The Second Life of Nick Mason (21 page)

Nick Mason waited for Frank Sandoval to arrive. He had done everything he had been told to do. Now he was going to do something else. Something for himself.

He was too tired to sleep. Too tired to close his eyes. He had seen too much since the day he had stepped through those prison gates from one life to the next.

The benches in Grant Park were all arranged in a great circle around the fountain. The water hadn’t been turned on yet. The air was cold, so he had his arms wrapped around himself. The black box was held tight between his forearm and his chest.

He had nowhere else to go. He waited there through the last hours of night until the dark horizon of the eastern sky started to lighten. A change almost too subtle to see unless you were watching for it. Black to something almost black and then to something almost purple. Mason sat and waited motionless through a hundred more shades until the sun finally started to rise.

He heard the traffic starting to hum on the roads surrounding
the park. The city coming back to life for the day. He heard someone whiz by on the bike trail behind him.

He waited a few more minutes. The sun came up and sent its light across the surface of the lake. The boats all slept, covered and anchored in place. Nothing moved in front of him until he saw the man walking toward the fountain. A black silhouette against the blue dawn.

Mason stood up, stretched himself, worked the pain from his body. He walked over to where Sandoval waited for him.

“What am I doing here?” Sandoval said.

He was dressed in a dark blue windbreaker. Not his usual rumpled suit jacket. He wasn’t wearing a tie. His face was unshaven and his eyes still looked like he’d just gotten out of bed five minutes ago.

“I told the guy at the station five thirty,” Mason said, looking at his watch. “You’re two minutes late.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I thought you might want this.”

Mason handed him the hard drive. Sandoval took it and looked it over.

“Don’t take it to the station,” Mason said. “Don’t check it into Evidence or you’ll never see it again. That’s very important. Don’t tell any other cops you have it.”

“What is it?”

“Take it home,” Mason said, “and make a copy. Make ten copies. Then go through everything. You’ll know what to do next.”

Sandoval looked around them at the empty park.

“You brought me all the way down here, at the crack of dawn, to give me a hard drive?”

“You told me there’s nothing more dangerous than a dirty cop. Here’s your chance to take down a whole squad of them.”

Sandoval just stared at him.

“I know your real target is Cole,” Mason said. “But you’ll never get to him through me. This is what you get instead.”

Sandoval looked at the box again. “Who exactly are we talking about here?”

Mason didn’t answer.

“There were three SIS detectives found at Thornton Quarry,” Sandoval said. “Someone on the road heard gunshots and called it in. Do you know anything about that?”

Mason shook his head. “Haven’t seen the paper today.”

“Were you there?”

“Read the official report, Detective. Whatever it says, I’m sure that’s exactly what happened.”

Sandoval kept staring at him. “Wherever you got this,” he said, “I don’t understand why you’re giving it to me.”

Mason couldn’t tell Sandoval the real reason. He’d been told by Quintero to bring this black box to him. To nobody else. Cole would be expecting it. He’d use it as a bargaining chip. A threat to have in his pocket. To make these cops get back in fucking line.

That was the order. Mason disobeyed it.

He was taking the cops down because he wanted to. For his own reasons. It was personal. He was ending the war on his own terms.

And he had no intention of ever taking another order again.

“Let’s just say I hate dirty cops as much as you do.”

“Why not give this to the feds?” Sandoval said, holding up the box.

“In what universe do I go looking around for federal agents, Detective?”

“This is going to make me a pariah,” Sandoval said. “You know that, right? I’m not Internal Affairs. I’m Homicide. I’ll be back on a
seven-man team, working with the same guys every day. What do you think’s gonna happen to me when they find out about this?”

Mason didn’t bother trying to convince him he could stay anonymous. He knew that would be a lie.

“They’ll know,” Sandoval said like he was reading Mason’s mind. “Cops talk to each other. I’ll be the most hated cop in Chicago.”

“Maybe you will,” Mason said. “But I think this is why you became a cop in the first place.”

Sandoval turned away. He looked out at the water for a while.

“You gotta understand something,” he said, still facing away from him.

“What is it?”

Sandoval turned back.

“No, I mean you
really
need to understand what I’m about to tell you.”

“I’m listening.”

“This changes nothing between us,” Sandoval said. “Absolutely nothing.”

“Not even half a day’s head start if I ever decide to run?”

“Absolutely . . . nothing.”

“I didn’t think it would,” Mason said.

The two men watched each other. They waited for something else to be said that would bring this to a close. Sandoval had a disk full of evidence to sort through. Mason had one more phone call to make.

