Lou Mason Mystery - 01 - Motion to Kill (30 page)

Mason waited for his return lap, and before Scott could tuck, turn, and swim away again, he grabbed him by the hair and slammed his forehead onto the edge of the deck. Scott grunted and slid backward into the water. Mason slipped his hands under Scott’s arms and pulled him out of the pool and onto the deck, where he lay, coughing and bleeding.

“Jesus Christ, Lou! Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

“Pretty fucking close, buddy. Swimming is a dangerous sport. You should get out of the water before you get hurt.”

Scott sat up, holding his head in his hands. Blood trickled through his fingers, pooling on the floor. Mason tossed him a towel, yanked him to his feet, and shoved him into the locker room.

“Come on, let’s check the damage.”

Wooden lockers lined three walls and filled a half dozen aisles furnished with benches. One wall was all mirrors and sinks split by a doorway that led to the toilets and showers.

Scott leaned on Mason, woozy from the blow, as Mason leaned him up against the wall by the sink and cleaned the cut. Mason wrapped a bath towel around Scott’s neck and gave him a hand towel to hold against his forehead. When the bleeding slowed, Mason sat him on a bench and propped him against a locker. He pulled a bench from another row of lockers parallel to Scott’s and sat across from him.

“So how long have you and Vic Jr. been using the firm to launder money?”

“You’re not just crazy, Lou. You’re out of your fucking mind!”

“I just want to get out of this alive. And I don’t much care if you do. Help yourself and answer my questions.”

Scott laughed. “You don’t have it in you, Lou. Give it up and go away while you still can.”

Mason stood and grabbed the ends of the towel around Scott’s neck, choking him. Scott clawed at the towel, but Mason twisted it tighter and whipped Scott’s head against the locker, reopening the cut over his eyes. Holding the towel with one hand, Mason drew his gun and jammed into Scott’s cheek, his finger tightening around the trigger. Bug-eyed, Scott blinked as blood ran into the corners of his eyes.

“Now, Scott, I’m not having a very good day. Frankly, I’m more than a little edgy. Been doing some really weird shit. Help me out, will you? Talk to me. It calms me down. Okay?”

“Okay, sure, just put the gun down, please.”

Mason let go of the towel and sat on his bench, lowering the gun to his side. “I’m not going to ask again.”

“Okay, okay. It was Vic Jr.’s idea. He got hooked up with some mob guys while he was in college in Chicago. They bailed him out of a jam and he agreed to help them out.”

“How?”

“Laundering their money.”

“So why did you get into it?”

“Money. They let Junior take a cut, and Junior needed Harlan and me to cover the deals, so we got a piece too.”

Mason wasn’t surprised that Harlan had been involved. The fixtures deals must have been the source of the unreported income that caught the attention of the IRS.

“That’s what the fixtures deals were for?”

“Yeah. Quintex bought the fixtures and leased them back. The lease payments were the dirty money.”

“What were the fixtures for?”

“Strip joints and porno shops. The rent was pumped way up to provide the cash flow.”

“And the fees for work that was never performed?”

“We had to get the money out of Quintex, and the firm was the easiest place.”

“But how did you get it out of the firm?”

“Consulting fees paid on behalf of Quintex.”

“To whom? Who’s behind the whole thing?”

“I don’t know who got the fees and I don’t know who was running the show.”

Mason grabbed the towel again.

“Okay! I knew but I didn’t know. Sure, it had to be the mob but I never heard any names. Please, Lou! I’m telling you the truth!”

Mason let go. “Tell me what you did know.”

“We always dealt with a Chicago law firm. They had power of attorney. The principals were never identified.”

“Who got the consulting fees?”

“Don’t know. We just made out the checks to corporations and mailed them. Everything went to a post office box.”

“Angela had to cover the billings for you. You had to cut her in. And you had to pay the money back out. Seems like a lot of trouble for the amounts involved.”

“The firm was only a piece of it. We set up separate corporations to contract with Quintex for phony services. Ran a lot of the money through them. Harlan thought it would be fun to run some through the firm since O’Malley was Sullivan’s client.”

