The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(20)

Mason kept staring at the wall.

“We saw your house there on Forty-third, Nick. Do a lot of work to the place? Me, I do all the painting at my house.” He was still living with his wife and kids at that time and he really did do all of the painting. It wasn’t a lie.

“Here’s the thing,” Sandoval went on. “I try to be clean, but painting’s a f*cking mess, you know? You do the painting at your house?”

Mason stayed silent.

“When I’m done,” Sandoval said, “I got paint all over myself. My arms, in my hair. My face. So I go to the sink and I wash up and I think I’m nice and clean. Until my wife finds me and says, ‘Hey, genius, what’s this?’ And she points to my elbows.”

Sandoval stood up and came around to Mason’s side of the table. He leaned close to Mason and showed him his right elbow.

“Right here,” he said. “I can’t see it when I’m washing. You know what I’m saying? So I miss it every time, Nick. Every single goddamned time. You think I’d know by now. Wash your elbows, Frank. And if I’m dumb enough to get in the car, what happens next?”

Sandoval put his arm down as if resting it on an armrest.

“Leather, you got a shot at cleaning that off. But I don’t got leather seats, Nick. Can’t afford it. I got cloth.”

He got close this time. Just a few inches from Mason’s ear. “Just like you.”

They tried to convince Mason to turn on Eddie Callahan. They knew Callahan was involved. Confirming that fact would just be a formality. They also tried to convince Mason to give them the identity of the fourth man. Everything would go a lot easier, they told him, if he would just cooperate. Otherwise, the prosecutor would go for the max. It was a dead DEA agent, so everyone was out for blood. Mason shouldn’t have to take it all alone.

Mason kept his mouth shut.

Even though Sandoval and Higgins made the arrest, the feds ultimately took the case away because it was a DEA agent who’d been killed. Neither man cared. What mattered was that Nick Mason drew twenty-five-to-life and went to Terre Haute.

But now, five years later, sixty f*cking months later, Detective Sandoval was sitting here in his car waiting for Nick Mason to show up, a man who was free only because his old partner stood up in court and told the judge that he had taken blood evidence from the scene, brought it with him, carried it around for hours—for hours—then found some way to plant it in Nick Mason’s car.

That’s the way it was written. That was the official f*cking record. And his partner’s life was destroyed.

? ? ?

He felt his cell phone buzzing in his pocket. He took it out and read the text. It was Sean Wright’s wife, Elizabeth, widow of a dead federal agent, single mother trying to raise two kids on her own, asking if the two families would still be getting together that weekend.

Sandoval texted back a reply. Yes, looking forward to it. Which was true. It was his one chance to see his own kids that week. His one chance to pretend the job hadn’t cost him everything else in his life.

He took one more look at Nick Mason’s new address. Then he drove away.





10




When the call Mason had been dreading finally came, he knew his life would never be the same. He just didn’t know exactly what Darius Cole had in store for him.

The sun was just coming up as Mason left the car on Columbus Drive and walked toward Grant Park. He’d never seen the park this empty.

He saw Quintero standing on the lake side of the fountain. Lake Shore Drive ran behind him, and beyond that were a hundred tarp-covered sailboats all anchored in the open water. The breakwater formed a straight line behind the boats and then beyond that was the rumor of Lake Michigan, disappearing into the morning fog. The rising sun started to break through, painting the city behind them in brilliant hues of gold and blue.

Mason hesitated for a moment, looking up at the buildings, the reflections so bright they made his eyes hurt. He remembered the morning he and Gina flew back home from their honeymoon in Las Vegas, an overnight flight that circled the city and came around from the east just as the sun was coming up behind them. Gina was in the window seat and she grabbed Nick’s arm tightly as the plane banked. He assumed it was her usual airplane jitters, but she gestured for him to look out the window. He pressed his face close to hers and saw that the city of Chicago was completely obscured by the morning clouds and yet somehow the reflection was still cast perfectly against the surface of the lake.

It was an amazing sight, the upside-down image of this city they both knew so well, where they’d try to find a real life together. So long ago, it seemed, even though barely a decade had passed. Now Mason walked here on the shore of the same lake, the same city behind him, glowing with the same colors, and yet everything else had been changed forever.

It was his own life that was upside down.

As he got closer, he saw that Quintero was wearing a black sweatshirt this morning. None of his tattoos were visible. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. He looked at his watch.

“I said five thirty,” he said.

“I’ve got five thirty-two.”

“That’s not five thirty.”

Mason looked out at the boats. “Which one of these is Cole’s?”

“How about we make a rule here? Don’t say his name out loud when we’re on the street.”