Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness (13 page)

“I thought you were the one who wanted to ask me questions.”

“You’ll just lie to me. I’ll wait until you’re under oath. Then I’ll let you commit perjury.”

“Perjury! Bullshit! I got nothing to lie about.”

“Then why are you trying so hard to make my client plead guilty to something he didn’t do?”

“Who says he didn’t do it? Him? You? So what? He should take the deal the DA offered him. Everybody will be better off. Including you. Did you explain that to your client?”

“He wasn’t moved. He figures if you kill me, he won’t have to pay my bill.”

“You keep up the jokes, Mason. Just remember all the laughs when it’s over.”

“What makes you think Jack Cullan’s files will stay hidden just because my client pleads guilty? If those files are so valuable, someone will find them. Then what will you do?”

Fiora set his drink on the bar and walked slowly around the table until he was nearly on top of Mason. Fiora gave up more than half a foot and thirty pounds to Mason, but standing in front of him, eyes blazing, Fiora couldn’t have cared less. He knew, as did Blues, that violence leveled all kinds of playing fields.

“Any motherfucker digs up dirt on me, I’ll bury him with it. You got that?”

Mason was tired of being pushed and pulled by cops, politicians, and thugs.

“Sure. Now I’ve got news for you. Any motherfucker who threatens me, my client, or my dog better have more than an ape guarding his door. You got that?”

Fiora ran his tongue over his lips, pushed it around the inside of his mouth, and reached his hand inside his tux jacket. He pulled out a gun and rested the end of the barrel on Mason’s chest.

“You got more balls than sense.”

“Helps in my line of work.” Mason pushed the gun away. “Happy New Year.”

He opened the door and tapped Tony on the shoulder. Tony turned sideways so he could see his boss. Fiora nodded and Tony stepped aside for Mason.

“Hey, Mason. You find those files, come see me. We’ll do some business.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t be stupid. You’ll live longer.”

“Doing business with you? Not likely,” Mason said, and headed back into the crowd.

Mason retreated to one of the many bars that ringed the gaming tables, ordered a beer, and watched the crowd from his stool. He added Fiora’s name to the list of people who wanted him to find Cullan’s files for them. He could live with the deals he’d made with Rachel Firestone and Amy White but wasn’t willing to bet his life on a deal with Fiora.

A band of cheerleaders surrounding a craps table screeched as someone ran a hot streak even hotter. The shooter was the celebrity of the moment, mistaking a statistical anomaly for good looks, charm, and wit. Anything was possible while the dice were hot. A collective moan rose from the hangers-on and side betters when the shooter shot craps. His last reward was a few claps on the back as people shifted their loyalties and hopes to the next shooter, welcoming him with a joy and rapture usually reserved for tent meetings.

Mason caught a glimpse of Rachel now and then. Once she was taking her turn at rolling the dice, basking in the instant adoration of her own good luck. Not long after, he saw her huddled with another woman, a lanky brunette in a black pantsuit and open tuxedo shirt, sharing full-throated laughs and long looks. Mason had assumed that she was on the prowl for a story, not companionship. Instead, he realized, she was using the night to lose herself in the anonymity of the crowd and give free rein to impulse. Tomorrow, no one would remember.

Just after eleven thirty, Billy Sunshine arrived and began working the crowd. Amy White hung at his side, whispering the names of contributors who sought him out. She scanned the crowd, looking for opportunities or trouble. Her eyes caught Mason’s for a moment, and her calculus was quick as she steered the mayor in the opposite direction. Mason tipped his bottle toward her in a small salute, acknowledging her good call. If she saw his gesture, she ignored it.

Thousands of balloons were gathered in nets suspended from the cavernous ceiling. Confetti cannons were aimed in a crossfire pattern to blanket the crowd. Scoreboard-sized digital clocks were mounted throughout the casino, counting the final minutes until midnight down to the tenth of a second.

