The Second Life of Nick Mason (9 page)

When an SIS sergeant was killed forty-eight hours after Nick Mason had been released from prison, Detective Frank Sandoval figured this was one crime scene he had to see.

As he ducked under the crime scene tape, a uniformed officer moved to stop him. Sandoval showed him his star and the officer stepped aside to let him pass.

He went up the stairs and down the exterior hallway to Room 215. He saw the blood on the walls first. Then the body on the floor. He took a step inside the room and looked at the exit wound on the man’s back. A bullet goes in clean, but then it meets resistance. It flattens out, slows down, and pushes the tissue in front of it like a snowplow. By the time it comes out the back, it’s not a clean missile anymore. It’s a goddamned musket ball.

He looked up over his head. There was more blood on the ceiling. It had started to drip down onto the bed.

He took a glance into the bathroom. He counted three towels.
They were all clean. Sandoval knew there had probably been a fourth.

Sandoval came back out into the main room. He stepped back out onto the balcony. It was after midnight. There was one news truck below him, getting a jump on the other stations, and a half-dozen squad cars, the lights bouncing blue and red on every surface. Beyond the parking lot it was just darkness and quiet streets.

Another car pulled into the lot. A black Audi. He watched the driver get out and walk past the uniforms. They made no move to stop him. A few seconds later, he heard him on the stairs, then saw him coming down the hallway, moving with purpose. He was a tall man, with hard features, hair cut close and so blond it was almost white. His eyes were a pale, metallic shade of gray. Sandoval knew him by reputation only. It was Sergeant Bloome, one of the original members of SIS, one of the men who stood behind the mayor when they announced the big new initiative in Chicago’s War on Drugs.

When they first put this team together, it was called Special Investigations Section. An elite task force of all the best narcotics officers in the city, handpicked by the superintendent himself. They were given their own floor at Homan Square, their own prosecutors and staff, anything they wanted. Their jurisdiction was the entire city of Chicago. They could go anywhere they wanted, talk to anybody at any time, take over any investigation. In a city overrun with drugs, they had been given a blank check from the highest levels to do whatever it took to bring down the dealers. They didn’t have cases. They had targets.

They stood apart from every other cop on the force. You could see an SIS man from three blocks away, always in a dark suit, perfectly tailored, perfectly pressed. Expensive leather shoes. He had his pick of any car confiscated in a drug bust, so he always drove the best.
Nothing like the homicide-issued Ford Fusion that Sandoval was driving.

After two years in operation, you started to hear some things about these guys. Illegal seizures, low-level guys on the street getting robbed and beaten. Nothing to lose any sleep over, since they were making arrests every day, piling up numbers that a homicide detective could only dream of. The crime rate went down. The mayor was happy. The brass was happy. So the rumors were ignored, and every uniformed officer—like those guys standing down there in the parking lot, letting Bloome walk by with nothing but a nod—they all kissed SIS ass, because SIS was what every Chicago cop wanted to be. They were stars. Celebrity cops.

Bloome passed by Sandoval without even looking at him. He went into the room. Sandoval waited. A minute later, Bloome came back out. He leaned over the railing, breathing in the night air. Then he finally looked up and noticed Sandoval standing there.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Detective Sandoval. Area Central Homicide. Got a question for you.”

“For
me
?”

“You’re SIS,” Sandoval said. “Jameson was SIS.”

“Wow, you’re some kind of investigator,” Bloome said. “Whose dick did you suck to make detective?”

“Why was he here alone?”

Bloome took his arms off the railing and stood up straight. “Guy I worked with for twenty fucking years is dead on the floor in there,” he said. “A friend. A great cop. So I’m not in the mood to answer your bullshit questions.”

“You see a suitcase? He wasn’t staying here. What was he doing, meeting a CI?”

“He was doing whatever the fuck he was doing,” Bloome said. “Before somebody blew a hole in him. We’re taking this case, by the way, so you can leave.”

“It was never mine,” Sandoval said. “Ryan’s downstairs. He’s caught it.”

Bloome worked that over in his head for a moment. “Then what the fuck are you doing here?” he said. “That’s a dead cop on the floor. You got no respect?”

“I’m working on something else,” Sandoval said. “Thought it might be connected.”

