The Second Life of Nick Mason

25

Among the thirty parents watching the soccer game, Nick Mason was pretty sure he was the only two-time murderer.

He stood against the backstop again, behind the bleachers, but with the same good angle to see the entire field. He had his sunglasses on even though it was not sunny. It was a gray day, on the verge of being cold, but he couldn’t feel it. He stood there motionless, leaning against the rough wood, with his arms folded across his chest.

He kept seeing the face he saw in that mirror in the strip club. It was the face of another man. A man he didn’t know.

A man he didn’t want to know.

But I would do it again in a second, Mason thought, staring across the field. Give me a thousand different chances to get out of that place, to see this nine-year-old girl running around, chasing a ball, for a few minutes every week…

I would do it again. Every time.

The game developed on the field as Nick Mason focused on one player. He kept watching his daughter even when play stopped, even when she went out for a few minutes and stood along the far sideline, cheering on her teammates.

At halftime, some of the parents stood up to stretch or to go have a smoke somewhere far away or talk on their cell phones. Mason stayed where he was, his eyes on his daughter as she sat in the grass and talked to two other players. When the second half was about to begin, a thought struck Mason and it was enough to make him move. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed Lauren at the pet store, trying to remember if showing up at her place the night before had been a definite promise or just a maybe. Either way, he wanted to see her again. He wanted to walk down the street with her and become that other person again, if only for those few hours.

The players were running around the field again. As Mason listened to the phone ringing, he looked for his daughter and for one moment couldn’t locate her. Then he spotted her on the far corner of the field, lining up for a free kick. She sent the ball into play and it was quickly cleared and sent down to the other end of the field. Adriana stayed behind, kneeling down on the grass to tie her shoe. Everyone else followed the movement of the ball toward the other goal, but Mason couldn’t care less about who scored or didn’t score. He was the one man still watching his daughter on the opposite end of the field.

That’s when he saw the other man standing there at the edge of the parking lot, about twenty yards away from Adriana.

Jimmy McManus.

He was wearing his tight jeans and muscle shirt again, with the same gold chains around his neck. It took Mason a moment to process the fact that the man was here, in this same park. And now as McManus scanned the people watching the game, his eyes settled on Mason. McManus nodded to him, then to Adriana, back to him, as if verifying that this was really his daughter. He reached his own conclusion and gave Mason a thumbs-up.

Then McManus took out his cell phone and gave out a sharp whistle. Adriana looked up from where she was still kneeling on the grass and Mason could see a look of confusion on her face. McManus pointed his phone at her and pushed a button. He was taking her picture.

Mason was already in motion.

He came out from the shadow of the backstop and ran along behind the bleachers toward the parking lot. McManus put up his hands, like, what the hell is this, but then he turned and headed back into the heart of the lot. He moved fast, not exactly running, but not exactly waiting around to see what Mason was going to do to him, either.

Mason caught up to him and grabbed him by the collar. He felt at least one of the gold chains coming apart in his hands as McManus escaped and starting running.

McManus was already in the next row of cars over, so Mason cut through a family getting out of their minivan and heard shouts from behind him. He reached McManus just as he was fumbling with his keys, trying to open the door of his bright red Corvette. Mason got a hand on the back of his neck and drove his face into the roof of the car.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

The noise-bone on metal-echoed across the parking lot as the blood spurted from McManus’s shattered nose. Mason spun him around and drove wicked left hooks into his ribs, the kind of punches that break bones and bruise organs, that make you bleed not out but in.

“It’s not enough you set us all up at the harbor,” he said as he grabbed him by the throat and pulled him back upright, “now you’re taking fucking pictures of my daughter?”

The next punch folded McManus right in half and he slid down the side of the Corvette. Mason was pulling him to his feet again when he heard the voice behind him ordering him to freeze. He ignored the voice and kept hitting McManus until he felt a great weight knocking him down from behind and then his hands being twisted behind his back and locked tight in cuffs.

Mason lay there on the ground for another few minutes, catching his breath, until he looked up and saw Gina’s face among the crowd of people who had gathered in the lot.

He didn’t see Adriana. Just Gina, and her face told him everything he needed to know about what she was feeling.

I was just protecting her. He tried to say it loud. I was just protecting our daughter. But she couldn’t hear him.

Then he was lifted up from the ground, put in the back of the squad car, and taken away.