The Coldest Mile

by Tom Piccirilli

  Jonah wouldn't. Chase wanted to know about Angie, ask about Kylie, find out what the old man planned to do now that the Dash family was gone and there was nowhere else for Kylie to go. The questions built up inside him and he knew his grandfather could feel them charging the air.

  “You don't know what you want, do you?” the old man said. “You've got no idea who you are anymore. You managed to stay straight a long time, but in Newark you cut all the way loose, and now you think there's no coming back from that.”

  Maybe it was true. Chase tried to respond but nothing sounded real or true enough to waste his breath on.

  “Go on home to New York,” Jonah said. “You don't need to be here.”

  “You could use my help. You said so yourself. Besides, I don't have a home anymore.”

  “You made one for yourself once, you can do it again.”

  Jesus, listen to this, his grandfather almost sounding protective, with four guns in the air vent.

  “I'll stick around for a while longer,” Chase said.

  “Where'd you pick up the forty g's?”

  While Chase had been inside talking to Boze and his crew, Jonah had taken off the car door panel and found the cash. Chase wondered how much the old man had grabbed. Not all of it, but some anyway. Maybe ten, maybe fifteen. He wouldn't have been able to stop himself.

  “What do you think. I stole it.”

  “That much I figured. Where? And why?”

  He didn't want to get into the story about the Langans and the tie and white gloves, Sherry insane because he wouldn't fuck her, Jackie dead in Vegas. “Because I'm a thief.”

  “You're an auto- shop teacher.”

  Chase turned to the old man and said, “Do you love Kylie?”

  “We weren't talking about that.”

  “I was. I am. Do you love her more than you did Angie?”

  “You're still stewing about that?”

  “You killed your own woman.”

  “Only because she shot me. In the back. Twice.”

  “Yeah, but do you know why?”

  “For the same reason anybody shoots you twice in the back. Because they want you in the ground when they steal what you've got.”

  Nearly sixty- six years old, been in the joint and spent a long time dodging it, partnered with Chase and a lot of others along the way, enough blood on his hands to fill a city gutter, and the man still just didn't get it.

  In a voice he knew was weak and full of sighs Chase said, “Or because they're afraid you'll steal what they've got.”

  “We already talked about this. After Newark.”

  “You said you expected her to make a play. You said you always do.”

  “That's right.”

  It was back then after Newark, with the old man driving to Chase's empty house, while Chase lay in the back still fighting fever and infection, one lung collapsed, that Jonah had said, It happened once be fore. And for the same reason. Over a kid. Another foolish woman.

  And Chase couldn't get it out of his head that the old man had been talking about Chase's mother.

  “You remember what else I said?” Jonah asked.

  “You asked if I was going to try you.”

  “And are you?”

  “You sound like you want me to.”

  Jonah said nothing more, letting it go just like he let everything go that had any worth, while he lay in the dark and made sure he was always one step ahead.

  * * *

  Two in the morning, the moonlight drenching him, Chase sat at the window while Jonah slept the way he always slept. Lightly. Without dreams.

  Clap your hands and the old man would roll off the covers and go for the hidden gun clipped under the bed that he'd put there while Chase was in the shower.

  Something was happening out in the world, Chase could feel it.

  Moves being made.

  Eight in the morning, Jonah went out and brought back a greasy, bagged breakfast. The stink of it filled Chase's head with more memories. His grandfather had fed him this same meal a thousand times before, while they were planning scores, sometimes on the run. Tossing it underhand across the room, the way he did now, and Chase catching it, opening the bag and eating without knowing or caring what the food was, without even tasting it.

  “Dex is setting us up,” Jonah said.

  “Maybe.”

  “No maybes, he is.”

  “Nothing we can do about it now,” Chase said. “Unless you know where Dex has moved on to and we can get close to him.”

  “No.”

  “Then we wait.”

  * * *

  At noon Jonah's cell buzzed. He drew the phone, handed it to Chase, and said, “Dex. You talk. This is your agenda.”

  Agenda—it wasn't a word he expected Jonah to ever use. Chase nearly said, I'm trying to save your daughter.

  Chase answered and Dex said, “ One- thirty this afternoon.”

  “Why'd it take so long?”

  “I had to find him. Bring the money.”

  “You'll be there?”

  “No, but the Reverend will give me my cut.”

  Dex was a perfect liar, and the perfect lie rang like crystal.

  Chase said, “I told you the circus score was yours. If you've fucked us on this, tell me now. It might save your life.”

  “I'm way down on your list of worries.”

  Chase thought, Jonah is going to turn your switch off, all because in a town full of money, you two couldn't find your own scores.

  “Where's the meet?”

  “At a club called the Curse of Nature. It's in Tampa. Don't be late. You need directions?”

  “No,” Chase said, and hung up, knowing there was going to be a lot of blood, and almost glad for it.

  Jonah unscrewed a ventilation grate and pulled out his weapons, kept two Browning 9mm automatics and handed Chase a S&W .38. “Here.” Then Jonah reached beneath the bed and pulled his popgun .22, stuck it in his back pocket.

