Exit Strategy

by Steve Hamilton

  We’re at the apartment building.

  Nick’s secret apartment.

  She took a deep breath. “Nick is dead.”

  “If I was going to kill Nick,” he said, “I would have done it myself. But that would displease the people I work for.”

  She looked at Darius. His face was still unchanged.

  “You don’t work for anybody,” she said.

  “We all work for someone.”

  They started walking toward the front entrance and she moved with him, not even feeling her own body anymore. When they were in the lobby, Darius told the man who’d followed them to wait there.

  A strange calm settled over her. I knew this would happen, she told herself. From the moment I met him. From the moment I asked him for vengeance for my father. From the moment I lay in his bed.

  It was always coming to this.

  Darius let go of her arm, leaned forward, and pushed the elevator button. When the door opened, she didn’t move. She felt his hand on the small of her back, pushing her forward.

  The elevator door closed. It was just the two of them in that confined space.

  I won’t beg, she told herself. Whatever happens, I will not beg.

  The elevator continued its slow climb. It stopped and the door opened. She looked over at Darius. He still looked untroubled, unmoved.

  Diana felt his hand on her back again, felt herself moving down the hallway. Darius pushed open the door to Nick’s apartment. Of course it would be unlocked for Darius Cole.

  “Come in,” he said to her.

  She went inside the apartment and Cole closed the door behind them.

  • • •

  MASON BRACED HIMSELF for the next blow, the wave of pain that would come a half second later.

  It didn’t come. Instead, Mason heard a voice from somewhere far away. A voice he vaguely recognized.

  “Chicago PD, let me see your hands!”

  Everyone in the room froze. Mason pushed himself back up to his knees, felt a hand on the back of his shirt pulling him to his feet.

  “Stand up,” the voice said. “Let’s go.”

  As he stood, Mason saw a gun barrel. Then a silver star. Then Sandoval’s face.

  Mason wiped the blood from his eyes, saw the door open, the hallway, the elevator. He kept moving, leaning back against the elevator wall when the door closed.

  He looked over and saw that Sandoval was breathing almost as hard as he was.

  “Cole took Diana,” Mason said. “Call it in. Find her.”

  “What the hell was going on up there?”

  “Cole found out about our deal.”

  “Fuck. I should have grabbed him outside.”

  “You saw him? Was Diana with him?”

  “Yeah, they were—”

  “We need to find her. Now!”

  “If they’re headed back to the restaurant,” Sandoval said, “I’ll call in for help. Have a dozen men set up. We’ll take them when they get there.”

  “If she’s in that car—”

  “She’ll be safe, all right? We got this. I just want to put those cuffs on Cole myself.”

  That wasn’t the plan, Mason said to himself. But right now, I’ll take it.

  As long as Diana is safe.

  The elevator hit the bottom floor with a thud.

  “You’re welcome, by the way,” Sandoval said.

  “For what?”

  The door opened.

  “For saving your ass,” Sandoval said.

  Then the detective’s head exploded.

  Mason fell backward, everything obliterated by the sudden gun blast. The shock washed over him, the blood and brain matter splattered in a bright red and pink arc across the elevator wall. Mason looked down and saw it was all over his face, all over his chest. He pushed himself to his feet.

  Mason watched Sandoval’s body slide down slowly into a sitting position, slump over. One eye was gone, the other still open.

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in his ears.

  “What the fuck …” he said to himself, barely hearing his own words.

  He looked up.

  Quintero stood there, holding the same Nighthawk Custom 1911 he’d drawn on Mason when he found him at his house.

  “You killed him …” Mason started to say as his hearing slowly came back.

  “Yeah. And I’d kill you, too, if I could,” Quintero said. “But those aren’t my orders.”

