The Coldest Mile Page 2

  In the background, the Deuce's chop shop sounded way too busy for this time of the afternoon. Deucie was getting a little sloppy too, having his crew make runs in broad daylight. “Get out of there,” he said to Chase. “Now. Just go. Don't score them. It doesn't matter if you take ten bucks or a hundred g's, it makes them look bad. You know these syndicates. They never stop looking for the people who rob them, hit them, betray them—it's their number one rule. It's what they live for. They'll come after you forever. You don't need that grief. I know you're still recuperating. Guy takes a beating like you did, bullet wounds, loss of blood, a couple cracks to the head, you gotta give yourself time to recover. You're not thinking straight. Depression, it's genetic, you got the gene. I know you're hurting about Lila, and what happened with Jonah, I know you're out there on the edge right now, and part of you wants to fall over. A lot of bodies are turning up in the Hudson, or not at all. Don't—”

  “Yeah, they've got a landfill someplace,” Chase said, and hung up.

  There were fourteen cars and trucks in the estate garages, everything from a three-year-old Mercedes to an F430 Spider and a Ford pickup.

  They were all in bad shape—scratched, dinged, rusted, sludge wearing out the engines. They'd been driven hard by amateurs who didn't believe in regular care. Chase was a little worried about just how well the crew had cleaned out the trunk of the Super Stretch.

  Since nobody had given him anything to do yet, Chase went to work on the vehicles.

  He pulled them out into the huge egg- shaped driveway in front of the main house and eavesdropped on the Langan crew as they milled about. There were supposed to be guards patrolling the grounds but everybody just stood around smoking and bullshitting.

  He learned that in the six months since Lenny Langan had more or less cashed out of the game, lying in bed with tubes in his nose and down his throat and in his crank while everybody was on death watch, his son Jackie had really spiffed up the estate. The guy had added a nine- hole golf course out back and vamped the main house by stripping all the cherry paneling and painting the place a pale chamois. It was all wasted flash since they'd probably be leaving soon.

  Chase picked up on the particulars. The Langans were being run out of Jersey by the Korean, Chinese, and Russian mobs, among others, and they'd soon be moving on to Chicago to start up again as a much smaller outfit. Most of the crew knew they were getting the ax and had started up little side businesses, like the chauffeur had done.

  The Mercedes had a fine stereo system, and Chase climbed in and turned on the radio, found an oldies station, and felt the tuned engine hum through his bones. He shut his eyes. The music took him back to when he was a kid and his parents danced around the living room together, his mother staring over his father's shoulder and making funny faces at Chase. It brought him back to the nights when he'd drive down the ocean parkways with Lila, heading out to the point, where they'd find some stretch of beach and she'd say, “Sweetness, you get more than flirty with me down in the dunes and you're gonna scratch us both raw.” He'd say he didn't care and she'd go, “Glad to hear it, love, 'cause neither do I.”

  When he opened his eyes, he snapped off the radio and focused on the house.

  Considering how things were going down, security inside the place looked even more lax than it was outside. It was Jackie's fault. He had a habit of sending different people on small errands. Chase watched as members of the crew wandered in and out and around the house, picking up Jackie's briefcase, his gold cigarette case, his .22, checkbook, golf clubs. These were serious guys, hitters and even some made men, running to a stationary to get Jackie some Vicks VapoRub because he thought he was coming down with a cold.

  Jackie favored three fingers of scotch on the rocks, but not too many rocks. No more than two cubes. His voice was deep and calm unless something went wrong, and then it became instantly laced with near hysteria. You could hear Jackie's neurotic ranting all over the place when he didn't get exactly what he wanted.

  Wrong VapoRub, not Vicks, go get the Vicks. Two cubes, not one, not three, not crushed ice, three fingers, not two, not four, the fuck couldn't anybody listen?

