The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(27)

“What are they doing to the car?” Mason said.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Quintero said, taking the gloves and the towel. “Now take off your clothes. Unless you have any other surprises for me.”

Mason took off his clothes. Quintero took them from him and put them in a garbage bag. Then he led Mason to a shower in the corner of the warehouse. He handed him a bar of soap and a large scrub brush.

“Every inch,” he said. “No DNA, no fibers. We take no chances.”

Mason got to work scrubbing himself down. When he was done, he stepped out of the shower. He grabbed the towel that had been put on a nearby worktable. Next to it were a pair of jeans and a shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes. He put on the clothes and looked at the rough mirror someone had screwed to the wall over the sink. The scrape over his left eye was still raw, and his whole face needed an ice bag. But he wasn’t about to ask for one. He walked back to where the men were working on the engine of the Mustang. They already had the car seats out. Now they were pulling out the battery.

“You’re not going to chop this car,” Mason said.

They ignored him.

“They’re not going to chop it,” Quintero said from behind him. “They’re going to f*cking obliterate it. They’re going to break it down to nothing like it never existed. That cop who saw the car? He saw a ghost.”

Quintero took the wet towel from Nick and added it to the bag of clothes.

“Over here,” Quintero said. He led him to the opposite side of the warehouse, where there was an incinerator. Quintero used a long pair of pliers with taped-up handles to open the door. Both men raised their arms against the sudden wave of heat. Quintero threw in the bag and it was instantly consumed by the flames. He nudged the door with the pliers until it was shut again.

“That camera at the motel,” Mason said to him. “I didn’t see it on my way to the room.”

“What do you think I do?” Quintero said, throwing the pliers on the bench. “Just drive around and watch you? You don’t think I had every angle at that motel taken care of? The feed on that camera was disabled. On all of the cameras, including the ones you didn’t see. I even rented out every other room.”

“What was his name?”

“Jameson. Sergeant Ray Jameson. Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, no big f*cking deal.”

“Listen,” Quintero said, “you think that was Serpico you took out? I had to deal with that prick for years. Thought he could do anything he wanted, like he owned the whole f*cking city. Whatever I paid him, he always wanted more. He was a piece of shit who happened to carry a badge in his pocket. Take away the badge and he’s still a piece of shit. Just not as useful.”

“If he’s useful, why take him out?”

“He stopped being useful when he stopped doing the things we paid him to do.”

“All right, hold on,” Mason said. “You gotta understand something.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t do this shit.”

“You can,” Quintero said. “You just did.”

Mason hesitated, because he didn’t know how else to say it. He’d just killed a man, but there hadn’t been a moment of truth. He didn’t have to look the man in the eye. He didn’t have to hear the man beg for his life or watch him piss himself. He didn’t have to calmly pull the trigger and then walk away.

Instead, it all just happened in a rush. Hell, it almost felt like self-defense. But that was a distinction he knew Quintero wouldn’t get. Mason was sent to kill the man. Mason came back. The man was dead. End of story.

Why me? That’s the question Mason had asked Cole, sitting in that prison cell, right after Cole had made his offer to him. All those other men in that unit, many of them murderers. Multiple murderers. Men who could have killed that cop in the motel room without blinking. Why did Cole choose Mason?

It still didn’t make sense.

“Your new ride,” Quintero said. He led Mason to the farthest bay in the garage, beyond the reach of the fluorescent lights. They might as well have been on the bottom of the ocean. Quintero snapped on a light. The darkness separated in the glare from the caged bulb. There was something there, covered with a gray tarp. When Quintero pulled away the tarp, Mason saw a 1967 first-generation Camaro SS. It was painted jet-black, just like the Mustang. But where the Mustang was sleek and beautiful, this thing was just a beast. Twin pipes. A simple flat grille. This car was fast when it was made, too fast for any sensible person to actually drive on the street. Mason guessed it was just as fast now.

“How many cars like this are you gonna destroy?” Mason said.

“Maybe next time we won’t have to.”

Mason’s heart rate was back to normal. He stood there looking at the Camaro and he thought about everything that had happened that night. This wasn’t the right way to do it, he said to himself. Go into a motel room, kill the man with a gun, drive away in a car that was unlike any other car in the city. There were too many ways it could go wrong.

But maybe that was part of the test, seeing if Mason could deal with those problems. And then, once he did, proving to Mason that Quintero would be here for the cleanup, even if that meant destroying a car that belonged in a museum.

It was all part of the show. And both men had learned something important about the other.