  Quintero realized his critical mistake almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, tried to swing the gun at Mason’s head, but Mason was already moving forward and slipped easily inside his reach. Desperate to get out, beaten up and numb to any more physical pain, Mason landed three straight punches to Quintero’s abdomen, hit him with an uppercut and caught him square on the chin. Quintero grabbed Mason by the neck and tore at his still-bandaged gunshot wound—the wound he had sewn up himself.

  Mason swung one arm up over Quintero’s wrists and pulled them down in a double lock. He hit Quintero in the face with two more quick lefts, but Quintero didn’t let go. Quintero pulled him closer, lining him up for a head-butt. Mason quickly drew back his right arm and brought it forward again just as Quintero’s head whipped forward. Mason felt the blow to Quintero’s nose all the way up his arm, but he followed through as if trying to drive his elbow clear through to the back of Quintero’s skull.

  Quintero went down to his knees, a shower of blood erupting from both nostrils. It was nothing like a fair fight at this point, but Mason hit Quintero in the face again. And again. He kept hitting him until his right hand was raw and bleeding. For Diana, for his family, for a dead cop on the floor of the elevator.

  For himself.

  He took Quintero’s gun as he stood up. He took his last look at Frank Sandoval, the man who had arrested him and sent him away. The man who’d pursued him for months and kept him looking over his shoulder. The man who’d just saved him.

  Sandoval had a wife and two kids. Whatever was left of Mason’s humanity would torture him over that simple human fact. Probably forever. But he didn’t have time for it now.

  He went out the door to go find Diana.

  • • •

  WHEN COLE STEPPED into the apartment, Diana was already standing at the window, looking out at the lights of the city. Cole came over and stood next to her. He didn’t touch her.

  “This place is empty,” Cole said, looking around. “He finds the one place he can have for himself. And there’s nothing here.”

  A day came back to her, the first day she ever saw him. In her father’s old restaurant, torn down and paved over by now. Her father long dead and buried, killed by two men who worked for one of Cole’s rivals.

  Nobody ever found a trace of either man.

  She took a step toward him and put a hand on his chest. “Darius,” she said, a note of raw fear finally creeping into her voice, “it’s me. It’s your Diana. Don’t you want to be with me right now? It’s been twelve years.”

  He reached up and brushed her hair aside. “This isn’t about you,” he said. “This is about Nick. I want you to understand that.”

  A tear ran down Diana’s cheek. Cole wiped it away.

  “I have to take something from him,” he said.

  He leaned closer so that his mouth was right next to her ear.

  “I have to hurt him,” he said in a whisper. “This is the only way I can.”

  • • •

  ALMOST TWENTY YEARS after the city had banned smoking anywhere indoors, the Burke family’s corner bar still held the stale smell of an ashtray, mixed with spilled beer and greasy food. As Bruce Harper stepped inside, he felt like he’d gone back in time half a century. There were round wooden tables covered with thin sheets of plastic. Molded plastic chairs. A pool table with faded felt. Barstools repaired with duct tape. Harper hit the light switch and a pair of overhead fixtures mottled with dead flies cast a dim glow that barely reached the corners of the room.


  Harper went behind the bar, through the kitchen door. He looked down at the faded bloodstains on the cracked linoleum floor. There were more bloodstains in the sink, and Harper knew that the police had recovered a butcher knife with both blood and scorch marks.

  They heated up the knife on this stove, Harper thought. Burned his flesh with it. Then cut off the fingers of one hand.

  Put the knife back on the stove to heat it again while they asked their question again. “Where’s your cousin?”

  Seared more flesh and cut off the fingers from the other hand.

  Harper went up to the apartment above the bar. Another step back in time: an honest-to-God tube television, a TV tray, piled high with crumpled fast-food bags, set up next to a beaten-up couch.

  Harper stood in the center of the room and asked himself: Was Sean Burke here?

  He picked up one of the fast-food bags and checked the receipt—over a week old. Then he went into the kitchen, saw the dishes sitting in a sink half full with water, a thin film of green mold floating on the surface.

