Instead of leaving the station through the main entrance, Kelson went down to the prisoner intake room. A handcuffed man with eyes that looked drugged into another universe swayed by a large wooden desk as a tall cop talked to the desk officer. At one end of a row of wall-mounted plastic seats, a man in a charcoal-gray suit sat talking quietly but heatedly with Sylvia Crane. At the other end of the row, standing by the wall, another man, older but dressed like the first, talked with Christine Winsin. A woman in a blue skirt and matching jacket, with a black briefcase, stood in the middle of the room reading her phone.
Kelson went to her and said, ‘Door number three?’
‘Pardon me?’ She had straight blond hair with strands of gray.
‘Who sent you?’ he said.
‘I’m sorry – who are you?’
‘Sam Kelson.’ He took a business card from his wallet and gave it to her. ‘And you’re here for the mute man? I call him Squirt.’
She blinked. ‘You’ll have to excuse me – you seem to have mistaken me for—’
‘Ms Crane has her lawyer, and Ms Winsin has hers,’ Kelson said. ‘Whose are you? Are other G&G clients sticking their fingers in? Is Squirt looking out for himself?’
‘Excuse me,’ the woman said again, and she moved away, looking down at her phone.
So Kelson went to Sylvia Crane and her lawyer. ‘Don’t worry about him telling your secrets,’ he said to her. ‘He doesn’t talk awake or asleep.’
‘Oh, hello, Mr Kelson,’ she said, as if they ran into each other at police stations all the time. ‘This is one of our G&G lawyers, Jim Edwards.’
Kelson shook hands with the man and said, ‘She didn’t trust you enough to send you alone, huh?’ Then, to Sylvia Crane, ‘You’re really worried about Squirt, aren’t you? You want him in your own hands. Are you going to try to cut a deal with him, or just make him go away?’
She gave him an almost convincing look of bafflement. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
He said to the lawyer, ‘How does it work? When they announce bail, do you and Christine Winsin’s lawyer count down from three and then race to see who can pay it? My money’s on the blue skirt. She’s got the legs to win anything up to a half mile.’
Sylvia Crane gave him a wry look. ‘You know Christine Winsin?’
‘And her brothers. They visited me in my office. They seem to share your interest in Marty LeCoeur – but maybe with a different result in mind.’
‘Marty who?’ she said.
He started to answer, then realized what she was doing. ‘You’re pretty good. The problem is, I think you need to be better than pretty good to survive in the game you’re playing.’
He went over to Christine Winsin and her lawyer. ‘Hello, Ms Winsin. Ready for the auction?’
The lady looked at him, irritated at the interruption. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You going to buy yourself a mute? Cut a deal with him before Sylvia Crane can?’
‘I’m sorry?’ As if she didn’t know him.
Kelson grinned at her. ‘You aren’t even pretty good. You come here with your thousand-dollar shoes and your million-dollar lawyer, and you don’t belong. You should call it in, or have your assistant’s assistant do it. Next time, stay home with the show dogs. But I guess you’re afraid to leave Squirt alone even with your lawyer – like Sylvia Crane.’
Christine Winsin asked the lawyer, ‘Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?’
The lawyer gave her the tiniest shake of his head.
So Kelson went back to the woman in the blue skirt and said, ‘My bets are on you. If they can’t pin more than a traffic violation and throwing a couple of punches at a cop on him, you’ll have him out in a few hours.’ Then he left the intake room and walked outside into the early evening.