The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(12)

Quintero.

“The f*ck you doing here?” Mason said. “Are you following me?”

Quintero didn’t speak. He handed Mason a piece of paper. Mason took it from him.

“What is this?” Mason said.

“What you’re looking for.”

A car started honking behind them. Quintero’s Escalade was double-parked, blocking the entire street. Quintero gave the driver a look and the honking stopped. Only then did he return to his vehicle. He got in and drove off.

Mason unfolded the paper. There was an address written down. In Elmhurst, of all places.

Elmhurst?

He looked out his windshield at the Escalade’s brake lights as the vehicle slowed at the stop sign, then disappeared down the street.

You know where they live, he said to himself. I shouldn’t be so surprised, but you know where Gina lives. You know where my daughter lives.

The man standing on his front porch was eyeing him now. Mason couldn’t blame him. A strange man in a strange car parked on his street. Then a gangbanger pulls up behind him in a gangbanger Escalade, blocking the whole street. If it were Mason on the porch, he’d already be wandering down to the street for a little chat. Can I help you out, friend? Are you lost, buddy?

Mason pulled away from the curb. When he got to the stop sign, he saw two kids in an old beater slowing down at the intersection, checking out the black vintage Mustang. They were eighteen years old, maybe nineteen. Tough Irish kids like a thousand others Mason grew up with. Like Eddie, like Finn. Like himself. Mason could see their eyes following the smooth lines of the car, then coming up to meet his.

He could tell what they were thinking. This guy must have taken the wrong turn on the expressway and found himself on the wrong street. You have no business driving down this street, those eyes said to him. This is our neighborhood. You do not belong here.

Looking back at them, Mason wondered which one of these kids would f*ck up his life as badly as he had himself. Maybe both of them.

He hit the gas and headed to Elmhurst.





5




Detective Frank Sandoval had worked a hundred brutal homicides with his old partner Gary Higgins, but he’d never seen fear on the man’s face. Not once.

Until today.

Sandoval had come up here to this little inland lake west of Kenosha, Wisconsin, not knowing if he’d found the right place until he had walked around to the lake side of the house and had seen the old Crown Vic, pulled around back so it couldn’t be seen from the road. The sun was going down by then. Sandoval held up a hand to shield his eyes and saw the silhouette on the dock. He walked down the trail, moving fast. Sandoval was built short and compact, with Latin features, and dark piercing eyes that took in every detail around him. He was a man doing the one job in the world that could contain all of his energy.

When Sandoval was close enough, the silhouette resolved into a man he would have recognized anywhere. Late fifties, with wide shoulders and not much hair left on his head. One of the most decorated homicide detectives in the city, with a list of high-profile arrests that would run off the page.

Sandoval thought back to the first time he’d ever seen this man. It was his first day as a detective at Area Central Homicide. The commander had partnered him with Gary Higgins. First thing Higgins told him was shut up and listen. Keep your eyes open and watch me. Learn how this really works before you start thinking you know something.

It was a six-man team, working under one sergeant. It didn’t take long for Sandoval to see how the other men took their lead from Higgins. Always the first man through the door. Knew when to lean on people and when to hang back. Knew which questions to ask and the right time to ask them. If Higgins hadn’t been a cop, he would have probably been a professor of human psychology.

He did it hard. He did it right. Most of all, he did it clean.

Everything Sandoval knew about being a good homicide detective, about being a good cop, he learned from Gary Higgins. But now, as he looked down the dock, he saw his old partner sitting motionless on a folding chair between the last two pilings. The water was as flat and still as a mirror. When Sandoval took one step onto the dock, Higgins turned around quickly. The surprise on his face gave way to anger.

“Whatever answers you thought you might be getting on the drive up here,” Higgins said, “you can forget it. You’ll get nothing from me.”

“We have to talk, Gary.”

Higgins stood up and came down the dock toward Sandoval. He’d seen this man just a few weeks ago. How could he be so much thinner? He looked like a man who’d aged ten years.

“Who’m I talking to?” Higgins said as he grabbed Sandoval by the shoulders and began to pat him down. “Who else is listening?”

“Take your f*cking hands off me,” Sandoval said, pushing him away. “You think I’d come here wired?”

He studied Higgins’s face. The lines around his mouth, the dark bags under his eyes. From two feet away, he could smell the alcohol on his breath.

“Raise your arms,” Higgins said.

“Fuck you. I’m not wearing a wire.”

“How did you find me?”

“I remembered you talking about this place,” Sandoval said. “It’s still in your father-in-law’s name, so I came up here and took a shot.”

“Who else knows you’re here?”