The Second Life of Nick Mason

18

As Mason parked the car on Thirty-fifth Street, he remembered an old joke. What’s the difference between Bridgeport and Canaryville? People in Bridgeport take the dishes out of the sink before they piss in it.

Bridgeport’s closer to the ballpark, closer to the river. There’s a little more “diversity,” meaning it wasn’t just Irish American kids hanging out at every corner. There were Latinos and even an Asian community in this part of town. The houses were packed tight on narrow lots, just like in Canaryville, with the detached garages in back feeding out into the alleyways that run between the streets, but the houses were a little bigger and a little nicer. There were a few more neighborhood parks and a few more places to eat. Good deep-dish pizza and those breaded steak sandwiches they made here. That’s Bridgeport.

Jokes aside, if you were honest about it, you’d have to admit it was a step up from Canaryville. You moved from there to here, you were moving in the right direction. Of course, you were still on the South Side. That was important. You move to Bridgeport, it’s not like you went too far north and started rooting for the fucking Cubs.

There was one house in particular that Mason was looking at. One narrow, two-story much like the others on the block, although this one actually had a little fenced-in strip of grass on one side. You couldn’t just reach out from your window and borrow a cup of sugar from your next-door neighbor. Mason wasn’t totally sure he had the right place, so he was sitting out on the street. The Camaro’s engine was off but still ticking as it cooled down.

He saw a little boy come running out from behind the house and into the little side yard. The kid was maybe three years old. Red hair and freckles. He was wearing shorts and a White Sox T-shirt, and he had a big plastic baseball bat in one hand, a plastic ball in the other.

A few seconds later, another boy came running after him. He was an exact copy, same size, same red hair and freckles. He was also wearing a White Sox T-shirt, but a different variation. Maybe that was so people could tell them apart.

Mason watched the two kids for a while. The one with the plastic bat was about to hit the other one when a man appeared on the scene just in time to stop him. He was still short and as solid as a fullback. He had the same coloring as the kids, even if maybe he had a little less hair than he once did. Mason knew him immediately.

He got out of the car and shut the door. The man in the yard looked up when he heard the sound. He had the kid’s plastic bat in his hand and he dropped it when he saw Nick Mason stepping over the curb and approaching the fence.

“Nick? Is that you?”

Mason stood with his elbows on the top of the fence. The two boys stared up at him, sensing something in their father and not sure how to react. Eddie Callahan opened up the gate and stepped out. He grabbed Mason by the shoulders like he was verifying the man was real flesh and blood, not some kind of hallucination.

“What the hell,” he said. “I mean, what the hell.”

“It’s good to see you, Eddie.”

“What are you doing here?” Eddie said, taking a quick look up and down the street. “I mean, are you out?”

“I’m out.”

“How did that happen?” Eddie asked, looking around again.

“It’s a long story, Eddie. But I’m out.”

Eddie’s eyes settled on the car. “And what the hell are you driving?”

“A 1967 Camaro. I didn’t steal it.”

“Stop kidding around and tell me what’s going on.” He looked back at the two boys, who were standing at the gate. “It’s okay, guys. Let’s take you inside for a minute, okay. Let’s go see Mommy.”

He grabbed each of them by the hand and led them around back, taking one more look over his shoulder at Mason as he disappeared around the corner.

Mason stood there waiting for a while. Longer than it should have taken Eddie to put the kids inside. Meaning Eddie’s wife was probably looking out the window at him and asking Eddie a lot of questions. She might even be calling the police, Mason thought, and it spooked him for half a second until he remembered he had nothing to worry about. From the police, at least.

Eddie finally came back out, looking like he’d just gotten an earful. “Sandra’s a little concerned, Nick. Are you on the run?”

“Eddie, I’m not on the run. I’m not even on parole. I’m out clean. You got nothing to worry about.”

“Okay,” Eddie said, clearly wanting to believe him.

“You gonna invite me in or not? Or are we gonna keep standing out here on the sidewalk?”

