Mason needed answers before the cops arrived. There wasn’t time for Fish to fall apart. Regardless of what Fish said he knew, the cops would assume that he knew more. Mason had to get a feel for the truth, which he assumed was somewhere between what Fish would admit and what the cops would suspect.
“Sit up and look at me.”
Fish lifted his head, his eyes glassy as if Mason had woken him from a drunk, strands of thin white hair drifting over his brow. He rubbed his meaty hands across his jowls, pulled off his glasses, and massaged the corners of his eyes.
“Okay, already. I’m sitting up. I’m looking at you. Ask your fifty questions.”
“Whose body is in the trunk of your car?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did the body get there?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t put it there.”
“How long has it been in your car?”
Fish took a deep breath and clutched the edge of the table with his hands. “It wasn’t there last night when I got home around six o’clock. It was there this morning when I left the synagogue.”
“You knew there was a body in the trunk of your car when you drove downtown?” Mason asked, not certain he’d heard Fish correctly.
Fish nodded with a sigh, avoiding eye contact with Mason.
“Avery, I’m not being critical here, but why didn’t you call the police instead of parking a dead body at the Federal Courthouse?”
Fish leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over the top of his belly and forcing his considerable stomach outward an inch or two like a blowfish puffing itself up to ward off attackers.
“That question I can answer, Mr. Smart Guy Lawyer. After services this morning, I opened the trunk to get my briefcase, only the body was on top of it. You told me not to be late and even though I thought this was a good excuse, I didn’t think the U.S. attorney would agree. Besides, a dead body is hard enough for an average citizen to explain and these days I’m not exactly an average citizen. So I kept my mouth shut, hoping you would get me out of here in a hurry. Then I’d figure out what to do. I was going to ask your advice, if it makes you feel any better.”
Mason let out a breath. “It always makes me feel special when my client drops an asteroid-size shoe on my head in the middle of negotiating a plea bargain.”
“Your head?” Fish asked, coming out of his chair. “Your head? Listen, boytchik, it’s my head that’s going to nestle into a prison pillow every night for the rest of my life. Not yours!”
“You can count on that if you keep me in the dark! The U.S. attorney figures I either knew about the body and didn’t say anything or that I have no control over you. Either way, my credibility takes a hit, and when that happens, your penitentiary frequent-guest points start stacking up. So make me really feel better. Tell me who it was.”
Fish fell back into his chair. “I told you. I don’t know.”
Fish’s voice was suddenly reedy; his burst of anger evaporated, a fearful desperation taking its place. Mason liked him and wanted to believe him. He wasn’t a terrorist, bank robber, or dope dealer. He was a gonif, a swindler, a con man, and he was good at it, having made a nice illegal income for a long time. That required a fair measure of charm, which Fish had in abundance, and an easy capacity to lie about anything to anyone. Mason hoped his client wasn’t lying to him now.
“Man or woman?” Mason asked.
“Man.”
“Okay, fine. You didn’t know him. What did he look like?”
Fish shrugged. “Not much. He was white. Probably around six feet, like you. Nothing special.”
“His face, Avery. What did he look like?”
Fish answered slowly, his hands covering his eyes before he dropped them in his lap in surrender, the memory too fresh, the day’s events piling up. “He didn’t have one.”
“C’mon, Avery,” Mason said, annoyed that Fish would try to play him. “If you knew the victim, the police will eventually figure that out.”
“Somebody cut off his head. And his hands,” Fish whispered, the words catching in his throat as tears spilled from his red-rimmed eyes.
FIVE
The homicide detectives went easy on Fish at first, as if he was a lesser victim of the crime and not a suspected killer. They commiserated with him about his grisly discovery, practically apologizing for their questions.
The two detectives, Kevin Griswold and Tom Cates, both white men in their late thirties, were lean, fit, and earnest-brothers under the skin with Pete Samuelson. Mason wasn’t fooled by their demeanor and trusted that Fish wasn’t either. Pious grandfather or old con man, Fish was their first and best suspect.
Fish stuck with the story he’d told Mason, which boosted Mason’s confidence that Fish was telling the truth. That he was afraid to call the police because he’d be late to his meeting with the U.S. attorney bordered on the improbable. Not because it wasn’t possible, but because it made Fish look so bad. Such confessions carried with them the ring of truth, especially when Fish could have easily claimed that the body in the trunk was news to him.
“So your lawyer here, Mr. Mason,” Detective Griswold said. “He told you not to be late for your meeting with the U.S. attorney. That’s why you didn’t call the police when you found the body.”
Fish nodded. “That’s right, Detective. You understand I’m not blaming my lawyer. When I saw the body, I didn’t know what else to do. All I could think was to come here and talk to Mr. Mason.”
“And you told your lawyer there was a dead man in the trunk of your car?” Griswold asked.
“With no head or hands,” Detective Cates added, shaking his head sympathetically. “And your lawyer says let’s take one crime at a time. Make a deal with the U.S. attorney and then clean up the mess in your car. Is that about it?”
Mason ground his teeth at the way the questioning had developed, uncertain whether to be angrier with his client or the cops. Fish had led the detectives away from him and directly at Mason, making Mason an accomplice in a cover-up just in case the cops didn’t buy Fish’s protest of innocence. He’d done it with disarming skill, making the cops think it was their idea, not his. Mason bet Fish could have sold both detectives time-shares in Florida.
Mason couldn’t let Fish answer the last series of questions without waiving the attorney-client privilege. The moment Mason instructed Fish not to answer, the impression Fish was leaving would be embossed in the cops’ minds. Yet Mason had no choice.
“Forget it,” Mason told the detectives. “You know better than to ask my client what he and I talked about. He told you what he knows. He found the body in the trunk this morning. His actions are understandable and not illegal.”
“The law says you’re supposed to report dead bodies, not hide them, Counselor,” Griswold said, ratcheting up the tempo for Mason.
“Within how many hours?” Mason asked. “He found the body after breakfast. It’s not even lunchtime. You want to charge him with failure to report, write it down. If you think you can prove that this fat old man killed whoever is in the trunk, then cut off the victim’s head and hands and drove around town with the leftovers, just say so. Otherwise, we’re leaving.”
Detective Griswold said, “We’ll have a warrant to search your client’s house in a couple of hours. Tell him not to go home and clean house before we get there.”
“You want to search my house?” Fish asked, standing and putting on his topcoat. “Be my guest. Search all you want. You don’t need a warrant. Just wipe your feet so you don’t track up. The last time the FBI searched my house, they left a mess. My housekeeper yelled at me for a week after that.”
Mason drove to Fish’s house. Fish rode with him, the detectives following behind. He had agreed with Fish’s offer of a voluntary search. It was another indication of Fish’s innocence. Or, from the cops’ perspective, it was proof that Fish committed the murder somewhere other than at his house. Either way, there was the risk that the
