The Second Life of Nick Mason

by Steve Hamilton

  Mason grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his waist. The woman was Mason’s age, tall and lithe, dressed in a black business suit with a shirt the color of coral. Her dark hair was pinned up. She didn’t wear much makeup. Nick’s first impression was that she didn’t need to.

  Nick shook the water from his hair. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Diana Rivelli. Nobody told you about me?”

  “No.”

  She shook her head as she reached over to turn on the ceiling vent. “That figures.”

  “The room at the end of the hallway,” Nick said. “The one that was locked.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking a little unhappy with the thought of him trying her door. “That’s my room.”

  I have a roommate, Mason said to himself.

  “The clothes on the bed,” he said. “You bought those for me. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Actually, I did. But you’re welcome, anyway.”

  Mason had more questions, but she was already walking out of the room. He dried off and got dressed, trying on some of the new clothes. Jeans and a simple white dress shirt.

  When he came out into the kitchen, he took another look around and found the walk-in pantry. At the back of it was yet another door. He felt the temperature drop as he opened it and stepped inside. He turned on the light and saw the wooden latticework along the wall, with a bottle of wine in each opening. There had to be at least three hundred bottles in here, with another dozen champagne bottles in a small glass-doored refrigerator on the table, next to the openers and decanters.

  Mason’s first cell mate made prison wine with fruit smuggled out from his kitchen job, some sugar, some toast, all mashed up in a plastic bag and kept warm for a week. From that world to this one in just twenty-four hours. Mason shook his head, turned off the light, and went back out to the kitchen.

  He found a frying pan in the cabinet below the kitchen island, got some eggs and cheese from the refrigerator, then cut up some onions and peppers. Diana came back down the stairs.

  “You want an omelet?” he asked.

  She sat down on the other side of the island and looked around at the mess. “That’s the wrong pan. If you’re making an omelet, you use the omelet pan. And you’ve got it way too hot.”

  Mason worked the spatula around the edge of the omelet and saw that it was already burning. “It’s been a while.”

  She looked away and tucked a stray hair behind her ear.

  “Where do you work?” he said.

  “I manage a restaurant on Rush Street. Antonia’s. Come by tonight, have dinner, see where you’ll be working.”

  Mason stopped dead. “Where I’ll be working?”

  “You’re an assistant manager,” she said. “Take the omelet out of the pan . . . or the scrambled eggs . . . whatever you’d call that.”

  Mason scooped it onto a plate.

  “You won’t be cooking,” she said. “No offense.”

  “Cook, assistant manager, like it even fucking matters. What do I know about restaurants?”

  Eddie would be able to fake his way through this, he thought. He’d always been the great improviser ever since they were kids. How many times had they done jobs together, Eddie acting like he really belonged somewhere, and getting away with it?

  “You’ll get a pay stub in case somebody needs to see it. The IRS, whoever else. Other than that, your official job description as assistant manager will be to stay the hell out of everybody else’s way.”

  Mason took a bite of his omelet. “What can you tell me about Quintero?”

  “I don’t think we’ve ever spent more than a minute in the same room. I wouldn’t mind keeping it that way.”

  Mason looked her over. He couldn’t figure out how she could be so matter-of-fact about this, a convict released yesterday and today standing in her kitchen.

  I wonder if I’m the first one, he thought. Maybe they come through here like a regular changing of the guard.

  “What’s your story?” he said. “Why are you here?”

  “I told you, I run a restaurant.”

  “Does Cole own it?”

  She hesitated. “Not officially. Not on paper.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  She hesitated again. Maybe she’s another devoted follower of my rule number seven, Mason thought. Keep your personal life and your professional life separate. As separate as enriched uranium and those mullahs over in Iran.

  “I’ve known Darius a long time,” she finally said. “My father was one of his first business partners. It was my father’s restaurant.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s dead,” she said, looking away from him. “He said the wrong thing to the wrong person. Darius dealt with that person. And everyone else who was involved.”

  Mason studied her carefully. She was talking about something else, something that went beyond the restaurant business or buying him clothes. She lived in Cole’s town house and obviously had a history with the man. She called him by his first name.

  “You’ve been living here,” he said to her, not even a question, “ever since he went to Terre Haute.”

  This was a classy woman, Mason thought. Smart enough to know how attractive she was, smart enough to know that with her body and brains, she could do and have pretty much anything or anyone she wanted.

  But she stayed here.

  Her eyes met his. “We don’t need to talk about that,” she said. “I need to get to work.”

  Mason could understand this need to compartmentalize. To set everything else aside so you could focus on the one thing you had to do. For Mason, it was stealing a car, or knocking over a drug dealer, or, eventually, breaking into a building and drilling open a safe. But then he’d come home when it was done and he’d leave that work behind him. He’d have money, he’d have time, he’d have a way to keep living until it was time to work again.

  He could see the same thing in Diana. That same need to focus on her job, to keep everything else separate. Her father is killed and Cole “deals” with it. She lives here with him and then stays here, for years, after he’s gone. She gets up every morning and goes to work.

