The Second Life of Nick Mason (6 page)

Mason left Elmhurst and gunned the Mustang down North Avenue, driving like a man with no family to live for.

He blew through every yellow light, made one turn and then another, with no idea where he was going. Finally, he stopped at a bar on a street he didn’t know. In a part of the West Side he’d never seen before. It was a building made of concrete with glass blocks rounding off the corners. No sign. No name. An anonymous place for the local daily drinkers who all knew the bartender and one another. Mason opened the door and stepped inside into the darkness, feeling the cold blast from the A/C.

He went to the bar, put down a twenty, and told the man to line them up. There was another man drinking at the other end of the bar. Another two men in one of the booths. A television was on over the bar, but the sound was off. A half-dozen backlit beer signs glowed on the walls.

Mason downed the first shot of rail whiskey without even tasting
it. It burned halfway down his throat. He drained another before easing up and taking a long breath.

“What did you expect?” he said to himself loud enough for the man at the end of the bar to look up at him. “What did you really think was going to happen?”

Mason picked up the third glass and weighed it in his hand. He looked at the cheap, watered-down whiskey and then threw it back.

Mason thought about all the guys he’d met inside, guys who’d been there for big chunks of their lives. He’d overhear them talking to one another, how life was going to be when they get out, how they got this woman out there, their old girlfriend from high school, hottest thing on two legs back then. They’re gonna get out, go find her, have some fun for a while, but then make it real. Get married, have a family. Make up for lost time. This whole picture they create, lying in their cells at night, staring up at the ceiling. Mason would hear them talking about it at the lunch table, during work detail, whenever they had a few minutes and a sympathetic ear, and he’d think some of these poor bastards in here have no idea how life really works. That girl from high school? Probably married and already has three kids. Or something a lot worse, depending on the neighborhood. Dead and gone. Or maybe even in the women’s penitentiary herself. No matter what, she sure as fuck wouldn’t remember some loser boyfriend from high school who went away all those years ago. You go find her, pal, assuming she’s alive. See how that little reunion turns out.

But Mason had to ask himself how his expectations were any different. Maybe it was only five years, but did it turn out any better? Getting married, having a kid together, it didn’t mean shit in the end. The Earth turns and everybody moves on with their lives.

Everybody forgets you.

I didn’t even see her, he said to himself. I didn’t even get to see what my own daughter looks like now.

“Line ’em up again,” he said to the bartender.

“Hope you’re not driving,” the man said.

“Pour me a real drink, I might have a problem.”

“Seriously, friend . . .”

“I am not your friend,” Mason said. He was already adding it up in his head—two behind him, one to his left, this clown in front of him. If they all wanted to give him a problem at once, it might get interesting.

“Maybe you should leave,” the bartender said. “We don’t need trouble here.”

Mason remembered what Quintero had said to him about what would happen if he got into trouble. Not even twenty-four hours had passed.

Mason waited a few more beats. Then he got up and left.

He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, blinded by the setting sun. The world became clear again and he went to the parking lot. He got in the Mustang, started it, put it in reverse, and pointed it at the street. A man walking by chose that moment to stop directly in front of his car, blocking the exit. He was dressed in black, head to toe, his shirt tight enough to show off his biceps. He had gold chains around his neck and a pair of screw-you mirrored sunglasses to complete the look.

“All right, auto show’s over,” Mason said out loud. He didn’t bother cranking down the window. “You got your look, now get your ass out of the way.”

The man didn’t move. Mason revved the engine.

“I will seriously run you over,” he said. “Today is not the day to fuck with me.”

The man stepped aside finally. As he barreled out of the parking lot, Mason looked up and saw the man taking off his sunglasses. He saw the man’s face for one fraction of a second. Full lips, crooked nose, hair thinning on top yet somehow the rest of it tied back in a ponytail.

Their eyes met. A spark of recognition.

Mason was a hundred yards down the street when it hit him. That was Jimmy McManus.

Mason doubled back in the black Mustang to the same parking lot. He even got out and went inside the bar, hoping that McManus really was a regular there.