“Harlan?”

Mason thought of that gentle man getting a kick out of setting up Sullivan’s biggest client. Every partner has his secrets, Mason realized. Harlan’s secret must have been that he hated Sullivan.

“Oh yeah, Harlan,” Scott said, reading Mason’s mind. “He hated Sullivan as much as the rest of us. The more you needed him, the more you hated him.”

“Enough to kill him?”

Scott’s shocked expression was genuine. “No way! That was just a lucky break.”

“Where were you before the poker game?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t remember.”

Mason slapped him hard across the face with the back of his hand.

“Lying violates your oath as a lawyer. You don’t want me to report you to the bar association, do you? Now, tell me where you were before the poker game started.”

Scott looked away, letting out a resigned sigh. “Angela and I had a thing going. We rented a ski boat and went for a ride. Let me tell you, it’s not easy to screw in one of those boats. But Angela’s something else.”

“Why didn’t you use O’Malley and Sullivan’s condo? You had to know about it.”

“Sure, but I didn’t want to run into Sullivan. Angela and I didn’t need the publicity.”

The bleeding on Scott’s forehead had slowed, his eyes were glassy, and his nose was pink and runny. He slumped against the lockers, no fight left in him.

“By the way, how’s the family? Have you introduced Angela to the wife and kids?”

Scott shook his head, his voice weak, unable to summon any outrage. “You’re a real prick, you know that, don’t you?”

“And how’s your oldest—the one with diabetes? Must be tough, all those injections.”

“Since when do you give a shit about my kids?”

“Since right now.”

“You want to know how he’s doing? He’s fine. We control the diabetes with diet; no shots, no insulin.”

In spite of everything, Mason was relieved at Scott’s answer. Whatever else Scott had done, unless he had another source for insulin, the odds were against him having murdered Sullivan.

“I’m glad to hear that. Did Sullivan know about Quintex?”

“Not until St. John’s subpoena. That’s when Sullivan started digging into the Quintex files. He must have figured it out, because Harlan and I were supposed to meet with him Sunday night after the retreat.”

“Did Sullivan tell you that he knew?”

“He didn’t have to. He told us about the subpoena and St. John’s target letter and said we needed to talk about the work we’d been doing for Vic Jr. That was enough.”

“How could you have kept it from Sullivan and O’Malley?”

“Sullivan only cared about his own work. He gave me Quintex and forgot about it. Junior convinced his old man to do the same thing. Said he needed a chance to prove himself.”

“If Sullivan was on to your scam, that’s a good motive for murder.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t do it and I don’t know who did,” Scott said, raising his arms and dropping them in his lap, signaling his surrender.

“Why did you and Harlan leave so early Sunday morning? And don’t tell me it was to get ready for your closing.”

“We wanted to search Sullivan’s office to find out how much he knew. I got there before Harlan. He called me when he found out that Sullivan was dead.”

“Who did you call from the office that afternoon to talk about Sullivan’s death?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Angela bugged your office, you schmuck. You were screwing her, but she was fucking you.”

Scott shook his head. “I trusted her.”

“Imagine that. Who did you call?”

“It was just a number and a voice. No names.”

“And you didn’t find the disks?”

“Didn’t know about the disks on Sunday.”

“When did you find out about them?”

“At Sullivan’s funeral. Angela told me she walked into Sullivan’s office the week before. He was talking to O’Malley about having the records they needed on a CD. Angela was worried that some of our legitimate work for O’Malley would get screwed up and, with Sullivan gone, he’d fire us. None of us could afford to lose O’Malley’s business.”

“You mean she didn’t know what was on the CD?”

“If she did, she didn’t say anything about it. She was just looking after the firm’s biggest client.”

“So how did you know there was anything on the CD?”

“I didn’t know for certain. But it was the only thing that made sense. I knew Sullivan had the information and I couldn’t find it anywhere else. Everyone in the office knew you had the disks.”

“So you told your anonymous business partners I had the disks even though you knew it could get me killed?”

“I didn’t know!”

