The Coldest Mile Page 13

  She didn't. She traipsed right past him carrying several shopping bags.

  He tailed her outside and watched her dump the packages in the trunk of the Merc. Then she carefully folded up all the separate bags, making sure she had all the receipts.

  Chase knew the scam. It wasn't even a con, really, but it could be pretty effective if you didn't get too greedy and go for high- end items. You kept the receipts and the bags, went back to the same stores, refilled the bags with the same merchandise you'd just paid for, then took it to returns and got your money back. Most stores still didn't have a line purchase yet in their computers, and you could get away with the gag.

  She returned to the mall and Chase replaced the Merc's distributor cap. He checked the items in the trunk. Mostly cheap jewelry, DVDs, CDs, some women's clothing. Everything would be from a different store. All told, maybe twelve or thirteen hundred bucks’ worth of shit. Add to that the fifty she'd nabbed off him and whatever else she'd managed to snatch out of the back pockets of the motel patrons, and she was doing okay for herself. Small- time, but keeping busy. A hustler, an operator, but if she got caught for any one score she wouldn't draw more than probation.

  Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe she was too small- time to be connected with anybody who had a line on Dex. He called Georgie and the Deuce again, hoping somebody had something for him, but there was still no word. Chase would have to follow through.

  He moved everything to the Goat—the drugs, the packages, the checks—and tossed them in the trunk. Then he broke the steering column of the Merc, started the engine, and let the air conditioner do its thing. He kept an eye out for her. It took her twenty-five minutes to hit all the stores again and make the returns. When he saw her exit the mall, he shut off the Merc, slid out the passenger seat, and weaved among the parked cars so he could come up behind her.

  “Hello again,” Chase said, stepping up and snatching her purse from her.

  She spun, recognized him, and put her fists up. She had good form, a proper boxer's stance. Somebody had taught her the basics. A glimmer of anxiety lit her eyes for an instant, but she controlled it well and eased her lips into a smile.

  She dropped her hands, going waifish again. “Mr. Gentleman, who's always willing to help a lady in distress.”

  No weapons in the purse either. He found a wedge of cash. Fourteen hundred dollars. He pocketed it and watched the amusement in her expression shift to anger.

  “Sucks to be boosted, doesn't it?” he asked.

  “Look,” she said, “you seem like a nice enough guy. So why don't you return that to me, blow now, and I won't have to scream rape?”

  “You do that and the cops might look in the trunk and discover the merchandise you tried to double up on. Or they'll find the pot or the coke. Or they might check the registration.”

  “I can walk away from this car right now and there'll be no one who can connect me to it.”

  Chase figured that would be her next move, but he still thought she was small- time enough that losing the car, the drugs, and the merchandise would hurt her crew. “Yeah, but would your boys be happy about your losses for the day? The X? The coke? The checks? The DVDs? Some nice two- disc sets there. Your string's going to be upset about having to watch sitcoms tonight. They going to be able to work their usual scores with one less car on the road? Seems to me they demonstrated a lot of faith letting you drive the club car around. I wonder how miffed they'll be that you let it go?”

  This time he saw a touch of genuine fear in her pretty face. “Listen—”

  “They the kind who might smack you around a little? Somebody knows boxing. He better than you?”

  Her brows knit together and the distress stiffened her features. Unconsciously, she flattened a hand over her belly. Whoever the slugger was, he'd worked her stomach over.

  “What kind of shakedown is this?” she asked.

  “It's not.”

  “Feels like it to me. You've been on to me from the beginning, even back at the motel. I should've known it. You acted too much like a mark. You went out of your way to show me your back pocket.”

  “You're clever but not all that quick with your hands,” he told her. “You need to clip your nails before you dip for a wallet.”

  “Thanks for the lesson. What's it going to cost me?”

  A family of four walked past, heading down the lot to their car. Mother, father, and two little girls eating ice- cream cones. A swelling sorrow rose in his chest and he had to look away. He asked, “They pull real scores, your crew?”

  “You don't act like a cop, but you sound like one. You come on strong with my friends and they'll hurt you.”

  “Answer my question. They into anything larger than short grifts like this?”

  “Yes.”

  “You use a wheelman?”

  “A what?”

  “A getaway driver.”

  “We don't knock over banks, if that's what you mean, but there are times when things have gotten hinky for us.” Her hands drifted toward him, rubbing his forearm, like they were on a first date and moving slowly toward something of great value or something that might break their hearts. He bet a lot of boys and middle- aged men were still tossing in the deep night thinking of her. “So, come on, what's this going to cost me.”

  Chase told her, “I want you to introduce me to your crew.”

  She didn't have the most nimble fingers maybe, but she was a quick thinker. He could see it in her eyes, that she thought she'd buy time to figure out a way out of the problem, somehow set him up.

  The grin crossed her face again and she unlocked the trunk. She nodded when she saw he'd taken everything in there.

  “They won't like you.”

  “And I won't like them, but that doesn't mean we can't string together.”

  “That's a bad attitude when you're running up against my friends. Really, you should just give everything back and take off.”

  “If they were as tough as you think they are, then they wouldn't need you out here running the return merchandise swindle.”