Two of the clocks were visible from the bar. A drunken duo sitting next to Mason were arguing whether one clock was faster, settling the argument with a twenty-dollar bet on which would strike twelve first.

Mason set his bottle on the bar and turned to the two gamblers, who were studying the competing clocks with watery-eyed concentration.

“Hey. I saw a clock on the other side of the casino next to the roulette wheels that was a minute ahead of those two.”

“No shit?” they asked in unison.

“No shit. There’s a guy standing under it giving five-to-one odds that it hits midnight first.”

“Damn,” they said, and left their unfinished drinks to cash in on Mason’s tip.

The bar was near the back of the casino. Mason decided to make his way to the front to be certain he was there at midnight to meet Rachel. He stood and waited a moment, trying to get his bearings. The casino was designed to obliterate all points of reference except for the tables and slots. There were no windows and, except on New Year’s Eve, no clocks.

The noise level was rising to near deafening. Slot machines trumpeted new winners with bleating air horns. Piped-in music throbbed overhead with an orgasmic Latin beat. The craps tables erupted in roars as one good throw followed another. Even the blackjack players, notorious for their semicomatose poker faces, were high-fiving one another. The joint was jumping.

A sliver of the crowd parted in front of Mason as a woman cut through their ranks. People peeled away from her path as if she pushed them aside, or so it seemed to Mason, when he recognized her.

Beth Harrell, clad in a shimmering silver gown cut halfway to her waist, her head thrown back, was walking toward him. She was holding a mink coat over her shoulder, a string of lustrous pearls roped around her neck, a sly smile creeping across her face. He didn’t move.

“Happy New Year, Lou,” she said.

“I’m counting on that.”

They stood for a moment, inches apart. She was probing. He was wondering. In a room of stunning women, she could have stopped the clocks with a single look. She handed him her coat, turned her back, and pressed herself against him as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. The sensation of the fur and her body against his was electric.

Beth faced him again, closer than before. Her perfume was heady. “Walk with me.”

He followed her through an exit onto the outer deck. Heaters mounted along the wall glowed red, cutting the night’s chill as they made their way along the dimly lit deck.

“Some riverboat,” Mason said.

Beth laughed. “It’s a barge permanently docked in a moat filled with water from the Missouri River. If the state legislature says it’s a riverboat, that’s good enough for me.”

“And me.”

She slipped her arm through his as naturally as if they’d been doing it all their lives. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Into the belly of the beast. Ed Fiora wouldn’t return my phone calls, so I decided to come see him.”

“Alone?”

“Sort of. I came with a friend, but we’re not together.”

“Good,” she said, emphasizing her satisfaction with a slight squeeze of his arm.

“How about you? Are you flying solo too?”

“I’m afraid so. Not many men are anxious to be seen with me these days, especially since my last date didn’t live through the night.”

“I suppose that would scare some guys away.”

They had reached what was, in the mind of a fanciful architect, the prow of the boat. It was an elongated triangle that reached out over the Missouri River, ten feet wide at its base, narrowing to a couple of feet at its farthest point and enclosed by a four-foot wrought-iron rail. Pale blue Christmas lights strung along the rail provided the only illumination. They walked out onto the end of the prow and leaned on the rail as the chill breeze blew off the river.

“How about you, Lou? Are you afraid of me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t scare so easy.”

Beth eased her back against his chest and he slipped his arms around her middle. She covered his hands with hers, neither talking, until fireworks launched from the parking lot announced the arrival of the New Year. Tracers of red and streaks of blue arced high into the sky. Green and white clusters exploded overhead, raining glowing cinders into the swiftly moving current twenty feet below.

Beth rolled in Mason’s arms, her lips brushing his. “Don’t let me scare you.” She pressed herself against him, kissing him softly, tentatively.

She pulled away for an instant, long enough to let him see in her quivering lips how much she wanted him, to let him feel the surge of need in her body for his.

Mason was lost in the moment, intoxicated with her taste, a series of small shudders building like shifting fault lines in his groin and belly. In that split second, he saw all that he wanted and all that he could lose and let her go.

