Mason pushed open the door and stepped into the men’s room. When the door closed behind him, the volume of the music was cut in half. It felt like he was out of his own body. Somewhere high above, looking down, watching it all happen.
The man at the sink looked much smaller. A small, weak man with no bodyguards to protect him. The gloves were already on Mason’s hands. The man hadn’t looked up yet. When he finally did, his first glance at Mason was dismissive. A white boy barging into the bathroom, interrupting his solitude. He looked back down and then up again. This might be a tough white boy, judging from the fading bruises on his face. Then he saw the gloves. Which didn’t make sense. No sense at all.
Until it did. But then it was too late.
Mason was already on top of him. Harris struggled, trying to elbow Mason in the ribs. Mason stabbed him once in each lung, then the heart. Three rapid jabs, then with one hand closed over his mouth, Mason moved the blade in one smooth motion across the man’s throat. A thin line for one second, then growing into a bright red band. Mason held on tight. That’s the exact moment he came back into himself. Holding on to the man and watching both of their reflections in the mirror. The man he was holding turned from a drug dealer into a scared man losing his life. A man with a history and a family. A man who grew up in Fuller Park, just on the other side of the Berlin Wall.
Mason kept holding him. His arms were wrapped tight around him. One last embrace. He could feel the man’s chest heaving as he fought for breath.
The man’s heart beating.
Fast. Then irregular. Then not at all.
Mason felt the man’s life leaving his body. Until he looked at his own face in the mirror.
It was the face of a cold-blooded killer.
The blood kept running. Mason let go and Harris hit the sink on the way down to the floor. Mason dropped the knife in the sink, took off the gloves and put them back in his left pocket. Then he backed away from the body on the floor, the blood already pooling on the dirty tile. He checked his clothes. Clean enough. Pushing the door open with his shoulder, he went back out into the noise and lights and didn’t look toward the corner. He made himself move at half the speed his body wanted.
Walk slow. Walk slow. Walk slow.
An eternity until he reached the staircase. Down the lighted steps, one at a time. Not looking behind him but expecting the sound of heavy footsteps catching up with him.
It didn’t happen. Nobody followed him. Nobody paid any attention to Nick Mason as he pushed open the main door and disappeared into the night.
24
The brutal murder of an SIS sergeant, then the execution of a prominent drug dealer, both less than a week apart—it all made Detective Frank Sandoval believe that Nick Mason was following a carefully planned hit list. The question was, how many more names were on the list?
It was after midnight again. Sandoval showed his star to the uniform at the door, then went up the stairs to the club. At night, a high-end place like this should be doing big business, but there was no music playing, no customers, no dancers. The place was lit up with an ugly set of fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling and filled with cops.
Sandoval weaved his way through the chairs and runways until he saw a flash of light coming from the bathroom. He went around the partition and stood in the open doorway. It had been propped open with a chair. The body was lying on the floor in an awkward pose no living man ever struck, the legs tangled together and the torso half turned on its side. A lake of dark red blood had spread for three or four feet in every direction, and Sandoval could see the smooth straight line across the man’s throat. The man’s eyes were open.
A police photographer was standing on the far side of the bathroom, his shoes covered with white fabric. He adjusted his camera setting and took another picture, blinding Sandoval with the flash.
“Weapon?” Sandoval said.
“In the sink,” the photographer said without looking up at him. “Don’t come in.”
The photographer took another shot. Then another.
Sandoval stepped away from the door, around the partition, and back into the main room. He found a young detective from Area North a few feet away, writing something on his pad.
“Anybody see anything?” Sandoval asked him.
“Nothing,” the detective said. “Staff said he had a whole posse with him, took over that corner over there. Four or five other black men, depending on who you ask. One white woman. But they were all gone before we got here.”
That’s when Sandoval heard the heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. Three seconds later, a new group of men spilled out into the room like they were invading the place. A half dozen of them, all in dark suits. It was SIS.
“What the fuck,” the young detective said. He went off to talk to the first man he could find until Sandoval saw Sergeant Bloome making his entrance.
“SIS is taking this one,” he heard Bloome say.
Sandoval wasn’t surprised. They take over yet another case. They stay in control.