The Second Life of Nick Mason

by Steve Hamilton

  When he got there, Cole was sitting at his desk with his back to him. He turned and gave Mason a quick nod. He was wearing the same rimless reading glasses that made him look like a prison librarian.

  “Why am I back here?” Mason said.

  Cole turned in his chair and took off the glasses. He didn’t look like a librarian anymore. “You’re back here,” he said, “because you got something I wanna know more about.”

  “Look, Mr. Cole . . .”

  “Read up on you,” Cole said. “Got some questions.”

  Cole reached behind him and grabbed a folder from the desk. As he opened it, Mason saw his own mug shot from four years ago on the top page. This was his criminal file.

  “You’re dialed in,” Mason said. “You’ve got this whole place wired. Is there anything the guards won’t bring you?”

  “You’re a Canaryville boy,” Cole said, putting his reading glasses back on and starting to flip through the pages. “‘Father unknown.’”

  Mason didn’t respond to that. He didn’t like seeing this man reading through his file, but once again figured it was probably a great time to keep his mouth shut.

  “Tough way to start your life,” Cole said. “Don’t learn how to be a man, sometimes, until it’s too late. You put work in on the streets for over fifteen years, never spent more than one night locked up.”

  Mason watched Cole flip back to the first page.

  “‘Possession of a stolen vehicle,’” he said, reading from the page. “Got a few of them here. You work for one shop? Freelance? How’d that work?”

  “Whoever paid. I moved around.”

  “‘Possession of burglary tools’? Man’s branching out. But that one got dropped, too. Nothing ever sticks to you.”

  Cole kept reading the file.

  “You work alone sometimes,” Cole said, flipping to the next page. “Sometimes with a crew. All over the city. Sometimes you go in hard. Sometimes on the sly.”

  He flipped back to the first page.

  “Thirty years without going down. But then they get you and you don’t just go down, you go down hard. Some men wouldn’t handle that so well.”

  “This is starting to sound like a job interview,” Mason said.

  “That’s exactly what this is.”

  The two men looked each other in the eye. Cole waited for Mason to say something.

  “I handled it,” Mason said. “What choice did I have?”

  “You always got a choice, Nick. Even here, you always got a choice. Like when I wanted to meet you.”

  “Look, if we’re gonna do this again . . .”

  “How come you didn’t give them up?” Cole said. “Twenty-five-to-life, you’re looking at. Hard federal time, Nick. But you keep your mouth shut.”

  There was a long silence, finally broken when two inmates walked by in the hallway outside Cole’s cell. Their conversation ended as soon as they saw the look on the bodyguards’ faces, and the two men moved quickly away.

  “One of your men got killed that night,” Cole said, looking back down at the papers. “Finn O’Malley. He a friend of yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two other men got away. Were they friends, too?”

  “One was a friend. The other was a piece of shit.”

  “But you didn’t turn on either of them.”

  “I turn on the piece of shit, he turns on my friend. I’m still heading down here, either way. No matter what I did.”

  “You had a wife,” Cole said, looking at the sheet again. “And a daughter.”

  “I’m outta here,” Mason said.

  “You don’t talk about them. They don’t belong in this place, right?” Cole leaned forward and studied Mason carefully for a long time. “What happens when they come to visit you?”

  Mason looked away without answering. Cole shuffled through the papers again and found something interesting on one of the last pages.

  “They don’t,” Cole said. “Ever. So you don’t talk about them. It’s, like, a rule you made up. To keep your mind right.”

  Mason stared at Cole. He’d never mentioned his rules to anyone in here. It was an essential part of him that nobody else had ever seen.

  “That’s right, Nick. You know what I’m talking about. You wanna hear one of my rules?”

  Mason didn’t respond.

  “I’m here for two lifetimes, Nick. But just because I eat here and I sleep here, does that mean I live here? Fuck that. I’m still back in Chicago, where I belong. Most guys hear that, they think I’m crazy. But maybe you understand what I’m saying.”

  Mason looked at one bodyguard, then the other, wondering if they had to hear this bullshit every day.

  “It’s a state of mind,” Cole said, tapping his temple with one index finger. “You look at it right, it’s just a problem of geography.”

  A problem of geography, Nick thought. The man actually just said that.

  “That’s just one of my rules,” Cole said. He picked up the file and opened it again. “I already know a couple of yours. Don’t sell out your friends. Keep everything separate. Keep your family inside you. I’m seeing a picture here.”

  “You hear my name,” Mason said. “Now you read a file. And you think you know me?”

  “I want to know what’s not in the file.”

  “I do my time,” Mason said. “I mind my own business. I don’t fuck with people and people don’t fuck with me. I don’t need to make friends here. When you make a friend, that man’s enemies become your enemies. I don’t need that.”

  Cole listened to him carefully, slowly nodding his head.

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t look out for people,” Mason went on. “I look out for them, they look out for me. That’s how you survive. But I don’t owe them anything else. I don’t belong to anybody in this prison, Mr. Cole. And even though I can see you’ve got lots of power here and you can drag me down here anytime you want, I’m not going to belong to you, either. Nobody owns me.”

