Free The Second Life of Nick Mason by Steve Hamilton Page A

Callahan’s car was clean.
    When Mason was brought in, Sandoval and Higgins sat there in the interview room for a while. Higgins had already told Sandoval to do the talking. He had a gut feeling that Mason wouldn’t say a word to either one of them, but at least Sandoval was the same age. He might have a slightly better shot at him.
    Sandoval kept watching Mason, waiting for the pressure to build. For most guys, it doesn’t take long. You just have to sit there and wait for it to become real to him.
    I’m sitting in a room with two cops, the guy will say to himself. There can only be one reason for that. They’ve got me nailed.
    But Sandoval wasn’t seeing this on Mason yet. All the signs you look for. The way the eyes start moving around. Looking toward the door. Thinking about what you can say that will get you out of the room. Never mind where I go next, just get me the fuck out of here.
    The hands coming together. The man instinctively protecting himself. Closing himself into a ball.
    Or the legs starting to shake under the table. All that tension, it has to go somewhere. But no, not this guy. He wasn’t giving them anything.
    Not yet.
    “Canaryville kid,” Sandoval said, finally breaking the silence. “You go to Saint Gabriel’s?”
    Mason said nothing.
    “Bet you’re a Sox fan, too. I’m from Avondale, been a Cubs fan my whole life.”
    Mason stared past them at a spot on the wall.
    “You go to Tilden High School? We played basketball there.”
    Mason kept staring at the wall.
    “We saw your house there on Forty-third, Nick. Do a lot of work to the place? Me, I do all the painting at my house.” He was still living with his wife and kids at that time and he really did do all of the painting. It wasn’t a lie.
    “Here’s the thing,” Sandoval went on. “I try to be clean, but painting’s a fucking mess, you know? You do the painting at your house?”
    Mason stayed silent.
    “When I’m done,” Sandoval said, “I got paint all over myself. My arms, in my hair. My face. So I go to the sink and I wash up and Ithink I’m nice and clean. Until my wife finds me and says, ‘Hey, genius, what’s this?’ And she points to my elbows.”
    Sandoval stood up and came around to Mason’s side of the table. He leaned close to Mason and showed him his right elbow.
    “Right here,” he said. “I can’t see it when I’m washing. You know what I’m saying? So I miss it every time, Nick. Every single goddamned time. You think I’d know by now. Wash your elbows, Frank. And if I’m dumb enough to get in the car, what happens next?”
    Sandoval put his arm down as if resting it on an armrest.
    “Leather, you got a shot at cleaning that off. But I don’t got leather seats, Nick. Can’t afford it. I got cloth.”
    He got close this time. Just a few inches from Mason’s ear. “Just like you.”
    They tried to convince Mason to turn on Eddie Callahan. They knew Callahan was involved. Confirming that fact would just be a formality. They also tried to convince Mason to give them the identity of the fourth man. Everything would go a lot easier, they told him, if he would just cooperate. Otherwise, the prosecutor would go for the max. It was a dead DEA agent, so everyone was out for blood. Mason shouldn’t have to take it all alone.
    Mason kept his mouth shut.
    Even though Sandoval and Higgins made the arrest, the feds ultimately took the case away because it was a DEA agent who’d been killed. Neither man cared. What mattered was that Nick Mason drew twenty-five-to-life and went to Terre Haute.
    But now, five years later,
sixty fucking months later
, Detective Sandoval was sitting here in his car waiting for Nick Mason to show up, a man who was free only because his old partner stood up in court and told the judge that he had taken blood evidence from thescene, brought it with him, carried it around for hours—
for hours
—then found some way to plant it in Nick Mason’s car.
    That’s the way it was