The Cold Spot

by Tom Piccirilli

  You get shot three times and somebody still has to come along and put more holes in you. Chase didn’t feel lucky. The doctor leaned forward and clasped the tube between his lips and started to blow. Chase felt his lung expanding but was suddenly worried about what kind of germs this dude was breathing into him. Chase vomited from the pain and passed out.

  He dreamed of his sibling who had never been born. The baby sat at the kitchen table in a high chair. Chase couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. The kid knew more answers than he did. The kid had been there the day his mother had been murdered and had died with her. Chase asked questions he couldn’t hear. The kid responded in Chase’s own voice, going, You already know all that, don’t you?

  Once he came awake for only a few seconds and saw the doctor working on Jonah’s back, the old man’s skin and muscle held open by retractors. There was blood everywhere. His grandfather didn’t make a sound, the hard son of a bitch. It seemed impossible.

  Now that the driver was iced, Chase realized that Jonah hadn’t done much in the way of helping him at all. He’d punched in the wrong door and wound up acing his own woman, leaving Chase to take down the three crew members by himself.

  He whispered, “You know, you didn’t do shit.”

  With the doc drilling for bullets around the old man’s spine, Jonah said, “You were two minutes from being dead when I got you here. Does that count?”

  With a sluggish anger trying to overcome him, Chase wanted to say, Fuck no, that wasn’t the job, but he was already unconscious.

  The next time he woke he was bandaged, his hand was in a cast, and he could barely move, but the painkillers had finally kicked in because he didn’t feel much. There were drains all over him. He was hooked to a couple of IVs and a blood bag. He didn’t even want to think about where the blood had come from. Jonah was sitting up staring out the window, where you could just make out the Grand Concourse in the Bronx across the river to the east.

  Jonah said, “You’ve been out for two and a half days. Doc says you’ll be okay if your heart doesn’t stop.”

  “Terrific.”

  “Go easy on the lung.”

  Chase had to wonder, How the hell do you go easy on a lung? No scuba diving? No marathons? No deep breaths? He tried to struggle up but nothing would work right.

  His grandfather said, “It’ll be a couple more days before you can be moved.”

  “How much is he costing us?”

  “Nothing, I did a favor for him once.”

  That made no sense. Jonah never did favors. All it meant was he’d crossed up with the doc at one point and hadn’t killed him. “What’s he on?”

  “I’m not sure. Coke, maybe.”

  “What’s he know about us?”

  “He doesn’t know anything about anything,” Jonah said. “That’s why we can come to him.”

  Sleep drew Chase down again, but he fought the tide, knowing he needed to think a few things through. Morgan and Murray would be on to him now. He’d practically lit the sky with a blazing neon arrow pointing to himself. Still, he didn’t think they’d press him too hard, but you never knew. Who cared exactly how a cop killer got taken down? They were macho hard-asses, they might like that Chase had handled this himself even if there were four bodies left behind. They could juggle the paperwork, take some of the credit for it, get their photos in the papers with some of the gropers. He figured Morgan would let it slide, but Murray might be trouble. It didn’t matter much, one way or the other. He’d done what had to be done, and if he had to go on the run with them chasing behind him, or if he wound up in the can for twelve to fifteen, or if they got him in a corner and made him draw, he’d do it for his girl.

  Four days later, on the way home, lying in the backseat and still smelling the oil from Angie’s Bernadelli subcompact, Chase asked the old man, “Does it bother you that you she made a play?”

  Jonah, too heavy on the gas, barreling through traffic on the parkway, said, “I expected it.”

  “Why?”

  “I always expect it.”

  “Yeah, but do you ever understand it?”

  Jonah caught his eyes in the rearview. The car shimmied. The old man hardly looked at the road, like he thought there would never be a curve ahead. “It happened once before. And for the same reason. Over a kid.”

  “What? With who?”

  “Another foolish woman.”

  “Yeah, but who?”

  Jonah said nothing for miles. Then, “Are you going to try me?”

  “What?”

  “She asked you to, didn’t she?”

  “Why didn’t you just let her go?”

  “She could’ve left anytime. But I need Kylie. Blood is important.”

  As if the names on his scarred arms actually meant anything. “Since when?”

  “Forever.”

