The Second Life of Nick Mason

by Steve Hamilton

  “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.

  • • •

  He 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.

  10

  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 transl
ate 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.”

  11

  “What do you know about the samurai, Nick?”

  The two men were walking along the perimeter of the yard. A chain-link fence ran alongside them, ten feet high and topped with razor wire that gleamed in the sunlight. Beyond that there was the other fence. More razor wire. On the issue of which side a man belonged, there would never be any doubt in his mind.

  “Not much,” Mason said. “Why?”

  “They got this code they live by. Called bushido. You ever hear of that?”

  “No.”

  “Bushido,” Cole said. He walked slowly when he was talking. “I like that word. I can look back on things in my life now, see how important that was, having a code like that. This shit goes back a thousand years, Nick.”

  Mason knew how many books Cole read. Between morning roll and lunchtime, that’s when any man with sense left Darius Cole alone because that was the time reserved for reading.

  Cole had an account with the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square and they would send him a new box of books every Friday.

  The man read at least one book a day, Nick thought, but he couldn’t shake the streets of Englewood when he spoke.

  “You got some of that,” Cole said. “What makes you stand out around here. You got yourself some bushido.”

  This is what they did. Every day, after Cole received his afternoon visitors, this was Mason’s time to listen to him. Mason didn’t have to say much in return. In fact, that was probably one of the things Cole appreciated the most, Nick realized, just being able to talk to somebody who knew when to shut the fuck up and listen.

  “Don’t have to know the word,” Cole said. “Don’t have to know anything about it. That don’t mean you don’t have it. You remember those first couple times you came down here?”

  “I remember.”

  “What did we talk about? The rules you got for yourself. To keep your life in order. Keep your mind right. The way you handle things around here. I see you, you got this way of moving around the three worlds in here. White, black, Latino. Whenever you gotta leave your own world, make your way in another . . . You don’t compromise yourself. You don’t give up nothing. But you don’t look for trouble, neither. I know you think it’s no big deal. Just one day at a time. But when I see that, I see this bushido, Nick. You got that shit up to your eyeballs.”

  Cole had been reading everything he could find about Japan lately, a place that appealed to him somehow, even if it was ten thousand miles away. Maybe that was the reason right there, the fact that it was on the other side of the world, different from this prison in southern Indiana in every way you could imagine. A place where honor meant everything, where a man would rather drive a knife into his own gut than bring shame on himself.

  But Cole was just about done with the books on Japan. Mason figured he’d hear about samurai and bushido for a few more days and that would be the end of it.

  He was coming up on one year in SHU by then. His cell mate was one of the two big bodyguards who had originally brought him over for his first visit. Mixed-race roomies were something you didn’t see anywhere else in the prison. In this block, it was commonplace. Just one more thing to learn about Cole, because Cole was unquestionably the boss of this unit. And that was why this was probably the most color-blind unit of any federal penitentiary in the country.

  Mason would usually have lunch at Cole’s table. Afterward, Cole would receive his visitors. He would mediate disputes. He would administer justice. There would be fines levied. Or restitution paid between one inmate and another. Sometimes justice would get a little more physical. Not right there in Cole’s cell, of course. It would happen later, out in the yard or while waiting in line. It would be quick and severe and there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind who sanctioned it.

  Everyone called him Mr. Cole. Even the guards.

  Mason kept waiting for the hook. He knew there had to be something asked of him in return for this new living arrangement. For all of this deferential treatment. Just listening to the man talk about books every day couldn’t be enough. It would be Mason’s turn to administer the justice, to find the man out on the yard. He’d grown up on the streets of Canaryville, so he knew how to fight. But Cole never asked him to do anything else. I never had a father, Mason said to himself more than once. Maybe this is what it feels like.

  A few days after that walk in the yard, Mason was sitting in his cell. It was a tough day for him, tough in a way he didn’t want to admit. Just the fact that it was this date on the calendar. Cole came in and stood over him. He had that way of walking right up to a man—any man in the block—just standing in the man’s space, maybe putting an arm on his shoulder. Something only he could do.

  “You’re thinking about her,” Cole said.

  Mason looked up at him.

  “Your daughter’s birthday.”

