The Coldest Mile Read online

  In the back of Chase's mind Jonah said, You were stupid, you should've kept the gun, you should've shot him in the face.

  Bishop asked, “What was the problem here?”

  “Jackie got mad because I changed the plugs in his Ferrari,” Chase said.

  With a gurgle of aggravation Jackie started to step around his desk and then thought better of it. He went to sit in the chair again and thought twice about that too. Finally he decided to lean against the corner of the desk like a doctor in a commercial about to talk about erectile dysfunction.

  There was the gurgle again, this time louder, with an edge of protest. Jackie said, “Listen—I have something I want you all to know—”

  Everybody ignored him. Moe Irvine finally got a move on and said to Bishop, “All right, get Crowley to the emergency room. Give Elkins back his piece. We've got work to do.” He frowned at Chase. “Stay away from the goddamn Ferrari.”

  “Sure.”

  These others, Chase didn't have to worry about them. It was Bishop he needed to keep his eyes on.

  They helped Crowley to stand and carried him groaning from the room. Bishop turned over the pistol with a quiet laugh. Elkins had some trouble putting his long- barrel back into its holster and the seam in his jacket's shoulder started to give with the loud and distinctive rending of cheap material.

  They all filed out, even Jackie, leaving Chase alone in the room. He looked around, mulling over the score, trying to figure out why he was really here, and thinking, My grandfather could come in here with nothing but a nail file and kill every one of us.

  In the dream, his dead parents sat at the kitchen table with his dead wife, talking in hushed tones as if they didn't want him to hear. When they noticed he was in the room, they looked at one another with anxious expressions and passed their last whispers. After a moment, they turned their attention to him. They waited, unblinking, for Chase to say something.

  His heart began to hammer as he stood there trying to get out the words, but nothing would come. Nothing ever did. In a fourth chair sat his unborn sibling, murdered before its own birth. Their mother had been shot in the kitchen, and that's where he always dreamed of her. The kid might be a boy or a girl, Chase still couldn't tell, no matter how many times he had nightmares like this.

  He wanted to ask it, What are you?

  A breeze blew in. He smelled floor wax and furniture polish. His father wiped down his glasses with some kind of citrus- scented cleaner. Lila never wore perfume but she bathed with a vegetable bath oil. Cucumbers, avocados, aloe. His memories and dreams were getting tangled. Her hair twisted across her eyes. He expected her to brush her curls back, but she didn't. Just kept sitting there with her hair covering most of her face.

  Sometimes the kid spoke in the nightmares and sometimes it didn't. Chase waited. So did the kid. So did the other dead. It had gone on like this for a while now and he wondered if it would ever end, or if he even wanted it to. Lila murmured something from beneath her hair that he didn't catch. He tried to move to her but couldn't get any closer.

  The kid hopped out of the chair, crawled across the table to Chase, and said, Listen to me. Find the girl.

  Blunt, aching pain drove him up from sleep. It initially centered in his fingers, which were purple and throbbing as he came awake, but a second later he hurt all over. His fight with the thugs had torn open the gunshot wounds again. His ribs sang. His collarbone raged. It was still infected. The fingers were fucked, he must've refractured them.

  He carefully climbed off the bed and made it out into the hall bathroom he shared with the rest of the floor. Nobody else was around. Under the sink he found a good supply of bandages, hydrogen peroxide, tape, even catgut. The real stuff—it had probably been in the house for forty years. Chase changed his dressings and set the bad fingers in place. He checked for painkillers in the medicine chest. All they had was aspirin. Family probably made fifty mil a year from opiates, but they shared none of the good stuff with the hired help. He took the bottle and chugged five tablets.

  He gathered the old bloody bandages and carried them with him to his room, where he hid them at the bottom of his gym bag at the back of his closet. He'd dump them sometime in the afternoon. He didn't want to advertise that he was a couple steps slower than usual.

