“I don’t know,” Mason said. “Most of them.”
“Most of them, yeah. How about every man in here? I hate seeing you being one of those men when you could be doing something else. Something a hell of a lot better.”
“What are we talking about here?”
“You could be a samurai, Nick. That’s what I’m saying. I look at you, I don’t see another inmate. I see a samurai.”
Mason didn’t know what to say. They had passed right by the usual idle prison talk, even by Cole’s standards. Now they seemed to be heading into something else.
“Mr. Cole,” Nick said. “I know you pretty well by now. You’re always thinking eight moves ahead of everybody else. So if you’ve got something in mind for me, why don’t you just tell me what it is?”
“Is that where you think I’m going with this? You think I need a samurai around this place? I got plenty of men who do anything I want. All I gotta do is say the word and it’s done.”
“Then I don’t get it,” Mason said. “What do you want me to do?”
“You know how I’m always talking about this place, how do I say it, being a problem of geography?”
Mason took one look around them. The cell just big enough to fit two men, a small desk, a toilet with no privacy. Beyond that, concrete walls and a thick pane of glass. Fluorescent lights buzzing over their heads. A dozen locked doors and then the fences and a small army of armed men standing between them and the world outside this place. Yeah, Mason said to himself, just a problem of geography.
“I still live in Chicago,” Cole said. “That’s the thing you gotta understand. It’s still my town.”
Cole leaned in toward Mason as he said this. He put out one hand like he was holding the city right there for Mason to look at.
“From there,” Cole said, “I can do anything, Nick. Anything I need to do. But sometimes I need a good set of eyes on the other side of these walls. A good pair of hands out there.”
“You don’t have anybody on the outside?”
“Oh, I got people who work for me,” Cole said. “People I can trust. But I need somebody special, Nick. I need a warrior. A man who can go anywhere. Do anything. I know I got myself stuck on this word, but it’s the only word that really gets at what I’m saying here. I need a samurai.”
“I can’t help you,” Mason said. “Unless you want to wait twenty years.”
“Fuck twenty years, Nick. Do you really want to wait that long?”
“I don’t see any choice.”
“Listen to me,” Cole said. “There’s gonna be this man someday, he’ll come to this prison to do your first parole hearing. Some fat white boy, civil servant type wearing a tie and glasses. You can see him, can’t you, Nick? Like he’s standing right here in front of us. Wanted to be a cop maybe, couldn’t cut it, so now he’s a parole officer. Only way he can have any kind of power over people. But that job, even that’s too hard, chasing down convicts all day, so they ask him to serve on the board and he’s all over that. Sit at a table, hear a man’s story, how he’s changed and found Jesus and he’s ready to be a productive citizen again. It’s all up to him. The man on the board. And if he got himself laid that morning, he puts down a big APPROVED on the file.”
Cole made a fist and stamped an imaginary file.
“Or if his kid told him to go fuck himself, he puts down a big DENIED.”
He stamped again.
“That man’s never gonna sit in judgment of me, Nick. That day won’t come. But that man’s waiting for you. He’s out there right now, but you know how far away he is? That man hasn’t even signed up for the job yet. Hasn’t even done his two years at the community college. He’s sitting in some junior high school class, looking out the window. Don’t even have hair on his balls yet.”
Cole stopped for a moment, shaking his head, tapping his fist on the bed.
“That’s too long to wait, Nick. Too long to wait for that boy to grow up to be the motherfucker who denies your parole.”
“You’re telling me all this for a reason,” Mason said. “What is it?”
“I’m talking about time, Nick. What’s it worth to you? Twenty fucking years. You’ll be what, fifty-five? Your daughter’ll be what, almost thirty years old? You miss her growing up. Maybe she even has kids of her own by then. You miss all of that. But what if that’s just one story, Nick? What if there’s another story where you get yourself out of here and she’s still nine years old and you got a chance to be her father again?”