Lou Mason Mystery - 01 - Motion to Kill (22 page)

“Surprised, Lou?”

“I didn’t think anything could surprise me after the last few days, Angela, but you are full of surprises.”

“Because I brought you to a lesbian bar?”

“It’s not something I would have thought—or thought about. You just seem so interested in men.”

“I am. Exclusively. I come here when I don’t want to be bothered by men. These women understand that and respect my privacy. Besides, there’s not much chance of running into Scott here, is there?”

They both laughed, breaking the tension. A waitress took their drink orders, beer for Mason, a martini for Angela.

“What’s happening at the office?”

“All hell broke loose after you and Sandra left. Scott and St. John had a real pissing match.”

“We ran into St. John on our way out. He had a court order freezing the firm’s assets.”

“That’s what was so funny. The two of them were fighting over whether the federal court order freezing the firm’s assets trumped the state court order appointing a receiver to run the firm.”

Mason smiled at the image. “Who won?”

Angela giggled. “I did. I told Scott we were screwed either way.”

“You have the wisdom of Solomon.”

“And very big ears. After St. John left, Vic Jr. showed up again. He and Scott had their own screamer in the conference room.”

A waitress brought their drinks. Mason sipped. Angela finished hers in two gulps.

“What was that one about?”

“I only caught bits and pieces, but it was mostly about the fees we charged his father for work we didn’t do. In the meantime, half the staff has quit and the clients are panicked. Scott hired the security guard to keep out the press.”

“And me.”

Mason signaled the waitress to bring Angela another round. Several women waved at Angela from across the bar. She caught their eyes and waved back, all smiles. The waitress set another martini on the table and wiped up the water ring left by the empty glass.

“Angela, I need some answers.”

“Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer.”

“Can’t or won’t? Someone is trying to kill me, and it has something to do with the firm. You know more about what’s going on there than anyone else. You’ve got to help me.”

“You give me too much credit. All I know is what I read in the papers.”

Mason waited, not wanting to press too hard. The volume of the bar’s background music had picked up, prompted by the arrival of the after-work crowd.

“Do you remember when Sullivan changed his will last winter? You were one of the witnesses.”

“Sure. Diane asked me to be a witness. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Did you know what changes he made in his will?”

“C’mon, Lou. That was six months ago. I don’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.”

“I’m not interested in your diet. Just do your best. Was Sullivan in the conference room?”

She hesitated, realizing that his questions were serious ones and that he expected serious answers.

“No. Diane was the only one there. We waited about ten minutes, but Sullivan didn’t show up. Finally, she just gave me the document and told me to sign it, and she would take care of the rest later.”

“So you never actually saw Sullivan sign it?”

“I know that’s against the rules, but we do it all the time with notary signatures.”

Mason hoped she was loosening up, so he decided to take the plunge. “Angela, do you remember our conversation the day after Sullivan’s body was found—”

“—when you did your big-shot impression and told me you were in charge?”

She couldn’t resist the chance to tease him. He smiled without taking his eyes off of her.

“Actually, that was old news by the time I got to your office. You already knew, and I’ve been wondering how you got the word so quickly.”

She reddened, swirled the ice cubes in her glass, and drained it. She looked down the length of the bar as she answered.

“Like I told you, Lou, radio traffic and troop movements.”

“I don’t think so. Only Scott, Harlan, and I knew before the partners’ meeting. I was the first one in your office after the meeting. Try me again.”

No answer. Mason took the telephone bug out of his pocket and dropped it on the table. Angela’s death grip on her glass was answer enough.

“You had me going for a while, Angela. You followed the first rule of the con artist. Tell the truth you have to tell. A little honesty buys a lot of credibility and makes it easier to lie about the important stuff.”

She wouldn’t look at him, but she looked her age for the first time since he’d known her. She shrugged, as though it was no big deal.

“All I wanted was something I could use to bargain with Sullivan. I knew that he’d hold my unauthorized loan from the firm over my head forever. There weren’t enough blow jobs to pay that debt off.”

