The Second Life of Nick Mason (8 page)

“The end of
this
month?”

“What’d I just say? End of the month.”

“Why are you doing this? Why me?”

“You gotta ask that question?” Cole said. “After everything we been talking about, this whole year? I watch you all the time, Nick. Every day. What I need out of a man, it’s all right here. Right here inside you. Don’t hurt that you’re white, too. You look sharp, you look clean, no tattoos. I can send you anywhere in the world, Nick. You fit right in.”

Mason shook his head as he looked up at him. “I still don’t understand,” he said. “You could have picked somebody who—”

“Just shut the fuck up,” Cole said, “and trust me. I picked
you
. I’m trying to explain why, but maybe I can’t. Not all of it. Maybe you’ll have to find out for yourself what it is I see in you.”

Mason took a moment to weigh those words. “If this really happens,” he said, “what do I have to do?”

“All you gotta do is answer the phone, Nick. It rings, you answer. You do whatever you get asked to do. That’s it.”

The dinner horn rang and inmates started to move down the hallway. Mason stayed where he was, sitting on the bed. He couldn’t help thinking about Gina. About Adriana.

“That night at the harbor,” Cole said, still standing in front of him. “We both know what you lost that night. Your wife. Your daughter. Everything you had.”

They were both right there in his head now.
Right there.
Close enough to touch.

“This is your chance, Nick. This is your chance to get it all back. All you gotta do is say yes.”

I have to do this, Mason thought. I have to take this. No matter what it means.

“But hear me,” Cole said, “before you say your next word. Make sure you understand what I’m saying to you. All that shit about nobody owning you? That’s gone. It’s a new fucking way of thinking for you. You make this deal with me, it’s twenty years you don’t have to be here anymore. But for those twenty years . . . your life don’t belong to you.”

Cole bent down close to Mason, close enough that his voice was a low rumble in Mason’s ear.

“For the next twenty years, your life belongs to me.”

As Nick Mason parked the Mustang outside Room 102, he tried to find the resolve inside himself to commit his first murder.

It was a motel like a thousand other run-down and forgotten shitholes all over the country. Shaped like an
L
, two stories high. A few blocks from Midway Airport, it might have even had some steady business back when Midway was the only game in town. Now the street was empty and there were maybe a half-dozen cars in the dark parking lot. Mason couldn’t imagine anyone staying in one of these rooms and being happy about the way his life had gone.

It was 11:29. Mason took the key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. He pushed it open and flicked on the switch. A single light came on next to the bed. He checked the bathroom and the closet. The room was empty.

He went to the night table and slid open the one drawer. There was a Gideon Bible inside. Next to it was a gun and a pair of black gloves.

He put the gloves on first. The gun was a Glock 20. He checked
the load. The magazine was filled with ten-millimeter shells. There was one in the chamber, ready to go.

The gun felt heavy in his right hand. He stood there looking at it. Stay in the moment, he told himself. Do one thing, then the next thing. Don’t think about what this means. Or what kind of person you’ll be if you really do this. Those are questions you can face later.

Then it all turned in his head at once. I’m not doing this, he said to himself. Samurai, my skinny Irish ass. There is no fucking way I’m doing this.

It turned again. Yes you are. You have no choice. Whoever’s upstairs, waiting for you . . . It’s not going to be the fucking Queen of England. Go upstairs and see for yourself.

He took one more long breath. As he turned, he caught sight of his face in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. You made this deal, he told himself. You put Gina’s life and Adriana’s life on the line. You will do this.

You have no other choice.

Mason went back out through the door, shutting off the light behind him. He was wearing black jeans and a black jacket. He put the gun in the jacket’s pocket and went to the stairs. The exit sign glowed a sickly orange. There were a Coke machine and a candy machine, both with crudely lettered signs indicating you were out of luck if you wanted either Coke or candy. An ice machine rattled, apparently still in business.

