The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(6)

He saw whites and blacks and Latinos all sitting together, something you’d never see back in Gen Pop.

Mason was led to the cell on the far end of the second floor. The first thing he noticed as he got close enough was the number of books in the cell. One of two beds was piled high with them. The other bed was neatly made with a red blanket that was nicer than any other he’d seen in the prison.

He saw the bald head first. The man was standing with his back to the door, looking in the mirror. He was one of those men who might be fifty, might be sixty-five. There was not a hair on his head to give him away. His face was as smooth as his head. Not a wrinkle. But you’d see that with some of the lifers in here. All the years inside, away from the sun. Only his eyes showed age. He was wearing small, frameless reading glasses, pushed down on his nose.

Darius Cole’s age might have been vague, but one thing that was perfectly clear was that he was black. Black as a mood, black as an Ali left jab or a Muddy Waters riff coming from the Checkerboard Lounge on a hot summer’s night.

“Nick Mason.” He had a smooth, quiet voice. Anywhere else, it would have been the voice of a peaceful man.

Mason kept looking around the cell, finding more and more violations. A corded lamp with an incandescent bulb. A laptop computer. A teapot sitting on a hot plate.

“My name is Darius Cole,” he said. “You know me?”

Mason shook his head.

“You from Chicago, right?”

Mason nodded.

“My name still don’t ring a bell?”

Mason shook his head again.

“You’re not supposed to know my name,” Cole said. “Not supposed to know anything about me. That’s your first lesson, Nick. A man’s ego will kill him faster than any bullet.”

“No disrespect,” Mason said, “but I don’t remember signing up for any lessons today.”

Mason waited for the two men to grab him. He was already anticipating how it would feel, the two sudden vise grips on either shoulder. But Cole just smiled and raised his hand.

“You need to carry yourself a certain way in here,” he said. “I understand. You can drop it around me.”

Cole pulled the chair away from his desk and put it in the middle of the cell. He sat and studied Mason for a long time.

“I pay that guard money every week, all he gotta do is get things done. Now you make him look like a little bitch. You think he’s gonna forget that?”

Mason shrugged. “Guards don’t forget anything.”

“Musta seemed strange to you. Maybe that’s why you said no. You wasn’t curious at all?”

Mason took a breath while he put the words together in his head. “If I say yes to meeting you,” he said, “there’s a good chance you’re going to ask me to do something. If I say no to that, then not only have I offended you, I’ve offended you to your face. So now I make you my enemy.”

Cole leaned forward in his chair, listening carefully.

“If I say yes to what it is you want, there’s a decent chance it’ll be something bad, something I don’t want to do. But maybe I feel like I need to do it anyway. So now I make enemies again. Maybe a lot of them.”

Cole started to nod his head.

“So for me,” Mason said, “the only right answer to meeting with you—”

“The only right answer,” Cole said, cutting him off, “is not to meet with me at all.”

Cole kept nodding his head. There was a smile on his face now. “You were supposed to go to Marion,” he said. “I had you brought here instead.”

Mason stood there trying to figure out what this man was saying. Marion was another federal prison. You draw federal time in Chicago, you go to Marion or Terre Haute.

“Take him back,” he said as he gestured to the two men. “I’m done with him. For now.”

He was still smiling as Mason was led away.





3




Mason woke up early, his body still on prison time. He got up, went outside, stood at the rail, and looked down at the quiet park and the sun rising low on the water. He looked up at the nearest security camera. That unblinking eye, watching him.

He went back into the bedroom suite, then into the bathroom. The shower was tiled floor to ceiling with natural lakeshore stones. He cranked the water, got in, and stood under the spray. For the first time in five years, there was no limit to the hot water. There was no limit to how long he could stand there. He could let it blast him until his skin was red and he couldn’t see anything in the billows of steam. He felt the knots in his muscles going loose. Until one more prison reflex came to him and broke the spell. The sudden uneasy feeling, something he could never imagine leaving him—the instinct to always watch your back, even in the shower.

Especially in the shower.

He turned off the water and stood there, dripping. He opened the glass door and felt his way through the steam for a towel.

“You’ll be wanting this,” a voice said. It was a woman, looking away from him and holding out a towel.

Mason grabbed the towel and wrapped it around his waist. The woman was Mason’s age, tall and lithe, dressed in a black business suit with a shirt the color of coral. Her dark hair was pinned up. She didn’t wear much makeup. Nick’s first impression was that she didn’t need to.