other thing left on his day’s agenda. He was to meet Al Webb and Lila Collins at the house at Lake Lotawana. He had a feeling they wouldn’t be alone when he called Blues and told him to meet him there.