  “It's a pretty good one, and it's side money for me.”

  “What's your name?” he asked.

  “You're not listening to me.”

  “I'm bearing it all in mind.” He led her to the GTO, opened the passenger door for her. “Please, get in.”

  “You still haven't told me what you want.”

  “I did tell you. I want to meet your crew.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “To hook up and make some cash.”

  “No,” she said, tightening her face, her chin dimpling. “No, that's not the reason.”

  He really had to work on his straight face, at least in front of women. Sherry Langan, Cessy, now this one, none of them had any trouble seeing right through him. “Let's put it this way. I'm not out to heist you and I'm not out to get anybody in trouble with the cops.”

  “What kind of con is this? You think you can just roust your way in?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I'm either right or wrong. Let's go find out which.”

  She kept her distance while he moved to her, took her wrist gently, and tugged her forward, helped her into the car the way he used to help Lila.

  In his head, Lila said, You're handling it wrong. You've offended this little white-trash vixen already. She'll never forgive you. If it takes a lifetime, she'll make sure she spits in your blood.

  The girl said, “I'll get the hell beat out of me if I tell them how you boosted me.”

  “So don't tell them. I won't either. And nobody is going to hurt you.”

  “You sound damn sure of yourself.”

  He got behind the wheel and looked at the girl again, who was still trying to distract him by showing more thigh than she needed to. She'd plucked another button loose on her blouse so that he could see the curve to her nearly bare breast.

  He looked in her eyes and said, “What's your name?”

  “You can call me Hildy. What's yours
?”

  Chase gave her the fake one and she turned it over, repeating it aloud. “Sounds fake.”

  “It is. Which way we headed?”

  “South.” She sat in the passenger seat, gnawing her lip, her discerning eyes alive with shrewd thoughts. She let her ponytail loose and the wind tossed her hair around. “Watch out for Mackie,” she told him. “He's a sneaky little shit.”

  The guys in Hildy's crew were sitting around drinking beer and playing poker in a shitty apartment, trying to take down two rubes.

  They looked up and nodded to Chase, believ ing that Hildy had brought another fish by to get reamed in the game. There were three on the string. The two rubes would be strangers even to each other. They had pained expressions and only a handful of chips and a small amount of cash showing. The string wouldn't quit until they were sure the rubes had been taken for all their money, even the emergency stash squirreled away at the bottom of their shoes. Then the fish would get the blowoff. Chase had seen it a hundred times.

  The crew was going to lose the next couple hands in order to keep the marks in the game and sucker Chase in.

  One of them asked, “Hey, you want to sit and join in?”

  “I'm just going to watch for a while, if you don't mind.”

  “Sure, relax, get a beer.”

  It went off in a classic pattern. They'd been taught old- school grift sense, same as Chase. It brought back a lot of memories, most of them bad but a few of them good. He started to smile. It's what would be expected of him. They wanted him to think he could walk in and clean them all out. The betting increased and the marks won four pots in a row.

  Everybody in the crew was a little younger than Chase, early twenties, but with a lot of the same wear. They'd lived out of places like this most of their lives, with their fathers or grandfathers or on their own.

  They were good but not as good as the guys Chase had played against when he was a kid. He spotted the shill immediately because the string had a lot of cross- fire chatter going, too much talk between the outside men and the inside man. The shill was pretending to be a bad player, forcing the two rubes to kick into the pot hoping to take him down and win back their losses in one grand play.

  Both marks were pale and sweating despite the air conditioner being turned full blast. It was another grift. You keep the room cold and you can get away with putting on a sweatshirt or jacket already loaded with cards. The crew members kept rotating the aces and face cards, then dropping the extra clothing back on the couch where one of the others could pick it up in turn.

  The crew member who'd invited Chase to join in turned to him now, handed him a beer, and said, “Hey there, I'm Mackie, you ready to play?”

  “Sure,” Chase said.

  Hildy went to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of water. She sat on the couch behind and to the left of Chase, giving him a sly look, a little hopeful but tinged with tamped- down panic.

  He had to give it to her, she had guts. Chase figured the guys sat around the apartment most days, drinking even when they weren't filleting fish, and she was getting a little tired of the lifestyle and looking to trade up. He felt an odd gratification that she was willing to tamp down her fear and put some faith in him.

  He also knew she had gone for a gun hidden in the kitchen and, if he flopped or sold her out, she'd probably put one in his head and tell the crew he'd forced his way in.

  Chase removed five hundred of Hildy's fourteen hundred bucks from his pocket and traded it in for chips.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes into the game, Chase said, “Man, it's freezing in here,” and snapped up one of the loaded jackets. Hildy watched him carefully. A magazine lay open and facedown on the couch cushion beside her. If things got too tight in here, he'd go for the piece hidden beneath it.

  Chase let another fifteen minutes pass before he carefully slid the extra cards into his hand. He won with a full house, kings over aces. Then he traded out the cards and reloaded the pockets.

