The Coldest Mile

by Tom Piccirilli

  “Thanks, anyway,” Chase said.

  “I'm Betty Lynn.”

  “Thanks anyway, Betty Lynn.”

  “What's your name?”

  “I don't have one anymore.”

  “Whatever you say, sweetness,” she said, and Chase turned his eyes on her and stared, suddenly full of hate, in pain at her use of Lila's word of affection, until Betty Lynn's bitter mouth softened and widened as she sipped air, gasping before his unveiled rage, and she hurried behind the counter and hid in the back room.

  Chase got undressed and tossed his pants over the chair closest to the door. His wallet was in the front right pocket, a little thin with only two hundred bucks in twenties. It should be enough. Along with the money, he'd left the false ID he'd used at the Langans, the credit card in the fake name. He double- checked the five grand in his gym bag, reassured that the other forty g's he had left after paying Deuce were secreted in the driver's door panel of the Goat. Then he slid the bag under the bed.

  He took a shower and checked himself in the mirror. The shoulder wound was finally healing up, thanks to Cessy's stitch work and the meds he'd bought from her. His fingers hurt like hell, but it wasn't the same gnawing, throbbing discomfort as before, and he thought he might be able to take the tape off in another couple days.

  Still, he felt slightly feverish, the heat clambering up his back and settling deep where Betty Lynn had been rubbing his neck. He popped two more antibiotics and climbed into bed.

  In the dream, his dead parents stood in their bedroom, facing away from him, talking and laughing a little under their breath. The noise of a television murmured distantly, the wild screams and roars of cartoon characters pounding against the walls. Someone called his name and Chase moved toward it through the house he'd lived in as a child.

  The halls were longer than he remembered. Distorted by memory or nightmare, it didn't much matter. It took him a long time to reach the living room where the TV rampaged with color and sound. He turned it off.

  His unborn sibling, looking a little older now, with a shag of golden hair, sat on a love- seat, side by side with Chase himself as a boy.

  He thought, Finally, I get to see myself. I get to ask myself, What the hell really happened toward the end there? Help me piece it together. Maybe you saw something and don't even realize what it was. Tell me. We can figure it out together.

  He opened his mouth to speak but again nothing would come. Nothing ever did. But he kept trying.

  He moved toward himself and saw that he was dead. It came as a slight shock, a part of himself knowing this was a dream and in dreams when you saw yourself dead—well, it wasn't a good thing. A psychiatrist would have a fucking ball taking these nightmares apart, scribbling notes, writing articles that would put him on the map. Chase in a white room, guys with Viennese accents asking him if he wanted to kill his father, sleep with his mother.

  This wasn't helping him much so Chase tried to back out of the room, but before he could make a move his sibling gripped him by the wrist. The human contact made Chase freeze where he was.

  The curtains drifted open. The backyard needed raking. Looked like autumn. His mother would be dead soon, a bullet in her head. His father would snuff himself right after the record for the second-coldest winter in New York history was broken.

  Angie, Jonah's much younger woman, who'd tried to take him out and had failed like a lot of other people and wound up as dead as the others, crouched behind the television with her eyes red from eight- ball hemorrhaging.

  Chase actually jumped back a tad, spooked to see her there. She was staring at him and whispering.

  He wanted to say, Go on, out with it.

  But she drew away, her voice rising but the words still unclear. She covered her face with her hands and hissed.

  Someone walked up behind Chase. His sibling tried to warn him, held its hands up and hopped off the love- seat. Chase as a corpse boy flopped over on his blue face. It was a spooky sight but somehow comforting as well, thinking that here he was, murdered along with the rest of his family.

  Powerful arms grabbed him from behind. An angel on the left forearm and a devil on the right, both in midflight with drawn flaming swords.

  Under the angel, the names Sandra, Mary, and Michael.

  Jonah's mother, his wife and his son, Chase's father.

  Under the devil, peering through a pitchfork: Joshua. Jonah's father.

  And beneath that, not a tattoo but a scar that had gotten infected and was still mottled white and pink.