The bartender was yelling something at him as he walked back into the place, but Mason didn’t hear a word. He scanned the room for McManus.

He wasn’t there.

Mason got back in the car and drove across town. Seeing that man, at least, was a wake-up call. There was no time to feel sorry for himself. He had bigger problems.

He wasn’t going to get Gina back. He had to accept that. Even seeing his own daughter was going to be a lot harder than he ever could have imagined. But he still had a deal to live up to. He still had a job to do. He had to be ready for that phone to ring even if he had no idea what would happen next.

He took out the cell phone and put it on the seat next to him. I don’t even know what the ringtone sounds like, he said to himself.

The next morning, he would find out.

Detective Sandoval’s hunt for Nick Mason had brought him to one of the most expensive streets in Chicago. Sandoval parked a few doors down from the town house and double-checked the address. Lincoln Park fucking West, he said to himself. With the park right across the street. The gardens, the conservatory, the zoo. A great view of Lake Michigan. This is the place. This is where Nick Mason lives now.

Sandoval remembered Mason’s last address. Or rather his last address before USP Terre Haute. It was a little shitbox in Canaryville, one of those houses they built right on top of one another with barely enough room to walk between them. Forty-third Street, if his memory was right. He’d seen it a few days after that night at the harbor. He’d just recently been partnered with Higgins back then, still getting the hang of the guy. Higgins was at the peak of his career, with a winning streak of big busts that would have made most cops insufferable. But Higgins wore his success well, with just enough self-confidence to believe he could solve any murder in the
city. That’s how they ended up on the Sean Wright case. It was a “heater case,” with a mandate from the superintendent’s office. A federal agent had been killed. They needed to solve it and solve it quickly.

They started with the one dead suspect, a man from Canaryville named Finn O’Malley. A perfect name, Sandoval thought, for a mick from that part of town. O’Malley had a long record of minor incidents, some pickups on more serious charges that never went anywhere, until an aggravated assault on a police officer put him away for eighteen months. They went to O’Malley’s last-known residence and asked around. They got nothing. Sandoval was ready to take it personally, all the locals closing ranks on him. But Higgins kept his cool and dragged him back to the station and they spent a full day going through old arrest records. If they couldn’t find any known associates who also went away to prison, they could at least find some other men O’Malley might have been picked up with even if everybody eventually walked.

That’s how they came up with two more names. Eddie Callahan and Nick Mason. They’d been picked up together and then released, on two separate occasions, a few years apart. A long-standing relationship.

Sandoval and Higgins went out looking for both men. They found them in Canaryville—Eddie Callahan at his fiancée’s apartment and Nick Mason at the house he shared with his wife and young daughter. Both men denied any involvement in the harbor job. Both men claimed they had been straight for years. Both men admitted that they had seen Finn O’Malley at Murphy’s bar on the night in question but that he had left the bar long before Callahan and Mason went home.

The two detectives checked out their story at the bar. The
bartender on duty that night confirmed that O’Malley had been there, had left early, and that Callahan and Mason had stayed.

“You trust that guy?” Sandoval said to Higgins as they walked back to their car. “Who’s the guy who killed Lincoln? John Wilkes Booth? If he’s a Canaryville guy, this bartender’s fucking great-grandfather swears Booth was at the bar all night. Never went near that theater.”

“Went deep for that one,” Higgins said.

“Am I wrong?”

“You’re not wrong.”

The next day, a stolen car was found in a parking lot a mile down the road. The blood was tested and found to be consistent with Finn O’Malley’s.

“Somebody brought that blood home,” Higgins said.

“Only been a few days,” Sandoval said. “If either guy’s in his own car that night . . .”

Higgins looked at his partner. They both knew what would happen next. Warrants were served. The cars were impounded. In Mason’s car, they ended up finding trace amounts of Finn O’Malley’s blood on the right armrest of the driver’s seat. Callahan’s car was clean.

When Mason was brought in, Sandoval and Higgins sat there in the interview room for a while. Higgins had already told Sandoval to do the talking. He had a gut feeling that Mason wouldn’t say a word to either one of them, but at least Sandoval was the same age. He might have a slightly better shot at him.

