“Cut myself shaving.”
“Adriana’s a beautiful girl. Sharp.”
“There a point to this?” Mason said, losing patience.
“I used to think you were sharp, too. Now I’m not so sure.”
“You’re going to hurt my feelings.”
Sandoval smiled. “You’ve been living a charmed life, Mason. Your luck almost ran out at the Aqua. But that’s not why I’m here.”
Nick said nothing, waited for him to continue.
“I want Cole.”
Mason ignored that and said, “We’re done.”
He took a few steps toward the Jag.
“I’m trying to save your life here, Mason. Maybe your girl’s life, too.”
Mason stopped, turned, and went back.
“You have something to say, say it.”
“I already told you once,” Sandoval said. “I’d trade a dozen of you to get to your boss.”
“What’s this got to do with my daughter?”
“That guy you killed at the Aqua. McLaren. He wasn’t some scumbag drug dealer or dirty cop. Your boss has you hunting federally protected witnesses now.”
Mason forced himself not to react.
“McLaren was Darius Cole’s accountant and one of two star witnesses against him at trial,” Sandoval said.
Mason looked away. He wanted to be behind the wheel of his car, driving away fast.
“You don’t care about your own life,” Sandoval said. “Your choice. But think about your girl and your ex.”
“What’s the point, Sandoval?”
“You think your life sucks now? What’s it going to be like if Darius Cole is back on the street? You know what happens to Cole’s loose ends. Soon as he gets out, you’re just as dangerous to him as McLaren was. Hell, even more so.”
Hard truths, no matter whose mouths they come out of, have a certain ring to them. But somewhere inside, Mason knew all this before the cop had said a word.
Sandoval kept at it. “You think the guy who comes to clean up after you is going to use nonlethal loads on innocent bystanders? No, Mason. The only question is, does he do you or your family first?”
Mason had heard enough. He turned and walked away from Sandoval’s sedan, heat rising just beneath his skin. Across the lot, he saw the sunlight reflected against the tinted windows of the Escalade. Then the vehicle pulled out of the lot.
For one horrible second, he thought it was catching up to Gina’s minivan, but as it pulled out onto the street, it turned and went in the opposite direction.
Mason got into his own car and left. It took him two minutes to clock a new car on his tail. He’d always suspected that someone else might be tailing him, at least some of the time. Because even a man like Quintero couldn’t follow him 24-7.
Another member of Cole’s organization, Mason said to himself. Someone I haven’t met yet. Maybe the man Sandoval was talking about. The man they’ll send to tie up Darius Cole’s loose end.
He was tempted to jam on the brakes at the next busy intersection, get out of the car, and go introduce himself. But then he had a better idea.
He took out his cell phone and called the one man who could help him turn this day around.
8
“Sandoval is a problem.”
Quintero sat behind the tinted glass of his vehicle, holding his cell phone to his ear and watching Detective Sandoval approach Mason at the school yard fence. Mason’s body language gave away the tension he must have been feeling, as he stood up stiffly and faced the man, with his own daughter just a few feet away.
“No names,” Cole said.
“We’re encrypted, right?”
“No names,” Cole said again. “And we got more important issues than the cop.”
“Like what?”
“Our second target will be moving soon.”
“Where?” Quintero said.
“When I know, I’ll tell you. Just be ready.”
Quintero kept an eye on Sandoval as he headed back to his car. Now Mason’s ex-wife was there behind the daughter. It was a regular family reunion.
“That thing I asked you to do with the woman,” Cole said, “you take care of it?”
Quintero took the phone away from his ear for a moment. He had been working for Darius Cole for eighteen years and not once had he ever lied to the man. Because Quintero was not a liar, first of all. And, second, if you were ever going to choose your first man to lie to, it wouldn’t be Darius Cole.
But the truth would be worse: telling Cole that he hadn’t followed an order, hadn’t killed Mason’s girlfriend and disposed of the body.
“Are you there?” Cole asked. “Did you take care of it or not?”
“It’s taken care of.”
Quintero swallowed hard, imagined Cole deciding whether or not to believe him.
“What about our third target?” Quintero said, changing subjects. “There’s someone in New York I can reach out to.”
“That issue is already being resolved. Today.”
“Solving your problems is my job.”
“The man’s eight hundred miles away.”
“I told you, I have a contact on the inside.”
“I think I probably have a few more,” Cole said. “Your job is to solve the problems I tell you to solve. Not to worry about anything else.”
Quintero looked at Mason one more time, and the two other people who one day might become a problem Cole told him to solve.
“Get your head on straight,” Cole said, reading his employee from a prison cell three hundred miles to the south. “Take care of your business and I’ll take care of the rest.”
• • •
THE REST OF THAT DAY’S business was about to take place, eight hundred miles to the east, just as Cole was ending the call. A Department of Corrections bus was heading down the three-lane girder bridge that connected the borough of Queens to Rikers Island, rattling down the thin metal strip, while airplanes roared in across the water to the LaGuardia runway on the far banks of the East River.
