The Coldest Mile Page 8

  Turning off of Houston, double- parking in front of the massage parlor so Jackie could get his spine snapped and de- stress from his father's death, Chase's cell rang. Jackie returned to form and said, “Hey, no private calls while you're—”

  Chase answered. It was the Deuce. “I might have a line on your grandfather.”

  A homeless guy with a spritz bottle moved out from behind a couple trash cans across the street and started staggering over.

  “Can't talk any more right now, Deuce,” Chase said. “There's a hit going down.”

  The Langan shooters had been having so much luck the last couple months that they'd gotten a touch sophisticated and more than a little sloppy. You always came out fast and blasting, it was the only way to do it. But they were taking time to have a little fun now, getting slick. Maybe because they were making a move on the head of the family.

  Chase watched the squeegee man shuffle across the street with a spritz bottle. There hadn't been a squeegee guy in New York since before 9-11, when Rudy Giuliani promised to get the homeless off the streets. Who knows what the hell he did with them, but the squeegee guys had been gone for years.

  Chase recognized the hitters from around the house. Young turks trying to make their bones, thinking too much and making a game of it. They should've just walked up with converted automatics and sprayed the car.

  Better yet, Bishop should've taken care of it himself. He must've been worried about the politics of the hit, even though it had to be obvious to everybody that Jackie was a dead man. Sherry stepping up was the right thing to do, but still, the wiseguys had a thing about openly whacking one of their own family members. Just because Pacino did it didn't mean everybody else could. If you did it, you had to do it quietly. You had to act like it was breaking your heart. Had to hire out, bring people in from another country who didn't speak English. Otherwise it looked bad to the other outfits.

  But dressing in costume? Chase could just imagine this guy with a pad and pencil writing notes to himself on the perfect way to ambush a limo. Drawing pictures of himself wearing different disguises, fake noses, beards, yarmulkes.

  Chase watched him shuffle step by step toward the windshield of the Super Stretch. In the movies, it was always the shoes that gave the bad guy away. Walking through a hospital wearing the lab coat and a stethoscope plugging his ears, and he's got muddy black boots on.

  But the squeegee guy wore scuffed shoes, had a black plastic trash bag with holes cut out for his head and arms. He was playing the part too well. Only the schizophrenics on antipsychotics wear trash bags, and then only when it was raining. This one, he had his spritz bottle out, and Chase noticed a flash off his finger.

  The hitter had a pinkie ring on. Chase had shaken his hand once and felt the bulge of that thing. Probably worn it for so many years that he couldn't get it off anymore no matter how much butter or cold cream he slathered around it. It was a diamond setting, he'd just twisted it around to face the diamond the other way, pointing toward his palm. But the sun still picked it up.

  Acting on Sherry's orders, Bishop would have told the guy the windshield was bulletproof. But the windows all rolled down, which meant they were regular safety glass. He tried to figure out who would bother to take half measures like that? What was the point? Like a torpedo was only going to stand right in front of your headlights and try to—

  Chase shut his eyes for a moment, not the smartest thing to do under the circumstances, but he was seeing Earl Raymond's head exploding inside the Roadrunner again.

  One of the ugliest images Chase had stuck in his skull, but the one that he got the most pleasure from prodding.

  His stomach tightened. The 9mm was still at the back of his closet. Okay, he could deal. Chase clicked the lock button just as Jackie tried to get out of the back.

  “Hey,” Jackie said, the whine already in his voice. “What are you doing?”

  “Buckle up.”

  “What?”

  “Hold tight.”

  “What?”

  From what Chase knew, and admittedly it wasn't a lot, these dips worked in teams. He waited for another squeegee guy to appear—attack of the fucking windshield- washer panhandlers—but he didn't spot anyone else nearby who might be in on the hit.

  The torpedo reached under his plastic bag into his waistband and Chase punched the gas, wrenched the wheel away from the curb, and knocked the guy down. The gun went off before it flew from the shooter's hand, sounded like a .32.

  Jackie instantly panicked. “What? What's going on!”

  “Somebody's trying to ice you.”

  “Well, Christ… don't let them!”

  While the shooter was down in the street, Chase stomped the pedal and ran over the guy's leg. The limo jerked and jostled. The crunch didn't sound bad unless you knew what was being crushed.

  He climbed out of the seat and pulled the torpedo out from under the limo. Chase got to one knee beside him and said, “You have a friend with you?”

  The shooter did his best not to scream but he wasn't having an easy time of it. The tire marks went over his knee and the lower half of his leg swung out too far to the right by maybe six inches, a pool of blood easing down the sloping asphalt toward a sewer grate. The trash bag was tented with busted bone.

  Jackie rolled the back window down, stuck his head out, looked down in the street, and threw up.

  Chase grabbed the .32 and said to the squeegee guy, “Seriously, how long were you out here wearing a plastic bag? Don't you feel stupid? If Sherry ever uses you again, make sure she offers medical benefits.” Chase kicked the guy in the face and put him out. Taxis veered around him, hardly slowing.

