Joel Goldman - Motion to Kill

“Lou, it’s Sandra. I’m meeting Vic Jr. at seven thirty tonight at a bar in the West Bottoms. The address is 312 Front Street. Meet me there. I want a witness.”

Mason wasn’t crazy about the idea, but he figured it would still be light out, and Vic Jr. had never struck him as dangerous. Besides, even if Sandra did carry a big knife, he knew she was counting on him to be there. He’d be only a few minutes late for dinner with Blues. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall as Mason left.

Mason’s grandfather, Mike, was a butcher in a slaughterhouse in the West Bottoms. He was also a saloonkeeper and a ward healer and anything else that would put food on the table during the Depression, all of it in the West Bottoms, a floodplain that drank in the overflow from the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers.

His last career had been in the wrecking business. When Mason was a boy, his grandfather took him to work on Saturday mornings at MM Wrecking Company. The office was on the first floor of a warehouse that stored the leftover, cast-aside guts of buildings and businesses that Mike Mason somehow turned into cash. Mason spent the mornings hunting for magnets while his grandfather shuffled papers.

Mike Mason got his start in the wrecking business through Tom Pendergast, the political boss who ran Kansas City and a good part of Missouri during the Depression. Bagnel Dam had just been finished, damming up three rivers and creating the Lake of the Ozarks. Pendergast’s concrete company had provided the cement and Pendergast doled out the leftovers, one of which was the scrap that had been salvaged from the project.

Mike Mason asked Pendergast if he could gather the scrap and sell it. Pendergast gave his blessing and waived his usual cut as he often did for his boys who made sure the voters turned out and voted Democratic. MM Wrecking outlasted Pendergast.

Mason played with his memories as he pulled alongside Sandra Connelly’s BMW. She had left it in the parking lot of a five-story, redbrick warehouse that backed up to the Missouri River, Hamlein Furniture painted in faded yellow above the windows on the fifth floor. A loading dock dominated the front, steel-paneled garage doors closing off the dock’s three bays. There was an entrance on the west for walk-in traffic. The bar was across the street, a half-lit neon sign in the front window promising free beer tomorrow.

He wondered why Vic Jr. had arranged the meeting here. Scott had given orders to the firm’s staff to stay away from Sandra and Mason. O’Malley had probably told Junior the same thing. Only Junior couldn’t resist Sandra. Mason was not unsympathetic.

Sandra’s car was empty, giving Mason a fleeting panic attack until she called to him from the doorway of a nearby storage shed that faced the parking lot about a hundred feet south and east from the dock. Two large commercial trash containers flanked the shed.

“Where’s our boy?” Mason asked as he joined her in the shed.

It was a ten-foot-square aluminum can littered with discarded scrap metal and the lingering odor of tenants who’d been too careless for too long with food, booze, and tobacco.

“He’s not due until eight o’clock. I wanted time to figure out what we’re going to do.”

“Does he know I’ll be here?”

“No. He said he would only talk to me.”

“In that case, I’ll move my car.”

Mason parked the TR6 in an alley half a block away.

“Say something,” she said as he stepped back inside.

“This is a bad idea.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of Junior.”

“These days, I’m afraid of my socks. Whose idea was it to meet down here? What’s wrong with Starbucks on the Plaza?”

“Vic Jr. insisted. He said he wasn’t supposed to talk to me and didn’t want to take the chance that we might run into someone who knew him.”

Sandra was wearing a hooded, navy nylon pullover, blue jeans, and running shoes. She pulled a slender handheld recorder from the front zipper pocket of her shell and replayed their brief conversation. Mason’s voice was muffled but understandable.

“I don’t want any questions later on about who said what to whom,” she said as she tucked the tape recorder back in its hiding place.

It wasn’t too noticeable. Besides, Mason figured that Junior would have something else on his mind if he started talking to her chest.

“When did he call you?”

“He left a message late this afternoon.”

They compared notes since last night. Sandra had also met the security guard at the office. She ran into Phil Rosa at the courthouse while reviewing the O’Malley lawsuit. His summary of office conditions matched Angela Molina’s.

They decided that Sandra would keep the meeting outside in the warehouse parking lot. If Vic Jr. insisted on going inside, Mason would just have to wait outside the bar. Otherwise, Vic Jr. would see him.

Sandra went back to her car and stared hard at the window on the front of the shed, trotting back to tell Mason he was invisible as long as he hung back in the shadows.

“Be careful,” he said.

“Always.”

The on-and-off rain was off again when a familiar black Escalade pulled into the parking lot. That meant Jimmie Camaya was inside or close by. Mason was desperate for a way to warn Sandra but ran out of time before he could think of anything.

The Escalade stopped ten feet from Sandra’s car. Vic Jr. stepped out the driver’s door and walked toward her. If she recognized the Escalade, she gave no indication, leaning against the hood, one foot on the fender, thumbs in her belt loops. She thrust her pelvis at him just enough to be an invitation. He took her arm and guided her toward the Escalade.

“Shit!” Mason said, wishing she could hear him. “Don’t get in the car. Whatever you do, don’t get in the fucking car!”

Junior opened the passenger door and shoved her from behind. She threw her arms against the doorframe and tried to turn and run, but someone inside the car grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her in.

Another guy, broad and thick, appeared from the far side of the Escalade, hit Junior in the back of the head, hoisted him by the belt, and threw him on top of Sandra and slammed the door.

Mason had a flashback to Harlan’s kitchen. He never saw the face of the man who threw him across the floor, but he recognized the swing. The same man climbed into Sandra’s BMW and followed the Escalade to the warehouse entrance.

Two men got out of the backseat of the Escalade, one twisting Sandra’s arm behind her back as they disappeared inside the building, joined by the man who’d driven Sandra’s car. The Escalade rolled back into the street and disappeared into the night.

It happened so fast that Mason had no chance to stop them. He tried his cell phone but couldn’t get a signal. He considered going for help but was afraid of what might happen while he was gone, so he picked up a foot-long piece of steel pipe and ran toward the warehouse as the sky erupted in blistering sheets of rain.

Hugging the exterior wall of the warehouse, he ran around to the back looking for another entrance. On the north side, overlooking the river, he found a narrow flight of concrete stairs that led down to a darkened landing.

He bolted down the steps only to find that what had once been a door at the bottom of the stairs was now a brick wall. He slumped against the rail, rain soaked, his chest heaving. He looked up, blinking against the rain, the wall seeming to sway.

Mason rubbed his eyes and climbed the stairs, reaching ground level, when familiar hands lifted him by his collar and tossed him against the wall. His back absorbed the force of the throw as his steel pipe clattered back down the stairs. He gathered himself in a crouch, promising himself that this time would be different.