Joel Goldman - Final judgment

“What do I tell him?”

“The truth. Anything else will get both of us in more trouble. I just want a head start on Griswold. When we were in the suite, you didn’t say anything when I told you that someone at Galaxy may be blackmailing Judge Carter. Why not?”

“Because I’m not stupid. I don’t know anything about that and I don’t want to know. That’s out of my league. I was going to tell Mr. Webb and let him handle it.”

“And now?”

“Maybe I’ll tell Detective Griswold and let him handle it. What do you think?”

That was the last thing Mason wanted her to do, but it was the only thing she could do. He’d put her in this situation and he’d have to deal with the fallout.

“I think you should tell the truth. You said you spend a lot of time checking references. Did you check Charles Rockley’s and Johnny Keegan’s?”

“Of course I did. That’s my job. They checked out fine.”

“What about Webb’s references?”

“His too. If they hadn’t checked out, they never would have gotten the jobs. The Gaming Commission ran checks on them too.”

“How did you do it? By telephone?”

“What do you think I did? Hop on a plane?”

“Easy, Lila. I’m not the piece of shit you work for,” Mason said, changing subjects. “Did Ed Fiori ever talk about me?”

“He liked you. He told me how you stood up to him and how loyal you were to your friend-the one that was charged with murder.”

Mason knew he might not get another chance to ask her about the tape. He shivered, though not from the cold. “Did Fiori have me on tape?”

Her eyes widened. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You and your friend and Ed. You must have asked him for help with your friend’s case and now you’re worried it’s all going to come out.”

Mason had tightened the noose completely around his neck. He’d just told a woman he hardly knew enough to figure out what he’d done. On top of that, he’d pointed Detective Griswold at her like a heat-seeking missile, and instructed her to tell Griswold everything. If that wasn’t enough, she worked for Mason’s number-one suspect in the blackmail scheme. She’d probably also tell Webb as well if he yelled at her loudly enough or asked her sweetly enough. It would have been quicker if he’d thrown himself under the wheels of a bus.

“My friend was innocent,” Mason explained, to salvage something of his reputation with Lila. “Ed helped me prove that.”

“I’ll bet he helped you a little too much.”

Mason nodded. “A little too much. I need to know if Ed taped our conversations.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know. He never let me listen to the tapes.”

“Webb showed up before you could tell me whether Bongiovanni took all of the tapes after Fiori died. Did he?”

“I don’t know that either,” she said as a ripple of cold wind wound through the trees. “Ed hid them in different places. I checked everywhere that night, but I don’t know if I got them all before the FBI got there.”

“The FBI. They were there too?”

“It was crazy. I was scrambling around looking for the tapes. Vince was hollering at me and packing everything I found into a couple of briefcases. One of the security guards called and said two agents were on their way to the office. Vince got out of there in a hurry.”

“What did the FBI agents want?”

“They tore the place apart. I asked them for a search warrant. They said they didn’t need one since Ed was dead. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Was one of them a big guy, built like a linebacker?” Mason asked, struggling for a better description of Dennis Brewer, kicking himself for not having a copy of his photograph.

“That description covers a lot of ground. But I made them show me ID. I remember names for a living and I remember theirs too.”

“Was one of them Dennis Brewer?”

“Yeah,” Lila said. “He was the big one. The other one was a woman.”

Mason sucked in his breath. “You remember her name?”

“Sure. Kelly Holt.”

Despite the cold, Mason felt a surge of heat sweep across his face. More than one piece of his past was bearing down on him.

“Did they find any more tapes?”

“I don’t know. They kicked me out. I would have called a lawyer, but Vince was the only one I knew and he ran for daylight as soon as I told him the FBI was on their way.”

Mason had drawn a dotted line between Brewer’s name and Fiori’s name on his dry erase board. He was ready to replace it with a solid line and add another one for Kelly and Al Webb.

“Have you seen Brewer hanging around the casino, maybe talking to Webb?”

She took her time, squinting and concentrating as the wind pelted her eyes. “I don’t think so. Not him. The other one, the woman, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen her around the casino a couple of times. In fact,” she added snapping her fingers, “I’m positive I saw her in one of the bars with Mr. Webb. She was wearing dark glasses like she was hungover or hiding. It was maybe six in the morning. I’d come in early to catch up on some paperwork. I walked by the bar and did a double take, but I kept my mouth shut.”

“When was that?”

“A month or so ago, something like that.” She looked at her watch, her olive skin pale in the clouded light. “I’ve gotta get back. I shouldn’t have followed you. That was stupid, really stupid.”

Mason put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m glad you did.”

“Yeah. I’ll put you down as a reference when that asshole fires me.”

Mason waited until she’d been gone five minutes before he took the footpath back to his car. When he got there, a gray Crown Victoria was parked next to his. Kelly Holt stood next to it, leaning against the driver’s door.

Mason’s Aunt Claire once told him that the world depended on both man-made and natural law. Man-made laws were elastic, adapting to special circumstance, acknowledging changing times or bending to clever argument. Natural laws were immutable, a gift of God or nature, depending on whether one’s compass pointed to faith or common sense as true north. The law of gravity was her favorite because, without it, everything on earth would hurtle into space in a cosmic instant.

Despite Detective Griswold’s innuendo, Mason considered the possibility that Kelly would bend the law-cross the line-as unlikely as God turning the gravity switch off in a fit of divine vandalism. Yet, as Mason walked toward her, he half-expected to be launched into the void by the centrifugal fling of a suddenly off-kilter planet.

From the moment Dennis Brewer had whispered in Pete Samuelson’s ear about the body in Fish’s car, Mason had suspected that Brewer was somehow stirring the pot. He’d been there when Rockley’s body was found. He’d been there when Mason and Blues had braced Mark Hill at the bar in Fairfax. He had the skill set to break into Lari Prillman’s office and safe and then escape under cover of darkness and gunfire. And, he was tied to both Ed Fiori and Al Webb.

Mason now knew that the same could be said about Kelly Holt. She’d had nothing to do with Fish’s case until Blues was photographed outside Rockley’s apartment. When Blues had predicted that another FBI agent was backing up Brewer that night in Fairfax, Kelly had been that agent. She was no less qualified than Brewer for the black bag job at Lari Prillman’s office. Lila Collins had placed her at the casino immediately after Fiori’s death and again, only a month ago, with Webb. And, she had persistently deflected Mason’s inquiries about Brewer, certain that Mason wouldn’t consider the flip side of the coin.

Brewer was an anonymous face with a badge and a gun and wouldn’t be the first good guy who turned out to be a bad guy. Mason couldn’t yet tie it all together, but if he kept bulling his way through the maze, he was confident that he’d nail Brewer and that the rest of the pieces would fall together. He would take his well-deserved lumps for what he’d done to Judge Carter, but the laws of man and nature would put everyone and everything where they belonged.