“Connected to what?” Bloome said. “What the fuck’s the matter with you? Do you let guys off the street come walking onto
your
crime scenes?”

He stopped and looked at Sandoval’s star again.

“Wait a minute,” Bloome said. “You’re Sandoval? Gary Higgins’s partner?”

Sandoval nodded.

Bloome looked him up and down. “Here’s what’s gonna happen, Detective. You’re gonna get the fuck out of here right now and I’m not gonna see your face again. Any crime scene. Anyplace got anything to do with me, with my men, with SIS. Just stay the fuck away from us so the real cops can do their job.”

Sandoval nodded. “That’s one way. Other way is I tell you to fuck off and I keep doing
my
job.”

Sandoval turned and walked down the hallway. When he was in the parking lot, he looked back up at the balcony and saw Bloome watching him. Then he walked through the glare of the news team’s camera lights, got in his car, and drove away.

Ten hours after committing his first murder, Nick Mason was desperate to find one good reason for it.

He had to see his daughter.

Mason went to the same house, the house where Adriana woke up every morning. Came home from school, did her homework. Went outside to play. Went to sleep. Did she still have nightmares? She had them two or three nights a week when she was four years old. How many more did she have when her father was taken away?

He took off his sunglasses and tilted the rearview mirror to look at himself. The scrape over his left eye was still an angry red, both cheeks were still swollen, and the bruises were turning every shade of black, blue, green, and even a little yellow. Mason had been in fights before, more than he could count, and he’d lost his share of them. But it had been a long time since he looked this bad.

When Diana had seen him that morning, she had put together another bag of ice for him, and she had stood over him for a few moments, getting a better look.

“Let me guess,” she finally said to him, almost smiling. “I should see the other guy, right?”

“Yeah,” Mason said. “Something like that.”

The way he said it made her smile slip away. “Don’t say another word.”

She gave him some ibuprofen for the swelling. Then she went to work. Mason got in his new Camaro and came out to Elmhurst. It was becoming obvious that the house was empty. He put the rearview mirror back in position and started the car.

As he was driving away, a couple of facts came together in Mason’s mind. Gina had said that her husband and Adriana were at practice the other day. Mason remembered seeing the soccer goal in the garage, too. It was a Saturday morning in July. Maybe today was game day.

He’d seen the high school on his way here, so he backtracked and looked for soccer fields, but saw only a football field, and the whole place was deserted, anyway. He went up a couple of blocks and found Elmhurst College and a soccer field with players on it, but no young kids. He drove around for another few minutes and was about to give up when he saw a soccer ball sticker on the back of a minivan. He followed it south, all the way to Oak Park, into a big parking lot where a half-dozen kids—all around Adriana’s age and dressed for soccer—piled out.

Mason got out of the car and started walking toward the fields. There were three fields, with a couple dozen kids running around on each of them, all coed games, with a hundred adults standing around, watching and cheering. Or just standing and talking to one another, enjoying the summer day. He wandered around the perimeter of the first field, watching the kids chase the ball.

Mason wasn’t sure if he’d recognize his daughter right away. Not
after five years. More than half of her life. He kept looking at one young face after another.

Then he saw Gina.

She was on the far side of the field, standing with another woman, half paying attention to the game. A low stand of bleachers on this side of the field was half full of spectators. Mason was about to sit down, then stopped himself.

I have every right to be here, he thought, no matter what Gina might say to me. But maybe it would be better to stay out of sight.

He took a few steps back until he was standing against the backstop of the softball field. With his sunglasses on, he was virtually invisible, and yet he still had a good look at the field.

He kept scanning the far sidelines. He didn’t see a man near her. Either the new husband was one of those guys who works even on Saturdays, Mason thought, or else he’s one of the coaches.

Mason saw two men on the near side of the field, standing with the kids who weren’t in the game yet. One looked a little too old. The other was tan and filled out his polo shirt like a man who ate right and took care of himself. That had to be good old Brad.

Mason turned his attention back to the kids on the field. That’s why he was here, not to watch his ex-wife or her successful new husband, who swims his laps at the club every morning. He was just starting to scan the players when a girl in the middle of the field turned his way.

It was her.

It was his daughter. Adriana.

