Exit Strategy

by Steve Hamilton

  The front doorbell rang. Mason went down the stairs and opened the door and was shocked to see Gina standing there, holding Adriana’s hand.

  “I thought you were in Denver,” Mason said, looking over her shoulder at the vehicles on Lincoln Park West. It was the only thing that had given him any peace of mind the night before, believing they were a thousand miles away when he faced off against Burke.

  “Good to see you, too,” Gina said. Adriana didn’t bother saying anything at all. She ran past her father and up the stairs into the town house.

  “Come in,” Mason said.

  When he led Gina up the stairs, he saw their daughter was already outside on the terrace, dipping her fingers in the pool. It was something he’d imagined a thousand times, finally having her here. But now that it was happening, on this day of all days …

  “This is some place,” Gina said. “I had no idea.”

  “It’s not mine.” He went to the kitchen counter and covered the gun with a towel.

  “Somebody else lives here?”

  “Diana. The woman at the restaurant,” Mason said. “But you have to understand—”

  “I don’t have to understand anything,” Gina said, putting up a hand to stop him. “It’s none of my business.”

  “I’m sorry about the other day,” Mason said. “It was unavoidable.”

  “You really are a bastard, Nick. Do you know what it took to convince Brad to let you take Adriana for the day?”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve already let me down enough, so I’m used to it. But Adriana …”

  Gina stopped herself for a moment, rubbing her forehead and wiping away a tear.

  “She was heartbroken,” Gina said. “It must have felt like you had abandoned her. Again.”

  “I’ll make it up to her. I promise.”

  They both watched Adriana get up from the pool and go over to the railing to look down at the zoo across the street. Mason had to fight off the urge to go get her, to bring her back inside where she’d be safe.

  Or at least safer.

  “Look,” Mason said, “if you came here to make me feel even worse …”

  “Brad says Denver is amazing,” Gina said. “The houses cost a lot, but there’s so much to do there. The mountains and skiing and hiking, and the schools are really good …”

  Mason knew what she was doing now. There was something else on her mind, so she was spinning her wheels, talking about nothing, because she didn’t want to say it.

  “What is it, Gina? Talk to me.”

  She moved toward the door and looked out at the terrace.

  “This is the only city I’ve ever lived in,” she said, “except for that one year in college. And you know how much I hated that.”

  “Is there something else going on here? Between you and Brad? I thought you were the perfect couple.”

  She turned to look at him with those burning green eyes. “There’s no such thing, Nick. You know that.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “Brad is a good man. A good stepfather. He loves Adriana like his own.”

  “But …”

  “But he’s consumed with his work. And sometimes he makes me feel like I’m his charity project. You know, save the poor lost girl from Canaryville and raise her daughter to be something better.”

  “The girl I knew never needed saving.”

  She smiled and looked at him for a long time before speaking again.

  “You know, we’d still be together,” she said softly. “You and I. If you hadn’t …”

  She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t have to.

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve been trying to do the right thing ever since I got out. That’s all I can do now. But if Brad really wants to take you away from here …”

  He couldn’t even believe what he was about to say. But he knew it was right.

  “… go.”

  Gina hadn’t come here to ask his permission. Mason knew that. But after everything they’d been through together, this was the one word she needed to hear. He could see it on her face.

  Mason looked out at his daughter again, still looking over the railing. He couldn’t help imagining a strange pair of eyes watching her on those video monitors Eddie had described to him. And though he’d made his deal with Burke, he couldn’t help imagining the crosshairs from a high-powered rifle lining up his daughter’s head even now from somewhere down on the street.

  You made a deal with a madman, Mason told himself. You’re gambling with everything you have, everything that ever mattered to you.

  Mason went out to the terrace and grabbed his daughter, held her tight, and brought her back inside.

  She whispered into his ear: “I want to go to the zoo.”

  “We will,” he said. “I promise.”

  Gina stood and watched them. There were tears on her face.

  “I will always be your father,” Mason said. “Forever. You know that, right?”

  He felt her nodding her head against his shoulder.

  “No matter if we’re together or far apart, you’re a part of me and I’m a part of you.”

  “But we’re not always going to be apart, right?”

  “No,” he said. Probably a lie.

  “Not for long.” An even bigger lie.

  “Promise me,” she said.

  He pushed her away gently so he could look into her eyes. “I promise,” he said. “You’re going to have a great time in Denver. And I’ll see you soon.”

  She smiled, wrapped her arms around his neck, and squeezed. “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you more than you could know,” he said, hugging her as if this were the last time he would ever see her. “I love you.”

  When they separated, Gina leaned over to Nick.

  “Thank you,” she said so quietly he could barely hear her.

  Mason grabbed onto Adriana again. He didn’t want to let go. But he put her back down on the floor and he watched them go down the stairs, watched them get into their car and leave. He stayed out on the street, watched the car stop at the corner and turn. Watched his whole life drive away.

  He stayed outside for a long time, ignoring the cold air. Finally, he went back upstairs to finish cleaning his gun.