  Chase's name.

  He was surprised to hear his own voice now, asking the old man behind him, “Did you kill my mother?”

  Jesus, the Viennese docs would straitjacket his ass and toss him in a dark cell, throw one of those masks on him so he couldn't bite anybody.

  Jonah's grip tightened, and then tightened further, the immense strength of his grandfather encircling him, crushing him, but somehow protecting him.

  His sibling rushed at him, got right in his face, as Jonah's breath ignited the back of Chase's skull, and the kid said, You're sicker than you think.

  Chase tried to respond but he'd bitten off his tongue.

  * * *

  The door to the motel room eased open. Someone kept the hinges nice and oiled. Betty Lynn slipped in and started rooting through his pockets. A thin shaft of light from the corridor glinted off something in her hand. Looked like a straight razor. It was a shitty weapon but the white trash loved it for some reason. Either she was coming in on the sly or she really had no pimp, was teamed with Durrell, the two of them playing games like this every so often to keep them in the meth. They should've just learned to make the shit, for fifty bucks in household products and gasoline they could stay high until their hearts gave out in a year, eighteen months.

  She found Chase's wallet and couldn't contain herself from letting out a small grunt of dissatisfaction as she lifted the cash. Good. It prompted her to take the credit card as well.

  She took another step forward and considered crossing the room. If she got any closer, things might get disagreeable. She wavered another moment and finally left, not even caring enough to relock the door with the spare key the kid at the desk had provided her.

  Her pimp or Durrell would use the credit card. It might throw off Sherry Langan and Bishop for a couple days when they turned their attention from syndicate- related troubles and came after him.

  Chase slugged his pillow and slept.

  In the morning Chase called Georgie Murphy in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was time to get a tighter line on Jonah. Chase would be in Florida by evening

  Georgie ran a car dealership, fenced merchandise, and ran messages back and forth for career criminals all over the country. He'd inherited the business from his now deceased father, who'd been a drop for decades.

  “I need to get in touch with Jonah,” Chase told him.

  “He had some trouble with his back,” Georgie said. “Needed to find a chiropractor in New York to help straighten him out. You know how tricky that can be. Sciatica.”

  Georgie used code whenever he could, thinking the feebs might have him tapped. The code wasn't especially difficult to crack, so who gave a shit? If the feds were working a case, this kind of info would be the least of Georgie's troubles.

  “I know. That was almost two months ago. I need a line on him now.”

  “It's the last I heard.”

  “Someone said he was in Sarasota.”

  “I can check with a couple of guys.”

  “Do it. See if maybe he met another, ah, chiropractor”—Chase had to pull away from the phone and shake his head—“to help him with his therapy. Named Dex.”

  “I'll check his references.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And, there's something else. Your granddad … listen, I have to tell you—” Georgie was having trouble figuring out a way to say whatever he wanted to say with his stupid- ass code.

  “Just fucking say it.”
/>   “Not too many people like him.”

  “No,” Chase said, “neither do I.”

  “You heard he left a certain person behind when things went sour in Aspen on a job a couple months ago?”

  That would be Lorelli. Jonah had left him behind dead when they'd tried to score a gated community, and the whole thing had gotten botched. “I heard.”

  “Some of that person's friends might be looking to—”

  “Tell them from me that they shouldn't try. I knew Lorelli. He was all right, but he's not worth dying for.”

  “You still stand up for him, huh? The old man.”

  “Is that what you're hearing?”

  “No, no, I suppose not,” Georgie said. “But with his sciatica problems—”

  “Get back to me soon as you can. And, Georgie, seriously, one more thing. Drop the bullshit code, you sound like a stammering asshole.”

  Chase headed for the back exit but Durrell was standing there, smoking. Chase couldn't tell whether it was a cigarette, a joint, or a meth pipe, but Durrell was suddenly extremely antsy, trying to play it friendly but acting a little too crazed. “Hey, checking out?”

  “Not checking out, Durrell, just going for some breakfast. Be back in half an hour.”

  “I think you ought to pay your bill first, and settle up.”

