The Coldest Mile

by Tom Piccirilli

  Mackie, sitting there and taking the time to pause the DVD, wasn't so pissy- faced this time around. Maybe he'd finally decided he should be a little thankful that Chase had saved his life. Maybe he was just working up a new mad- on, getting ready to take another poke. You just couldn't tell. Chase was sore, but the action was still inside him, his fists still aching to flash out.

  Hildy said, “No. Nobody sounds familiar to me.”

  Boze grabbed the map and studied the list carefully, his mouth moving, breathing names, trying to see if any of them might be fake but maybe sounding like another name he might've heard.

  Now here came Tons. Chase didn't get any negative vibe off the tubby guy, who seemed to feel some obligation to Chase and actually looked eager to help. Smiling, wagging his half pinkie all over, first at Hildy and then at Chase. He started forward with a slack smile, but Mackie jumped to his feet and blocked him. Tons running into him and saying, “Hey.”

  You'd think, if you were going to sit around eating cheese curls, maybe you could dial down the attitude at least a little, but Mackie had to keep his front up.

  “Why should we help you?” he asked.

  “Because I saved your lives last night?”

  “Oh bullshit, you did not. Arno wasn't about to do anything. Not serious anyway.”

  “Looked serious enough to me.”

  Tons was still trying to move forward, and Mackie giving him a soft elbow in the guts every time he tried to step around him. The bag of cheese curls hit the floor and Tons backed up onto them, orange dust gusting up in the air. He held his belly. “Ow!”

  “You don't think a lot of guys would've lammed it?” Chase asked.

  “You were part of the crew!”

  “Then I still am. So help me out here.”

  “Oh fuck that.”

  “Ow!”

  Trying once more, knowing it was going to flop, Chase said, “You don't think Tons would've been any worse for wear if I hadn't come in when I did and driven him to the hospital?”

  Still trying to get past his foster brother, still getting elbowed in the stomach, Tony Tons was starting to look a little pissed. Puffs of cheese poofs rising around his ankles, turning his socks orange.

  “Tons can take care of himself.”

  “And you?”

  “I can take care of myself too.”

  “Ow! Quit it! My stomach!” Tons fell back onto the couch and went a little green, dry heaving, working his way up to tossing up all the munchies.

  Hildy went, “Oh brother, do you two really have to get into it again? Don't—”

  “Yes!” Mackie shouted.

  You could put up with a lot. You could handle arrogance and ignorance on their own, but together they could really crawl up your ass. Mackie stomped forward, leading with his chin. Chase grabbed the mook's bad arm and twisted it hard. Mackie dropped onto his knees, let out a squeal, and looked up in agony. Chase jabbed him twice in the face, flattening what was left of Mackie's already mashed nose. He spun to the left to avoid the spurting blood and let go. The guy folded up on the floor and started rolling around. Tons heaved on top of him, a fountain of bright orange splashing down.

  “Aw goddamn it, Tons!”

  Chase turned his head. Boze glanced down and got that faraway look again, like he was finally making a decision to go solo.

  “I didn't leave you boys out to dry,” Chase said, “don't do it to me.”

  “He's right,” Hildy said. “He helped out when he didn't have to. If you know anything, tell him.” She glanced at Mackie and said, “Oh jeez, I can't look.”

  Boze looked at the list. “Only one. Phil Revereson. They call him Reverend. Part of his grift is working the holy rollers. When he needs a little cash he checks out a church in one of the rich parishes, hangs around the parking lot Sunday mornings, then follows some blue- haired biddy in her Rolls Royce back to her house and knocks on her door pretending to be a missionary. Spends a couple of hours drinking tea and tweaking a few grand out of her, says he's going to bring God to the heathen pygmy tribes in South America. Sometimes he hires black midgets and says they're converts.”

  “How do I get in touch with him?”

  “I don't have any idea. He drifts around the Intracoastal.”

  “Dex will know,” Hildy said.

  “I can't talk to Dex.”

  She looked deep into him, gave him that smirk again. Knowing what the trouble was already, without him having to say anything more. “You were only there a couple of hours. He pissed at you too?”

