The Coldest Mile Page 9

  They drove the limit to the airport. When they got close, Chase saw a shuttle stop, pulled over, climbed out, opened the back door, and plucked the briefcase off the seat. Jackie just sat there and stared at him while Chase counted the cash. A hundred and fifty grand. Enough to make the whole foolishness at the Langan household worthwhile, but not enough for the heat he was going to bring down on himself. There were easier ways to snuff yourself if that's what he was trying to do. He'd have to think about it soon.

  “Now get out, Jackie.”

  “What?”

  “Go sit on the bench and wait for the shuttle.”

  “What?”

  “I'm robbing you.”

  In some men the light of understanding would've dawned in their eyes, but Jackie was still confused, his face twitching. “What?”

  “I'm scoring you. Go sit over there.”

  “You. You did this. Those were your friends back there!”

  “If they were my friends, Jackie, I wouldn't have run one over and shot the other. I didn't set up the hit. You've got enemies under your own roof. Your own mother said so.”

  “I don't—”

  “You should've brought more than one- fifty.”

  “I told you, that's all I had access to. That's all Sherry had in the downstairs safe.”

  “Okay. Go.”

  “You're leaving me here? We're not even at the terminal!”

  “A shuttle will be along.”

  “You can't do this!”

  “I am doing it.”

  “But you work for me!”

  “I quit. Get the fuck out.”

  “But my money!”

  “You own a casino.”

  The hysteria was back in Jackie's voice, worse than Chase had ever heard it. “Partial owner! I'll need something to help me set up, to be secure!”

  Chase left Jackie ten grand. It would be enough to keep him alive for a couple weeks in Vegas until he figured out how to protect himself. If he ever figured it out.

  He grabbed Jackie by the arm and pulled him out of the stretch. Jackie came along like a mental patient zoned on lithium.

  Chase said, “Lay low. Don't contact the house. Hide. Don't come up for air for a while. Stick with your own friends. Your friends, you understand, not the family's.”

  “You … I trusted you.”

  “Jackie, that's just more proof that you don't know what you're doing.”

  “Goddamn you.”

  Chase looked back once more and, in another odd moment of even deeper pity, said, “Jackie, wake up and watch your sister. She's going to ace you before you hit Chi.” He threw the briefcase in the front seat, climbed in, and drove off, his thoughts focused entirely on his grandfather now.

  Knowing Jonah was out there telling him not to come after the family secrets, to keep clear of his mother's ghost, to stay away from the girl.

  It was only a half hour's drive to the Deuce's chop shop. On the way over Chase threw his cell phone out the window. Five minutes later he spotted a GTO in the middle lane and jockeyed in behind it. He eased the window down and listened to the engine, letting its heritage fill him. It sounded a touch flat but powerful, righteous. It ran with new plugs but a couple hadn't been gapped properly. The pipes were a little loose and rattled, but the muscle was there, hard, waiting.

  The tires were too wide for real speed. Chase could feel the thrum of action and legacy in the car even from a lane away. That clinched it. Chase memorized the license plate and pulled alongside. The driver was maybe forty- five, bald, anxious, and sneering. Another pissed- off almost- was trying to find a little cool as he slid backward and mewling into middle- age. Angry with his wife, his college-dropout son, the pregnant teen daughter, fuck no he wasn't going to stop for milk, dairy products were out, fish oil would keep him young. He was getting Viagra cheap online from overseas.

  Besides Jonah, all the meanest guys Chase had ever met were in that same state of disappointment and trying for reinvention.

  It wasn't smart to stay out in the open with a stolen mob Super Stretch, but it was even more dangerous to carry a hundred and forty g's in cash around. Chase stopped at two banks down the block from each other, took out safety- deposit boxes with two different fake IDs he'd held in reserve, and cached forty- five large in each.

  He pulled into the Deuce's shop, but the limo was too long for any of the stalls. He parked at an angle and several new faces poked up beneath open car hoods and glared at him, no calm, no composure.

  Deucie showed up before anybody got too hot, a new unlit cigar looking too huge for his mouth. He checked the stretch, nodded. “Anybody in the trunk?”

