The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(46)

McManus wore expensive clothes, he had a gold ring in one ear, and he talked like a man who knew how to do things. But Mason had this guy pegged, first sentence out of his mouth. When he was eight years old and his mother called him in the backyard, the first thing out of his mouth was “I didn’t do it!” He was a Grade A f*ckup when he was a kid, he was a Grade A f*ckup when he was a teenager, and now he was a Grade A f*ckup as a man. He was absolutely the last guy you’d ever want on a job. It violated a half dozen of Mason’s rules just sitting here at this table listening to him.

“You’ll never move that much freight out of the Port District,” Mason said to him. “It’s impossible.”

“What kind of jackass do you think I am?” McManus asked him, and Mason had one or two answers ready. But then McManus laid out the plan.

Just beyond the Port District, after one bend in the river, was the area where sailboats and other smaller craft went for dry dock. That’s where the boat would be found. Everyone would be watching the Port District while the trucks left the dry dock and drove right past them.

“So why you?” Mason asked. “They got this valuable shipment coming in, how come they put you in charge of delivering it to Detroit?”

“They need four locals. Four white-faced boys from Chicago who won’t look out of place on the dry dock. Who can get the trucks in and out without having to stop and ask for directions.”

“You said a hundred thousand. That’s each man’s share?”

“I get two hundred for setting it up. You guys all get a hundred.”

“Then you can forget it,” Mason said. “Equal risk, equal pay. A hundred and twenty-five per man.”

Looking back, he should have already been on his feet and out the door instead of sitting there arguing over payouts. When McManus gave in, Mason looked at Eddie and he could tell his friend was thinking about it. He’d been sitting back and listening carefully, the way he always did. Absorbing every word and putting it together in his mind.

Mason dragged his friend outside.

“That man’s a clown,” Eddie said. “But I like the angle. Avoid the hot spot but don’t try too hard to hide.”

“Don’t do this because you want to buy a house,” Mason told him. “Do it because you think we can get it done and get out.”

“You could do a lot with that money, too,” Eddie said. “Think about Gina. And Adriana.”

“I wouldn’t even consider this if you weren’t a part of it. If you walk, I walk.”

“You know I’ll have your back,” Eddie said. “Don’t I always?”

“So you’re saying you’re in.”

Eddie looked at him. He didn’t have to say it. He was in.

Two days later, the four men arrived at the dry dock with the two panel trucks. McManus had found the trucks somewhere, each one with a lot of miles on it and four bad tires. No shocks left at all. But the trucks were clean and forgettable and that’s all they needed.

Mason drove one truck. He had Finn with him because Mason was the only man who could keep Finn calm if things went sideways. That left Eddie driving with McManus. They pulled into the dry dock area just as the sun was going down. They were wearing gray coveralls and baseball hats. The idea was to look busy, to look like they belonged there. You see four men loading up trucks, doing what looks like boring, productive work, you leave them alone.

Mason was surprised when they pulled up to the boat. It had come in earlier that day and was tied up along the edge of the dock and was bigger than what he’d been expecting. It was some kind of passenger ferryboat, at the end of a long journey from Canada, where it had been used for many years in Toronto’s Inner Harbour. At least a hundred feet long, it was built to look like one of those old-fashioned paddle wheelers, with the long double-decker canopy and two dozen rows of padded benches.

The four men got out of the trucks and boarded the boat. They started pulling up the pads from the benches and bringing them back down to the trucks. It was late enough in the day that there were no other people around on the dry dock. But not so late that they couldn’t see what they were doing. It was Eddie who had taken the time to make up the cover story about how this boat was scheduled to begin its overhaul the next morning and how he and the three other men had been contracted to pull out all of the existing upholstery. Hard, dirty, boring work that nobody else wanted to do. And yes, they were getting a late start on it. It had been one of those days. Rounding up the right crew. Then one of the trucks broke down. And so on. Eddie even had a work order made out to show if somebody happened to wander by and ask for it.

Eddie was good at cover stories and he was a natural-born actor. Finn could play along, but he could be counted on to stay in character for only so long. When the spell was broken, it was broken beyond repair and he would lose his game completely.

Mason kept an eye on Finn as they tore out the padding of one bench after another. He seemed to be doing just fine. It didn’t look like they’d have any reason to use Eddie’s cover story or to show the work order to any curious dockworkers who happened to wander over. There was a constant thrum of activity over in the Port District, but here at the dry dock it was deserted.

There was a sharp smell in the air. Diesel fuel, gasoline, dead fish. The last light of the day created a rainbow sheen on the surface of the water.