She spilled what she knew about Dex, which wasn't much despite the fact that she drifted in and out among his boys, the way she did Boze's crew. She was one of several girls who revolved around the Sarasota circuit. They called her a greeter. She made the pros coming in from out of town comfortable. She'd been on hand when Lamberson came in. She called him the prostate guy.
“That's all he talked about. How he had to go in once a week for radiation. He thought his dick was being burned off. Said his father died from cancer and he figured it was his turn now.”
“Can you get me in to see Dex?”
“He always moves the meets. I haven't heard a word from anybody on his string for a couple of weeks. They hardly ever need a girl around. When they do, I show up and sometimes there's other chicks too, sometimes not. It's not quite as sleazy as it sounds. Those guys, they don't like whores much because a streetwalker doesn't know the rules. She's not really part of the bent life, and she's likely to give up what little she knows about somebody if she gets dragged in on a vice rap or a drug charge. The strings like girls in the life who know about grifting and scores and won't ever open their mouths unless they're told to. They like a little company just so they can talk about their jail time and their biggest heists. Most of them don't even want to screw around. They want someone to ooh and ahh, make them a sandwich.”
“You don't have a number for him?”
“No, not Dex. But one of his string. Guy named Russ Declan.”
“Call him and find out what you can.”
Hildy shook her head. “That's not how it's done. If I call him, he'll suspect a setup right from go. It's easy to disappear forever in a state that has almost twelve hundred miles of coast.”
All that coastline but Milly and Little Walt had been dropped in a lagoon. What did that say?
“Give me his number,” Chase told her. “I'll call. I'll say I got it from Lamberson and I want in on the job.”
“Lamberson wouldn't know it.”
“That doesn't matter. He'll have to tell Dex that I know about the job. Dex will have to reel me in and check me out anyway. I just need to get inside.”
“Once you're in they might just cap you.”
“Not until they talk to me to find out what I know.”
“Then you'll give me up.”
He looked at her and said, “No.”
She stared into his face for a while. She brought her lips to his, pressing and urging, but he was stone, as he thought he'd always be from now on, and eventually she gave up. “Your wife's dead.”
“What's the number?” he asked.
They slept late, lying there on top of the sheets with their clothes on, her hand on top of his chest. Hildy showered first and used most of the towels. Then he went in. The sexual tension had vanished. It was gone because she'd finally turned it off. She was smart enough not to keep wasting energy.
He called and tried to break into Dex's string. Chase spun his story about getting the number from Lamberson and hearing about a big score cooking. For added credibility he threw in Sloane's name. Russ Declan was friendly and talkative and eager to meet. He mentioned a bar that Chase had passed a few times.
They'd have to check him out now to see if they had a leak and if the score was blown. Chase figured he'd immediately be ushered to where Dex's crew was holed up because everybody involved would want to get a look at him and see if he was wired. They'd make nice for a while, play some cards, drink some beers, try to squirrel info, and if he wasn't forthcoming enough they'd shatter his kneecaps.
Chase took Hildy out for breakfast. Over French toast and hash browns he said, “Tell me about Russ.”
“He's like me kinda, on the edge of the circle. A little jittery sometimes because he used to be a trucker and he picked up a taste for speed. He used to live on it during the long hauls. He likes to be behind a wheel. Not getaway stuff, but just long drives, up and down the Intracoastal, to the Keys and back again.”
“But he's in on the heists?”
“He's muscle. Preferred weapon is a twelve-gauge. Covers crowds, keeps anybody from being a hero during bank jobs.” She drank her milk and said, “This is sour. Is your milk sour?”
“No.”
“Try it.”
“I have tried it.”
“And it's not sour?”
“No.”
“You hardly sipped yours.”
“Order another.”
“I don't want another if it's going to be sour.”
“Get orange juice then!”
She did, and more hash browns, toast, and another side of bacon. He liked watching her pack it away. Lila had loved to eat too.
“Any idea what the score is?”
“A circus,” she said.
Chase took an extra second to see if he'd heard her right. “What?”
“This traveling carnival- circus comes through. Calloway & Dark's Traveling Fair and Sideshow of Wonders. They're still popular around here, the old- fashioned carnivals. Touring all through the South.”
Chase remembered just how fucked up names could get down here. He'd met Lila while on a string with three guys who planned on robbing Bookatee's Antiques & Rustic Curio Emporium. Later on, he'd bought Lila's wedding ring from Bookatee himself.
The rage wanted to crawl up his spine again. He thought of armed men running into a circus tent filled with kids holding balloons and cotton candy. One shot and the horses and elephants stampede, stomping folks underfoot and knocking over the bandstands, crushing dozens. He saw Jonah drawing a bead on midgets and dancing poodles.
But it would be a cash- only venue. Probably no real security. Tickets and cash boxes, bored teenagers and carny hawkers working the crowd. It seemed a little stupid and not all that big a score to call in so many pros, but maybe there was more to it than Chase was thinking. Compared to knocking over a traveling fair, the dress heist sounded a lot smarter.
“I don't suppose you're going to drive for Boze anymore now, are you?” Hildy said.
“They don't need a driver.”
“They think they do.”