A man named Sean Burke was sitting in the front row, the only one of the seventy-one passengers who had a bench seat to himself. The CO on the other side of the grate kept a constant eye on him as if waiting for him to do something interesting. But there was a bored, almost half-asleep look on Burke’s pale, freckled face, and surrounded by a few dozen other men who resembled interior linemen or heavyweight contenders, you’d never suspect that Sean Burke was the most dangerous man on the bus.
Burke was born in 1977 in a town called Crossmaglen in occupied Northern Ireland. When he was five years old, he watched his father get dragged from their home in retaliation for a sniper attack against British soldiers. His father died in prison soon afterward, and Burke vowed to take his place in the ongoing fight. He didn’t care about a united Ireland or any other principle the IRA was fighting for. His first, overwhelming motivation was pure revenge. In the years that followed, when Burke proved himself to be a fearless and vicious killer, the killing itself became all that he knew.
Just after the 1999 cease-fire, Burke was about to be arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. He fled the country for Chicago, where a cousin owned a corner bar in the heavily Irish South Side neighborhood of Beverly. When he overstayed his visa, Burke went underground, working cash jobs and ultimately proving himself as fearless and as vicious as he had in Northern Ireland—and just as invaluable to organizations that trafficked in violence.
Burke never did look anything like a violent man. Not then, and not now as he rode the bus back to Rikers after his transfer hearing. With his slight build, red hair, freckled face, and disinterested demeanor, he was a man begging to be underestimated. But his cut muscles rippled and pulsed beneath his jail fatigues. Without an ounce of fat, every inch of him, body and soul, was devoted to one thing: destruction. Burke was a lion masquerading as a house cat.
Underestimating him was the mistake his cellmate had made up at Dannemora. Burke was th
ree years into his life sentence when the new man in the top bunk laughed off the warnings and tried to take Burke’s blanket on a cold Upstate New York night. The instantaneous results bought Burke a new set of charges, a resentencing, and a transfer to the New York supermax at Southport. He had three more days to spend here at Rikers, where they’d been keeping him in the Central Punitive Segregation Unit, a five-story gray tower of solitary nine-by-eight cells, home for five hundred of the most dangerous prisoners on the island. No television, no phone, a tiny slit high on the wall the only excuse for a window. One hour of rec per day, meaning a walk in shackles to stand alone in a small courtyard, staring up at the airplanes flying overhead.
Burke had always been a fan of Johnny Cash, the worn cassette tapes his only physical connection to his father, their sound his only memory of better times. He played Cash’s songs in his head now, a running sound track for his days at Dannemora, the volume turned up even louder here at Rikers. “Folsom Prison Blues” was his favorite, and now he knew more than ever how a man could listen to a train going by and think about the people inside just like Burke thought about the people on those jets coming in and out of LaGuardia.
But Burke sure as hell wasn’t going to hang his head and cry.
When the bus pulled up to the CPSU tower, Burke stood up and shuffled off with the rest of the prisoners. Each man was wearing handcuffs and leg-irons. They were led into the processing area and then loaded onto the elevator a half dozen at a time, with one CO to watch over them as they were taken up to their floor. There were no buttons to push on this elevator—it was all controlled remotely.
When Burke was put into the elevator with five other men, all headed toward the fifth floor, the doors slid shut and the elevator jerked upward.
“What’choo doing in the Bing, white boy?”
It was one of three large black men who said this to Burke, using CPSU’s unofficial title. He’d heard this tower called the Bing by several of the COs—as far as he could tell, bing was the sound of a man losing his mind after twenty-three hours a day in a solitary cell.
Burke looked up at the man’s face, then at the even larger white man standing next to him. “Ya gonna let him talk to me that way?”
The big white man looked down at him and laughed. Mocking Burke’s brogue, he repeated the line back to him. Yee ganna let heem tawk to me dat why? He laughed some more, and said in a heavy New York accent, “Let me guess, you’re a fucking Red Sox fan, too.”
Burke looked the man in the eye. “I hate all American sports,” he said. “And I’ve never even been to Boston, you ignorant piece of shite.”
The man smiled even wider and that’s when Burke knew something was seriously fucked. Under any normal circumstances, this would be a challenge. But here, right now …
Burke took a quick look around the rest of the elevator, finally noticing the one thing that should have caught his eye immediately: no CO, just the five large men—three black, one Latino, and his new white friend—and Burke. All of them wearing handcuffs and leg-irons.
The elevator ground to a halt between floors.
“Looks like we’re stuck,” the white man said.
It’s a setup, Burke said to himself. But they made a mistake: they kept us all shackled.
Now it’s not even a fair fight.
Burke didn’t hesitate. If he was the kind of man who waited for the enemy to make the first move, he would have been buried in a Crossmaglen graveyard years ago.
He reached up and circled his forearms around the white man’s neck, using the man’s height to give himself the first advantage. The man was strong and resisted going down, exactly what Burke had counted on. Using the big man’s resistance for leverage, Burke swung his shackled feet around and kicked the black man at the back of the elevator car in the throat. The man went down, gasping for air and clutching at his throat.
Everything slowed down for Burke now that the fight was on. Still using the white man to push off, Burke slammed his feet into the testicles of one of the other black men. The white man’s resistance waning, he lost his balance, taking Burke down with him. Using the falling man’s momentum, Burke thrust his legs on the Latino’s left knee. Something cracked and the Latino toppled sideways, grabbing his leg and screaming Spanish curses.