  She does her job.

  Now if Mason only knew what his job would be.

  “What can you tell me about what I’ll be doing here?” Mason said. “Besides staying out of your way at the restaurant.”

  “That’s between you and Darius,” she said.

  “I hated prison, but at least you knew what to expect there. Right down to the minute. Here, I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen next.”

  Mason thought about the twenty-year “contract” he had signed with Cole and how Cole was the only man who really knew what was written in it.

  “When the time comes,” Diana said, “just do exactly what you’re told. Nothing more, nothing less. Trust me, that’s the only way to play this.”

  “Those cameras outside,” Mason said, nodding toward the pool. “Don’t they bother you?”

  She looked outside and shrugged. “I don’t even think about them anymore.”

  “He could have put me anywhere,” Mason said. “Why here? So you can keep an eye on me? Is that part of your job?”

  “Maybe it’s part of your job to keep an eye on me.” She gathered up her purse, took out her keys, and went down the stairs.

  4

  After five years without a visit or a phone call, Nick Mason didn’t even know if the life he’d left behind would still be there, but he had to try.

  He went through the clothes in his room and put on a black sports coat over his jeans and white dress shirt. When he went down to the garage, he found the keys to the Mustang in the ignition. He hadn’t driven a car in five years. He opened the garage, put it in reverse, backed out into the street. Then he heade
d south.

  If you grow up in Chicago, you know it’s a city of neighborhoods, a great patchwork of separate communities, spreading out in three directions from the shores of Lake Michigan. Each neighborhood has its own rhythm, its own way of life, and its own food—from the deep-dish pizza in Streeterville to the pierogies in Avondale to the fried rattlesnake in La Villita.

  And if you grow up in what they officially call New City, like Nick Mason did, you know it’s really two separate neighborhoods in one: Back of the Yards and Canaryville. Back of the Yards is where you find the kids with the Polish last names, the grandchildren of the men who worked as meatpackers in the Union Stock Yards. On the other side of that is Canaryville. That’s where you find the Irish kids. Like Eddie Callahan. Or Finn O’Malley. Or a half-Irish, half-whatever kid named Nick Mason.

  Of the three, Eddie was the smartest. He was a short, redheaded kid with freckles, built as solid as a fullback. Surprisingly fast when he had to be. He didn’t always talk like a kid from Canaryville. He even had both parents at home most of the time.

  Finn was tall and underfed, with a haunted look in his eyes that made him irresistible to some girls and unsettling to everyone else. His mother worked at the corner grocery, and his father was usually either missing or sitting at one of the bars on Halsted Street.

  Nick’s mother lived in one tiny apartment after another and sometimes relied on charity from St. Gabriel’s. He had a vague memory of some men who’d come by to see her, but he couldn’t remember any single man as his father no matter how hard he tried. It bothered him sometimes, but then he’d think, what the hell, it’s probably just some local loser who may or may not be kicking around anymore. Sometimes he’d even wonder what would happen if he met an older man at the bar and saw enough resemblance in the face to make the connection. He honestly didn’t know what would happen next, but it probably wouldn’t be good.

  A year older, Finn was the first one of the three to get drunk, the first to get laid, the first to steal a car. He was the first to get picked up by the police and held in a cell until his mother could get off work and come pick him up.

  When Nick and Eddie followed Finn into the auto theft business, they discovered that they had a real talent for it. Something that Finn would never have. They were a lot more careful, for one thing. They were more patient. They knew to walk away if everything wasn’t right. Once they had that part figured, the rest was easy. It wasn’t like breaking into people’s houses. It wasn’t that kind of personal invasion. It was just cold metal on wheels.

  Eddie, in particular, got good at the technical side of car theft. He’d read the electrical diagrams on some of the models so he’d know where to find the wires to the main fuse, the ignition circuit, and the starter motor. Once you’ve got those three wires pulled out from the wiring harness and cut, you’re in business.

  It didn’t take Nick and Eddie long to find the people who would buy the cars from them. If you did a clean job, and if you were willing to go out and find exactly what they wanted, there would always be people willing to pay you.

  That’s what Mason did instead of junior and senior year of high school. That’s what he did instead of college. That was his job for six years. He got picked up a few times, but he was never charged. He was proud to say he’d never spent two consecutive nights in custody. The first time Mason and Eddie both got picked up together, Eddie’s parents convinced him to join the Army. Mason was surprised when he agreed to it. He wasn’t surprised when Eddie came back two years later.

  “Turns out I can shoot a gun,” Eddie said the first night Mason saw him again. “I mean, really shoot. And I loved it. But I couldn’t take the rest of it, some asshole pounding on a garbage can lid and telling me to get out of bed.”

  “So two years of your life . . .” Mason said.

  “Yeah, two years and I’m out,” Eddie said. “But I can still hit anything inside a thousand yards.”