  Chase stood in the window and stared out toward Jackie's golf course and caught the scent of water on the wind. His thoughts twisted. His dreams were growing more intense, the details clearer. Lila had grown up in the back hills of Mississippi and always had a wide superstitious streak. She'd once told him the dead would always make their will known, and it had stuck with him.

  His own history was prominent in his mind. A tangle of emotions and half- understood compulsions and motivations. The Deuce had been right, Chase shouldn't be here, but what else was he going to do? Go back to stealing cars? He had a chance to lay in a big score here, and he'd need the money for the girl—for Kylie. He stared in the direction of the water.

  He tried not to think about what had led him here but something had broken inside of him and he could feel the memories surging forward, wanting out.

  Lila had loved the ocean and Chase had eventually grown to enjoy it too. He'd once thought he'd never be able to sit on a beach again because his old man had snuffed himself by taking a sailboat out into the Great South Bay one winter.

  His father had suicided because he couldn't handle the grief after Chase's mother had been found shot dead in their kitchen. Fifteen years gone now and no one knew who'd done it, but Chase was finally starting to get a few ideas.

  Jonah, his grandfather, a man he'd not only never met before but had never even heard about, plucked him from foster care and convinced him that family was all that mattered, that blood was important. Maybe it was true.

  Jonah—carved from rock and just as feeling. Chase started working professional strings and crews immediately. First short cons and small grifts, and then acting as a second- story burglar and a wheelman. He'd been brought in on bigger scores because he was a first- rate driver and kept his nerve. It had gone on like that for years, until the day he'd watched Jonah ice one of his own men.

  He severed ties with his grandfather and tooled around the South. That was how he met Lila—a deputy sheriff in a Mississippi county—during a score gone bad. He went straight, they got married, and eventually came back to New York where she joined the Suffolk County cops and he taught high school auto shop.

  Chase pressed his forehead to the cold glass, hoping it would cool his heated thoughts, but it wasn't nearly enough. Lila in his head telling him, It's all right, love, I'll help you through this.

  Six weeks ago she'd been murdered on duty while trying to stop a crew heisting a diamond merchant's store. The driver, Earl Raymond, parked in the street and waiting to roll, had shot her three times with his left arm hanging out the window

  Chase hadn't seen Jonah for ten years, but his grandfather was the only man hard enough to help him go after the string. The old man showed up with Angie, a woman forty years his junior, who was the mother of his two-year-old daughter, Kylie.

  It was a weird setup and Chase had a hard time picturing what the little girl's life must be like, but he knew that Jonah would ruin it for her. Angie knew it too and asked Chase to take a run at his grandfather, pop him twice in the back of the skull.

  Chase had a lot of resentment, but he couldn't do that.

  He tracked the crew to a motel in Newark, and at the last minute Angie put two in the old man's back. It didn't slow Jonah or stop him. He killed her while Chase had an old- fashioned shootout with Earl in the middle of the parking lot. Earl driving his sweet Plymouth Superbird with the funky extended front end, the 440 V8 tuned up right, while Chase just stood there already shot a couple of times, his ribs cracked, fingers busted, and tried to lift his gun to hit a moving target. Though Chase wasted five shots without even cracking the windshield before he finally put one in Earl's head.

  Jonah in his mind sa
ying, You should've taken him out with the first blast.

  He was right.

  Now Chase thought of Jonah out there, maybe with his baby girl and maybe not. Angie had left the kid in Sarasota with her sister Milly Chase didn't know anything else except that she was married to a professional surfer. He figured there couldn't be that many professional surfers in Sarasota with wives named Milly.

  He could find the kid one way or another. With the money he hoped to score from the Langans, he figured he had a better choice he could offer the child. Some way to protect her from Jonah, from the kind of life that Chase himself had been drawn into.

  There was nothing else for him to do. Jonah had been right about one thing. Blood was important.

  Lila said, Save the baby.

