The Second Life of Nick Mason

by Steve Hamilton

  “Let’s just say I hate dirty cops as much as you do.”

  “Why not give this to the feds?” Sandoval said, holding up the box.

  “In what universe do I go looking around for federal agents, Detective?”

  “This is going to make me a pariah,” Sandoval said. “You know that, right? I’m not Internal Affairs. I’m Homicide. I’ll be back on a seven-man team, working with the same guys every day. What do you think’s gonna happen to me when they find out about this?”

  Mason didn’t bother trying to convince him he could stay anonymous. He knew that would be a lie.

  “They’ll know,” Sandoval said like he was reading Mason’s mind. “Cops talk to each other. I’ll be the most hated cop in Chicago.”

  “Maybe you will,” Mason said. “But I think this is why you became a cop in the first place.”

  Sandoval turned away. He looked out at the water for a while.

  “You gotta understand something,” he said, still facing away from him.

  “What is it?”

  Sandoval turned back.

  “No, I mean you really need to understand what I’m about to tell you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “This changes nothing between us,” Sandoval said. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Not even half a day’s head start if I ever decide to run?”

  “Absolutely . . . nothing.”

  “I didn’t think it would,” Mason said.

  The two men watched each other. They waited for something else to be said that would bring this to a close. Sandoval had a disk full of evidence to sort through. Mason had one more phone call to make.

  “I’m still gonna take you down,” Sandoval said.

  “You’re going to try,” Mason said.

  Sandoval nodded to him. Then he walked away.

  36

  Mason sat in his car on Lincoln Park West. He’d been there for two hours and still hadn’t gone inside. Instead, he had parked his car on the street and just watched the place, looking up at the high windows of the beautiful town house and thinking about Darius Cole sitting in his cell at Terre Haute.

  His driver’s-side glass was still gone. There was a crack on the passenger’s-side window, another on the windshield. But he had bigger problems to solve that day.

  He picked up his cell phone and called Quintero. It was answered on the first ring.

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m around,” Mason said. “Listen to me. This is important.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “What do you mean you don’t have it?”

  “Somebody else has it now,” Mason said. “You’ll read about it in the paper.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Mason could hear the sounds of power tools in the background. Quintero was at the chop shop.

  “If this is some kind of fucking joke . . .”

  “I need to talk to him,” Mason said.

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Okay, fine,” Mason said. “Visiting hours start at eight o’clock on Saturday morning. I’ll be first in line.”

  “That would be a big mistake.”

  “Then make it happen,” Mason said. “Today.”

  He ended the call and tossed the phone on the seat next to him.

  Yet another order disobeyed, because now Mason was doing something he should never do, putting everyone at risk. Himself, Quintero, Cole, even some prison guard who’d have to supply the illegal cell phone.

  But it was the only way.

  He sat there and waited. He watched the town house. He watched the street. People were walking through the park, enjoying the day. Families were on their way to the zoo.

  An hour later, the phone rang. It was Quintero.

  “I’m going to give you a number to call,” he said. “This is a onetime event.”

  “Just give me the number.”

  He waited for it, then ended the call without saying another word. His heart was pounding in his throat as he dialed the number and waited.

  “Who is this?” a voice said.

  “Let me talk to him.”

  “Is this Mason?”

  Something about the high pitch in the man’s voice made him think about the undersized guard who came to him in the yard that day, just over a year ago, to deliver that first invitation to come meet Darius Cole.

  “Let me talk to him,” Mason repeated.

  “Hold on,” the man said. Then his voice became distant as he took his mouth away from the phone to say, “You have ten minutes, Mr. Cole.”

  Mason pictured the man, two hundred miles south of him, taking off his reading glasses before putting the phone to his ear.

  “This is not a smart phone call,” Cole said. “What do you want?”

  “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “That’s not how this works, Nick.”

  “I’ve done everything you asked,” Mason said. “Things I never thought I’d do.”

  “Until last night,” Cole said. “What were you thinking?”

  “I did that for myself,” Mason said. “Way I see it, we were already even. Whatever I owed you, I’m paid up.”

  “You don’t get it, Nick. For you, there is no ‘even.’ There is no ‘out.’”

  “Listen to me—”

  “No, listen to me,” Cole said. “I need you to keep doing what you’re doing. And if you ever disobey me again—”

  “I can’t do it,” Mason said, his grip tightening on the phone. “Even if that means going back to prison.”

  “Before another word comes out of your mouth,” Cole said, “think about what you’re going to say.”

  “I’ll serve out the rest of my sentence right now.”

  “What do you think would happen if you really came back here?”

  “I’d finish my sentence. One day at a time. Like anybody else.”

  “No, let me educate you. You remember how I said you was able to move around this place—between the whites, the blacks, the Latinos—without ever compromising yourself? How much I admired that?”

  “What about it?”