  Chase finished up with the Mercedes and started drifting around inside. If Sherry Langan was anywhere around, he didn't see her or hear anything about her. He checked the windows to see what kind of a security system they had. It was bush- league at best. He looked into empty rooms. There were dens and libraries and parlors furnished with antique, fancy furniture. Statues, paintings, ornaments, and books no one had ever read. He watched Jackie and his men come and go. Nobody said squat to him.

  He did a quick search of Jackie's office and found a safe hidden behind a hinged oil reproduction of Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer. He only knew it because the high- school auto shop where he'd taught was next door to the art classes, and one of the teachers there had the same print taped to a wall.

  He'd been a thief since he was ten years old, pulling scores with his grandfather Jonah, but Chase had never actually seen a safe behind a painting before. It sort of stunned him.

  No wiring around the frame, so there was no alarm, but he wasn't a jugger, he didn't know how to crack.

  Sometimes they got cute and left the tumbler only one digit off to save time opening it. Chase tried it but the handle still wouldn't pop. Sometimes they scribbled the combination on a slip of paper and kept it close at hand, just in case they forgot. Chase checked the corners of the drawers of Jackie's desk but didn't find anything of value except a switchblade. He pocketed it and skimmed out the door.

  The next day it was threatening rain and a cold wind kept blowing through the area. Chase was under a nice SUV but he couldn't do as much on the truck as he wanted to because the fingers on his left hand began singing with pain. He'd fractured three of them a few weeks back and he wondered if this nagging ache would be a new constant he'd have to put up with for the rest of his life.

  He thought of Lila again and a distant sweeping sorrow moved through him like a storm on the horizon heading inland. He bit back a groan. He'd made a mistake, he'd relaxed too long here. Two days was already too much. He had to stay in motion. Sweat burst across his forehead. And just like that, his pulse was suddenly thundering. He dove for the cold spot trying to find his cool, but it just wasn't there no matter how deep he went. He wondered if he'd ever reach that place again.

  Chase felt as if he should just wait on this barren shore for the hurricane to hit and take him and everything else along with it.

  One of the henchmen bent and peered around the engine block at Chase and said, “Boss wants you.”

  So here it was.

  Smelling of old man's aftershave and wearing a blue ascot—Christ on the cross, seriously, an ascot— Jackie Langan was seated in his office. Chase walked in and decided he didn't mind the pale chamois paint all that much himself.

  Hovering nearby were two strongarms—-Jackie's personal bodyguards, a couple of the guys who ran for the Juicy Fruit and the Vicks. They carried long-barreled .357s in shoulder holsters under poorly fitted sport jackets. The hunch- shouldered tailor hadn't made their suits for them.

  Their biceps were so huge, the clothes so tight, and the gun barrels so long that it would take them two and a half minutes to draw their weapons if trouble ever came down.

  Jackie wanted to make Chase wait for a minute so he pretended to be busy with some paperwork on the desk even though he hardly glanced at the pages. Chase figured it was something that Lenny Langan had done and Jackie was now emulating without quite getting the nuances right.

  Chase didn't really mind. He knew how disturbing it was to feel the presence of a powerful father or father figure not even in the room. Perhaps long gone, perhaps even dead, but forever present in your blood. You couldn't get away from it, couldn't really make peace with it. You just had to put up with it.

  Eventually Jackie looked up and said, “So far as I can tell, the men of this organization are broken into three m
ain groups. Accountants, capos, and muscle. Which are you?”

  Chase thought Jackie was forgetting a few guys, like the butler, the doctor, and the groundskeeper who took care of the golf course. But Jackie was after effect.

  “I fall outside those categories,” Chase said.

  “Yeah, you do, I suppose, so how about if you tell me, what's your purpose?”

  “General man-about-town.”

  That made Jackie's face close up like he'd just sucked a lemon out of somebody's ass. It seemed to pretty much be Jackie Langan's everyday expression. “Are you making a joke?”

  “You would think so, wouldn't you,” Chase said.

  It looked as if nobody had told Jackie about snuffing the other chauffeur or the fact that Chase had come aboard. Probably just an oversight, but Jackie seemed like he wanted to make a big deal out of it.