  Standing at the window, Chase watched the doctor pull up and park at an angle at the side door again, the guy taking a last couple puffs of a cigarette then carefully putting it out against his heel. How would that make a cancer patient feel, seeing his own doc hacking up yellow phlegm and smelling like a second- floor boys’ room.

  After all this time, Chase still had a lot of questions. He wanted to know why his father had said that he'd asked to make an appeal to the killer, when the truth was the cops had backed him into doing it. He wanted to know why his mother had cried so much the night before she died.

  Talking about Jonah, Angie had said, Everyone else he destroys. More than you know.

  And Jonah had said someone else had tried to kill him over a kid.

  Another foolish woman.

  Chase couldn't shake those words. They hummed and buzzed and bit at him.

  He thought, Did Jonah murder my pregnant mother?

  The kid said to find the girl. Lila told him to save the baby. Blood was important. Chase needed to finish taking this score and get on the move.

  Later that morning the suit was delivered to Chase along with a fresh pair of white gloves. He couldn't quite get over it. They really wanted him to wear a chauffeur's uniform.

  The suit fit well. He didn't like the ties Moe Irvine picked out so much and threw on the one he found least offensive. The diamond stickpin caught light like a laser.

  The phone in his room rang. He answered and a curt voice he didn't recognize told him, “Mister Langan and Miss Sherry are to be driven to the First National Bank at 232 Madison Avenue, in Manhattan. Then they shall lunch at Pietro's on West 51st Street.”

  Chase thought, They couldn't tell me that themselves once they got in the back of the limo?

  He walked out to the garage and backed the limo down the drive to where Jackie and his sister stood at the front door looking like they'd been sitting in a funeral director's parlor for hours. The soldiers were milling around, glancing out at the golf course like they wanted to play a couple rounds while Jackie was off in New York. A few more were on the sundeck, their collars open, relaxing in chaise lounges.

  So their well- being was now his responsibility. He wondered how much of all that internal- war shit was true, and if it was, how long it would take for someone to make a real move. Jackie bulldozing his sister, or she popping him? Or Moe Irvine taking out both of them, then going upstairs to whisper in Lenny Langan's ear, “You treated me like shit for thirty years, you prick, now I'm in charge.” Then pulling the dying guy's plug.

  Jackie eyed him up and down, noticed right off that Chase didn't have the hat and gloves on. He said, “Hey, one second here …”

  Chase ignored him and opened the back door of the limo for Sherry Langan. It was a cloudy day but she wore big dark sunglasses. He offered his hand but she didn't take it, climbing in on her own and swinging her legs clear of the door. She stretched them out, her toes pointed, muscles perfectly defined, the skin pale but exquisite. She wasn't showing off for him. She hadn't even looked at him and probably thought he was the dead chauffeur.

  It annoyed him and he didn't know why.

  He continued holding the door open, his shadow thrown across her knees, until she slowly turned her chin and shifted in her seat, those shades finally focused on him. He could feel her innate strength and knew right then that the Deuce was right, she was sharp and primed to take over.

  He pretended to tip the hat that wasn't there and said, “Hello, Miss Langan.” Then closed her in.

  Moe walked out of the house and started giving orders to one of the capos but stopped talking when he noticed Chase wasn't wearing the hat and gloves.

  These people, Jesus Christ.

  Jackie Langan stood back and waited for Chase to open the door of the limo for him. Chase walked past him, slid behind the wheel, and tapped the door lock. The security gates were already open. He left Jackie, Moe Irvine, and the rest of the stumble-fuck crew standing there while he kidnapped the woman.

  In the back of his head, Lila whispered, Sweetness, why're you doing this?

  It was a good question.

  Maybe the answer was blood, maybe it wasn't, you just couldn't tell anymore. Chase hadn't intended to play things out this way, but he went with his instincts. Jackie didn't matter. Jackie would only have chump change around, even in the safe. Sherry Langan was the real head of the family and would probably be whacking her stupid- ass brother any day now. Chase had to get on her radar somehow, so why not be bold about it? His grandfather always told him never to follow someone else's rules.