  He went into the bedroom, pulled back the bedspread, and saw sheets that needed washing a few months ago. Dirty clothes all over the floor. The only thing hanging on the wall: a map of Ireland, distinctive because it showed no border separating the counties of Northern Ireland from the rest of the island.

  This is where you’d come to hide, Harper thought. This is the closest thing to a home you have.

  He picked up a single framed photograph from the dresser—three men standing outside the bar, one of them a young Sean Burke—sat on the edge of the bed, and looked into the face of a killer.

  Harper replaced the crime scene tape on his way out. It wasn’t a waste of time, Harper told himself as he drove away. No matter how tight this neighborhood is, a half million dollars is a hell of a lot of money.

  If the son of a bitch who slaughtered those guards comes home …

  I’ll find him.

  • • •

  SEAN BURKE WATCHED the marshal from the bunker getting into his car, noted the white bandage stretched across his head.

  He’d watched the man go up and down the street, giving his card to everyone who answered their doors. Burke had slept in the apartment above the night before, keeping the lights off. Nobody in the neighborhood had seen him, and in a few more hours, he’d be gone again. This time, he’d have no reason to ever come back.

  Burke went to the back door of the bar, took the old spare key that had lived on the top edge of the doorjamb for the past forty years. When he was in the kitchen, he stopped one more time, looking down at the stain on the floor. He crossed himself, more out of lifelong habit than belief.

  Then he went inside to the bar and settled down to wait.

  • • •

  MASON PARKED THE JAGUAR behind the restaurant and went in through the kitchen. One of Cole’s men was standing there—there were probably others at each door. This man had his back to the door and he was talking on his cell phone.

  “Don’t worry,” Mason heard him say. “He won’t get in here.”

  It took five seconds for Mason to prove him wrong as he grabbed a long iron rotisserie spike and cracked the man in the head before he could finish turning around. The man went down. Mason wiped his face with a kitchen towel, put it down soaked red, ignored the two cooks who were staring at him.

  He went to the front of the kitchen, where he could see into the dining room. He scanned through the men in suits, women in dresses, waiters in white shirts, looking for Diana. He didn’t see her. He didn’t see Cole.

  Then the front door to the restaurant opened and Cole walked in with two of his men.

  Diana wasn’t with him.

  Mason watched everyone in the room stand up to applaud Cole’s arrival. As Cole came into the center of the room, everyone surrounded him. He was shaking hands, kissing women, and Mason knew this would go on all night. With no good chance to separate him.

  Mason’s plan had already fallen apart. He didn’t have a new one. All he had was pain and pure gut instinct. And a growing fear that he had to keep pushing out of his mind.

  She’s not dead, he told himself. Diana is not dead.

  Mason moved quickly through the crowd. Cole looked up in surprise when he saw him, but nobody screamed until Mason already had Quintero’s Nighthawk pressed against Cole’s head.

  “Where is she?” he said into his ear as he wrapped his free arm around Cole’s chest from behind.

  More screaming. One of Cole’s men drew his own gun and pointed it in his direction.

  “Everybody relax,” Cole said, already recovered from the surprise, his voice strangely calm.

  Mason pulled him into the kitchen, Cole going along with every step. Not trying to resist. They went out the back door. Into the car. Cole in the passenger’s seat, the gun still aimed at his head as Mason came around and got behind the wheel.

  “Where is Diana?” Mason said.

  When Cole didn’t answer, Mason hit him across the face with the gun.

  Cole wiped his mouth and said, “You made a deal with a cop, Nick.”

  Mason hit him again. His hand was still raw and now swelling, with at least two broken fingers, but he didn’t care anymore.

  “You’re already having a bad night,” Cole said. “Think about what you’re doing right now.”

  Mason put the car in gear and started driving. He opened up on the expressway, the Jaguar roaring. When they reached the South Side, he pulled off and drove down the dark streets, the car quiet enough now for Cole to speak.

