Joel Goldman - Final judgment

Mason said, “Mickey’s story doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t want you talking to him. If that’s his story, I’m going to make him stick with it. At this point, all three of you are suspects.”

Samuelson rejoined them. “The tech said Fish was in the kitchen the entire time Mickey and Sylvia were in the vault so he couldn’t have made the call. He also said Fish left the house right after Mason did. He should be here by now.”

“Then where is he?” Kelly asked, hands on her hips, her chin aimed at Mason.

“How the hell am I supposed to know? Look, either arrest me or get out of my way,” Mason said, glaring at Kelly, needing both hands to count the different faces she had shown him.

Kelly returned Mason’s heat, her chest heaving slightly. Samuelson stepped between them, pointing a finger at Kelly.

“You don’t have probable cause to arrest Mason. You do have enough to take Mickey in for questioning, but if you deny him his right to counsel, nothing you get from him will be admissible in court. Plus, Mason knows I told you to cancel the operation and that you blew me off. What do you think he’ll do to you when he gets you on the stand? On top of that, he’ll make me testify that this was the second time today that you disregarded my advice. If you would have listened the first time, there wouldn’t have been a second time.”

Kelly’s eyes now blazed on Samuelson, but he didn’t back down. She’d pulled rank on him when he told her to call off the operation. Now he’d outflanked her with a deft maneuver that forced Mason to reconsider his appraisal of the assistant U.S. attorney.

“What about Fish?” she asked Samuelson. “Do we have your permission to take him in for questioning?”

Samuelson nodded, ignoring her sarcasm. “Absolutely, based on Mickey’s statement that Fish called him and told him to let Sylvia have the money.”

Kelly said to Brewer, “Tell one of the other agents to work with the police on an APB for Fish. I want him found fast. Tell the others to take Mickey to the detention center at the Federal Courthouse.” Turning to Mason, she said, “You can talk to him there. With any luck, we’ll have Fish in custody by then and save you a second trip.”

“See you there,” Mason told her. He crossed the street to the sidewalk, stepping into the circle of FBI agents who cut him off from Mickey. “Back off,” Mason told them. “I need to speak with my client.”

The agents exchanged looks with Kelly and Brewer, who were watching from the middle of the street, then widened the perimeter around Mason and Mickey, giving them space without giving them a way out.

“What the hell is this?” Mickey asked, lifting his cuffed wrists. “Fish called me and said there’d been a change in the plan. He said I was supposed to let her take the money.”

“Keep your voice down. I never gave Fish your cell phone number. Did you?”

Mickey’s face reddened. “Shit! I am too stupid to live.”

“We’ll see,” Mason said in a low whisper. “They’re going to take you to the Federal Courthouse. I’ll get there as soon as I can, but I may have to send someone else for a little while. In the meantime, don’t answer any questions and don’t try to win any votes.”

Mason called his Aunt Claire from the car and gave her a quick rundown on what had happened.

“Can you go the Federal Courthouse and hold Mickey’s hand until I can line up someone to represent him?”

“Of course. But, aren’t you going to be his lawyer?”

Claire had raised him to do the right thing, often telling him that recognizing it was a lot harder than doing it. It was the single highest virtue in her world. He had yet to tell her that he wouldn’t be representing Mickey or anyone else for quite a while because he had fallen short of her standards. He owed her an explanation in person, not over the phone.

“There may be a conflict of interest with my representation of Avery Fish. I’ll call B. J. Moore. He’s almost as good as I am,” Mason said, hoping the joke would distract Claire.

She didn’t laugh. “You’ve got enough to do. I’ll call B.J.”

“Thanks.”

“Lou,” she said, a fresh concern in her voice. “Is there anything else?”

She was his aunt, not his mother, but she had a mother’s intuition, sensing when there was something else. She often told him that she could see it in his eyes or hear it in his voice. Sometimes, she said, she could just feel it.

“Yeah. I’ll tell you about it as soon as I can.”

“I’ll be here,” she said.

The subconscious mind was the brain’s buried treasure. It was where memories, dreams, and other evanescent flotsam and jetsam lay hidden until synapses short-circuited, allowing a particle of past knowledge to escape and pop into one’s head. Sometimes a song lyric became lodged against an ear, looping over and over. Sometimes it was the starting lineup of the 1963 Dodgers. Sometimes it was a scene from a movie.

As Mason drove away from the bank, he had such a moment, flashing on another scene from Animal House, the one where a member of the fraternity takes a freshman pledge to the grocery, throwing items over his shoulder to the pledge, who tries to keep up, catching as many as he can, until he is finally overwhelmed and slides to the floor in surrender. The frat boy doesn’t care whether the pledge catches a single thing. He just wants to keep the pledge’s hands full.

Mason felt like the pledge when he realized that Kelly was throwing as many things as possible at him so that he couldn’t keep up with her. He was certain that Mickey was telling the truth about the phone call and he was equally sure that Fish hadn’t made the call. The combination was enough to get Mickey arrested and an APB issued for Fish, both of which would tie Mason up long enough that she and Brewer could finish what they’d started-whatever that was.

He focused on the call he knew Fish had made to Sylvia McBride setting everything in motion. Kelly had been there and had heard Fish reminisce about how his late great friend Wayne could mimic Fish’s voice well enough to fool Sylvia. Fooling Mickey, who barely knew Fish, would have been easy. Kelly could have obtained Mickey’s cell phone number simply by flashing her FBI badge and invoking the Patriot Act.

All of which made Kelly and Webb, nee McBride, partners in a bank robbery. Hardly a matter of national security and hardly worth the risk. But there it was. Kelly had set him, along with Fish and Mickey, up to take the fall for the robbery.

Along the way, Rockley, Keegan, and Hill had been murdered and Judge Carter had been blackmailed. As the day wound toward dusk, Mason couldn’t get away from Al Webb as the trigger man. Rockley and Keegan must have turned on him, or given him reason to think they had, and he killed them. Mark Hill must have gotten drunk enough to go after Webb to avenge his wife’s honor and met the same fate. Webb also had to be the blackmailer despite his protest that he had nothing to gain since the other likely candidates were dead and the blackmailer was still pushing Judge Carter’s buttons.

The pieces didn’t fit perfectly together, but criminals were not models of rational behavior. While economists contrive mathematical models to explain what rational people should do, real people persist in their refusal to act as predicted. The models fail because they are stripped of the emotions that drive people to buy high and sell low. Or, in the case of blackmailers and murderers, sell out and kill often.

The rational thing for Mason to do was to get Mickey released and spend a quiet night with Abby. By the time Fish turned up, he’d have a new lawyer in place for him as well. But there was one other thing left on his day’s agenda. He was to meet Al Webb and Lila Collins at the house at Lake Lotawana. He had a feeling they wouldn’t be alone when he called Blues and told him to meet him there.