  “Not today.”

  Giving him the deep look, wanting to know more than he should, Deuce decided to ask, “How big did you score them?”

  “They won't miss it,” Chase said.

  “Not the money, maybe, but they'll never let you go for heisting them. You know that. When you go on the run now, it's for good.”

  Of course it was the truth, but there was no reason to go into all of that with Deuce or anybody else. “It's a dead outfit.”

  “Almost dead anyway, now that Lenny's gone. Heard about that. They're free to move on, but I wonder if they'll hold over for a while longer now, despite the Koreans and the Russians and the Yugoslavians and whoever the fuck else wants a piece of them. You better hope they don't get a shot of adrenaline from this boost of yours. You mentioned a hit was going down?” Deuce held his hand up, turned his face away. “Don't tell me about it, I don't want to know. Listen, like I said, I'm sorry I ever sent you there. I realize that family was a mess. I feel a little responsible you ever got involved.”

  “It's not your—”

  The Deuce, on a roll. “Hey, you ever get out on their golf course? I hear it's pretty nice, especially the putting greens. Mikey Rhino played there a couple times with Jackie and Moe. Moe shaves strokes the way he shaved points back when he ran book. I ain't hit the links in I don't know how long. I never liked it much when I'm there doing it, but when I'm not I want to get back. It's all right, so long as some prick isn't trying to play through. No, forget all that. I'm distracted, got troubles of my own. My wife, she's on her third hysterectomy.”

  “Listen—”

  “I thought the whole point of the damn thing was to go in there, take it all out, but she must have more than most women, whatever the hell's in there, who knows. Fuckin’ doctors, she's in the hospital for nine days and I owe six figures. My brother-in-law works a medical- insurance fraud scam, and even he says they're raping me. He went up for four years to Sing Sing, and these doctors, Jesus Christ, you talk about golf, that's all they do. Walk in with tans darker than braised pork bellies, half a bottle of mousse in their hair, these little sticky curls all over their foreheads.”

  Deuce pulled back, his expression a little stunned, knowing he'd talked too much. He lit his cigar, took a few deep puffs trying to get it down to a manageable size.

  It made Chase think for a second that he'd been wrong counting on the Deuce now. Deucie still had strong ties to the syndicates, would give cut rates to the capos so the wiseguys could buy Maseratis for their daughters’ sixteenth birthdays. And now, hearing he had home troubles, something Deuce never let on about before. Chase couldn't see the Deuce turning him in, but he thought maybe he'd outworn his welcome in this part of town for a while. He had to cut fast, take the pressure off, get Deuce back on his side somewhere down the line.

  “I need wheels,” Chase said.

  Pointing around at the cars up on the lifts, engine blocks lying around mostly in pieces, Deuce said, “Take your pick, I can give you a deal.”

  “I need muscle.”

  “I know you do. All you wheelmen do, even if you're just driving up the block to get a quart of milk. I ain't got anything like that here right now.”

  Chase ran off the license plate number of the GTO he'd spotted. “Get it for me by tomorrow.”

  Grinning around the cig
ar butt, smoke trailing from his lips. “Okay, I'll get my girl at the DMV on it, put a couple of the boys out to grab it. They'll go in tonight, burn off the VIN. You sticking around for a few days?”

  “No. I'm splitting in the morning.”

  “You gonna meet my price?”

  “You can take the Stretch.”

  “It's not a fair trade,” Deuce said, trying to sound hurt and not making it.

  “You're right, but I don't mind losing out here.” Chase drew the .32 and the S&W .38 he'd taken off the pair of dip hitters and tossed them on the front seat. He opened his gym bag and tossed in the 9mm Browning as well. “Here, you can take these too.”

  “Smith & Wesson? A pissant .32? Browning? Who uses these nowadays? It's all Glocks and Desert Eagles. They got nine-year-olds in north Jersey with semiauto mags.” Deucie threw up his hands, shook his head, tried to purse his lips, which didn't work too well around the cigar. “You should keep them. You need to carry something. I know it was never your thing before, but you're different now, into a new kind of score, on your own. If you're back in the life, which I'm still not too sure about. Are you?”

