The Second Life of Nick Mason (Nick Mason #1)(9)

That’s what Mason did instead of junior and senior year of high school. That’s what he did instead of college. That was his job for six years. He got picked up a few times, but he was never charged. He was proud to say he’d never spent two consecutive nights in custody. The first time Mason and Eddie both got picked up together, Eddie’s parents convinced him to join the Army. Mason was surprised when he agreed to it. He wasn’t surprised when Eddie came back two years later.

“Turns out I can shoot a gun,” Eddie said the first night Mason saw him again. “I mean, really shoot. And I loved it. But I couldn’t take the rest of it, some * pounding on a garbage can lid and telling me to get out of bed.”

“So two years of your life . . .” Mason said.

“Yeah, two years and I’m out,” Eddie said. “But I can still hit anything inside a thousand yards.”

Mason had never used a gun on a job before. You don’t need one when you’re stealing cars. But now with Eddie back, they had a new plan.

Robbing drug dealers.

It took less time than stealing a car, it paid twice the money, and nobody involved in this transaction had any interest in calling the police. The basic routine was to find a dealer, observe his routine, catch him when he was carrying the maximum amount of money. Do it quickly, decisively, and then get the hell out. The risk was a lot higher, so that meant some new rules. And when it came to the guns, they needed one very carefully thought-out rule that would keep everyone alive, including the dealers. A real cowboy like Finn would have come up with something straight and simple like Don’t bring out the guns unless you plan on using them. But that’s bullshit. Absolute suicidal bullshit. Because you don’t want to use your gun. You just want the other man to think you will. The rule they came up with was Act like you want to shoot the man. Act like it’s the one thing you want more than anything else in the world.

It was a rule that worked, because if you could sustain that belief within yourself, then the man you were robbing would believe it, too. No dealer wanted to die over a few thousand dollars. Not if it was money he could make back the next day.

Of course, you could only do that kind of job so often. It wasn’t like stealing cars, with a fresh supply lined up and down the street every single day. You knocked over dealers and they started putting extra men on the corners. So you backed off and let things go back to normal. Then you hit them again.

The business stayed profitable for two years. Then one night they had a house lined up in Roseland. Abandoned for months, it became a place for users to score, but within another couple of days the operation would be moved to yet another house. All they had to do was wait for the right moment, enter in front and back to introduce themselves, take the money, and say good night.

They were just getting ready to move when another vehicle pulled up on the other side of the street. A big Ford Bronco. Three white men got out. One of the men went around back. The other two went to the front. Their guns were out before they even hit the door. It was as if they had borrowed the same plan and then executed it exactly as Nick, Eddie, and Finn would have.

They were back out of the house within two minutes. One of them was carrying a grocery bag. They got in their Bronco and took off.

“You know who that was?” Eddie asked.

Nobody answered. The way these guys looked, the way they moved, the fact that they didn’t care about being seen . . . that was Mason’s first encounter with dirty cops. It wouldn’t be his last. But, for now, it meant one thing: when the cops take over your business, it’s time to find a new one.

? ? ?

After six years of stealing cars and two years of taking down drug dealers, Nick Mason graduated to high-end robbery. He got his first job through one of his old chop shop contacts, who told Mason about a business supplying and servicing video poker games in bars. The bar customers weren’t supposed to be playing for real money, of course, but the owner had been overheard complaining about how the “not real” money was piling up and he didn’t want to put it in the bank and have to account for it on the books. So it was all just wads of cash that barely fit into the hiding places all over his shop. He hadn’t spent any of that money on a safe.

As soon as Mason shared this with Eddie and Finn, Finn wanted to bust right into the place and put a gun to the man’s head and ask him where the money was hidden. But Mason knew this was an opportunity to learn how to do this kind of job right. Like a pro.

Mason watched the place for a few days. It dealt with more than just the video poker. It was a “vending and amusement supply company,” for cigarette machines, pinball machines, video games, you name it. There was always someone in the building from eight in the morning until six in the evening, at which point everything was locked up and the alarm was turned on. There was a side window with thick iron bars, but Mason could look through and see the work area in the back of the building. Mason made detailed notes so he’d be sure to have a plan once he got inside, along with the proper tools.

Meanwhile, Eddie was learning everything he could about the alarm system. He was the one who knew how to hot-wire cars, so he was the natural choice for alarm man. The sticker in the front window told Eddie what kind of system it was. All he had to do was figure out how to disarm the system within the thirty-second delay after the front door was opened.

When the night came, the three men broke the glass on the rear door and were inside in seconds. Eddie went straight to the security panel in the front of the building and disabled it, which for that particular model meant grabbing it and pulling the entire old-school landline piece of crap right off the wall. Mason started searching through locked metal cabinets, using the large bolt cutters he had brought with him. He came up empty every time. Eddie joined him and started going through the hollow consoles of the vending machines and video games. Finn just poked around, getting more and more anxious.