“I want to know what’s not in the file.”
“I do my time,” Mason said. “I mind my own business. I don’t fuck with people and people don’t fuck with me. I don’t need to make friends here. When you make a friend, that man’s enemies become your enemies. I don’t need that.”
Cole listened to him carefully, slowly nodding his head.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t look out for people,” Mason went on. “I look out for them, they look out for me. That’s how you survive. But I don’t owe them anything else. I don’t belong to anybody in this prison, Mr. Cole. And even though I can see you’ve got lots of power here and you can drag me down here anytime you want, I’m not going to belong to you, either. Nobody owns me.”
Cole kept looking at him, still nodding his head.
“You don’t always have to be that way,” he finally said. “People in my neighborhood, they have a problem, they don’t call nine-one-one. They call me. I’m the police, the fireman, and the judge.”
“Yeah, that’s your neighborhood. It’s not mine.”
Cole smiled at that. “How long you been here, Nick?”
“You saw the file. Four years.”
“Four years down, twenty-one to go if you’re lucky. So we got time to get to know each other. My boys will help you pack your stuff.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re coming to SHU, Nick. Better food, better equipment . . . You’ll like it here.”
“What if I say no?”
“It’s already done,” Cole said.
8
Mason left Elmhurst and gunned the Mustang down North Avenue, driving like a man with no family to live for.
He blew through every yellow light, made one turn and then another, with no idea where he was going. Finally, he stopped at a bar on a street he didn’t know. In a part of the West Side he’d never seen before. It was a building made of concrete with glass blocks rounding off the corners. No sign. No name. An anonymous place for the local daily drinkers who all knew the bartender and one another. Mason opened the door and stepped inside into the darkness, feeling the cold blast from the A/C.
He went to the bar, put down a twenty, and told the man to line them up. There was another man drinking at the other end of the bar. Another two men in one of the booths. A television was on over the bar, but the sound was off. A half-dozen backlit beer signs glowed on the walls.
Mason downed the first shot of rail whiskey without even tasting it. It burned halfway down his throat. He drained another before easing up and taking a long breath.
“What did you expect?” he said to himself loud enough for the man at the end of the bar to look up at him. “What did you really think was going to happen?”
Mason picked up the third glass and weighed it in his hand. He looked at the cheap, watered-down whiskey and then threw it back.
Mason thought about all the guys he’d met inside, guys who’d been there for big chunks of their lives. He’d overhear them talking to one another, how life was going to be when they get out, how they got this woman out there, their old girlfriend from high school, hottest thing on two legs back then. They’re gonna get out, go find her, have some fun for a while, but then make it real. Get married, have a family. Make up for lost time. This whole picture they create, lying in their cells at night, staring up at the ceiling. Mason would hear them talking about it at the lunch table, during work detail, whenever they had a few minutes and a sympathetic ear, and he’d think some of these poor bastards in here have no idea how life really works. That girl from high school? Probably married and already has three kids. Or something a lot worse, depending on the neighborhood. Dead and gone. Or maybe even in the women’s penitentiary herself. No matter what, she sure as fuck wouldn’t remember some loser boyfriend from high school who went away all those years ago. You go find her, pal, assuming she’s alive. See how that little reunion turns out.
But Mason had to ask himself how his expectations were any different. Maybe it was only five years, but did it turn out any better? Getting married, having a kid together, it didn’t mean shit in the end. The Earth turns and everybody moves on with their lives.
Everybody forgets you.
I didn’t even see her, he said to himself. I didn’t even get to see what my own daughter looks like now.
“Line ’em up again,” he said to the bartender.
“Hope you’re not driving,” the man said.
“Pour me a real drink, I might have a problem.”
“Seriously, friend . . .”
“I am not your friend,” Mason said. He was already adding it up in his head—two behind him, one to his left, this clown in front of him. If they all wanted to give him a problem at once, it might get interesting.
“Maybe you should leave,” the bartender said. “We don’t need trouble here.”