Sandoval kept watching Mason, waiting for the pressure to build. For most guys, it doesn’t take long. You just have to sit there and wait for it to become real to him.

I’m sitting in a room with two cops, the guy will say to himself. There can only be one reason for that. They’ve got me nailed.

But Sandoval wasn’t seeing this on Mason yet. All the signs you look for. The way the eyes start moving around. Looking toward the door. Thinking about what you can say that will get you out of the room. Never mind where I go next, just get me the fuck out of here.

The hands coming together. The man instinctively protecting himself. Closing himself into a ball.

Or the legs starting to shake under the table. All that tension, it has to go somewhere. But no, not this guy. He wasn’t giving them anything.

Not yet.

“Canaryville kid,” Sandoval said, finally breaking the silence. “You go to Saint Gabriel’s?”

Mason said nothing.

“Bet you’re a Sox fan, too. I’m from Avondale, been a Cubs fan my whole life.”

Mason stared past them at a spot on the wall.

“You go to Tilden High School? We played basketball there.”

Mason kept staring at the wall.

“We saw your house there on Forty-third, Nick. Do a lot of work to the place? Me, I do all the painting at my house.” He was still living with his wife and kids at that time and he really did do all of the painting. It wasn’t a lie.

“Here’s the thing,” Sandoval went on. “I try to be clean, but painting’s a fucking mess, you know? You do the painting at your house?”

Mason stayed silent.

“When I’m done,” Sandoval said, “I got paint all over myself. My arms, in my hair. My face. So I go to the sink and I wash up and I
think I’m nice and clean. Until my wife finds me and says, ‘Hey, genius, what’s this?’ And she points to my elbows.”

Sandoval stood up and came around to Mason’s side of the table. He leaned close to Mason and showed him his right elbow.

“Right here,” he said. “I can’t see it when I’m washing. You know what I’m saying? So I miss it every time, Nick. Every single goddamned time. You think I’d know by now. Wash your elbows, Frank. And if I’m dumb enough to get in the car, what happens next?”

Sandoval put his arm down as if resting it on an armrest.

“Leather, you got a shot at cleaning that off. But I don’t got leather seats, Nick. Can’t afford it. I got cloth.”

He got close this time. Just a few inches from Mason’s ear. “Just like you.”

They tried to convince Mason to turn on Eddie Callahan. They knew Callahan was involved. Confirming that fact would just be a formality. They also tried to convince Mason to give them the identity of the fourth man. Everything would go a lot easier, they told him, if he would just cooperate. Otherwise, the prosecutor would go for the max. It was a dead DEA agent, so everyone was out for blood. Mason shouldn’t have to take it all alone.

Mason kept his mouth shut.

Even though Sandoval and Higgins made the arrest, the feds ultimately took the case away because it was a DEA agent who’d been killed. Neither man cared. What mattered was that Nick Mason drew twenty-five-to-life and went to Terre Haute.

But now, five years later,
sixty fucking months later
, Detective Sandoval was sitting here in his car waiting for Nick Mason to show up, a man who was free only because his old partner stood up in court and told the judge that he had taken blood evidence from the
scene, brought it with him, carried it around for hours—
for hours
—then found some way to plant it in Nick Mason’s car.

That’s the way it was written. That was the official fucking record. And his partner’s life was destroyed.

•   •   •

H
e felt his cell phone buzzing in his pocket. He took it out and read the text. It was Sean Wright’s wife, Elizabeth, widow of a dead federal agent, single mother trying to raise two kids on her own, asking if the two families would still be getting together that weekend.

Sandoval texted back a reply.
Yes, looking forward to it.
Which was true. It was his one chance to see his own kids that week. His one chance to pretend the job hadn’t cost him everything else in his life.

He took one more look at Nick Mason’s new address. Then he drove away.

When the call Mason had been dreading finally came, he knew his life would never be the same. He just didn’t know exactly what Darius Cole had in store for him.

