The Second Life of Nick Mason

13

Mason closed the door to Room 215, trying to reconcile that there was a dead man-a dead cop-on the other side.

The towel was spotted with blood, so he put it inside his jacket as he stepped out onto the balcony and back into the stairwell. He stopped dead when he saw the security camera. It was mounted on this side of the concrete header over the entrance to the stairs. On his way up, there had been no way to see it.

Mason kept going. Down the stairs, still lit pale orange by the exit sign. He got in the Mustang, started it, backed up, and then gunned it onto the street.

Slow down, he told himself. It’s time to be straight and correct.

He made himself bring the car to a stop as the traffic light went from yellow to red. He sat there idling for a moment, waiting for his heart rate to come down. Then he saw the flashing blue and red lights. The police car came around the corner, running silent and fast. The cop driving the car looked the Mustang up and down. Mason knew his face couldn’t be seen through the tinted glass, but the car itself was unmistakable. Mason poised his right foot on the accelerator, ready to see what this thing could do from a standing start. But the police car kept going.

Mason let out his breath. The light turned green. He pulled out slowly and drove down the street, looking in his rearview mirror. There was nobody behind him.

He pulled out his cell phone and called Quintero.

“There was a security camera,” he said as soon as Quintero answered. “I’m fucked.”

“Relax,” Quintero said. “Get a grip on yourself.”

“I got spotted by a patrolman, too. If the guy knows cars, I’ll stick in his head. When he finds out what happened at the motel, he’ll remember he saw a 1968 Mustang one block away.”

“I’m going to give you an address.”

“That was a cop in the motel, by the way.”

“The place will look abandoned, but we’ll open up the door when you get there.”

“Did you hear me?” Mason said. “That guy was a cop.”

“You need to shut the fuck up and go to this address.”

Quintero gave him an address on Spaulding, just over the river. Mason stayed off the highway, making his way down the dark, quiet streets. He crossed the river and spent a few minutes looking for the exact street and address. There was a huge storage warehouse and an asphalt yard locked up for the night. A half-dozen houses all boarded up, then at last another brick building with a large garage door being rolled up, a sudden bright rectangle spilling out onto the street. Mason turned into the opening. He saw Quintero standing there, his arms folded. The door was already rattling shut when Mason stopped the car and got out.

There were two other men in the garage. Dark-haired Latinos like Quintero, except these men both wore gray coveralls. Banks of fluorescent lighting hung from the high ceiling, the area above them seeming to disappear into the darkness. There were workbenches and a lift and heavy welding equipment. Mason knew what this place was. He’d seen his share of chop shops.

“Tell me why I just killed a cop,” Mason said.

Quintero didn’t move. He kept his arms folded in front of his chest and said something to the other two men in Spanish. The men laughed.

“Tell me why,” Mason said, “before I kick the shit out of you right here.”

Whatever trace of a smile had been on Quintero’s face disappeared in an instant. “Shut the fuck up, Mason. We got business to take care of. Take off your clothes.”

“Excuse me?”

“We gotta get rid of them. You smell like a slaughterhouse.”

Mason looked down at himself. It was his first good look in bright light. Even though his jacket and pants were black, he could see that they were soaked with blood. He took the towel from the motel bathroom out of his jacket. Then he took the gloves out of one pocket. Finally, he took the gun out of the other.

“Chingada Madre!” Quintero said. “The fuck is the matter with you? That gun is clean!”

“So what?”

“So you don’t bring it with you, you stupid pendejo. You leave it in the room.”

“Excuse the fuck out of me,” Mason said. “I never shot anybody before.”

Quintero took the gun from Mason as he said something else in Spanish to the other two men. They already had both car doors open and were working on the seats.

“What are they doing to the car?” Mason said.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Quintero said, taking the gloves and the towel. “Now take off your clothes. Unless you have any other surprises for me.”

Mason took off his clothes. Quintero took them from him and put them in a garbage bag. Then he led Mason to a shower in the corner of the warehouse. He handed him a bar of soap and a large scrub brush.

“Every inch,” he said. “No DNA, no fibers. We take no chances.”

Mason got to work scrubbing himself down. When he was done, he stepped out of the shower. He grabbed the towel that had been put on a nearby worktable. Next to it were a pair of jeans and a shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes. He put on the clothes and looked at the rough mirror someone had screwed to the wall over the sink. The scrape over his left eye was still raw, and his whole face needed an ice bag. But he wasn’t about to ask for one. He walked back to where the men were working on the engine of the Mustang. They already had the car seats out. Now they were pulling out the battery.

“You’re not going to chop this car,” Mason said.

They ignored him.

“They’re not going to chop it,” Quintero said from behind him. “They’re going to fucking obliterate it. They’re going to break it down to nothing like it never existed. That cop who saw the car? He saw a ghost.”

Quintero took the wet towel from Nick and added it to the bag of clothes.

“Over here,” Quintero said. He led him to the opposite side of the warehouse, where there was an incinerator. Quintero used a long pair of pliers with taped-up handles to open the door. Both men raised their arms against the sudden wave of heat. Quintero threw in the bag and it was instantly consumed by the flames. He nudged the door with the pliers until it was shut again.

“That camera at the motel,” Mason said to him. “I didn’t see it on my way to the room.”

