The Second Life of Nick Mason

by Steve Hamilton

  But there’s no way we’re going back up these stairs, he thought. With or without Eddie.

  There could be more cops up there. Even if it’s clear, we won’t have a vehicle.

  He closed the door and came back down the stairs.

  “This way,” he said, grabbing her hand again.

  They started walking. He knew it was a long way back. He hoped she had the strength to make it. They moved from one circle of light to the next, marking their progress that way even if nothing seemed to change ahead of them. He tried to keep her out of the standing water, but it was impossible. Her feet were soon as wet as his and she started shivering.

  “Eddie!” Mason said into his headset, not sure if he had a signal again yet. “Clear!”

  “Here . . .”

  “Get out!”

  “Going . . .”

  They came to the crane Mason had passed on the way in. He figured they were halfway out.

  “Almost there,” he said to her.

  She didn’t answer him. He pulled her up for a moment to look into her eyes. She had gone somewhere else. But at least she was still moving, her body on automatic pilot, so he took her hand and kept walking with her.

  More rings of light until he saw where they ended. Where the night sky could already be seen through the last ring and the air was getting fresher with every step.

  He looped his arm around Diana’s back and held her up for a few more steps.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  He found a dry spot against the rounded wall and eased her down into a sitting position. She folded her arms over her knees and put her head down. She didn’t say a word.

  “Be right back,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  He brought the shotgun up to a ready position and made his way slowly to the mouth of the tunnel. Drinking in the night air, he caught his second wind. One more shot of energy to get him across these last few yards.

  Mason didn’t want to speak into the headset now. He didn’t want to make any sound at all.

  He inched his way to the last ring of light, staying low, taking one careful step at a time, each step giving him a better angle on whatever he might see outside. He switched to the opposite side of the tunnel, then back again. Another step, then another. Until he was at the edge and could carefully scan the entire scene.

  His car was there. The darkened trailer behind it. The giant construction vehicles still asleep in their places. The far rim of the quarry high above everything else.

  Mason took another step, out into the night. He could see along the cliff in either direction. Nobody there.

  No Eddie. No Jeep. He was already on his way out.

  We’re safe, Mason said to himself. This whole crazy fucking thing worked. Which is yet another confirmation of why Cole chose me. He said so himself. I might not even understand it until I saw it with my own eyes. Now I have.

  Because here’s the simple truth. There aren’t many other men who could have done this.

  But the thought didn’t give Mason any satisfaction. He wasn’t even sure what it meant—about what kind of man he really was—but there’d be time to think about that later.

  He went back to where Diana was still slumped against the wall. When he bent down to her, she shivered and tried to push him away.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He picked her up and carried her out of the tunnel, across the open ground, working hard to keep his balance, finally getting her to the car and opening up the passenger’s-side door. When he put her in the seat and closed the door, she fell back, her head against the window, her hands covering her face.

  Mason went around to the driver’s side and got behind the wheel. He started the engine and turned on the headlights.

  Another cop was standing directly in front of the car.

  He had his pistol leveled at Mason’s head, and he was smart enough to swing himself around, away from the front of the car, so there’d be no chance of Mason running him over.

  Mason had put the shotgun between the two front seats. He played it out in his head as the cop came around to the passenger’s-side window, his gun still pointed at him. One move for the shotgun and he’d get it right through the glass.

  The cop spoke to him, but Mason couldn’t make out the words. Probably something about getting the fuck out of the car. Or, maybe, don’t even bother.

  The two men were frozen in that position for a single second, just long enough for Mason to have his one last hope. That second ended when a .338 Lapua Magnum round tore through the man’s body, going through the Kevlar like it was toilet paper. The man fell onto the windshield, the blood already streaming from his nose and mouth.

  Then a movement. On Mason’s left. A face, vaguely familiar to him in that fraction of a second, then pure reaction as he picked up the shotgun and fired. The blast was louder than any so far, a spike in each ear, as it sent buckshot and pebbles of glass at the man who had appeared at the driver’s-side window. Diana kept screaming as Mason put his foot down on the accelerator and the tires threw limestone dust high in the air behind them. The dead man slid off the windshield as the tires found purchase, the second man down on the ground somewhere behind them, as Mason weaved around the construction vehicles at impossible speed, sliced through the ponds of water, drove through the pass-through into the other section of the quarry, and then climbed the long, sloping shelf up to the access road, fighting every inch of the way to keep the car from falling off into the abyss below.

  She had stopped screaming by the time Mason exploded through the gate. She had no breath to scream anymore. No strength. She had nothing left.

  But Mason did.

  32

  Mason didn’t know where he was driving. He didn’t even know which direction. He was just getting away from the quarry as fast as he could. Drive the fuck away, he told himself. Don’t stop until you’re somewhere safe.

