The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(70)

All that unpaid overtime they were putting in. This was just a little compensation. Totally justified.

Bloome didn’t sleep that night. He thought they’d catch up to him.

They never did.

It got easier the next time. Easier again when it was two or three cops working together.

You had to take the money then. You were part of the team and it would make everyone else nervous if you didn’t.

The suits got more expensive. You started seeing manicures and hundred-dollar haircuts. You started seeing the cars taken from the dealers parked in the lot outside, gleaming in the sunshine. Mercedes, BMWs, Audis, Porsches. Usually black, always fast.

Nobody said a word. In fact, it was more high-profile arrests, more commendations, more pictures with the mayor, more detectives from around the city wanting to be a part of SIS.

And then came Darius Cole.

It was Jameson who first brought up the name, based on a recorded conversation between two high-level dealers. Bloome remembered Cole from his first year in Narcotics and the airtight RICO case the feds had put together to put him away for two consecutive lifetimes. It seemed impossible now that a man who’d been in prison for years could still have such influence in Chicago, two hundred miles away. But Jameson put Cole’s name on the board and the two men got to work.

While Bloome and Jameson were putting together a case on Cole and the men who worked for him, those same men were busy putting together a case on Bloome and Jameson. They knew everything about the two detectives. Where they lived. Where their children went to school. Every case they’d ever worked on. Every bribe they’d ever taken. Until the day Cole contacted them both directly on a prison guard’s cell phone and gave them a choice. I’ll make you f*cking rich men or I’ll make you f*cking dead men. Your choice.

They took the money. Every month, in an envelope delivered by one of Cole’s men, an ex-gangbanger named Marcos Quintero. At first, Cole was also giving them tips on members of rival organizations, which led to even more arrests than before, their reputations in the unit rising even higher.

We’re still doing good police work, the two men told themselves. And yes, making some good money on the side. Everybody wins.

But Cole’s tips eventually turned into requests for favors. Then those requests started to sound like orders.

When Tyron Harris came along, the first man who actually looked smart enough to take over Cole’s territory, Jameson tried to make a new deal. End the relationship with the man in prison, start fresh with this new kid, somebody we can break in the right way. Somebody who won’t make so many demands.

Cole can’t touch us. That was the idea.

Now Jameson and Harris were both dead. And here I am, Bloome said to himself. Look at where I’m standing. Look at what I was prepared to do to protect myself.

If Jameson was here, Bloome thought, we’d talk this over, see if we had any chance to make this look right. Three dead cops in a quarry, three members of the most elite unit in the city . . . in the middle of the night, with no backup. Nobody else knowing anything about the operation. How do you explain that?

Bloome could already see himself giving his version of this story to Internal Affairs. Then the superintendent. Then the mayor. Then a federal prosecutor in open court.

So it better be one f*ck of a story.

He looked down at Fowler again.

Or else it better be a f*cking mystery why the three of you guys were down here alone.

I don’t know if I can do that, Bloome said to himself. These are the three guys I trusted the most, now that Jameson is gone. That’s why they were here tonight.

But Bloome knew he had to sell them out to save himself. He had to go get his neck cleaned up somewhere. Get rid of this vest. Then play dumb about this night when they ask about it tomorrow. And every other day for the rest of his life.

That feeling he had whenever they had a target identified, that cold chill in his gut, knowing they were going to put that man away . . . Bloome had that same feeling now. But for the first time, he was on the other end of it.

Bloome knew that Mason had the evidence to put him away forever. Those recordings, all of their conversations with Harris . . . Mason would take them right to the man who sent him here in the first place. And Darius Cole would now have the power to destroy him.

The war was over.

If he lets me live, Bloome thought, Cole will own me. For the rest of my life. Anything he tells me to do, I’ll have to do it.

Even if I get to Mason, or Quintero, or anyone else he sends . . . I’ll never be able to touch Darius Cole.

We thought that prison would keep us safe. It keeps him safe.

Bloome walked toward the tunnel. He had to see his other two men one more time. He felt smaller and smaller as he took each step toward the giant ring of light. Then as he disappeared into the earth, walking through the first puddle, the line came back to him one more time. That question that Sandoval had asked him.

Do you even f*cking remember when you were a cop?





34




Eddie Callahan promised Sandra he would never do anything that would put him in handcuffs and take him away from his family again. He had promised her when he proposed to her. He had promised her when the police came to question him about the harbor. He had promised her when their twin sons were born.

Tonight he had broken that promise and put everything at risk.

Eddie had already locked up his sniper rifle in the gun cabinet. It was an H-S Precision Pro 2000 with a Leupold Mark 4 scope on the rail. Good thing he’d already had the scope sighted on the range because he wasn’t getting any practice shots tonight. Now he was waiting for Nick Mason to show up at his front door.