The Cold Spot (13 page)

O
nly three o’clock, but the traffic was thick, bottle-necking
them among a fleet of eighteen-wheelers as they hit some construction on Sunrise Highway. The road crews stood around holding jackhammers and shovels but not using them, and the left lane’s asphalt lay peeled open. The van didn’t have the best suspension and the stop-and-go jerking started to bounce the whiskey inside Chase. He shouldn’t have drank. He wasn’t used to it and the sourness made him think of the stink always drifting off Joe-Boo Brinks.

He looked over at Jonah and the Jonah inside his mind said, He wants to ace you, but he’s waiting. He’ll grab the score, put one in your head, and leave you at the scene.

Chase didn’t need to give Angie directions to his house. She already knew the way, which was pretty good for someone who hadn’t had more than a couple of days to set up the snatch and memorize the roads. He thought more and more that she wasn’t just along for the ride. Nobody had mentioned her being in on the Aspen heist, but Chase wondered if she’d been there with Jonah and Lorelli, and if she’d been the driver who’d gotten them out of the tight mountain town.

She caught his eye in the rearview. He still couldn’t figure her but decided to think the worst for now.

They came down his street toward the house. He got out, keyed in the garage door code, and said, “Pull all the way in.”

He’d taken down the heavy bag so there was room for the van beside the Chevelle. Angie threw it into park They got out and Jonah stared at the black Chevelle.

“You still got something to shred the road,” he said.

“It’s new,” Chase told him.

He opened the door to the house and led them inside.

“You don’t keep it locked,” Angie noted.

“You’ve got no burglar alarm. You’d think a cop and a thief would know better.”

Chase said nothing. It bothered him having Jonah here, in the home he and Lila had made, even though this wasn’t the same home anymore without her. It meant less and less to him every day. But he could sense his grandfather already scoping the silverware, checking around for loose cash, plotting to walk off with something. The loss of property didn’t matter, Chase had already decided to get rid of it all and sell the house. He didn’t regret giving everything up, but he didn’t want the old man to steal any of it.

Angie went through the fridge, grabbed fixings for sandwiches, and said, “We’re hungry.”

“Most of it’s probably stale.”

“That doesn’t bother us. Anything to drink?”

“Only what’s in there.”

“There’s nothing in there. Guess we’ll finish the scotch.”

Plural again. Angie spoke like she was half of an old married couple, and he wondered if he was hearing it right or reading into it. He could imagine them lovers. Jonah always went in for the young stuff. But he’d never heard a woman talk about the old man like a husband before. Jonah’s silence lent itself to the idea that he felt the same way about her. Chase regarded them without any interest as they both ate, throwing back the whiskey, Jonah eating and drinking the way he did everything else. With no wasted action, no sign of enthusiasm, utterly emotionless.

When he’d finished he asked, “So what do you need me for?”

“You already know that,” Chase said.

“Yeah, I do. You don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

“I’ll get them dirty, I just want you there to help me do what needs to be done.”

“Don’t talk in euphemisms, it only muddles the situation.”

“I’m going to kill the driver,” Chase told him. “The others too, if they get in my way. That clear enough?”

“You got the stomach for that?” Jonah asked.

“You either believe me or you don’t.”

“You said you nabbed the store’s security videos of the heist from the cops?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see them.”

While Jonah viewed
the tapes in the den, Angie wandered the house touching stuff, picking up framed photos and putting them down again. Grabbing up knickknacks, the vases and candles, looking at the paintings and prints. Chase followed behind, watchful. She said, “You like clutter. Or your wife did.”

Chase had never thought about it before. He said, “You need to fill a home.”

“I wouldn’t know. Never had much of one. My mother croaked when I was nine. Uterine cancer. You ever see what that does to a woman? It makes her horrified that she
is
a woman. Knowing the part of her that
is
woman is what’s killing her. She died with this look of confusion and terror on her face. My father was a Cuban boozer who loved the Miami club scene and thought he was a gigolo for the pasty-white divorcees. If he was lucky they’d let him drive their Porsches home. They’d tip him like the pool boy. We lived in a two-room apartment. He’d spend eight hundred bucks on a pair of shoes, but wouldn’t have money to feed my sister and me. He got drunk at a club, hit on some drug dealer’s woman and got snuffed in the men’s room when I was eleven. He died with his head in the toilet. My aunt took us in. Altogether with her kids there were fourteen of us in her house. I started turning tricks as soon as my tits came in. Hooked up with a third-rate crew in St. Pete’s Beach a couple of years later. At first I was just there for laughs, but soon I was planning some easy jobs. We wound up moving around a lot for a while. Then I got on a string with your grandfather and stayed with him after the boost.”