“What do you think I do?” Quintero said, throwing the pliers on the bench. “Just drive around and watch you? You don’t think I had every angle at that motel taken care of? The feed on that camera was disabled. On all of the cameras, including the ones you didn’t see. I even rented out every other room.”

“What was his name?”

“Jameson. Sergeant Ray Jameson. Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, no big fucking deal.”

“Listen,” Quintero said, “you think that was Serpico you took out? I had to deal with that prick for years. Thought he could do anything he wanted, like he owned the whole fucking city. Whatever I paid him, he always wanted more. He was a piece of shit who happened to carry a badge in his pocket. Take away the badge and he’s still a piece of shit. Just not as useful.”

“If he’s useful, why take him out?”

“He stopped being useful when he stopped doing the things we paid him to do.”

“All right, hold on,” Mason said. “You gotta understand something.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t do this shit.”

“You can,” Quintero said. “You just did.”

Mason hesitated, because he didn’t know how else to say it. He’d just killed a man, but there hadn’t been a moment of truth. He didn’t have to look the man in the eye. He didn’t have to hear the man beg for his life or watch him piss himself. He didn’t have to calmly pull the trigger and then walk away.

Instead, it all just happened in a rush. Hell, it almost felt like self-defense. But that was a distinction he knew Quintero wouldn’t get. Mason was sent to kill the man. Mason came back. The man was dead. End of story.

Why me? That’s the question Mason had asked Cole, sitting in that prison cell, right after Cole had made his offer to him. All those other men in that unit, many of them murderers. Multiple murderers. Men who could have killed that cop in the motel room without blinking. Why did Cole choose Mason?

It still didn’t make sense.

“Your new ride,” Quintero said. He led Mason to the farthest bay in the garage, beyond the reach of the fluorescent lights. They might as well have been on the bottom of the ocean. Quintero snapped on a light. The darkness separated in the glare from the caged bulb. There was something there, covered with a gray tarp. When Quintero pulled away the tarp, Mason saw a 1967 first-generation Camaro SS. It was painted jet-black, just like the Mustang. But where the Mustang was sleek and beautiful, this thing was just a beast. Twin pipes. A simple flat grille. This car was fast when it was made, too fast for any sensible person to actually drive on the street. Mason guessed it was just as fast now.

“How many cars like this are you gonna destroy?” Mason said.

“Maybe next time we won’t have to.”

Mason’s heart rate was back to normal. He stood there looking at the Camaro and he thought about everything that had happened that night. This wasn’t the right way to do it, he said to himself. Go into a motel room, kill the man with a gun, drive away in a car that was unlike any other car in the city. There were too many ways it could go wrong.

But maybe that was part of the test, seeing if Mason could deal with those problems. And then, once he did, proving to Mason that Quintero would be here for the cleanup, even if that meant destroying a car that belonged in a museum.

It was all part of the show. And both men had learned something important about the other.

Quintero took a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Mason. “Those bruises look good on you,” he said. “Make you look humble.”

“Open the door so I can get the fuck out of here.”

Quintero hit a button on the wall and the bay door cranked open. Mason backed out the Camaro and took off.

He tried to keep it out of his mind as he drove back to Lincoln Park, pulled into the town house garage, and went up the stairs. The dark cherrywood was the same color as the blood-soaked carpeting in the motel. The television was on and Diana was sitting on the leather couch, watching a cooking show, magnified on the huge HD screen. She glanced up as she heard Mason and for one moment it looked like she might ask him why the hell he hadn’t showed up at the restaurant like she’d asked him to.

But then she saw his face. She turned back to her show without saying a word.

Mason went into his bathroom and took off the clothes Quintero had given him. Even though he was probably the cleanest man in the world, he got in the shower and spent a half hour under the hot spray.

His own reaction was finally coming through to him now that he had stopped moving. He kept hearing the shot against the man’s chest, kept feeling the weight of the man’s dead body on top of him.

I always had rules, he said to himself. They never failed me until the day I started ignoring them. Now I need some new rules. New rules for new problems.

When he got out of the shower, he once again caught sight of himself in the mirror. The bruises were already looking worse.

He threw on some new clothes, went out to the kitchen, and filled a plastic bag with ice. He grabbed a Goose Island out of the fridge and sat down on the far end of the couch, holding the ice against his face. Diana didn’t react. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t make a sound. She kept sitting there, watching the television.

It was a special break-in from the local news. A woman reporter was standing outside somewhere, holding a microphone. Behind her was a thin strand of yellow crime scene tape. Behind the tape was a line of doors. Above those doors was a balcony.

Mason knew this place.

The crawl across the bottom of the screen gave Mason the news he didn’t need to read. Sergeant Ray Jameson, a highly decorated police officer, was killed by an unknown gunman. He leaves behind a wife and three children.

Mason looked over at Diana. She had her knees drawn up to her chest and she was hugging them. She kept staring at the screen.

Mason closed his eyes for a moment. He pressed the ice against his face. The cold was painful, but eventually it started to make him feel numb.

When he opened his eyes again, the reporter was signing off. Just before the camera cut away, he saw a plainclothes police officer stepping right into the shot, blinking at the glare of the camera lights. On the screen the man looked bigger than life and Mason knew him immediately even though he hadn’t seen him in five years.

It was Detective Frank Sandoval.