The Coldest Mile (21 page)

“No problem.”

Tony Tons said, “I don't feel so good.”

Arno lifted the .44 and pointed it at Chase. “Do you see this in my hand?”

“I do,” Chase told him.

“Then what's your problem?”

“My very question to you. What's the beef, Arno?”

As it happened on occasion, a player liked to talk to somebody in the know. Who ran up against him
and kept his cool and didn't feed into the ill will of the moment. Arno, who was already one of the most relaxed pricks Chase had ever seen, visibly relaxed even more, sinking farther into the cushions and damn near melting like a scoop of ice cream left out too long. The prettyboys lost their hold on him and just stood there, staring.

“They ripped me off.”

“They did? How?”

“I think I'm gonna be sick!” Tons said.

“The X they were trying to sell to me was originally stolen from me.”

“I see.”

It was the kind of scam that worked when you were dealing with major insured items. Steal some rich lady's jewelry, then peddle it back to the insurance company for half of what it was worth. No need to deal with fences and you avoided a lot of hassles, including the cops. The companies just wanted their merchandise back and they saved at least half their bread.

But you couldn't do the same thing with drug dealers or pink fatcats waving .44s around. Es pe cially if they were egomaniacs, which damn near everybody was. They didn't like having to buy their own product back from the rip- off artists who took it in the first place. Boze should've known that.

Looking into his eyes, Boze certainly seemed to have picked up on it by now. Chase got the feeling this was Mackie's stupid score.

“Okay, so what's the damage?” Chase asked.

“The potential damage is to my reputation,” Arno said. It was the kind of thing that someone without much of a reputation would say. “I can't let it out on the street that I'll pay top dollar for my own drugs. That invites further piracy.”

Chase couldn't really argue the point. “You're right. How about the other shit?”

“The other shit doesn't mean much to me. I'll pay fourteen hundred for it.”

“There was about a thousand in coke. Was that your product too?”

“No.”

They'd expected four or five grand on the deal. “Make it twenty- five hundred for everything.”

“Why should I deal at all?”

“Because you're not going to dump four guys in the ocean over this.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because you're a businessman with some weird fetishes, not a maniac.”

“ Twenty- two hundred.”

“Done,” Chase said.

Mackie started to protest. “It's worth more than twice that! We—” The blood from his leaking nose was thickening across his lips and turning his teeth red. He jumped to his feet and took a step. Arno's gun hand swung over and Mackie stopped moving. Surprisingly, it looked like he could make a smart move when the moment called for it.

Boze helped Tons to stand. He looked for something to tie a tourniquet. Tore a piece of Tons's shirt
off and tried to knot it in place but it wouldn't stick well. Tony Tons's finger continued to bleed against his chest. He said, “I'm getting sleepy.”

“Stay awake, Tons.”

Voorman tapped Chase on the shoulder and said, “Could you take the knife out of me now?”

“No.” Chase tugged the blade a little and the bouncer gurgled in the back of his throat. “Shut up.”

He nodded to Boze and said, “Go pick up your money.”

Smiling, Boze ambled across the room and met Arno, who was also smiling. He nodded, got his jowls moving again, and one of the prettyboys took the bills from his own pocket and handed them to Boze. The girls giggled. The boys giggled. Everybody happy now that the storm had passed.

Except that Boze turned to Chase, still showing that grin, and offered an honest flash of humiliation in his eyes as he passed. It was the kind of small and meaningless shame that you couldn't live down. Chase shouldn't have taken the money without deferring to Boze, and he shouldn't have ordered him around.

Another foolish move. They were piling up. Chase tugged the switchblade out of Voorman and the bouncer went “Ahhh,” and put a hand out onto Chase's shoulder, steadying himself. Chase waited to see if the strongarm was going to throw down now. He didn't. He patted Chase's shoulder twice the way a thankful buddy might.

So, he'd made friends with the troublemakers and
stirred more shit with the crew he was working with. The Jonah in his head had been right. He should've just run.

Chase followed the others out of the office and gave a last backward glance to Arno, who was starting to use the .44 in an unholy manner on one of the girls.