  Mason had never used a gun on a job before. You don’t need one when you’re stealing cars. But now with Eddie back, they had a new plan.

  Robbing drug dealers.

  It took less time than stealing a car, it paid twice the money, and nobody involved in this transaction had any interest in calling the police. The basic routine was to find a dealer, observe his routine, catch him when he was carrying the maximum amount of money. Do it quickly, decisively, and then get the hell out. The risk was a lot higher, so that meant some new rules. And when it came to the guns, they needed one very carefully thought-out rule that would keep everyone alive, including the dealers. A real cowboy like Finn would have come up with something straight and simple like Don’t bring out the guns unless you plan on using them. But that’s bullshit. Absolute suicidal bullshit. Because you don’t want to use your gun. You just want the other man to think you will. The rule they came up with was Act like you want to shoot the man. Act like it’s the one thing you want more than anything else in the world.

  It was a rule that worked, because if you could sustain that belief within yourself, then the man you were robbing would believe it, too. No dealer wanted to die over a few thousand dollars. Not if it was money he could make back the next day.

  Of course, you could only do that kind of job so often. It wasn’t like stealing cars, with a fresh supply lined up and down the street every single day. You knocked over dealers and they started putting extra men on the corners. So you backed off and let things go back to normal. Then you hit them again.

  The business stayed profitable for two years. Then one night they had a house lined up in Roseland. Abandoned for months, it became a place for users to score, but within another couple of days the operation would be moved to yet another house. All they had to do was wait for the right moment, enter in front and back to introduce themselves, take the money, and say good night.

  They were just getting ready to move when another vehicle pulled up on the other side of the street. A big Ford Bronco. Three white men got out. One of the men went around back. The other two went to the front. Their guns were out before they even hit the door. It was as if they had borrowed the same plan and then executed it exactly as Nick, Eddie, and Finn would have.

  They were back out of the house within two minutes. One of them was carrying a grocery bag. They got in their Bronco and took off.

  “You know who that was?” Eddie asked.

  Nobody answered. The way these guys looked, the way they moved, the fact that they didn’t care about being seen . . . that was Mason’s first encounter with dirty cops. It wouldn’t be his last. But, for now, it meant one thing: when the cops take over your business, it’s time to find a new one.

  • • •

  After six years of stealing cars and two years of taking down drug dealers, Nick Mason graduated to high-end robbery. He got his first job through one of his old chop shop contacts, who told Mason about a business supplying and servicing video poker games in bars. The bar customers weren’t supposed to be playing for real money, of course, but the owner had been overheard complaining about how the “not real” money was piling up and he didn’t want to put it in the bank and have to account for it on the books. So it was all just wads of cash that barely fit into the hiding places all over his shop. He hadn’t spent any of that money on a safe.

  As soon as Mason shared this with Eddie and Finn, Finn wanted to bust right into the place and put a gun to the man’s head and ask him where the money was hidden. But Mason knew this was an opportunity to learn how to do this kind of job right. Like a pro.

  Mason watched the place for a few days. It dealt with more than just the video poker. It was a “vending and amusement supply company,” for cigarette machines, pinball machines, video games, you name it. There was always someone in the building from eight in the morning until six in the evening, at which point everything was locked up and the alarm was turned on. There was a side window with thick iron bars, but
Mason could look through and see the work area in the back of the building. Mason made detailed notes so he’d be sure to have a plan once he got inside, along with the proper tools.

  Meanwhile, Eddie was learning everything he could about the alarm system. He was the one who knew how to hot-wire cars, so he was the natural choice for alarm man. The sticker in the front window told Eddie what kind of system it was. All he had to do was figure out how to disarm the system within the thirty-second delay after the front door was opened.

  When the night came, the three men broke the glass on the rear door and were inside in seconds. Eddie went straight to the security panel in the front of the building and disabled it, which for that particular model meant grabbing it and pulling the entire old-school landline piece of crap right off the wall. Mason started searching through locked metal cabinets, using the large bolt cutters he had brought with him. He came up empty every time. Eddie joined him and started going through the hollow consoles of the vending machines and video games. Finn just poked around, getting more and more anxious.

  “I told you how we should have done this,” Finn said just as Mason pushed up the ceiling tiles and pulled down a bundle of money.

  The three of them spent the next few minutes pushing up every ceiling tile in the storage area. When they were done, they had a garbage bag full of cash, over twelve thousand dollars for one night’s work. One week if you counted the prep work. They had learned some good lessons that were useful on their next job. And the job after that. The ideal target was anyplace where a large amount of cash was put to bed for the night. Eddie learned a little more about alarm systems with each job. Mason learned about cheap safes and how to drill them open.

  The last job the three men did together, years before getting together again one more time at the harbor, was another cash business with a drillable safe. By then, Mason wasn’t relying on anyone else for the setups. He’d learned how to recognize the easy targets. In this case, it was a car audio store, and as Mason stood at the counter, he could see the safe in the back room, a model he knew he could drill in ten minutes. It was practically begging to be opened.