The Coldest Mile (13 page)

Lila saying, I fell in love with an outlaw, you do what you need to do for now. So long as you remember to take hold of that child.

Jonah telling him, If you brace me, you're dead.

It went on like that mile after mile. Chase thought
some action might clear his head, which proved he was too tired to keep going.

He pulled into a motel outside of Winston- Salem, walked in, and a whore in the lobby sighted him. It was his own fault. He knew the stink of cash was on him.

She rose and approached him while he bit back a sigh, knowing there was no way to avoid this.

Fair- skinned, freckled, redheaded, with a blatant smile that no one would find attractive but a lot of men would still appreciate, he thought she must've been quite pretty when she was sixteen, and had probably skipped right to worn- out at eighteen.

She wore a summer dress and high heels she had trouble walking in. Dangling costume- jewelry earrings caught the harsh light and emphasized pits in her cheeks. Her arms were scabbed. Meth did it, made them feel extrasensitive, their flesh crawling.

She said, “Hey there, sweetie,” and a knot immediately formed between his shoulders.

“Hello,” he answered.

“How you doin’ this evening? You look like you've been drivin’ a thousand hard miles.”

“They were easy,” he admitted. “The rest will be rough.”

He should've just shut the fuck up, but he'd gone too far without hearing another living voice, and he wanted to shake the others out of his skull.

There was no right way to play it now. Her pimp would be nearby. Chase figured it couldn't be the kid.

Act rude and tell her you're not interested, and
she plays the hurt damsel and the pimp turns up looking for trouble. Show the slightest sign of interest and she's on your back until you manhandle her away, and the pimp still shows up. Chase should've stopped an hour sooner, when he was fresher and smarter. He would've been alert enough to keep away from this kind of place and stayed somewhere the hookers only went after businessmen.

The kid behind the desk was unnaturally perky. “Hi, welcome to the Winston- Salem Motor Court! I'm Durrell. What can I do you for?”

His eyes were dilated and Chase got a whiff of weed, but that wasn't what was spiking the guy. A nerve in Durrell's cheek twitched and Chase could clearly see the vein in his throat throbbing, scabbed from scratching. Yep, meth.

Chase got his room key, and Durrell spun around behind the counter, then excused himself to the back room, leaving the girl to do her thing. Chase kept an eye out for the pimp, wondering if he should make a run, try to get a few more miles in tonight, but he was starting to ache.

“It's going to be a cold night, darling,” she told Chase, leaving the “g” hanging nice and thick, trying to talk northern so he might relate to her better. She put a hand to the back of his neck and softly rubbed him there, the way Lila used to do. “You might need a touch of warmth.”

He shut his eyes and almost allowed himself to go with it for a moment, just a few seconds, because everyone needed a soft hand on occasion.

Except it wasn't his wife's. He snapped his head aside and said, “It's ninety- five in the moonlight.”

“A man can still get chilly.”

“Maybe if he's got malaria.”

It took her back a step and she pulled a face. If you didn't show enough interest right off, they went for your balls, started cracking about whether you were gay. He still wore his wedding ring on his fractured ring finger, now covered over with tape.

“Most lonely men still like a little company when they come this far across the Mason- Dixon.”

“Who says I'm lonely?”

“Your eyes do.”

“Don't listen to them, they're my worst feature.”

“I like them,” she said, drawing back, inspecting him. “Sad but just a little tough, a bit mean.”

She could've been a Southern belle, Miss Pumpkin Patch or the Radish Princess, waving from a float during the big Radish Day Parade, wearing a plastic tiara. But there was a hard tilt to her mouth that was part bitter humor and part affront. She grinned, knowing her teeth were crud and trying to hide the fact. They called it meth mouth. She and Durrell were definitely into that shit, already so far down the road they'd never get back again, headed for dead at twenty- five.

“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.

I
n the dream, his dead parents stood in their bed
room, 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.

I
n 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.