Crazed music and crushing body heat swarmed Chase as he made his way along. Tons yawned and staggered from the loss of blood. When they hit the street he said, “He insulted us again. He called us dinks. He had Voorman break your nose, Mackie. Does it hurt?”

“I'm going to kill that piggy son of a bitch,” Mackie said.

Moonlight and a soft breeze dipped across the back of Chase's sweaty neck. Boze turned to him and said, “Man, you've got the touch, all right. You're cool, you're cold, and you've got the heat, all at the same time.”

Not a thank- you, and Chase hadn't been expecting one. He read the subtle anger in those words and realized that Mackie wasn't going to be the problem after all. Boze, with his hands as fast and dangerous as Chase's, faster even. Who knew what he could do when he held a knife or a gun? Chase was going to have to pull up stakes very soon.

But he hated to leave without managing to swing any info on Dex. It was the wrong time to ask, but it couldn't be helped. He couldn't work it naturally
into the conversation, especially since there was no conversation. But he had to give it a whirl.

“You think this will get back to Dex?” he asked.

No one answered him. Mackie was tearing another section of Tons's shirt off to use as a tourniquet. He tied it very tightly and Tony Tons wavered and almost passed out. Chase got behind the wheel of the Goat and as soon as everyone was in he threw it into drive.

“We have to get Tons to the hospital again,” Boze said.

Chase thought, Florida, what the fuck am I doing down here with these idiots?

A
fter Tons had gotten stitched back up, Chase
dropped the string off and returned to his motel. The spot between his shoulders grew tight and hot as he crossed the lot. He hoped there was a shooter nearby. His ears quivered as he fought to hear beyond the warm breeze whispering in the darkness. He got to the front door and held back a moment, giving Kel Clarke or Bishop or his grandfather another chance to break from some shadows and come after him. He stared at the dim reflection of himself in the glass, searching behind him, hopeful, waiting. Then he stepped inside.

He checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes. He was wasting time. Mistakes were heaping around him, the weight of them slowing him down. He decided he'd give himself another twenty-four hours to push the others and see if anything would rattle free. If he couldn't get any useful information on Dex from the crew, he'd go back to Arno and see if the fatcat could get him in touch. If nothing
there, he'd have to start over and find himself a new thief working some grift on the dark end of the street in another part of town.

Shirtless, he stood in the window of his room and willed someone to make a move on him. The rage built in him, rising from its great depths until his skin felt on fire. Chase was suddenly furious with himself that he hadn't checked the Dash house more thoroughly. Maybe he could've found a photo of Kylie. Her face, he thought, could possibly stir the things inside him that needed to be awakened, perhaps could cool the overheated parts of his mind and warm what remained on ice.

He kept seeing the little girl he used to imagine would one day be his own, back before he and Lila had started visiting the specialists and they still had a little hope left. He flashed on the daughter that wasn't his. The threefold hook tugged. At this instant, he was as close to tears as he could possibly come. He hadn't cried since he was ten and his mother had been shot to death in their kitchen. Hadn't sobbed even once for his suicided old man, or for Lila.

But now the image of a daughter he didn't have filled his head. It was a revelation of sorts, thinking of her again and remembering what wholesome pain he used to feel, holding Lila in the sweaty nights of Mississippi and dreaming of family. And now, still holding on to some bizarre hope that saving Kylie would somehow be saving himself.

He lay on the bed and watched a movie. The picture unfolded before him and he watched and listened, and when it was over he didn't have any idea what the movie had been. He turned the TV off. Within seconds he was asleep and had started to dream of his old man under the icy water, his father's eyes black and frozen. Chase was reaching out to take his father's hand and pull him to the surface when a knock on the door woke him.

Switchblade ready, he answered. Hildy stood there wearing only a bikini top and some kind of wrap knotted at her hip.

Lila said to him, This one, if she don't sink her claws in soon, she's likely to give up and put on a habit.

