The Second Life of Nick Mason

ALSO BY STEVE HAMILTON

ALEX M
C
KNIGHT

Let It Burn

Die a Stranger

Misery Bay

A Stolen Season

Ice Run

Blood is the Sky

North of Nowhere

The Hunting Wind

Winter of the Wolf Moon

A Cold Day in Paradise

STAND-ALONES

The Lock Artist

Night
Work

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright © 2016 by Cold Day Productions, LLC

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“Darkness On The Edge Of Town” by Bruce Springsteen. Copyright © 1978 Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP). Reprinted by permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.

eBook ISBN 9780399574337

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

To Shane
who saw a better life, even when I
couldn’t

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

—N
ATHANIEL
H
AWTHORNE
,
The Scarlet Letter

Everybody’s got a secret Sonny

Something that they just can’t face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

—B
RUCE
S
PRINGSTEEN
, “Darkness on the Edge of
Town”

Nick Mason’s freedom lasted less than a minute.

He didn’t see it then, but he’d look back on that day and mark those first free steps through the gate, after five years and twenty-eight days inside. Nobody was standing over him, nobody was watching him, nobody was telling him where to go and when. He could have walked anywhere in that moment. Pick any direction and go. But the black Escalade was waiting for him, and as soon as he took those thirty steps and opened the passenger’s-side door, his freedom was gone again.

Mason had effectively signed a contract. When most men do that, they know what’s expected of them. They get to read the terms, understand what the job’s going to be, know exactly what they’ll be expected to do. But Mason didn’t get to read anything, because this contract wasn’t on paper at all, and instead of actually signing anything, he simply gave his word, with no idea what would come next.

It was late afternoon, the heart of the day spent on processing and changeout. The daily discharge from USP Terre Haute. Typical
prison operations, hurry up and wait, the screws dragging their feet all the way to the end. There were two other inmates with him, both anxious to get outside. One of the men he’d never seen before. Not unusual in a prison with so many separate units. The second man was vaguely familiar. Someone from his original unit, before he made his move.

“You’re getting out today,” that man said, looking surprised. You don’t talk about the length of your sentence with most men in this place, but there’s no need to keep it a big secret, either. This man had obviously figured Mason for a longtimer. Or maybe he’d heard it from someone else. Mason didn’t care. He shrugged the man off without another word and went back to his final-release forms.

When Mason was done with those, the clerk slid a plastic tray across the counter with the clothes he’d been wearing the day he processed in. It felt like a lifetime ago. He’d arrived here in this same room and been told to put his clothes in the tray. The black jeans and the white button-down shirt. Now, it felt strange to be taking off the khaki, like the color was a part of him. But the old clothes still fit.

All three men walked out together. The concrete walls, the steel doors, the two rows of chain-link fence topped with razor wire—all left behind as they stepped out onto the hot pavement and waited for the gate to grind open. There were two families waiting there. Two wives, five kids, all of them looking like they’d been standing there for hours. The kids held handmade signs with multicolored letters, welcoming their fathers home.

There was no family waiting for Nick Mason. No signs.

He stood there blinking for a few seconds, feeling the hot Indiana sun on the back of his neck. He was clean-shaven and fair-skinned,
a little over six feet tall. His body was taut with muscle but lean like a middleweight. An old scar ran the length of his right eyebrow.

He saw the black Escalade, idling near the sidewalk. The vehicle didn’t move, so he walked down to it.

The windows were tinted. He couldn’t see who was inside until he opened the front passenger’s-side door. Once he did, he saw that the driver was Hispanic, with dark sunglasses covering his eyes. One arm draped over the steering wheel, the other at rest on the gearshift. He wore a simple white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, jeans and work boots, one thin gold chain around his neck. Dark hair pulled back and tied with a black band, and as Mason’s eyes adjusted, he saw the gray threading through the man’s hair and the lines on the man’s face. He was at least ten years older than Mason, maybe a few more. But he was rock-solid. His arms were tattooed all the way down both arms to his fingers, and he had three rings in his right ear. Mason couldn’t see the other ear because the man did not turn to him. “Mason,” the man said. A statement, not a question.

“Yes,” Mason said.

“Get in.”

