“Take a mirror, hold it under your car. You’ll see.”
Mason didn’t want to leave Burke alone for a second, but unless he wanted to risk untying the bastard and bringing him into the office, he had no choice.
“Don’t move,” Mason said, sticking the gun under Burke’s chin to make the point. He went to the office, opened up the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, and took out his backup copy of the information Eddie had given him.
He was gone for maybe thirty seconds total, and when he was back in the kitchen, he sat down in front of Burke again. He was about to open the envelope when he happened to glance at the floor. Something didn’t look right to him. The positioning of the chair legs was slightly different now.
The chair had been moved.
Mason stood up, grabbed Burke by the shoulder, and looked at his hands. They were still bound by the belt, but as he looked closer he saw the long blade of a knife hidden against the inside of Burke’s right forearm. He took the knife and held it in front of Burke’s face.
“I oughta cut your fucking ears off,” Mason said before he threw the knife in the sink. “You got any more tricks you want to play? ’Cause I’m getting tired of them.”
“I got one more, boyo,” Burke said, looking him in the eye. “I’m going to take your gun from you and empty every fucking bullet into your body. And you’ll be alive until the last one.”
Just one more minute, Mason thought. One more minute hitting him in the face is exactly what I need right now.
“I was never going to testify against Cole,” Burke said. “He didn’t have to send you to kill me. Or my cousin …”
Mason took a photograph from the envelope—two men on a sidewalk, one black, one white. He was almost certain that the white man was the one who drove the gray sedan and took turns tailing him. But, more important, it was these two men who Eddie had followed into the bar in Beverly.
“These are the men who killed your cousin,” Mason said, holding the photograph in front of Burke’s face. “Do you recognize them?”
“The black one is Patrick,” Burke said. “Been with Cole a long time. The big dumb white one is Gordie. He was new when I was around.”
Burke kept peering at the two faces in the photograph. “Gordie’s the one killed Eamon. I know it. Not Patrick.”
When Mason put the photograph back in the folder, Burke looked him in the eye. “He would have told you to do it. But you were in New York.”
Mason didn’t bother arguing.
“Would have been interesting if you had made it down the bunker while I was still there.”
“But I didn’t,” Mason said. “And now you’re here. Which means we both have a choice.”
Burke narrowed his eyes. “About what?”
“About what to do next.”
“There used to be an office,” Burke said. “Over on Canal Street. It’s been moved.”
“It’s down on 111th Street now.”
“And Quintero. He still works for Cole?”
Mason nodded.
“And Cole’s woman,” Burke said, “still runs the restaurant. I saw her at lunchtime today.”
“Diana has nothing to do with this,” Mason said. “You’re not going to touch her. Do you understand me?”
Burke smiled. “Tapping the boss’s molly, are we? He’s not going to like that.”
Mason held the barrel of the Browning close to Burke’s left eye.
“Easy, boyo,” Burke said. “Put that thing away and we’ll keep talking.”
“I need to make this clear to you,” Mason said. “Diana has no part in any of this. Whatever happens, she walks away.”
“Understood.”
Mason pulled the gun away.
“You’re alive right now for one reason,” Mason said. “It’s because we both want the same thing.”
“That would be?”
“We both want Darius Cole dead,” Mason said. “We both want freedom. We can do that if we work together.”
“You expect me to help you now?” Burke was smiling again.
“Cole has a hearing tomorrow morning,” Mason said. “There’s a good chance he’ll be on the street by the end of the day.”
Burke nodded, deep in thought.
“So, tell me the truth,” Mason said, sitting back down on the chair and facing him. “Who do you want more right now? Me or Cole?”
Mason watched him carefully. Watched for that key moment when Burke’s hatred for Mason redirected to his old boss. Just like a freight train switching tracks. Just as quick. And just as deadly.
“If we agree to work together,” Burke finally said, “how are you going to trust me?”
“I won’t,” Mason said. “But I don’t have any choice. Neither of us do.”
