The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(8)

Mason could understand this need to compartmentalize. To set everything else aside so you could focus on the one thing you had to do. For Mason, it was stealing a car, or knocking over a drug dealer, or, eventually, breaking into a building and drilling open a safe. But then he’d come home when it was done and he’d leave that work behind him. He’d have money, he’d have time, he’d have a way to keep living until it was time to work again.

He could see the same thing in Diana. That same need to focus on her job, to keep everything else separate. Her father is killed and Cole “deals” with it. She lives here with him and then stays here, for years, after he’s gone. She gets up every morning and goes to work.

She does her job.

Now if Mason only knew what his job would be.

“What can you tell me about what I’ll be doing here?” Mason said. “Besides staying out of your way at the restaurant.”

“That’s between you and Darius,” she said.

“I hated prison, but at least you knew what to expect there. Right down to the minute. Here, I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen next.”

Mason thought about the twenty-year “contract” he had signed with Cole and how Cole was the only man who really knew what was written in it.

“When the time comes,” Diana said, “just do exactly what you’re told. Nothing more, nothing less. Trust me, that’s the only way to play this.”

“Those cameras outside,” Mason said, nodding toward the pool. “Don’t they bother you?”

She looked outside and shrugged. “I don’t even think about them anymore.”

“He could have put me anywhere,” Mason said. “Why here? So you can keep an eye on me? Is that part of your job?”

“Maybe it’s part of your job to keep an eye on me.” She gathered up her purse, took out her keys, and went down the stairs.





4




After five years without a visit or a phone call, Nick Mason didn’t even know if the life he’d left behind would still be there, but he had to try.

He went through the clothes in his room and put on a black sports coat over his jeans and white dress shirt. When he went down to the garage, he found the keys to the Mustang in the ignition. He hadn’t driven a car in five years. He opened the garage, put it in reverse, backed out into the street. Then he headed south.

If you grow up in Chicago, you know it’s a city of neighborhoods, a great patchwork of separate communities, spreading out in three directions from the shores of Lake Michigan. Each neighborhood has its own rhythm, its own way of life, and its own food—from the deep-dish pizza in Streeterville to the pierogies in Avondale to the fried rattlesnake in La Villita.

And if you grow up in what they officially call New City, like Nick Mason did, you know it’s really two separate neighborhoods in one: Back of the Yards and Canaryville. Back of the Yards is where you find the kids with the Polish last names, the grandchildren of the men who worked as meatpackers in the Union Stock Yards. On the other side of that is Canaryville. That’s where you find the Irish kids. Like Eddie Callahan. Or Finn O’Malley. Or a half-Irish, half-whatever kid named Nick Mason.

Of the three, Eddie was the smartest. He was a short, redheaded kid with freckles, built as solid as a fullback. Surprisingly fast when he had to be. He didn’t always talk like a kid from Canaryville. He even had both parents at home most of the time.

Finn was tall and underfed, with a haunted look in his eyes that made him irresistible to some girls and unsettling to everyone else. His mother worked at the corner grocery, and his father was usually either missing or sitting at one of the bars on Halsted Street.

Nick’s mother lived in one tiny apartment after another and sometimes relied on charity from St. Gabriel’s. He had a vague memory of some men who’d come by to see her, but he couldn’t remember any single man as his father no matter how hard he tried. It bothered him sometimes, but then he’d think, what the hell, it’s probably just some local loser who may or may not be kicking around anymore. Sometimes he’d even wonder what would happen if he met an older man at the bar and saw enough resemblance in the face to make the connection. He honestly didn’t know what would happen next, but it probably wouldn’t be good.

A year older, Finn was the first one of the three to get drunk, the first to get laid, the first to steal a car. He was the first to get picked up by the police and held in a cell until his mother could get off work and come pick him up.

When Nick and Eddie followed Finn into the auto theft business, they discovered that they had a real talent for it. Something that Finn would never have. They were a lot more careful, for one thing. They were more patient. They knew to walk away if everything wasn’t right. Once they had that part figured, the rest was easy. It wasn’t like breaking into people’s houses. It wasn’t that kind of personal invasion. It was just cold metal on wheels.

Eddie, in particular, got good at the technical side of car theft. He’d read the electrical diagrams on some of the models so he’d know where to find the wires to the main fuse, the ignition circuit, and the starter motor. Once you’ve got those three wires pulled out from the wiring harness and cut, you’re in business.

It didn’t take Nick and Eddie long to find the people who would buy the cars from them. If you did a clean job, and if you were willing to go out and find exactly what they wanted, there would always be people willing to pay you.