  “First time I heard your name,” Cole said, “you were part of that team that hit the harbor. One of your friends gets killed. Another gets away. Never did find the fourth man …”

  The image of McManus’s dead body floating in his pool came to Mason. He brushed it away and kept driving.

  “But the only man who does time is you.”

  “Tell me where she is,” Mason said, his eyes on the road. “I don’t need a fucking trip down memory lane.”

  “I’m just trying to understand, Nick. How we got here. We used to walk that fence line every day. You and me, in the yard. Just talking. I could have been selfish and kept you there.”

  “You’re a real prince.”

  “How many years did you have left on that sentence? Twenty? At a minimum? You’d still be in Cellblock A right now, wondering why your family forgot about you. Instead … look at you. I gave this to you, Nick. I gave you your life back.”

  “Some fucking life.”

  “You got to see your family, Nick. What’s that worth to you? How about a little appreciation?”

  Mason pulled over to the side of the expressway with a screech of tires and a long blare of horns from behind him. Cole rocked forward and back. Mason grabbed him by the collar of his jacket.

  “This life you gave me,” Mason said, putting his own face close to Cole’s, “it’s a horror show. And that bunker in New York … that was a suicide mission. I was dead walking into that place and you knew it.”

  “You were doing your job,” Cole said, his voice still calm and steady. “When we made our deal, was I not crystal clear on the terms? Did you not know exactly what you were getting into? Mobility, not freedom—remember? Answer the phone, do what you’re told. That’s the deal you agreed to.”

  “I had no choice. You knew that. I would have done anything to get out. And you used that to turn me into a … a fucking monster.”

  “I didn’t turn you into anything, Nick. You’re the same man who walked into that place. You’re just better at it now.”

  Mason pulled out the gun, racked it into firing position, and pressed it against Cole’s left temple.

  “It’s over,” Mason said. “I’m tearing up the contract. No more phone calls. No more killing.”

  “Go ahead,” Cole said, “blow my brains out. You’ll be doing the same thing to your family. Every one of them by the end of the night.”

  “No,”
Mason said. “No more threats to my family. That ends, too. I’m calling your bluff this time.”

  “Let me ask you something, Nick. And listen carefully. If Quintero doesn’t hear from me, he’s on his way to Elmhurst. When he gets there, do you want him to do your wife first? While the daughter watches? Or the other way around? It’s your choice.”

  “Quintero’s not doing that tonight,” Mason said, “Cconsidering that this is his gun I’m holding.”

  Cole laughed. “So, what, you think you’re winning this? You think it’s that easy?”

  Where have I heard that before? Mason asked himself.

  From Quintero. When I dared to suggest we should both get out.

  “Go ahead,” Cole said. “Pull the trigger.”

  Mason put the gun down, grabbed the stick shift, and slammed the car into gear.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Mason said as he pulled onto the road. “Sandoval’s not the only one I made a deal with tonight.”

  • • •

  AS HARPER DROVE AWAY FROM Burke’s neighborhood, he went over every conversation he’d had with the people who lived on the street, everything he’d seen in the bar and the apartment over it.

  Something didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t figure out what the hell it was.

  He tried to slow it all down in his mind, replaying everything he’d done. Everything he’d seen. Every step.

  The street. The bar. The apartment.

  The bed.

  It came to him in an instant, the one thing that didn’t belong.

  The bed was made.

  There was a less than one percent chance that the man who lived in that apartment would actually make his bed and let everything else go to hell. But a man who spent the last several years in prison? That’s a man who makes his bed the second he gets up every single goddamned morning. It’s so automatic, so much a matter of pure muscle memory, for a man who lived by a strict prison regimen, Burke probably didn’t even think about it.

  Burke was there.

  Harper turned his car around and sped back to the bar.

  • • •

  BURKE LOOKED AT HIS WATCH as he heard the car pull in behind the bar. He stayed seated in the corner, in the darkness, as he heard the door pushed open. Nick Mason came into the room, along with another man. A man he hadn’t seen in twelve years.