“I told you we should have brought guns,” Finn said, his hands shaking and his eyes as wide open as a junkie’s. “Did I not fucking say that?”
Mason wanted to slap him hard across the face. For all of his rules, Mason had one blind spot—this one man who had been like a brother to him for as long as he could remember. Seeing him like this made Mason reconsider. Maybe he needed one more rule about working with guys who lose their shit and start talking about guns when they’re backed into a corner.
Mason took a breath and went over to the small side window, peering out at the parking lot. He saw the front half of the patrol car.
And then another car. An old beater with four male occupants. It had pulled over into the lot and was parked directly in front of the patrol car.
It was a traffic stop.
Mason kept watching out the window as the four high school shitheads were taken out, IDs checked, beer bottles dumped, and the empties lined up on the roof of the car. He let out his breath and whispered to Eddie and Finn that they weren’t all about to get arrested after all.
But now they’d have to wait to get out of there.
Parents were called and brought down to the scene of the crime. Another patrol car pulled in to help out. Thirty minutes passed and the three men were still trapped inside the store. Then an hour. Finn was getting anxious again.
At one point, one of the patrol officers actually came over to the store and looked in the front window. He cast a long shadow that reached all the way across the counter and into the back room. Mason, Eddie, and Finn all held their breath and made sure they couldn’t be seen. Then the shadow left the window and the cars started to pull out of the lot.
Except for the one patrol car.
Mason could imagine the two cops calling in on their radio, requesting backup. After all this time waiting, he thought, maybe we really do have to go out that back door and try to outrun them.
But then the car finally turned onto the street and drove away.
As soon as it was out of sight, they went out the back door and got in their car. Eddie carried the trash bag.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Eddie said as Mason started the car and hit the gas. When they counted the money an hour later, it turned out to be just over nine thousand dollars. Three thousand per man. Not nearly enough money for what they had risked.
It was time to take a break. And then, when they got back together, to make a decision. Either go bigger or get out.
But then Finn did something stupid, even by his own standards. He took a girl to a bar in McKinley Park and got in a fight with one of the locals who said the wrong thing to her. Bad enough to take her out of Canaryville in the first place when there were perfectly good bars on your own home turf and nobody’s calling the cops as long as it’s a fair fight. But Finn was a stranger in McKinley Park, so a patrol car did show up and Finn ended up hitting the first cop who put a hand on him. That cop got a concussion and Finn got eighteen months for aggravated assault and obstruction. When he was released, he didn’t even bother coming back to Canaryville to face Mason and Eddie. He went to Florida instead.
It felt like one more sign. Then Eddie met Sandra. Mason got back together with Gina, and if there was still any question left, she answered it for him.
It was time to get out.
? ? ?
Mason turned thirty and he was trying to settle down, trying to stay straight. He was married to Gina by then. Adriana was four years old. Finn had been in Florida for a few years and had just recently returned to Chicago. He got picked up again on his first night back in town. Two days later, he found Nick Mason.
“Got a job for us,” he said.
“I’m out, Finn. Forget it.”
Nick had the house on Forty-third Street and he was doing whatever straight jobs he could find. Manual labor, construction, driving a delivery truck. The same kind of working-stiff jobs everyone else in their neighborhood did.
“You don’t look retired to me. You look busier than ever, getting up early every morning to drive that truck around.”
“It’s called working for a living. You should give it a try. Just once in your life.”
“You have to hear me out,” Finn said. “This is a onetime thing and then you’re set.”
“No.”
“You take care of your family. You buy a nicer house. You change your whole life.”
“I said no.”
“Don’t you get it, Nickie? This is your walkaway job. A half million dollars for one day’s work.”
That stopped Mason dead.
“Half a million split four ways,” Finn said. “There’s a shipment coming in through the harbor.”
“A shipment of what?”
“Shipment of I don’t know and I don’t care. That’s not the point. The point is, someone needs four men to unload it and then drive two trucks to Detroit. That’s all we’re doing and then taking half a million for our trouble. Hop on a bus back home and have a fucking party.”
“Who are the four?”
“You and me and Eddie. And this other guy.”
“What other guy?”
“This guy I met in custody.”