Nine years old, he said to himself. God damn, look at her. She was a younger version of her mother. Same dirty-blond hair, same build. Tall and rangy, with that dead-serious look of determination on her face. She was fast, too. Running circles around most of the boys.

He remembered the day she was born. Rushing Gina down to the hospital on Fifty-first Street, then waiting eighteen hours at her side until Adriana made her appearance.

Bringing her home. The room Mason had made for her. Painted green, the compromise when Gina took her stand against pink.

The first Christmas in that house. The tree in the corner. The first time she looked at him. Really looked at him. The first time she said, “Daddy.”

The first time she walked across the room to him, her arms spread wide.

His chest felt tight. This was the exact moment he had been waiting for, finally being able to see her again, after five years.

It had been sixty months since the last time he saw his daughter. Over forty thousand hours.

But he couldn’t talk to her. He couldn’t explain things. Not yet.

A boy tried to take the ball away from her and knocked her to the ground. Mason was already leaning forward, like he’d actually go out there and do something about it, when the ref blew his whistle and gave her team a free kick.

“Shake it off, Aid!” It was the coach who was probably Brad yelling at her. Aid, he called her. Everything about this guy he already hated.

Mason watched his daughter play for the next half hour. He never took his eyes off her except for the few times he glanced over at Gina and saw her talking to her friend, barely paying any attention to this miracle that was happening on the field. This nine-year-old girl they created together who was so much faster, so much more graceful, than anyone else on the field.

At one point, the ball came over the line on his side of the field. Adriana came to pick it up and seemed to look right at him. They
were still a good twenty yards apart, but he was about to lift his hand into a wave. Then she grabbed the ball and threw it back out on the field.

As the game was winding down, he started walking back toward the car. He passed a sheet of paper tacked onto the other end of the backstop. It was the league schedule. There were games every Wednesday and Saturday.

He was in his car before the rest of the kids and parents started streaming into the parking lot. He sat in the Camaro and watched his ex-wife and the coach, who was now confirmed beyond all doubt to be Brad, get into their Volvo SUV. Adriana followed after them, getting into the backseat. He watched them drive away. Back to their perfect house. Back to their perfect life.

He sat there for a few more minutes, thinking about what he had done the night before. It couldn’t all be just for this, he told himself. This one chance to see his daughter, for just a few moments. Then to sit here and watch her drive away to another man’s home.

Jameson chose his own fate, Mason said to himself. I chose mine. Now I just have to keep it all separate. Keep that part of my life as far away from her as possible. Keep doing my job. Keep living for moments like this. Because that’s all I have right now.

Someday, I may have more. A lot more. Whatever I have to do to get there, that’s what I want. A real life with my daughter. Then maybe, just maybe, this will all be worth the price I’ve paid.

Five years in prison had given Nick Mason convict eyes. It’s a certain way of looking at the world, your primal reptile brain watching every movement, every change, measuring it for danger. The body language of a man approaching you in the hallway. Or the way his eyes track you across the yard. After a while, you don’t even think about it. It’s just a basic part of your awareness. Your survival.

He’d seen Sandoval sitting in his car a half hour ago, across the street from the town house. He’d just clocked him again in the restaurant parking lot. He knew he’d be walking through that door. Mason picked a table in the back corner, sat down so he was facing the door, and ordered a Goose Island.

He scanned the place while he waited, this restaurant where he was officially employed. It had once been a speakeasy, then they’d gutted the place and rebuilt it, leaving exposed brick on one wall. Another wall was dominated by the glassed-in wine tower, everything a contrast of old against modern, the natural cherry floors against the muted steel panels along the bar. There was a high
cathedral ceiling, with pendant lights hanging from long braided cables. Red velvet upholstery on the chairs and in the booths, white tablecloths with votive candles. It all created an atmosphere of intimate sophistication. The windows overlooked Rush Street, where the streetlights were just starting to glow.

Mason knew this restaurant had to be a whole different world around lunchtime, with traders from the Chicago Stock Exchange, executives from the downtown banks, all walking up over the DuSable Bridge to sit at these tables, putting down their corporate credit cards and never thinking about the prices.

Right now, it looked like couples celebrating special occasions and some tourists out for a night on the town, maybe before catching a play at one of the theaters. There were a dozen high-end hotels within a few blocks of this place. Every concierge probably had Antonia’s near the top of his call list.

