'These are my floors, Amy,' Mason said, pointing to the glowing buttons. 'I get to use them any way I want. When was the last time you talked to Carl Zimmerman?'
'Last week. I don't remember the day, the time, or what we talked about.'
'The conversation I want to know about is one that I think you'd remember. It was about Jack Cullan's files.'
'That's a conversation I would have remembered, and I don't. You've got three floors left. Make them count.'
'Where were you last Thursday night between six and ten o'clock?'
'Probably eating rubber chicken at a civic award dinner with the mayor, or home wishing I was.'
'Did Zimmerman call you that night?'
The elevator stopped at the first floor, the doors opened, and they stepped out into the lobby. Amy steadied herself with one hand against a pillar, gulping cleaner air. They could see the snow tumbling from the sky like feathers from a billion ruptured pillows.
'My God!' Amy said. 'This is going to be the rush hour from hell.' Turning to Mason, she asked, 'Do you have any idea how many complaints we will get by noon tomorrow that somebody's street hasn't been plowed?' Mason shook his head. 'Everyone but the mayor will call. His street always gets plowed.' She touched her forehead with the back of her hand, wiping away sweat she must have imagined. 'I'm sorry, Lou. What did you ask me?'
Mason smiled. He'd questioned too many witnesses too many times to be pushed off track.
'Did Carl Zimmerman call you last Thursday night?'
Amy drew on her reserves of exasperation. 'Yes, no, maybe. I don't remember. Should I?'
'That depends on whether Zimmerman needs an alibi for Shirley Parker's murder.'
Amy studied Mason as she tied her scarf around her neck, cinching it securely under her chin, pulled her coat back on, and took her time carefully buttoning each button. She cocked her head to one side in a thoughtful pose and clasped her hands together.
'No,' she said at last. 'I'm quite certain I didn't talk to Detective Zimmerman at all that night.'
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Mason took seriously Patrick Ortiz's announcement that he was a suspect in the arson at Pendergast's office and in the murder of Shirley Parker. While the jailhouse bureaucrats processed Blues's release on bail, he spent the rest of the morning waiting for the police department's records clerk to make him a copy of the investigative reports on both crimes. He pushed her limited tolerance for defense lawyers when he asked for two sets of the reports as well as another set of the reports on the Cullan murder, knowing that Blues would want his own set.
Shortly after one o'clock, Blues emerged from the jail wearing the same clothes as the day he had been arrested. The suit he'd worn for his preliminary hearing was crammed into a grocery bag. Mason embraced him, Blues balking, more comfortable with a fist tap.
'Do I want to know how you pulled this off?' Blues asked.
'No. You hungry?'
'Is a bluebird blue? My tribal ancestors ate better on the reservation than I ate in that jail.'
'Let's get out of here. I'm buying lunch.'
The snow already had covered the streets and sidewalks, obliterating where one began and the other stopped. The only clues were the cars stacked bumper-to-bumper on every street, many of them stuck on the sheet of ice that lay beneath the snow, tires spinning in a futile effort to get traction. Other drivers had made the mistake of trying to go around those cars, only to slide into someone else attempting the same maneuver. The result was automotive gridlock accompanied by blaring horns, screaming commuters, and ecstatic tow-truck drivers.
Blues pointed to a bar a block west of the courthouse. 'Let's try Rossi's. He never closes.'
Rossi's Bar amp; Grill lived off of the traffic from city hall, the county courthouse, and police headquarters. Judges, lawyers, and bureaucrats provided the lunch traffic. Cops owned the place after hours. DeWayne Rossi was a retired deputy sheriff who heard everything, repeated nothing, and spent his days and nights parked on a stool behind the cash register chewing cigars. Rossi tipped the scales at more than three hundred pounds, limiting his exercise to making change for a twenty. Regular patrons had a secret pool picking the date he would stroke out. Rossi liked the action enough to have placed his own bet.
Rossi's had eight tables and was decorated in late-twentieth-century dark and dingy. A pair of canned spotlights washed the bar in weak light. Short lamps with green shades barely illuminated each table. A splash of daylight filtered in through dirty windows. A color TV hung from the ceiling above the bar and was permanently tuned to ESPN Classic. Rossi kept a. 357 Magnum under the bar in case anyone tried to rob the place or change the channel.
There were two waitresses. Donna worked days and Savannah worked nights. They had both worked the street until they'd had too many johns and too many busts. The cops who used to arrest them now overtipped them to balance the books. A fry cook whose name no one knew hustled burgers and pork tenderloins from a tiny kitchen in the back.
'I haven't been in here since I quit the force,' Blues said as he and Mason stamped the snow from their shoes.
'You didn't miss the atmosphere?'
'I didn't miss the company. I'm as welcome in a cops' bar as a whore is in church.'
One table was occupied, as was one seat at the bar. Rossi turned away from the TV screen long enough to look at them, giving Blues an imperceptible nod that may just have been his jowls catching up with the rest of his head. Donna, a lanky, washed-out blonde with slack skin and a downturned mouth, was sitting at one of the tables reading USA Today and smoking a cigarette.
Mason and Blues chose a table against the wall that gave them a view out the windows. Donna materialized, setting glasses of water in front of them and laying her hand on Blues's shoulder.
'Long time, darling. How you been?'
'No complaints that count, Donna. How's life treating you?'
'Same way I treat it. Neither one of us gives a shit about the other. What'll you have on this lovely day?'
'Bring us a couple of burgers and the coldest beer you've got in a bottle.'
Donna wandered back toward the kitchen to turn in their order. Mason unzipped the black satchel he used as a briefcase and handed Blues his copies of the reports.
'I thought you'd want your own set.'
Blues left the reports on the table. 'Did Leonard Campbell find religion and decide to let me out?'
Mason shook his head.
'I know Ortiz didn't do it on his own.'
'It wasn't the prosecutor's office. It was the judge.'
'Judge Carter? You're shitting me!'
Mason shook his head again, watching the replay of Kordell Stewart's Hail Mary miracle pass against Michigan, instead of meeting Blues head-on.
Blues asked him, 'You think that game is going to end differently this time?'
Mason gave up and faced his friend. 'No, sorry.'
'How much trouble are we in?'
'It depends on whether we can prove that you didn't kill Jack Cullan and I didn't kill Shirley Parker.'
'What about Judge Carter and my bail?'
'Small potatoes compared to capital murder.'
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Mason filled Blues in on his evening out with Beth Harrell that ended with him saving Ed Fiora's life. He
