The Coldest Mile (22 page)

Any other time and he wouldn't have said a word, but he'd fallen into a strange, heavy mood and his thoughts were moving from past to future without halting on the present. He sat on the bed, propped against the headboard, thinking about Kylie out there with Jonah again, and forcing himself not to obsess on Little Walt's last ride. With Lila's voice echoing his own inside his head he talked about her to Hildy. It felt as if the sob that had been building in him might threaten to break at any moment, but it held back and back until he almost wanted it to leave him once and for all. Hildy shut off the light.

His voice seeped from him in a way that made it almost impossible for him to hear. He seemed to be talking about the specialists. Broadway shows. The day he'd rushed to the hospital and forced his way into the morgue. Lila's voice took on a strength his own lacked, the Southern twang just a little stronger than usual, the way it happened when she was a little upset.

Words slid from his lips full of significance but no context, already edited of most names and places. He was surprised he had the presence of mind to do that considering his state, but maybe it was Lila lending a hand. He ran through the high points of the
last several weeks, painting a vivid and accurate picture. He spoke of Kylie, his fears for the little girl, then talked about the lagoon. Hildy perked and let out a little sound like she'd stabbed herself with a needle. Maybe she'd heard about it, maybe it was just that awful a story that it could affect anybody, no matter how hard they were, so long as they weren't Jonah. Hildy murmured beside him with sorrowful, sometimes nearly sexual whispers.

“What do you want now?” she asked.

She placed a hand on his inner thigh, but didn't move it. No patting or massaging or groping toward his groin. Just the touch of a lovely young woman. She looked into his mean or sad or lonely eyes and moved away from him.

He wanted to save his two-year-old aunt Kylie even though he couldn't offer her anything truly stable. What the hell was he going to do with a little girl? He didn't have a job, he'd reentered the bent life. It didn't matter, he thought, he hoped. But he couldn't leave the girl with Jonah.

It was nearly three in the morning. His chest pained him as if a steel band were tightening around it. The moon washed across Hildy's face and lit her in silver. She stared at him, eyes black in the dark, her lips shining.

“You didn't burgle houses with those three,” Chase said.

“No,” Hildy admitted.

“Who then?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Whatever Jonah's score was, it was most certainly already in play. He was close to the old man and didn't want to have to start over again.

The smirk. The smirk was what he'd focused on before.

He turned to Hildy, the pillow hot against the side of his face, and said, “I want to meet Dex.”

“Oh. You trying to get in on that big job?”

T
urned out she was one of those chicks who floated
through crews, latching on to guys here and there and then breaking off again, always in motion. A familiar face who got her action, brought friends around, served drinks, picked up a few tricks of the trade, and usually heard more than she should've. Chase had seen a lot of women like that growing up, but never when a major score was cooking.

Georgie had said that Dex didn't usually work on the same circuit with the likes of Jonah, and Chase could see why. Letting girls get in close enough to overhear your setups was worse than sloppy, it was sometimes lethal. Chase realized that if Jonah had known Hildy knew anything about this latest heist they were planning, she'd be dead.

She spilled what she knew about Dex, which wasn't much despite the fact that she drifted in and out among his boys, the way she did Boze's crew. She was one of several girls who revolved around the Sarasota circuit. They called her a greeter. She made
the pros coming in from out of town comfortable. She'd been on hand when Lamberson came in. She called him the prostate guy.

“That's all he talked about. How he had to go in once a week for radiation. He thought his dick was being burned off. Said his father died from cancer and he figured it was his turn now.”

“Can you get me in to see Dex?”

“He always moves the meets. I haven't heard a word from anybody on his string for a couple of weeks. They hardly ever need a girl around. When they do, I show up and sometimes there's other chicks too, sometimes not. It's not quite as sleazy as it sounds. Those guys, they don't like whores much because a streetwalker doesn't know the rules. She's not really part of the bent life, and she's likely to give up what little she knows about somebody if she gets dragged in on a vice rap or a drug charge. The strings like girls in the life who know about grifting and scores and won't ever open their mouths unless they're told to. They like a little company just so they can talk about their jail time and their biggest heists. Most of them don't even want to screw around. They want someone to ooh and ahh, make them a sandwich.”

“You don't have a number for him?”

“No, not Dex. But one of his string. Guy named Russ Declan.”

“Call him and find out what you can.”

Hildy shook her head. “That's not how it's done. If I call him, he'll suspect a setup right from go. It's
easy to disappear forever in a state that has almost twelve hundred miles of coast.”

All that coastline but Milly and Little Walt had been dropped in a lagoon. What did that say?

“Give me his number,” Chase told her. “I'll call. I'll say I got it from Lamberson and I want in on the job.”

“Lamberson wouldn't know it.”

“That doesn't matter. He'll have to tell Dex that I know about the job. Dex will have to reel me in and check me out anyway. I just need to get inside.”

“Once you're in they might just cap you.”

“Not until they talk to me to find out what I know.”

“Then you'll give me up.”

He looked at her and said, “No.”

She stared into his face for a while. She brought her lips to his, pressing and urging, but he was stone, as he thought he'd always be from now on, and eventually she gave up. “Your wife's dead.”

“What's the number?” he asked.

They slept late,
lying there on top of the sheets with their clothes on, her hand on top of his chest. Hildy showered first and used most of the towels. Then he went in. The sexual tension had vanished. It was gone because she'd finally turned it off. She was smart enough not to keep wasting energy.

He called and tried to break into Dex's string. Chase spun his story about getting the number from
Lamberson and hearing about a big score cooking. For added credibility he threw in Sloane's name. Russ Declan was friendly and talkative and eager to meet. He mentioned a bar that Chase had passed a few times.

