The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(13)

“Nobody. I came on my own.”

“You should have stayed in Chicago, Frank. They could have followed you. They’re probably watching us right now.”

Sandoval looked around at the empty lake. There were other houses all along the shoreline, but he couldn’t see another soul. “Jesus,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”

Sandoval watched Higgins, waiting for the rest of his old partner to come back. The man who could never stop talking when they were on the job.

“I was your partner for six years,” Sandoval finally said. “You never took money, never crossed the line. I know you’re not jammed up, so you tell me what kind of deal you made to put Nick Mason back on the street.”

“I got nothing for you, Frank. You’re wasting your time here.”

“Thirty years,” Sandoval said. “You expect me to watch you throw that away, not say a f*cking word? Give me a name, let me start helping you.”

“You can’t help me.”

“Give me one name.”

“I can’t.”

“Okay, I’ll give you one. Darius Cole.”

Higgins looked away. It was a fraction of a second, but it was all Sandoval needed to see.

“Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere. Darius Cole, who happened to be in the same block with Nick Mason, down at Terre Haute. Of course, you already knew that much, right? And Mason’s got what, twenty years until his first parole hearing? At least two decades before he’s out, Gary. You know where he is right now?”

Higgins didn’t answer.

“He’s in a five-million-dollar town house in Lincoln Park. Which I’m sure is owned by guess who. I haven’t dug into it yet, but I don’t have to, because you know it’s one shell company that owns other companies, one for the restaurant, one for the town house, and who knows what else. But if you follow the money, it all flows back to Darius Cole. So Nick Mason’s out of prison and soaking in a hot tub and getting ready to do . . . what? Cole knows. Maybe you know. What horrible thing is he out to do, Gary? Whatever it is, you’re going to be wearing it. How’s that sit with you?”

Higgins looked at him.

“He killed a federal agent, Gary. Now he’s out.”

“We never put that gun in his hand.”

“The f*ck does that matter?” Sandoval said. “You know it’s felony murder as long as he’s there. Who cares if he pulled the trigger?”

Higgins put his hand on Sandoval’s chest and drove him backward, into the piling. Sandoval felt the rough wood digging into his back.

“You think I don’t know this?” Higgins said, his face two inches away. “All of this? I know what I did, Frank. I know what I f*cking did. Every night, I gotta drink myself to sleep so I don’t put a bullet in my head.”

“We can climb out of this. Together.”

“You don’t know these people,” Higgins said. “You don’t know what they’ll do to you. Is this worth your life, Frank? Your family’s life? That’s what the risk is here if you don’t stop. You say you want the answers, but you don’t. Believe me, you f*cking don’t.”

Sandoval had seen enough pain in his life. How many times had he answered a homicide call, met the wife or the parents, and seen a whole world of it? More than one person should be asked to bear? You never get numb to it. It’s new every time.

He was seeing that now, that same kind of pain, staring back at him through his partner’s eyes.

“I’m done,” Higgins said. “I’m over. You don’t have to be. Go back to Chicago and forget you ever saw me.”

Higgins let him go. He turned away from him and went back to the end of the dock.

“I’m not going to let this go,” Sandoval said to his back.

Higgins didn’t turn. He kept walking away.

“No matter what you say, Gary, I’m not going to stop.”





6




Nick Mason was staring at the house that contained his wife, his daughter, and another man who was apparently fulfilling his role as a husband and father.

He was in Elmhurst, a suburb west of Chicago. He was parked on the street, looking out at a big Colonial, some shade of beige or taupe or desert sand or whatever the hell it said on the paint can. Black shutters, white trim. Everything just so. Probably three thousand square feet, with big bedrooms. It was the kind of house he would have laughed at back when he was in the market for a house himself. This McMansion. But if you had injected him with truth serum back then, he would have confessed his secret longing to live in a place just like this. To watch his daughter grow up here.

The big sloping front yard was a half acre of perfect grass. It would take you an hour to cut it with a push mower, but Mason knew this guy had a rider mower with the snowplow you could put on the front for a Chicago winter.

One bay in the three-car garage was open. He could see a bicycle parked inside. He could see a soccer net and a ball. Around the far edge of the house, peeking out from the backyard, a swing set. Not cheap metal, but cedar, with the clubhouse connected to it, green flags at the corners of its roof and a slide going out its door.

Mason unfolded the piece of paper and checked the address. He couldn’t help wondering if Quintero had come here himself. If he had sat in his Escalade, in this exact spot, watching Mason’s daughter cross the front yard. The man’s eyes hidden behind his sunglasses, a ghost sitting behind the tinted windows of his big black vehicle.