Chapter Thirty-one

Mason and Amy eyed each other as the ancient elevator lurched to a halt at each of the next three floors. Amy broke off their eye contact with a nervous glance at her watch. The illuminated buttons on the elevator panel promised another twenty-five sea-sickening stops. Mason waited for Amy to speak first and set the course for his questions. The door opened on the twenty-fifth floor. Amy took a step toward the open door when Mason blocked her path.

"I'm getting off," she insisted.

"Nope. A deal is a deal. All the questions I can ask until we hit bottom." Mason pushed the button to close the elevator door.

"Okay, fine," she said without meaning either. "What about Carl Zimmerman?"

"You know him?"

"He's a cop. Good enough?"

"Easy, Amy. How much snow can fall before we finish stopping at the next twenty-four floors? How do you know that he's a cop?"

"The chief brought him to the mayor's office after Jack Cullan was found dead. He and another detective-I think the other one was named Harry Ryman-were investigating the case and the mayor wanted some answers. The chief told Zimmerman to keep me updated on the case."

Mason listened, his silence prompting her to continue.

"You know all that already or you wouldn't be asking me," she said. "And you can't be so stupid to think I would lie about something you could so easily prove that I did know. So get to the point. You're running out of floors."

A barely operable ceiling fan wheezed and sucked warm, greasy air from the elevator shaft into the elevator, filling the car with the metallic taste of friction-heated oil. The odor combined with each ball-bouncing stop, turning their ride into a stomach-churning descent. Amy took off her knee-length navy wool coat and Burberry scarf, and unbuttoned the high-necked collar of her dress. Her face was taking on a pasty, alien hue. Mason couldn't tell if her suddenly green-gilled complexion was due to their rocky ride or his questions.

"When was the last time he checked in with you?"

"I didn't log him into my Palm Pilot. What difference does it make?"

"These are my floors, Amy," Mason said, pointing to the glowing buttons. "I get to use them any way I want. When was the last time you talked to Carl Zimmerman?"

"Last week. I don't remember the day, the time, or what we talked about."

"The conversation I want to know about is one that I think you'd remember. It was about Jack Cullan's files."

"That's a conversation I would have remembered and I don't. You've got three floors left. Make them count."

"Where were you last Thursday night between six and ten o'clock?"

"Probably eating rubber chicken at a civic award dinner with the mayor, or home wishing I was."

"Did Zimmerman call you that night?"

The elevator stopped at the first floor, the doors opened, and they stepped out into the lobby. Amy steadied herself with one hand against a pillar, gulping cleaner air. They could see the snow tumbling from the sky like feathers from a billion ruptured pillows.

"My God!" Amy said. "This is going to be the rush hour from hell." Turning to Mason, she asked, "Do you have any idea how many complaints we will get by noon tomorrow that somebody's street hasn't been plowed?" Mason shook his head. "Everyone but the mayor will call. His street always gets plowed." She touched her forehead with the back of her hand, wiping away sweat she must have imagined. "I'm sorry, Lou. What did you ask me?"

Mason smiled patiently. He'd questioned too many witnesses too many times to be pushed off track. "Did Carl Zimmerman call you last Thursday night?"

Amy drew on her reserves of exasperation. "Yes, no, maybe. I don't remember. Should I?"

"That depends on whether Zimmerman needs an alibi for Shirley Parker's murder."

Amy studied Mason as she tied her scarf around her neck, cinching it securely under her chin, pulled her coat back on, and took her time carefully buttoning each button. She cocked her head to one side in a thoughtful pose and clasped her hands together.

"No," she said at last. "I'm quite certain I didn't talk to Detective Zimmerman at all that night."

Mason took seriously Patrick Ortiz's announcement that he was a suspect in the arson at Pendergast's office and in the murder of Shirley Parker. While the jailhouse bureaucrats processed Blues's release on bail, he spent the rest of the morning waiting for the police department's records clerk to make him a copy of the investigative reports on both crimes. He nearly pushed the clerk to her maximum tolerance when he asked for two sets of the reports as well as another set of the reports on the Cullan murder. Mason knew that Blues would want his own set of all the reports.

Shortly after one o'clock in the afternoon, Blues emerged from behind the first-floor security doors into the lobby of the jail. Mason was waiting for him beneath a sign that read visitors' check-in. Blues was wearing the same clothes as the day he had been arrested. The suit he'd worn for his preliminary hearing was crammed into a grocery bag.

Mason extended his hand toward Blues, who wrapped his own hand around it with a solid grip that was as much gratitude as it was greeting. They released each other's hand, forming fists they tapped together.

"Do I want to know how you pulled this off?" Blues asked him.

"No," Mason answered. "You hungry?"

"Is a bluebird blue? My tribal ancestors ate better on the reservation than I ate in that jail."

"Let's get out of here," Mason said. "I'm buying lunch."

The snow already had covered the streets and sidewalks, obliterating where one began and the other stopped. The only clues were the cars stacked bumper-to-bumper on every street. Many of the cars were stuck on the sheet of ice that lay beneath the snow, tires spinning in a futile effort to get traction. Drivers of other cars had made the mistake of trying to go around those cars, only to slide into someone else attempting the same maneuver. The result was automotive gridlock accompanied by blaring horns, screaming commuters, and ecstatic tow-truck drivers.

Blues pointed to a bar a block west of the courthouse. "Let's try Rossi's. He never closes."

Rossi's Bar & Grill lived off of the traffic from City Hall, the county courthouse, and police headquarters. Judges, lawyers, and bureaucrats provided the lunch traffic. Cops owned the place after hours. DeWayne Rossi was a retired deputy sheriff who heard everything, repeated nothing, and spent his days and nights parked on a stool behind the cash register chewing cigars. Rossi tipped the scales at slightly over three hundred pounds, limiting his exercise to making change for a twenty. Regular patrons had a secret pool picking the date he would stroke out. Rossi had quietly placed his own bet through one of his buddies, not wanting to let on that he knew about the pool.

Rossi's had eight tables and was decorated in late-twentieth-century dark and dingy. A pair of canned spotlights washed the bar in weak light. Short lamps with green shades barely illuminated each table. A splash of daylight filtered in through dirty windows. A color TV hung from the ceiling above the bar permanently tuned to ESPN Classic. Rossi kept a.357 magnum under the bar in case anyone tried to rob the place or change the channel.

There were two waitresses; Donna worked days and Savannah worked nights. They had both worked the street until they'd had too many johns and too many busts. The cops who used to arrest them now overtipped them to balance the books. A fry cook whose name no one knew hustled burgers and pork tenderloins from a tiny kitchen in the back.

"I haven't been in here since I quit the force," Blues said as he and Mason stamped the snow from their shoes.