Final Judgment by Joel Goldman Read Free Book Online Page A

bones, the wind tunneling past his window. Some of those people would camp out on bar stools and in booths in the bar one floor below where he stood. Blues on Broadway was a place where people came to order a draw and kick back to live jazz, the regulars hoping Blues was in the mood to play the piano.
    Most of those people spent their lives walking a straight line that led from the delivery room to the mortuary with predictable, orderly stops along the way for school, jobs, marriage, kids, dreams, disappointments, and death. A handful, like Blues, made a conscious decision to stay off the track.
    He was a full-blooded Shawnee Indian, taller than Mason, with jet-black hair, dark eyes, and copper skin that made no secret of his ancestry. He was all coiled muscle and sinew, never forgetting the survival skills he’d learned in the Army’s Special Forces. After the Army taught him to be a killer, the Kansas City Police Department taught him to catch killers. He quit when he couldn’t make his hard-nosed code fit with a bureaucratic approach to justice.
    Since then, Blues had invoked his code as a shield or sword for those who needed it or deserved it. Mason had needed it more than once.
    Along the way, Blues had learned to play jazz piano jamming in joints like the one he now owned. When he played, it was for himself. Anyone who could afford the price of a cold beer could watch and listen. That was fine with him. He paid no attention when people whispered their amazement that sounds so sweet could come from the hands of a man whose looks could kill.
    Mason went downstairs and sat in a booth at the back of the bar waiting for Blues to finish playing a number that Mason didn’t recognize. Three people listened from stools along the mahogany bar that dominated the room. Hank, a beanpole bartender, kept their drinks fresh. The customers clapped when Blues stood. He acted like he hadn’t heard, joining Mason in the booth.
    “Something new?” Mason asked.
    “Yeah,” Blues said. “I’ve been fooling around with my own stuff. Thought I’d try it out.”
    Mason shook his head. “I’ll never understand how you can compose music. Do you hear the sounds in your head before you play the notes?”
    “I feel them more than I hear them.”
    “Well, that makes it so much easier to understand.”
    “I saw Vanessa Carter going up the back stairs earlier today. What’s she want with you?”
    “It’s what she wants with us.”
    He summarized his conversation with Judge Carter and covered the highlights in Carol Hill’s file, keeping his voice low even though Hank and the three customers were too wrapped up in an argument over which college team had the best point guard to pay any attention to them. Blues listened, completely still, his face a mask.
    “You think it’s this guy Rockley?” he asked when Mason finished.
    “Makes sense. He’s the guy with the most to lose. Galaxy can’t be happy about the case, but there’s nothing there to make them take a chance like this.”
    “So if Rockley’s just a supervisor, how does he know about the tape of the conversation between Fiori and the Judge? And how does he get ahold of it so he can play it over the phone for her? That’s not the kind of thing Galaxy is gonna leave lying around in the employee lunchroom.”
    Mason chewed his lip, annoyed that he hadn’t considered Blues’s questions. “I don’t know, but it makes sense to start with him. We can’t just call up Al Webb and ask him which one of his employees is a blackmailer.”
    “Who is Al Webb?”
    “General manager of the Galaxy. I read his testimony from the arbitration. He made Rockley sound like the employee of the year.”
    “How long has Rockley worked for Galaxy?”
    “About a year,” Mason answered. “Same as Webb.”
    “So Rockley wasn’t around when Galaxy took over the boat, which means that he couldn’t have stumbled across the tape when he was cleaning out Fiori’s office. If Rockley made the