  He was still asserting himself in the organization. From what Chase had picked up, Jackie had spent years floating through Ivy League universities failing law school. He'd worked with diction coaches to lose his Brooklyn accent, but now that he'd returned to become head of the outfit he had to struggle to reacquire it.

  He sounded like he'd been watching old film noir lately, studying up on how Eddie G. used to do it. He tried for a dead- eyed stare and didn't come close. He had no idea how to get anybody to respect him. The ascot didn't help.

  “What the hell does that mean?” Jackie asked. “Man-about-town?”

  Chase said, “I'm a driver.”

  “Another chauffeur?”

  “The new chauffeur.”

  “So that's why you've got grease under your nails.”

  “I've been tuning your cars.”

  Jackie's mouth went slack. “You didn't touch my Ferrari, did you?” The hysteria was already creeping back into his voice.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “But nobody touches my Ferrari.”

  “No, nobody has,” Chase said. “The battery was dead, the belts were loose, your brakes were gone, and the intake valve was busted. I fixed it.”

  “I don't like this.”

  “You don't like this?”

  “I don't like you talking back,” Jackie said.

  “I thought we were having a conversation.”

  “You're still talking back.”

  “I am?”

  “You are, goddamn it.”

  Chase assessed his options here. He thought maybe it wasn't worth any more of his time trying to score these dips, despite the fact that there had to be a lot of loose cash around someplace. But maybe the Deuce was right and Chase just wanted to be out on the edge. He was anxious about becoming bored, and in the boredom where his mind would take him.

  Easing from his chair now, Jackie leaned over and planted his fists on the green leather desk mat, firmed his chin and almost snarled like the King. You had to give it to him. He was trying to fall into the role. But he realized he was going too far and pulled it back at the last second.

  Chase couldn't help smiling, not the smartest thing to do considering the situation.

  Jackie went back to the lemon-out-of-the-asshole face and said, “Boys, break one of his appendages.”

  Man, Chase thought, this crew really doesn't like chauffeurs. And to say appendages instead of arms or legs? The guy had to get his patter down.

  The two bruisers lumbered over, shaking their heads because they didn't understand any of this either, but they did as they were told. They frowned and held up their hands in a Whattya gonna do gesture.

  It was dumb as hell. Nobody wanted to fight. The strongarms looked at Chase with a kind of pleading twist to their mouths, hoping he'd take a couple shots to the belly and just shut the fuck up.

  For a second Chase figured, What the hell, I can do that.

  But then they each grabbed him by a wrist, making their killer faces. Showing teeth, nostrils flared, squinting. They thought it made them look slick. They were dumb. You squint like a spaghetti cowboy and you cut off your peripheral vision.

  Chase allowed them to begin wrenching him forward. He couldn't figure out how they intended to break his bones holding him like this.

  In his head Jonah said, It's time to move.

  Chase moved. Pain flared in his collarbone, where he'd been shot. He'd lost some muscle mass being laid up and felt the effects immediately, the weakness that had never been there before.

  Cheat, you idiot, Jonah said.

  Chase stomped the foot of one of the thugs. You see somebody do that and you think they're trying to break the guy's toes or something, it looks kind of sissy. But if you do it right, the way Jonah had taught him, you smash the instep and you tear tendon away from bone. It'll take the guy two months in traction before he can limp out of the hospital.

  The bruiser went down screaming. Chase hadn't expected screams and apparently neither had Jackie, who jumped away from his desk and huddled against the wall. The other thug stared at his buddy wondering why a soldier going two- fifty would fall down and shriek because somebody stepped on his foot.

  Despite the bad fingers and the wrenching in his shoulder, Chase unleashed a flurry of jabs and crosses on the guy still standing. He bit the inside of his cheek and took shallow breaths, hoping to keep his damaged ribs from scratching around too much. His punches weren't especially effective, but he still had grease on his hands and he managed to work it into the thug's eyes. That was a pretty good cheat too.

