was hard to believe that they’d just finished their war games.
“So-what are you going to do?” Blues asked.
“Circle the wagons, make ‘em pay for every inch of ground-what am I supposed to say?”
“No, man. When this is over, what are you going to do?”
“I’ll treat the question as a vote of confidence. To tell you the truth, I haven’t really thought about it. I guess I’ll have to find a job or take up piano again.”
“You’d be better off joining the foreign legion. Why do you want to keep practicing law anyway?”
“I’m not certain. I had the right motives when I went to law school. Fight the good fight. Protect the individual. But I lost the fire somewhere along the way.”
“But you turned out to be pretty good at it.”
“Sometimes. I lost my last case. It was one of those I couldn’t afford to lose. Maybe I lost my nerve.”
“Fall off the horse, you’re supposed to get right back on. Maybe you should go back to the kind of practice you started with.”
“And maybe I should start doing what I should have done in the first place.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Listen to my aunt Claire. How about you? Are you going to spend the rest of your life as an itinerant Piano Man?”
“Nah. I’ve been making my changes all along.”
“Somehow musician and scuffling PI doesn’t sound like a grand strategy for fulfillment.”
Blues laughed and agreed. “You’re right about that, brother. I’m tired of bouncing from gig to gig. I’m buying my own place.”
“Get out! What kind of place?”
“Used to be a restaurant on Broadway. I’m gonna call it ‘Blues on Broadway.’ It’ll be a first-rate piano joint. I’ll play when I feel like it, and if I don’t feel like it, I’ll get somebody to sit in.” He said it with the satisfaction of a man who’d figured it all out.
“Have you closed the deal yet?”
“Supposed to close in three weeks. That’s why I wanted to have dinner with you last night. My place is across the street from the restaurant and I was going to ask you to look over the paperwork for me.”
“How big is it?”
“The club is a couple of thousand square feet. But I’m buying the whole building. There’s an office upstairs that I need to rent out. Make a nice place for some mouthpiece to hang his shingle. I’ll make you a good deal.”
Mason looked at Blues as he smiled and pulled on a long stem of grass he’d been chewing. Before Mason could answer, Blues said he was going for a walk. Mason watched him disappear into the woods, carrying a shotgun. He looked around for his, checked its load, and climbed back into the love seat on the porch to consider Blues’s offer.
Practicing law was the only way Mason knew how to make a living. He’d chosen the profession because he believed in the law-in its central role in society-in its capacity to heal and make whole. At first, representing injured people gave shape to those values. But the practice of law introduced a different human dimension to living those values. Partners he couldn’t trust; clients whose cases he couldn’t win and who had nowhere else to turn. He had abandoned those values just to keep practicing when he joined Sullivan amp; Christenson. Some safe harbor. A desk above Blues’s bar might be the right place to start over.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Kelly pulled into the clearing around five o’clock. Mason was inside trying to scrape more clues from the printouts on O’Malley. She came in carrying sacks of groceries for the night and no signs of baggage from their conversation in her office. Mason wasn’t going anywhere, and so far, she wasn’t throwing him out.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
“Where’s Sandra?”
“She’s staying with Riley until they find something.”
The sacks contained K.C. strip steaks, corn on the cob, charcoal, watermelon, and more cold beer. Mason was back in the barbecue business. He built a fire and put the steaks on when the coals turned white on the outside while still glowing red on the inside. Kelly joined him and they watched the flames lick the steaks until Mason decided to test the waters.
“Any news on Vic Jr.?” he began.
“McNamara called again. He’s really pushing me to bring you in.”
“Bring me into what? He makes it sound like I’m a criminal.”
“He isn’t satisfied with the information I gave him. Says he has to talk to you personally. I told him I’d let you know.”
“Great. What else?”
She hesitated to answer. When she did, Mason understood why. Amateurs aren’t supposed to be right.
“Vic Jr. attended the University of Chicago. His senior year, he was charged with drug trafficking and interstate transportation of a minor. Since he crossed state lines it became a federal case. And then it all went away.”
“Daddy buy him out of it?”
“I don’t know. But it puts him in the right place at the right time. Carlo D’lessandro runs the skin trade and the dope in and out of Chicago. He might have hooked up with someone in D’lessandro’s organization and the contact followed him home to Kansas City.”
“So now what?”
“I’m going to Chicago in the morning.”
“Why? The money laundering isn’t part of your case. Leave that to the feds. I thought you wanted to find Sullivan’s killer.”
“We both know they’re tied together. I want to get a look at Junior’s file.”
“That’s it?”
“No. I’ve still got sources in Chicago. I may be able to find out if D’lessandro is running this operation. If he is, I might come up with some way to pressure him to back off.”
“How are you going to do that? Go see him and ask him nicely not to let Camaya kill the poor schmuck who wandered into this mess?”
“Lou, sometimes you make it hard to care about you.”
“Well, that’s just part of my charm.”
“Really? If that’s as good as it gets, I may bring him back here to meet you in person.”
The grill was going up in flames and the steaks were sizzling on the edge of incineration. Mason rescued their dinner just in time. Later, she joined him in the love seat and surprised him by leaning her head against his shoulder. He put his arm around her, and she didn’t resist when he pulled her closer. Blues came outside and wisely announced he was going for another walk.
“My dad and I built this cabin,” she said, nestling against him. They were a natural fit. “It was just before he died. He could build anything-do anything. I helped him trim the trees and notch the logs so they’d fit together. Making it together made it really special.”
“It is special.”
“It’s always been my hideout. I come here to heal my wounds.”
The air was clear, the sky a starlit panorama. The love seat rocked them gently as he pulled her face to his. Finally, she breathed his name.
“Do you want to see my trapdoor?”
“I always knew you were a hopeless romantic.”
He fumbled with her belt. She held his hands in check.
“No, you dope. I really do have a trapdoor. I made my dad build it in the cabin. I thought it would be fun to
