The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(48)

Then a car pulled out in front of the first truck.

There was a service road from Indianapolis Avenue, cutting in sharply to merge with Ewing. An unmarked police car pulled forward and stopped, lights flashing, and everything that happened next was preordained by the basic physics of two trucks with bad tires and bad brakes suddenly trying to stop.

The lead truck hit the car. Mason’s truck slammed into the lead truck. The car behind slammed into Mason’s truck. A haze of noise pierced Mason’s ears, and then there was a slow-motion pantomime that would have been a comedy if it didn’t include such sudden deadly force—three more unmarked cars fanning out behind the first, plainclothes officers wearing tactical vests throwing open the doors and streaming toward them. Mason saw McManus already out the open door of the truck in front of him. He was running awkwardly, his head low, on a sidewalk on the other side of the iron rail. A moment later, Eddie came running behind him. Mason saw that his door was blocked by the girders and that there’d be nowhere to go even if he could get out that way. He had to get out the other door.

That’s when the gunshots started.

He looked out the passenger’s-side window just in time to see McManus fire at the two men coming out of the car behind them. One was hit. The driver threw himself to the ground on the other side of the car.

The screams of a dying man, the truck’s windshield suddenly exploding all around him as the cops in front fired on them. Mason went down and tried to take Finn with him. He pulled down Finn’s head and saw where the bullet had entered his skull through the left eye.

Mason pushed the door open and Finn fell to the pavement. Mason tried to pick him up, but he was already gone.

Shouts from the officers ahead of him, now using the first truck for shelter. The driver from the car behind him yelling, “Hold fire!” His partner was down. Those few seconds when every weapon was still, Mason saw his one chance to escape. Back to the open air between the bridges, a break in the concrete wall, through the brush and garbage, to a thin strip of land where the power lines were held high by their towers. The foliage had been trampled already by Eddie and McManus. Mason followed their trail to the high grass between the towers but did not see either man in the dark.

He heard more sirens in the distance. Every cop in the city would be out looking for them. He didn’t think any of them had gotten a clear look at his face. That was his only hope. There was a line of trees to his right. He went in that direction, knowing that it was east and that it would lead him farther from his home and from where his car was waiting in Murphy’s parking lot. But that was miles away and he’d have to find some way to get back there as quickly as possible. Which meant another vehicle.

He didn’t know the neighborhood, so he didn’t know if there was an easy spot for stealing a car, and he didn’t have his tools with him, anyway. He hadn’t carried those tools in years. He felt exposed as he came out of the woods and started walking down the street. He passed a storefront church and a liquor store. Some of the signs were in Spanish, and the people he saw walking on the other side of the street all had darker skin. He knew he’d stand out if somebody took a close look at him. The flashing lights of a police car lit the street. Mason stepped into a parking lot and pressed his body against the wall as it drove by.

He went down another half a block, waiting for more police cars, waiting for the helicopter to start circling around in the sky, shining down its white-hot spotlight.

He held off the thought of Finn’s dead body lying on the ground because right now it was all still in the moment and the moment was about getting the hell out of there. He saw the side door of a building open and the light spill out. A man came across the parking lot, stumbling his way to his car. He had his keys out in his right hand and he was singing something in Spanish.

Mason went right up to him, doing things the Finn way for once. You want something, you just take it, without another thought in your head. The man’s eyes went wide when he saw Mason coming at him in that parking lot. “Sangre,” the man said, pointing at Mason’s chest. But Mason was already on top of him before he could do anything else. The man was too drunk to put up a fight. Mason took the man’s keys and discarded the man on the ground.

He got in the car, some filthy old beater of a thing, and pulled out of the lot. When he was finally a few blocks down the street, he looked down at his chest and saw the blood. For one second he thought, I’ve been hit. Then he realized that the blood was Finn’s.

A few more police cars raced past him in the opposite direction as he made his way back to the heart of the South Side. He dumped the car a mile away from Canaryville and wiped himself off with a blanket he found in the backseat. As he walked up Halsted Street, he composed himself into something resembling a calm man taking a normal evening walk, then went in through the back door of Murphy’s and cleaned himself off in the bathroom as well as he could.

He watched the last of Finn’s blood run down the drain.

Then he got in his own car and drove home.

Gina was surprised to see him home so early. She figured he’d be out at Murphy’s until after midnight, drinking with his friends.

“I’d rather be here,” Mason said to her. “This is where I want to be.” He went into his daughter’s bedroom and sat there for a long time, watching her sleep. Then he climbed into bed with his wife and made love to her. That night would be the last time.