“Listen,” Quintero said, “you think that was Serpico you took out? I had to deal with that prick for years. Thought he could do anything he wanted, like he owned the whole fucking city. Whatever I paid him, he always wanted more. He was a piece of shit who happened to carry a badge in his pocket. Take away the badge and he’s still a piece of shit. Just not as useful.”
“If he’s useful, why take him out?”
“He stopped being useful when he stopped doing the things we paid him to do.”
“All right, hold on,” Mason said. “You gotta understand something.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t do this shit.”
“You can,” Quintero said. “You just did.”
Mason hesitated, because he didn’t know how else to say it. He’d just killed a man, but there hadn’t been a moment of truth. He didn’t have to look the man in the eye. He didn’t have to hear the man beg for his life or watch him piss himself. He didn’t have to calmly pull the trigger and then walk away.
Instead, it all just happened in a rush. Hell, it almost felt like self-defense. But that was a distinction he knew Quintero wouldn’t get. Mason was sent to kill the man. Mason came back. The man was dead. End of story.
Why me? That’s the question Mason had asked Cole, sitting in that prison cell, right after Cole had made his offer to him. All those other men in that unit, many of them murderers. Multiple murderers. Men who could have killed that cop in the motel room without blinking. Why did Cole choose Mason?
It still didn’t make sense.
“Your new ride,” Quintero said. He led Mason to the farthest bay in the garage, beyond the reach of the fluorescent lights. They might as well have been on the bottom of the ocean. Quintero snapped on a light. The darkness separated in the glare from the caged bulb. There was something there, covered with a gray tarp. When Quintero pulled away the tarp, Mason saw a 1967 first-generation Camaro SS. It was painted jet-black, just like the Mustang. But where the Mustang was sleek and beautiful, this thing was just a beast. Twin pipes. A simple flat grille. This car was fast when it was made, too fast for any sensible person to actually drive on the street. Mason guessed it was just as fast now.
“How many cars like this are you gonna destroy?” Mason said.
“Maybe next time we won’t have to.”
Mason’s heart rate was back to normal. He stood there looking at the Camaro and he thought about everything that had happened that night. This wasn’t the right way to do it, he said to himself. Go into a motel room, kill the man with a gun, drive away in a car that was unlike any other car in the city. There were too many ways it could go wrong.
But maybe that was part of the test, seeing if Mason could deal with those problems. And then, once he did, proving to Mason that Quintero would be here for the cleanup, even if that meant destroying a car that belonged in a museum.
It was all part of the show. And both men had learned something important about the other.
Quintero took a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Mason. “Those bruises look good on you,” he said. “Make you look humble.”
“Open the door so I can get the fuck out of here.”
Quintero hit a button on the wall and the bay door cranked open. Mason backed out the Camaro and took off.
? ? ?
He tried to keep it out of his mind as he drove back to Lincoln Park, pulled into the town house garage, and went up the stairs. The dark cherrywood was the same color as the blood-soaked carpeting in the motel. The television was on and Diana was sitting on the leather couch, watching a cooking show, magnified on the huge HD screen. She glanced up as she heard Mason and for one moment it looked like she might ask him why the hell he hadn’t showed up at the restaurant like she’d asked him to.
But then she saw his face. She turned back to her show without saying a word.
Mason went into his bathroom and took off the clothes Quintero had given him. Even though he was probably the cleanest man in the world, he got in the shower and spent a half hour under the hot spray.
His own reaction was finally coming through to him now that he had stopped moving. He kept hearing the shot against the man’s chest, kept feeling the weight of the man’s dead body on top of him.
I always had rules, he said to himself. They never failed me until the day I started ignoring them. Now I need some new rules. New rules for new problems.
When he got out of the shower, he once again caught sight of himself in the mirror. The bruises were already looking worse.
He threw on some new clothes, went out to the kitchen, and filled a plastic bag with ice. He grabbed a Goose Island out of the fridge and sat down on the far end of the couch, holding the ice against his face. Diana didn’t react. She didn’t look at him. She didn’t make a sound. She kept sitting there, watching the television.
It was a special break-in from the local news. A woman reporter was standing outside somewhere, holding a microphone. Behind her was a thin strand of yellow crime scene tape. Behind the tape was a line of doors. Above those doors was a balcony.