“I’m sorry, Beth. I’m truly sorry. Maybe when this is all over, but not now.”

The fire went out of her face as swiftly and coldly as the fireworks when they hit the water. She stepped back toward the deck, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Well, that’s one way to start the New Year. Humiliate myself like a horny middle-aged broad who can’t get laid.”

“Don’t do that, Beth. You’re better than that.”

“Am I?”

She didn’t wait for Mason’s answer, leaving him alone at the end of the prow.

Mason stayed where he was, perched like the lookout on the
Titanic
, staring across the Missouri. The wind was brisk, but he wanted to give Beth time to leave the casino without another embarrassing encounter.

She had locked onto him like a heat-seeking missile. She couldn’t have known he was at the casino, let alone where to find him, unless someone told her. Only Ed Fiora could have done that. The more intriguing questions were why he’d pimp her out like that and why she’d let him do it.

He looked at the river, surprised at how far out over the black, swirling water the prow extended, when he heard a sharp crack, like a firecracker, and felt something ricochet against the railing, knowing but not believing it was a bullet. He whipped around in time to see a muzzle flash from the shadows of the deck, another bullet pinging off the rail.

He couldn’t have been more exposed if he were doing backflips naked down Broadway. Two more shots careened around him, sending him crashing back and forth in the corner of the prow like a pinball and showering broken Christmas lights at his feet.

Stay where he was and the shooter would find him. Run and he’d catch a bullet. The river was his only option. Crouching and coiling his legs, hands gripping the wrought iron, he vaulted the rail, letting go as a bullet singed his side.

He hit the river at an angle, slapping his face on the water before the current swept him under. The icy water flash-froze him, his hands going numb as he fought to get out of his jacket, afraid it would drag him down. Kicking ferociously, he managed to break to the surface, gasping for air and treading water, trying to get his bearings.

The casino was already a hundred yards behind him, grim testimony to the swift current that had carried him to the center of the river, the bank too far away to think about. Swimming across the current would exhaust him before he got close, so he tried to cut it at an angle. That would keep him in the water longer but give him a better chance of reaching shore if he didn’t freeze to death first.

He pressed one shoe against the other, slipping it off, doing the same with the other to give him a better kick. The cold was toxic, his arms and legs growing heavy, each stroke harder than the last. He was getting light-headed, the bank a distant blur.

Weariness crept into his bones and muscles until he couldn’t lift his arms or summon more than a weak flutter from his legs. He was going to drown, and in that moment he smiled, the prospect somehow peaceful, the end of his struggle welcome. He closed his eyes and slipped beneath the water.

A raspy chopping sound stirred him as hard steel banged against his spine, caught his collar, and yanked him to the surface.

“Gotcha!”

Rachel Firestone dropped the fishing gaff she’d used to snag him, slipped her hands under his shoulders, and hoisted him over the side of the small boat, the effort putting her on her butt. Mason was facedown, half in and half out of the water. She rose to her knees, grabbed him by the belt, and dragged him the rest of the way into the boat, falling backward again and pulling him on top of her.

She squirmed out from under him, rolled him over, and opened his mouth, making certain his airway was clear, doing chest compressions until he coughed up river water and started breathing.

“When I told you to meet me at midnight, this is not what I had in mind,” she said.

When Rachel got Mason to dry land and into her car, he refused to let her take him to a hospital. “I don’t want to explain to an emergency room doc what happened,” he said through chattering teeth. “Somebody will call the cops; then the press will get ahold of it.”

“Fine. You’ll probably catch pneumonia plus ten different diseases from the crap in the river, and it looks like you’ve been shot,” she added, pointing to a red stain on the left side of his tuxedo shirt. “And in case your brain completely froze while you were in the water, I am the press and I’ve already got ahold of this story.”

“You forgot our deal. Everything’s off the record unless I say otherwise.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Men are too dumb to live.”