  Diana was slumped in the seat next to him. Her eyes were open, but they weren’t focused on anything at all. He grabbed her arm and shook it.

  “Diana!”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Diana! Are you okay?”

  As Mason made a quick turn, she was thrown against the side of the car. Then she fell back to the same position. She was still staring at nothing.

  “Answer me! Are you okay?”

  She inhaled a long breath, ragged and sputtering. Like a diver breaking through to the surface. “Let me out!”

  “No.”

  “Let me out! Let me out right now!” She grabbed his arm, her fingernails digging into his skin. “Pull this car over, God damn it!”

  He jammed on the brakes and brought the car to a skidding stop on the side of the road. Diana was thrown forward in her seat, then came back hard. She grabbed at the door handle.

  “Listen to me,” Mason said, reaching over and trying to pull her hand away from the handle. He looked outside, had no idea where they were. Still outside the city somewhere. A darkened warehouse on one side of the road, an empty field on the other. “Will you fucking listen to me for one second?”

  First she was comatose. Then she was clawing at the car door like an animal trying to escape its cage.

  “You need to calm down,” he said.

  She took a few more gasping breaths before she could speak again. “You want me to calm down?” she said. “I was just kidnapped, Nick. I was kidnapped and taken down a fucking tunnel. And then you came and you . . . you . . .” She tried to find the right words. “You killed four people right in front of me! You killed four cops, Nick! I’ve got their blood on me!”

  She showed him the sleeves of her shirt. The white fabric was sprinkled with bright red dots. He didn’t want to point out that the same blood was all over her face.

  And he didn’t feel like telling her that he’d
only killed two of them.

  Eddie had killed the third.

  As for the fourth . . . He flashed back on the fraction of a second he saw the cop standing there on the other side of his car window. He could see the man’s face and those cold gray eyes. He could see the man’s tactical vest. Then the explosion from the shotgun, aimed right at the man’s chest.

  That cop was probably still alive.

  He’d only seen the man once before, from a distance. But he knew exactly who it was. Sergeant Bloome.

  “That’s their blood, Nick! And you’re telling me to calm down?”

  “Fine,” Mason said, letting go of her arm. “If you want to get out, get out. They’ll find you and they’ll kill you. But at least you’ll be out of this car.”

  She was still breathing like she couldn’t get enough air. Mason put the car back into gear and kept driving.

  “There’s only one safe place for you right now,” Mason said, trying to put some calm into his voice. “And that’s with me.”

  “Are you crazy? Every cop in this city will be looking for you.”

  “No,” Mason said. “That’s the last thing they want. They arrest me, they start asking questions. They start asking questions, they’ll want to know what I was doing there. They’ll want to know what you were doing there. And they’ll really want to know what Bloome and his men were doing there without backup.”

  “What was I doing there?” she said. “What did they want from me?”

  “They want something I have,” Mason said. “And then they want us dead.”

  Her breathing was finally settling back into a normal rhythm. But her hands were still shaking.

  “Where do we go?”

  “Not home, not the restaurant,” he said. “They’re not safe.”

  “Then where?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  They were heading straight back to the city, so he turned and cut to the west until they were in the forest that ran along the canal. He turned onto a gravel road leading off into the trees, the branches scratching at both sides of the car. He came to a fork and went left, then to another fork and went right. All the way into the middle of the forest until the ground rose and the road ended in a clearing.

  Mason stopped the car. Diana had her head back on the seat, but her eyes were still wide open. I wonder if she’ll ever be able to close them again, Mason thought, without reliving this night.

  “Where are we?” she said.

  “Nowhere,” he said. “Good place to be.”

  “How does this end?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “My house?”

  “Gone.”

  “My restaurant?”

  “Forget it.”

  “What about my life?”

  “That life is over,” he said.

  She shook her head and looked out at the trees.

  “This goes back to Darius,” she said. “Those cops . . .”

  “They were in business with him.”

  “But he’s always owned cops,” she said. “As long as I can remember. I’d see them parked outside on the street. Darius would send Quintero out to talk to them, give them their money. He hated cops his whole life. He’d tell me stories about what they did to some of the kids on the streets when he was growing up. But he said you had to learn to use the thing you hate the most. ‘Tie your wagon to the Devil’s tail,’ he said.”

  “This one got loose,” Mason said. “So Cole had to respond. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I was doing just fine until you got here,” she said. “It wasn’t the exact life I wanted, but I was making it work.”

  “This was not my idea, Diana.”

  “You brought this on me.”

  He felt like he was about to say the wrong thing, so he got out of the car and walked away. He looked up at the stars in the moonless night. To the east, he saw a great smudge of light in the sky. This city where he came from. This city where nothing would ever be the same again.

  We need to go somewhere, he said to himself. We need to go somewhere safe where we can figure out our next move.

