Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

"Depends on how many I have to tell. You ready to get after this?"

Mason put his hands on the table. "Yeah, I'm ready. I don't have a choice."

Smith took him through it, starting with Ryan Kowalczyk's execution, breaking down every conversation, taking notes, and writing down names in the margins. He jumped around, interrupting Mason's narrative, asking what King was wearing when Mason talked to him at Camille's, asking the make and model of the cars that the valets retrieved before they brought back King's car. He tortured Mason for details.

"I didn't count King's molars if that's what you're going to ask me next," Mason said after a couple of hours.

"I was getting to that," Smith said. "The details don't matter as much as whether you remember them. It's all about credibility. Do you remember everything, or just the part that helps you? Did you forget everything or just the part that hurts you? You know the drill."

"I do," Mason said. "But not from this side of the table."

"Get used to it," Smith said. "I think I've worked you over enough for one night."

Mason said, "You left out the one question I thought you would ask."

Smith pried apart the last crab Rangoon, spooning the cold filling out, leaving the fried wrapping. "So ask it yourself," he said, washing the crab down with warm beer.

"Why did I hire you?" Mason asked.

"You tell me," Smith said. "Has to be more than my good looks and charm."

"Sandra had found out something about Whitney and his family that she wanted to tell me but she hesitated because it may have been privileged and because I was on the other side. She was about to tell me when you called her. After that, she shut up."

"You think it had something to do with Whitney King, so you hired me because you think I'll tell you," Smith said.

"Sandra said you were working together on another case. I don't buy that."

"Why? Because she worked downtown and represented big corporations and white-collar crooks and I work on the east side representing people who get collared instead of wear collars? Or maybe it's one of those what's-a-good-lookingwhite-woman-doing-with-a-black-man things."

"Neither," Mason said, ignoring the bait. "Because I knew Sandra well enough to know that she didn't scare easily and she was shaking. She trusted me. That's the last thing she said to me before she was shot. She wanted to tell me something but didn't know how to do it. Whatever you said to her shut her up. I paid you a hundred thousand dollars to find out."

"Correction," Smith said, pushing back from the table. "Your auntie paid me." He walked into the dining room and tapped his foot against the flywheel on Mason's rowing machine. "Waste of time," Smith said, pointing to the machine. "All that work and you're right back where you started when you finish."

"You look like a runner," Mason said, following Smith into the dining room. "You do the same thing."

"Wrong. When I'm running, I'm always going someplace even if I always come back. Sandra was like that. Always going some place. Fact is we were working on another case.

One of her clients was a doctor with big-time gambling debts who'd gotten in too deep with a private lender. He was overcharging his Medicare patients to pay off his debts."

"And you represent the private lender who uses a bent-nose collector to pick up the weekly installment?"

"Her doctor rolled over on my lender as part of a deal with the feds," Smith said.

"Gang bangers, dope dealers, and loan sharks," Mason said. "Quality clientele."

"Don't give me that crap, Lou. You're right down there with the rest of us. Most of the people we represent are guilty. They know it, the prosecutors know it, and we know it. Sandra knew it, too. She knew I had contacts. People that could find out things that other people couldn't."

"She told me that she'd spent the weekend reviewing her firm's files on Whitney King's family. Did she find something that made her ask you for help?"

"She didn't say anything about any files. All she asked was if I would look into something for one of her firm's clients."

"Whitney King?"

"Close. His mother."

"She's in some kind of psychiatric nursing home," Mason said.

"They're separate facilities actually. A nursing home and a psychiatric hospital. Same company owns them. It's called Golden Years. Sandra wasn't sure which one the mother was in, but she wanted to know if the mother belonged in either one," Smith said.

"Don't tell me," Mason said. "You're not a doctor even though you play one on TV."

"You charge your clients for the jokes?" Smith asked.

"Depends on how many I have to tell. What's your nursing home connection?"

"Like you said, I've got a quality clientele. Not all of it is gang bangers, dope dealers, and loan sharks. There's a lot of money to be made taking care of old people. Those Medicare care regulations are a bitch. Going after doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes is easy money for the feds. Damon Parker owns Golden Years. I've kept him open for business a couple times when the feds had other ideas. He liked the fact that I had good contacts in the U.S. attorney's office from my days as a prosecutor."

"So, if Sandra wanted to know something about King's mother, why didn't she ask her or ask King?"

"You said she was scared," Smith said. "Maybe she didn't want King to know she was asking."

"What did you find out?" Mason asked.

"Nothing. I put out a feeler and Parker fired me. That's what I told Sandra when I called her."

"Ask a question and get fired. That makes the point," Mason said.

"Not like getting shot in the face," Smith said.

It was close to ten o'clock when Dixon Smith left. Mason and Tuffy walked him to the curb, the dog stretching as Smith drove away. Mason kneaded the back of the dog's neck. The wind came in gusts, raising the rest of her coat. Thick layers of indigo clouds had rolled overhead, blanketing the stars and promising a storm powerful enough to shatter the heat wave.

He lingered at the curb, the dog nudging him to go inside, uneasy at the weather. At least one of them had the sense to avoid the storm.

"C'mon," he told the dog, who leaped out ahead of him. Mason followed slowly, hands jammed into his pockets.

He did a few slow laps around the first floor, cleaning up in the haphazard way of someone who has no one to clean up for, too restless to sit, reviewing the list of things he'd told Dixon Smith to do.

Run down Sandra's cell phone records and Whitney King's. Check local suppliers of stun guns for sales to King. Forget about Internet suppliers. There were too many and they don't employ real people anyway having figured out how to run a business entirely on e-mail and voice mail.

Find Janet Hook and Andrea Bracco, the last two jurors before they turn up dead. If they were still alive. And find Mary Kowalczyk.

Talk to Whitney King's mother, Victoria. Test her son's alibi. Figure out why Sandra questioned whether Victoria King belonged in either a psychiatric hospital or a nursing home and why Smith got fired for asking if she did.

Smith had nodded while Mason rattled off his checklist, not taking any notes.

"Thanks," Smith had told him when Mason finished. "Never would have thought of any of that."

"No charge," Mason said. "I appreciate your courtesy," he added, returning the jab.

"A hundred thousand dollars buys a lot of courtesy," Smith had replied. "Let me handle this, Lou. I know what I'm doing."

"Do I have a choice?"

"You've always got a choice. Not a good one, but you've got it."

Mason sat on the rowing machine's sliding seat, rolling forward and back a few times. He got up, a stationary workout not what he needed. Smith was right to keep him on the sidelines, but Mason didn't know how long he could stay there.