Mason heard a car moving somewhere, maybe a block away. He turned the corner. The balcony was empty. He walked slowly, feeling the slight sway of the concrete slab beneath him as he moved his weight from one foot to the other. He counted down the room numbers. 223. 221. 219. 217.

Mason could see the office below him, on the other side of the
L
.
He could see a dim light through the window, but he did not see an occupant.

He paused for a moment. Room 215 was ten feet away. His heart was pounding. Breathe in, he said to himself. Breathe out.

He took another slow step. Then another. He couldn’t see any light coming from the room’s window until he reached the center and there was a slight gap between the curtains.

The man in the room was stained blue by the glow of the television. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and he was a big enough man to make it sag halfway to the bottom of the frame. He looked at his watch, then stood up and brushed off the back of his suit coat, looking down at the bed like it had been a mistake to sit there. He was wearing a white dress shirt under his suit, no tie, but everything was perfectly pressed. His leather shoes had just been shined.

Mason’s senses were so amped by adrenaline that every detail of the room, of the man, of everything else around him, was burned into Mason’s mind in that one instant.

He closed his eyes and took one more deep breath. He took the gun from his jacket pocket and held it close to his chest.

A car turned onto the street below and its headlights swung across Mason’s back. He froze for a moment. When the car was gone, he took the final two steps to the door. He knew one good kick would open it. But the headlights had set off a timer in his head and now that a full two seconds had passed the bell had started to ring. Yes, he told himself, the man may have seen your shadow against the curtains.

That’s the exact moment when the door opened and the man came out and at Mason, moving impossibly fast for his size. He grabbed Mason by the collar and pushed him back against the balcony. For one sickening moment Mason felt the whole thing start to
give. He could picture the two of them falling to the concrete below. But then the man pulled back like they were two wrestlers coming off the ropes and Mason was thrown into the room. The door swung closed behind them. The gun was wrenched from Mason’s hand. He heard it land with a soft thud somewhere on the carpet.

The man’s hands were wrapped tight around Mason’s throat. Mason tried to dig his thumbs into the soft pressure points of the man’s elbows, but the man was too heavy and strong.

The man pushed him back against the television set and it fell to the floor, plunging the room into almost total darkness. Mason brought his knee up into the man’s groin and he felt the grip around his neck loosen and then give way. The man was breathing hard and making noises like a feral animal as he started swinging his fists. There was an explosion of light and pain when he caught Mason above the left eye.

Mason ducked and drove his shoulder into the man’s gut. He drove him backward, past the bed and against the far wall. He felt the night table splintering and heard the picture frame sliding down the wall. The man tried to ram his head into Mason’s nose, missed, but still caught him on the cheek, and another explosion went off as Mason felt himself overwhelmed once again by the man’s pure physical mass.

After all of the fights Mason had been in, ever since he was kid, a ninety-pound weight advantage was the one thing he had no answer for. Now it seemed like the one final fact that would end his life.

The man was on top of him. Mason could smell the faint trace of alcohol on the man’s breath, mixing with sweat and fear. He could already taste the blood in his mouth as the man hit him again. Then again. It was all going dark. And when the man hit him square in the throat, he took what would surely be his last breath. For one
moment he saw the face of his daughter when she was four years old. He’d never see her as a nine-year-old. He’d never see anything else again, apart from the dark outline of the man above him, poised with his fist in the air, ready to drive it into Mason’s head one last time.

Then he felt the hard metal of the gun butt just under the bed. He pulled it out and brought the barrel to the man’s chest. He fired, the kick of the gun twisting it painfully in his hand, the body muffling the shot for everyone in the city except Nick Mason. It rang in his ears. And the ringing said to him, This is the first man you’ve ever killed.