  Cole kept looking at him, still nodding his head.

  “You don’t always have to be that way,” he finally said. “People in my neighborhood, they have a problem, they don’t call nine-one-one. They call me. I’m the police, the fireman, and the judge.”

  “Yeah, that’s your neighborhood. It’s not mine.”

  Cole smiled at that. “How long you been here, Nick?”

  “You saw the file. Four years.”

  “Four years down, twenty-one to go if you’re lucky. So we got time to get to know each other. My boys will help you pack your stuff.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re coming to SHU, Nick. Better food, better equipment . . . You’ll like it here.”

  “What if I say no?”

  “It’s already done,” Cole said.

  8

  Mason left Elmhurst and gunned the Mustang down North Avenue, driving like a man with no family to live for.

  He blew through every yellow light, made one turn and then another, with no idea where he was going. Finally, he stopped at a bar on a street he didn’t know. In a part of the West Side he’d never seen before. It was a building made of concrete with glass blocks rounding off the corners. No sign. No name. An anonymous place for the local daily drinkers who all knew the bartender and one another. Mason opened the door and stepped inside into the darkness, feeling the cold blast from the A/C.

  He went to the bar, put down a twenty, and told the man to line them up. There was another man drinking at the other end of the bar. Another two men in one of the booths. A television was on over the bar, but the sound was off. A half-dozen backlit beer signs glowed on the walls.

  Mason downed the first shot of rail whiskey without even tasting it. It burned halfway down his throat. He drained another before easing up and taking a long breat
h.

  “What did you expect?” he said to himself loud enough for the man at the end of the bar to look up at him. “What did you really think was going to happen?”

  Mason picked up the third glass and weighed it in his hand. He looked at the cheap, watered-down whiskey and then threw it back.

  Mason thought about all the guys he’d met inside, guys who’d been there for big chunks of their lives. He’d overhear them talking to one another, how life was going to be when they get out, how they got this woman out there, their old girlfriend from high school, hottest thing on two legs back then. They’re gonna get out, go find her, have some fun for a while, but then make it real. Get married, have a family. Make up for lost time. This whole picture they create, lying in their cells at night, staring up at the ceiling. Mason would hear them talking about it at the lunch table, during work detail, whenever they had a few minutes and a sympathetic ear, and he’d think some of these poor bastards in here have no idea how life really works. That girl from high school? Probably married and already has three kids. Or something a lot worse, depending on the neighborhood. Dead and gone. Or maybe even in the women’s penitentiary herself. No matter what, she sure as fuck wouldn’t remember some loser boyfriend from high school who went away all those years ago. You go find her, pal, assuming she’s alive. See how that little reunion turns out.

  But Mason had to ask himself how his expectations were any different. Maybe it was only five years, but did it turn out any better? Getting married, having a kid together, it didn’t mean shit in the end. The Earth turns and everybody moves on with their lives.

  Everybody forgets you.

  I didn’t even see her, he said to himself. I didn’t even get to see what my own daughter looks like now.

  “Line ’em up again,” he said to the bartender.

  “Hope you’re not driving,” the man said.

  “Pour me a real drink, I might have a problem.”

  “Seriously, friend . . .”

  “I am not your friend,” Mason said. He was already adding it up in his head—two behind him, one to his left, this clown in front of him. If they all wanted to give him a problem at once, it might get interesting.

  “Maybe you should leave,” the bartender said. “We don’t need trouble here.”

  Mason remembered what Quintero had said to him about what would happen if he got into trouble. Not even twenty-four hours had passed.

  Mason waited a few more beats. Then he got up and left.

  He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, blinded by the setting sun. The world became clear again and he went to the parking lot. He got in the Mustang, started it, put it in reverse, and pointed it at the street. A man walking by chose that moment to stop directly in front of his car, blocking the exit. He was dressed in black, head to toe, his shirt tight enough to show off his biceps. He had gold chains around his neck and a pair of screw-you mirrored sunglasses to complete the look.

  “All right, auto show’s over,” Mason said out loud. He didn’t bother cranking down the window. “You got your look, now get your ass out of the way.”

  The man didn’t move. Mason revved the engine.

  “I will seriously run you over,” he said. “Today is not the day to fuck with me.”

  The man stepped aside finally. As he barreled out of the parking lot, Mason looked up and saw the man taking off his sunglasses. He saw the man’s face for one fraction of a second. Full lips, crooked nose, hair thinning on top yet somehow the rest of it tied back in a ponytail.

  Their eyes met. A spark of recognition.

  Mason was a hundred yards down the street when it hit him. That was Jimmy McManus.

  Mason doubled back in the black Mustang to the same parking lot. He even got out and went inside the bar, hoping that McManus really was a regular there.

  The bartender was yelling something at him as he walked back into the place, but Mason didn’t hear a word. He scanned the room for McManus.

  He wasn’t there.

  Mason got back in the car and drove across town. Seeing that man, at least, was a wake-up call. There was no time to feel sorry for himself. He had bigger problems.

