Joel Goldman - Final judgment

The quick denial of Carol’s involvement raised, rather than lowered, Mason’s suspicion. He hadn’t considered Carol as a suspect until her lawyer assured him she wasn’t one. Mason could picture Mark Hill angry and drunk enough to kill Rockley especially if his wife egged him on. None of that led to the trunk of Avery Fish’s car. Still, Bongiovanni’s assurance of Carol’s innocence gave Mason an opening.

“I’m glad to know that. Then she won’t mind talking to me.”

Bongiovanni hesitated, rubbing his palm against his bottle of beer. He frowned long enough to convince Mason that his indecision was rehearsed. “I’ll make her available, but I want whatever you come up with on Rockley.”

“Why? Your case is over. Mine is just beginning.”

“My case is a toss-up. Rockley claimed to be a choirboy, said my client was lying. Carol took some hits on cross-examination. If I can get something good on Rockley, I’ll ask Judge Carter to let me add it to the record before she rules.”

Mason remembered Judge Carter’s comment that Carol and her lawyer were out for blood, not money. He knew that lawyers and clients often changed their appetite after the harsh realities of the courtroom set in.

“Why not settle?”

Bongiovanni tightened his jaw. “Not a chance.”

“You said it was a close case. Sometimes a bad settlement is better than a bad verdict.”

“Carol is family. This isn’t ever going to be one of those times.”

Judge Carter’s assessment had been dead-on. If the case was a toss-up, Bongiovanni’s deal made sense except for one thing. The better his case got, the harder it would be on Judge Carter to rule in Galaxy’s favor. Still, Mason needed whatever he could come up with on Rockley, and Carol Hill was as good a place to start as any. He had to talk with her as soon as possible while putting Bongiovanni off until after the blackmailer’s deadline.

“I’ll keep you in the loop, but I may not have anything for a while. Depends on how much cooperation I get from the cops or from Galaxy. The sooner I can talk with your client, the sooner I can start putting something together.”

“How about tomorrow morning? We can meet at her house.”

That was the last place Mason wanted to meet, imagining her husband wandering out from the bedroom with a hangover. He shook his head.

“My office. Ten o’clock.”

“Done. I’ll bring the bagels,” Bongiovanni said.

“One other thing. Who do I talk to at Galaxy about Rockley?”

“Forget it. You’ll have to go through Galaxy’s lawyer, Lari Prillman, and there isn’t enough heat in hell to melt her heart.” He stood, clapping Mason on the shoulder. “A Jew and an Italian on the same team. Look out, world.”

Mason waited until Bongiovanni cleared the front door of the bar before he called Rachel Firestone.

“What do you know about Charles Rockley?” she asked him.

“Just because you have caller ID doesn’t mean you don’t have to say hello.”

“Hello and I’m on deadline. My editor said if you don’t give me something on Rockley we might as well start sleeping together since I won’t be any good to him anyway.”

Mason preferred the old Rachel, the one he could confide in, trade tips with, and not worry about what was on or off the record. He couldn’t give her the whole story because he didn’t know which pieces might come back to haunt him.

“Your message was the first I heard about the victim’s identity. I’ll talk to the cops on Monday and give you what I can,” he said.

“That’s it? This guy is murdered, butchered, and dumped in the trunk of your client’s car and you’ve got nothing? I don’t believe it.”

“Best I can do,” Mason said.

“I wouldn’t brag about it,” she told him.

Mason stayed at the bar, hoping the music would soothe the tension in his neck and shoulders, finally leaving close to midnight. It had been a long day. He felt like a fighter who had spent eighteen hours in a crouch. He hadn’t taken a beating, but his instincts told him one was coming and he didn’t know if he could stay covered up long enough to avoid the knockdown.

He lived in the middle of a block of houses that were statelier and better cared for than his, as were the people who lived in them. His neighbors barely tolerated him, resenting the turmoil that too often followed him into their quiet acreage. He tried to ignore their conscious disregard for him though it had begun to gnaw at him.

He’d lived there all his life, first while being raised by his Aunt Claire, then during the few short years he was married to Kate, and now for the seven years since, when he’d lived there alone. Abby Lieberman hadn’t moved in, though she’d spent enough nights there to qualify for Gold Guest status until she found herself agreeing with the neighbors.

He understood Abby’s reasons for leaving and his neighbors’ reasons for wishing that he would follow. Whether it was stubbornness, inertia, or a blind willingness to sacrifice what he wanted for what he needed, he’d not been able to change. He couldn’t resist lost causes, last chances, or dark water.

When Abby left for Washington and took Mickey Shanahan with her, his world shrunk, its population reduced to Claire; her longtime boyfriend and retired homicide cop, Harry Ryman; Blues; and Rachel. Now he was playing dodgeball with Rachel, wincing as he imagined her redheaded fury when she discovered he’d been holding out on her. Everything felt smaller and isolated-his office, his house, and especially him.

Heading for home, he thought about driving south and west into the Kansas-side suburb of Leawood, where Judith Bartholomew lived with her husband, her children, and her mother, Brenda Roth, but decided against the late-night drive. He’d only recently pried from a very reluctant Claire a slice of his tarnished family history. Mason’s father had had an affair with Brenda when Mason was a small child. His parents had died in a car wreck that had its genesis in their illicit relationship.

Growing up, Mason had idolized his father though he knew that his memories were manufactured, his father dying too soon for honest ones. He didn’t know much about his father’s life except that his father had gone to college; met and married his mother; tried his hand at a couple of different businesses before settling on insurance; and that was about it.

He hadn’t needed the details to craft his family myth, imagining his father as a strong, silent hero, resolute and doomed though unaware of his fate. Claire had a picture of the three of them, his father wrapping one arm around his mother, the other arm draped over Mason, who hugged his father’s leg. The picture fed his childhood fantasies of what might have been, all of them dependent on the legend he’d imagined about his father.

The remnants of his myth had given way to the harsh reality that his father had cheated on his mother. He wondered how his father had justified the betrayal, knowing that it didn’t matter then or now. His father had crossed a line; his parents had been killed by the implacable rule of unintended consequences.

Sifting Claire’s revelation, he couldn’t shake a queasy wonder about Judith Bartholomew. He’d seen her outside her house. From a distance, he thought that she bore a soft resemblance to him, perhaps real, perhaps imagined in the knowledge that she was born at a time when his father and his mistress could have conceived her. He still longed for his father, to understand him and to forgive him. Perhaps, even to redeem him. He wondered if Judith Bartholomew was part of that.

Mason knew that he too had crossed a line, breaking the law when he had asked Ed Fiori to strong-arm Judge Carter. He hadn’t used those words, hiding instead behind euphemism and rationalized need. Now the words and the reasons didn’t matter; only the consequences did. Redemption was too remote a prospect at the moment. He just wanted to survive.