Mason untangled himself from the man’s dead weight. He went to the bathroom and flicked on the light. As he looked back, he saw the exit wound in the man’s back. It was a ragged, softball-sized hole in the man’s suit coat. And as he looked at the walls and ceiling, he saw the man’s blood and tissue all over the place. He looked in the bathroom mirror and saw more blood on his face. His own blood, the man’s blood—he didn’t even know, or care, at that point. His cheek and eyebrow were already beginning to swell.

Mason wanted to take his gloves off to wash his hands and to feel the cold water against his face. But he knew he couldn’t. He knew he had to get out of there and not leave a trace.

Breathe, he told himself. Breathe and move.

And don’t make any stupid mistakes.

He took one of the towels and held it against his eye. Then he took a quick look around the room. He couldn’t quite figure out what was missing until it finally came to him. There was no luggage in the room. The man checked in and he was sitting here, watching the television, but he had no luggage.

He was waiting for someone, Mason thought. Someone who could be here at any moment.

Mason put the gun in his jacket pocket. He gave the room one more quick look and that’s when he saw the man’s billfold, sitting on the bed.

He saw the glint of silver.

He went closer. He looked down at the star. There was no need to pick it up. No need to touch it. It was already telling him everything he needed to know.

Nick Mason had just killed a cop.

Mason closed the door to Room 215, trying to reconcile that there was a dead man—a dead cop—on the other side.

The towel was spotted with blood, so he put it inside his jacket as he stepped out onto the balcony and back into the stairwell. He stopped dead when he saw the security camera. It was mounted on this side of the concrete header over the entrance to the stairs. On his way up, there had been no way to see it.

Mason kept going. Down the stairs, still lit pale orange by the exit sign. He got in the Mustang, started it, backed up, and then gunned it onto the street.

Slow down, he told himself. It’s time to be straight and correct.

He made himself bring the car to a stop as the traffic light went from yellow to red. He sat there idling for a moment, waiting for his heart rate to come down. Then he saw the flashing blue and red lights. The police car came around the corner, running silent and fast. The cop driving the car looked the Mustang up and down. Mason knew his face couldn’t be seen through the tinted glass, but
the car itself was unmistakable. Mason poised his right foot on the accelerator, ready to see what this thing could do from a standing start. But the police car kept going.

Mason let out his breath. The light turned green. He pulled out slowly and drove down the street, looking in his rearview mirror. There was nobody behind him.

He pulled out his cell phone and called Quintero.

“There was a security camera,” he said as soon as Quintero answered. “I’m fucked.”

“Relax,” Quintero said. “Get a grip on yourself.”

“I got spotted by a patrolman, too. If the guy knows cars, I’ll stick in his head. When he finds out what happened at the motel, he’ll remember he saw a 1968 Mustang one block away.”

“I’m going to give you an address.”

“That was a cop in the motel, by the way.”

“The place will look abandoned, but we’ll open up the door when you get there.”

“Did you hear me?” Mason said. “That guy was a cop.”

“You need to shut the fuck up and go to this address.”

Quintero gave him an address on Spaulding, just over the river. Mason stayed off the highway, making his way down the dark, quiet streets. He crossed the river and spent a few minutes looking for the exact street and address. There was a huge storage warehouse and an asphalt yard locked up for the night. A half-dozen houses all boarded up, then at last another brick building with a large garage door being rolled up, a sudden bright rectangle spilling out onto the street. Mason turned into the opening. He saw Quintero standing there, his arms folded. The door was already rattling shut when Mason stopped the car and got out.

There were two other men in the garage. Dark-haired Latinos
like Quintero, except these men both wore gray coveralls. Banks of fluorescent lighting hung from the high ceiling, the area above them seeming to disappear into the darkness. There were workbenches and a lift and heavy welding equipment. Mason knew what this place was. He’d seen his share of chop shops.

“Tell me why I just killed a cop,” Mason said.

Quintero didn’t move. He kept his arms folded in front of his chest and said something to the other two men in Spanish. The men laughed.

“Tell me why,” Mason said, “before I kick the shit out of you right here.”