  “Yeah. So this Reverend. Would Arno know him?”

  “Not his crowd, he's all about X and whoring and jewelry, buddying up to the wiseguys, playing king of the hill for his little friends. Nobody else I've ever worked scores with would know.”

  “Except for Dex,” Hildy said. “Shit, I'm going to have to go mop the goddamn floor, aren't I?”

  Mackie still rolling. Tons about ready to cry, ashamed of barfing, hiding his face in his hands. Hildy, young but already settling in with second-raters, walked into the bathroom and started hunting up some rags and foaming cleaners.

  Catching Boze's eye, Chase said, “You and she would be a lot better off on your own.”

  “Yeah, but what the hell can I do? These other assholes, they're my family.”

  Family. The word held an almost mythical meaning. Blood was important. Everybody dead so loud in his dreams, always talking, whispering, going out of their way to wrestle his attention. And yet as Chase got in the Goat, chirped away from the curb and sped through a yellow light, accelerating as the sun poured into him through the open window, his grandfather remained beside him silent and intractable.

  They passed a poster in a bank window. Calloway & Dark's Traveling Fair and Sideshow of Wonders.

  Chase told Jonah about the Reverend still being around. Jonah said, “It doesn't mean anything. We don't know if Clarke is hooked up with him.”

  “You're right, but who gives a shit. Let's move on it anyway. Call Dex.”

  “No. We open ourselves up like that and he'll try to make a deal with Clarke first, sell us out for an ambush.”

  “Only if Clarke has cash.”

  “Maybe he does.”

  “The clock is ticking here,” Chase said. “Kylie's been gone for what? Two, three weeks now? You think Clarke is feeding her regularly, changing her diapers?”

  “She's potty- trained.”

  The old man actually using the word, potty. It made Chase turn away, the kind of thing you do when you're not sure if you want to laugh or cry or hurl a fucking chair through a plate- glass window.

  “He made a run at me with your daughter in the backseat.”

  “But you're not sure about that.”

  No, he wasn't. He hadn't seen the girl, just the top of what could have been a car seat. And if it was, it might not have even been hers.

  “He aced a little boy,” Chase said.

  “He won't hurt her. It's all he has over me.”

  “What makes you think he needs anything over you at all?”

  “Fleischer flopped the hit. Clarke never made contact with me. He botched the contact with you. That means he's waiting to take another run at our backs. If he's as scared as you say he is, he'll be hunting us down. He might get to us before we get to him. And that would save us time.”

  Even now, when other fathers would've been breaking down, doubled over, on their knees, praying for the safety of their children, Jonah was still only thinking of himself. Chase couldn't even find the energy to hate the bastard anymore because he realized with a great understanding that Jonah was incapable of giving or being anything else.

  “Call Dex.”

  And again, with a greater resolution than Chase had probably ever felt about anything in his life, the old man said, “No.”

  “Okay.”

  What the fuck.

  Jonah, always iron, adamant, and invulnerable, but still capable of making mistakes.

  C
hase stomped the gas pedal, loving the im mediate response of the engine, the steel around him bending to his will. The hum in his head as they went from forty to eighty in four seconds. He slammed the brakes and jerked the wheel left.

  Jonah put his arms out, but it did no good as he shot forward and cracked his forehead first against the dashboard and then against the passenger window. The bloodstained glass cracked into a colorless kaleidoscope and the old man fell back in the seat semiconscious, pawing at the door handle.

  Ruthless, fearsome, merciless, and unyielding, the prick still should've put his seat belt on.

  Gunning it again, Chase made a quick turn into a movie- theater parking lot. He watched as Jonah managed to get the door open and flopped outside onto his belly. This might be it, the point of no return. You had to roll with it.

  The old man was on his knees now, spitting gobs of blood from a split lip and reaching for his back pocket. That's where it would be, the .22.

