Free Lou Mason Mystery - 02 - The Last Witness by Joel Goldman Page A

formed a joint venture with three prominent black businessmen and two labor unions whose local presidents were Hispanic. It pledged $250,000 to the Kansas City chapter of Gamblers Anonymous. Galaxy signed a ninety-nine-year ground lease, contingent on getting the license, with the owner of the site the Army Corps of Engineers had designated as its first choice for a 150,000-square-foot floating barge. Three city councilmen and Congressman Delray Shays backed the Galaxy proposal.
    The mayor thanked the commission members for their efforts, praised their hard work, and then bestowed the license on Ed Fiora and the Dream Casino. He announced that the casino would be docked at the limestone ledge that had once attracted eighteenth-century traders and trappers to pull in and build the trading post that grew into Kansas City. That site, he noted, was owned by the city and would be leased to the Dream Casino, turning an unproductive historical footnote into a new source of revenue for the city.
    The owners of the losing casinos had shrugged their corporate shoulders, accustomed to the game of chance they played in cities throughout the country. A few local investors in the losing companies cried foul, more aggrieved by the loss of the money they were convinced they would have made than by any misplaced sense of civic outrage. In time, they had let the matter drop and gone in search of the next good deal.
    Rachel Firestone didn’t let the story drop. She dogged the Missouri Gaming Commission, the mayor’s office, and the Dream Casino until she found the one thing that tied them all together. Jack Cullan. Cullan had represented Ed Fiora and led the behind-the-scenes efforts to win approval of the Dream’s application. Before that, he had been treasurer of Billy Sunshine’s two successful campaigns for the office of mayor.
    Though she hadn’t found evidence of a direct relationship between Cullan and Beth Harrell, she cited highly placed confidential sources intimating that Harrell had been improperly influenced in her decision to approve the license for the Dream Casino.
    She traced the flow of money from Ed Fiora to Billy Sunshine. Though her most recent article intimated at a quid pro quo, she fell short of an outright accusation. She quoted the U.S. attorney as not finding sufficient evidence to take the case to the grand jury, making it sound as if he was part of the cover-up.
    Trying to find a connection between Cullan’s murder and the Dream Casino reminded Mason of a game of three-card monte. The game was a con, not a game of chance or skill.
    The dealer dealt three cards, one of which was the ace of spades. The dealer then turned the cards facedown, and the gambler bet that he could keep track of the ace as the dealer shuffled the three cards at lightning speed. When the dealer finished shuffling, the gambler pointed to the card he believed was the ace. If the dealer wanted the gambler to win a small pot and keep playing until he lost a big one, the dealer would let the gambler win. The trick was to distract the gambler while the cards were being shuffled so that the dealer could replace the ace with another card, hiding the ace in his clothes.
    The dealer worked with a partner who bumped the gambler, offered him a drink, or otherwise pulled his attention away from the dealer just for an instant. Mason looked at the notes on his board, the newspaper stories, and the police report. He wondered who was hiding the ace of spades and who was trying to keep him from finding it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
     
    Claire Mason had practiced law by herself for thirty years, waging battles for those who had no one else to fight for them. Whether her battles were hopeless or hopeful, she won enough of them to keep going.
    Many of the bedrock businesses and institutions in town had been her target at one time or another. One of her favorite tactics was to buy a single share of stock in a company just so she could attend the shareholders’