“Let me talk to him,” Mason repeated.
“Hold on,” the man said. Then his voice became distant as he took his mouth away from the phone to say, “You have ten minutes, Mr. Cole.”
Mason pictured the man, two hundred miles south of him, taking off his reading glasses before putting the phone to his ear.
“This is not a smart phone call,” Cole said. “What do you want?”
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“That’s not how this works, Nick.”
“I’ve done everything you asked,” Mason said. “Things I never thought I’d do.”
“Until last night,” Cole said. “What were you thinking?”
“I did that for myself,” Mason said. “Way I see it, we were already even. Whatever I owed you, I’m paid up.”
“You don’t get it, Nick. For you, there is no ‘even.’ There is no ‘out.’”
“Listen to me—”
“No, listen to me,” Cole said. “I need you to keep doing what you’re doing. And if you ever disobey me again—”
“I can’t do it,” Mason said, his grip tightening on the phone. “Even if that means going back to prison.”
“Before another word comes out of your mouth,” Cole said, “think about what you’re going to say.”
“I’ll serve out the rest of my sentence right now.”
“What do you think would happen if you really came back here?”
“I’d finish my sentence. One day at a time. Like anybody else.”
“No, let me educate you. You remember how I said you was able to move around this place—between the whites, the blacks, the Latinos—without ever compromising yourself? How much I admired that?”
“What about it?”
“It won’t be that way if you come back. All three of those worlds will turn against you. Even the whites. Especially the whites. You’ll be fair game for any man. Anytime. I’ll make a fucking game of it. Whoever fucks you up the most, I’ll make sure that man gets taken care of. Anything he wants, anything his family wants. Do you hear what I’m saying, Nick? You come back here and you’ll be passed around this place like toilet paper every single day for the rest of your life. And believe me, I’ll make sure you never get out of this place again. Even after I’m dead, you’ll still be here.”
“There are some things even you can’t do,” Mason said. “I’ll do my twenty, if I have to, and then I’ll walk out.”
“Nick, who you think goes down for those first two jobs you did? You don’t think I’m ready for anything that can happen? You’ll be wearin’ both of those jobs around your neck like a fucking bow tie. Your twenty years will turn into two hundred.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I’m not sure your ex-wife will want to roll the same dice, Nick.”
Mason felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. He put a hand on the steering wheel and started pushing on it until the muscles in his arms were drawn taut.
“She has no part in this,” he said, knowing even as he said it that it was untrue.
“She was always part of this,” Cole said, “and so was your daughter. From the beginning. You need to listen to me very carefully, Nick, because everything that happens to you, it’ll be doubled for them. Every time you’re beaten, every time you’re violated, you’ll know that the exact same thing will be happening to them. The exact same thing. Times two.”
Mason closed his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t make a sound.
“Those twenty years you were gonna work for me just turned into a lifetime sentence,” Cole said. “And don’t ever fucking call me again.”
37
Mason got out of the car. He was trying to breathe. He was trying to draw some air into his lungs and breathe.
No, he said to himself. Then he said the same word over and over a hundred more times.
He walked down the shoreline for a hundred yards until he realized he still had the phone in his hand.
Then he threw it as far as he could out into the water.
He kept walking. Until the walkway made its big curl at North Avenue Beach and came to a dead stop. He turned around and looked at the buildings rising high above the water without really seeing them.
“What the fuck did I expect?” he asked himself out loud. “Did I actually think for one fucking second . . .”
Then he started moving again. Fast. Back up the walkway, up the beach and through the park. Back to his car.
He got in and gunned it. He drove across town to the West Side, to the address on Spaulding, past the big storage warehouse and the asphalt yard and the boarded-up houses. He could see the place better in the daylight. It was practically in the shadow of the Cook County Jail.
The chop shop.
He pulled up in front of the garage door and pressed on the horn until the door finally started to rise. Mason drove through into the bay. The two Latinos stood there, watching him.