Burke seemed to accept that. When Mason stood up and undid the belts, he stayed seated on the chair, rubbing his wrists.
Mason took out the burner phone he’d bought that day, gave it to Burke, along with a few hundred-dollar bills. “My phone number is already in here. Buy yourself some clothes. Find a place to stay.”
Burke folded everything and put it in his pocket. “I’m taking orders from you now, am I?”
“This is my town,” Mason said. “Now get the fuck out of here and be ready when I call.”
When Burke left, Mason put together all of the materials Eddie had collected for him. All of the photographs, computer records, everything a man would need to bring down Cole’s operation.
Mason knew that Burke was his best bet for Plan A.
But he was smart enough to know you always need a Plan B.
It was time to set up that insurance policy. Time to protect his family, and Diana, in case he didn’t live to see the end of the next day.
He took out his cell phone and dialed Detective Sandoval’s number.
“Where did you go?” Sandoval said after answering on the first ring. He didn’t sound happy. “I was right behind you, and when you left the restaurant, then … What did you do, jump down a manhole or something?”
“Forget that,” Mason said. “I’m back at the restaurant now. And I’m ready to make that deal.”
20
At nine o’clock in the morning on the worst day of Rachel Greenwood’s professional life, she stood in the courtroom on the twenty-first floor of the Federal Building, thirty feet away from a man directly responsible for the deaths of two people that week and indirectly for a dozen more.
God only knows how many others over the years, she thought. Twenty, thirty, a hundred? And what about the rest of it? The drug trafficking, extortion, money laundering, corruption, the ruined lives?
Thirty feet away from her stood Darius Cole, about to walk out of this courtroom a free man.
But not before Judge Oakley delivered one of her famous tongue-lashings, even if to Greenwood it felt like nothing more than empty words. She had failed. Harper had failed. The system had failed.
“Mr. Cole,” the judge said, looking down at him over a pair of reading glasses, the perfect cinematic touch. “You were found guilty by a jury of your peers twelve years ago in a case that exposed a vast criminal enterprise based on illegal narcotics, based on murder, based on intimidation, bribery, and corruption. To this court, you represent everything that is destroying our city. The drugs, the guns, the very culture of lawlessness. All of those things personified in one man.”
Darius Cole stood motionless next to Jay Starr. He was wearing a perfect olive-green suit, with a pale lilac shirt and a red floral tie that matched the handkerchief folded in the jacket pocket. He was facing the judge without really meeting her eyes, looking as calm and undisturbed as a man waiting for a traffic light to turn.
“You are a cancer on this city,” the judge went on. “A cancer that was once isolated and removed from our body, now tragically returned and metastasized.”
“Your Honor …” Starr said.
The judge shifted her gaze to him and he stopped talking.
“Any reasonable person,” she said, “would find reason to believe that you, Darius Cole, are directly responsible for the brutal murders of the two men who testified against you at the original trial. And that same person would have no doubt that this …”
She picked up the deposition from the retired Agent Horton, the same deposition that Greenwood had taken with her when she confronted the man yesterday. Even now, he was sitting somewhere in the courtroom, showing his true colors by hiding in the back row.
“That this,” the judge said, seeking out the agent, “is nothing more than an opportunistic fantasy, about which I hope to have much more to say at a different time in a different venue.”
Greenwood saw Cole giving his attorney a quick smile.
“But, at this moment, I am beholden to the law,” the judge said. “And the law requires this court to follow the Rules of Evidence at all times, no matter the circumstances.”
Last chance for a giant meteor, Greenwood thought to herself. Something her first boss used to say whenever a case was about to take a turn like this one.
“In the case before this court,” the judge said, “the U.S. Attorney has advised me that the vast majority of the evidence relies either directly or indirectly on the testimony of Mr. Cole’s former accountant, Ken McLaren, and his former adviser, Isaiah Wallace. If those witnesses were, as attested …”
The judge paused for a moment. One brief second of total silence in the courtroom before the unthinkable actually happened.