“Yeah, come on,” Eddie said, opening up the gate. “Maybe in the garage? Would that be all right? We can talk there.”

Mason shook his head and followed him. “This is the place you showed me. You told me you were thinking of buying it.”

“This is the place,” Eddie said. “It’s got a yard, you know? Most places don’t.”

Mason looked around at the thin strip of grass running down the lot line. Just wide enough, maybe, to drive a car down. But Eddie was right, most houses in this neighborhood didn’t even have this much.

“Bridgeport,” Mason said. “You actually moved out of Canaryville.”

“Yeah, everybody’s not all up in your business here. We really needed a fresh start. I mean, you know…”

Eddie cleared his throat and let that thought die in the air.

“What are your kids’ names?”

Eddie stopped and looked him. “Yeah, they were born when you were… I mean, it’s Gregory and Jeffrey.”

“They seem like great kids.”

“They’re a big handful.”

Eddie opened up the door to the garage and stepped inside, taking a quick look back at the house.

“Eddie, listen, I don’t want to get you in trouble here. If Sandra doesn’t want me here…”

“No, no, it’s cool. Come on in and sit down. I got it all set up in here. Sandra calls it my man cave.”

Mason stepped inside the garage and saw worktables along both walls. The tabletops were crowded with computer consoles and laptops. One table seemed to be set aside as Eddie’s personal desk, with a nice computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, the whole works. A leather office chair was situated in front of it.

“This is what I do,” Eddie said. “I fix them, I sell them. It’s been pretty busy.”

“I’m not surprised. You were always good with the technical stuff.” Meaning hot-wiring cars and disabling alarms.

There was a tall safe set in the corner of the garage. Mason went over and tried the handle. It was locked up tight.

“I got a couple of rifles in there,” Eddie said. “I still get to the range when I can, but too much other stuff going on, you know?”

Eddie rolled the office chair over to Mason. He pulled out a folding chair and set it up. Then he went to the little mini-fridge in the corner, opened the door, and took out two cans of Half Acre beer.

“You want one of these?”

“Sure.”

Eddie gave him the can and sat down on the folding chair. Mason looked down at the man for a moment before sitting.

“Eddie…”

“Yeah, Nick?”

“You can relax now.”

“I’m sorry, man.” Eddie slinked down in his chair like somebody had taken half the air out of him. “I just don’t know what to think. You show up like this, when you’re not supposed to be out for another twenty years…”

“There was a problem with the arrest.”

“I’ve heard of shit like that happening,” Eddie said. “But I never thought-”

“Let’s get this out of the way,” Mason said, cutting him short. “I went away and you didn’t.”

“I know, man.” Eddie looked at the garage floor.

“That’s the way it happened. You wouldn’t have given me up if it was you.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Eddie said, looking back up at him. Mason could feel him grabbing onto this idea like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline. “I would have done the same thing, I swear.”

“Okay, then, we’re good.”

“But I should have come to see you,” Eddie said. “I was worried they would see my name and, I don’t know, try to keep me there.”

Mason took a hit off his beer. You feel really bad, he said to himself. And yet if I was still down there, you’d still be sitting here in Bridgeport, not coming down to pay me a visit. So you wouldn’t have felt that bad.

“It’s okay,” Mason said. “You’re married. You got kids. You gotta move on.”

“I was gonna come. Really, I was. But Sandra, she just…”

She just wouldn’t let it happen, Mason thought. I get it. The same woman who even now is making us sit out here in the garage instead of coming into the house. I should go in there, find her in her bedroom with both her kids hugged tight to her chest, tell her I just got done doing five years in a federal penitentiary and would have done a lot more. I never said a word about your husband being involved. Not one fucking word.

“So I heard about Gina,” Eddie said. “I mean, I don’t know if you’ve seen her yet. You knew she got remarried?”

“I heard,” Mason said, trying to hide how much it still hurt.

He’d been keeping his cool. But it was getting to be a bit too much. He held on tight to his beer can and counted to three.