  Which means one thing. There is one man out there who told me to come to him with any problems. He remembered his exact words. You need something, you call me. You get in a situation, you call me. Don’t get creative. Don’t try to fix anything yourself. You call me.

  That’s his job. He couldn’t have made it any more clear.

  He took out his cell phone.

  He’s the only man who can help us, Mason thought. So why am I not calling him?

  He heard the car door opening behind him. Then he heard the scream. As he wheeled around, he saw Diana halfway out of her seat, one foot on the ground. She was looking at the side-view mirror. At the blood on her face.

  He went over and pulled her up from the car. He wrapped his arms around her and held on to her as she sobbed into his chest.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “What are we going to do?” she said. “Where are we going to go?”

  “I know a place we can go,” he said. “It’ll be safe there.”

  He picked up the phone again. He dialed Eddie.

  “Thank you for what you did,” he said. “You saved our lives. Now we’re coming to your house.”

  There was a long silence on the other end.

  “You can’t bring this here,” Eddie finally said. “I’m glad I got a chance to help you out. You know that. But whatever this was, you can’t bring it into this house.”

  “You can open the door,” Mason said. “Or I can knock it down.”

  33

  Sergeant Vince Bloome stood over the dead body of his friend and fellow SIS detective, trying desperately to figure out how the hell he was going to explain any of this.

  Detective Sandoval’s question came back to him.

  Do you even fucking remember when you were a cop?

  He’d been a Chicago cop for the past twenty-nine years, including sixteen in Narcotics, then seven in SIS. But, right now, he didn’t know the answer to that question.

  He went over to where Jay Fowler lay on the ground, got down on one knee, and turned the man over. His eyes were open. Shot from behind, Bloome thought. One of my best friends in the unit. One of the few men I’d even think about asking to be here tonight.

  Bloome’s head was still ringing. He felt sick and dizzy, unsteady on his feet. Feeling along his right shoulder and neck, he came back with blood on his hand. He’d been hit by some scatter from the buckshot and by some glass. The Kevlar vest had taken most of it.

  Squinting in the near darkness, he scanned the construction vehicles, the cliffs, the empty road that ran along the top. Then the ring of the tunnel, casting the only light in this whole place. The door to the trailer was still open behind him, but they had left the lights off. There was nobody else here.

  He looked back down at the dead man’s face. Fowler had been part of SIS for five years. He came out of the Narcotics unit, just like Bloome had. He was young, he was ambitious, he wanted to be a rock star cop. And that meant SIS. He’d found Bloome in Homan Square, had walked right up to him in the hallway, told him he’d be part of the team someday. Bloome had remembered him. When they had an opening, Fowler was the first man he called.

  He was married now. His wife’s name was Joanne. Everybody called her Jo. Jay and Jo. She was seven months pregnant.

  I did this, Bloome said to himself. I brought this man here. He will never see his own child.

  Bloome stood up and tried moving his neck, felt the muscles tightening, the skin stretching over something hard, embedded just under the surface. He stopped testing it.

  “Reagan,” he said out loud. “Koniczek.”

  The two men inside the tunn
el. Bloome knew they were dead. He knew by the simple math of a dozen gunshots and Mason and the woman somehow walking away.

  They were dead.

  Walter Reagan. John Koniczek. He knew their wives, too, just as well as he knew Fowler’s. He knew their kids.

  None of these men should have been here.

  Bloome spotted his gun lying on the ground, went back over and picked it up. He brushed it off before holstering it and, as he did, he remembered the day he bought it. Chicago cops have to buy their own weapons and he had picked out a Sig P250, chambered with .45 ACP shells. It was the only weapon he’d ever carried, even today when it was no longer on the approved list. If you already had one, they let you keep it.

  He remembered the first time he had fired it on the streets. Just a few years in, on a West Side buy-and-bust, some low-level runner taking a crack at them as he fled down an alley. Back when they had no idea what they were doing. When their best idea for finding the traffic was looking for white buyers in the wrong neighborhoods or picking up junkies and turning them into informants. Trying to work their way from the bottom up. And never getting anywhere.

  Things didn’t get much better when Bloome joined the Narcotics unit as a detective. It still felt like a losing battle every day. But then he got partnered with a detective named Ray Jameson. A former college wrestler with permanently mauled ears and a personality as big as his body, he was a human wrecking ball when it came to police work, a perfect counterpart to the cold, machinelike precision of Vincent Bloome. These were two men who never should have gotten along, not for five minutes, but it was Bloome’s couch that Jameson chose to sleep on whenever his wife threw him out of the house. And from the moment Bloome and Jameson started working cases together, it was obvious their individual strengths formed a perfect combination to get things done on the streets.

  Bloome and Jameson were putting up good numbers, but the overall picture in Chicago was getting worse every year. More drugs, more violence. More pressure on the mayor to do something about it. Anything.