“If those witnesses were functioning as paid informants at the time the evidence was developed, and if those witnesses will not be able to testify in a retrial, then this court has no choice but to disallow that evidence under the Exclusionary Rule as clarified in Nardone versus United States. The so-called Fruit of the Poisonous Tree.”
Judge Oakley picked up her gavel, looked at it like she was in just as much disbelief as anyone else in the courtroom.
“Darius Cole,” she said, “this court hereby vacates all federal charges against you and orders the Department of Corrections to release you immediately.”
She brought the gavel down once and was already on her feet by the time the sound was done reverberating through the chamber. The door behind the bench opened and the judge disappeared. Greenwood wished she had her own special door to do the same.
The dozen journalists in the courtroom didn’t rush out like they would have done a couple decades ago. There were no calls to editors to stop the presses. Instead, they worked furiously on their smartphones and tablets.
The whole scene was much too quiet, much too restrained. It was as if the city of Chicago didn’t yet realize what had just happened to it.
• • •
DETECTIVE FRANK SANDOVAL sat on the aisle, four rows back. Next to him sat the bruised and battered Marshal Harper.
Sandoval watched Darius Cole walk down the aisle. If you were making a Mount Rushmore of Chicago criminals, you’d start with Al Capone and John Dillinger, then consider figures like Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana. If Darius Cole didn’t make the final cut, he’d at least be part of the conversation, and yet here he was, walking out of this courtroom a free man, passing maybe twenty inches away from Sandoval’s right elbow.
“Enjoy it while you can,” Sandoval said to him.
Cole barely slowed down, gave the cop a quick nod and a smile. Then he kept walking.
Harper pushed his way out into the aisle, past Sandoval, and stopped AUSA Greenwood before she left the courtroom.
“Marshal!” she said, not hiding her surprise.
“I know,” he said, “I look like hell. Never mind that. I want you to meet Detective Frank Sandoval.”
“Rachel Greenwood,” she said as she shook Sandoval’s hand. “But if you’ll excuse me—”
“I know you’re busy,” Harper said, “but I thought you might be able to spare a few minutes—”
“I’m sorry,” Greenwood said, already moving away from them. “I have to go talk to my boss, see if I still have a job.”
“Are you sure? Detective Sandoval would like to talk to you about putting Darius Cole back in prison. Forever.”
That stopped her. “Then let’s buy the detective some coffee,” she said, gesturing toward the door.
• • •
TEN MINUTES LATER, they were sitting in the back of a coffee shop a block down Dearborn Street. A steady stream of federal workers came in to get their cups to go, most of them apparently blissfully unaware of what had just happened in the district courtroom.
“Nick Mason killed Ken McLaren,” Sandoval said. “He killed Isaiah Wallace. He would have killed Sean Burke if he had gotten the chance.”
“Marshal Harper mentioned Mason before,” Greenwood said. “He works for Cole?”
“Yes.” Sandoval snuck one more quick look at Harper, then he delivered the punch line facing Greenwood: “I want to arrest Cole. And use Mason against him.”
She stopped drinking her coffee.
“He’s going to give us everything we need to make it stick this time,” Sandoval said. “And he’s going to testify.”
“In exchange for what, full immunity?”
“He’s more worried about protection for his ex-wife and his daughter.”
“How long do you think it’ll take to put this case together?”
“I don’t want to wait,” Sandoval said. “I want to arrest him tonight.”
She looked at him. “That’s a joke, right?”
“Look,” Sandoval said, “if we wait for a new federal case to get put together, it’ll take months. A hundred people working on it. Your office, FBI, DEA. During that time, what happens? He gets to somebody. Just like he got to my partner. Just like he got to the marshals. Just like he got to that FBI agent. That’s what he does.”
“This is insane,” she said. “You can’t arrest him on your own.”