Burke caught himself just before hitting the floor, going down to his knees and keeping the handcuffs tight against the white man’s neck. The last man in the elevator, the third black, was already swinging one of his chained legs toward Burke. It was a labored, slow movement that Burke had no trouble anticipating. He yanked the white man’s head in front of him like a shield to take the blow. The white’s nose snapped as the black’s shoe found its mark. That would turn on the white man’s tear ducts, Burke knew, moving him down to the bottom of the list.
The only one left standing, the third black man, was about to swing one of his shackled feet again. He still hadn’t learned his lesson. Burke ducked it easily and swept the man’s other leg out from underneath him. He thumped hard against the elevator floor, the wind going out of him in a single rush. Burke brought his elbow down, and down again, on the man’s throat.
The man he’d kicked in the groin was back in the game. He swung at Burke with both hands clasped together, connecting with the side of Burke’s head. The man swung again and Burke ducked, then drove his shoulder up into the man and pinned him. He pulled at the man’s already-damaged groin with both hands, lifting and tearing. The man collapsed, vomiting and writhing in pain.
Quick count: two dead. Three men still moving, but not for long. Burke turned and faced the Latino with the wrecked knee. Burke opened his hands as wide as they could go and drove the man’s head back against the wall, the thin part of his skull hitting hard enough to knock him out. Working systematically, Burke choked the life out of him and then the third black man by squeezing their necks until their tracheas collapsed and their throats filled with blood. That left Burke with one other man still alive in the midst of the vomit and carnage.
Burke knelt down next to the white man, his face smeared with mucus and blood from his broken nose.
“Who arranged this party, boyo?”
“Fuck you,” the man said, spitting blood into Burke’s face.
Burke calmly wiped the blood away, then grabbed the man’s right hand and bent his little finger until it snapped. The man screamed.
Fingers were such convenient things in a situation like this. So simple to break yet so many nerve endings connected to the brain.
“I didn’t hear you,” Burke said. “Who was it?”
He moved to the next finger, bending it backward until it snapped. The man screamed again.
“I don’t think it was one of the Gambinos,” Burke said. “They wouldn’t hire a whole fucking United Nations to do this.”
He broke the third finger.
“No,” the man screamed, shaking his head. “No, no …”
“I didn’t think so.”
He broke another finger. Now all four fingers of the man’s right hand were bent back at unnatural angles. Burke took all of the fingers in one hand, squeezing them together, as he took the thumb with his other hand. The man screamed even louder.
“I think I know who it is,” Burke said, “but, all the same, I’d like to hear you say his name.”
When Burke had first come to Chicago, he’d ended up working for an aging local gangster on the South Side until the man drew the attention of an emerging crime figure, a man who was moving to consolidate all of his financial operations in the entire city. The old man refused to cooperate and a representative was sent to have a conversation with him. Burke intervened and killed the representative, and then the next two men who came afterward. The man who sent them had already demonstrated a certain wisdom about when to make friends rather than enemies or when to make employees. He’d just bought out the services of a La Raza gang member named Quintero and now decided to do the same with Burke. Instead of going to war with this
kid, he would hire him. Burke’s first job: kill the gangster he was protecting.
Burke continued to work for his new boss, receiving his assignments through Quintero, and ultimately killing more men than he could count—until he was finally given an order he didn’t feel like obeying. After shadowing a rival dealer for two days straight, living on nothing but coffee and cigarettes, Quintero called him at the last minute and told him to back off. Burke killed the man anyway just so two days of his life wouldn’t have been totally wasted. When Quintero reminded him of the price for disobedience, Burke said, “You know where to find me.” Cole sent a half dozen men. Burke sent them all back. Dead.
Burke left Chicago soon after that and ended up in New York, finding work with a newly revived version of the Westies, the infamous Hell’s Kitchen gang sponsored and protected by the Gambino crime family. But it was a new generation of criminals born and bred in New York, and even though they all had Irish last names, Burke found no common ground with them. They were more interested in buying clothes and getting laid, and when Burke killed a Gambino lieutenant for calling him a mick for the hundredth time, not only did they fail to protect him, they handed him over to the police. For the first time in his life, Burke was sent to prison.
And now, three years later, he waited to hear the name of the one and only man who could have reached him in a fortified tower on an island in the East River.
“Cole,” the man said between screams. “It was Cole, it was Cole.”
“There you go,” Burke said, bending the man’s thumb back and tearing the joint away from the palm just for the hell of it. The man fell backward, fainting from pain.
Burke stood up, brushing himself off as well as he could with both hands still cuffed together. Then he stood with one foot on either side of the man’s head, pressing the leg-irons into his neck.
The elevator came to life with a jerk and started moving upward again. Burke listened impassively to the gurgling sounds coming from the white man’s throat, until they stopped. When the elevator got to the fifth floor, Burke stepped over the body of the now-dead man into the arms of a dozen screws, all waiting for him with clubs and pepper spray.
Exit Strategy Page 7