“When was that?”

“Three years ago.”

“You couldn’t have been sixteen yet.”

“I wasn’t.”

She turned away just when she got to the part Chase wanted to hear about. “When did you go to the cosmetic surgeon?”

It made her lips stiffen. “I don’t like to talk about that.”

“Scars look pretty fresh.”

You never mention such things to a woman, and he knew it. But he needed more info and hoped she had enough vanity left to let something slip.

Angie just breezed out a giggle. “You bastard.”

Yeah, she was definitely hard, with that same sharpness and ability to take pain that Marisa Iverson had. He wondered if she’d picked it up on her own or if Jonah had helped her find it along the way.

She grabbed up a photo of Lila and Chase sitting beneath a wild maple with a blur of children rushing by in the background. “She was pretty.”

“Yes.”

“Looks like a picnic.”

“Down the road from my in-laws’ house. They had a lot of family.”

“The way you say that, I can tell you never considered yourself a part of it.”

“I did my best.”

Brushing a fingertip over the edges of the photo, tapping with that red nail where the river jutted just into frame. “Where was this taken?”

“In Mississippi.”

That surprised her. “You spent time down south?”

“Seven years or so.”

“Usually when someone’s there for that long they pick up a hint of accent. You don’t have any.”

“I’ve been back in New York for a while.”

“That’s not the answer. You’ve never had an accent of any kind, have you. Not even a New York one.”

Chase shrugged. He’d been a lot of places and talked how he talked.

“You really going to kill this crew?”

“If I have to. If I can. I only want one of them.”

“I don’t see it in you. I’ve known guys who could put down their own mothers, but you—” Her eyes searched his face, looking for every character flaw, each weakness and desperate intent. The lips turned up in a soft kind of sneer, the scars dimpling back into view. “I don’t think you could put down a dog.”

“Depends on the dog.”

“I think the old man will have to get it done for you.”

“We’ll see.”

He’d found where she’d stashed the Bernadelli. There was a small extra pocket right at the bend of her left hip. Easy to reach and draw from, and the subcompact showed almost no bulge as she moved. The pocket fit a regular seam in her jeans. She knew how to sew too.

Chase’s hand flashed out and he snatched the .25 from her.

“Hey!” she said.

Only nine ounces, he couldn’t believe how light it was. Less than a toy weighed, no wonder these people liked to pull them so often and keep them so close. There was a sense of power without the burden of potential murder.

He said, “You use too much oil.”

“I get overzealous. I like things clean.”

“No use hiding it so well if someone can sniff it out on you. You walk into a score posing as a lady just doing her banking or shopping and one of those retired cops turned security guards will know you’re carrying.”

“I’ll remember to dab on more perfume. Now give me my sweet little cap gun back. You don’t want me throwing a tantrum.”

He handed her the pistol and watched her slip it back into the secret pocket, where it vanished once more. “That’s a clever hideaway.”

“And you’re a naughty boy, dipping your hand in there like that. If you want something, all you need do is ask.”

“I’d like to know how you hooked up with Jonah.”

Her eyes deadened for an moment and then brightened again almost instantly. “It’s simple enough. I was with somebody else and now I’m with him.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it.”

“Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not.”

“You can always move on.”

“No, I can’t.”

He decided to drop that. “What happened to the somebody else?”

“He left.”

“On a gurney or by his own free will?”

“He made a mistake and died for it.”

“Who snuffed him?” Chase asked.

The smile again, the near-invisible scars adding some mystery and strength to her features, and something else he couldn’t name but which made the muscles in his back tighten. “Who do you think?”

J
onah poured the last of the scotch in a glass and
took a deep bite. He didn’t look the least bit interested in helping Chase. “What’s in it for me?”

At least he put it on the line, first thing. Chase had expected him to say that. He’d assumed from the beginning that he’d have to offer money up front on top of a possible score. At the time, the idea of it hadn’t offended him, but now that he was staring into his grandfather’s face, he found that it did. It stung knowing that the man would never do anything except for a payday, not even for someone whose name was tattooed into his flesh.

And Lila had once asked Chase if Jonah had ever really loved him.

“I’m selling my house,” Chase said. “The price of real estate is still shooting up on the island. I should clear at least a hundred grand, maybe more.”

“And I get it all?”

“Sure.”

“You’re not even going to try to talk me down, see if I’ll do it for less?”

“You’ll cost whatever you cost.”

“And when do I get it?”

“The house isn’t on the market yet. A few months, I guess.”

“And I trust that you’re good for it?”

“I’m good for it. Whether you trust me or not is up to you.”

Jonah showed nothing. “Let me think about it.”

