The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(2)

Another rule broken, Nick thought. Rule number nine: Never work with gang members.

They’ve sworn a blood oath of loyalty. But not to you.

An hour of silence passed. The driver hadn’t offered so much as a sideways glance. Mason couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if he turned on the radio. Or actually said something out loud. Something made him stay silent. Rule number three: When in doubt, keep your mouth shut.

After driving past every exit on US 41, they finally pulled off. For an instant, Mason wondered if this whole thing had been a setup. It was an unavoidable prison reflex, to be ready for the worst at any moment. Two hours away from the prison, somewhere in the middle of western Indiana, the driver could pull off on the most abandoned exit he could find, drive a few miles into the farmland, and then put a bullet in the passenger’s head. Leave his body right there in the ditch beside the road. You wouldn’t go to that much trouble to do something that could have been done already, on any given day standing around the prison yard, but Mason could still feel his body tensing as the vehicle slowed down.

The driver pulled into a gas station. He got out and pumped gas into the tank. Mason sat there in the passenger’s seat, looking out at the little mini-mart. A young woman came out through the glass door. Maybe twenty years old. Shorts and a tank top, flip-flops on her feet. Mason hadn’t seen a live woman dressed this way in five years.

The driver got back in and started the vehicle. He pulled out and drove back onto the highway, pointed north, and hit seventy on the speedometer. Dark clouds began to assemble in the sky. By the time they reached the Illinois border, it was raining. The driver turned on the wipers. The traffic got heavier and the lights from the other cars reflected off the rain-slicked road.

The tall buildings were lost in the clouds, but Mason would have known this place no matter how dark the sky or how low the clouds hung over the city streets.

He was almost home.

But first the long pass over the Calumet River, the cranes and drawbridges and power lines. The harbor was down there. The harbor and the one night in his life when everything changed. The one night that led him all the way to Terre Haute and to a man named Cole. Then, somehow, all the way back, a lot sooner than he expected.

He counted down the streets. Eighty-seventh Street. Seventy-first Street. They were on the South Side now. The rain kept falling. The driver kept driving. Garfield Boulevard. Fifty-first Street. You want to start an argument, you go into any bar around here, ask the regulars if Canaryville starts at Fifty-first or Forty-ninth. Stand back and watch the words fly. Then the fists, if it’s late enough.

They passed the big train yard, a thousand boxcars waiting for an engine. Then the tracks running high along the eastern edge of his old neighborhood. Mason took a breath as they passed Forty-third Street. His whole life came back to him at once in a sudden flood of almost random memories, both good and bad—Eddie’s dad taking them to old Comiskey Park, the only game he ever got to see Michael Jordan play in person, the first car he ever stole, the first time he spent the night in jail, the party where he met a Canaryville girl named Gina Sullivan, the day he bought their house, the only place he could ever call home . . . it was all right here, wrapped up together in the city of Chicago. The alleys and the streets of this place ran through him like the veins in his body.

The lights were on at the new Sox park, but it was still raining too hard to play. The Escalade went all the way downtown, crossing the Chicago River. The Sears Tower—always and forever the Sears Tower despite whatever new name they try to give it—dominated the skyline and looked down at them through a sudden break in the clouds, its two antennae like a devil’s horns.

The driver finally got off the highway and took North Avenue all the way across the North Side, until Mason could see the shores of Lake Michigan. The water stretched out in blues and grays forever, blending into the rain clouds. When they turned on Clark Street, Mason was about to say something. You bring me all the way up to the North Side for what, pal? A Cubs game maybe? Good luck with that one.

Mason hated the Cubs. He hated everything about the North Side. Everything it represented. When he was growing up, the North Side was everything he didn’t have. And never would have.

The driver made his last turn, onto the last street Mason thought he’d see that day. Lincoln Park West. It was four blocks of high-end apartment buildings overlooking the gardens and the conservatory and the lake beyond. There were a few town houses between the apartment buildings, still tall enough to look down at the street and on everyone who passed by. The driver slowed down and stopped right in front of one of those town houses. It sat at the end of the block, rising three stories above the heavy front door and the garage bays, the upper-floor windows all covered with iron latticework. Built out to the side was another one story with a balcony on top, overlooking the cross street, the park, and the lake beyond it. Five million for this place? Hell, probably more.

The driver broke the silence. “My name is Quintero.” He made the name sound like it came from the bottom of a tequila bottle. Keen-TAY-ro.

“You work for Cole?”

“Listen to me,” Quintero said. “Because everything I’m about to say is important.”

Mason looked over at him.

“You need something,” Quintero said, “you call me. You get in a situation, you call me. Don’t get creative. Don’t try to fix anything yourself. You call me. Clear so far?”