“That's part of their problem. They think too much and not enough.”
She nodded at that, turning it over. He wondered if she was in love with Mackie or Boze or anybody else. The fact that she wandered through the crews didn't mean she didn't have her heart set on someone.
Like most women in the life she had a hard- line worldliness fused with a kind of naive romanticism. Cynical but fanciful, the two never balancing out, always working against each other. No one would ever be able to earn her love. She wouldn't want it that way. In the bent life you only took what you could steal.
They finished their meal and Chase paid. Hildy moved to him again, leaning forward on her toes, as if she might try to kiss him, and he found himself edging toward her, as if to receive her in his arms, except his arms were tight at his sides.
She twirled aside and said, “Can you drop me off?”
“You didn't drive to the motel?”
“No, I took a cab.”
It went against all the rules, taking taxis and leaving a record of your movements. “Where's the Merc?”
“We had to ditch it.”
Chase led her outside and they climbed into the GTO. She said, “You don't have a gun.”
“I don't like guns.”
She pulled a Smith & Wesson .38 out of her handbag. “Here.”
“What are you doing with that?”
“What do you think?”
“You didn't have it the other day when I checked your purse.”
“If I had, maybe you wouldn't have been able to check my purse.”
“But last night I told you—”
“You don't have to like it, just use it. You think too much and not enough too.”
“You keep it. Your friend Russ will just snatch it from me when I show up. Or it'll spook him and he'll be edgy enough to draw down on me before I've had a chance to meet Dex. I don't need it.�
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She shook her head and said, “Are you for real or what? How have you lived so long?”
He was almost back in the groove. When he saw Jonah again, the old man would be palming a .22 down against his leg for a quick draw and pop. Chase would snatch it away and stick it in his grandfather's eye and say, How could you do it, you prick? How could you snuff a kid? Where's Kylie? The old man would stare at him, as inured and implacable as an ancient altar where hundreds had been split open by stone knives. Chase was eager to find out what would happen next.
His cell rang before he even started the car. The Deuce told him, “Jackie Langan just got aced in Vegas. One between the eyes while he was sleeping in bed.”
Chase snapped his phone shut and knew Bishop would be coming.
Looking at his face, Hildy said, “Jeez, even more bad news?”
“Nothing I didn't already know about.”
“Most people, they know about trouble, they step out of the way. You walk in front of it.”
“Yeah, you might be right about that, but I have my reasons for doing what I do, same as you.”
She gave a practiced titter, the kind of thing drunk businessmen might like to hear. “Sometimes you sound as stupid as Tons.”
“Oh man, that's just low.”
Halfway across town they picked up a tail. A Ford Taurus, hanging back about fifty yards but being fairly aggressive, jockeying to stay in position. The roads were packed with surfer dudes hanging out of Jeeps, boards and coolers on show everywhere. The Taurus almost clipped some shaggy- headed golden boys in a crosswalk. Worried that Chase would notice, the driver fell back for a while. Chase made a sharp left.
“Where are you going?” Hildy asked. “You were supposed to take a right there.”
He glanced at her again and thought about his promise to her. “I know. Hold on.”
“Hold on? What kind of talk is that, hold on? Keep your eyes on the road, would you? Are you going to explain the ‘hold on,’ or what?”
The Taurus kept with them as Chase took occasional turns, running plans through his head and discarding them one after the other until his mind was made up for him. An old Dodge pickup burning a lot of oil crossed lanes in front of him, got directly ahead and started leading the Goat along, blowing clouds of blue smoke. Behind, the Taurus closed in doing its best to stick tight without really tailgating him. They started to box him in.
For a minute Chase thought it might be the Langan crew having caught up much faster than he'd expected. But he decided Sherry and Bishop just wouldn't play it this way. They wouldn't hire out to hit him twice in a row. The next time the Langans came at Chase, Bishop would come on his own and Sherry would be in the room, trying to get a look into Chase's dying eyes.
It could just be another cheap scam. Guy in front hits his brakes, you crack into him, and then the guy in back speeds up to smash into your car. First guy takes off leaving you to pay out of pocket to avoid the cops or insurance hassles. It happened on American highways a hundred times a day.
Hildy perked in her seat, checking the side mirror. “So this is hold on, huh? You got clowns behind you.”
“And in front. Either of them Russ or Dex?”
She looked ahead, saw the Dodge braking for no reason. “I don't think so. How would they know you? It's an insurance scam.”
“I thought so too at first, but they're boxing me in too tight.”
“But we're barely doing forty. Maybe they're just really bad at the swindle.”
“Nah, they definitely want to pin us.”
“They want to pin you. I'm not the one who goes around looking for trouble. You ready for the .38 now?”
“Buckle up,” he told her.
“Oh shit. Jesus Christ, you could've had me if you'd wanted me, there's no need to show off now. What are you going to do?”
Chase said, “Put out his lights.”
“Isn't that like crashing?”
“A little.”
The wide street was empty. He sped up and nosed the Dodge in the rear. He could push the GTO and put some real muscle into this race, do a lot of body damage, maybe crack the others up, but he wasn't in the mood to run these assholes around for a while. Chase had things he had to do.