“I’m still gonna take you down,” Sandoval said.

“You’re going to try,” Mason said.

Sandoval nodded to him. Then he walked away.

Mason sat in his car on Lincoln Park West. He’d been there for two hours and still hadn’t gone inside. Instead, he had parked his car on the street and just watched the place, looking up at the high windows of the beautiful town house and thinking about Darius Cole sitting in his cell at Terre Haute.

His driver’s-side glass was still gone. There was a crack on the passenger’s-side window, another on the windshield. But he had bigger problems to solve that day.

He picked up his cell phone and called Quintero. It was answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?”

“I’m around,” Mason said. “Listen to me. This is important.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t have it.”

“What do you mean you don’t have it?”

“Somebody else has it now,” Mason said. “You’ll read about it in the paper.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Mason could hear the sounds of power tools in the background. Quintero was at the chop shop.

“If this is some kind of fucking joke . . .”

“I need to talk to him,” Mason said.

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Okay, fine,” Mason said. “Visiting hours start at eight o’clock on Saturday morning. I’ll be first in line.”

“That would be a big mistake.”

“Then make it happen,” Mason said. “Today.”

He ended the call and tossed the phone on the seat next to him.

Yet another order disobeyed, because now Mason was doing something he should never do, putting everyone at risk. Himself, Quintero, Cole, even some prison guard who’d have to supply the illegal cell phone.

But it was the only way.

He sat there and waited. He watched the town house. He watched the street. People were walking through the park, enjoying the day. Families were on their way to the zoo.

An hour later, the phone rang. It was Quintero.

“I’m going to give you a number to call,” he said. “This is a onetime event.”

“Just give me the number.”

He waited for it, then ended the call without saying another word. His heart was pounding in his throat as he dialed the number and waited.

“Who is this?” a voice said.

“Let me talk to him.”

“Is this Mason?”

Something about the high pitch in the man’s voice made him
think about the undersized guard who came to him in the yard that day, just over a year ago, to deliver that first invitation to come meet Darius Cole.

“Let me talk to him,” Mason repeated.

“Hold on,” the man said. Then his voice became distant as he took his mouth away from the phone to say, “You have ten minutes, Mr. Cole.”

Mason pictured the man, two hundred miles south of him, taking off his reading glasses before putting the phone to his ear.

“This is not a smart phone call,” Cole said. “What do you want?”

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“That’s not how this works, Nick.”

“I’ve done everything you asked,” Mason said. “Things I never thought I’d do.”

“Until last night,” Cole said. “What were you thinking?”

“I did that for myself,” Mason said. “Way I see it, we were already even. Whatever I owed you, I’m paid up.”

“You don’t get it, Nick. For you, there is no ‘even.’ There is no ‘out.’”

“Listen to me—”

“No, listen to me,” Cole said. “I need you to keep doing what you’re doing. And if you ever disobey me again—”

“I can’t do it,” Mason said, his grip tightening on the phone. “Even if that means going back to prison.”

“Before another word comes out of your mouth,” Cole said, “think about what you’re going to say.”

“I’ll serve out the rest of my sentence right now.”

“What do you think would happen if you really came back here?”

“I’d finish my sentence. One day at a time. Like anybody else.”

“No, let me educate you. You remember how I said you was able to move around this place—between the whites, the blacks, the Latinos—without ever compromising yourself? How much I admired that?”

“What about it?”

“It won’t be that way if you come back. All three of those worlds will turn against you. Even the whites.
Especially
the whites. You’ll be fair game for any man. Anytime. I’ll make a fucking game of it. Whoever fucks you up the most, I’ll make sure that man gets taken care of. Anything he wants, anything his family wants. Do you hear what I’m saying, Nick? You come back here and you’ll be passed around this place like toilet paper every single day for the rest of your life. And believe me, I’ll make sure you never get out of this place again. Even after I’m dead, you’ll still be here.”

“There are some things even you can’t do,” Mason said. “I’ll do my twenty, if I have to, and then I’ll walk out.”

“Nick, who you think goes down for those first two jobs you did? You don’t think I’m ready for
anything
that can happen? You’ll be wearin’ both of those jobs around your neck like a fucking bow tie. Your twenty years will turn into two hundred.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“I’m not sure your ex-wife will want to roll the same dice, Nick.”

Mason felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He put a hand on the steering wheel and started pushing on it until the muscles in his arms were drawn taut.