Chase stood without his shirt on, all the mottled scars and bruises on display. Hildy gently placed a hand to his shoulder and let the backs of her fingers trail down across his chest, flicking against the thatch of hair. He noticed she had on orange nail polish today, an awful color in its own right but somehow looking appropriate on her. She touched his collarbone where the stitch marks were still red and ugly, the skin puckered badly.

“You have a nice body,” she said, and he put his shirt back on.

On the bed again, moonlight coursed across Hildy's knees. This time she only hit one provocative pose and held it, her eyes on him. She'd been on the beach and was even more tan than the other day, the twinkling blue stones of her pierced belly button
flashing across his face whenever she took a deep enough breath, the rays of moonlight slashing.

“I've heard there are shakers who move right in on a crew and take it over,” she said. “Is that what you're after?”

“No.”

“Then I don't get it. You're not after the money, or the juice. You'd get plenty more on your own. And you don't want me. When that bullshit went down with Arno you could've bailed. I mean, Jesus, did you really go in there with nothing but a switchblade? Anybody else would've run, but not you, and you've got nothing invested.”

She angled her chin aside, the veins of her throat and light array of freckles presented to him. An animal gesture of acquiescence, meant to agitate and excite a dominating red- blooded American mook. Lila said, She's been thinking on you, trying to get inside your head, practicing in a mirror and putting on cold cream. All this sun, by the time she's thirty she'll look like a worn- out saddle.

Chase said, “Not everybody would've run.”

“Everybody I know.”

“You know a lot of third- raters.”

Nodding, she took another deep breath and held it, her stomach muscles fluttering and the moon splashing into his eyes. “You're a different one, all right.”

“You said that before.”

“And it's still true. They're not sure what they want to do with you. Boze isn't as happy with you as
he was before. A brazen attitude will only carry you so far. You've been stepping on him.”

“I know. I didn't mean to. I just wanted to keep everybody alive and keep the situation from going nuclear.”

“But you also saved their asses, and they understand that. Mackie still wants to kick the hell out of you, but it's different now. I think that's more his way of saying that he respects you. Throwing down on you.”

“Some guys are mixed up like that.”

“Isn't that the truth.” She slid higher onto the bed, relaxing across the pillows, and Chase knew she was really going to turn on the heat now. “Why haven't you tried to make me?” she asked.

“You mean besides the statutory- rape charge?”

It got her smiling. “Yeah, besides that. None of the other guys ever cared about that.”

“That's why they've all done time.”

“That's not why, and you're avoiding my question.”

“It's the kind of question anybody who's smart avoids.”

“I am eighteen, you know, if that kind of thing really bothers you. And I see the wedding band. But she's not here. Something tells me she's gone for good. Maybe you're divorced, maybe she split, maybe she's dead. But you're alone. I was wrong before about your eyes.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. The eyes again.

“They're not mean. They are lonely. And sad. Can I stay here with you?”

“No,” he said.

“Why not? I want to know.”

Like you had to explain such a thing. Like it would make sense to a kid like her. “It's not something I can tell you.”

“Of course it is. Why do you think not? Because your heart was broken?”

“Yes.”

“I like to hear about love,” Hildy said. “Nobody ever talks about it. My parents sure as hell never did.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “My mother was a diabetic. She used to go into sugar shock. It was like she was drunk. She wouldn't know me, wouldn't know what day of the week it was, who the president was. She'd talk to me like I was a stranger and ask me to take her home. She'd cry like a lost little girl and I'd force- feed her candy bars and orange juice, then sing to her to calm her down until the sugar kicked in. It was the only time we ever got along. My father, he lost an arm in Desert Storm but it didn't slow him down from fucking around all the time. One of those guys who was always flirting, always on the make like his life depended on it. Maybe it did. Maybe it had something to do with the war, maybe he was just an asshole. I once caught him with a Mary Kay saleslady who was going door to door around the neighborhood. He was working the nub of his amputated arm all up inside—”

“Jesus Christ, kid, I don't want to hear this!”

“—her and she was screaming. I wonder how big a check he cut her. He brought back all these cosmetics, a rainbow of fingernail polish. My mother wore green eye shadow for months after that. Come lay down and talk to me. Tell me about your wife and what gave you your sad eyes.”