  In the Goat on the way to Tampa, Chase told his grandfather about Arno and the club and what had happened there the other night.

  “There are no coincidences. Dex is out to burn us. So why'd this place get picked for the meet?”

  “I don't know.”

  “He must've made a lot of calls last night. He's heard about you. What you've been doing here in Florida. Someone's been talking about you.” Jonah chewed on that for a while. “We're supposed to meet the Reverend, who ran with Angie and might give us a line on where Clarke is. Your connection said the Reverend wouldn't know Arno.”

  “That's what he said.”

  “So this Reverend wouldn't call the meet here.”

  There are no coincidences. “Doesn't seem likely.”

  “And if Dex set something up with Clarke to take us down, Clarke wouldn't call the meet here either.”

  “I don't see why he would.”

  “So maybe this Arno wants to settle a score.”

  “It wasn't that big a thing,” Chase said. “But even if he did want me dead, and was willing to pay for it, why bring us to his front door, where things could get messy?”

  “He wouldn't.”

  “I don't see why.”

  Dex and Clarke and Arno all working together? Had he really pissed so many people off?

  Silent in the car now, Chase and Jonah both worked the angles, thinking of who might get paid, and how, and from whom, and who was selling them out. What the connections were, who might stab who in the back to get to them.

  Chase kept hitting walls. He felt stupid and blinded by his need to save the girl. He wanted Lila to tell him what would be coming around the next corner. He was a little light- headed, but still drove perfectly, slick and fast, as they entered sun- glazed Tampa.

  “Nice city,” Jonah said. His voice was loud as a rifle shot in the car.

  “Not where we're going.”

  They hit the block lined with bars and dance clubs. In the day it looked even worse than it had the last time C
hase had been here. Abandoned, stagnant, like the place was a hair away from planned demolitions and urban renewal. Metal shutters were locked over a lot of the windows. The streets were empty. They'd looked a lot better with the drunk girls wandering from bar to bar, holding each other up.

  “There it is,” Chase said, pointing out the Curse of Nature.

  “Doesn't look like much.”

  “It's not.”

  “There's no real cover,” Jonah said. “I'd like to get a look at the back parking lot, but we might get pinned.”

  Chase turned around, eased up and down the area until he found an alley two blocks away that still gave them a line of sight to the front door of the Curse of Nature.

  Jonah asked, “The hell does the name mean?”

  “I have no idea.” Chase checked his watch. It was 1:10.

  Claustrophobia set in as they sat, Chase feeling like his skin was on fire. His grandfather's strength of presence was pushing him right out of the fucking car. He looked at the old man's tattoos and wondered why Kylie wasn't among the other names.

  His thoughts raced along. He had no control. He couldn't stop thinking about all the specialists he and Lila had visited while trying for a baby. The docs had said it wasn't impossible, but the odds were worse for Lila than the “average young female” to become pregnant and carry a child full term.

  He remembered how she'd said, “Well, I was raised to believe in miracles.”

  “Tell me about Kylie,” Chase said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about her.”

  The old man looked at him, having no idea what to say. Other men, they talked to you about their kids until you were shitless. The little girls all angelic, the boys smart and great athletes. They sometimes put on adorable voices to sound like their children, and you wanted to cover your ears and howl because you couldn't take listening to that cutie- pie crap. And those same guys had felt the same way too until they'd had kids. It was just the way things went.

  But Jonah had nothing to say.

  “It's one- thirty” Chase told him.

  “What time do clubs like that open?”

  “Maybe six o'clock? Seven?”

  “You don't know.”

  “No.”

  “Then say that.”

  “I just did.”

  The old man stared through the windshield, sighting the front door. The only apparent hint of tension in his body was that the veins in his thick wrists were sticking out and throbbing. Chase knew exactly what his grandfather would say next.

  “Never follow someone else's rules.”

  Chase nodded and said, “We wait.”

  Fifteen minutes later Jonah's cell went off. He ignored it.

  The temperature in the car had to be topping one-ten, but Chase didn't feel it. He was bathed in cold sweat, trails running down his throat and chest. He didn't know where the willpower was coming from for him to stay in his seat. Thinking of the little girl out there someplace, surrounded by enemies, maybe hungry, crying, wearing dirty diapers. No, Jonah had said she was potty- trained. Chase held the steering wheel tightly in his hands and gained no comfort.

  At 2:20, someone came to the front door of the club, opened it a few inches, peered out.

  “Trying to get us to jump,” Jonah said. “Any idea what this Reverend looks like?”

  “Like a reverend I guess.”

  “Could it be Arno?”

  “Can't tell.”

  “They're getting edgy.”

  Chase wanted to say, So am I.

  “Another half hour or so and we go.”

  Touching the keys, trying to draw strength from the Detroit line of forty years ago, when they cared about their craft and the roads were full of cars with style and attitude and cool, but Chase still couldn't calm himself. He was freezing.

  It was almost three when a figure came to the door with Kylie in his arms.

  “Oh Christ,” Chase said.

  Jonah never rattled. “So we know she's still alive.”

  The door opening wider.

  Molten sunlight flooding inside.

  Shadow becoming color and form.

