The Coldest Mile (24 page)

The guy talked incessantly, saying nothing but rambling on, unable to sit in his seat without bouncing his knee or rat-a-tat-tatting his knuckles on the tabletop, all lit fuse and burning flare.

They drank beer and did a few shots. The plan would be to keep Chase drinking to loosen him up so he made a mistake. He drank the watery beer but sprinkled out the shots under the table into the inch-deep grime on the floor.

Russ was so hyped he didn't notice anything. The speed ruled him but he wasn't entirely gone yet. He kept asking questions, most of them meaningless but with a few sharp ones tossed in to dig deep for real info. Chase answered them all truthfully. It was his honesty that would keep him alive, at least until he was inside Dex's door.

Two hours passed. After another four shots of Wild Turkey, Russ became a lot more mellow. Chase didn't try to act drunk. Nobody ever did a good job at it. They always overplayed and everyone saw through it anyway. Chase excused himself and went to the bathroom. Either Russ would attack him in the john or he'd use the time to phone Dex and tell him to get ready.

Russ didn't make a play. Chase returned to the table and said, “How about it?”

Smiling and nodding, Russ hopped to his feet and nearly fell over. He wasn't just mellow, the speed was wearing off and the liquor and lack of sleep were taking their toll. Chase watched the guy steadying himself against one of the ladies, who made a crack and got the whole bar laughing.

Russ was so fucked up he couldn't drive. Chase got the guy situated in the GTO and asked how to get to Dex's place. Russ couldn't seem to remember. He soon passed out and looked very peaceful in the passenger seat, snoring lightly. Chase reached over and found Russ's cell, hit the redial.

A voice went, “Yeah?”

Chase said, “Your man's asleep. I need directions.”

He got the
address, left Russ asleep in the Goat, and found the right apartment. He knocked and the door snapped open. He looked around at four guys eating salami sandwiches and playing poker. Maybe Dex's string, maybe just a few others like Russ and Hildy, on
the outskirts of the crew, put to use from time to time. Chase was hoping Dex might have pulled in someone else that he knew but they were all strangers.

The place was a one- bedroom shit hole, rented on a weekly basis. It was just a meeting ground, nobody stayed here. Chase figured they'd already packed up and had a new shithole ready to call home base until the big circus heist went down.

Quick introductions were made. All the names would be phony. Dex wouldn't be here, he'd be off somewhere safe waiting to get a report. They'd continue to size Chase up and try to wheedle bits of information from him. They needed to know if he was a cop. They'd keep feeding him liquor and wait for him to drop his guard.

One guy had already set up station near the front door to keep Chase from making a run for it. Someone went to the window, saw Russ with his head against the passenger window, and said, “It's the Wild Turkey that gets to him. He can stay hopped on reds for a week straight, but the minute you give him a shot of cheap whiskey it hits him like an ax handle.”

They poured Chase three fingers of bourbon. He bought three hundred in chips and they dealt him in. They'd be cool another twenty minutes, and then the anxiety would stretch and widen until they cracked him in the head, threw him across the table, and frisked him.

Twenty minutes max to make his move.

If only he could figure out what it should be.

Two of the guys were cheating and making a game
out of it, trying to one- up each other. In some circles, you pulled something like that, it would leave at least a couple of people dead, but this bunch was playful, showing one another their tricks. Chase lost four pots in a row and then they fed him a big one back to keep him in good spirits, prove to him that they weren't out to cheat him. It was a smart thing to do but they shouldn't have pushed four pots. They didn't know him well enough. He could've been an edgy type who didn't dig their merry ways. But then, they would know that much about him.

Nobody mentioned Dex's name or talked about any scores or jobs they'd pulled. He might be wired. If he asked any questions, they'd think he was a cop or a snitch, so he let them lead the conversation and once again answered everything honestly. Where he was from, where he'd been, who he knew, some of the old scores he'd been involved with. All the info he relayed was ten years old.