  “It won’t be that way if you come back. All three of those worlds will turn against you. Even the whites. Especially the whites. You’ll be fair game for any man. Anytime. I’ll make a fucking game of it. Whoever fucks you up the most, I’ll make sure that man gets taken care of. Anything he wants, anything his family wants. Do you hear what I’m saying, Nick? You come back here and you’ll be passed around this place like toilet paper every single day for the rest of your life. And believe me, I’ll make sure you never get out of this place again. Even after I’m dead, you’ll still be here.”

  “There are some things even you can’t do,” Mason said. “I’ll do my twenty, if I have to, and then I’ll walk out.”

  “Nick, who you think goes down for those first two jobs you did? You don’t think I’m ready for anything that can happen? You’ll be wearin’ both of those jobs around your neck like a fucking bow tie. Your twenty years will turn into two hundred.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “I’m not sure your ex-wife will want to roll the same dice, Nick.”

  Mason felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He put a hand on the steering wheel and started pushing on it until the muscles in his arms were drawn taut.

  “She has no part in this,” he said, knowing even as he said it that it was untrue.

  “She was always part of this,” Cole said, “and so was your daughter. From the beginning. You need to listen to me very carefully, Nick, because everything that happens to you, it’ll be doubled for them. Every time you’re beaten, every time you’re violated, you’ll know that the exact same thing
will be happening to them. The exact same thing. Times two.”

  Mason closed his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t make a sound.

  “Those twenty years you were gonna work for me just turned into a lifetime sentence,” Cole said. “And don’t ever fucking call me again.”

  37

  Mason got out of the car. He was trying to breathe. He was trying to draw some air into his lungs and breathe.

  No, he said to himself. Then he said the same word over and over a hundred more times.

  He walked down the shoreline for a hundred yards until he realized he still had the phone in his hand.

  Then he threw it as far as he could out into the water.

  He kept walking. Until the walkway made its big curl at North Avenue Beach and came to a dead stop. He turned around and looked at the buildings rising high above the water without really seeing them.

  “What the fuck did I expect?” he asked himself out loud. “Did I actually think for one fucking second . . .”

  Then he started moving again. Fast. Back up the walkway, up the beach and through the park. Back to his car.

  He got in and gunned it. He drove across town to the West Side, to the address on Spaulding, past the big storage warehouse and the asphalt yard and the boarded-up houses. He could see the place better in the daylight. It was practically in the shadow of the Cook County Jail.

  The chop shop.

  He pulled up in front of the garage door and pressed on the horn until the door finally started to rise. Mason drove through into the bay. The two Latinos stood there, watching him.

  “Where is he?” Mason said as he got out of the car.

  The Honda Accord they were working on was already halfway taken apart. The whole front end had been removed from the frame, then the doors and windshield had been taken off. When the seats were out, they’d cut out the entire dashboard, saving the air bags. That’s what they did here every day, but now they just looked at him.

  Until their eyes shifted and Mason knew there was someone behind him.

  He felt the hand on his right shoulder. When he turned, Quintero hit him in the mouth. He was already tasting blood as he grabbed the man by the throat and threw him against the car.

  When Quintero swung at him again, Mason ducked and drove his head into Quintero’s chest, sending him backward into a workbench. Tools rattled and fell crashing to the floor.

  “Is that all you got?” Mason said to him. “I fought guys tougher than you in junior high school, you fucking gangbanger piece of shit.”

  Quintero came at him, faking another swing at his head and then sucker punching him in the gut. Quintero had him lined up for another shot to the face, but Mason got an arm up to block him and drove him back, all the way into another bay, and pinned him against the car in the bay.

  They both stayed there for a moment, holding on to each other. At such close range, Mason could see every gray hair, every line in the man’s face. Those extra years on Quintero, hard years of service to one man, doing fuck knows what. In that one moment, Mason couldn’t help wondering if he was looking at his own future.

  “You stupid güero,” Quintero said. “I’ve been putting up with your shit from the moment I drove you up here. Your questions. Your attitude. Getting thrown in fucking jail. But now, today, you crossed the one line you can’t cross.”

  Mason pushed himself away and caught his breath.

  “If you ever disobey him again,” Quintero said, “if you ever fucking call him and disrespect him . . . I swear to Christ, I will take whatever he tells me to do to you and I’ll make it last twice as long. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Mason said. “All you ever do is talk.”

  “And yet you never fucking listen. I told you, you got a problem, you come to me. That’s why I’m here. How come you still don’t get that?”

  Mason looked at him. What the fuck, he thought, this man honestly sounds offended. Like I betrayed him.

  “Just stay away from me, Quintero. And stay the fuck away from my family. I don’t care what he tells you to do. I swear to God, if you go anywhere near my family, I will kill you. I will not hurt you. I will kill you.”

  “You don’t want me fucking with your family, don’t give me a reason.”

  “No,” Mason said, wiping the blood from his mouth. “Reason or no reason—today, tomorrow, any day of your fucking life—you touch either of them, your life is over.”

  Quintero brushed off his shirt. “He owns both of us,” he said. “Don’t you see that?”

  “No,” Mason said. “He doesn’t.”

  “Somos hermanos, you and me,” Quintero said. “We are brothers.”