“Watch me,” he replied. “I’ve got an open murder investigation right here in Chicago. That’s where I was going to start, but if you back me up, we can throw in federal charges now, put everybody on the spot. We bring in Mason, tell him the deal expires in twenty-four hours. Now everybody’s got to make a choice: either get behind the charges right now or take an official position that Darius Cole should walk free again.”
She looked at him for a long beat. “You really want to get fired,” she said.
“I’m already on my way out, Counselor. What about you? How’s your career path looking right now?”
Greenwood put her cup down and turned to Harper. “What do you think?”
“Sounds crazy to me,” Harper said, “but Sandoval’s right. All you need is one cop. And one Assistant U.S. Attorney.”
“One way or another,” Sandoval said, “Cole’s going to have quite a night. Either he has a big party and goes home to sleep in his own bed …”
He leaned forward and looked at Greenwood with his intense dark eyes.
“… or he goes right back in the cage. It’s up to you.”
• • •
SEAN BURKE SAT behind the wheel of the stolen pickup truck with New York plates, watching the storefront on 111th Street, when he saw a gray sedan pull up driven by the man he knew as Gordie. Patrick was in the passenger’s seat. They got out and went inside, and Burke waited patiently, watching the building until Gordie came back out alone and got into the panel truck that was parked in the back lot. When he pulled out onto the street, Burke pulled out behind him.
He followed the truck to a major transport center near the southern border of the city just off the Skyway. When Gordie left, Burke noted that the truck was lower. It had a full load. But Burke didn’t care about what was in the back of the truck. He only cared about the man driving it.
Burke stayed behind the truck as it made its way back toward the storefront, but instead of going straight back to work, Gordie made a stop at a Japanese restaurant. Burke pulled in and parked his truck next to Gordie’s.
He watched through t
he window as Gordie went into the restaurant’s bathroom, then he took out the toolbox that had been rattling around in the back of his pickup truck all the way from New York and went inside.
There were half a dozen people sitting at the tables having an early lunch. Two men were busy preparing sushi behind the counter, barely looking up at the newest arrival. Burke walked past the counter and into the bathroom.
Gordie was standing at the sink, washing his hands. Just as big a man as Burke remembered, just as ugly, with that same stupid look on his face. He had dark sunglasses on today, probably thought they made him look like a real badass.
Burke locked the door behind him.
It took Gordie a full second to recognize the man who’d just entered the bathroom. Gordie was ninety pounds heavier, six inches taller, and was carrying a Ruger in his shoulder holster—but within the span of that one second his surprise turned into the desperate fear of a cornered animal.
Before Gordie could reach for his Ruger, Burke swung the toolbox, shattering both the radius and the ulna bones in the big man’s forearm, then quickly closed in on him in the confined space, broke two of his fingers and took the gun away. He hit him in the face with it until his nose cartilage was pulverized and several of his teeth were lying on the bathroom floor.
Burke stepped back, wiping the blood from his hands as he looked down at the man sitting slumped against the wall.
“It’s nice to see you again, Gordie.”
He picked up Gordie’s sunglasses, which had been thrown to the floor, got down on one knee beside the man, lifted the jacket from his chest, and carefully slipped them into his inner pocket.
“Wouldn’t want these to be damaged,” Burke said.
Then he slid the toolbox over, undid the latch, and opened it.
“Now,” he said as he rummaged through the tools, “what can we play with?”
He picked up a long screwdriver, then a hammer, then a pair of vise-grip pliers.
“These will do,” he said. “For a start.”
• • •
NICK MASON SAT at the kitchen counter, cleaning the subway dirt from his Browning. The town house was otherwise empty. Diana was at the restaurant preparing for the lunch rush.
And Mason knew that somewhere, in a little house in Bridgeport, Eddie Callahan was safe at home after being released from the Cook County Jail—no formal charges ever filed against him—but still with a hell of a lot of explaining to do to his wife.
Exit Strategy Page 20