  The strongarm raised his fists to his face and tried to thumb his eyes clear. That was enough for Chase to snake his hand inside the guy's jacket and yank out the .357.

  He cocked the hammer and jammed the piece under the strongarm's chin.

  Cherry paneling—there was a reason why the goombas always did a house in a nice dark red-brown. It hid the bloodstains. Pale chamois wasn't going to cut it.

  He was thinking what a fucked mess this was when Moe Irvine and three other men busted into the office, all kinds of heavy hardware flashing. Chase was trying to decide if he'd put himself into this stupid position because, somewhere deep inside, he wanted to suicide like his father.

  That sorrow swept through him again, the storm much closer to the beach this time.

  Lila said to him, Love, it's time to stop this foolishness.

  The torpedo who'd walked into Chase's room with blood on his shirt now stepped in front of the others and held his hand out, palm up, waiting for the pistol. When Chase didn't turn over the long-barrel fast enough, the guy actually snapped his fingers.

  What a crew. They might ace him for a lot of things, but not this.

  Chase gave the gun up.

  Checking the scene, his bronze chin angled first in one direction and then another, Moe Irvine took his time before he spoke. “So … somebody explain. What's going on here?”

  Another stupid question. Chase had been in jams before, but he had to admit this time he was a touch edgy. He'd always dealt with cops and professional thieves, guys who followed a code. But somehow these people, who used to be at the top of the crime chain, just didn't seem to have one, at least not anymore. He couldn't tell which way things would jump next.

  The torpedo took another step. He stared down at the bruiser who'd finally quit screaming and was now mewling like a newborn. The torpedo's eyes shifted to Chase.

  “Don't hurt him, Bishop,” Moe Irvine barked. “He's new.”

  “Nobody's going to hurt him,” Bishop said.

  “Why not?” Jackie asked, still hiding out in the corner, and Chase found himself echoing the question. Yeah, why not?

  Stepping over to the collapsed thug, Bishop lightly toed the guy's damaged foot. The strongarm started making rubber ducky noises—it was the kind of sound no man liked to hear another guy make, because it meant he might make it himself someday.

  Bishop turned and gave Chase a warm, friendly smile. It even reached his eyes, which was a damn hard thing for a stone killer to learn how to do. But Bishop did it.

  “You made short work of them,”
he said.

  “They're sloppy,” Chase told him. “And they really didn't want to hurt me without a good reason.”

  “You've done some muscling.”

  “No, that's not my area.”

  “What is?”

  “I'm not a strongarm,” Chase said, “I'm a wheelman.”

  “Strongarm?” That got an amiable chuckle from Bishop. He almost sounded like a normal guy instead of somebody who could cut a nun's throat and wash the blood off his hands in a baptismal fount. A nice nun too, not one of the mean ones. “I haven't heard anybody use that term in a while.”

  It was another holdover from running around with Jonah and his strings when Chase was a kid. A fourteen-year-old getaway man for a crew of middle- aged pros. He had a throwback mentality and sometimes used grift speak that only old men or guys born into the life would know.

  Bishop was caressing the .357 in his hand. Un con sciously he plied it, like touching a woman's wrist at dinner while the wine was being served. His thumb circled over the casing, his forefinger easing back and forth across the trigger guard. It made Chase sick to his stomach.

  “What do you drive?” Bishop asked. “When you're not driving a limo?”

  Everyone put their cannons away and stood around trying to follow Bishop's lead without knowing exactly where it was going. They looked to Moe Irvine, who didn't do anything either. They glanced at Jackie, who glanced back. They couldn't keep their eyes on him too long without pulling a face. That ascot.

  Chase said, “You ever met a driver who didn't answer by saying ‘anything’ when you asked that question?”

  “No.”

  “There it is.”

  Everybody listened in, wondering what Bishop might do next. Chase was pretty interested in that himself.

  The fondling of the pistol was getting creepy now, Bishop unable to help himself, really working over the gunmetal. He kept his smile up the whole time.