The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(28)

Quintero took a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Mason. “Those bruises look good on you,” he said. “Make you look humble.”

“Open the door so I can get the f*ck out of here.”

Quintero hit a button on the wall and the bay door cranked open. Mason backed out the Camaro and took off.

? ? ?

He tried to keep it out of his mind as he drove back to Lincoln Park, pulled into the town house garage, and went up the stairs. The dark cherrywood was the same color as the blood-soaked carpeting in the motel. The television was on and Diana was sitting on the leather couch, watching a cooking show, magnified on the huge HD screen. She glanced up as she heard Mason and for one moment it looked like she might ask him why the hell he hadn’t showed up at the restaurant like she’d asked him to.

But then she saw his face. She turned back to her show without saying a word.

Mason went into his bathroom and took off the clothes Quintero had given him. Even though he was probably the cleanest man in the world, he got in the shower and spent a half hour under the hot spray.

His own reaction was finally coming through to him now that he had stopped moving. He kept hearing the shot against the man’s chest, kept feeling the weight of the man’s dead body on top of him.

I always had rules, he said to himself. They never failed me until the day I started ignoring them. Now I need some new rules. New rules for new problems.

When he got out of the shower, he once again caught sight of himself in the mirror. The bruises were already looking worse.

He threw on some new clothes, went out to the kitchen, and filled a plastic bag with ice. He grabbed a Goose Island out of the fridge and sat down on the far end of the couch, holding the ice against his face. Diana didn’t react. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t make a sound. She kept sitting there, watching the television.

It was a special break-in from the local news. A woman reporter was standing outside somewhere, holding a microphone. Behind her was a thin strand of yellow crime scene tape. Behind the tape was a line of doors. Above those doors was a balcony.

Mason knew this place.

The crawl across the bottom of the screen gave Mason the news he didn’t need to read. Sergeant Ray Jameson, a highly decorated police officer, was killed by an unknown gunman. He leaves behind a wife and three children.

Mason looked over at Diana. She had her knees drawn up to her chest and she was hugging them. She kept staring at the screen.

Mason closed his eyes for a moment. He pressed the ice against his face. The cold was painful, but eventually it started to make him feel numb.

When he opened his eyes again, the reporter was signing off. Just before the camera cut away, he saw a plainclothes police officer stepping right into the shot, blinking at the glare of the camera lights. On the screen the man looked bigger than life and Mason knew him immediately even though he hadn’t seen him in five years.

It was Detective Frank Sandoval.





14




When an SIS sergeant was killed forty-eight hours after Nick Mason had been released from prison, Detective Frank Sandoval figured this was one crime scene he had to see.

As he ducked under the crime scene tape, a uniformed officer moved to stop him. Sandoval showed him his star and the officer stepped aside to let him pass.

He went up the stairs and down the exterior hallway to Room 215. He saw the blood on the walls first. Then the body on the floor. He took a step inside the room and looked at the exit wound on the man’s back. A bullet goes in clean, but then it meets resistance. It flattens out, slows down, and pushes the tissue in front of it like a snowplow. By the time it comes out the back, it’s not a clean missile anymore. It’s a goddamned musket ball.

He looked up over his head. There was more blood on the ceiling. It had started to drip down onto the bed.

He took a glance into the bathroom. He counted three towels. They were all clean. Sandoval knew there had probably been a fourth.

Sandoval came back out into the main room. He stepped back out onto the balcony. It was after midnight. There was one news truck below him, getting a jump on the other stations, and a half-dozen squad cars, the lights bouncing blue and red on every surface. Beyond the parking lot it was just darkness and quiet streets.

Another car pulled into the lot. A black Audi. He watched the driver get out and walk past the uniforms. They made no move to stop him. A few seconds later, he heard him on the stairs, then saw him coming down the hallway, moving with purpose. He was a tall man, with hard features, hair cut close and so blond it was almost white. His eyes were a pale, metallic shade of gray. Sandoval knew him by reputation only. It was Sergeant Bloome, one of the original members of SIS, one of the men who stood behind the mayor when they announced the big new initiative in Chicago’s War on Drugs.

When they first put this team together, it was called Special Investigations Section. An elite task force of all the best narcotics officers in the city, handpicked by the superintendent himself. They were given their own floor at Homan Square, their own prosecutors and staff, anything they wanted. Their jurisdiction was the entire city of Chicago. They could go anywhere they wanted, talk to anybody at any time, take over any investigation. In a city overrun with drugs, they had been given a blank check from the highest levels to do whatever it took to bring down the dealers. They didn’t have cases. They had targets.

They stood apart from every other cop on the force. You could see an SIS man from three blocks away, always in a dark suit, perfectly tailored, perfectly pressed. Expensive leather shoes. He had his pick of any car confiscated in a drug bust, so he always drove the best. Nothing like the homicide-issued Ford Fusion that Sandoval was driving.