Mason let Claire go, knowing better than to follow or argue. He ate his soup while he thought about her rendition of Billy Sunshine's promises for a diverse city. The Summit Cafe was on the West Side, the urban West Side, barely south of downtown and slightly west of the revitalized Freight House District where art galleries, coffee shops, and lofts converted to condos were in vogue. West Side meant Mexican restaurants and bakeries and neighborhoods where extended Hispanic families lived in row houses lining an entire block.
Kansas City was dotted with ethnic pockets like the West Side. Decades earlier, Italian immigrants had settled in the North End between the Missouri River and Admiral Boulevard. Though later generations had moved south to the suburbs, enough had stayed to preserve the identity of the area.
The East Side was called the urban core, code words meaning where the black people lived. It had the highest crime rate, the highest unemployment rate, and the worst schools. It was the recipient of the most lip service, campaign promises, and hand-wringing at City Hall.
Midtown was a rough square bounded on the north by the Plaza at Forty-Seventh Street, on the east by Holmes Road, on the south by Seventy-Fifth Street, and on the west by State Line Road, the divider between Missouri and Kansas. It was home to the city's power elite. Private schools made the dismal public schools irrelevant. Homes in Sunset Hills above the Plaza, where Cullan had lived, and along Ward Parkway fetched seven figures. Fashionably fit white men and women jogged along Ward Parkway, comfortable in the belief that their lives were the ones the city was referring to when it claimed to be the most livable city in America.
His aunt Claire's house, the house Mason had grown up in and later received as a wedding gift from her, was located in the heart of Midtown between Ward Parkway and Wornall Road, two blocks south of Loose Park. Claire had made it one of her missions in life to expose Mason to the entire city lest he grow up dunking that everyone was white and drove a Land Rover. Though they were Jewish, she had taken him to a black Methodist congregation, telling him that no one had the best corner of religious real estate. She took him to the City Union Mission to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless, and then took him on a driving tour of the city's underbelly, where they found those who wouldn't come to the mission and gave them blankets and box dinners.
"You're damn lucky, that's all," she told him after they'd completed their deliveries one particularly cold Thanksgiving when he was ten years old. It had rained all day, the kind of cold, relentless rain that erodes any trace of warmth hidden in the body. Their last stop had been a tar-paper shanty built into the side of a bridge abutment. A man and a woman had lived there, although it was difficult to tell which was which. They both had greasy brown hair plastered to their heads with dirt and rain that had blown into their makeshift shelter. Their eyes were hollow, their cheeks splotched with broken blood vessels, and the few teeth they still had were yellow and rotted.
"Why?" Mason had asked her. "Because we don't live under a bridge?"
"Partly," she had answered. "Mostly because you're an upper-middle-class white male and this country doesn't like anything better than that. Just don't confuse luck with brilliance. Don't think because you were born on third base that you hit a triple. Do something with your life that makes a difference for someone besides yourself. Otherwise, you'll never score. You'll just die on third base."
Mason had envied his aunt for the passion that coursed through her to do the right thing, fight the good fight. He had looked for the same spark in his own practice, first in a small firm that represented injured people, then in a big firm that protected people's money, and now in his own practice, where he just protected people. He'd found the spark. Now he just hoped it wouldn't start a fire that consumed everyone he cared about.
Chapter Ten
Mason was lousy at big social functions. He was no good at being a hail-fellow-well-met, or assuring a new face that he was damn glad to meet him. In a world that ran on networking, he preferred the sidelines. It wasn't that he was shy or unfriendly. He just hated the forced conviviality of events at which new acquaintances looked over his shoulder for a better deal while pretending to be enthralled with their new friendship. Particularly when friendship was the last thing on anyone's agenda. Advantage, fair or otherwise, was the party favor everyone wanted to take home.
He stood at the back of the ballroom at the Hyatt Hotel and listened as Mayor Billy Sunshine thanked each of his dear personal friends who had been so gracious to invite him to this wonderful event at this wonderful time of year. Even from a distance, Mason had to give the mayor his due. The speech had been written for him, but he made the words his own. His DNA was uniquely programmed with a connection gene that linked him to his audience, erasing any suggestion that both he and they were just going through the motions. The mayor may have been tail and handsome, but he made it work for him instead of letting it turn him into a caricature.
Billy Sunshine had been the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs for ten years before retiring rather than risk suffering another concussion. Before hanging it up, he had taken the Chiefs to the Promised Land of the Super Bowl, winning the championship on an eighty-yard bootleg as time expired. He had announced his retirement and his candidacy for mayor the day after the ticker-tape parade. He'd been more crowned than elected. Though he wasn't Kansas City's first African-American mayor, he was the first to make teenage girls swoon as if he were a rock star and middle-age white guys tear up when he told football war stories on the campaign trail.
Even his critics, who were few when he took office, conceded that he was more than another pretty face with a Super Bowl ring. He was bright, earnest, charming, and irresistible. Although eight years in office had replaced his cleats with feet of clay, the mayor pretended not to notice. No one else in the ballroom seemed to notice either as he worked yet another football memory into his remarks.
Mason scanned the ballroom, trying to identify the mayor's staff people who would shuttle him to his next meeting after he finished speaking. The ballroom was actually three rooms that could be divided by movable walls, shrinking or expanding the space as attendance required. The Salvation Army's annual luncheon was one of those causes no one could quibble with, and the turnout was huge, at least a thousand people by Mason's estimation. Ten people were crowded around each table, which had a miniature Christmas tree as its centerpiece. Instead of a star at the top of the tree, each one was adorned with the name of the sponsor for that table. The effect was a bit like a political convention where each state's delegation gathered around its banner. Those sponsors who had contributed an additional amount could watch as their names and logos ran across a video loop projected above the head table.
Titanic-sized pear-shaped chandeliers hung from the ceiling, soft yellow light refracting brilliantly through sharply cut crystals, adding an intimate glow to the ballroom. Waiters in short white jackets, ruffled shirts, and tuxedo pants wove in and around tables, deftly serving, pouring, and clearing. Twenty-foot-tall Christmas trees flanked the raised dais, besotted with glistening ornaments and small, twinkling colored lights. A wreath of mistletoe large enough to be a life preserver hung in front of the speaker's podium, and blood-red poinsettias on pedestal planters ringed the room.