The Second Life of Nick Mason

37

Mason got out of the car. He was trying to breathe. He was trying to draw some air into his lungs and breathe.

No, he said to himself. Then he said the same word over and over a hundred more times.

He walked down the shoreline for a hundred yards until he realized he still had the phone in his hand.

Then he threw it as far as he could out into the water.

He kept walking. Until the walkway made its big curl at North Avenue Beach and came to a dead stop. He turned around and looked at the buildings rising high above the water without really seeing them.

“What the fuck did I expect?” he asked himself out loud. “Did I actually think for one fucking second…”

Then he started moving again. Fast. Back up the walkway, up the beach and through the park. Back to his car.

He got in and gunned it. He drove across town to the West Side, to the address on Spaulding, past the big storage warehouse and the asphalt yard and the boarded-up houses. He could see the place better in the daylight. It was practically in the shadow of the Cook County Jail.

The chop shop.

He pulled up in front of the garage door and pressed on the horn until the door finally started to rise. Mason drove through into the bay. The two Latinos stood there, watching him.

“Where is he?” Mason said as he got out of the car.

The Honda Accord they were working on was already halfway taken apart. The whole front end had been removed from the frame, then the doors and windshield had been taken off. When the seats were out, they’d cut out the entire dashboard, saving the air bags. That’s what they did here every day, but now they just looked at him.

Until their eyes shifted and Mason knew there was someone behind him.

He felt the hand on his right shoulder. When he turned, Quintero hit him in the mouth. He was already tasting blood as he grabbed the man by the throat and threw him against the car.

When Quintero swung at him again, Mason ducked and drove his head into Quintero’s chest, sending him backward into a workbench. Tools rattled and fell crashing to the floor.

“Is that all you got?” Mason said to him. “I fought guys tougher than you in junior high school, you fucking gangbanger piece of shit.”

Quintero came at him, faking another swing at his head and then sucker punching him in the gut. Quintero had him lined up for another shot to the face, but Mason got an arm up to block him and drove him back, all the way into another bay, and pinned him against the car in the bay.

They both stayed there for a moment, holding on to each other. At such close range, Mason could see every gray hair, every line in the man’s face. Those extra years on Quintero, hard years of service to one man, doing fuck knows what. In that one moment, Mason couldn’t help wondering if he was looking at his own future.

“You stupid güero,” Quintero said. “I’ve been putting up with your shit from the moment I drove you up here. Your questions. Your attitude. Getting thrown in fucking jail. But now, today, you crossed the one line you can’t cross.”

Mason pushed himself away and caught his breath.

“If you ever disobey him again,” Quintero said, “if you ever fucking call him and disrespect him… I swear to Christ, I will take whatever he tells me to do to you and I’ll make it last twice as long. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Mason said. “All you ever do is talk.”

“And yet you never fucking listen. I told you, you got a problem, you come to me. That’s why I’m here. How come you still don’t get that?”

Mason looked at him. What the fuck, he thought, this man honestly sounds offended. Like I betrayed him.

“Just stay away from me, Quintero. And stay the fuck away from my family. I don’t care what he tells you to do. I swear to God, if you go anywhere near my family, I will kill you. I will not hurt you. I will kill you.”

“You don’t want me fucking with your family, don’t give me a reason.”

“No,” Mason said, wiping the blood from his mouth. “Reason or no reason-today, tomorrow, any day of your fucking life-you touch either of them, your life is over.”

Quintero brushed off his shirt. “He owns both of us,” he said. “Don’t you see that?”

“No,” Mason said. “He doesn’t.”

“Somos hermanos, you and me,” Quintero said. “We are brothers.”

They stood there in the garage for a long time while the other men went back to work.

“You need another car,” Quintero finally said, nodding toward the blown-out window in the Camaro.

The car they’d just been leaning against as they tried to kill each other was another jet-black American muscle car.

“It’s a 1964 Pontiac GTO,” Quintero said. “With the Bobcat engine.”

He threw Mason the keys.