  They stood there in the garage for a long time while the other men went back to work.

  “You need another car,” Quintero finally said, nodding toward the blown-out window in the Camaro.

  The car they’d just been leaning against as they tried to kill each other was another jet-black American muscle car.

  “It’s a 1964 Pontiac GTO,” Quintero said. “With the Bobcat engine.”

  He threw Mason the keys.

  38

  Nick Mason sat on the edge of his bed, listening to the rain outside, waiting to see if Cole would change his mind and send his “brother” to kill him that night.

  He had defied the one man you don’t defy. But he wasn’t going to run away. He wasn’t going to hide. If Cole decided that extending his contract wasn’t enough of a punishment, Mason would be ready. He still had the M9, with six shots left. That would be enough.

  He kept waiting. The rain stopped. Finally, he got up and went out to the pool. As he turned the corner, he felt the impact against the back of his head. He dropped the gun as he went down, then saw it kicked away from his reach.

  When he looked up, he saw Jimmy McManus standing over him. He was holding his own gun in his right hand.

  He was in his customary tight jeans and muscle shirt, with some new gold chains around his neck. He held the gun a little too casually, like it was one more accessory in the overall fashion statement, that of a man right out of the movies, a man you do not fuck with. But the bruises around both of his eyes, the shattered nose Mason had given him, turned that statement into a lie.

  “This is quite a place you got,” McManus said, gesturing with the barrel of the gun, pointing at the pool and everything else around him.

  “What do you want?” Mason said, getting to his feet and rubbing the back of his head. McManus backed away from him.

  “I’m here to settle things,” he said. “It’s like I told you last time. It’s the loose ends that hang you, Nickie boy. And you are one hell of a loose end.”

  Mason took a step toward him. McManus flinched and tightened his grip on the gun, the barrel trained on Mason’s chest.

  Mason had seen this man fire his gun in a blind panic while he was running away from that truck at the harbor. But this was different.

  Facing a man. Ending his life. Something most men cannot do. It takes another kind of man.

  A killer.

  Mason knew that now.

  “Go ahead. If you really have it in you.”

  He looked Jimmy McManus in the eye and waited.

  McManus swallowed and tightened his grip again. He raised the gun to eye level and sighted down the barrel.

  Mason waited.

  They say you never hear the shot that kills you, but it rang in Mason’s ears.

  McManus stood there for one more moment, his neck bent at a strange new angle. Blood came running down his face, between his eyes. Then he fell forward into the pool.

  Mason watched the pink swirl growing around the body as it turned clockwise in the water. Then he looked up.

  Marcos Quintero stood twenty feet away, a gun in his right hand. Quintero gave Mason a slight nod o
f his head.

  Mason stared him down for a long time before finally nodding back.

  39

  Chicago Sun-Times

  CHICAGO COPS INDICTED IN DRUG SCANDAL

  CONSPIRACY, ROBBERY, EXTORTION, KIDNAPPING, DRUG DEALING AMONG CHARGES

  By Denny Kilmer, Staff Reporter

  The United States Attorney’s Office unsealed an indictment today charging seven members of the Chicago Police Department, all members of the elite Special Investigations Section task force, with RICO conspiracy, robbery, racketeering, extortion, kidnapping, drug dealing, and a number of other charges. The indictments come after a five-month joint investigation by the FBI, DEA, and the Chicago Police Bureau of Internal Affairs and represent one of the biggest corruption cases in the history of the city. More suspects may be charged as the investigation continues.

  The investigation may also shed light on the unsolved shooting death of SIS Sergeant Ray Jameson, as well as the deaths of SIS Detectives Walter Reagan, Jason Fowler, and John Koniczek, who were all found gunned down at the Deep Tunnel outlet in the Thornton Quarry. Those homicides have been the subject of an ongoing investigation conducted by the Illinois State Police and have generated intense media attention due to the mysterious circumstances surrounding those deaths.

  The names of those officers arrested and charged are:

  Sgt. Vincent Bloome, 58 years old, 29 years on force, 7 years in SIS. Det. John Fairley, 42 years old, 17 years on force, 5 years in SIS. Det. William Spiller, 35 years old, 12 years on force, 5 years in SIS. Det. Michael Harrison, 34 years old, 8 years on force, 3 years in SIS. Det. Brian Jaynes, 31 years old, 7 years on force, 2 years in SIS. Det. Hayward Baylor, 29 years old, 6 years on force, 2 years in SIS. Det. Edward Coleman, 29 years old, 5 years on force, 2 years in SIS.

  The seven officers charged are all members of the Special Investigations Section, otherwise known as SIS, an elite task force of narcotics officers put together in 2009 in response to the rampant drug-related crimes plaguing the city. Those officers were given broad leeway to conduct their own investigations and reported high arrest rates in every year of the unit’s existence. Many of those arrests are now being called into question, and civilian complaints against many of these officers, including claims of illegal seizure and use of excessive force, compiled from the task force’s inception in 2009, are now coming to light.