“So why bug Scott’s phone and Harlan’s phone too?”

“I didn’t care where I got the information as long as I could use it.”

“When did you find out about the subpoena?”

“After the retreat. I came to the office every Sunday night to check the tapes. Scott had called someone, and they talked about it.”

“Who did he call?”

“It was a man’s voice that I didn’t recognize.”

“Why did you remove the wiretaps from their phones and not Sullivan’s?”

“God knows I wanted to. I was afraid what Scott might do if he found out. I didn’t want to deal with another partner who could blackmail me between the sheets or anyplace else. So I got rid of the ones in Scott’s office and Harlan’s office first. I was going to take out Sullivan’s, but the cleaning crew showed up. I didn’t want someone saying they’d seen me in Sullivan’s office, so I left. I planned on getting rid of it on Monday, but you ordered his office sealed before I could.”

“What did Scott and the other man talk about?”

“Scott told the other guy that Sullivan was dead. Then Scott told him that he’d convinced you to handle the grand jury subpoena. The guy got mad, but Scott told him that he could control you. Then the guy told Scott to find some documents and hung up.”

“What documents?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are the tapes, Angela?”

“In a safe place.”

“Does anyone else know they exist?”

“No. An FBI agent interviewed me last week. He asked about the wiretaps but I didn’t confess.”

“Did he interview you at the office?”

“At home. He said he didn’t want to disturb me during the day because he knew how crazy things must be at the office.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He said the FBI’s investigation was very confidential and that I should keep quiet. Otherwise, the suspects could be tipped off. Since I knew who had done the taping, I wasn’t about to open my mouth.”

“What was the guy’s name?”

“I don’t remember, but he gave me his card.” She fumbled in her purse and produced Gene McNamara’s business card.

“Angela, I need the tapes. Someone tried to kill me. The tapes may help me figure out what’s going on.”

“Sorry, Lou, but I’m not sticking my neck out. They’ll find out who did the taping, and then I’m finished.”

“Just give me the tapes, Angela, or at least let me listen to them. I’ll make certain your name stays out of it.”

She stopped stirring her drink and looked at Mason as if about to answer. Her gaze went over his shoulder to the front of the bar and froze.

“Oh, shit!”

She looked down, but it was too late. They had company. Mason turned around.

Diane Farrell took a long drag on her cigarette, dropped it on the floor, and ground it out with her heel. She began a slow walk toward them, stopping along the way to kiss one woman and squeeze the butt of another.

“Well, Lou, are you coming out of the closet or are you just curious? Really, Angela, I thought you had better taste.”

She dismissed Mason with a pathetic sigh, gave Angela a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, and headed for the bar.

“Let’s get out of here,” Angela said. She left a twenty-dollar bill on the table and he followed her out.

“Sorry, Lou,” she said hurriedly as he caught up to her. “You’ll have to walk back to your car.”

“I don’t get it. It’s no big deal when you take me into that bar. Then Diane shows up, and you can’t wait to get rid of me.”

“You’re right, you don’t get it.”

“Then what is it?”

“You’re the problem. Scott told the staff that we weren’t supposed to talk to you or Sandra. I’ve got enough problems without losing my job. Don’t do this again.”

“We can help each other.”

“I don’t think so. Good-bye.”

The air was thick and still. The peaks of the thunderheads were no longer visible as clouds rolled over the city. People quickened their pace. Mason marched in double time, watching the clouds and the cars.

Anna and her wayward husband were holding hands on their front porch when Mason pulled into his driveway. Any guilt he had about the TR6 vanished with Jack’s friendly wave. At least something was working out.

The salvage crew had swept through his house, leaving a card table and chairs in the kitchen and his computer and bed frame upstairs. A pile of underwear and socks was on the floor of his closet. The rest of his clothes were piled in one corner of the bedroom.