  He stood in time to see the massage parlor door open, someone a little more hard- core stepping out. There was the second man. He must've been distracted waiting inside, looking at all the girls, the madam giving him a hard time and offering free massages, the sumo wrestler telling him about having his dick stuck in hot sake, listening to all the businessmen being boiled in their hot tubs and clopped on in teakwood.

  He was one of the young guys who just wandered around the estate too, looking tough but doing nothing much. So here he was supposedly stepping up. He looked in the back window of the limo trying to get a line on Jackie and make sure he was sighting the right guy. The windows were tinted. It threw him off for another second.

  Chase clutched the .32, swung his arm up onto the trunk of the limo and drew down on the kid. “Heya, drop it.”

  He didn't wait to see if the hitter did it or not, he just shot the mook twice in the left leg.

  It reminded him of the day he met Lila, while he was working with a string in northern Mississippi boosting antique and jewelry shops. Chase waiting out front in the getaway car while Lila almost got the drop on the crew. Chase held her while the others decided whether they should rape her before they killed her. He shot all three of them in the leg, and his courtship with Lila began with blood and the hint of a smile.

  Jonah said, Finish it, put another one in his head.

  Chase walked around the back of the limo to the second shooter and grabbed his gun too, an S&W .38. Number two was in shock, white- faced, sweating, and panting heavily, but still cognizant. Chase asked, “So who paid you?”

  He didn't expect an answer and was surprised when the guy said, “Elkins.”

  It took Chase a second to remember. The strong -arm with the .357 that Bishop had practically been sucking on that day of the rumble in Jackie's pale chamois office. Jackie's personal bodyguard, who hadn't been around all that much anyway.

  “He pay you half up front?”

  “No, nothing up front. All back end.”

  “You're another idiot. Don't go back to the Langans looking to get paid for pain and suffering. If you see Bishop step out of a doorway in front of you, shoot first.”

  Jackie cracked the nearest window a couple inches and peered out. He raised his lips to the space and said, “Are they dead?”

  “Did
you hear what he said, Jackie?”

  “What?”

  Chase toed number two and said, “Repeat.”

  But the guy didn't. He was out cold.

  There were sirens coming, but there were always sirens coming. Chase pocketed both pistols, got back in the limo, got out again and pulled the squeegee guy away far enough so he wouldn't get run over one more time, climbed in and took off. The cops would never catch on. The madam would plead ignorance, never give a straight answer, speak in pidgin. The description of the stretch wouldn't help at all in Manhattan, and the two hitters would be questioned, released, and the next time they got sent up they'd get laughed right out of Rikers. Or Bishop would bury them.

  You need to leave town,” Chase told Jackie, thinking, Here's my chance.

  Jackie was out in left field. For a guy who'd grown up in a mob house his mother must've kept him completely insulated, always sending him off for milk and cookies whenever the heavy action went down.

  Jackie might've heard him, Chase couldn't tell.

  “You need to snap to it and get on the ball,” Chase said.

  “What?”

  “Wake up, come on.”

  Jackie made himself a drink, disturbed enough to add four ice cubes this time, that's how fucked he was. He filled the glass with JD, four fingers. “Who did this? Whose men were they?”

  “Who do you think? Who knew you were coming to get walked on today?”

  “Nobody,” Jackie said, his eyes receding into his head.

  “Think about that answer.”

  “Nobody, I tell you, there's nobody. There's never anybody.”

  “The butler knew.”

  “Porteroy?”

  “The butler's name is Porteroy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Holy shit.”

  Wagging his head in disbelief, Chase figured Porteroy was playing the game just like Cessy. His name was probably Harvey Glupman from Passaic. Chase said, “If he knew, then everybody could know. You need to get out.”

  “What?”

  Chase didn't really give a shit about Jackie, but he also didn't want to be personally responsible for killing the mook, especially not after saving his life already today. Plus, if he could get Jackie to jump, then a little cash might fall out of his pockets.

  “You need to run for it.”

  “Run? Run where? I can't go anyplace. Where am I supposed to go? My father hasn't even been buried yet.”

  “You told me you didn't want to go into the ground with him.” Chase figured Jackie, like most wiseguys, would never believe that his own blood would come gunning for him. “That was Elkins. This was an inside job, don't you see that?”

  “See that it was an inside job? Elkins? You think it was one of my own troops? That's impossible.”

  “Why?”

  “I trust them implicitly.”

  Chase tried not to sigh. Some people didn't want to be saved. They wanted to go over the side of a sailboat into the icy water and merge with the depths of their heartache and absurdity.

  “You trust everyone? Even me? You even know all the names of your crew? Jackie, those two guys we just left out there work for you.”

  “That's impossible.”

  “The estate is no longer safe for you. You need to pack it in, hide out, until you clean house. You got a place you can hole up for a couple of weeks until you've found your rats?”

  “They might hurt my sister. Or my mother. I have to stay and take care of things.”

  Chase knew that he could explain it to Jackie for ten hours and the guy would never get it. He would never believe his sister was behind it, that she was already running the crew, and had been since Lenny got sick. Jackie could never imagine that Sherry might ace him, not even when she came up to him with that .38 and put it between his eyes.

  “Your sister isn't the one they want, Jackie. Neither is your mother. It's you. You're the head of the family. They'll be fine.”

