"Good morning to you too. Nice of you to call and you're welcome for last night," she added.

"I'm sure it was as good for you as it was for me."

"As good as it gets," she assured him. "How did you find out about the mortgage?"

"You aren't my only source," he told her. "What do you know about the relationship between Fiora, Donovan Jenkins, and the mayor?"

"Fiora made Jenkins his exclusive beer supplier. Jenkins loaned the mayor a quarter of a million bucks. It's dirty, it sucks, but it's legal. I've talked to the U.S. attorney about it. Jenkins's loan is a matter of public record. Amy White, the mayor's chief of staff, showed me canceled checks for the monthly house payment Mayor Sunshine makes to Jenkins. The interest rate is a market rate. End of story, but I've got something you might be interested in on that tunnel you found in the basement of the barbershop."

"Should I sit up and beg?" Mason asked.

"Not over the phone. I can't tell if you're really sitting up. I checked the paper's archives. During Prohibition, Pendergast owned a speakeasy that was on the other side of the alley from the barbershop. He built the tunnel so his boys could escape in case the feds raided the joint."

"Who owns the building?" Mason asked.

"Donovan Jenkins. He bought it from Jack Cullan a year ago."

Mason said, "That's handy. Who does Jenkins lease the space to?"

"An art gallery. They had a big opening last month. It was vacant a long time before that. Care to guess who the last tenant was before the art gallery?"

"And rob you of the pleasure of telling me? Never," Mason told her.

"You are so thoughtful. Would you believe it was the Committee to Reelect Billy Sunshine?"

"Get out!"

"Get in and get in deep!" Rachel said.

"Man, is there anybody in this whole mess who isn't in bed with one another?"

"Just you and me, babe. Just you and me," Rachel told him.

Mason didn't know what to say. He couldn't tell if Rachel was flirting with him, and if she was, he didn't know how to flirt with a lesbian. "By the way, thanks for last night," he told her.

"It was nothing. Keep in touch," she added before hanging up.

Mason knew that it wasn't nothing, although he hadn't figured out quite what it was. His relationship with Rachel wasn't sexual or romantic and never would be, despite his complete willingness to overlook her gender preference if only she would. Mason reluctantly conceded that it was easier to make love to a woman than to just make friends with her. That this particular woman spent every waking moment gunning for a page-one headline above the fold didn't make the calculus any easier.

With Cullan's files either destroyed or stolen, Mason was back at the bottom of the hill, still trying to push the boulder to the top. He would let Mickey continue plowing fields in cyberspace while he dug at ground level.

Mason logged on to the county's civil-lawsuit database and punched in Beth Harrell's name. Both of her divorce cases showed up. Husband number one was Baker McKenzie. Mason recognized his name. He was the senior partner in the McKenzie, Strachan law firm. Husband number two was Al Douglas, a name Mason didn't recognize. According to Beth, one of her ex-husbands had snapped nasty pics of her and had given them to Jack Cullan. Mason's best idea of the day was to find the exes and ask which one of them was the shit bag. It wasn't noon yet, but Mason hoped he'd have a better idea before the sun set.

Chapter Twenty-four

Mason didn't want to ask Beth which of her ex-husbands was the shit bag. He wasn't entirely convinced that she was telling the truth in the first place. If Beth knew he was checking out her story and she was lying, she would backpedal or find some way to distract him, and he wasn't up to being distracted. If she was telling the truth, she would start crowding Ed Fiora's pole position on the suspect track.

Mason called the clerk of the Circuit Court to locate Bern 's divorce files. The voice-mail system cast him into a menu of choices that he accepted and rejected until a human being answered. When the woman said her name was Margaret, he didn't believe her when she asked if she could help him.

"My name is Lou Mason. I'm a lawyer and I'm trying to locate two divorce files," he said.

"Are they on-site or off-site?" she asked him.

Mason swallowed. "I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me."

"If they are on-site, they might only be available on microfilm. That would mean that we shipped the hard copy off-site. If the files are off-site and you want the hard copy, it will take one to three business days to retrieve the files from off-site storage. Hold, please," she added before he could respond.

Mason imagined dozens of different torture scenarios for bureaucrats named Margaret during the three minutes and twenty-seven seconds she left him on hold. Mason timed her.

"This is Margaret. May I help you?" she asked when she returned to his call.

"Margaret, this is Lou Mason. We've already met. I'm looking for two divorce files and I know the on-site, off-site drill. Let me give you the case numbers so you can find out where they are."

"We can't give that information out over the phone. You'll have to come to the clerk's office and sign a form."

Mason took a deep breath. "Should I ask for you, Margaret?"

"Yes. I'll be at lunch."

Mason hung up, confident that Margaret would keep a lookout for him and run out the back door for lunch the instant he crossed the threshold of the clerk's office.

Thirty minutes later, Mason cautiously approached the court clerk's office. He was less concerned that Margaret would actually be at lunch than he was that she would be there and he'd end up a suspect in another homicide. Mason passed through double glass doors, above which clerk of the jackson county circuit court had been embossed in gold-filigree letters on the dark-walnut-paneled wall. A long white counter laminated with Formica separated Mason from women working at desks, processing the county's civil and criminal cases.

He had concluded from past experiences that they had been trained not to look up unless it was at the clock. It was ten minutes to noon when Mason rang the bell on the counter under the sign that read ring for service. The woman at the nearest desk looked up, the resentment at his interruption shot through her glare. He asked for Margaret.

The woman picked up her phone, speaking softly and furtively stealing glances at him until Mason was certain that she'd called the sheriff's office. She hung up the phone, put the cap on her pen, and disappeared to the back of the office. He didn't know where she had gone, only that she was gone.

Mason waited. There was a large clock on the wall to his right. He watched the second hand sweep around the dial and the incremental march of the minute hand to twelve o'clock high. The other women in the office, as if in response to an inner clock, rose in turn from their desks, vanishing into the far depths of the clerk's office.

One woman remained. She was of an indistinct age and build that spoke of middle years without further precision. She wore a tan pantsuit and a flat expression across her wide face. She walked slowly to the counter, eyeing the clock, timing her advance.

"My name is Margaret," she said, this time not offering to help him.

"I'm Lou Mason. We spoke on the phone. You said I had to fill out a form to request a couple of divorce files."

Margaret reached into a drawer on her side of the counter and handed Mason two forms, one for each file. He filled them out and flashed her his best smile when he handed them back to her. He followed her gaze to the clock.