There were three messages on his landline. Blues said he was tired of Mason not answering his cell phone and to meet him for dinner at eight at Constantine on Broadway. He checked his cell. The ringer was turned on, but for some reason his calls were going straight to voice mail. The second message was from Kelly, saying she had to go back to Starlight and would call him tomorrow. The third call was from Sandra Connelly. He replayed her message twice.

“Lou, it’s Sandra. I’m meeting Vic Jr. at seven thirty tonight at a bar in the West Bottoms. The address is 312 Front Street. Meet me there. I want a witness.”

Mason wasn’t crazy about the idea, but he figured it would still be light out, and Vic Jr. had never struck him as dangerous. Besides, even if Sandra did carry a big knife, he knew she was counting on him to be there. He’d be only a few minutes late for dinner with Blues. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall as Mason left.

Mason’s grandfather, Mike, was a butcher in a slaughterhouse in the West Bottoms. He was also a saloonkeeper and a ward healer and anything else that would put food on the table during the Depression, all of it in the West Bottoms, a floodplain that drank in the overflow from the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers.

His last career had been in the wrecking business. When Mason was a boy, his grandfather took him to work on Saturday mornings at MM Wrecking Company. The office was on the first floor of a warehouse that stored the leftover, cast-aside guts of buildings and businesses that Mike Mason somehow turned into cash. Mason spent the mornings hunting for magnets while his grandfather shuffled papers.

Mike Mason got his start in the wrecking business through Tom Pendergast, the political boss who ran Kansas City and a good part of Missouri during the Depression. Bagnel Dam had just been finished, damming up three rivers and creating the Lake of the Ozarks. Pendergast’s concrete company had provided the cement and Pendergast doled out the leftovers, one of which was the scrap that had been salvaged from the project.

Mike Mason asked Pendergast if he could gather the scrap and sell it. Pendergast gave his blessing and waived his usual cut as he often did for his boys who made sure the voters turned out and voted Democratic. MM Wrecking outlasted Pendergast.

Mason played with his memories as he pulled alongside Sandra Connelly’s BMW. She had left it in the parking lot of a five-story, redbrick warehouse that backed up to the Missouri River,
Hamlein Furniture
painted in faded yellow above the windows on the fifth floor. A loading dock dominated the front, steel-paneled garage doors closing off the dock’s three bays. There was an entrance on the west for walk-in traffic. The bar was across the street, a half-lit neon sign in the front window promising free beer tomorrow.

He wondered why Vic Jr. had arranged the meeting here. Scott had given orders to the firm’s staff to stay away from Sandra and Mason. O’Malley had probably told Junior the same thing. Only Junior couldn’t resist Sandra. Mason was not unsympathetic.

Sandra’s car was empty, giving Mason a fleeting panic attack until she called to him from the doorway of a nearby storage shed that faced the parking lot about a hundred feet south and east from the dock. Two large commercial trash containers flanked the shed.

“Where’s our boy?” Mason asked as he joined her in the shed.

It was a ten-foot-square aluminum can littered with discarded scrap metal and the lingering odor of tenants who’d been too careless for too long with food, booze, and tobacco.

“He’s not due until eight o’clock. I wanted time to figure out what we’re going to do.”

“Does he know I’ll be here?”

“No. He said he would only talk to me.”

“In that case, I’ll move my car.”

Mason parked the TR6 in an alley half a block away.

“Say something,” she said as he stepped back inside.

“This is a bad idea.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of Junior.”

“These days, I’m afraid of my socks. Whose idea was it to meet down here? What’s wrong with Starbucks on the Plaza?”

“Vic Jr. insisted. He said he wasn’t supposed to talk to me and didn’t want to take the chance that we might run into someone who knew him.”

Sandra was wearing a hooded, navy nylon pullover, blue jeans, and running shoes. She pulled a slender handheld recorder from the front zipper pocket of her shell and replayed their brief conversation. Mason’s voice was muffled but understandable.