  21

  When Darius Cole took his first steps of freedom after twelve years in federal prison, he knew he’d done more than just beat the odds. He’d beaten the best prosecutor the federal government could throw at him, with all of the resources of the U.S. Justice Department behind her. He’d eliminated two key witnesses, turned a federal agent into the wrecking ball of the government’s evidence against him, turned a U.S. marshal into his own eyes and ears inside the WITSEC Program.

  He’d beaten them all. But on a day when he should have been celebrating, he went right back to business.

  Cole had two men waiting for him in the back row of the court galley. They were just as large as the beefs he had looking after him in Terre Haute, but instead of prison denims, they wore gray suits. They joined Cole on his way back down to the street level through the lobby, one on either side of him, pushing away a half dozen journalists who wanted to ask Cole questions, then ramming right through a camera crew that had been set up to block them.

  Cole didn’t need these men to keep him off the six o’clock news. He needed them to help keep him alive.

  Burke was out there somewhere. Watching him, waiting for the perfect opportunity. Cole wouldn’t see it coming. Wouldn’t hear it. That’s what Burke did, better than anyone Cole had ever known. Which meant that as long as Burke was still alive, Cole had to watch his back, conceal his movements, avoid exposed positions.

  Cole had to be just as smart as Burke. Just as careful.

  The attorney had already arranged for him to use the side exit from the Dirksen Building. As much as he wanted to go down those wide front steps onto Dearborn Street, he knew that Burke would have a perfect shot
at him there. Four lanes of midday traffic, a throng of pedestrians on their way back from lunch. Tall buildings on all sides, a thousand different windows in which to set up a sniper rifle. Cole’s newfound freedom might not last halfway down the steps.

  Cole hated the idea of sneaking out the side door like a servant instead of walking out the front door like a king retaking his kingdom. But as he’d once told Nick Mason, pride will kill a man faster than any bullet.

  When his men took him out the side door, he saw the black Town Car waiting on the street. Steel plates in the side panels and roof, polycarbonate tinted windows. One of his men opened the rear passenger’s-side door and Cole slipped inside.

  “Welcome home, boss,” the driver said, and when the other two men were inside the vehicle, he accelerated away from the curb.

  The man with Cole in the backseat handed him his new cell phone—every important number already keyed in. Cole hit the number for Quintero and had him on the line after one ring.

  “Mason and Sandoval cut a deal,” Quintero said. As always, right to business.

  Cole took a beat to let this sink in.

  “How do you know this?”

  “Horton,” Quintero said. “He knows somebody in the U.S. Attorney’s office, says that woman who led the retrial—”

  “Greenwood. The AUSA.”

  “She’s putting a new case together. Conspiracy to commit murder, another set of CCE charges for everything that happened in the last twelve years …”

  The Kingpin Statute, Cole thought. Postdated from the day they sent me away. Which means they won’t need McLaren and they won’t need Wallace.

  “Mason will be the cooperating witness,” Cole said.

  My samurai.

  “Yes,” Quintero said. “How do you want to handle this?”

  “What’s the cop’s role?”

  “He gets the arrest. Wants to do it at the restaurant tonight, make a Mongolian opera out of it.”

  Cole thought about what Sun Tzu said over twenty-five hundred years ago in The Art of War: “Make your enemies reveal themselves.”

  Burke is too smart to hit me at the restaurant. Too hard to get a clean shot, too many bystanders on the way out. But Sandoval’s just another cop who thinks he can do anything because he’s wearing a badge.

  “Stay on Sandoval,” Cole said. “Wherever he goes.”

  “And Mason?”

  Cole sat back in his seat and looked out the darkened windows as Chicago raced by.

  I gave him his life back, Cole thought. And the man betrays me.

  “I’ll deal with Mason.”

  • • •

  FIVE HOURS LATER, Antonia’s Restaurant had become the center of the city. A long line of limousines and Town Cars jockeyed for position on Rush Street, each vehicle stopping at the great red awning leading to the front door. Drivers opened doors, men stepped out and held out arms for women dressed like it was the event of the year.

  Businessmen of every race, a dozen retired athletes, a handful of the more daring low-level politicians—they were all taking a calculated gamble that night, publicly celebrating the Second Coming of Darius Cole.

  Inside the restaurant, Nick Mason sat on a stool at the bar, nursing a Goose Island. Just one, to take the edge off. No more than that. He needed to stay sharp.

  He was wearing his Armani jacket, white shirt with no tie. He watched the front door of the restaurant as the guests all seated themselves and waited for Cole’s arrival. He had been due here at eight o’clock. It was now after nine and still no sign of Cole.

  Mason was getting nervous. Without knowing why, he had a sense that his plan was already starting to unravel. It was just another one of those gut feelings. But those feelings had helped keep him alive ever since he’d walked out of that prison.

  His plan was to let Cole make his big entrance and work his way through the room. Mason would ask him into the office for a moment, while Diana improvised any necessary diversion—she even had a pan prepared for a small grease fire—to make sure Mason and Cole had that one moment alone.

  Mason would take Cole out the back—he had the Browning tucked into his belt—put him in the Jaguar, and take him to where Burke was waiting. Mason would be back here in a matter of minutes, and then there’d be two hundred well-dressed witnesses, along with one homicide detective, to establish that Mason was right here in this room when they wrote down the time on Cole’s toe tag.