  He wasn’t going to get Gina back. He had to accept that. Even seeing his own daughter was going to be a lot harder than he ever could have imagined. But he still had a deal to live up to. He still had a job to do. He had to be ready for that phone to ring even if he had no idea what would happen next.

  He took out the cell phone and put it on the seat next to him. I don’t even know what the ringtone sounds like, he said to himself.

  The next morning, he would find out.

  9

  Detective Sandoval’s hunt for Nick Mason had brought him to one of the most expensive streets in Chicago. Sandoval parked a few doors down from the town house and double-checked the address. Lincoln Park fucking West, he said to himself. With the park right across the street. The gardens, the conservatory, the zoo. A great view of Lake Michigan. This is the place. This is where Nick Mason lives now.

  Sandoval remembered Mason’s last address. Or rather his last address before USP Terre Haute. It was a little shitbox in Canaryville, one of those houses they built right on top of one another with barely enough room to walk between them. Forty-third Street, if his memory was right. He’d seen it a few days after that night at the harbor. He’d just recently been partnered with Higgins back then, still getting the hang of the guy. Higgins was at the peak of his career, with a winning streak of big busts that would have made most cops insufferable. But Higgins wore his success well, with just enough self-confidence to believe he could solve any murder in the city. That’s how they ended up on the Sean Wright case. It was a “heater case,” with a mandate from the superintendent’s office. A federal agent had been killed. They needed to solve it and solve it quickly.

  They started with the one dead suspect, a man from Canaryville named Finn O’Malley. A perfect name, Sandoval thought, for a mick from that part of town. O’Malley had a long record of minor incidents, some pickups on more serious charges that never went anywhere, until an aggravated assault on a police officer put him away for eighteen months. They went to O’Malley’s last-known residence and asked around. They got nothing. Sandoval was ready to take it personally, all the locals closing ranks on him. But Higgins kept his cool and dragged him back to the station and they spent a full day going through old arrest records. If they couldn’t find any known associates who also went away to prison, they could at least find some other men O’Malley might have been picked up with even if everybody eventually walked.

  That’s how they came up with two more names. Eddie Callahan and Nick Mason. They’d been picked up together and then released, on two separate occasions, a few years apart. A long-standing relationship.

  Sandoval and Higgins went out looking for both men. They found them in Canaryville—Eddie Callahan at his fiancée’s apartment and Nick Mason at the house he shared with his wife and young daughter. Both men denied any involvement in the harbor job. Both men claimed they had been straight for years. Both men admitted that they had seen Finn O’Malley at Murphy’s bar on the night in question but that he had left the bar long before Callahan and Mason went home.

  The two detectives checked out their story at the bar. The bartender on duty that night confirmed that O’Malley had been there, had left early, and that Callahan and Mason had stayed.

  “You trust that guy?” Sandoval said to Higgins as they walked back to their car. “Who’s the guy who killed Lincoln? John Wilkes Booth? If he’s a Canaryville guy, this bartender’s fucking great-grandfather swears Booth was at the bar all night. Never went near that theater.”

  “Went deep for that one,” Higgins said.

  “Am I wrong?”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  The next day, a stolen car was found in a parking lot a mile down the road. T
he blood was tested and found to be consistent with Finn O’Malley’s.

  “Somebody brought that blood home,” Higgins said.

  “Only been a few days,” Sandoval said. “If either guy’s in his own car that night . . .”

  Higgins looked at his partner. They both knew what would happen next. Warrants were served. The cars were impounded. In Mason’s car, they ended up finding trace amounts of Finn O’Malley’s blood on the right armrest of the driver’s seat. Callahan’s car was clean.

  When Mason was brought in, Sandoval and Higgins sat there in the interview room for a while. Higgins had already told Sandoval to do the talking. He had a gut feeling that Mason wouldn’t say a word to either one of them, but at least Sandoval was the same age. He might have a slightly better shot at him.

  Sandoval kept watching Mason, waiting for the pressure to build. For most guys, it doesn’t take long. You just have to sit there and wait for it to become real to him.

  I’m sitting in a room with two cops, the guy will say to himself. There can only be one reason for that. They’ve got me nailed.

  But Sandoval wasn’t seeing this on Mason yet. All the signs you look for. The way the eyes start moving around. Looking toward the door. Thinking about what you can say that will get you out of the room. Never mind where I go next, just get me the fuck out of here.

  The hands coming together. The man instinctively protecting himself. Closing himself into a ball.

  Or the legs starting to shake under the table. All that tension, it has to go somewhere. But no, not this guy. He wasn’t giving them anything.

  Not yet.

  “Canaryville kid,” Sandoval said, finally breaking the silence. “You go to Saint Gabriel’s?”

  Mason said nothing.

  “Bet you’re a Sox fan, too. I’m from Avondale, been a Cubs fan my whole life.”

  Mason stared past them at a spot on the wall.

  “You go to Tilden High School? We played basketball there.”

  Mason kept staring at the wall.