Final Judgment (5 page)

The last time Mason had seen her was in her chambers. She had been Judge Vanessa Carter then, a conservative judge on everybody’s short list for promotion from the state trial court to the federal bench, and she had been presiding over the murder case of Wilson “Blues” Bluestone, Jr.

Blues was Mason’s closest friend, landlord, and tour guide to the world of violent dispute resolution. At the time, he was being held without bail for a murder he hadn’t committed. Mason had asked for a gangland favor to pressure Judge Carter into letting Blues out on bail so he could help Mason find the real killer.

The favor was given and Mason cleared Blues’s name. Judge Carter quit the bench the day she released Blues, rumors trailing her like poisonous vapors. The last thing she told Mason still haunted him. She would have granted bail anyway.

In the years since then, she had quietly rebuilt her career as a private judge specializing in mediation and arbitration, a low-cost alternative to expensive civil litigation. The practice provided a second career for retired judges, and Judge Carter had gradually won a significant following with her balanced handling of cases.

Mason had taken comfort in her success, his guilt assuaged but not forgotten. He handled a few civil cases from time to time, and when the parties elected alternative dispute resolution, he’d always managed to convince the opposing lawyer to select someone besides Judge Carter. While Kansas City may seem like a small town to those who didn’t know it, it was more than large enough for Mason not to have crossed Judge Carter’s path since that last hearing in her chambers.

He looked at her now and didn’t know what to say. She filled the void.

“We have a problem,” she said.

NINE

“I’m being blackmailed,” Vanessa Carter told him.

She threw her coat onto Mason’s sofa, draping it over a stack of files Mason was storing against the cushions. She angled one of the low-slung round-backed chairs in front of his desk, sitting down with enough authority that Mason nearly rose and said,
Good morning, Your Honor
.

His clients always began by telling him they had a problem. His problem was helping them with their problem, but that didn’t make them the same problem. Their problems came down to freedom or prison, sometimes life or death. His problems were always legal, strategic, and pragmatic. Keep the client free or, at least, off death row. And get paid.

Vanessa Carter announced that she and Mason had a problem like it was a shared burden. Her simple declaration demanded his next question, one that hovered over his heart, taunting the long scar that dressed his chest. He suspected the answer, even knew what it had to be, but had to hear her say it.

“By whom?” he asked. His pulse quickened as he struggled to remain neutral.

“Somebody at Galaxy Gaming.”

She said it like she was pronouncing sentence on Mason, her words hitting him like a term of twenty-five years to life. There was no statute of limitations on some debts and Mason’s had just been called.

Galaxy Gaming had purchased the Dream Casino three years ago. It was a riverboat cash cow docked on the Missouri River at the spot where Kansas City had been born more than a hundred and fifty years earlier.

Galaxy had purchased the Dream from the estate of Ed Fiori, the grantor of the gangland favor Mason had used to force Judge Carter to free Blues. Mason had always suspected that Fiori had secretly recorded his request for Fiori’s help. Whether it was audio or video Mason didn’t know, but he knew it didn’t matter.

After Fiori’s death, Mason had worried that the casino’s new owners would stumble across the tape, hoarding it until they needed a return favor, explaining to Mason the laws of inheritance that governed secret sins. When no bent-nose pit boss with a Jersey accent knocked at his door over the next couple of years, Mason’s fears had begun to recede.

Sometimes, he indulged in the fantasy that he’d gotten away with it, just as many criminals got away with their crimes. Other times, he reminded himself that he had had no choice, would do it again if he had to, and would deal with the consequences when the time came, increasingly hopeful that it never would.

But it had and the fact that the messenger was Vanessa Carter bound the moment in the irony that so often shrouded trouble and justice. The ripple in his pulse spent itself as he forced his hands to loosen their grips on the arms of his chair. He was a lawyer and lawyers made their living untying shrunken knots.
Get at it
, he told himself, nodding at Judge Carter, unable to think of her without the honorific.

“Tell me about it,” he said.