They'd have to check him out now to see if they had a leak and if the score was blown. Chase figured he'd immediately be ushered to where Dex's crew was holed up because everybody involved would want to get a look at him and see if he was wired. They'd make nice for a while, play some cards, drink some beers, try to squirrel info, and if he wasn't forthcoming enough they'd shatter his kneecaps.

Chase took Hildy
out for breakfast. Over French toast and hash browns he said, “Tell me about Russ.”

“He's like me kinda, on the edge of the circle. A little jittery sometimes because he used to be a trucker and he picked up a taste for speed. He used to live on it during the long hauls. He likes to be behind a wheel. Not getaway stuff, but just long drives, up and down the Intracoastal, to the Keys and back again.”

“But he's in on the heists?”

“He's muscle. Preferred weapon is a twelve-gauge. Covers crowds, keeps anybody from being a hero during bank jobs.” She drank her milk and said, “This is sour. Is your milk sour?”

“No.”

“Try it.”

“I have tried it.”

“And it's not sour?”

“No.”

“You hardly sipped yours.”

“Order another.”

“I don't want another if it's going to be sour.”

“Get orange juice then!”

She did, and more hash browns, toast, and another side of bacon. He liked watching her pack it away. Lila had loved to eat too.

“Any idea what the score is?”

“A circus,” she said.

Chase took an extra second to see if he'd heard her right. “What?”

“This traveling carnival- circus comes through. Calloway & Dark's Traveling Fair and Sideshow of Wonders. They're still popular around here, the old- fashioned carnivals. Touring all through the South.”

Chase remembered just how fucked up names could get down here. He'd met Lila while on a string with three guys who planned on robbing Bookatee's Antiques & Rustic Curio Emporium. Later on, he'd bought Lila's wedding ring from Bookatee himself.

The rage wanted to crawl up his spine again. He thought of armed men running into a circus tent filled with kids holding balloons and cotton candy. One shot and the horses and elephants stampede, stomping folks underfoot and knocking over the bandstands, crushing dozens. He saw Jonah drawing a bead on midgets and dancing poodles.

But it would be a cash- only venue. Probably no real security. Tickets and cash boxes, bored teenagers and carny hawkers working the crowd. It seemed a little stupid and not all that big a score to call in so many pros, but maybe there was more to it than Chase was thinking. Compared to knocking over a traveling fair, the dress heist sounded a lot smarter.

“I don't suppose you're going to drive for Boze anymore now, are you?” Hildy said.

“They don't need a driver.”

“They think they do.”

“That's part of their problem. They think too much and not enough.”

She nodded at that, turning it over. He wondered if she was in love with Mackie or Boze or anybody else. The fact that she wandered through the crews didn't mean she didn't have her heart set on someone.

Like most women in the life she had a hard- line worldliness fused with a kind of naive romanticism. Cynical but fanciful, the two never balancing out, always working against each other. No one would ever be able to earn her love. She wouldn't want it that way. In the bent life you only took what you could steal.

They finished their meal and Chase paid. Hildy moved to him again, leaning forward on her toes, as if she might try to kiss him, and he found himself edging toward her, as if to receive her in his arms, except his arms were tight at his sides.

She twirled aside and said, “Can you drop me off?”

“You didn't drive to the motel?”

“No, I took a cab.”

It went against all the rules, taking taxis and leaving a record of your movements. “Where's the Merc?”

“We had to ditch it.”

Chase led her outside and they climbed into the GTO. She said, “You don't have a gun.”

“I don't like guns.”

She pulled a Smith & Wesson .38 out of her handbag. “Here.”

“What are you doing with that?”

“What do you think?”

“You didn't have it the other day when I checked your purse.”

“If I had, maybe you wouldn't have been able to check my purse.”

“But last night I told you—”

“You don't have to like it, just use it. You think too much and not enough too.”

“You keep it. Your friend Russ will just snatch it from me when I show up. Or it'll spook him and he'll be edgy enough to draw down on me before I've had a chance to meet Dex. I don't need it.”

She shook her head and said, “Are you for real or what? How have you lived so long?”

He was almost back in the groove. When he saw Jonah again, the old man would be palming a .22 down against his leg for a quick draw and pop.
Chase would snatch it away and stick it in his grandfather's eye and say, How could you do it, you prick? How could you snuff a kid? Where's Kylie? The old man would stare at him, as inured and implacable as an ancient altar where hundreds had been split open by stone knives. Chase was eager to find out what would happen next.

H
is cell rang before he even started the car. The
Deuce told him, “Jackie Langan just got aced in Vegas. One between the eyes while he was sleeping in bed.”

Chase snapped his phone shut and knew Bishop would be coming.

Looking at his
face, Hildy said,
“Jeez,
even more bad news?”

“Nothing I didn't already know about.”

“Most people, they know about trouble, they step out of the way. You walk in front of it.”

“Yeah, you might be right about that, but I have my reasons for doing what I do, same as you.”

She gave a practiced titter, the kind of thing drunk businessmen might like to hear. “Sometimes you sound as stupid as Tons.”

“Oh man, that's just low.”

Halfway across town they picked up a tail. A Ford
Taurus, hanging back about fifty yards but being fairly aggressive, jockeying to stay in position. The roads were packed with surfer dudes hanging out of Jeeps, boards and coolers on show everywhere. The Taurus almost clipped some shaggy- headed golden boys in a crosswalk. Worried that Chase would notice, the driver fell back for a while. Chase made a sharp left.