The Second Life of Nick Mason Read online

  The formal dining room had a table long enough to seat all dozen people that had watched the television in the other room. He left that room and went into what turned out to be the billiards room. An actual room for billiards, with a red felt table and a woven net under each pocket. There was dark paneling on the walls. A pair of stained-glass Tiffany lamps hung over the table. The far corner of the room was set up for darts, and yet another corner had two overstuffed leather chairs with a three-foot-tall humidor between them. Looking through the glass at the selection of cigars inside, Mason remembered how a single cigarette could go for ten dollars in Terre Haute. A carton could get someone killed.

  He went up another set of stairs to the top floor. There were bedrooms on each side of a long hallway. When he got to the last door, he tried turning the knob. It was locked.

  Mason went back downstairs and found a door on the other side of the kitchen. He walked through and saw another bedroom suite. There was an iron-framed bed topped with black linen, and on top of that were several shopping bags. He took a quick look through them. Pants, shirts, shoes, socks, underwear, belts, a wallet—everything a man could possibly need. Most of the bags had come from Nordstrom and Armani. One from Balani, the custom shop on Monroe Street. He did a quick check of the tags. Everything was his size.

  I don’t see my new friend Quintero doing this, he thought.

  Mason went back out to the kitchen and opened up the refrigerator. After five years of prison food, Mason stood there staring at the salmon, at the cooked and chilled lobster, at the aged steaks. He didn’t know where to start. Then he saw the bottles of beer on the lower shelf. He shuffled through the selection, mostly microbrews he’d never heard of. Then he found a bottle of Goose Island.

  He opened the bottle and took a long swallow. It took him back to summer nights sitting out on his porch. Listening to a ball game with Eddie and Finn. Or listening to his wife and watching their daughter try to catch fireflies.

  He found a take-out container of beef tenderloin with some kind of shiitake mushroom sauce, with angel-hair pasta. He went through the drawers until he found the silverware, grabbed a fork, and ate the entire dish cold, standing there in the middle of the kitchen. He wondered what the inmates in Terre Haute had for dinner that night.

  Wednesday night, he said to himself. Usually hamburger night. Or, at least, what they called hamburger.

  When he was done eating, he went to the black leather couch, found the remote control, and turned on the television. Leaning back and putting his feet up on the table, he took another long swallow from his beer, found the rain-delayed White Sox game, and watched the last inning. The Sox won. Then he spent a few minutes flipping up and down through the channels just because he could. You try doing that on the television in the common room and you’ll start a riot. He shut the television off.

  He went back to the refrigerator and took out another Goose Island, then went outside through the big sliding glass door off the kitchen. Still high above the street, with a swimming pool sunk into the great concrete monolith beneath the patio, the water surrounded by bluestone, lit up with underwater lights and glowing aquamarine in the darkness. A table, chairs, and a grill with a wet bar stood by, ready for an outdoor party.

  Mason went to the rail and looked out at the park and, beyond that, the endless horizon of Lake Michigan. He could see the lights from a half-dozen boats on the water. He could hear the distant bass notes from a car cruising by on the street. A perfect summer night to be out on the town, no matter where you were going.

  A breeze came off the lake and gave him a brief chill. Sixteen hours ago, Mason had woken up in a maximum security prison cell. Now he was standing in a town house in Lincoln Park, drinking a bottle of Goose Island and looking out at the lake.

  I knew this man had power, he said to himself, but that was a federal fucking prison I walked out of today. How does one man make that happen?

  Unless there’s even more to him than I know . . .

  As he was about to turn away, he looked up and saw the security camera, its little red light blinking. There was a similar camera on each of the other three corner posts. Someone, somewhere, was watching him.

  This was his life now. It felt like he was holding his breath, waiting to see what this would truly cost him. How long until that happened?

  How long until that phone rings?

  When he finally went back into his room and lay down in his bed, he stared at the ceiling for a long time. He was tired. But his body was waiting for the guard to call lights-out. Waiting for the metallic click of his cell door locking shut. Then the horn, that lonely, faraway buzz, that sent him to bed, every single night, for the last five years.

  He lay awake, waiting. The sounds never came.

  2

  The first time Nick Mason ever heard Darius Cole’s name, he was four years into his twenty-five-to-life at USP Terre Haute.

  It was a high-security facility, strictly segregated into six different housing units, a maze of one wing after another, with gray, featureless walls that seemed to stretch out forever. The whole compound was surrounded by a high fence topped with razor wire. Then a no-man’s-land. Then another fence, with more razor wire. A guard’s turret stood at every corner.

  There were fifteen hundred other men in this place, including some of the most notorious inmates in the country. Serial killers, Islamic terrorists. A man who raped and killed four children. They had all been sent here, and the men in one housing unit were scheduled to die here, just like Timothy McVeigh did, strapped to a table and injected with potassium chloride, because Terre Haute was now the one and only facility designated for all federal executions.

