Mason looked at the man sitting on the bed next to him. He still didn’t know what to say and it felt like a good time to be careful about that. Because none of this was making any sense.
“Listen to me.” Cole stood up. He hooked one hand behind the back of Mason’s neck and twisted his head so that it was inches from his. “You need to hear every word of what I’m saying to you. Because this is how it’s going to work. Those two cops who put you away? One of them’s a detective, who’s gonna stand up in court and swear he put that blood in your car. The whole case gonna fall apart on them. They gonna vacate the conviction, Nick. That’s what they call it. And that prosecutor, he won’t want nothing to do with you. He won’t touch a retrial because it’s all gone to shit. You walk out of here twenty years early, Nick. Do you hear me? You walk the fuck out. No parole. No felony record. Like it never happened.”
Mason knew about prison gangs. La eMe. La Nuestra Familia. Mara Salvatrucha. He knew they had power that extended outside the prison walls. He knew they could say one word and make things happen. But this . . . This was impossible.
“Remember what I do, Nick. What’s my fucking specialty? I make things clean.”
“I’m not a wad of dirty money. It’s not the same.”
“I’ve been working on this,” Cole said. “You’ll be outta here by the end of the month. I’m setting you up on the outside. Everything you need, it’s all taken care of.”
“The end of this month?”
“What’d I just say? End of the month.”
“Why are you doing this? Why me?”
“You gotta ask that question?” Cole said. “After everything we been talking about, this whole year? I watch you all the time, Nick. Every day. What I need out of a man, it’s all right here. Right here inside you. Don’t hurt that you’re white, too. You look sharp, you look clean, no tattoos. I can send you anywhere in the world, Nick. You fit right in.”
Mason shook his head as he looked up at him. “I still don’t understand,” he said. “You could have picked somebody who—”
“Just shut the fuck up,” Cole said, “and trust me. I picked you. I’m trying to explain why, but maybe I can’t. Not all of it. Maybe you’ll have to find out for yourself what it is I see in you.”
Mason took a moment to weigh those words. “If this really happens,” he said, “what do I have to do?”
“All you gotta do is answer the phone, Nick. It rings, you answer. You do whatever you get asked to do. That’s it.”
The dinner horn rang and inmates started to move down the hallway. Mason stayed where he was, sitting on the bed. He couldn’t help thinking about Gina. About Adriana.
“That night at the harbor,” Cole said, still standing in front of him. “We both know what you lost that night. Your wife. Your daughter. Everything you had.”
They were both right there in his head now. Right there. Close enough to touch.
“This is your chance, Nick. This is your chance to get it all back. All you gotta do is say yes.”
I have to do this, Mason thought. I have to take this. No matter what it means.
“But hear me,” Cole said, “before you say your next word. Make sure you understand what I’m saying to you. All that shit about nobody owning you? That’s gone. It’s a new fucking way of thinking for you. You make this deal with me, it’s twenty years you don’t have to be here anymore. But for those twenty years . . . your life don’t belong to you.”
Cole bent down close to Mason, close enough that his voice was a low rumble in Mason’s ear.
“For the next twenty years, your life belongs to me.”
12
As Nick Mason parked the Mustang outside Room 102, he tried to find the resolve inside himself to commit his first murder.
It was a motel like a thousand other run-down and forgotten shitholes all over the country. Shaped like an L, two stories high. A few blocks from Midway Airport, it might have even had some steady business back when Midway was the only game in town. Now the street was empty and there were maybe a half-dozen cars in the dark parking lot. Mason couldn’t imagine anyone staying in one of these rooms and being happy about the way his life had gone.
It was 11:29. Mason took the key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. He pushed it open and flicked on the switch. A single light came on next to the bed. He checked the bathroom and the closet. The room was empty.
He went to the night table and slid open the one drawer. There was a Gideon Bible inside. Next to it was a gun and a pair of black gloves.
He put the gloves on first. The gun was a Glock 20. He checked the load. The magazine was filled with ten-millimeter shells. There was one in the chamber, ready to go.
The gun felt heavy in his right hand. He stood there looking at it. Stay in the moment, he told himself. Do one thing, then the next thing. Don’t think about what this means. Or what kind of person you’ll be if you really do this. Those are questions you can face later.