  “I've stayed in a thousand shit motels like this one, Durrell, I know how to come and go, all right?”

  Chase almost booked past him, but it felt too much like running, and he wanted to avoid a confrontation. Besides, he was parked out front and would have to walk all the way around the damn place to get there. Since he'd been trying to slip out unnoticed, there was no point in playing coy anymore. Chase turned and headed up the corridor in the opposite direction, toward the front counter.

  Durrell bopped up behind him, no longer smiling, hovering too close like he wanted to put his hands on Chase but was afraid to do so. Trying to escort him along, keep him from leaving. It was weird and Chase just didn't get it.

  “Look, Durrell,” Chase said, “I've already had a bad night, okay? You and—and—”

  For a second he couldn't remember the girl's name and almost said Sherry Lynn.

  Sherry Langan was weighing on his mind, he had to focus.

  “—Betty Lynn boosted me for two c's, that should make you happy. Don't push it.”

  “I have no idea what you're talking about, sir.”

  Chase liked the afterthought “sir,” like that made everything better. This kid was going to scam the wrong person one of these days and this motel would become a slaughterhouse. “You need to rehab, that shit is making you way too sloppy.”

  They hit the front counter together, Durrell still doing the dancing no- touch body- block thing, his awful breath wafting into Chase's face. The stink of rotting teeth was so powerful that it made Chase cough.

  “Sir, I really do think you should settle.”

  Chase nearly smacked Durrell just to get the punk off him. “Settle, huh? Is that what you call it?”

  Betty Lynn and her pimp walked in from the back room. Chase rubbed his forehead. It was clammy to the touch and his front curls were damp with sweat. He thought of the dream where his unborn sibling had told him that he was sicker than he thought. Chase wondered if it might be true.

  Now this setup made sense, all that bopping and weaving Durrell had been doing. The pimp had probably told him not to let Chase leave yet. Why? Betty Lynn had gone through his wallet, they could see he had no other cash or credit cards on him. Was it the car? Chase looked out the front window to see if they'd fucked with the Goat at all, but from here he couldn't tell. Maybe they'd gone through the glove box and seen there weren't any papers. Fig ured he was on the run and they could squeeze him for something more.

  On second glance Chase decided, no, the guy wasn't a pimp, just her twentysomething boyfriend pretending to be worldly and tough. He had some meat on him, big through the chest and shoulders but with sagging jowls. Looked like a fallen football hero from the same high school, got hooked on the same shit, and was degrading at about the same rate. His face was also scarred and pitted from the meth sores and scratching. Why anybody fucked with this drug was beyond Chase's understanding.

  “That's him,” Betty Lynn said.

  Chase looked around. Weren't there any other guests in this place? Or was he really the only one taking advantage of all this innate charm and Southern hospitality at the Winston- Salem Motor Court?

  The boyfriend stomped up. Chase took the initiative and said, “What's your name?”

  It took the mutt off guard. “Huh?”

  “Your name. What's your name?”

  The guy didn't know what to say. He blinked at Chase.

  “You don't know your name?”

  “Of course I know my damn name. Augie.”

  “Okay, now we're getting somewhere. What do you want, Augie? What do you want from me?”

  Augie didn't respond. He was too busy trying to resettle himself, get dug back in, play the hard- ass. Chase thought, It must be me. I do something to lure them to me.

  Betty Lynn moved around the counter and said, “We want money. What else would you think we'd want, sweetie?”

  “You stole all my money.”

  “I was right. You were awake. You were watching me. I knew it. But you didn't say anythin’. Now why is that?”

  “You planted the cash,” Augie said. “You're so loaded you don't even care that she took a hundred dollars off you.”

  “She took two hundred,” Chase told him. “She's holding out on you. But hey, she lies to everybody. She told me she liked my lonely eyes. And I do care, I just don't care enough. I have other troubles on my mind.”

  Augie squared his shoulders and tightened his fists, trying to get the veins pumped on his forearms. It wasn't working. “I'm going to give you even more.”

