The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(75)

“Somos hermanos, you and me,” Quintero said. “We are brothers.”

They stood there in the garage for a long time while the other men went back to work.

“You need another car,” Quintero finally said, nodding toward the blown-out window in the Camaro.

The car they’d just been leaning against as they tried to kill each other was another jet-black American muscle car.

“It’s a 1964 Pontiac GTO,” Quintero said. “With the Bobcat engine.”

He threw Mason the keys.





38




Nick Mason sat on the edge of his bed, listening to the rain outside, waiting to see if Cole would change his mind and send his “brother” to kill him that night.

He had defied the one man you don’t defy. But he wasn’t going to run away. He wasn’t going to hide. If Cole decided that extending his contract wasn’t enough of a punishment, Mason would be ready. He still had the M9, with six shots left. That would be enough.

He kept waiting. The rain stopped. Finally, he got up and went out to the pool. As he turned the corner, he felt the impact against the back of his head. He dropped the gun as he went down, then saw it kicked away from his reach.

When he looked up, he saw Jimmy McManus standing over him. He was holding his own gun in his right hand.

He was in his customary tight jeans and muscle shirt, with some new gold chains around his neck. He held the gun a little too casually, like it was one more accessory in the overall fashion statement, that of a man right out of the movies, a man you do not f*ck with. But the bruises around both of his eyes, the shattered nose Mason had given him, turned that statement into a lie.

“This is quite a place you got,” McManus said, gesturing with the barrel of the gun, pointing at the pool and everything else around him.

“What do you want?” Mason said, getting to his feet and rubbing the back of his head. McManus backed away from him.

“I’m here to settle things,” he said. “It’s like I told you last time. It’s the loose ends that hang you, Nickie boy. And you are one hell of a loose end.”

Mason took a step toward him. McManus flinched and tightened his grip on the gun, the barrel trained on Mason’s chest.

Mason had seen this man fire his gun in a blind panic while he was running away from that truck at the harbor. But this was different.

Facing a man. Ending his life. Something most men cannot do. It takes another kind of man.

A killer.

Mason knew that now.

“Go ahead. If you really have it in you.”

He looked Jimmy McManus in the eye and waited.

McManus swallowed and tightened his grip again. He raised the gun to eye level and sighted down the barrel.

Mason waited.

They say you never hear the shot that kills you, but it rang in Mason’s ears.

McManus stood there for one more moment, his neck bent at a strange new angle. Blood came running down his face, between his eyes. Then he fell forward into the pool.

Mason watched the pink swirl growing around the body as it turned clockwise in the water. Then he looked up.

Marcos Quintero stood twenty feet away, a gun in his right hand. Quintero gave Mason a slight nod of his head.

Mason stared him down for a long time before finally nodding back.





39



Chicago Sun-Times

CHICAGO COPS INDICTED IN DRUG SCANDAL

CONSPIRACY, ROBBERY, EXTORTION, KIDNAPPING, DRUG DEALING AMONG CHARGES


By Denny Kilmer, Staff Reporter


The United States Attorney’s Office unsealed an indictment today charging seven members of the Chicago Police Department, all members of the elite Special Investigations Section task force, with RICO conspiracy, robbery, racketeering, extortion, kidnapping, drug dealing, and a number of other charges. The indictments come after a five-month joint investigation by the FBI, DEA, and the Chicago Police Bureau of Internal Affairs and represent one of the biggest corruption cases in the history of the city. More suspects may be charged as the investigation continues.

The investigation may also shed light on the unsolved shooting death of SIS Sergeant Ray Jameson, as well as the deaths of SIS Detectives Walter Reagan, Jason Fowler, and John Koniczek, who were all found gunned down at the Deep Tunnel outlet in the Thornton Quarry. Those homicides have been the subject of an ongoing investigation conducted by the Illinois State Police and have generated intense media attention due to the mysterious circumstances surrounding those deaths.

The names of those officers arrested and charged are:

Sgt. Vincent Bloome, 58 years old, 29 years on force, 7 years in SIS. Det. John Fairley, 42 years old, 17 years on force, 5 years in SIS. Det. William Spiller, 35 years old, 12 years on force, 5 years in SIS. Det. Michael Harrison, 34 years old, 8 years on force, 3 years in SIS. Det. Brian Jaynes, 31 years old, 7 years on force, 2 years in SIS. Det. Hayward Baylor, 29 years old, 6 years on force, 2 years in SIS. Det. Edward Coleman, 29 years old, 5 years on force, 2 years in SIS.

The seven officers charged are all members of the Special Investigations Section, otherwise known as SIS, an elite task force of narcotics officers put together in 2009 in response to the rampant drug-related crimes plaguing the city. Those officers were given broad leeway to conduct their own investigations and reported high arrest rates in every year of the unit’s existence. Many of those arrests are now being called into question, and civilian complaints against many of these officers, including claims of illegal seizure and use of excessive force, compiled from the task force’s inception in 2009, are now coming to light.