  A lot of muscle stood around in back, filling the en-tranceway. Not Voorman and not the prettyboys.

  Chase finally understood the setup. How Arno fit into it. Boze had said, Sometimes he deals with the syndicates, old fat Italians on the down slide who come here to go out on his boat and get blowjobs and go fishing.

  All these years thinking he'd been fast, and yet now he saw that he was so very goddamn slow. Chase had been too close to the situation, hadn't been able to focus. As usual, he'd been worrying about the wrong things. He'd known it was happening and still hadn't been able to help himself.

  Dex had been busy on the phone all right, making a lot of calls, gathering info, swinging deals. But the scheme couldn't have come together so quickly if it hadn't already been in motion.

  Jonah swept his arm out, holding Chase in his seat. He hadn't realized that he'd started to lean forward and begun to turn the key.

  The little girl, Chase had never seen her before. He thought, My God, she's a golden beauty.

  “That Clarke?” Jonah asked.

  “What?”

  “Is that Clarke holding Kylie?”

  “No.”

  “The Reverend? He doesn't look like someone who'd be chasing down the Ladies Christian Coalition.”

  “He's not. His name is Bishop.”

  He looks hard,” the old man said. “He's wearing a black suit and tie in Florida. His jacket is cut to hide his shoulder holster. A torpedo?”

  “What?”

  Jonah thumped Chase in the chest once, trying to get him to concentrate. “You know him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is he a shooter?”

  “Yeah. He works for the Langans.”

  “The New Jersey Langans? Lenny Langan's dead. What are they doing here in Florida? They've got no real muscle anymore.”

  “They've got him,” Chase said, “and he's good. The daughter, Sherry Langan, took over. I bet she's inside. When we go in, she'll have Kylie sitting on her lap.”

  Jonah looked at him, gave him the empty, lethal stare. “So this isn't only about what happened at the motel in Newark anymore.”

  “No.”

  “What did you get into?”

  “I stole some money from them.”

  “From the Langan syndicate?”

  “Yeah, I was a driver for them.”

  “They don't use drivers.”

  “I was a chauffeur.”

  “How much did you heist?”

  “One forty.”

  The old man almost imperceptibly shaking his head. “That's not enough for a mob princess to get personally involved. If she's here, why's she here?”

  “She's mad at me too,” Chase said.

  “What else did you do?”

  “I wouldn't fuck her doggie style.”

  “Did you fuck her some other way?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should've.”

  Chase wiped sweat from his eyes. “The situation probably could've been resolved a bit more tactfully.”

  “That's one way of putting it. A woman scorned is bad enough. A syndicate princess you scored and left high and dry, no wonder she's chased you down here.”

  Jonah turned his attention back to the front door, and they saw that Bishop had pulled the girl back inside.

  Chase said, “Dex found the Reverend. The Reverend led him to Clarke and Kylie. Clarke had been following me around. He must've followed me to the club.”

  “Followed you for over an hour on the road?”

  “I told you I'd been sloppy.”

  “Sloppy is one thing. You've been something else.”

  “Yeah,” Chase admitted. He'd been disconnected even worse than he'd thought.

  “Why this place though?”

  “Clarke must've talked to Arno. He mentions what happ
ened in Newark, tells him we're pros from the East Coast. Asks him for help in tracking you down and in popping me.” He thought, That's who was in the Dodge pickup. Voorman or one of the prettyboys helping Clarke out. “Arno has some dealings with the weaker mob families. He must've put his ear to the wire and eventually heard some buzz about what I pulled at the Langans.”

  “Contacted them and told them to come on down, he's got my baby and he knows where you are. They tell him there's a big payday if he grabs and holds you.” Jonah turned, looked into Chase's face. “This broad really hates your guts.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jonah said, “While we were making calls trying to find Kylie, they were making calls to the same people and using her to find us.”

  It was true. Right from the day Chase hit Florida he'd thought he was so slick and in control, but he'd had everything backward, and everyone else had been using his blind stupidity against him. “It's my fault. I wasn't watching. I wasn't thinking.”

  “So this has nothing to do with me anymore.”

  “No,” Chase said. “It never really did.” “You should've told me,” Jonah said, and swung in his seat, bringing his fist up from the wheel well and smashing Chase in the mouth.

  The old man climbed out of the car, gave Chase a final once- over, showing nothing, walked out the alley, and headed for the front door of the club.

  Hell of a turn, Chase thought, spitting ribbons of blood and half a molar out the window.

  It took him ten minutes until the bleeding stopped enough for him to speak clearly. Then he made one last phone call, spoke calmly but sharply, hung up and threw the cell against the alley wall. The phone splintered into pieces.

  He drove out of the mouth of the alley, turned the corner, went around the block and parked down the street from the Curse of Nature. He took the S&W .38 out of his gym bag and had no idea what to do with it. He had no holster, and all he was wearing was a T-shirt. He got out of the car, untucked his shirt and stuck the gun in his waistband but it wouldn't fit. Tried it at the small of his back and it didn't fit there either. He decided to just carry the damn thing. He felt like an idiot. Decided fuck it. Threw it back in the gym bag and left it in the passenger foot well.