“I was hired as an arbitrator in a sexual harassment case. The plaintiff is a woman named Carol Hill. She worked as a blackjack dealer at the Galaxy Casino and claimed that one of the supervisors harassed her. The hearing was last week. I took the case under advisement and told them I would have a ruling in thirty days. Yesterday a man called me. He didn’t give me his name and I think he used something electronic to disguise his voice. He said that if I didn’t rule in Galaxy’s favor, I was finished.”

“How could he make that happen?”

She glared at Mason like he was a simpleton. He returned her stare, forcing her to lay it out. She drew a breath and squared her shoulders.

“He said he had a tape recording of me agreeing to do a favor for Ed Fiori when I was still on the bench. I told him he was a liar. He played the tape for me over the phone.”

Mason caught the first cracks in her judicial demeanor as her voice quivered and her eyes blinked. She swallowed hard, a momentary spasm tightening the muscles in her neck. He gave her a minute to regroup.

“He wasn’t lying,” Mason said.

“No, he wasn’t lying,” she said, her voice solid again, her eyes steady and clear. “On the tape, Fiori tells me to release Wilson Bluestone on bail or my son’s gambling debts would be collected the hard way. I asked Fiori why he cared what happened to Bluestone and he said that he didn’t but Lou Mason did.”

Mason sat completely still, absorbing Judge Carter’s explanation. The shoe was dangling, but it hadn’t dropped. The law was built on fine distinctions. Shades of intent, percentages of fault and knowledge, real or imputed, can save a life or cost a fortune. Enough of the truth can carry the day even if it isn’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The blackmail tape was of a conversation between Judge Carter and Ed Fiori, not between Mason and Fiori. Mason’s name was used, but, without the tape of Mason’s conversation with Fiori, it was a secondhand indictment. He made himself breathe.

“Blackmailing you doesn’t make any sense. If Galaxy is that worried about the case, they would just settle it.”

“They tried. The plaintiff and her lawyer want blood, not money.”

“Why come to me? Why not just go to the police?”

“Because, Counselor,” she began, drawing out the words like Mason had attention deficit disorder, “we both know that the tape is legitimate. If I go to the police, I compromise myself. I’ve done that once and I won’t do it again.”

Mason ignored her reminder of his complicity. If he didn’t say it out loud, maybe he could keep ducking it.

“We both know that any legal action I could take would have the same result. What do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to take care of it and I don’t care how you do it. You put me in this box.”

“You could have said no when Fiori called you.”

“You don’t have kids, do you?” she asked. Mason shook his head. “How about someone you love?”

Mason nodded.

“Do you love her enough to die for her?” she asked. Mason nodded again. “Then don’t ask such fool questions.”

“I’m only a lawyer. I can’t get an injunction against the blackmailer, even assuming I can find him. You should hire somebody else.”

Judge Carter rose, gathering her coat from Mason’s sofa, not taking her eyes off him.

“If I have to hire someone else that will be one more person who will know what happened. I don’t think you’d like that. Besides, I’m not hiring you. I’m telling you. Ask your friend Mr. Bluestone to help. He’s as much a part of this as you are. Between the two of you, I’m certain you’ll think of something.”

Judge Carter was blackmailing him and there was nothing he could do about it. What had been her problem when she walked in the door had swiftly morphed from a shared burden to his problem. He came around from his side of the desk.

“I’ll need your file on the arbitration.”

Judge Carter opened her purse and handed Mason a flash drive. “The attorneys scanned everything onto this drive. It’s all there—exhibits, testimony, everything.” She didn’t shake his hand, thank him, or wish him luck.

He stood in the center of his office, watching as she walked briskly down the hall without a backward glance, past Blues’s empty office and down the back stair that led to the parking lot at the rear of the building. He palmed the flash drive, knowing at last what it was like to hold his life in his hands.

TEN

Mason spent the day reading the arbitration file. Carol Hill signed an agreement when she was hired to submit any claims against Galaxy Gaming to binding arbitration. That was okay with her. She needed the job and couldn’t imagine having to file a claim anyway.

The process was private, quick, and cheap when compared to the courts. Employers liked it because there was no jury that might have either the good sense or bad judgment to sock them with a bell-ringing verdict.