That “code” that Cole said he saw in Mason-all that bushido honor and bushido loyalty-maybe it really was a rare thing after all.

“I’m sorry, man,” Eddie said. “It must feel like I forgot all about you in there. I really didn’t. Every day, I thought about you in there and me out here.”

Mason was quiet.

“We grew up together,” Eddie said. “How many times did you save my ass, even before you went away? I should have been a better friend. After what you did for me.”

“I said forget it.”

“I’m turning this into a fucking soap opera, I’m sorry. Come on, let’s drink to something, okay? You’re out of prison.” Eddie raised his beer. “To getting out. To freedom.”

Mason raised his halfheartedly. The two cans clicked together. Mason wasn’t so sure what they were drinking to. Whatever he had now, it wasn’t really freedom. Like Quintero had said, it’s mobility.

“To Finn,” Mason said, raising his beer again.

“To crazy old Finn.”

They clicked their cans one more time. Neither of them said anything for a while.

“I saw McManus,” Mason finally said.

“How’d that go?”

“Could have run him over. Didn’t even realize who it was until I was down the street.”

“I’m surprised that asshole is still in town. If I ever see him, he’s a dead man.”

Mason took a hit off his beer.

“It’s funny,” Eddie said. “I think back to that night… That fucker was out of the truck before they even started shooting.”

Mason nodded. He’d been thinking about it for years.

“He better not come to Bridgeport. I swear, I’ll beat him to death. Right in the street.”

Yeah, sure, Mason thought. While Sandra and the boys are watching you. That’s exactly what you’ll do.

“I saw Detective Sandoval, too,” Mason said. “You remember him.”

“Yeah.”

“He might come by, ask you some questions, now that I’m out.”

Eddie looked out at the house like he was imagining a detective on his front porch and Sandra answering the doorbell.

“Sandoval couldn’t touch you five years ago,” Mason said. “He can’t touch you today. You got nothing to worry about.”

“Right.”

Eddie took a long sip off his beer and stared at the garage floor for a while.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Eddie said. “I got something to show you.”

He put down his beer, got up, and grabbed the stepladder from the far corner of the garage. He set it up and went into the rafters. He came down with a cardboard box. When he opened it, he pulled out a stack of newspapers. The first masthead read Chicago Sun-Times, and it took Mason about two seconds to understand what these represented. These were the newspapers from five years ago, all of the coverage from the harbor job, the dead agent, the apprehending of the suspect, the police superintendent standing on the court steps and saying that a federal agent’s death has been avenged. The whole fucking circus.

“Eddie,” Mason said, “why the hell would you save these?”

“I’m not even sure what I was thinking, but, I’ll tell ya, when I’m having a bad day or something, I’ll take out these papers and I’ll remember what you did for me. How I’m here in this house with my wife and kids because you didn’t give me up. How Finn never even made it back home at all. It just puts everything in perspective, you know?”

Eddie flipped through the pages, shaking his head as he relived the history.

“You should take these,” Eddie said. “Read them, if you want. Burn them. I don’t care. I just think you should have them. Now that you’re out, I don’t need them anymore.”

Eddie put the newspapers back in the box. Mason took his last hit off the beer, then put the can down on the table.

“I’ll get out of here,” Mason said, “before I get you in any more trouble.”

Eddie reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders again. This time, he pulled him close and gave him a hug. “It’s good to see you, man. I still can’t believe it.”

“Take care of yourself, Eddie.”

“Listen to me,” he said, looking Mason in the eye. “If you ever need me, I’ll be there. Anything, anytime. Whatever it is. I will be there.”

“Okay.”

Eddie took out a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote down his number. “Here,” he said as he gave it to him. “I mean it, Nick. I owe you.”

Eddie gave him one more hug. Mason picked up the box of newspapers and walked back down the narrow side yard, back to the street. He glanced at the window but didn’t see Sandra looking out at him.

Mason put the newspapers in the backseat of the Camaro. Then he got in and left Bridgeport behind him.