Whatever trace of a smile had been on Quintero’s face disappeared in an instant. “Shut the fuck up, Mason. We got business to take care of. Take off your clothes.”

“Excuse me?”

“We gotta get rid of them. You smell like a slaughterhouse.”

Mason looked down at himself. It was his first good look in bright light. Even though his jacket and pants were black, he could see that they were soaked with blood. He took the towel from the motel bathroom out of his jacket. Then he took the gloves out of one pocket. Finally, he took the gun out of the other.

“Chingada Madre!”
Quintero said. “The fuck is the matter with you? That gun is clean!”

“So what?”

“So you don’t bring it with you, you stupid
pendejo
. You leave it in the room.”

“Excuse the fuck out of me,” Mason said. “I never shot anybody before.”

Quintero took the gun from Mason as he said something else in
Spanish to the other two men. They already had both car doors open and were working on the seats.

“What are they doing to the car?” Mason said.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Quintero said, taking the gloves and the towel. “Now take off your clothes. Unless you have any other surprises for me.”

Mason took off his clothes. Quintero took them from him and put them in a garbage bag. Then he led Mason to a shower in the corner of the warehouse. He handed him a bar of soap and a large scrub brush.

“Every inch,” he said. “No DNA, no fibers. We take no chances.”

Mason got to work scrubbing himself down. When he was done, he stepped out of the shower. He grabbed the towel that had been put on a nearby worktable. Next to it were a pair of jeans and a shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes. He put on the clothes and looked at the rough mirror someone had screwed to the wall over the sink. The scrape over his left eye was still raw, and his whole face needed an ice bag. But he wasn’t about to ask for one. He walked back to where the men were working on the engine of the Mustang. They already had the car seats out. Now they were pulling out the battery.

“You’re not going to chop this car,” Mason said.

They ignored him.

“They’re not going to chop it,” Quintero said from behind him. “They’re going to fucking obliterate it. They’re going to break it down to nothing like it never existed. That cop who saw the car? He saw a ghost.”

Quintero took the wet towel from Nick and added it to the bag of clothes.

“Over here,” Quintero said. He led him to the opposite side of the
warehouse, where there was an incinerator. Quintero used a long pair of pliers with taped-up handles to open the door. Both men raised their arms against the sudden wave of heat. Quintero threw in the bag and it was instantly consumed by the flames. He nudged the door with the pliers until it was shut again.

“That camera at the motel,” Mason said to him. “I didn’t see it on my way to the room.”

“What do you think I do?” Quintero said, throwing the pliers on the bench. “Just drive around and watch you? You don’t think I had every angle at that motel taken care of? The feed on that camera was disabled. On
all
of the cameras, including the ones you
didn’t
see. I even rented out every other room.”

“What was his name?”

“Jameson. Sergeant Ray Jameson. Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, no big fucking deal.”

“Listen,” Quintero said, “you think that was Serpico you took out? I had to deal with that prick for years. Thought he could do anything he wanted, like he owned the whole fucking city. Whatever I paid him, he always wanted more. He was a piece of shit who happened to carry a badge in his pocket. Take away the badge and he’s still a piece of shit. Just not as useful.”

“If he’s useful, why take him out?”

“He stopped being useful when he stopped doing the things we paid him to do.”

“All right, hold on,” Mason said. “You gotta understand something.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t do this shit.”

“You can,” Quintero said. “You just did.”

Mason hesitated, because he didn’t know how else to say it. He’d just killed a man, but there hadn’t been a moment of truth. He didn’t have to look the man in the eye. He didn’t have to hear the man beg for his life or watch him piss himself. He didn’t have to calmly pull the trigger and then walk away.

Instead, it all just happened in a rush. Hell, it almost felt like self-defense. But that was a distinction he knew Quintero wouldn’t get. Mason was sent to kill the man. Mason came back. The man was dead. End of story.

