The Second Life of Nick Mason

by Steve Hamilton

  “I still live in Chicago,” Cole said. “That’s the thing you gotta understand. It’s still my town.”

  Cole leaned in toward Mason as he said this. He put out one hand like he was holding the city right there for Mason to look at.

  “From there,” Cole said, “I can do anything, Nick. Anything I need to do. But sometimes I need a good set of eyes on the other side of these walls. A good pair of hands out there.”

  “You don’t have anybody on the outside?”

  “Oh, I got people who work for me,” Cole said. “People I can trust. But I need somebody special, Nick. I need a warrior. A man who can go anywhere. Do anything. I know I got myself stuck on this word, but it’s the only word that really gets at what I’m saying here. I need a samurai.”

  “I can’t help you,” Mason said. “Unless you want to wait twenty years.”

  “Fuck twenty years, Nick. Do you really want to wait that long?”

  “I don’t see any choice.”

  “Listen to me,” Cole said. “There’s gonna be this man someday, he’ll come to this prison to do your first parole hearing. Some fat white boy, civil servant type wearing a tie and glasses. You can see him, can’t you, Nick? Like he’s standing right here in front of us. Wanted to be a cop maybe, couldn’t cut it, so now he’s a parole officer. Only way he can have any kind of power over people. But that job, even that’s too hard, chasing down convicts all day, so they ask him to serve on the board and he’s all over that. Sit at a table, hear a man’s story, how he’s changed and found Jesus and he’s ready to be a productive citizen again. It’s all up to him. The man on the board. And if he got himself laid that morning, he puts down a big APPROVED on the file.”

  Cole made a fist and stamped an imaginary file.

  “Or if his kid told him to go fuck himself, he puts down a big DENIED.”

  He stamped again.

  “That man’s never gonna sit in judgment of me, Nick. That day won’t come. But that man’s waiting for you. He’s out there right now, but you know how far away he is? That man hasn’t even signed up for the job yet. Hasn’t even done his two years at the community college. He’s sitting in some junior high school class, looking out the window. Don’t even have hair on his balls yet.”

  Cole stopped for a moment, shaking his head, tapping his fist on the bed.

  “That’s too long to wait, Nick. Too long to wait for that boy to grow up to be the motherfucker who denies your parole.”

  “You’re telling me all this for a reason,” Mason said. “What is it?”

  “I’m talking about time, Nick. What’s it worth to you? Twenty fucking years. You’ll be what, fifty-five? Your daughter’ll be what, almost thirty years old? You miss her growing up. Maybe she even has kids of her own by then. You miss all of that. But what if that’s just one story, Nick? What if there’s another story where you get yourself out of here and she’s still nine years old and you got a chance to be her father again?”

  Mason looked at the man sitting on the bed next to him. He still didn’t know what to say and it felt like a good time to be careful about that. Because none of this was making any sense.

  “Listen to me.” Cole stood up. He hooked one hand behind the back of Mason’s neck and twisted his head so that it was inches from his. “You need to hear every word of what I’m saying to you. Because this is how it’s going to work. Those two cops who put you away? One of them’s a detective, who’s gonna stand up in court and swear he put that blood in your car. The whole case gonna fall apart on them. They gonna vacate the conviction, Nick. That’s what they call it. And that prosecutor, he won’t want nothing to do with you. He won’t touch a retrial because it’s all gone to shit. You walk out of here twenty years early, Nick. Do you hear me? You walk the fuck out. No parole. No felony record. Like it never happened.”

  Mason knew about prison gangs. La eMe. La Nuestra Familia. Mara Salvatrucha. He knew they had power that extended outside the prison walls. He knew they could say one word and make things happen. But this . . . This was impossible.

  “Remember what I do, Nick. What’s my fucking specialty? I make things clean.”

  “I’m not a wad of dirty money. It’s not the same.”

  “I’ve been working on this,” Cole said. “You’ll be outta here by the end of the month. I’m setting you up on the outside. Everything you need, it’s all taken care of.”

  “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.”

  12

  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 per
son 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.

  13

  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 co
p 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.