The sun was just coming up as Mason left the car on Columbus Drive and walked toward Grant Park. He’d never seen the park this empty.

He saw Quintero standing on the lake side of the fountain. Lake Shore Drive ran behind him, and beyond that were a hundred tarp-covered sailboats all anchored in the open water. The breakwater formed a straight line behind the boats and then beyond that was the rumor of Lake Michigan, disappearing into the morning fog. The rising sun started to break through, painting the city behind them in brilliant hues of gold and blue.

Mason hesitated for a moment, looking up at the buildings, the reflections so bright they made his eyes hurt. He remembered the morning he and Gina flew back home from their honeymoon in Las Vegas, an overnight flight that circled the city and came around
from the east just as the sun was coming up behind them. Gina was in the window seat and she grabbed Nick’s arm tightly as the plane banked. He assumed it was her usual airplane jitters, but she gestured for him to look out the window. He pressed his face close to hers and saw that the city of Chicago was completely obscured by the morning clouds and yet somehow the reflection was still cast perfectly against the surface of the lake.

It was an amazing sight, the upside-down image of this city they both knew so well, where they’d try to find a real life together. So long ago, it seemed, even though barely a decade had passed. Now Mason walked here on the shore of the same lake, the same city behind him, glowing with the same colors, and yet everything else had been changed forever.

It was his own life that was upside down.

As he got closer, he saw that Quintero was wearing a black sweatshirt this morning. None of his tattoos were visible. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. He looked at his watch.

“I said five thirty,” he said.

“I’ve got five thirty-two.”

“That’s not five thirty.”

Mason looked out at the boats. “Which one of these is Cole’s?”

“How about we make a rule here? Don’t say his name out loud when we’re on the street.”

“Fine,” Mason said. “I know all about rules.”

“We both know who we’re talking about. You make it a habit, then you don’t fuck up when it really matters.”

“Speaking of habits,” Mason said, “how much time are you going to spend following me around?”

“I knew you’d be looking for your ex-wife and your daughter.”

“Let me make this real clear,” Mason said. “My ex-wife and my
daughter have nothing to do with this. With
any
of this. To you, they don’t exist.”

“That’s not how this works, Mason. You made this deal. You think you get to make the rules now? I’ll go move into their fucking guest room if I want to.”

Mason stood there for a moment, staring the man down. Then Quintero handed him a motel room key on an old-fashioned plastic key fob. The name and address of the motel was written on one side along with the room number: 102. On the other side was a promise to pay the return postage if you dropped the key into any mailbox.

“The room will be empty,” Quintero said. “You go there and you park in front of this room. Nowhere else. Get there at eleven thirty p.m. No earlier, no later. Go inside and you’ll find everything you need in the top drawer of the nightstand. Then go around and up the stairs to Room 215. Your man will be there. Call me when you’re done.”

Mason took a moment to process that. “Done with what?” he said.

“You’re helping him check out. What the fuck you
think
you’re doing?”

This is it, Mason said to himself. I made this deal. I didn’t give him any exceptions. I didn’t say there are certain things I will not do.

I just said yes.

He turned to face his city one more time. Then he turned back to the man who was telling him to do the one thing he never thought he’d do.

“Why don’t you do it?” Mason said. “Something tells me it wouldn’t be your first.”

“I’m not doing it because it’s not my job to do it. It’s yours. We’re gonna find out just how well you can handle things.”

Mason stood there looking at the key. The sun kept breaking through the morning fog, making the glass on the buildings shine brighter and brighter. It was going to be a hot day.

“One thing I’ve never done,” Mason finally said, “my whole life.”

Quintero looked him up and down. He shook his head and there was almost a smile on his face.
“No mames,”
he said.

Mason didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he’d heard a Mexican in SHU use the phrase now and then. He figured it must translate to something like “No fucking way.”

“I know you’re here for a reason,” Quintero said. “Cole doesn’t make mistakes. So you better get yourself ready,
cuate
.”

Mason put the key in his pocket and walked away.

“First one’s a bitch,” Quintero said to his back. “Then it gets easy.”