“She has no part in this,” he said, knowing even as he said it that it was untrue.

“She was
always
part of this,” Cole said, “and so was your daughter. From the beginning. You need to listen to me very carefully,
Nick, because everything that happens to you, it’ll be doubled for them. Every time you’re beaten, every time you’re violated, you’ll know that the exact same thing will be happening to them.
The exact same thing.
Times two.”

Mason closed his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t make a sound.

“Those twenty years you were gonna work for me just turned into a lifetime sentence,” Cole said. “And don’t ever fucking call me again.”

Mason got out of the car. He was trying to breathe. He was trying to draw some air into his lungs and
breathe
.

No, he said to himself. Then he said the same word over and over a hundred more times.

He walked down the shoreline for a hundred yards until he realized he still had the phone in his hand.

Then he threw it as far as he could out into the water.

He kept walking. Until the walkway made its big curl at North Avenue Beach and came to a dead stop. He turned around and looked at the buildings rising high above the water without really seeing them.

“What the
fuck
did I expect?” he asked himself out loud. “Did I actually think for one fucking second . . .”

Then he started moving again. Fast. Back up the walkway, up the beach and through the park. Back to his car.

He got in and gunned it. He drove across town to the West Side, to the address on Spaulding, past the big storage warehouse and the
asphalt yard and the boarded-up houses. He could see the place better in the daylight. It was practically in the shadow of the Cook County Jail.

The chop shop.

He pulled up in front of the garage door and pressed on the horn until the door finally started to rise. Mason drove through into the bay. The two Latinos stood there, watching him.

“Where is he?” Mason said as he got out of the car.

The Honda Accord they were working on was already halfway taken apart. The whole front end had been removed from the frame, then the doors and windshield had been taken off. When the seats were out, they’d cut out the entire dashboard, saving the air bags. That’s what they did here every day, but now they just looked at him.

Until their eyes shifted and Mason knew there was someone behind him.

He felt the hand on his right shoulder. When he turned, Quintero hit him in the mouth. He was already tasting blood as he grabbed the man by the throat and threw him against the car.

When Quintero swung at him again, Mason ducked and drove his head into Quintero’s chest, sending him backward into a workbench. Tools rattled and fell crashing to the floor.

“Is that all you got?” Mason said to him. “I fought guys tougher than you in junior high school, you fucking gangbanger piece of shit.”

Quintero came at him, faking another swing at his head and then sucker punching him in the gut. Quintero had him lined up for another shot to the face, but Mason got an arm up to block him and drove him back, all the way into another bay, and pinned him against the car in the bay.

They both stayed there for a moment, holding on to each other. At
such close range, Mason could see every gray hair, every line in the man’s face. Those extra years on Quintero, hard years of service to one man, doing fuck knows what. In that one moment, Mason couldn’t help wondering if he was looking at his own future.

“You stupid
güero
,” Quintero said. “I’ve been putting up with your shit from the moment I drove you up here. Your questions. Your attitude. Getting thrown in fucking jail. But now,
today
, you crossed the one line you can’t cross.”

Mason pushed himself away and caught his breath.

“If you ever disobey him again,” Quintero said, “if you ever fucking call him and disrespect him . . . I swear to Christ, I will take whatever he tells me to do to you and I’ll make it last twice as long. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Mason said. “All you ever do is talk.”

“And yet you never fucking listen. I told you, you got a problem, you come to me. That’s why I’m here. How come you still don’t get that?”

Mason looked at him. What the fuck, he thought, this man honestly sounds offended. Like I betrayed him.

“Just stay away from me, Quintero. And stay the fuck away from my family. I don’t care what he tells you to do. I swear to God, if you go anywhere near my family, I will kill you. I will not hurt you.
I will kill you.
”

“You don’t want me fucking with your family, don’t give me a reason.”

“No,” Mason said, wiping the blood from his mouth. “Reason or no reason—today, tomorrow, any day of your fucking life—you touch either of them, your life is over.”

Quintero brushed off his shirt. “He owns both of us,” he said. “Don’t you see that?”

“No,” Mason said. “He doesn’t.”

“
Somos hermanos
, you and me,” Quintero said. “We are brothers.”

They stood there in the garage for a long time while the other men went back to work.

“You need another car,” Quintero finally said, nodding toward the blown-out window in the Camaro.

The car they’d just been leaning against as they tried to kill each other was another jet-black American muscle car.

“It’s a 1964 Pontiac GTO,” Quintero said. “With the Bobcat engine.”

He threw Mason the keys.