"Law offices of Lou Mason. To whom may I direct your call?" Mickey said.
"Are you auditioning for a job as a receptionist too?" Mason asked.
"No job too small, no duty too great. Pay me soon, it's been a week since I ate," Mickey recited.
"I'm not surprised. Your shtick is from hunger," Mason replied. "While you're cruising the Internet, go to the county's Web site and check property ownership records for 2010 Main. In fact, check the ownership records for that entire block. The west side of Main between Twentieth and Twenty-first. Call me back on my cell phone," Mason said, and gave him the number.
Mason took his phone and went inside the diner, noting its name for the first time. The Egg House Diner was a twenty-four-hour restaurant with a counter that seated eight and a row of booths along the front window, none of which were occupied when Mason sat down shortly before noon. A man of indeterminate age, wearing layers of soiled clothing and a strong odor, sat at the counter, stirring a cup of coffee. A large, black plastic bag, stuffed to its limit, lay on the floor at his feet. The booths were empty. Mason knew that a diner that was dead at lunch was not living off its reputation for fine food.
He chose a booth that gave him a clear view of the barbershop, and picked up a menu that had more stains than entrees. A few moments later, a flat-faced woman with dull eyes and thin hair, wearing a lime-green-and-white-striped waitress uniform, brought him a glass of water and took his order for a turkey sandwich. He'd taken his first bite when his cell phone rang. Mason's caller ID displayed his office phone number.
"What do you have for me, Mickey?" Mason asked.
"The whole block is owned by New Century Redevelopment Corporation except for 2010 Main. Shirley Parker owns that building. Her name mean anything to you?"
"It means everything," Mason answered. "I'll probably be out the rest of the day, but you can reach me on my cell phone."
Mason spent the rest of the afternoon in the booth at the Egg House Diner. The man sitting at the counter did the same. The waitress, apparently used to customers who spent little, talked less, and stayed forever, left him alone. He watched the traffic on Main Street, waiting for Shirley Parker to jaywalk from the People's Savings Building to the barbershop across the street.
Mason wasn't good at sitting and waiting. He lacked the patience for a stakeout and wasn't certain whether sitting in a restaurant qualified for that description. He figured a real stakeout meant sitting in a dark car, drinking cold coffee, peeing in a bottle, and scrunching down in the front seat whenever someone drove by. He was just killing time in a dumpy diner, kept company by people who had no place else to go.
After a while, he retrieved a yellow legal pad from his car and tried to reproduce the notes from his dry-erase board.
He wrote the names and the questions again, adding order and precision to the notes without finding any new answers. He drummed his pen against the pad until the vagrant at the counter silenced him with an annoyed look. No one else came into the diner. At three o'clock, Mason ordered a slice of apple pie and a cup of coffee to be polite. He picked at the pie and stirred the coffee, then told the waitress to give it to his counter companion. The man gave him another annoyed look, but didn't send the snack back to Mason's booth.
By five o'clock, clouds had moved in, hastening the transition from dusk to dark. Headlights blinked on, slicing the gloom on Main Street as people began making their way home. As if on cue, the man at the counter grunted at the waitress, hoisted his plastic bag over his shoulder, and left, giving Mason a final silent stab on his way out the door.
A pair of city buses, one northbound, the other southbound, stopped at the corner of Twentieth and Main, momentarily blocking his view. When the buses pulled away, he saw Shirley Parker jostling the lock on the door to the building that housed the barbershop. He waited until she was inside before leaving the diner, trying to remember when he'd had his last haircut.
Chapter Twenty-one
The door opened into a long, dark, narrow hallway that led to the back of the building. Bare wooden stairs that led down from the second floor nearly to the entrance further narrowed the passage to the rear.
Another door to Mason's right would have opened into the barbershop had the door not been lying on its side, propped against the wall as an afterthought. The shop was nearly empty, having been looted years before. An ancient barber's chair planted in the center of the floor, and stretched into the reclining position used to wash and shave, was the last relic of the brisk trade in grooming and gossip that had once flourished there. Even the sink the barber had used had been uprooted. Steel bars had been bolted to the storefront window frame; a stark concession to the uneasy plight of an abandoned building made too late to save anything but memories.
A naked lightbulb at the top of the stairs cast uneasy shadows at Mason's feet He could hear Shirley Parker's shoes scraping overhead against the floor of Tom Pendergast's old office.
Mason had spent the afternoon betting that Jack Cullan had hidden his secret files in Pendergast's office. He was certain that Cullan couldn't have resisted the delicious irony of using his hero's headquarters as his own hideaway. Putting the ownership of the building in Shirley Parker's name was a thin dodge, arrogance mistaken for cleverness-a common weakness of bad guys. Mason was certain that Superman never would have put Jimmy Olson's name on the deed to the Fortress of Solitude.
Mason had also bet that Shirley Parker would make the short trip across the street to be certain that the files were undisturbed. He hoped that his questions had unnerved her, compelling her to conduct her own stakeout of the barbershop from the vantage of Cullan's office just to confirm that Mason didn't try to break in and steal the files. Having spent her day watching the barbershop, she wouldn't be able to resist the compulsion to make sure he hadn't somehow sneaked past her.
Breaking, and entering was a Class D felony, not an upward career move for most lawyers. As he walked from the diner to the barbershop, Mason convinced himself that he was neither breaking nor entering; he was simply making a business visit knowing that Shirley was inside. Besides, he had no intent to commit any crime on the premises, at least not at that moment. He just wanted to talk with Shirley Parker.
Mason's careful rationalization evaporated along with his chilled breath the moment he stepped inside. Shirley Parker had refused to answer his questions in Cullan's office during normal business hours. Popping up like the Pillsbury Doughboy in Pendergast's office after hours wouldn't loosen her tongue. She would make good on her threat to call the police, and the files, if they were upstairs, would disappear overnight.
Mason had a sudden insight into the curious reasoning that frequently landed his clients in jail. It was a mix of overstated need, selfish justification, and unfounded optimism that he could pull off the plan that he had just conceived in a larcenous epiphany. He walked to the end of the hallway, confident that it really was a good idea to hide there until Shirley left the building, then search Pendergast's office until he found the files. Tomorrow morning, he would serve Shirley with a subpoena for the files, and then sit back and watch Patrick Ortiz marvel at his resourcefulness.
His eyes adjusted to the dark as he felt his way along the hallway, soon coming to the backside of the stairway, where he found a door that he assumed led to the basement. Taking care not to aggravate squeaky hinges, he gently nursed the handle until he felt it release, then eased the door open just enough to slip through. Probing the black space with one foot, he confirmed his guess about a basement and stepped down onto the first stair, pulling the door closed behind him. He was sweating inside his jacket in spite of the cold that crept up the stairs from the unheated basement.