“No,” Chase said. “I need an answer now. If you shake off then I go it alone.”

“How much time do you figure you’ve got left?”

“Almost none. The fence has had over a week to start moving the ice. He’ll have sold some of it by now, and he’ll have a small amount of cash to hand over to the crew. The woman, Marisa Iverson, didn’t cut and run when she should’ve. I think they’re going to score the same diamond merchant again.”

“So they’re close.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe closer than you think.”

Chase frowned and said, “What does that mean?”

“It means you never should’ve given them your address.” Jonah stepped back into the living room and clicked on the video. “If they were smart they would’ve hit you immediately. When did you brace the woman?”

“Four days ago.”

“So they’re good but not that good.” He paused the video where Marisa Iverson was getting shoved.

“She’d have to hide out after you worked on her. She could call in sick for a couple of days, stay away from her house. But if they want to go through with scoring the merchant a second time, they’ll want her back in play. If they’re worried about you fouling the deal, they’ll have to move on you first.” His gaze roved across the TV screen. “She’s got to be fucking the manager of the shop.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because it makes sense.” Jonah rewound, hit play, and pointed out the manager. A puffy guy in his mid-fifties with a bad toupee who stood around looking mildly irritated the entire time the heist was going down. “She’s the insider for the crew and he’s the inside man for her. Feeding her information on when the diamonds are due, what the safe combination is, all that. He’s probably married to a cow and nailing this piece on the sly. Look at him. He only gets upset when the crew pretends to rough her up. He thinks he’s in love with her. She’s driven him out of his head.”

Chase hadn’t considered the possibility of a second inside person. He hadn’t been able to get into the head of a lonely, middle-aged white-collar guy.

He thought about Marisa Iverson moving in his arms, forcing her blood-smeared mouth against his. The manager, yeah, he’d enjoy that taste.

“I see it now,” Chase said.

Jonah leaned over and tapped the TV screen.

“You can tell. Everything in his life is an annoyance except for when he’s in bed with her. She takes him to a whole new place, and he’s desperate for that feeling now. He never wants to go back to what he was before. The straight citizens, most of them are so bored they want to snuff themselves.” Chase looked at the manager being annoyed, wanting out, barely able to contain himself with Marisa in the same room. “The cops will work on him, but right now he thinks he’ll go to the pen before he gives her up. Never underestimate the desperation of a man who has everything.”

The manager would be a liability now. She’d have to get back into play and deal with him. “He’s going to want to run with her.”

“They’ll cap him this time, on their way out, before he spills to the police. If the crew wants that second score they’ve got to go in fast. But they can’t move quick because of you. They know you’re watching, and since you were stupid enough to tell them where you lived, and they were stupid enough to wait, that means they’re watching you.”

His grandfather was right, Chase had been stupid. He’d been so caught up in his own grief and anger that he figured they might want to come at him the same way he wanted to go at them. Head to head. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might be more subtle and monitor him for days.

“You think they’re somewhere nearby this minute?” he asked.

“Sure,” Jonah said. “They should’ve punched your ticket already but they think you’re on to them, baiting a trap. They believe you’re a pro because you got this close. By now they’ve aced one of your neighbors and have somebody installed.”

A crew that
would murder a civilian in his own living room, just to keep an eye on somebody. Maybe the driver wasn’t the only wild dog. Marisa Iverson was at least a little crazy, going through what she had for the sake of the driver, who’d popped a cop. Chase had been thinking too positively. He wasn’t going to get the driver without taking them all down.

He glanced at Jonah, who was staring back at him.

“You didn’t think anybody else might get hurt in this fight of yours?” his grandfather asked.

Chase said nothing.

They moved to the front window together and peered through the blinds. Jonah pointed across the street on the diagonal. “Who lives there?”

Sarah Corvis and her kids. They’d sent over a roast after Lila’s funeral. “A middle-aged woman, has a teenage son and daughter.”

“Too many to take out and keep quiet.” Jonah pointed to the house opposite it. “There?”

The Wagner family. The children had brought over a card. “Husband, wife, three children grade-school age.”

“No.” Now, pointing down the block the other way, again diagonally from Chase’s house. “And there?”

Mrs. Nicholson and Freddy. Freddy would sometimes walk to the very bottom of the lawn and watch Chase tune the car, but he’d never come any closer than that. “Elderly lady, seventy, seventy-five. Has a mentally handicapped son who’s maybe fifty. They’re shut-ins, live on government checks, have their groceries delivered. They have lots of cats.”

“Call her.”

Chase got out the phone book and dialed the number. He let it ring ten times and hung up. He swallowed thickly, thinking of the poor woman, in her kitchen, Freddy in the bedroom, the cats going hungry. “No answer.”