  “I can't leave. My father's funeral is tomorrow.”

  “If you stay, they'll toss you in the box with him.”

  “Stop saying shit like that!”

  It wasn't going to work, the way Chase was playing it. Jackie couldn't face facts and was just going deeper into denial. But Chase knew the way to get a man to do the things he didn't want to do, he'd been taught by the best.

  “What would your father do, Jackie? Think it through the way Lenny might've. How would your old man handle a situation like this? Where would he go?”

  “Vegas,” Jackie said. “I have a little place in Vegas too. I can stay there for a couple of days.”

  “I'll take you to the airport. Don't pack anything except cash. You have to be autonomous, Jackie, self- reliant. Didn't your father teach you anything when he threw you off the pier at Asbury Park?”

  “How the fuck did you know about that?” Jackie asked.

  They pulled up to the estate, everything the same as usual, except Jackie was in the back climbing around like a wet cat. He poured himself another drink and Chase reached back through the partition and put his hand on Jackie's shoulder.

  “Just be cool.”

  “Will you—?”

  “Yeah, I'll come in with you.”

  “Thanks.”

  The thugs lolled about. For the first time Jackie seemed to notice just how many guys there were standing around doing nothing, everybody trying to figure out what they could grab for themselves before they left. Moe Irvine was out on the sundeck, his face dappled with baby oil.

  The house was already emptying fast. Furniture was being moved out the side door, lots of boxes and bundles all about on the lawn.

  Chase walked Jackie inside, followed him to his office, and watched as Jackie stepped directly to Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer. It was a five-tumbler combo. Jackie had wads of cash in there and pulled a briefcase out from somewhere under his desk, filled it with the money. The stacks were thick but there weren't all that many—it would be enough to go after Jonah and Kylie, though.

  Chase had been right, the safe wasn't where the big money was kept. He'd never cracked the pattern and now he wouldn't score the serious cash. He looked up at the ceiling thinking about Sherry up there, waiting for the call that would tell her that her brother had been capped.

  He said, “You should take more, Jackie.”

  “That's all I have access to.”

  “What about all the cash flow? You must have it squirreled away all over the place.”

  “It all goes into accounts to keep the business solvent. We've taken hard hits the past year. Attorneys’ fees cost us more than two million the past six months, trying to keep our men out of prison and the right people paid off.”

  Briefcase in hand, Jackie led Chase upstairs. Jackie's mother was sitting in a rocking chair, her bedroom mostly packed, a couple photos and paintings still on the walls. Lenny Langan as a young man. Jackie and Sherry as kids. Chase shut his eyes and tried to resist the pull of history around him, swirling him backward into an ocean of his own life, full of the dead.

  Jackie kissed his mother and she said, “You're leaving.” The lady was smart, and she knew Jackie would be wrecked in the fallout. “Good, it's time. I wasn't sure if I could protect you. Go find a safe place to stay for a month or two. Let me know where you are when you get settled. On my private line. Don't talk to anyone else.”

  “I'll be home soon, Mother.”

  “There's no home left, Jackson. This is the way it happens sometimes. I'm sorry.”

  “You forgive me for missing the funeral?”

  “Your father wouldn't give a shit, why should I?”

  “I need to talk to Sherry first.”

  “No, Jackson, you don't. She's busy.”

  “I'm taking money from the safe, Mother. I should tell her.”

  “Leave her be. Go now. Go.”

  She kissed her boy and Jackie turned away, Chase following, wondering if Jackie's mom would've warned him if he hadn't shown some
initiative.

  Nobody noticed them leaving the house. Chase backed the limo up to the servants’ quarters and got out. Jackie squawked, “You're leaving me?”

  “For a minute.”

  “That's all it might take.”

  Chase ignored him and ran inside. His gym bag was in the closet stuffed with his fake ID, meds, some clothes, the Browning, and extra cash. He moved fast.

  He ran back out and got behind the wheel of the stretch, the two pistols he'd pulled off the hitters in front of the massage parlor heavy in his pockets, and tried to imagine what it was going to be like when Sherry and Bishop caught up with him in a couple weeks or a couple months or a couple years down the line. Sherry stepping up with the Jacqueline O's, Bishop smiling amiably. They weren't going to let him go. Sherry already hated his guts for turning her down, and now he had helped Jackie get away, and he was about to score the family too.

  Jackie was on his cell calling the airlines.

  “You coming with me?” he asked. “I could use you.”

  “No, I have something I need to do.”

  “What?”

  “Clear up my own family troubles.”

  “I only have a few guys out there. You could be top man.”

  “What's the setup?”

  “I'm partial owner of a casino. A small one. I get a nice cut and I have a couple books and parlors. My father brought me in when I was a kid. They generate cash, but—”

  “But they're legal, so you never gave a shit about them before?” Chase asked. “You never should have come back from Brown to take over the business.”

  “I didn't want to. My sister made me. She convinced me it was the right thing to do for my father.”

  Jesus, Chase thought, that bitch is hard. She didn't want to ace Jackie because he might get in the way of her power play. She just wanted him dead because it was easier than having him on the loose, living his own life.