  Mason didn’t even bother asking him how he knew that. He didn’t bother reminding Cole about his rule, either, that he didn’t talk about his family here.

  “Some days are harder in here,” Cole said. “Can’t help that.”

  Then Cole did something he’d never done before. He sat down on Mason’s bed, a foot away from him. Mason saw the long scar on the back of Cole’s right hand. He already knew the story behind it. Cole had gone to see a girl when he was seventeen years old, but she lived in the wrong neighborhood. He was two blocks past a line he shouldn’t have crossed when two white men put a knife into the back of that hand. To this day, the jagged scar would be on his mind whenever he shook a man’s hand for the first time.

  “I saw you talking to Shelley the other day,” Cole said. “Not thinking of getting ink, are you?”

  Shelley was the man with the illegal tattoo gun. He’d made it with the motor from a CD player, an empty pen barrel, and a needle made by stretching out the spring from a stapler. He used burnt shoe polish for the ink. There’s probably one such man in every unit in every prison in America.

  “No,” Mason said.

  “Today’s the kinda day you might do that,” Cole said. “Get your daughter’s name on your arm or something.”

  “I’m not getting a tattoo.”

  “That’s all you need when you get outta here,” Cole said. “Cheap prison ink all under your skin, turning green. Might as well write CONVICT on your forehead.”

  “If you hate tattoos so much, how come you let Shelley stay in business? One word from you and he’d be shut down.”

  “He can ink anybody else he wants,” Cole said. “Just not you.”

  Mason stood up. He didn’t mind listening to Cole most days. But today was not most days.

  “No disrespect,” Mason said, “I’m taking a walk.”

  “Sit down, Nick. You wanna be alone, I get that. But you should be talking to me about something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’re ready to hear this,” Cole said. “Sit the hell back down.”

  Mason let out a breath and sat down on the bed.

  “I’m going to ask you something,” Cole said. “If you could walk out of here right now, go see your daughter, what would you say to her?”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “I’m saying if you could, Nick. How old is she?”

  “She’s nine.”

  “Nine years old,” Cole said. “She hasn’t seen you since—what?— four years old.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You think she remember you?”

  “Why are you asking me this?”

&nb
sp; “Other day,” Cole said, “you remember, we was talking about bushido?”

  Mason took a moment, let out another breath. “I can’t do this.”

  “Shut up and listen to me, Nick. Something you need to hear. There’s more to that code than just having your mind right. You gotta have loyalty, too. You gotta be serving something. Somebody worth giving that honor to. So you get honor back in return. You hear what I’m saying? You know what a daimyo is, Nick?”

  “No.”

  “A daimyo is the master. A daimyo is the boss. If a samurai don’t have a daimyo to serve, he’s just a rōnin. Like a homeless man. A vagabond. Wandering around the world, begging for food. No purpose in his life. Look around you, Nick. Look at all the men in here. How many of them does that describe to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Mason said. “Most of them.”

  “Most of them, yeah. How about every man in here? I hate seeing you being one of those men when you could be doing something else. Something a hell of a lot better.”

  “What are we talking about here?”

  “You could be a samurai, Nick. That’s what I’m saying. I look at you, I don’t see another inmate. I see a samurai.”

  Mason didn’t know what to say. They had passed right by the usual idle prison talk, even by Cole’s standards. Now they seemed to be heading into something else.

  “Mr. Cole,” Nick said. “I know you pretty well by now. You’re always thinking eight moves ahead of everybody else. So if you’ve got something in mind for me, why don’t you just tell me what it is?”

  “Is that where you think I’m going with this? You think I need a samurai around this place? I got plenty of men who do anything I want. All I gotta do is say the word and it’s done.”

  “Then I don’t get it,” Mason said. “What do you want me to do?”

  “You know how I’m always talking about this place, how do I say it, being a problem of geography?”

  Mason took one look around them. The cell just big enough to fit two men, a small desk, a toilet with no privacy. Beyond that, concrete walls and a thick pane of glass. Fluorescent lights buzzing over their heads. A dozen locked doors and then the fences and a small army of armed men standing between them and the world outside this place. Yeah, Mason said to himself, just a problem of geography.