He kept an eye on his watch. He figured someone would stand up to get a beer, walk behind his chair, and throw an elbow into the back of his head. It was all right, he could take an asskicking. The idea of four guys yanking his pants off to make sure he didn't have a wire under his nuts was a little more bothersome, but he could handle that too. He just hoped he wouldn't have to try to stare down his grandfather with his crank hanging out.

They fed him good hands trying to get him to bet large, then at the last second pulled out flushes and full houses to beat him. It was all a matter of trying to
get him a little riled. Chase started cheating too, and won back what he lost but no more than that. They didn't know what to make of somebody who worked the pots to stay perfectly even.

One of them asked, “You want another beer?”

“Sure,” Chase said, thinking, Here it comes, here it is.

The guy passed behind his chair. He didn't throw an elbow. He pulled a blackjack. Chase decided that was excessive. You miss the sweet spot and you can shatter a man's skull. He turned in time to take the blow on his good shoulder. It still hurt and the guy came in for another pass, brushing Chase's ear with the leather- covered lead weight.

Four on one and they had to try to sap him? Going with the flow was one thing, but rolling over to die like a dog?

No guns on show yet. Chase wanted to drop and let them frisk him, but everybody's cool was gone. It didn't really matter anymore because now Chase was pissed. Like he hadn't taken enough shit down here.

He picked up a beer bottle, spun, clocked the guy with the sap, and watched him go down. It was a nice move, he had to admit, and he hadn't even given the mook a concussion. Somebody threw a jab into Chase's face and his field of vision blazed red and black. He fell back to the wall and the three guys still standing moved in. That was fine. Nobody knew how to fight as a team, they all just waded in and got in each other's way.

Taking a deep breath, he fired off a couple solid
jabs, slugging ribs and chins, holding back a fair amount but too angry to completely give in. A little nonconducive to what he was trying to accomplish here, but to hell with it. Let them work for it now.

Chase danced around the table, trying not to laugh as the three came around together, nobody thinking to head him off on the other side. That's what happened when you had no chain of command, just a group of thugs who all listened to one guy. Without Dex to give orders, they barreled ahead. Still no guns, which was a touch surprising. Chase held his ground, threw a few jabs, a few uppercuts, watching the blood squirt. He chopped at a throat and the guy gagged and went to his knees.

Someone else picked up the fallen sap and swung wildly. Chase backed off and found himself cornered, stuck beside a ratty couch and an unplugged refrigerator that smelled like a lot of shit had died in there. He got his arms up and pulled his elbows in, ducked his face, and took a lot of hammering before he went down.

The fourth guy finally got to his feet again and stumbled around some. Then he jumped into the fray too. They started to work Chase over pretty good, everyone joining in. He rolled onto his belly, balled up, and tried to ride it out. He'd let them get their shots in. He'd taken worse.

They started kicking him, which he also thought was excessive. Sons of bitches, was he going to have to get back up and fight some more? No, he tightened
up further. Not too much damage going on until someone caught him in the groin. The rotten pricks.

Finally, huffing and weaving, they lifted him up, threw him down on the couch, got his clothes off, and gave him a solid frisking. You couldn't tell nowadays with microtransmitters and bugs. They looked between his ass cheeks. They looked under his nuts. They combed through his hair with their fingers.

Someone eventually went away and got Dex.

Middle- aged but honed,
everything about him lean and tight and sharp, Dex was another hard- ass with too much strength and not enough mercy.

You only had to take one look at him to know he'd left a lot of blood in his wake. Good references, Georgie had said. Been around a while, does good work. The man's eyes were dark and they glistened with judgment and deliberation. Chase figured Dex always made off with the score no matter who he had to leave behind. Chase wondered why he'd never heard of him before.

He must've been up river for a while. Or maybe he really did heists so seldom that he never got known wide on the circuit. At least not when Chase was a kid.

Dex spoke to his man at the door, his lips hardly moving, puffing his words under his breath the way a lot of ex- cons did. Dex had a .32 in his back left pocket. He stepped over, tossed Chase his clothes, and said, “Get dressed.”