  The guards told you when to wake up and when to go to sleep. They told you when you could leave your cell or when you had thirty seconds to get back in it. They could search your body at any time. They could search your cell, come in and flip your bed and pick through everything you owned, while you stood still in the hallway outside, your face to the wall.

  This was Nick Mason’s life.

  He was outside that day, the day he first met Darius Cole, sitting on the top of a picnic table and watching the Latinos play baseball. One of those perfect summer days that could really get to you if you let it. Mason had always lived by his own carefully constructed set of rules, refined over the years to cover any situation—to keep him alive and out of prison. But now that he was here, those rules had been stripped down to their essence. They were all about simple survival, getting through each day one at a time, holding on to his sanity, not thinking about how good life would be on the other side of that fence. Not thinking about the past or the people he left behind. The night at the harbor and how it sent him here. Not thinking about the future, how many endless days just like this one he had in front of him.

  In fact, that was his new rule number one (prison edition): Deal with today. Tomorrow doesn’t exist.

  They did the head count at six o’clock every morning. There was a loud buzz at the end of the hallway and then the guards came around to make sure there were two men in every cell. You had until seven to be on your feet and dressed. That’s when the cell door opened.

  You filed down to breakfast. If you were near the end of the line, you had to eat fast because the work assignments started at eight. Mason was assigned to the laundry room. Supposedly one of the easier jobs, although Mason hated touching the other inmates’ filthy clothing. The morning work period lasted four hours. Then lunch at noon, another rush if you were at the end of the line. Then an hour of classes or counseling sessions or just sitting alone in your cell. At two o’clock they finally let you outside.

  That was a moment Mason lived for, every day, when he could escape from the gray walls and the artificial light, get outside and feel the sunlight on his face. See the trees in the distance beyond the fence. That’s when he could stretch his legs and walk on the grass,
remember these simple things he once took for granted. Or just sit at one of the tables and breathe.

  Other inmates would often bring their mail outside with them. They would sit and read their letters from home and sometimes even share them with the other men sitting around them. It was just another way to pass the time.

  Mason didn’t bring mail outside and he had no interest in reading anyone else’s. After four years of watching the mail cart come by, six days a week, he had learned not to expect anything. To feel nothing at all as the other men grabbed their letters and tore them open.

  It was another hard lesson of prison life. If your hopes never leave the ground, they can never fall.

  On this afternoon, he could hear a man reading something out loud, a funny story related to him by his wife. Mason was close enough to the field to see the ball game, but not too far away from the other white men at the tables behind him. It was something he didn’t even have to think about anymore. The yard was always divided into three different worlds—at this time of day it was whites on the tables, blacks in the workout area, Latinos on the ball field—and you stayed with your own. The first time you strayed outside those boundaries, you got a warning. The second time, you deserved whatever happened to you.

  A guard came up to him. He was one of those guys who walked around trying a little too hard to look like they owned the place. Maybe because he was barely five and a half feet tall he had to put on the attitude every day, right after he put on his uniform.

  “Mason,” the guard said.

  Mason looked at him.

  “Take a walk with me. Somebody wants to meet you.”

  Mason didn’t move.

  “Let’s go, inmate. On your feet.”

  “Tell me who we’re going to see.”

  The guard took a step closer. His arms were folded across his chest. And with Mason sitting on top of the picnic table, the two men could look each other in the eye.

  “We’re going to go see Mr. Cole,” the guard said. “Get up and start walking.”

  “Mr. Cole works here?”

  “No, he’s another inmate.”

  Whatever this was, it was not official prison business.

  “I’ll pass,” Mason said. “Tell him I mean no disrespect.”

  The guard stood there, working it over in his head. He clearly didn’t have a plan for no.

  “This is not the way to play this,” he said as he hitched up his pants. Then he walked away.

  Mason knew that probably wasn’t the end of the matter. So he wasn’t surprised when he saw the shadow in the hallway later that day, just outside the door to his cell. What did surprise him was when the shadow gave way not to the same five-and-a-half-foot prison guard but to two inmates he’d never seen before. They were both black and they both looked like interior linemen from the Bears, six hundred combined pounds of prison khaki filling up the doorway and blocking out the light like a fucking solar eclipse.

  Mason was determined to stay calm. It was his rule number two (prison edition): Don’t show them weakness. Don’t show them fear. Don’t show them shit.

  “Can I help you guys?” he said. He was sitting on his bed and he didn’t get up. “You look lost.”

  “Mason,” the man on the left said. “Mr. Cole wants to talk to you. Not a request.”

  Mason stood up. The two men remained polite and composed.

  They walked on either side of him, drawing stares from every other inmate they passed. When the three of them were at the end of the cellblock, the guard took one look at them and let them pass into the connecting hallway. Mason felt vulnerable for the few seconds they were alone there. The two men could have stopped at any time and taken him apart piece by piece. But they kept walking, and Mason stayed between them. He didn’t say a word. It was his one rule from the outside that was just as good on the inside, rule number three: When in doubt, keep your mouth shut.

