Joel Goldman - Final judgment

“What if her boss says no?”

“Then we don’t have a deal. They reserve the right to reinstate the charges if they aren’t satisfied with your cooperation. If Roosevelt Holmes doesn’t agree to dismiss the mail fraud charge, you don’t cooperate and we’re back to square one.”

“Such a crazy business.”

“Your tax dollars at work. Sign it.”

Fish signed his name and looked away as Samuelson sealed the agreement inside the envelope, tucking it back into his jacket pocket.

“Thank you, Mr. Fish,” Samuelson said. “Your government is grateful.”

“For what? I haven’t done anything yet and I don’t see how I can. My name is all over the papers like a common criminal. Which I’m not. Thank you very much. So how can I possibly help my government that’s so grateful?”

Kelly answered. “We are investigating a money-laundering operation. We want you to launder some money for us so we can trace where it goes.”

“How much money?” Fish asked, perking up now that the game had begun.

“A hundred thousand dollars,” Kelly said.

“I don’t know anything about laundering money.”

“We don’t care what you know. We’re interested in who you know,” Kelly said.

“I don’t know any money launderers either.”

“Mr. Fish,” Kelly said, “have you ever been to the Galaxy Casino?”

Fish shook his head. “Casinos are for suckers, Ms. Holt.”

“Who bring a lot of money with them and leave it there,” she said. “The manager of the casino is a man named Al Webb. You’ll make contact with him and tell him you need to put a hundred thousand dollars away where the government can’t find it until you get your legal problems worked out.”

Mason bit the inside of his mouth at the mention of Webb’s name. He couldn’t tell whether the noose he was caught in was getting tighter or whether he was about to find a way to slip out of the knot.

“And this Webb character who doesn’t know me from Adam,” Fish said. “I suppose he’s going to thank me for my business, give me a receipt, and tell me to come back tomorrow to pick up the number for my new Swiss bank account.”

It was Kelly’s turn to take an envelope out of her jacket pocket. It contained a photograph. She handed it to Mason along with a pen flashlight.

“Do you recognize this man?” she asked Fish.

Mason shined the light on the black-and-white photograph as Fish studied Al Webb’s image.

Fish tugged at his face, struggling with a dormant memory. He picked up the photograph, his hands shaking with recognition. “It’s not possible,” he said.

“What’s not possible?” Mason asked.

“It’s the eyes. He’s done something. Plastic surgery, I suppose. But, you can’t change a man’s eyes. But it’s still not possible.”

“Who is it?” Kelly asked.

“Wayne McBride. But he’s been dead for ten years,” Fish said.

“How do you know that?” Mason asked.

“Because,” Fish said in a low voice, “he was my partner and I was a pallbearer at his funeral.”

“Your ex-partner is doing well for a dead man,” Kelly said.

“But I was there,” Fish said. “At his funeral. I sat with his wife, Sylvia. She cried like a baby.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Kelly asked.

“I stayed in touch with her for a while. The last time I saw her, she told me she was moving back to Minneapolis. She had a sister there who was dying of cancer. She went to take care of her. That was about six months after Wayne died.”

“Her sister died a year later. Sylvia inherited the house and still lives there. She works for a telephone call center and lives a quiet, modest life. She hasn’t remarried.”

“I can’t believe it. They had a place at Ten Mile Lake in Minnesota. Wayne was fooling around on his dock. He slipped, fell in the water, and got caught under the boat. Sylvia, she went looking for him. I’ll never forget what she said to me. It was a nightmare. She kept calling his name. Finally, she looked down in the water and there he was. Staring back at her. Drowned.”

Mason interrupted. “You’re saying this McBride faked his death. How did he do it?”

“It wasn’t difficult,” Kelly said. “His wife called nine-one-one and identified the body when the paramedics fished it out of the water. The coroner ruled the death accidental. No questions asked.”

“What about the body?” Mason asked. “Whose was it?”

“Mr. Fish?” Kelly asked.

“Who knows? He was cremated,” Fish answered, thumping his palm on the table. “Such a putz, I was!”

“You?” Mason asked. “Why? How could you have known?”

“I couldn’t have. It was a small funeral. Closed casket, which was fine with me. That’s not what I mean. Wayne owed me fifty thousand dollars from a deal we closed a week before he died. He didn’t have any life insurance. I felt sorry for Sylvia and I told her to keep the money.”

Mason turned to Kelly. “How did you find out that Webb was really McBride?”

Samuelson held his hand up. “We learned about that in our investigation. What’s important now is that Mr. Fish confirmed his identity.”

“I don’t like this,” Mason said. “If Avery asks Webb to hide his money, Webb will know that his identity is blown. He killed one man to fake his death. I don’t want Avery to be next.”

“We don’t know that he killed anyone,” Kelly said.

“What about the body?” Mason asked.

“All we know is that the paramedics found a man’s body in the water. We don’t know whose it was. A lot of people drown accidentally. Because the body was cremated, we can’t prove there was a murder.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“We’ll do everything we can to protect Mr. Fish,” Samuelson said. “Besides, Webb won’t be able to resist a million dollars.”

“I thought it was only a hundred thousand,” Mason said.

“That’s the bait,” Fish said. “Am I right?”

Samuelson nodded.

“Make it a million one-hundred sixty-seven. Nobody has exactly a million bucks lying around. I’ll tell him that I’ll let him handle the balance if he can take care of me on the hundred. He won’t try anything until he gets the rest of the money. That’s the way these things work. You always bait the hook first.”

“And we nail him before he tries anything with Mr. Fish,” Samuelson said.

Mason looked at Kelly, who coolly met his gaze, silently telling him she would do her best but that she’d leave the guarantees to Samuelson.

“What about Rockley’s murder?” Mason asked. “Your scheme does nothing for him with the cops and Patrick Ortiz.”

Samuelson cleared his throat. “We’ll make certain the state authorities are aware of Mr. Fish’s cooperation.”

“That’s just terrific. But we need something more than a letter of recommendation for the judge to read at his sentencing.”

“That’s the best we can do,” Samuelson said. “Our case against Webb has nothing to do with Rockley’s murder. We can’t interfere with that investigation.”

“I still don’t like it. Webb, or McBride or whoever he is, won’t take the chance that Avery isn’t setting him up. He’ll figure Avery needs something to offer the cops and the FBI to stay out of jail. He’ll want to know how Fish got to him. There’s no story Fish can tell him that won’t make him suspicious.”

“I’ll call Sylvia,” Fish said. “She knew it wasn’t Wayne’s body they fished out of the lake. She was crazy in love with him. She has to know that Wayne is still alive. I’ll tell her I need her help hiding the money. I won’t have to mention Wayne’s name. He’ll find me.”