Joel Goldman - Motion to Kill

Tony stood at the door, about five feet in front of Mason. Gino was closer to Mason, but at an angle to Mason’s left. He knew that Tony would shoot him before he got close to him, but he’d have a chance with Gino if Camaya took care of Tony.

“Listen, Tony,” Mason began. “This isn’t working out like you expected. You probably counted on the cop outside the door but no way could you figure on an FBI agent, the U.S. attorney, and me being here. You kill everyone in this room and your boss is going to catch so much heat you’ll never be able to go home again.”

Tony considered Mason’s comments. “It is the way it is, pal. Lots of people end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. I guess this is just your time.”

“Last chance,” Mason said. “Put your guns down and give up or Jimmie will shoot you.” Both gunmen laughed. “Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance.”

Mason stood up, stepping toward Gino and drawing Tony’s attention away from Camaya. Tony froze in astonishment at the gun in Camaya’s hand long enough for Camaya to shoot him in the face. He was dead before he hit the floor.

Mason leapt at Gino but not before Gino shot McNamara. Gino had weight on his side. Mason had surprise and desperation on his. And he fought dirty. Mason grabbed Gino’s gun with his left hand and Gino’s testicles with his right, squeezing both while he drove his head into Gino’s neck.

The gun flew out of their grasp as they toppled onto the floor. Gino slammed his knee upward, breaking Mason’s grip on his crotch, and wrapped his hands around Mason’s throat. His fingers were crushing Mason’s windpipe and cutting off his breath. Mason straddled Gino as the bigger man held Mason at arm’s length, strangling him.

Raising his right hand from Gino’s chest, Mason jammed his forefinger into Gino’s eye, puncturing the outer surface until he felt the hard socket against his knuckle. Gino’s piercing scream nearly shattered Mason’s eardrum as his grip on Mason’s throat gave way. Mason withdrew his bloody hand, leaving Gino’s eye dangling alongside his nose.

Mason staggered to his feet. McNamara lay on the floor, moaning but alive. St. John had wet himself and assumed the fetal position.

“My man! My main man!” Camaya crowed, waving Mason’s gun in the air.

Mason snatched the gun from him and grabbed him by the throat. “I’m not your man, you miserable piece of shit. Now, call the nurse!”

Sunday started with a steady rain pinging against Mason’s windows as he lay in bed long after Harry Ryman’s last questions stopped reverberating in his ears. It was welcome white noise, something to concentrate on when he felt Gino’s blood trickling down his arm again.

Bright flashes of light sparked against his eyelids when he clenched them against the jarring array of mortal images he had collected. Snapshots of Sullivan’s bloated corpse, Harlan’s gargoyle death mask, Julio’s pulverized face, and Gino’s mutilated eye dotted his mental landscape like unholy billboards.

He had slipped so easily from a world of rules where uncivil conduct toward an adversary was grounds for sanction to one in which blood ruled and the only sanction that mattered was death. He doubted whether he could return to his old world without a part of him remaining in his new one.

Dawn, gray and misty, found him pounding the jogging path around Loose Park, two blocks from home. Breathing raggedly, he tried to outrun the demons that had become his new best friends until he dropped facedown in the grass, cool and wet. The rain ran off him as he rolled onto his back, squinting skyward, looking for an opening in the clouds. With no epiphany in sight, he trudged home to find Anna Karelson camped on his doorstep, dry and nosy under her umbrella.

“For pity’s sake, Lou, you’d have to look better to die!”

She had bed head and she hadn’t found her mouthwash yet. Her candy-striped housecoat, loosely tied at the waist, was playing peek-a-boo with her heavy bosom.

“Early morning isn’t your best time of day either, Anna. It’s just the rain. I’m fine.”

“In a pig’s eye! My two-week-old bananas have better color than you do.”

“Look, Anna. I appreciate your concern, but I’m really okay. I promise to look better after I clean up and get some rest.”

“Well, Mr. Celebrity Lawyer, I wouldn’t plan on getting any rest today if I was you.”

“Meaning?”

“TV trucks and reporters have been banging on your door since you left this morning. I told them you took a cab to the airport. But they’ll be back; that’s for sure.”

Mason had one more rock to turn over before he was ready to go to the cops with Sullivan’s and Angela’s killer. If the media started shining their light on him now, he’d lose the privacy he needed.

“Anna, mind if I shower at your house?”

“Lou!” she said as she blushed and clutched her gown to her chest. “Jack’s still asleep!”

“Don’t worry, I’m a quiet scrubber.” He ran upstairs and grabbed clean clothes, a black Windbreaker, a Beaver Creek cap, and Vernon’s Bible. “Drive my car around the block behind your house,” Mason said when he came back and handed her the keys to the TR6. “I’ll be in the shower.”

Anna came in through her back door, dripping and cursing Mason as water ran off her neck and between her breasts. “Honestly, Lou, I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things.”

He was sitting at her kitchen table, tying his shoes while scanning the front page of the morning paper. McNamara would live. St. John announced that his investigation into organized crime would continue.

“That’s what neighbors are for, Anna. I owe you one.”

Mason glanced out her living room window. Camera crews for the local affiliates of the major networks were setting up shop in his front yard, their logos emblazoned on the rain poncho of each crew member. The clock was running on his fifteen minutes of fame.

Mason kissed Anna on the cheek and went out the back door, cutting across lawns to the next block and his car. It was eight o’clock, early for house calls. Mason hoped he wasn’t too late.

Pamela’s newspaper was still in the driveway and there were no lights on in the house. It felt as though more than twenty-four hours had passed since he’d last knocked on her door. Vernon’s Bible lay heavily against his side, protected from the rain by his jacket, as he leaned on the doorbell. Five minutes of chimes brought protesting footsteps that stopped on the other side of the peephole in the door.

“Lou, what are you doing here at this hour?” Pamela asked in a voice muffled by the thick oak door.

“I’ve got to talk with you. It’s very important.”

“I had a late night. Can’t it wait until later, or tomorrow?”

“Pamela, please open the door. I can hardly hear you.”

Mason hoped that it would be harder to send him away face-to-face than separated by the heavy door. The dead bolt slid back. Pamela pulled the door open enough to peer around the edge. Mason stepped sideways through the narrow opening before she could protest.

She had the same puffy-eyed, just-rousted-from-bed look as Anna Karelson had. He could taste the stale, smoky aroma that hung on her, and he could smell the booze in her sweat. She hunched her shoulders inside the velour red robe she had zipped to the neck. She was close enough to rock bottom to touch it with her tongue.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. I know who killed your husband. I thought you would want to know.”

She slumped against the door, pushing it closed, as she covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes asking questions that she refused to speak.