Chase wasn't even bleeding badly, a couple threads
from his nose and his mouth. His nuts still hurt though, and he hissed through his teeth as he got back into his clothes. Dex wet a hand towel in the sink and threw it to him. Chase wiped the blood off, sat back, and waited. Everyone else did too.

“Who are you, kid?”

Chase gave his real name.

“So what the hell's your problem?”

“Me? I don't have one.”

“You didn't get my number from Lamberson.”

“No,” Chase said.

“And you're not here for any job.”

Chase could barely say it with a straight face. “The circus score? No.”

“So what's it all about?”

Ready to double- tap him if he didn't immediately follow up with the truth.

So here it was. “I want to see Jonah.”

Five minutes later
the door opened, and there was his grandfather.

Jonah, the murderer of his own woman, the murderer of children, perhaps even the murderer of Chase's own mother. Cold, abiding, impenetrable, looking down at him, lips tilted into the thinnest smile in the history of the world, a grin barely there but as much as a man of stone could muster.

T
hat's all it took.

The rage ignited inside Chase. Lila said, Don't be foolish, love. You've come this far.

Jonah in his head said, You're dead.

Chase started to reach out and snatch the old man's .22, except Jonah didn't have it in his hand. That startled Chase enough to make him hesitate for an instant—where was the lethal .22 that Jonah always had cupped against his leg so he could jab it against a man's temple when the guy least expected it?—and then he went for the .32 Dex had in his back pocket.

His hands, as fast as ever. Chase snaked his fingers out, grabbed the gun butt, and yanked it free before Dex realized anything was going on.

The gun, like holding on to ice.

Chase aimed the pistol at his grandfather's face.

He knew exactly why Jonah had entered the room. It wasn't because anybody suspected Chase was his grandson. It wasn't because Jonah was in
charge of the circus score and had come around to check out last- minute details. It wasn't because he was about to play cards and have a few beers with these mooks. It was because Dex was using the old man too, keeping him on hand in case it turned out there was a snitch or a cop in their midst. Jonah was there to remove the problem.

But there was something different about the old man.

Chase frowned, even while all the hardware came out around the room, pointed at his head. Nobody saying a word. He realized with sudden clarity that he'd been planning it this way from the beginning. Take out the old man and suicide right alongside him. What a stupid move. After all this, who would be left to save Kylie? She'd wind up in the system, nearly as fucked up as if she'd been raised by Jonah. He should've listened to Lila. He should always listen to Lila.

So what was it about the old man now?

At sixty- five Jonah remained hard and powerful. The two bullets in the back hadn't slowed him at the Newark motel, and even now didn't hitch up the man's step at all. His back straight, arms corded, every ridge and muscle cut to perfect definition. Same steely eyes.

The seamed face, the white hair, the prison tats on display. An angel on the left forearm and a devil on the right, both in midflight with drawn flaming swords.

Under the angel:
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 exactly but a scar, a homemade scratching that had gotten infected and would forever remain mottled.
Chase.

Something different about him, but what?

It took a moment.

Jesus Christ.

The old man's face.

The old man's face with a hint of human expression. Something like worry.

Chase couldn't believe it. He lowered the gun an inch. Jonah said, This is a trap, you're going to die.

Jonah said, “I'm glad you're here.”

D
ex gave orders and the others cleared out. That told
Chase that they hadn't been Dex's circus score crew but the hangers- on, the ones he put to use when he needed them to do the minor jobs and rough stuff. A crew wouldn't split without seeing the outcome.

Jonah held a place of certain respect. Dex moved across the room and sat at the table, lit a cigarette, and said to Chase, “Think I can have my gun back?”

Chase ignored him, staring at his grandfather, trying to figure out his next move. He'd thought that maybe he'd wanted the old man dead. Did he still? He might never get another chance. He could feel himself wanting to say to Jonah, Seriously, are you totally cracked? The fucking circus?