  Chase rushed over to make sure his grandfather hadn't broken anything and wasn't concussed. Jonah, still so strong, took a swipe at him, dizzy and hurting but already on the comeback. God damn it. Chase was going to have to do it. He tensed up, moved into the cold spot where his fear and anger left him, and kicked his grandfather in the face. Jonah grunted and spun aside. Chase reached into his grand father's back pocket and took out the gun. Then he searched until he found the old man's cell.

  Saying sorry would be pointless. But even here, iced down where nothing could touch him, he still felt the need to say it. “Sorry.”

  It would have to be contact by phone now. Chase was sure that Dex had cleared out of the room. The phone number would change soon too. It might be too late already.

  He scanned the numbers. No names, not even initials. He recognized Dex's number from Russell's phone.

  Chase should've remembered it, shouldn't have needed the old man's phone at all, but he had to admit he had a lot on his mind.

  Up on the lamppost, another sign was stuck there for Calloway & Dark's Traveling Fair and Sideshow of Wonders. They sure knew how to publicize. Get the whole town out there on the calliope, the merry-go-round, go play in the house of mirrors, buy cotton candy. Maybe it did bring in a ton of cash. Maybe it was a solid score, knocking over the barker, snapping his cane, punching out his straw hat.

  Dex answered and Chase said, “I want you to find somebody for me. Guy called the Reverend. You know him?”

  Playing it close and cagey, as expected. There was always something comforting about the predictability of a thief. “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Give me a few hours to see if I can find him. He'll want to be paid.”

  Meaning, Dex wanted money. “He will be.”

  “How much?”

  He had to come up with a round number, but not too large. Something that sounded like it would make it worth the time for both of them. “Eight.”

  “He might want more.”

  “He can tell me that himself.”

  A few shoppers walked by, staring, but nobody approached. Someone yelled, “You guys okay?” and Chase nodded. Others around, on the street and walking through the lot, were watching but minding their own business. Jonah had managed to sit up now, a black knot in the center of his eyebrows, gray hair at his temple turning black with blood. Drawing the back of his huge hand across his mouth he looked over at Chase and tried to decide his next move.

  Chase wondered if his grandfather would've tried to wrestle the gun away and pop him if there hadn't been a crowd around. The old man, rudderless for so long, hesitating again just as he did when it came to his own baby girl. Chase felt a sudden immense sense of pity for Jonah, but it was gone before he even had to deal with it.

  “It might take a day or two,” Dex told him.

  “You just said a few hours.”

  “Just saying it might take longer.”

  “Make sure it doesn't. And you can go through with the carnival score. How goddamn hard can it be to take down that you have to fret about it so much?”

  “Your grandfather and I set it up together. If I take it, he'll ace me.”

  “I get the feeling it was more your idea than his. Besides, he just talks tough. He's really a softie, likes to crochet, drink cocoa, sit in a rocking chair.”

  “You've got worse troubles than me, kid.”

  The old man got to his feet and took a step. He stumbled, went down to one knee again. Looking up, blood in his eyes, raw murder in his eyes, all power and hate once again. In a way, it was good to see. Chase grinned and held out his hand to help Jonah up. Inside him, Lila told him to duck. Inside him, Jonah told him to duck, I'm going to shatter your rib cage and drive the shards into your heart.

  Jonah, taking Chase's hand, said, “This had better work.”

  Both of them checked out of their motels and took a room together in an even shittier one. No matter how beautiful a town there was always a skid row where the transients, junkies, and alcoholics on the downslide of dementia lay waiting while the pimps and whores plied their trade. Paying out by the hour, the afternoon, the last week of your life. The failures, the head cases, the hesitant suicides waiting for the final tap off the ledge. This is where they came and readied themselves to die, and prepared themselves to kill.

  The air was different. The despair palpable. The curtains always shut. The heat unbearable, the air conditioner gutless. Somebody murmured and hissed his love in Spanish.

  Chase set up on one side of the room and Jonah on the other, secure in the intimate understanding of each other, returning to a familiar form. This was the way things used to be, the life they'd led together when Chase was a kid. He had a sense of déjà vu that wouldn't quit.