  It took Chase three hours to win half the cash on hand, about two grand. He wasn't sure he could get the rest. The crew had a nice grift going, playing off each other. Chase was good but he wasn't a pro card handler, and one of the string especially was giving him a hard time. The kid's name was Boze and he had exceptional skill in misdirection, dealing off the bottom, false cuts, top- card peeks, and doing a three- card, sometimes four- card lift. Boze had put hundreds of hours into the moves. Grabbing four cards at a time and making it look like he was holding one. The best magicians in the world could only handle a five- or six- card lift.

  The two other marks had long since been wiped out. They left despondent and very drunk. Mackie kept up a lot of talk, trying to get Chase to reveal details about his life, but Chase staved him off with the usual bullshit.

  Mackie had taken a piss break and talked briefly with Hildy, no doubt asking where she'd hooked Chase. Boze said almost nothing but kept watching Chase's hands. Chase knew the kid saw at least every other sleight Chase made, but when you had two con men in the same game, you didn't call one another on it, you just upped your play. Boze had gotten sharper as the game went on, and seemed to enjoy the competition. He had ratty teeth that he showed more and more, smiling whenever Chase raked in a pot.

  The third guy on the crew was called Tony Tons, and he was the strongarm. Didn't say much, not even during the cross chatter. Looked a little dopey. Muscular but fat, he tipped the scales at around two-seventy and was maybe five-foot-ten. Not all that imposing for a strongarm despite the ham- hock hands. His smile was a little too wide and his laugh was a couple seconds off, like he had to wait until he heard others laughing first, making sure something was funny before he joined in.

  The cross fire died out. There was no point to it anymore. The fish were gone and the crew knew that Chase wasn't a rube.

  Mackie finally got up and dragged Hildy into the bedroom. The guy had held out for a pretty long time. He'd been cool but not that cool. Chase sat in his seat for another few seconds, pocketed his cash, and then followed.

  Tony Tons reached out to stop him and said, “Hey you, stay here. That's none of your—”

  Chase kicked out the back leg of Tons's chair and watched the tubby thug fall over and hit the ground hard enough to rattle a painting on the wall. Boze was still smiling.

  No big surprise about anything happening so far. Chase stepped into the bedroom. Mackie had a tight grip on Hildy's upper arm, his fingers pressing in deeply, the edges of her mouth tilted in pain.

  Chase said, “That's enough.”

  Mackie immediately released the girl and held up his fists. He was the boxer who liked to teach girls how to fight and then work them over a little. Chase wasn't sure if he should throw down with this guy or try to smooth things out. The situation wasn't too far gone yet.

  The five- finger impressions on Hildy's arm were a bright red. They were going to bruise pretty badly. Chase had promised to protect her and he enjoyed the rising anger making its way up his back, settling between his shoulders like his grandfather's powerful hand giving him a shove forward.

  Whatever the fuck.

  Chase moved in and Mackie feinted with a looping left, then spun and set Chase up for a right cross. Chase saw it coming and tried to counter but Mackie had excellent footwork and eased in through Chase's defenses, suddenly right there a couple inches away having covered half the length of the room in two quick, fluid steps. Chase had enough time to angle his head back before Mackie's fist collided with his jaw.

  Molten colors quivered and flared at the edges of Chase's vision. He centered himself, dodged left, and swung his hips and brought an arching shot up from his knees that landed in Mackie's ribs. An animal grunt of pain erupted. It made Hildy grin.

  Something about her smile triggered Chase's memories. In the garage, shadowboxing and working out on the mats while Lila cleaned her gun collection, the stink of gun oil so heavy that he'd start coughing, and Lila asking him if he wanted to learn h
ow to shoot. He'd remind her that the night they met he shot three guys in the leg, and she'd remind him that that wasn't really shooting, standing two feet away from three arguing assholes and just blasting them in the calves. He'd say, “It worked, didn't it?” and slide up behind her while she shined the barrels of her pistols. He'd pull her backward off her stool and down onto the mat and they'd make love right there. In the garage, in their house, and he'd be reminded he was a married man, a man of property, a regular joe, and he'd somehow made it through the fire and come out the other side.

  Now he was back again where he'd started. Not even a fall from grace so much as a fucking swan dive. It was the draw in his blood.

  Without warning, the rage was alive inside him, wanting out. He twisted hard to the left as Mackie hurled a crushing right cross toward his temple. If it had hit, it might've fractured his skull. Chase let loose with a bitter laugh and moved in tighter, cutting loose, full- on rock 'em, pummeling Mackie in the belly before wheeling to club the guy in the chest with an elbow.

  It was a nice move but not nice enough. Mackie was incredibly fast and had already pivoted and danced away. He connected with a halfway- hard shot to Chase's throat that rattled him pretty well and got his bile grooving. Chase's mouth filled with sourness and his breathing hitched. He let out a sickly cough and went after Mackie, threw two hard jabs into his gut and another into those battered ribs.

  With a groan, Mackie fell across the bed on his belly and had to grip the ornate wooden footboard to heave himself up. Chase followed once more and saw that Mackie was bent to one side, protecting his ribs.

  But no, that wasn't it at all, Chase realized a second too late. Mackie had pulled a popgun .22 from where it had been jammed in the space between the mattress and the footboard.

  Sneaky shit, all right.

  Everybody in the life sleeping with their weapons of choice.