The kitchen opened right into the dining room, so Mason could see the long prep tables, the stoves and ovens and walk-in freezer. The waitstaff and the chefs were all moving together in a perfect choreography. Then finally, at the center of everything, he caught sight of Diana. This woman who seemed so reserved and self-contained at the town house. She was unleashed here in this kitchen, totally in control and directing every movement around her.

Mason smelled the steaks broiling on the open grill. He checked the menu again, saw the four different cooking options for rib eyes, aged twenty-eight to seventy-five days in the cellar with Himalayan rock salt. He thought back to the last meal he had eaten at Terre Haute. The gray mass they passed off as meat, with rice and vegetables and bread that somehow all tasted the same. A cup of water to wash it down.

From that world to this.

•   •   •

A
bout two minutes later, Sandoval came in. He gave the place a quick scan and spotted Mason, came over and stood by the table for a moment. Then he sat down in the chair across from him.

“Remember me?”

Mason didn’t answer him. If his rule number three wasn’t enough—
When in doubt, keep your mouth shut
—the extra rule number ten was designed to hammer home the point—
Never
talk to a cop. Not one syllable.

The rule applied universally, no matter what the situation, guilty or innocent, to formal questioning or just shooting the breeze. Never say one fucking word to a fucking cop because talking to a cop gets you on the cop’s radar.

And once you’re on a cop’s radar, you will never get off.

“I arrested you,” Sandoval said. “Five years ago.”

Mason said nothing. Sandoval picked up Mason’s menu and started looking through it. “Looks like a nice place. Food any good? You do work here, right?”

Mason didn’t answer.

“Didn’t know you were in the restaurant business, Mason. Real high-end place, too.”

He looked at the menu again.

“Wow, fifty bucks for a steak,” he said. “That’s a little steep for a guy on a cop’s salary. Maybe on my anniversary.”

Sandoval leaned forward to take a closer look at Mason’s face.

“What happened to your face?”

Mason stayed silent.

“All right,” Sandoval said, putting down the menu. “You’re not a chatty guy, I get it. How ’bout I just talk and you listen?”

The waiter came and gave Mason his beer. He asked Sandoval if he’d like a drink. Sandoval said, “No, thank you.” The waiter left. Sandoval leaned forward on both elbows and looked Mason in the eye.

“Sean Wright,” Sandoval said. “You remember him? Name might have got mentioned at your trial once or twice. He was the DEA agent who got killed that night at the harbor. Most of the time, you know, cops and federal agents, working the same town, you butt heads sometimes. Whether it’s FBI, DEA, Homeland Security . . . they get in our way, we get in their way. Some of those guys are real jackasses, too. But here’s the thing, Mason. One of those guys goes down . . .”

He paused and shook his head.

“Now we’re the same,” he said. “Cops, agents, don’t matter. All the fucking same. So my partner and me, we got to the harbor and they’re taking his body away. Wheeling him away with a sheet over him. They don’t want to leave a dead agent lying there in the road. But I saw the pictures later. Read the reports. Man didn’t even have his gun drawn. He gets out of the car and he’s already dead.”

Mason kept watching the man. He kept listening. He didn’t react in any way.

“I know there’s four of you in the trucks. Two trucks, two men each, one-in-four chance you pulled that trigger, right? One-in-four chance you gunned down a federal agent while you were running away. But you know it don’t matter. I don’t care. The law don’t care. You’re in the middle of a felony when he’s killed, so it’s felony murder. All four of you guys.”

Sandoval paused to look around the restaurant like he was checking to make sure nobody else was listening.

“So two of you guys get away,” he said in a slightly lower voice. “A
third man gets shot in the truck. That leaves one man to stand up for everybody. That’s you. Not how we want to close the case, but that’s what we got. It was
something
, right? We got one guy who can be accountable. One guy I can take back to Sean Wright’s family, say, Here, this guy’s gonna pay for it. Your whole family got torn apart, and this don’t bring him back. But here’s one man. You can see him pay for it.”

Sandoval leaned back in his chair and took a breath. Then he leaned forward again.