  “Do you love anything?”

  The old man’s gaze held him in the mirror. You could spend your whole life trying to figure out what Jonah knew about love and grief, and you’d never get an answer.

  Chase thought he should’ve tried harder to help Angie, to dissuade her from taking a run at Jonah, at least with a .32. Maybe a .44. Maybe Chase should’ve drawn on him. Yanked a gun or thrown at least one good punch if nothing else. Whatever happened afterward, it might’ve been worth it.

  But then he remembered his grandfather gripping his hand in the doc’s office. That meant something. Anyone else, you might say it was a gesture of the heart. But the old man would always be beyond him. And always inside of him.

  Jonah didn’t plan to stay. He packed the van with his gear and kept pulling out whatever belonged to Angie and leaving it on the side of the garage. There wasn’t a lot. The little pile became a slightly larger little pile as he added a belt, a scarf. All that was left of the woman’s history, besides her child somewhere in Florida, could be fit into a shoe box.

  Popping a handful of pills the doc had given him, Chase swallowed them dry. Painkillers and antibiotics, but they didn’t seem to be doing much good so far. He’d reached his limit and was covered in cold sweat. His bandages had soaked through and needed changing.

  He leaned against the hood of the Chevelle, almost ready to drop, staring up at his grandfather through his damp hair.

  Jonah said, “It’s a nice house. You shouldn’t sell it.”

  “It’s over for me here. I’m leaving.”

  “Any idea where you’ll go?”

  “No,” Chase said. “But I’ll get you your money.”

  “Forget that.”

  Chase had been through a lot these last few weeks, but his grandfather’s voice now, the words he spoke, nearly took out his knees. He wavered.

  “What?”

  “After what I nabbed from Fishman the fence and scored off the crew, I made out all right.”

  “The crew? When did you score them?”

  “There was ninety grand in the closet of their motel room,” Jonah said.

  “When did you have a chance to dig around in their room?”

  “Before I pulled you out of there.”

  Which meant that while Chase was dying in the lot bleeding out, and everyone in the crew was dead, and the Superbird was still roaring with a corpse’s foot jammed down on the pedal, the car wedged into the front of the room having crashed through the wall, Jonah had staggered around with two in the back after having just killed the mother of his child and dug among the bodies to find the cash.

  The old man had finished packing the van.

  He got to the door and said, “You know how to get in touch with me if you need to.”

  Same thing he’d said ten years ago when they’d split up.

  And then his grandfather pulled out of the garage and drove off past the Nicholsons’ house and was just as gone.

  The Jonah inside Chase’s head said, Don’t ever trust me. I’m going to kill you one day.

  The weakness overpowered him for the next two days, but the next morning he felt mu
ch stronger. He got out of bed and cleaned up the blood in the Chevelle. He took more of the pills the doc had given him. Throughout the day he had freezing fits where he shook uncontrollably. His heart slugged against his ribs. The lung would work fine for a while and then his breathing would grow ragged and come in bites and gasps where he couldn’t get enough air.

  He should’ve cut the car loose of it by now. The businessman and the hooker had seen it at the motel, but it was a long shot anyone had grabbed the license. The car owed him and he owed the car. You don’t soup this kind of muscle and not use it. The dark energy inside it still wanted out. He knew he’d have use of it farther on down the line.

  He called a real estate agent to put the house up for sale. She showed up the next day and walked around the property, took measurements of the rooms and made lots of notes on her clipboard. They settled on a starting price, which was higher than Chase had expected.

  Somebody finally got worried about Mrs. Nicholson and went over there and called the cops. It blew wide. The prowl cars stacked up in the road and the police canvassed the area. They came to his door and asked him questions about the Nicholsons. Animal control came along later that day with just as many vehicles as the cops had. It took four guys twenty minutes to round up all the cats.

  The police wouldn’t be able to cross all the T’s but they’d have enough to satisfy them. They’d find out what Timmy Rosso’s real name was and discover he was just a bartender posing as a criminal. They’d figure correctly he was double-crossed by wiser minds. There wouldn’t be a high premium on the old lady and her retarded son.

  In the morning, Morgan showed up at Chase’s front door. He stared into Chase’s eyes for a while and noted the bandages and the cast and said, “You look like shit.”

