Three To Get Deadly (72 page)

After dinner, they drove to the Plaza and parked in front of their fountain. The top was down on the TR6. The air was close, thick with humidity. Bugs danced in the fountain's spray. Cars filled with teenagers sauntered past, rap and rock bellowing from open windows. Mason and Kelly smiled ruefully at each other, realizing that the magic had been in the moment, not the fountain, and the moment had passed.

Mason read her thoughts. "Nick was dirty, Kelly. That was about him, not about you."

She sighed deeply, rubbed her hands in her lap, and nodded. "I didn't see it," she said. "That is about me." A thin tear leaked from the corner of her eye. Mason reached to wipe it away. She took his hand. "The cabin was my hiding place, Lou. I hid everything there, including my feelings for Nick, for you, and for myself. I've got to rebuild before I can decide what I want."

Mason dropped her at her hotel. Kelly stepped from the car, leaned back in, and kissed him. He watched her walk away until she disappeared through the revolving door.

The next day, he returned Vernon's Bible to him. He was unchanged. A new nurse was caring for him and told Mason that he could last for years in that condition. He almost promised that he'd come back to visit, but he was tired of making promises meant to be broken.

When he got home, he called Webb Chapman. "Any news on the safety hooks?"

"I was getting ready to call you. The test results came back today. Several of the hooks have blood on them. One of the blood samples matches Tommy's blood type. You need DNA tests to prove it was Tommy's blood, and that's not cheap to do."

Mason quickly calculated how much money he had left from his insurance settlement. "Do it."

"Have you told Tommy?"

"No. I want to be certain first."

Blues on Broadway opened the week after Labor Day. It was a straight-ahead joint. No cutesy memorabilia from funkier times. A rectangular-shaped mahogany bar dominated the center. Glasses hung in racks from the ceiling. Single-malt Scotch got premier billing on the shelves behind the bar. Black leather booths lined the walls, and a handful of matching round tables dotted the floor.

Blues's Steinway grand piano, its ebony wood buffed to a high sheen, sat a foot off the floor on a stage barely big enough for it and the big man who played it. Mason had an office upstairs and a part-time job tending bar.

Sandra Connelly dropped in one afternoon as he was wiping glasses. Her auburn hair was shaped, shortened, and highlighted for fall. A glistening diamond hung from the center of a gold necklace. She stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the sunshine.

"Come on in," Mason told her. "You can sign up to be a charter regular."

"What do I get? My own chair at the bar?"

"Any seat that isn't taken."

"Suits me. Give me a glass of your best house wine. And don't open a fresh gallon on my account."

Sandra had been at the center of a fierce recruiting battle among the major law firms in town. She didn't discourage the soft exaggerations of her exploits by the media and leveraged her high profile into a corner office and a fat paycheck. Mason admired her ambition but didn't envy her. He poured and she sipped.

"Victor O'Malley just wrote my firm a check for a hundred thousand dollars."

"Still paying for work his lawyers didn't do."

"Cute, for a bartender. This one is the real deal, Lou. I'm his lawyer. St. John is still going after him."

"Any word on Vic Jr.?"

Sandra turned serious. "No. The cops assumed that Camaya killed him. His father wants me to keep looking. I came by to tell you something else."

"What's that?"

"Camaya escaped from the prison hospital last night. It looks like he had outside help."

"I'm not worried. Jimmie and I have an understanding."

"All the same, watch your back. Are you going to spend the rest of your life tending bar?"

"Nope. I'm just helping Blues. The DNA tests on one of the Philpott safety hooks turned up Tommy's blood. I'm going to file a motion for a new trial next week. Then I'm going to hang my shingle out in an office upstairs and see what comes through the door."

"Just remember, Lou. My door's always open." She left him a nice tip.

Mason wandered upstairs to his office. Tuffy was curled on a rug next to his desk chair, waiting for her ears to be scratched.

He settled into his chair, swiveled around to look out his windows onto Broadway. His office was in a part of town the mayor described as "in transition." He felt the same way. There was nothing fancy about the office—just the basics. Blues had given him an office-warming gift. It was a metronome. He told Mason to just listen to the beat. It was good advice.

A number of people were instrumental in helping me with this book the first time it was published as a paperback original in 2002. From the beginning, my wife, Hildy, and my children—Aaron, Danny, and Michele—supported me. Many people, including my sister Susan, my cousin Merilyn, and my friend Dan, read and reread the early drafts, adding their enthusiastic encouragement. My agent, Meredith Bernstein, gave me a chance and became my good friend.

The e-book revolution has given this book and the others in the Lou Mason series a second life. I've updated the book but kept the story intact. It's like getting a do-over with one of your kids!

I'm thankful for all those indie writers who have shown me the e-book way, with special thanks to
Lee Goldberg
,
Paul Levine
, and
Joe Konrath
.

Thanks also to
Steven W. Booth
for formatting this book, to
Jeroen ten Berge
for designing the cover, and to Eileen Chetti (
[email protected]
) for a superb copyediting job.

Joel Goldman is an Edgar and Shamus nominated author who was a trial lawyer for twenty-eight years. He wrote his first thriller after one of his partners complained about another partner and he decided to write a mystery, kill the son-of-a-bitch off in the first chapter and spend the rest of the book figuring out who did it. No longer practicing law, he offices at Starbucks and lives in Kansas City with his wife and two dogs.

Lou Mason is back in
The Last Witness
and this time it's personal when his surrogate father, Homicide Detective Harry Ryman, arrests his best friend, Wilson "Blues" Bluestone, Jr., for murder. Mason unearths secrets someone will do anything to keep as he closes in on a desperate killer, setting himself up as the next target.

When FBI Agent Jack Davis investigates a mass murder in
Shakedown
, a leak of crucial information and his imploding personal life throw him into the ultimate danger zone – where truth lies at the heart of betrayal.

Grab
The Dead Man
, the second book in the Jack Davis series. Jack crosses paths with a serial killer inside one of the most advanced research facilities in the world when people start to die exactly as they dreamed they would.

And be sure to check out all of
Joel Goldman's books!

 

To Valerie & Madison

I want to thank William Rabkin and Tod Goldberg for their invaluable help in crafting this novel, and Ed Gorman for making it a reality.

It wasn't like he imagined it at all. Of course, everything Martin Slack imagined seemed to come from television or movies, or at least big chunks of it, so he figured his own imagination really wasn't to blame for things not being the way they were supposed to be.

There weren't any of those ominous, early warning signs that everyone ignored, like big flocks of birds flying away or dogs barking for no reason, or the little rumbles that were shrugged off as a big truck passing by on the street.

Marty wasn't getting married, retiring from the force, embarking on a maiden voyage, or christening some bold, new construction project, each a definite precursor of disaster, at least according to Irwin Allen, the acknowledged expert on the subject.

And at least one thing turned out like the movies—here he was, underneath his car, just like Charlton Heston in
Earthquake
. That's where any similarity between Marty and Charlton ended.

He wasn't clutching Ava Gardner, and he certainly wouldn't sacrifice himself to save her over Genevieve Bujold. And after the shaking was over, Charlton wasn't curled in a fetal position, covered in dust and sprinkles of broken glass, wondering if the itchy wetness he felt on his legs was blood, something from the car, or his own piss.

Marty didn't want to move. He felt just like he did waking up in his soaked sleeping bag at Camp Cochise, afraid to stir, hoping everything would dry before the other campers, especially that bully Dwayne Edwards, woke up and discovered he was a bed-wetter. The sharpness of the fear and shame, thirty years later, surprised him almost as much as thinking about it now.