  There were rituals your body would remember even if you could not. He took the bed closest to the window. Jonah needed to be near the door.

  You'd think it was the safer place, being by the window. In case of a fire you jump out. Some hitter breaks in, you dive behind the bed, you're better protected. But the fact was, anybody trying to get in would try the windows first. Anybody looking for an easy kill might just pump a few shotgun shells inside. Jonah had always put himself first, and Chase, early on not understanding, and later only responding to his grandfather's will, learned he was always the one in front of the first bullet.

  Jonah unscrewed a ventilation grate up near the ceiling and hid guns and a wedge of cash. Before he sealed it back up he glanced at Chase, expecting him to have something that needed to be cached. Chase shook his head and the old man nearly pulled a face.

  Well, that was something.

  They were both bruised and smeared with their own dried blood. Jonah took a shower first, leaving Chase lying on the bed listening to the sounds around him, focusing on anything to avoid listening to the sounds inside him.

  Doors slammed. Televisions were loud and static-filled. Some surfer dudes sounded like they were starting early with a whore at their bachelor party. Maybe it wasn't a bachelor party. Maybe it wasn't a prostitute.

  The walls were little more than Sheetrock. Someone was vomiting a room or two away. Someone else screaming, maybe sex, maybe the D.T.'s, maybe murder. Most of the time you couldn't tell the difference. A hooker was arguing with her trick. He was taking too long. The guy started crying. He wanted to kiss. She made him pay double. One of them started smacking the other. A bottle clanked around on an uncarpeted floor but didn't break. The sounds of his youth.

  White sand and ocean only a mile away, paradise right there in your arms waiting, and these people were as far from it as the other side of the grave. So was he.

  He split the curtains and checked out front. No one on the prowl.

  Jonah had been in the shower for five minutes. Chase figured the old man hadn't even taken his clothes off yet. He was in there waiting to see if Chase was about to sneak in to try and ice him.

  Another five minutes went by. Jonah finished and walked out naked. Nearly sixty- six now and still carve
d from rock. The bruise on his forehead looked like a Catholic daub on Ash Wednesday. The bullet scars in his back were still raw and awful. The tattoos stood out sharply in contrast to his scrubbed and flushed skin. Jonah had been in Florida for a few weeks, but had no tan. Always moving in shadow, hardly ever catching the sun.

  Chase thought about the toys around the Dash house. Kylie out there on the beach with little Walt, the two of them playing together with the salty breeze rolling in off the ocean.

  Going from that to living like this with Jonah. Hearing the whores robbing the johns, the curtains always drawn, the walls always thin. The girl sleeping by the window so she could take the first bullet.

  Without turning, Jonah said, “What is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You're sitting there ready to jump out of your skin.”

  The man forever aware and onto you.

  “Nothing,” Chase said, wondering if his grandfather was going to throw a punch now, payback for that move in the parking lot. He stood and cautiously walked past, realizing the old man knew he was being wary, and why, and so right there he'd managed to retaliate.

  Chase took a shower. There was no hot water. It didn't matter to him. He stayed beneath the freezing jets for a long time, and still he was burning.

  The rest of the afternoon stumbled past. Night came on fervent and thick. The motel filled and emptied by the hour. The drunks started to sing and fight and die a little more. Noise on all four sides. Moan ing that sounded more like getting knifed in the kidneys than sex.

  “Why did you come after me?” Jonah asked.

  “How about if we let it slide until we get Kylie back?”

  “She's nothing to you.”

  “She's my blood.”

  “Is that important to you?”

  “You know it is.”

  “Even now?”

  “Especially now.”

  So, was it finally time to come out with it and ask Jonah, Did you murder my mother? Did you drive your own son to suicide?

  Other men, even the hardest jailbirds, the guys who'd spent half their lives in solitary, would answer human questions. You ask them what it was like pulling the trigger, strangling the woman, boosting the bank, kidnapping the mayor's kid, blasting into the crowd, and you'd get a serious response, some kind of answer. It might be the truth and it might be a lie, but they'd talk, they'd tell you.