  Sandoval would know that Mason had lied to him, that he never had any intention of testifying.

  Mason could live with that.

  The backup plan if Mason failed was Sandoval still gets all the information on Cole’s organization and Mason trusts him to protect Adriana.

  And Gina.

  And Diana.

  Mason didn’t want to use the backup plan because it meant trusting a cop and trusting the system.

  The backup plan also meant that Mason was dead.

  Mason looked at the door again. Then his cell phone rang. As he answered the call, he walked to the end of the bar to minimize the surrounding noise.

  It was Cole. “Change of plans. I’m in Englewood. Bring Diana with you.”

  Mason’s gut feeling was right. The delay had already thrown off the timing. Now the whole plan could be lost. Sandoval, who was waiting to arrest Darius Cole that night, would lose patience and go off script.

  And God knows what Burke would do if Mason failed to deliver.

  “Everybody’s waiting for you here,” Mason said.

  Cole ignored that, gave him a street and a number.

  “Twenty minutes,” Cole said. Then the call ended.

  Mason put his phone away, looked up and saw Diana standing near one of the tables filled with eight men, all of them already half drunk. As soon as he caught her eye, he gave her a nod and she came over to him. Her face was red from running around, trying to keep two hundred impatient guests happy, and from the same nerves Mason had been trying to deal with all day. From both of those things and more. She was a woman waiting for her captor to walk through the door. A captor she never thought would come back.

  “That was Cole,” Mason told her. “We have to leave.”

  Her face went white. “Nick, that’s not—”

  “I know,” he said. He wanted to pull her close, but he knew couldn’t. Not right there in the restaurant with two hundred guests watching. “We have to stay cool. Play this out.”

  “Nick, I don’t know—”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “It’s not a matter of—”

  “Diana,” Nick said, looking into her eyes, “do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” she said, trying to compose herself within that moment. It would have fooled anyone but Mason, who could still see the apprehension in the way she held her body. “Let’s go.”

  • • •

  SANDOVAL SAT in his unmarked blue sedan parked a half block down from the restaurant on Rush Street. He listened to the radio traffic, the second shift already busy at work as the sun went down on another day in Chicago.

  Sandoval hated waiting. Always had. Surveillance was torture for him. And for everyone else around him—just ask any of his former partners.

  But tonight he was alone. One man, one pair of handcuffs.

  But still no sign of Darius Cole.

  He looked up in surprise as Mason’s black Jaguar came out of the parking lot, moving fast. Sandoval pulled in behind him, watched him make two left turns and then head south.

  Sandoval picked up his cell phone as he drove, hit the speed dial for Mason’s number. “What the hell’s going on?” he said as soon as Mason answered. “Where’s Cole?”

  “I’ll get him,” Mason said. “Bring him back. Just stay by the restaurant and be ready.”

  The call ended. Sandoval threw the phone on the seat next to him. No fucking way he was going back to wait on Rush Street. He picked up Mason on the Wabash Avenue Bridge and stayed behind him.

  • • • />
  QUINTERO DIDN’T MIND WAITING. He knew the value of patience. He’d seen enough men die on the streets because they didn’t have enough of it.

  Tonight he’d need every ounce of la paciencia because every other part of him wanted only to go inside that restaurant, grab Mason, drag him outside into the back alley, and beat him to death.

  Quintero saw Mason’s black Jaguar pull out of the parking lot, Sandoval’s sedan pull out soon after. Quintero started his Escalade and joined them, tailing both cars across the Wabash Avenue Bridge all the way to Englewood.

  • • •

  ON THE FAR END OF TOWN, in the Irish neighborhood of Beverly, Bruce Harper rang the bell next to door number twenty. Or maybe twenty-one—Harper had lost count. His arm was out of the sling today but still sore as hell, and he still had the bandage going all the way across his forehead, hiding the raw scrape Burke had given him when he had hit his head against the concrete wall of the bunker.

  A man who was at least seventy years old pulled open the door. He’d probably lived on this street his whole life, half a block away from the old corner bar owned by Burke’s cousin.

  Harper showed him his U.S. Marshals’ badge, then Burke’s mug shot, and asked him if he’d seen Burke around the neighborhood.

  “I know his family,” the man said, “but haven’t seen Sean in years. Isn’t he doing a murder beef out in New York?”

  “He was,” Harper said, “but I need your help.” It was a good way to get a man on your side: by making him feel like he’s part of the process. Like you’re pinning a deputy’s badge right on his chest.

  “If you see him,” Harper said, “or hear somebody talking about him, you give me a call, okay? There’s a half-million-dollar reward.”

  If deputizing a man was a good way to buy his help, half a million dollars worked a hell of a lot better.

  “Never liked that kid, anyway,” the man said with a wry smile, putting the card in his pocket.

  Harper thanked him and left. He was still walking around with the effects of a concussion, but he had more doors to knock on here in Burke’s old neighborhood. Like every good U.S. marshal, Bruce Harper knew one dead-solid truth about how to find a fugitive: