"Maybe I'm psychic," Mason said. "Too bad the phone service was cut off. I hear the more time you give the psychic, the better they do." Earl Luke's eyes dilated from slits to saucers as he listened to Mason. "Tell you what I'll do," Mason continued. "I'll buy that phone from you. You take the money, buy a phone card, and tell your psychic to give it to you straight."
"How much?" Earl Luke asked.
Mason took cash out of his wallet, letting it dangle from his fingers. "Fifty bucks," he said, watching Earl Luke wet his lips and ease his grip on the sweatshirt. "Just one other thing. Tell me how you got the phone."
Earl Luke handed Mason the phone, grabbing the cash with a pickpocket's swiftness. "Dumpster behind the Depot."
"Show me," Mason said, flashing another twenty-dollar bill.
Earl Luke snapped up the twenty and led Mason to the grassy north side of the Cable Depot, where there was less than a hundred feet from the building to the edge of the bluff overlooking the interstate highway that wrapped around the downtown. Mason could hear the pounding roar of passing traffic.
Earl Luke pointed to a Dumpster set hard against the north face of the building beneath a trash chute bolted to the brick wall. There was no sun on this side of the building. Mason craned his neck upward, catching the cool early evening breeze under his chin, tracing the trash chute to a small door on the top floor, buried in the brick, hidden even more by the advancing dusk. He followed it back down to the Dumpster, sitting on a concrete pad partially obscuring another door, this one a steel door inlaid in the concrete.
"Give me a hand," Mason said, the two of them shoving the Dumpster off the trapdoor. "That's an odd place to put a door," Mason said, kneeling and rubbing his hand across the burnished lock, fingering the passkey in his pocket, wondering if it would open the door and what he would find if it did.
"You got to be the strangest lawyer I ever did see," Earl Luke said. "You buy a phone off of me we both know don't work. You give me another sawbuck to show you a trash can you coulda found on your own. Now you got the look of a second-story man I once knowed jus' before he get caught."
Mason kept his head down, not wanting Earl Luke to see him smile. He felt like a second-story man, taunted by the mystery of what was hidden on the other side of the trapdoor, juiced by the prospect of slipping in under the radar of the straight and narrow, wondering what his life would be like if he gave sway to the part of him that got off on tempting trouble.
It was, he understood, what Dr. Gina meant by the title of her book, The Way You Do the Things You Do. The impulse to step off the path, to break the rules was sometimes irresistible. It put Max Coyle and Gina Davenport in a photo album of dirty pictures. It put Robert Davenport at the naked breast of a student model, then left him dead with a dirty needle in his arm. It put Terry Nix in the black-market baby business. And it was about to put Mason on the wrong side of the line, a place he was willing to go alone but not with Earl Luke as his witness. He left the passkey in his pocket and stood up, brushing his pants clean.
"It's probably nothing," Mason said, not convincing either one of them. "Thanks," he said, adding, "I don't suppose you saw who put the phone in the Dumpster."
"Now how am I gonna see that?" Earl Luke asked. "Any fool can see that trash chute comin' out of the radio station up there. How am I gonna see who opens that little-bitty door?"
"How do you know the trash chute is in the radio station?"
"On account of I know that the radio station is up there and on account of I saw that woman what got throw'd out her window on the south side of the building. So, the radio station has to be on this side."
"You're right," Mason said, remembering the view from Arthur Hackett's window north to the downtown airport. Mason turned around, a small plane gliding in for a landing, puffs of smoke bursting from the runway as the wheels touched down. He looked back at the trash chute, finding the small door cut into the wall directly below Arthur Hackett's window.
Earl Luke watched Mason for a few more minutes, clearing his throat, shuffling his feet, baiting the air with the hope for more easy money. "Anything else you want to see?" he finally asked Mason.
Mason gazed eight stories up, not hearing Earl Luke, wondering about a father's grief and the reasons it ran so deep.
David Evans's office was locked, no light under the door, no answer to Mason's knock, Mason drawing the line at breaking into Evans's office. Outside, blue violet dusk chased the last patches of daylight, lacing the evening air with a sharp chill, making good the weatherman's forecast of an early frost. Mason sat on Earl Luke's bench watching tenants spin out of the Cable Depot's revolving door, their day finished, collars gathered around chins, cursing the unexpected cold. Earl Luke was gone, having taken his grocery cart and Mason's money out for the evening.
Mason was glad that he'd thrown a barn jacket and a ball cap in his car when he heard the forecast that morning. He was used to Kansas City's multiple-personality weather, with days that dawned bright and sunny, then descended into raw nights. He rolled his collar up and pulled his cap down, becoming invisible to those passing by, arguing with himself about the door behind the Depot, knowing the argument was more about when than if.
He tabled his internal debate when David Evans and Paula Sutton squeezed through the revolving door, setting a quick pace as they headed south, Paula trying without success to smooth the wrinkles in her clothes, Evans teasing her and the fabric with playful strokes. She gave him a shove, not resisting when he locked his arm over hers, pulling her to him as they continued on, their dance reminding Mason that a locked door with no light beneath it and no answer to his knock didn't mean that no one was home.
Remembering that Evans lived a few blocks away in Quality Hill, Mason followed them, telling himself that the door behind the Depot wasn't going anywhere. Mason liked catching a witness out of his element, away from the comfortable trappings of home turf. Evans's house was certainly his home turf, but it wasn't Paula Sutton's.
Mason gave them a good head start before following at an unobtrusive distance, lingering in doorways when they stopped at a deli, then a liquor store. Evans's townhouse was the middle unit in a row of restored, orange-brick row houses. Mason waited until the lights came on before retreating to the deli for his own dinner.
A pastrami on rye with dark mustard and darker ale gave him no great insights into the relationship between Paula Sutton and David Evans. There was nothing sinister, or even wrong, about a relationship they made no effort to hide, though Mason guessed that Paula's open resentment of Gina Davenport made for interesting pillow talk.
He called Abby, telling her he was working late, relieved when she said that she was as well, promising to call tomorrow. He wasn't ready to tell her about Emily, and he wasn't anxious to undermine their relationship by holding back. He hoped another day would bring more answers.
Realizing he had to ask questions to get answers, he retraced his route to David Evans's front door, this time drawing a response to his knocking. Evans opened the door, his shirt half-buttoned and hanging out over his pants, Sinatra playing in the background.
"Mason, what do you want?" Evans asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"Sinatra?" Mason asked in return. "I never figured you for a Sinatra guy, David. I would have guessed the Backstreet Boys."
"Who is it?" Paula asked from inside the house, appearing behind Evans wearing a man's bathrobe. "Oh, shit!" she said, answering her own question.
"Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol," Mason said. "If you'll just step outside for our cameras, we'll present you with the grand-prize check."