Out five minutes, Mason said to himself, and I’m already about to break my rules. Rule number one:
Never work with strangers. Strangers put you in prison or they put you in the ground.
A stranger already put me in the first. I don’t need another stranger to put me in the other.

Today, Mason didn’t have a choice. He got in and closed the door. The man still hadn’t turned to face him. He put the vehicle in gear and accelerated smoothly out of the prison parking lot.

Mason scanned the vehicle. The interior was clean. The leather seats, the carpet, the windows. He had to give the man credit for
that much. The vehicle looked like it had just rolled out of the showroom.

He gave the man’s tattoos another look. No prison ink here. No spiderwebs. No clocks without hands. This man had spent a lot of time and money in the chair of a real pro, even if some of the color had faded over time. There was an Aztec lattice going all the way up the right arm, with a snake, a jaguar, a headstone, and some Spanish words meaning God knows what. What was unmistakable were the three letters in green, white, and red on the shoulder—
LRZ
—La Raza—the Mexican gang that ruled the West Side of Chicago.

Another rule broken, Nick thought. Rule number nine:
Never work with gang members.

They’ve sworn a blood oath of loyalty. But not to you.

An hour of silence passed. The driver hadn’t offered so much as a sideways glance. Mason couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he turned on the radio. Or actually said something out loud. Something made him stay silent. Rule number three:
When in doubt, keep your mouth shut.

After driving past every exit on US 41, they finally pulled off. For an instant, Mason wondered if this whole thing had been a setup. It was an unavoidable prison reflex, to be ready for the worst at any moment. Two hours away from the prison, somewhere in the middle of western Indiana, the driver could pull off on the most abandoned exit he could find, drive a few miles into the farmland, and then put a bullet in the passenger’s head. Leave his body right there in the ditch beside the road. You wouldn’t go to that much trouble to do something that could have been done already, on any given day standing around the prison yard, but Mason could still feel his body tensing as the vehicle slowed down.

The driver pulled into a gas station. He got out and pumped gas
into the tank. Mason sat there in the passenger’s seat, looking out at the little mini-mart. A young woman came out through the glass door. Maybe twenty years old. Shorts and a tank top, flip-flops on her feet. Mason hadn’t seen a live woman dressed this way in five years.

The driver got back in and started the vehicle. He pulled out and drove back onto the highway, pointed north, and hit seventy on the speedometer. Dark clouds began to assemble in the sky. By the time they reached the Illinois border, it was raining. The driver turned on the wipers. The traffic got heavier and the lights from the other cars reflected off the rain-slicked road.

The tall buildings were lost in the clouds, but Mason would have known this place no matter how dark the sky or how low the clouds hung over the city streets.

He was almost home.

But first the long pass over the Calumet River, the cranes and drawbridges and power lines. The harbor was down there. The harbor and the one night in his life when everything changed. The one night that led him all the way to Terre Haute and to a man named Cole. Then, somehow, all the way back, a lot sooner than he expected.

He counted down the streets. Eighty-seventh Street. Seventy-first Street. They were on the South Side now. The rain kept falling. The driver kept driving. Garfield Boulevard. Fifty-first Street. You want to start an argument, you go into any bar around here, ask the regulars if Canaryville starts at Fifty-first or Forty-ninth. Stand back and watch the words fly. Then the fists, if it’s late enough.

They passed the big train yard, a thousand boxcars waiting for an engine. Then the tracks running high along the eastern edge of his old neighborhood. Mason took a breath as they passed Forty-third
Street. His whole life came back to him at once in a sudden flood of almost random memories, both good and bad—Eddie’s dad taking them to old Comiskey Park, the only game he ever got to see Michael Jordan play in person, the first car he ever stole, the first time he spent the night in jail, the party where he met a Canaryville girl named Gina Sullivan, the day he bought their house, the only place he could ever call home . . . it was all right here, wrapped up together in the city of Chicago. The alleys and the streets of this place ran through him like the veins in his body.

The lights were on at the new Sox park, but it was still raining too hard to play. The Escalade went all the way downtown, crossing the Chicago River. The Sears Tower—always and forever the Sears Tower despite whatever new name they try to give it—dominated the skyline and looked down at them through a sudden break in the clouds, its two antennae like a devil’s horns.