  “You've got a lot of problems yourself, man. You want to add to them?”

  Chase thought, I can pull the switchblade. I can stomp his foot and drop him. Or I can work out some of the kinks and get ready for the upcoming show.

  He swung the gym bag around his good shoulder and said, “You any good?”

  “What?”

  “Augie, listen. Focus here, son.” Snapping his fingers under Augie's nose. “You any good? You had any training? I don't want to waste my time, I've got miles to make today. You know how to fight or are you just big and rude?”

  Durrell felt the need to cover for his buddy. “He can fight. I seen him once knock a man down with one punch.”

  “And I was only half- trying,” Augie added.

  Chase said, “Yeah, but did the guy get back up and kick your ass?”

  As he often did, he figured that the real trouble would lie with the woman, who seemed a little sharper than these mooks and probably still had the rusty straight razor on her.

  “You've only got one good hand,” Augie said. “How you gonna fight with—”

  Chase fired two sharp jabs into Augie's nose and dodged left so the spurting blood wouldn't splash him. He right hooked the mutt to the temple and then elbowed Durrell in the chest as the kid came running forward, his hands up in the wrong position, not even protecting himself. Durrell's breath blasted out of him as he went down and Chase almost broke into a coughing fit, from the stench back in the air. He spun and right hooked Augie to the temple again, enjoying the solid thunk of his knuckles smacking bone. Augie let out a sound like a dying camel and collapsed to his knees.

  With his back to Sherry Lynn—goddamn it, with his back to Betty Lynn—Chase hoped she'd draw the razor and try to use it. He presented the target and waited for her to take the chance.

  But she didn't. He wheeled and she was standing there, trembling but with a weird, knowing grin. She was hugging herself and he saw the fresh fingernail scratches bleeding down her arms.

  She said, “Take me with you.”

  “Christ no.”

  “Please, I'll be good
to you, I'll make you feel good, I promise. I can do things that—”

  The cold sweat poured off him as he made it out the door. He almost smiled for a moment until he thought, This was just stupid. This wasn't getting ready for Jonah. This didn't prove anything except you're scared.

  He'd taken down the crew that had killed his wife. He'd been shot to shreds and managed to come through. He'd watched a man get gutted a couple weeks ago. He'd brawled with an ace shooter. And now he was going to let a fucking Augie get under his skin?

  No cool, no calm.

  Once in the Goat he peeled out of the parking lot, trying to let the machine steady his nerves and work its power into his guts, waiting for the thrum of the engine to quiet his mind, but after a hundred miles he was still thinking of Betty Lynn's grin, wondering what it was she knew about him that he still hadn't realized himself.

  The world darkened to that blinding Southern ruby red by noon, and the temperature topped a hundred and two. One thing Chase hadn't checked in the Goat before hitting the road in Jersey was whether the air- conditioning worked. It was a stupid mistake and he suffered for it the entire morning and into afternoon.

  He decided not to push himself and found a higher- class hotel in north Florida. Untaped the fingers and flexed them, thinking it might be all right to leave them free now, at least for a while. Ordered room service, used the pool and the workout room, did some easy weights. The left hand held out. Stayed in the steam bath until exhaustion set in and it felt like he'd burned some of the poison out. He didn't want to dream tonight.

  Settled into bed and started watching a bang-'em-up action flick on cable while he waited for sleep. He was out cold before the opening credits finished rolling.

  The next morning Chase popped the plates off a nearby vehicle and switched them with the Jersey tags. He entered the city of Sarasota and was a little surprised that it was so quaint while still edging toward serious money.

  He'd figured it would be a surfer area, shoddy, a lot of punk kids on the street. But everywhere he looked he saw clean, gorgeous beaches, parks, and private clubs. Lots of families out together picnicking, plenty of laughter and music in the air. People were swimming, jogging, sitting at rec benches before barbecues. Huge mirrored condos lined the face of the bay. Piers leading out into private lagoons. Botanical gardens. Moored boats rocked in the marina. Palm trees lined the old downtown Main Street heavy with foot traffic moving in and out of the shops.