Mason stayed a block away. He didn’t want to get too close. With no other cars on the street, he’d be spotted in a second.
So this is Harris’s home, Mason thought. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but that was probably the point. There was plenty of room on the inside, and a little money could have turned it into something comfortable.
The best part of all was, Mason knew exactly where he was. He was in Fuller Park, which meant he could have gotten out, walked down past the stoneworks to the tunnel on Forty-fifth Street that would take him through the embankment and under the railroad tracks. On the other side of those tracks was Canaryville. A few more blocks and he’d be standing in front of his old house.
They called that embankment the Berlin Wall when he was growing up over there. They probably still did, because things like that don’t change. You never went through that tunnel under the Berlin Wall. You stayed where you were, surrounded by your own.
He picked up the phone and called Quintero. He heard a woman’s voice in the background, words exchanged in Spanish. Mason gave him the update. He had found Harris’s home base. But he was surrounded by bodyguards at all times. Right now, there were two men in the house with Harris and the woman. Another in the car outside, and Mason wouldn’t be surprised if that man stayed there all night.
“It’s going to be hard to get to him,” Mason said. “He’s never alone.”
“You keep watching him. You find a way.”
“Do the math,” Mason said. “Wyatt Earp couldn’t get to this guy.”
“I’ll see if I can get you some help tomorrow.”
“What are you talking about? What kind of help?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” Quintero said. “Then you’ll get your shot.”
The call ended.
As the street went dark, Mason sat there with the phone still in his hand, watching the house of a dead man.
22
Mason’s time had run out. He would get no chance to kill today.
It was midnight. The one man was still sitting in the car on the street. From a block away, Mason saw the window open and the hot red speck of a cigarette. A blue glow flickered in one of the top-floor windows for a while, then went out. Harris and his woman were in bed. Mason pictured the two bodyguards somewhere downstairs, probably sleeping in shifts.
He pulled away from the curb and drove north. He wasn’t sure whether Diana would still be at the restaurant at this hour, but when he came up Rush Street, he saw the Camaro parked out front. He couldn’t imagine somebody watching the car all day, but he looped around the block and parked in back just in case. He went in through the back door and found Diana alone in the office, reviewing the day’s receipts cashed out by her staff. Her eyes were closed and she had her head propped up with her right hand.
“I’m here,” Mason said.
She came back to life with a start.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “You should have gone home.”
“Had to close out the day.”
“You always leave that back door unlocked?”
“Everybody left. They forget sometimes.”
Mason looked around the office, then out the door at the darkened dining room. “You shouldn’t be alone here,” he said. “Somebody could walk right in.”
“You don’t have to worry about me, Nick.”
Mason leaned back against the frame of the doorway. All he’d done that day was drive around looking for one man, then watching that man. Nothing else. So why was he so tired?
“You still haven’t told me why you’re here,” he said.
She looked at him. “I work here.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He waited for her to answer. After a few moments, she finally spoke.
“I told you my father worked with Cole. He always fascinated me, from the first time I met him. He had this . . . way about him. This presence. After my father was killed, he asked me to move into his town house. I was already becoming attracted to him by then, so it wasn’t a hard decision. I didn’t have any other place I wanted to go. But then I started to see what his life was really like.”
She paused for a moment.
“He never tried to hide any of it from me,” she said. “There were no secrets because there was never any question of me leaving. Ever. When they arrested him, he told me to stay here. He said he’d be watching me every minute. And that someday he’d be back.”
“He’s in for all day and a night,” Mason said. “Life without parole.”
“I’m telling you, he’ll find a way.”
Mason didn’t try to argue with her. On some level, maybe he even believed the same thing.
“In the meantime, I have this,” she said, nodding toward the open doorway. “I run this place. It takes everything I’ve got. It’s not the best life in the world. I know that. But it’s mine.”
She looked up at him. Mason nodded. He understood. Maybe he was the only person in the world who could.