Why me? That’s the question Mason had asked Cole, sitting in that prison cell, right after Cole had made his offer to him. All those other men in that unit, many of them murderers. Multiple murderers. Men who could have killed that cop in the motel room without blinking. Why did Cole choose Mason?

It still didn’t make sense.

“Your new ride,” Quintero said. He led Mason to the farthest bay in the garage, beyond the reach of the fluorescent lights. They might as well have been on the bottom of the ocean. Quintero snapped on a light. The darkness separated in the glare from the caged bulb. There was something there, covered with a gray tarp. When Quintero pulled away the tarp, Mason saw a 1967 first-generation Camaro SS. It was painted jet-black, just like the Mustang. But where the Mustang was sleek and beautiful, this thing was just a beast. Twin pipes. A simple flat grille. This car was fast when it was made, too fast for any sensible person to actually drive on the street. Mason guessed it was just as fast now.

“How many cars like this are you gonna destroy?” Mason said.

“Maybe next time we won’t have to.”

Mason’s heart rate was back to normal. He stood there looking at
the Camaro and he thought about everything that had happened that night. This wasn’t the right way to do it, he said to himself. Go into a motel room, kill the man with a gun, drive away in a car that was unlike any other car in the city. There were too many ways it could go wrong.

But maybe that was part of the test, seeing if Mason could deal with those problems. And then, once he did, proving to Mason that Quintero would be here for the cleanup, even if that meant destroying a car that belonged in a museum.

It was all part of the show. And both men had learned something important about the other.

Quintero took a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Mason. “Those bruises look good on you,” he said. “Make you look humble.”

“Open the door so I can get the fuck out of here.”

Quintero hit a button on the wall and the bay door cranked open. Mason backed out the Camaro and took off.

•   •   •

H
e tried to keep it out of his mind as he drove back to Lincoln Park, pulled into the town house garage, and went up the stairs. The dark cherrywood was the same color as the blood-soaked carpeting in the motel. The television was on and Diana was sitting on the leather couch, watching a cooking show, magnified on the huge HD screen. She glanced up as she heard Mason and for one moment it looked like she might ask him why the hell he hadn’t showed up at the restaurant like she’d asked him to.

But then she saw his face. She turned back to her show without saying a word.

Mason went into his bathroom and took off the clothes Quintero
had given him. Even though he was probably the cleanest man in the world, he got in the shower and spent a half hour under the hot spray.

His own reaction was finally coming through to him now that he had stopped moving. He kept hearing the shot against the man’s chest, kept feeling the weight of the man’s dead body on top of him.

I always had rules, he said to himself. They never failed me until the day I started ignoring them. Now I need some new rules. New rules for new problems.

When he got out of the shower, he once again caught sight of himself in the mirror. The bruises were already looking worse.

He threw on some new clothes, went out to the kitchen, and filled a plastic bag with ice. He grabbed a Goose Island out of the fridge and sat down on the far end of the couch, holding the ice against his face. Diana didn’t react. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t make a sound. She kept sitting there, watching the television.

It was a special break-in from the local news. A woman reporter was standing outside somewhere, holding a microphone. Behind her was a thin strand of yellow crime scene tape. Behind the tape was a line of doors. Above those doors was a balcony.

Mason knew this place.

The crawl across the bottom of the screen gave Mason the news he didn’t need to read. Sergeant Ray Jameson, a highly decorated police officer, was killed by an unknown gunman. He leaves behind a wife and three children.

Mason looked over at Diana. She had her knees drawn up to her chest and she was hugging them. She kept staring at the screen.

Mason closed his eyes for a moment. He pressed the ice against his face. The cold was painful, but eventually it started to make him feel numb.

When he opened his eyes again, the reporter was signing off. Just before the camera cut away, he saw a plainclothes police officer stepping right into the shot, blinking at the glare of the camera lights. On the screen the man looked bigger than life and Mason knew him immediately even though he hadn’t seen him in five years.

It was Detective Frank Sandoval.