The driver finally got off the highway and took North Avenue all the way across the North Side, until Mason could see the shores of Lake Michigan. The water stretched out in blues and grays forever, blending into the rain clouds. When they turned on Clark Street, Mason was about to say something. You bring me all the way up to the North Side for what, pal? A Cubs game maybe? Good luck with that one.

Mason hated the Cubs. He hated everything about the North Side. Everything it represented. When he was growing up, the North Side was everything he didn’t have. And never would have.

The driver made his last turn, onto the last street Mason thought he’d see that day. Lincoln Park West. It was four blocks of high-end apartment buildings overlooking the gardens and the conservatory and the lake beyond. There were a few town houses between the
apartment buildings, still tall enough to look down at the street and on everyone who passed by. The driver slowed down and stopped right in front of one of those town houses. It sat at the end of the block, rising three stories above the heavy front door and the garage bays, the upper-floor windows all covered with iron latticework. Built out to the side was another one story with a balcony on top, overlooking the cross street, the park, and the lake beyond it. Five million for this place? Hell, probably more.

The driver broke the silence. “My name is Quintero.” He made the name sound like it came from the bottom of a tequila bottle.
Keen-TAY-ro.

“You work for Cole?”

“Listen to me,” Quintero said. “Because everything I’m about to say is important.”

Mason looked over at him.

“You need something,” Quintero said, “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.
Clear so far?”

Mason nodded.

“Beyond that, I don’t give a fuck what you do with your time. You were inside for five years, so go have a drink, get yourself laid, I don’t care. Just understand, you need to stay out of trouble. You get picked up for
anything
, now you’ve got two problems. The one you got picked up for . . . and me.”

Mason turned and looked out the window.

“Why are we here?”

“This is where you live now.”

“Guys like me don’t live in Lincoln Park,” Mason said.

“I’m going to give you a cell phone. You’re going to answer this
phone when I call you. Whenever that may be. Day or night. There is no busy. There is no unavailable. There is only you answering this phone. Then doing
exactly
what I tell you to do.”

Mason sat there in his seat, thinking that one over.

“The phone is in here,” Quintero said, reaching behind the seat and bringing out a large envelope. “Along with the keys to the front and back doors. And the security code.”

Mason took the envelope. It was heavier than he expected.

“Ten thousand dollars in cash and the key to a safe-deposit box at First Chicago on Western. There’ll be ten thousand more on the first day of each month.”

Mason looked over at the man one more time.

“That’s it,” Quintero said. “Keep your phone on.”

Mason opened the passenger’s-side door. Before he could get out, Quintero grabbed his arm. Mason tensed up—another prison reflex, someone grabs you, your first reaction is deciding which finger to break first.

“One more thing,” Quintero said, holding on tight. “This isn’t freedom. This is
mobility
. Don’t get those two things confused.”

Quintero let him go. Mason stepped out and closed the door. The rain had stopped.

Mason stood there on the sidewalk and watched Quintero’s vehicle pull away from the curb, then disappear into the night. He reached into the envelope and took out the key. Then he opened the front door and went inside.

The town house entranceway had a high ceiling, and the light fixture hanging over Mason’s head was a piece of modern art with a thousand slivers of glass. The floor was large tiles laid diagonally in a diamond pattern. The stairs were polished cherry. He stood there for a moment until he noticed a beeping noise. He saw the security
panel on the wall, took out the code from the envelope, and entered it on the keypad. The beeping stopped.

The door to his right opened to a two-car garage. In one space he saw a Mustang. He knew exactly what this was. It was a 1968 390 GT Fastback, a jet-black version of the car Steve McQueen drove in
Bullitt
. He’d never stolen a car like this because you don’t steal a masterpiece and take it to the chop shop. You don’t steal a car like this and drive it yourself no matter how much you want to. That’s how amateurs get caught.

The other spot in the garage was empty. He saw the faint outline of tire tracks. Another car belonged here.

Mason opened another door and saw a full gym. A row of dumbbells, neatly arranged in pairs, ranged from nothing to the big fifty-pounders at the end. A bench with a rack, a treadmill, an elliptical trainer. A television was mounted high in one corner of the room. A heavy bag hung in another corner. The back wall was a full mirror. Mason looked at his own face from twenty feet away. Cole had told him he could go anywhere in the world with this face, but he never thought he’d end up in a Lincoln Park town house.