A husky voice interrupted. “Sure you did.”

It was Jimmie Camaya, standing at the opposite end of the benches, pointing a pistol at them, a silencer screwed into the barrel. Mason tightened his grip on his gun, holding it next to his thigh out of Camaya’s view.

“How do you do it, Jimmie? You always show up just when I’m getting to the good part.”

Camaya flashed his serpentine smile. “You just got bad luck, Mason. I came here to tell Scott about his retirement. Looks like you both can have a going-away party now. Too bad I didn’t get here before Scott got so talkative. But it don’t matter since you’re both dead.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then let me hear the rest of it; maybe you’ll learn something.”

Mason turned back to Scott, hoping to distract Camaya long enough to gain the edge he needed. “Jimmie says you’re lying, Scott. Says you knew they’d kill me? Is that right?”

“I don’t know which one of you is crazier!” Scott shouted. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, Lou, but I was in too deep. They told me to get the disks back—”

“Or else?” Mason asked.

“Or else Scott would end up like your partner, Harlan Christenson,” Camaya said.

Scott’s face froze. The unspeakable meaning of what Camaya said hit Mason head-on.

“You told them Harlan was being audited, and they were afraid he’d make a deal with the feds and turn all of you in, so they killed him,” Mason said.

Scott didn’t answer, but Camaya did.

“Julio snapped that old man’s neck like it was a chicken’s leg. You should have got there early, like Scotty here did. He had a front-row seat.”

Mason listened in disbelief. The tears rolling off Scott’s face and the retreating look in his eyes said it was true.

“He made me watch—,” Scott said. “So I wouldn’t forget to do what I was told.”

“And then you took Julio out with a goddamn toilet! What a fucked-up world, huh, Mason? So, Scott, you want to go first this time or watch another one of your friends die?”

Camaya pointed his gun at Scott. Mason estimated the distance between them at about ten feet.

“Jimmie, do me a favor, come a little closer, will you?”

“Why?”

“Better odds at seven feet,” Mason said, raising his gun and firing three quick rounds.

Mason didn’t know which round hit Camaya, but only one did, the others shattering the mirror behind him. Camaya squeezed off a shot as he fell to the floor, wounding Scott, who toppled onto Mason, knocking him off the bench. Mason looked up to see Blues standing over Camaya.

“He ain’t dead, but he sure bleeds a lot.”

Camaya wheezed from the round that caught him in the right side of his chest, pressing a towel Mason gave him against the wound, slowing the bleeding.

“Hey, Mason,” he whispered in a feathery voice. “Why’d you shoot me, man?”

“Gee, Jimmie, I don’t know. Seemed like a better idea than letting you shoot me.”

“Aw, man! I was gonna shoot Scott—I hadn’t made up my mind about you.”

“Yeah, how come?”

“Friend of mine wants to talk to you—besides, you was gettin’ to be good company.”

“Who’s your friend, Jimmie?”

“Man—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“No way—it’s all I got to deal with—”

He started to gag and cough blood just as the paramedics arrived. Mason went to look for Scott when they started talking about establishing an airway.

Camaya’s shot had grazed Scott’s shoulder. One of the paramedics was cleaning a crimson furrow along his upper back when Mason found him sitting mannequin-like on a bench, expressionless as an EMT tended him.

“Scott,” Mason said.

“Forget it, buddy,” the EMT said. “The guy is zoned out.”

“What do you mean? Is he in shock?”

“Way past that. The shrinks got a name for it. I call it ‘zoned.’ Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don’t.”

He finished bandaging Scott and unfolded him onto a stretcher. Scott never blinked as they rolled him out to the elevator.

Harry Ryman questioned Mason in one corner of the locker room while another detective quizzed Blues in a different corner. A forensics team methodically gathered evidence, taking photographs and measurements to preserve the scene. An hour later, they were ushered downstairs through a gauntlet of reporters. Their police scanners had picked up the report of the “Mid-America Club Shoot-out,” as one overheated journalist dubbed it. Mason managed a tight-lipped “no comment” before their squad car pulled away.