“They’re dead.”

He didn’t waver or tremble, but inside he fell in a heap and the hatred bloomed further, for the crew and himself, and he was screaming.

The volume inside his skull was turned way up. He had trouble hearing his grandfather.

“When it gets dark we’ll go over there for a visit,” Jonah was saying. “Pack up your shit because we’re leaving here. We’ll get another place up near the diamond merchant.”

He held out his arm and Angie immediately slid next to him. He toyed with her hair and she plucked at his fingers, as if they’d practiced the action many times before, like a dance neither one of them enjoyed anymore.

Jonah told Chase, “Stand watch for a few hours, we’re tired from the trip. You think you can handle it?”

Lila had liked Mrs. Nicholson and Freddy. She used to go over there and bring pies. She’d made the effort to be generous and sociable. Chase never had. He’d be out in the garage working the speed bag and Lila would come back from across the street with her breath smelling like peach cobbler and say, “No reason under God why such lovely people as them have got to be alone in the world. Living in a houseful of cat piss. That Freddy, he admires you.” After the funeral, Freddy had come a little farther up the driveway and waved.

Even Freddy had made the effort, and now he and his mother were dead because of what Chase had set in motion. The Jonah inside his head said, You didn’t think anybody else might get hurt in this fight of yours?

He’d be saying it forever.

Still putting Chase to the test, Jonah wanted to see how far he could push. He walked to the master bedroom and said, “We’ll take this one.”

“No,” Chase told him.

“You’re alone, you can take the smaller bed in the guest room.”

“No.”

Thinking now, So maybe this is where I get to shove that popgun .22 up his ass.

He looked at his grandfather and his grandfather looked at him, and they both stayed that way for a while until Angie pressed a hand tenderly to Jonah’s face and made him turn aside, then tugged him down the short hall to the guest room.

Jonah, who didn’t feel things like a regular man did, but somehow still acted like someone stung by an ungrateful child. Chase turned back to the window and stared at Mrs. Nicholson’s house, imagining the scene.

The crew wouldn’t let the driver go along because he was a wild card and might try to pop Chase without first checking him out thoroughly. So one of the others would be sent in, someone who liked to work quietly, maybe with a knife. He’d park up the road from Chase’s house, checking out his house and everybody on the block. Watch the kids play, the men cutting their lawns, the women heading off to work or shopping. See Mrs. Nicholson limp out onto her front stoop to get the mail or pay the paperboy. Contemplate Freddy standing out on the cement driveway doing nothing.

So he’d knock on the old lady’s door and say he was selling Bibles, keep a conversation going while he scanned her place, making sure she lived only with the retarded guy, except for all the cats. The stink of the cat piss would make his nose run. He’d look out her front window at Chase’s house and wonder what was going on in there, why Chase had fuckin’ invited the crew to come crush him. There had to be some kind of setup.

The old lady asking him, Aren’t you going to show me the Bibles?

What Bibles?

The gold-inlaid fine end-paper illustrated and annotated text Bibles that you’re selling.

Maybe knifing her right then. Or, not wanting to get any blood on himself, just strangling her, garotting her. It didn’t take much to snap the neck of an eighty-year-old woman with osteoporosis and light bone density.

Freddy letting out a perplexed and terrified shriek. Or maybe not, maybe just standing there unsure of what just happened. Going, Ma? Ma?

Standing there going, Mama? While the knife appeared. While it slid into his belly and the great overwhelming pain engulfed him, but still not great enough to drown out his fear for his mother. Ma?

Falling to his knees, then on his face, the cats scattering.

The killer calling his crew and using their little code, two rings, hang up, three rings, hang up. Whatever. Telling the boss, the schemer behind it all, I’m in.

Watching the house across the street, seeing Chase come and go. Now a van pulling up with an old man and a hot chippie with him, sliding into the garage. Watching the blinds part a little bit in the living room over there now, somebody staring back out at him.

Chase went for the cold spot and let it ice him down, the burning fury that threatened to consume his thoughts slowly being quelled until he could think again.

He stood watch, staring at the house for four hours. He heard Jonah and Angie in the guest room going at it. Maybe not so tired from the trip, after all.

Chase remembered being thirteen, and Jonah holding the mostly empty pint of Dewar’s and introducing him to the cute and less-cute girls named Lou. His grandfather had stolen the one Chase wanted to be with simply because he could. It had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power, which reminded him of Marisa Iverson and why Chase had called Jonah in the first place.

They were two of a kind. He’d been right. He needed Jonah.

Chase stood at his front window staring into the evening as it became night, wanting to kill someone.