  They passed another guard. Mason was now in the Secure Housing Unit, a separate wing for what they called high-profile offenders. Men who were best kept separate from Gen Pop but with no special need to be isolated from one another once they were. Everything looked a little newer here—glass on the cells instead of bars, a central guard station on the second floor looking down over the common area. Men were playing cards at the tables. Others were watching the television. It seemed odd to Mason that the men weren’t automatically separated by race here.

  He saw whites and blacks and Latinos all sitting together, something you’d never see back in Gen Pop.

  Mason was led to the cell on the far end of the second floor. The first thing he noticed as he got close enough was the number of books in the cell. One of two beds was piled high with them. The other bed was neatly made with a red blanket that was nicer than any other he’d seen in the prison.

  He saw the bald head first. The man was standing with his back to the door, looking in the mirror. He was one of those men who might be fifty, might be sixty-five. There was not a hair on his head to give him away. His face was as smooth as his head. Not a wrinkle. But you’d see that with some of the lifers in here. All the years inside, away from the sun. Only his eyes showed age. He was wearing small, frameless reading glasses, pushed down on his nose.

  Darius Cole’s age might have been vague, but one thing that was perfectly clear was that he was black. Black as a mood, black as an Ali left jab or a Muddy Waters riff coming from the Checkerboard Lounge on a hot summer’s night.

  “Nick Mason.” He had a smooth, quiet voice. Anywhere else, it would have been the voice of a peaceful man.

  Mason kept looking around the cell, finding more and more violations. A corded lamp with an incandescent bulb. A laptop computer. A teapot sitting on a hot plate.

  “My name is Darius Cole,” he said. “You know me?”

  Mason shook his head.

  “You from Chicago, right?”

  Mason nodded.

  “My name still don’t ring a bell?”

  Mason shook his head again.

  “You’re not supposed to know my name,” Cole said. “Not supposed to know anything about me. That’s your first lesson, Nick. A man’s ego will kill him faster than any bullet.”

  “No disrespect,” Mason said, “but I don’t remember signing up for any lessons today.”

  Mason waited for the two men to grab him. He was already anticipating how it would feel, the two sudden vise grips on either shoulder. But Cole just smiled and raised his hand.

  “You need to carry yourself a certain way in here,” he said. “I understand. You can drop it around me.”

  Cole pulled the chair away from his desk and put it in the middle of the cell. He sat and studied Mason for a long time.

  “I pay that guard money every week, all he gotta do is get things done. Now you make him look like a little bitch. You think he’s gonna forget that?”

  Mason shrugged. “Guards don’t forget anything.”

  “Musta seemed strange to you. Maybe that’s why you said no. You wasn’t curious at all?”

  Mason took a breath while he put the words together in his head. “If I say yes to meeting you,” he said, “there’s a good chance you’re going to ask me to do something. If I say no to that, then not only have I offended you, I’ve offended you to your face. So now I make you my enemy.”

  Cole leaned forward in his chair, listening carefully.

  “If I say yes to what it is you want, there’s a decent chance it’ll be something bad, something I don’t want to do. But maybe I feel like I need to do it anyway. So now I make enemies again. Maybe a lot of them.”

  Cole started to nod his head.

  “So for me,” Mason said, “the only right answer to meeting with you—”

  “The only right answer,” Cole said, cutting him off, “is not to meet with me at all.”

  Cole k
ept nodding his head. There was a smile on his face now. “You were supposed to go to Marion,” he said. “I had you brought here instead.”

  Mason stood there trying to figure out what this man was saying. Marion was another federal prison. You draw federal time in Chicago, you go to Marion or Terre Haute.

  “Take him back,” he said as he gestured to the two men. “I’m done with him. For now.”

  He was still smiling as Mason was led away.

  3

  Mason woke up early, his body still on prison time. He got up, went outside, stood at the rail, and looked down at the quiet park and the sun rising low on the water. He looked up at the nearest security camera. That unblinking eye, watching him.

  He went back into the bedroom suite, then into the bathroom. The shower was tiled floor to ceiling with natural lakeshore stones. He cranked the water, got in, and stood under the spray. For the first time in five years, there was no limit to the hot water. There was no limit to how long he could stand there. He could let it blast him until his skin was red and he couldn’t see anything in the billows of steam. He felt the knots in his muscles going loose. Until one more prison reflex came to him and broke the spell. The sudden uneasy feeling, something he could never imagine leaving him—the instinct to always watch your back, even in the shower.

  Especially in the shower.

  He turned off the water and stood there, dripping. He opened the glass door and felt his way through the steam for a towel.

  “You’ll be wanting this,” a voice said. It was a woman, looking away from him and holding out a towel.