“Elizabeth Wright,” he said. “That’s his wife. Married seven years then. They got two kids. Sean Junior, he’s nine years old. Sarah’s eight. They’re four years old, three years old when their father got killed. You can’t imagine, Mason, what that’s like, seeing those kids when we got that case. I got a boy and a girl, too. Exact same ages. My son and Sean, they play ball together now. This team I coach, I got Sean on there. I talk to him all the time, make sure he’s doing okay. Sarah, I don’t get to talk to. She still don’t say much to anybody. Eight years old, Mason, girl just sitting there, staring off into space. Breaks your heart.”

Sandoval leaned forward even farther and lowered his voice again.

“So here’s what I wanna know, Mason. I see this family all the time. Five years later, I still see them. So what am I supposed to say to them?”

Mason picked up the glass of beer, but he didn’t drink. Never talk to cops, he told himself. Never talk to fucking cops.

“Because as far as I know,” Sandoval said, “they have no idea. I don’t think anybody called them. And it didn’t make the newspapers yet. The real crime reporters in this town are all dead or they took
buyouts because nobody buys a fucking newspaper anymore, but someone will find the story eventually, go knock on their door with a camera crew . . . For now, that leaves me to give them the news. So how do I do that, Mason? How do I tell them you’re out of prison already? You got any ideas for me?”

Mason held his glass and looked at the amber liquid.

“Yes?” Sandoval said. “You look like you wanna say something.”

Mason put the glass back down.

This is why you stay off a cop’s radar, Mason thought. Especially a cop like this. You give him any kind of reason and suddenly you’re the one man he can’t stop thinking about. When he’s working another case, having lunch with his partner, doing his paperwork, waiting in line at the courthouse. Packing up for the day and going out for a splash with his cop friends.

Even at home, having dinner with his family, watching television, helping his kids with their homework. Going out to a Sox game on the weekend, having a hot dog and a beer.

You open up that guy’s head at any minute and there you are, living somewhere inside it.

“Wasn’t easy finding you,” Sandoval said. “No parole, so no address. I looked in a few different places, nothing for Nick Mason. Nothing new. Then I remember this guy over at Social Security. They got this database, there’s a new W-4 for Nick Mason, working at a restaurant. Let me guess, Darius Cole own this place?”

Mason looked at him.

“Got your address, too,” Sandoval said. “I’ve been there, just taking a look, and you gotta be fucking kidding me, right? From federal prison to Lincoln Park West?”

Sandoval scanned the restaurant again, shaking his head slowly.

“You don’t even have to hide it,” Sandoval said. “This so-called job you got. That town house you’re living in. It’s all legit on paper. Hell of a nice life, huh?”

Yeah, Mason thought, hell of a nice life.

“If I’m in your place, I’m not sure how I sleep at night. But I guess you’re a different kind of man.”

“His name was Finn,” Mason said, officially saying fuck you to rule number ten. “Finn O’Malley.”

“The one who got killed?”

“Yes.”

“Your friend, right? Grew up together in Canaryville. He’s the one you left behind in the truck with a bullet in his head.”

Mason took a breath. “Finn shouldn’t have been there.”

“Wrong place, wrong time, huh?”

Mason looked down at his beer.

“Did you kill that cop in the motel room last night?”

Mason looked back at him. “The fuck you talking about, Detective?”

“I know it was Cole. He’s the one who got you out, he’s the one who fucked my partner, and he’s the one who told you to kill that cop. Just nod your head if I’m getting close here.”

“If you could make a case,” Mason said, “if you had anything real, you’d arrest me. What you have is bullshit.”

The two men watched each other over the table for a moment. Then Sandoval stood up, took a few steps toward the door.

He stopped dead, then came back to the table.

“I don’t have it yet,” he said, leaning in close to Mason’s ear. “But I’m gonna work this out, Mason. Every single fucking piece of it. You, Cole, anybody else who had anything to do with you getting out. I’ll do it on my own, I don’t give a fuck. No matter who tells
me to leave it alone. I promise you, I promise me, I promise my ex-partner, Sean Wright, and his whole family . . . I’m not going to sleep at night until you’re back in prison where you fucking belong. And Cole is out of business forever. You hearing me, Mason? You better get used to me because I’m gonna wake you up every fucking morning and I’m gonna put you to bed every fucking night.”

He stood up straight and gave Mason a smile.

“Enjoy your dinner.”