things you did, Dr. Gina,' Mason said. 'Did that get you killed?'
Chapter 29
Late that afternoon, Mason returned to the Cable Depot, this time to talk to David Evans about Gina Davenport's recipe for cooking the books of Emily's Fund. Earl Luke Fisher was sprawled out on his park bench across from the building entrance, his head propped on an oil-stained canvas bag, the rest of his worldly possessions crammed into a grocery cart lashed to the back of the bench with a candy-striped bungee cord. The autumnal sun, low-angled and gentle, painted him gold to match the leaves pooled beneath the bench. He called out as Mason parked his car.
'Hey, Mason!'
Mason gave him a waist-high salute as he made for the front door.
'Come here, Mason!' Earl Luke shouted, sitting up on his bench. 'What's the matter? You too good for Earl Luke? Do I gotta make a damn appointment?'
Earl Luke stood, eclipsing the sun at his back, his shadow rippling on the pavement, aiming at Mason, who looked at his watch and shrugged. It was close to dinner, and he guessed Earl Luke's meal plan was a little short.
'How you doing, Earl Luke?' Mason asked, crossing the street.
'I'm fit to spit,' Earl Luke answered, closing one eye and slapping his hand over his heart, as if to prove the point.
'Something on your mind?' Mason asked.
'Always got something on my mind,' Earl Luke said. 'It ain't free, though.'
Mason had put money into worse lost causes than Earl Luke, and didn't mind doing it again. He liked Earl Luke's approach, turning panhandling into retail at the street level. He said, 'You've got to ask for the sale to make the sale.'
'I'm asking, I'm asking,' Earl Luke said, rubbing his hands on a denim shirt that could have been a palette for a dirt painter. 'That prosecutor fella come see me again and give me a subpoena for court this Friday. Give me a check for forty bucks too.'
'That's a witness fee,' Mason explained. 'The subpoena isn't valid without the check.'
'Well, forty bucks is nothing to sneeze at, 'cept I can't cash no check seein's as how I ain't exactly got a local bank account, if you get my meaning.'
'You'll have to take that up with the prosecutor,' Mason said. 'Maybe they'll give you cash.'
'The hell with that and the hell with them!' Earl Luke said. 'I'm taking up a collection to head south for the winter. Thought you might like to get me started. If I can get a stake, I'd leave today, let that prosecutor cash his own damn check. Might do your client some good if I was to be a long way from that courtroom come Friday.'
Mason stepped back, not interested in Earl Luke's offer to become a tampered witness regardless of the price. 'Can't help you,' Mason told him. 'You're under subpoena to appear in court. You better show up or the prosecutor will send the sheriff to make sure you do. Besides,' Mason lied, 'I'm not worried about your testimony.'
'It's a goddamn conspiracy, is what it is!' Earl Luke said. 'You damn lawyers are all in it together,' he added, snatching up his canvas bag, spilling its contents on the ground, scrambling to shove the coarse stuffing of his vagrant life back in the bag.
Mason counted a screwdriver, a short length of thin rope, a flattened roll of duct tape, a rusty bottle opener, a butane lighter, a yellowed copy of People magazine, and a wadded sweatshirt among Earl Luke's inventory. Something hard tumbled out of the folds of the sweatshirt, skidding across the pavement, Earl Luke diving to recover it, Mason catching a glimpse.
'Is that a cell phone?' Mason asked. The flash of a pink faceplate had caught his eye.
'What if it is?' Earl Luke asked, crouched on the ground, hiding the phone under the sweatshirt. 'I got business to tend to. Man's entitled to a telephone.'
'Must be tough paying your phone bill without having a bank account,' Mason said, 'and I bet it's even harder to get a mailing address for a park bench.'
Earl Luke spat, scooting backward to his grocery cart, dumping the bag in with the rest of his things, clutching the sweatshirt.
'Where did you get the phone, Earl Luke?'
'I didn't steal it and you can't prove I did. I found it and it's mine. Possession is the law, Mr. Lawyer!'
'I don't care if you did,' Mason told him. 'Like you said, a man's got to take care of business, right?'
Earl Luke cocked his head, squinting at Mason, knowing Mason was playing him, not sure for what and why. 'I got my business and it's my own business, so you just stay out of it.'
'You get any good tips from the psychic hotline, Earl Luke?' Mason asked.
Earl Luke stopped fumbling with the bungee cord harnessing the grocery cart to the park bench. 'How'd you know 'bout somethin' like that?'
'Maybe I'm psychic,' Mason said. 'Too bad the phone service was cut off. I hear the more time you give the psychic, the better they do.' Earl Luke's eyes dilated from slits to saucers as he listened to Mason. 'Tell you what I'll do,' Mason continued. 'I'll buy that phone from you. You take the money, buy a phone card, and tell your psychic to give it to you straight.'
'How much?' Earl Luke asked.
Mason took cash out of his wallet, letting it dangle from his fingers. 'Fifty bucks,' he said, watching Earl Luke wet his lips and ease his grip on the sweatshirt. 'Just one other thing. Tell me how you got the phone.'
Earl Luke handed Mason the phone, grabbing the cash with a pickpocket's swiftness. 'Dumpster behind the Depot.'
'Show me,' Mason said, flashing another twenty-dollar bill.
Earl Luke snapped up the twenty and led Mason to the grassy north side of the Cable Depot, where there was less than a hundred feet from the building to the edge of the bluff overlooking the interstate highway that wrapped around the downtown. Mason could hear the pounding roar of passing traffic.
Earl Luke pointed to a Dumpster set hard against the north face of the building beneath a trash chute bolted to the brick wall. There was no sun on this side of the building. Mason craned his neck upward, catching the cool early evening breeze under his chin, tracing the trash chute to a small door on the top floor, buried in the brick, hidden even more by the advancing dusk. He followed it back down to the Dumpster, sitting on a concrete pad partially obscuring another door, this one a steel door inlaid in the concrete.
'Give me a hand,' Mason said, the two of them shoving the Dumpster off the trapdoor. 'That's an odd place to put a door,' Mason said, kneeling and rubbing his hand across the burnished lock, fingering the passkey in his pocket, wondering if it would open the door and what he would find if it did.
'You got to be the strangest lawyer I ever did see,' Earl Luke said. 'You buy a phone off of me we both know don't work. You give me another sawbuck to show you a trash can you coulda found on your own. Now you got the look of a second-story man I once knowed jus' before he get caught.'
Mason kept his head down, not wanting Earl Luke to see him smile. He felt like a second-story man, taunted by the mystery of what was hidden on the other side of the trapdoor, juiced by the prospect of slipping in under the radar of the straight and narrow, wondering what his life would be like if he gave sway to the part of him that got off on tempting trouble.
It was, he understood, what Dr. Gina meant by the title of her book, The Way You Do the Things You Do. The impulse to step off the path, to break the rules was sometimes irresistible. It put Max Coyle and Gina Davenport in a photo album of dirty pictures. It put Robert Davenport at the naked breast of a student model, then left him dead with a dirty needle in his arm. It put Terry Nix in the black-market baby business. And it was about to put Mason on the wrong side of the line, a place he was willing to go alone but not with Earl Luke as his witness. He left the passkey in his pocket and stood up, brushing his pants clean.
'It's probably nothing,' Mason said, not convincing either one of them. 'Thanks,' he said, adding, 'I don't suppose you saw who put the phone in the Dumpster.'