  Jonah in his skull said, You're doing this because you want to die.

  Chase gunned the limo toward the Holland Tunnel. He'd overhauled the engine and was able to squeeze some real speed out of it, the front end perfectly aligned, tires balanced, the extra length of the vehicle cutting a nice channel as he cruised.

  The satellite radio had been set to sophisticated talk shows and classical music. He found an oldies station and kept the volume low, the sweet harmonies of Motown reaching out and filling his belly with a nice thrum.

  The partition window was down. Sherry Langan said, “So, you're a showoff.”

  “Not really,” Chase told her. “I'm just a driver, not a chauffeur.”

  “What's the difference?”

  “Among other things, I don't wear the hat and gloves.”

  “Then I daresay this wasn't the job for you. Perhaps we should have weeded you out during the interview.”

  The backs of her hands were covered with thin wisps of veins. She made herself a drink at the bar and sat back, sipping it, sighing a little as she swallowed.

  She crossed her legs. They were her best feature and she knew it. He suspected that she was always hoping for a reaction—had probably heard the old wiseguys whispering about her stems since she was a kid.

  “Are you the one who's been raiding my Glenlivet?”

  “No.”

  “Your friends then.”

  “I don't have any friends,” he said, and the truth of it rang inside him, echoing through the emptiness.

  She watched him taking the smooth turns, weaving through traffic, in no real hurry but still making good time. “Are you trying to play out a flash move here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Earn your bones by creating a stir? Garner respect and rise through the ranks by pissing off your employers?”

  “People really give that a whirl?”

  “They have in the past, yes.”

  “Were any of them still breathing the next day?”

  A demure laugh rippled up her throat. “I suspect not many, at least not in the old days. So tell me, what's your game?”

  “I don't have one,” Chase said. “I'm just taking you to the bank on Madison and then to Pietro's for lunch.”

  Nails clinking the rim of the glass elicited a sharp tone. “But you abandoned my brother.”

  Chase tried to force his features into a shocked expression, knowing it probably wasn't going to work. But how well could she see him anyhow? Way back there through those big black shades?

  “What?”

  “Yes, he was supposed to join us.”

  “Nobody
told me he was coming.”

  “He was standing there in the driveway next to the limo.”

  “Really?” Chase said. “So why didn't he get in?”

  “He was waiting for you to open the door for him.”

  “Oh, right, I'm supposed to do that. I thought he was just seeing you off.”

  Her top leg began to bounce slightly and she held the glass against her bottom lip, rolling it, the ice clicking in time with the shoop- shoops on the radio. He could feel the depth of her concentration, the way she pored over him now. It ignited him somehow, made him perk up in the seat.

  She took off the Jacqueline O's.

  He met her eyes in the rearview. They were hot and calculating and full of education and traces of the dead. That was her strength. Crippled and crushed boys scattered down the years in her wake, starting when she was about thirteen. A few maimed but alive enough to limp along in the world, deformed but still thinking about her, maybe even loving her. She'd never been struck with a pinprick of conscience. That was the tragedy she'd never feel. He'd seen a few like her before.

  The road rolled in and out. He could feel her trying to assess the situation, wondering if he was working with one of the other outfits and making a grab. Or if he might be a feeb fucking around with her. Or just another dumb member of the crew overstepping his bounds, perhaps looking to nail the boss's daughter. She kept her purse close. He knew she must be packing. Probably a little lady's snub .25, something that would do real damage if she got close enough to put it to a guy's head. The bullet whipping around in there turning everything to cream.

  But she had her cell phone and Chase hadn't made any overt moves, and they were still on their way to the bank. Not like he was hijacking her to Atlantic City or the Poconos. He liked the way she showed no alarm, sure of herself, on top of the action.

  After a moment she said, “No. You're not one of us.” She finished her drink, grabbed her purse, slid up directly behind him, and spoke through the partition. He heard her digging around past her lipstick and hairbrush. “There's something not right about you.”