The driver in the pickup was talking on his cell. Chase checked the rearview and saw the driver of the Taurus talking animatedly too. Jesus Christ, they were actually on the phone to each other, probably doing a countdown.
Pulling a gamble like this meant they wanted him out of the car. So he'd get out.
He slammed the brakes and the Taurus plowed into him from behind. The Goat rocked hard, but you had to love classic Detroit steel. Serious grillwork, solid as all- hell bumpers. Hildy barely bounced in her seat.
But a little tap like that and the Taurus's headlights exploded and its front end crumpled. The hood lock detached and the hood sprang open. The driver slammed on the brakes and the car slewed over the curb and tapped a fire hydrant.
The Dodge pickup slowed but didn't stop. It roared off as Chase watched it, the blue smoke dwindling in the sunshine.
Chase said, “Stay here.”
“Where else am I gonna go?”
He threw the Goat into park, leaped out, and ran to the Taurus. He got the driver's door open while the guy behind the wheel wrestled with the inflated air bag. They fill hard and fast and explode into your face so that it's like a punch in the nose. The driver was dazed. Chase grabbed the guy by the collar and yanked him out of the car, threw him down in the street and kicked him twice in the stomach.
Okay, so it wasn't an insurance scam, wasn't Russ, wasn't Bishop, wasn't Mackie or Tons, and it wasn't Jonah. That left only one person Chase could think of.
You Kel Clarke?” he asked.
Chase got his first good look at the guy. He was young, even younger than Chase. Maybe twenty-one, still had crummy skin. Skinny, only needed to shave once a month tops, almost effeminate, with a lot of wild James Dean hair that smelled of fruity shampoo and spray. His nose was bleeding from the air bag.
He tried to roll to his feet and Chase slugged him in the chest. The kid's sternum rang like a bell and he let out a squawk of pain. Chase frisked him. The mook wore a deep concealment Kel- Tec P32 clipped to his belt and he kept trying to reach for it. As small as a dollar bill, the frame clip made it look like nothing more than a folding knife. Another sneaky fucker. Chase slapped the kid's hands aside and snatched the tiny gun away.
You had to love Sarasota for one thing besides the bikinis. Broad daylight, buildings all over the place, traffic at the cross street ahead, but everybody minded their business. When you lived on the beach and always picnicked with your kids, you had even less cause to get in someone else's face.
“I asked you a question. Who are you?” Chase said.
“Like you don't know?”
“Like I don't know. Are you Clarke?”
“Yeah.”
“You ran with Earl and Ellie Raymond.”
“That's right.”
Clarke tried to stand and Chase put his foot on the guy's chest. “Just sit there.”
“Come on, man, in the street? The cops might show up.”
“Then talk fast. Who was in the pickup?”
“Nobody.”
Chase pulled one other name that he remembered from the guys who had crewed up with the Raymonds. “Jason … Fleischer?”
“No, someone else I work with on occasion.”
“Okay. So what do you want?”
It seemed to confuse him. “What do I want?”
“My very words. What do you want?”
“What you mean what do I want? What do you think I want? You wiped out my whole crew. I want you dead.”
It took Chase back a little. “Why?”
“You're asking me why?”
“Were you that close with them?”
“No. We only pulled a couple of scores together. Come on, let me get up.”
“Stay there. Did you get your
cut from that diamond heist?”
“Some of it anyway.”
“So why come looking for trouble?”
“I thought you were after me too. I wasn't about to sit around and wait for you to come find me. Not after what happened in Newark. Not after what you did to them. That motel looked like fucking Beirut. You drove a car through a wall and ran over Slip in his goddamn bed!”
“That's not what happened.”
Chase did drive through a wall, but Slip and the others hadn't been crushed. The room was small but large enough for two double beds, with a nightstand between them. Earl Raymond had been behind the bed farthest away, his sister Ellie between the two, Slip Jenson closest to Chase so he was the one Chase popped first even though he didn't have anything against the guy.
“However it went down,” Clarke said, “you racked them up pretty good. Bodies in there, bodies next door in the other room. I did some checking. The old man killed his own woman. She was what? Twenty? Twenty- two?”
Not even. “How do you know that?”
“Like I said, I asked around. I called in favors on the circuit. I found out about you and the old man. You're vicious. You don't stop. You're maniacs.”
Clarke was one of those guys who couldn't keep anything bottled inside him. He liked to talk, let you know what was on his mind. He'd worry about the consequences later, maybe have to go out and find somebody who had listened to him too closely and plug the leak. But he liked getting it all out of his system in a rush.
“I barely remembered your name. Earl pulled the trigger on my wife. You were there in the diamond merchant's shop that day. You saw what happened. All I ever wanted was him.”
“You still killed Ellie and Slip too.”
“I told them what would happen,” Chase said. “I gave them a chance to give up the driver. They didn't take it.”
“Why should I believe you?” Clarke asked.
“Why shouldn't you? I never made a move against you.”
“Maybe you were just working your way up to it.”
“You've got an inflated sense of your self- worth, kid. If I wanted you dead, I wouldn't be standing around trying to convince you otherwise.”
The Coldest Mile Page 17