  “Feel that way too.”

  Staring some more, the hard-ass cop in Morgan wanted the entire truth, but didn’t want it that badly. He’d already figured most of it out anyhow. How could he not? It was more or less a straight line from his own desk to the motel.

  Morgan nodded at the FOR SALE sign on the lawn. “You leaving?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Soon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Get the fuck out of here. Go far away. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  “You won’t,” Chase said.

  You moved into the night and the night moved into you.

  Chase showed up at the Deuce’s chop shop. “That don’s son. He still need someone who can drive?”

  “Yeah,” Deucie said, “but things are really ugly over there. I was an asshole to mention it to you in the first place. Infighting, mob-war bullshit. Between different families, in the same family, between New York and Jersey and Chicago, and the feds up everybody’s ass with a microscope. A lot of bodies are turning up in the East River, or not at all. They’re icing each other in restaurants, on street corners, wiping out girlfriends and kids like in the bad old days.”

  “Make the call.”

  Chewing the end of his cigar, Deucie frowned and stood there for a minute studying Chase. Then he let out a sigh of defeat and ran off to do it. Chase climbed back into the Chevelle and shut his eyes, the engine humming, crooning a love song to him.

  The house was gone. Lila was buried twelve hundred miles away. He thought of Jonah out there, maybe with his baby girl and maybe not. The thought of the girl growing up in the life, following Jonah’s lead, as bent as him, made Chase’s stomach tighten. Sweat swarmed his back, but he was still too weak.

  He figured there couldn’t be that many professional surfers in Sarasota with wives named Milagro, who they called Milly. He could find the kid one way or another, his two-year-old aunt Kylie. He’d track her eventually, when he had a choice to offer her. Jonah had been right about one thing. Blood was important.

  Chase had questions. He wanted to know why his father had said that he’d asked to make an appeal to the killer, when the truth was the cops had backed him into doing it. Chase wanted to know why his mother had cried so much right before she died.

  The dream returned in full force. His unborn sibling tugging at his hand, Chase listening intently to the child, who knew the answers. A couple lines repeating themselves.

  Angie had said, Everyone else he destroys. More than you know.

  Jonah had said someone else had tried to kill him over a kid.

  Another foolish woman.

  Chase couldn’t shake those words. They hummed and buzzed and bit at him.

  He thought, Did Jonah murder my pregnant mother?

  Waving a scrap of paper, Deuce returned and tried once more to talk Chase out of the job. Chase checked the name and address and said good-bye.

  He cruised out of the shop and hit the street. He didn’t feel any fear or hope or excitement. Just a nagging curiosity about his own past that would sharpen within him and drive him forward into another, perhaps a more decisive, confrontation with Jonah. Chase had shifted gears again, and now his life was on a different road. He still had things to do. Soothing music on the radio promised escape and intimacy as he drove on into the darkness thinking, Here it is. Here I am.

  Look for Chase’s return in

  THE COLDEST MILE

  by

  Tom Piccirilli

  Coming from

  Bantam Books in 2009

  About the Author

  TOM PICCIRILLI lives in Colorado, where, besides writing, he spends an inordinate amount of time watching trash cult films and reading Gold Medal classic noir and hardboiled novels. He’s a fan of Asian cinema, especially horror movies, bullet ballet, pinky violence, and samurai flicks. He also likes walking his dogs around the neighborhood. Are you starting to get the hint that he doesn’t have a particularly active social life? Well, to heck with you, buddy, yours isn’t much better. Give him any static and he’ll smack you in the mush, dig? Tom also enjoys making new friends. He’s the author of twenty novels, including The Midnight Road, The Dead Letters, Headstone City, November Mourns, and A Choir of Ill Children. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a final nominee for the World Fantasy Award, the International Thriller Writers Award, and Le Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. To learn more, check out his official website, Epitaphs, at www.tompiccirilli.com.

  ALSO BY TOM PICCIRILLI

  The Midnight Road

  The Dead Letters

  Headstone City

  November Mourns

  A Choir of Ill Children

  THE COLD SPOT

  A Bantam Book / May 2008

  Published by Bantam Dell

  A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2008 by Tom Piccirilli

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  eISBN: 978-0-553-90496-3

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