Her case was a garden-variety story of sexual harassment. Charles Rockley, her supervisor, had hit on her until it hurt. When he wouldn’t stop and her complaints to management were ignored, she sued.

Rockley started with compliments about her appearance, for which she thanked him just to be polite, even though his remarks made her nervous. He was her boss and she didn’t want to offend him. It wasn’t long before he escalated to suggestions that she wear tighter, low-cut tops to show off her shape to the customers. She demurred, reminding him that the casino provided modest uniforms for dealers, buttoned to the chin, saving the cleavage outfits for the cocktail waitresses. Rockley had laughed, explaining that he was just imagining how she would look for him.

Next he began asking her out. Just drinks after her shift, he told her. Then it was how about a late dinner, maybe a weekend getaway if she was interested. Each time she declined, explaining that she wasn’t interested and, besides, her husband wouldn’t like it.

Rockley kept at her, finally summoning her to his office one night after she finished dealing, telling her it was time for her to meet the meat. She was afraid she’d lose her job and gave in to him. Afterwards, consumed by guilt, she told him never again. He gave her a bad performance review and put her on probation.

That was Carol Hill’s story as summed up by her lawyer, Vince Bongiovanni, in his closing argument. Mason knew him by reputation. He was the hotshot plaintiff’s lawyer of the month, knocking off companies for big bucks when their employees played grab-ass with the wrong person. Each victory attracted a new wave of clients. No human resources manager looked forward to an invitation to one of Bongiovanni’s courtroom parties.

Galaxy Gaming’s lawyer was Lari Prillman. Employers liked being represented by a woman lawyer in sexual harassment cases because of the not-so-subtle message they hoped it would send. Some of our best friends are women. We even hire them as lawyers. Besides, if we were the creeps the plaintiff says we are, no self-respecting woman—not even a lawyer—would defend us.

Lari Prillman had taken advantage of that misplaced wisdom for twenty-five years, building a successful boutique practice devoted to the defense against claims made by the Carol Hills of the world. She parlayed her own good looks and charm in a male-dominated world, happily taking every advantage, God-given or otherwise. Though she could defend these cases in her sleep, she didn’t, taking nothing for granted and screwing down every fact and inconsistency. She lived by the Al Davis rule—just win, baby.

She dismissed Carol’s accusations and Bongiovanni’s theatrics as the romance-novel fantasy of a disturbed woman looking for a way to distract her jealous husband from her own indiscretions. Carol was the aggressor and the sex was consensual. Rockley backed her up.

Worse yet, Carol was banging one of the bartenders, though Lari put it more delicately, forcing Carol to tearfully admit on the stand that she had been unfaithful to her husband. A fact that Carol had failed to share with him until Lari extracted it from her under oath before Judge Carter, her stunned husband watching as Lari dismantled his wife and marriage.

Bongiovanni protested Lari’s tactics, claiming that Carol’s indiscretions were irrelevant. He was right, but that was one of the wonderful things about arbitration. There were no rules of evidence, allowing both sides to throw mud. Even if she had strayed, he argued, that didn’t make her fair game for someone who had the power to force her to submit or be fired.

Bongiovanni countered with corroborating testimony from a girlfriend of Carol’s, who recounted how Carol had complained of Rockley’s crude advances. He closed his case with the reluctant testimony of another supervisor, who admitted that Rockley had bragged that he was “getting some” from Carol Hill.

Lari Prillman had counterpunched with evidence of the girlfriend’s prior conviction for forging a coworker’s signature on a paycheck she’d stolen from the coworker. Then she cajoled the other supervisor to sheepishly admit on cross-examination that he had often bragged about his own mythical sexual exploits and had assumed as much about Rockley’s story.

After reading the file on his computer screen, Mason charted the case on the dry erase board that hung on one wall of his office. The board was low tech, but it helped him put everything in perspective and allowed him to think in visual terms, picturing parties, witnesses, and lawyers. And it helped him find the pieces that didn’t fit or that were missing.

This case was a deadfall, a push. There was no way to pick a winner from the one-dimensional lifeless transcript. That was not unusual. Judge Carter had heard the testimony live. She had observed the demeanor of the witnesses. She was in the best position to decide whom to believe.