  No calm, no composure. Funny how it was a question Chase kept avoiding, even while he was still carrying a briefcase filled with a stolen fifty grand. He hadn't been thinking about getting back into the bent life. Hadn't been thinking about life at all. What had mattered was driving down Earl Raymond and his crew. Now all he needed to do was to see as far as the next exit down the road and find a way to get to Kylie.

  “I don't know, Deuce.”

  “Your wife, the way you two were. Close like that. I know you're—”

  Chase's jaw tightened. He reached for the cold spot, the place where he was frozen and hard, where nothing could reach him, but it didn't seem to be there anymore. He went for it again, trying to hide from Lila in his mind. Her laugh in his ear, her voice there, even now, telling him not to trust Deuce. He closed his eyes but said nothing, trying to draw himself backward from the moment, and when he opened them again to see Deuce just staring at him, worried but maybe not worried enough, he was pleased that the Deuce had at least shut up. Chase was glad he couldn't see his own face.

  “How's Mara?” he asked.

  “The Romanian girl? The folks I told you about, they love her, got her set up working in some Romanian restaurant in Princeton. I never heard of such a thing, who the fuck says, ‘Hey, you want Italian, French, or Romanian tonight?’ What do they eat over there anyway, and are you gonna call it cuisine? She's a waitress, they said. They sent me a photo of the kid on my cell. Cute.”

  “Thanks for helping.”

  “Sure. What else do you need?” Deuce asked.

  “Another cell phone. And another set of IDs.”

  “The paperwork will take a week. And it'll cost.”

  “I know. An extra grand if you rush it.”

  Shrugging, like the Deuce had to put a lot of consideration into it. “I'll see what I can do. You must've scored big to toss money like that around.”

  Chase thought, What, I need to worry about this now? If he's going to rat me out or try to rip me off before I can bolt? Chase looked into Deucie's face, trying to see just how bad the guy's money troubles were, or if he was acting out of sorts because his wife was sick. He decided that Deucie was just as worried about Chase as Chase was about him. Chase was acting like a pro doing unprofessional things, and it was throwing Deuce, leaving him with a definite lack of faith.

  “You said you had a line on Jonah,” Chase said.

  “He was trying to put together a deal in Sarasota a couple of weeks ago.”

  Chase hissed between his teeth. The man, closing in on seventy, had taken two bullets in the back, and yet he was still coming up stronger and faster than Chase. Already down South in Florida, in the town where his two-year-old daughter was living with Angie's sister.

  Deuce had his cigar down to the size he liked, where he could chew around it pretty good. “It didn't work out too well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I'm not sure. It's just a lot of noise right now. He was putting together a string but somebody wound up dead.”

  “You mean he killed someone.”

  “Yeah, I think so, but I don't know that circuit, it's a new bunch of people. They're young and fresh. What I hear is just buzz. So I can't say if he was in the wrong or not, or what the fallout will be like. I think he's still there though. He hasn't come up anywhere else, so he's probably still working on some kind of heist.”

  “You have any names for the new string?” “Just one. Duster. No wait, I'm wrong. Dexie. No, I'm wrong again. It's Dex, that's it. He's a little older, been around for a while, but only pulls big jobs once every few years. They're sometimes messy. Not somebody you want to deal with.”

  Chase nodded. He didn't want to deal with anybody, just wanted to find Jonah. He almost reached through the window of the limo to pull back the .38. He could feel the twisting frustration inside him trying to work itself up into his head and overwhelm his thoughts, but he pressed it back down to where it frothed his blood.

  Blood, fuel, and cash. It's what ran inside him and what made him run.

  Chase cruised to an oldies station until it faded in Delaware, kept tuning in to others for almost six hundred miles before his cool started to loosen. He hadn't been down South since he and Lila had lived in Mississippi over four years ago, up the road from her father, the sheriff. When he crossed the North Carolina border Chase knew he should pull over, get a motel room, get steady again, but he didn't want to get out of the Goat. That was a bad sign, but it didn't change anything. Lila grew louder in his thoughts, and so did Jonah. The two had never met while she was alive, but now they seemed to be arguing all the time.

