The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(3)
Mason nodded.
“Beyond that, I don’t give a f*ck what you do with your time. You were inside for five years, so go have a drink, get yourself laid, I don’t care. Just understand, you need to stay out of trouble. You get picked up for anything, now you’ve got two problems. The one you got picked up for . . . and me.”
Mason turned and looked out the window.
“Why are we here?”
“This is where you live now.”
“Guys like me don’t live in Lincoln Park,” Mason said.
“I’m going to give you a cell phone. You’re going to answer this phone when I call you. Whenever that may be. Day or night. There is no busy. There is no unavailable. There is only you answering this phone. Then doing exactly what I tell you to do.”
Mason sat there in his seat, thinking that one over.
“The phone is in here,” Quintero said, reaching behind the seat and bringing out a large envelope. “Along with the keys to the front and back doors. And the security code.”
Mason took the envelope. It was heavier than he expected.
“Ten thousand dollars in cash and the key to a safe-deposit box at First Chicago on Western. There’ll be ten thousand more on the first day of each month.”
Mason looked over at the man one more time.
“That’s it,” Quintero said. “Keep your phone on.”
Mason opened the passenger’s-side door. Before he could get out, Quintero grabbed his arm. Mason tensed up—another prison reflex, someone grabs you, your first reaction is deciding which finger to break first.
“One more thing,” Quintero said, holding on tight. “This isn’t freedom. This is mobility. Don’t get those two things confused.”
Quintero let him go. Mason stepped out and closed the door. The rain had stopped.
Mason stood there on the sidewalk and watched Quintero’s vehicle pull away from the curb, then disappear into the night. He reached into the envelope and took out the key. Then he opened the front door and went inside.
The town house entranceway had a high ceiling, and the light fixture hanging over Mason’s head was a piece of modern art with a thousand slivers of glass. The floor was large tiles laid diagonally in a diamond pattern. The stairs were polished cherry. He stood there for a moment until he noticed a beeping noise. He saw the security panel on the wall, took out the code from the envelope, and entered it on the keypad. The beeping stopped.
The door to his right opened to a two-car garage. In one space he saw a Mustang. He knew exactly what this was. It was a 1968 390 GT Fastback, a jet-black version of the car Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt. He’d never stolen a car like this because you don’t steal a masterpiece and take it to the chop shop. You don’t steal a car like this and drive it yourself no matter how much you want to. That’s how amateurs get caught.
The other spot in the garage was empty. He saw the faint outline of tire tracks. Another car belonged here.
Mason opened another door and saw a full gym. A row of dumbbells, neatly arranged in pairs, ranged from nothing to the big fifty-pounders at the end. A bench with a rack, a treadmill, an elliptical trainer. A television was mounted high in one corner of the room. A heavy bag hung in another corner. The back wall was a full mirror. Mason looked at his own face from twenty feet away. Cole had told him he could go anywhere in the world with this face, but he never thought he’d end up in a Lincoln Park town house.
He went up the long flight of stairs to what was obviously the main floor. The sleek, modern kitchen had polished granite countertops, an island with a Viking stove and a restaurant hood hanging over it. The bar top looked out over a great open area dominated by the largest television screen Mason had ever seen. He was pretty sure the square footage of the screen was larger than the square footage of the cell he woke up in that morning. In front of the television was a U-shaped expanse of black leather with a large oak coffee table in the middle. You could easily sit a dozen people here. It made the quiet emptiness of the place feel like a sin.
The formal dining room had a table long enough to seat all dozen people that had watched the television in the other room. He left that room and went into what turned out to be the billiards room. An actual room for billiards, with a red felt table and a woven net under each pocket. There was dark paneling on the walls. A pair of stained-glass Tiffany lamps hung over the table. The far corner of the room was set up for darts, and yet another corner had two overstuffed leather chairs with a three-foot-tall humidor between them. Looking through the glass at the selection of cigars inside, Mason remembered how a single cigarette could go for ten dollars in Terre Haute. A carton could get someone killed.
He went up another set of stairs to the top floor. There were bedrooms on each side of a long hallway. When he got to the last door, he tried turning the knob. It was locked.
Mason went back downstairs and found a door on the other side of the kitchen. He walked through and saw another bedroom suite. There was an iron-framed bed topped with black linen, and on top of that were several shopping bags. He took a quick look through them. Pants, shirts, shoes, socks, underwear, belts, a wallet—everything a man could possibly need. Most of the bags had come from Nordstrom and Armani. One from Balani, the custom shop on Monroe Street. He did a quick check of the tags. Everything was his size.
I don’t see my new friend Quintero doing this, he thought.