  Lila saying, I fell in love with an outlaw, you do what you need to do for now. So long as you remember to take hold of that child.

  Jonah telling him, If you brace me, you're dead.

  It went on like that mile after mile. Chase thought some action might clear his head, which proved he was too tired to keep going.

  He pulled into a motel outside of Winston- Salem, walked in, and a whore in the lobby sighted him. It was his own fault. He knew the stink of cash was on him.

  She rose and approached him while he bit back a sigh, knowing there was no way to avoid this.

  Fair- skinned, freckled, redheaded, with a blatant smile that no one would find attractive but a lot of men would still appreciate, he thought she must've been quite pretty when she was sixteen, and had probably skipped right to worn- out at eighteen.

  She wore a summer dress and high heels she had trouble walking in. Dangling costume- jewelry earrings caught the harsh light and emphasized pits in her cheeks. Her arms were scabbed. Meth did it, made them feel extrasensitive, their flesh crawling.

  She said, “Hey there, sweetie,” and a knot immediately formed between his shoulders.

  “Hello,” he answered.

  “How you doin’ this evening? You look like you've been drivin’ a thousand hard miles.”

  “They were easy,” he admitted. “The rest will be rough.”

  He should've just shut the fuck up, but he'd gone too far without hearing another living voice, and he wanted to shake the others out of his skull.

  There was no right way to play it now. Her pimp would be nearby. Chase figured it couldn't be the kid.

  Act rude and tell her you're not interested, and she plays the hurt damsel and the pimp turns up looking for trouble. Show the slightest sign of interest and she's on your back until you manhandle her away, and the pimp still shows up. Chase should've stopped an hour sooner, when he was fresher and smarter. He would've been alert enough to keep away from this kind of place and stayed somewhere the hookers only went after businessmen.

  The kid behind the desk was unnaturally perky. “Hi, welcome to the Winston- Salem Motor Court! I'm Durrell. What can I do you for?”

  His eyes were dilated and Chase got a whi
ff of weed, but that wasn't what was spiking the guy. A nerve in Durrell's cheek twitched and Chase could clearly see the vein in his throat throbbing, scabbed from scratching. Yep, meth.

  Chase got his room key, and Durrell spun around behind the counter, then excused himself to the back room, leaving the girl to do her thing. Chase kept an eye out for the pimp, wondering if he should make a run, try to get a few more miles in tonight, but he was starting to ache.

  “It's going to be a cold night, darling,” she told Chase, leaving the “g” hanging nice and thick, trying to talk northern so he might relate to her better. She put a hand to the back of his neck and softly rubbed him there, the way Lila used to do. “You might need a touch of warmth.”

  He shut his eyes and almost allowed himself to go with it for a moment, just a few seconds, because everyone needed a soft hand on occasion.

  Except it wasn't his wife's. He snapped his head aside and said, “It's ninety- five in the moonlight.”

  “A man can still get chilly.”

  “Maybe if he's got malaria.”

  It took her back a step and she pulled a face. If you didn't show enough interest right off, they went for your balls, started cracking about whether you were gay. He still wore his wedding ring on his fractured ring finger, now covered over with tape.

  “Most lonely men still like a little company when they come this far across the Mason- Dixon.”

  “Who says I'm lonely?”

  “Your eyes do.”

  “Don't listen to them, they're my worst feature.”

  “I like them,” she said, drawing back, inspecting him. “Sad but just a little tough, a bit mean.”

  She could've been a Southern belle, Miss Pumpkin Patch or the Radish Princess, waving from a float during the big Radish Day Parade, wearing a plastic tiara. But there was a hard tilt to her mouth that was part bitter humor and part affront. She grinned, knowing her teeth were crud and trying to hide the fact. They called it meth mouth. She and Durrell were definitely into that shit, already so far down the road they'd never get back again, headed for dead at twenty- five.