The Coldest Mile (5 page)

He thought, Did Jonah murder my pregnant mother?

The kid said to find the girl. Lila told him to save the baby. Blood was important. Chase needed to finish taking this score and get on the move.

Later that morning
the suit was delivered to Chase along with a fresh pair of white gloves. He couldn't quite get over it. They really wanted him to wear a chauffeur's uniform.

The suit fit well. He didn't like the ties Moe Irvine picked out so much and threw on the one he found least offensive. The diamond stickpin caught light like a laser.

The phone in his room rang. He answered and a curt voice he didn't recognize told him, “Mister Langan and Miss Sherry are to be driven to the First National Bank at 232 Madison Avenue, in Manhattan. Then they shall lunch at Pietro's on West 51st Street.”

Chase thought, They couldn't tell me that themselves once they got in the back of the limo?

He walked out to the garage and backed the limo down the drive to where Jackie and his sister stood at the front door looking like they'd been sitting in a funeral director's parlor for hours. The soldiers were milling around, glancing out at the golf course like they wanted to play a couple rounds while Jackie was off in New York. A few more were on the sundeck, their collars open, relaxing in chaise lounges.

So their well- being was now his responsibility. He wondered how much of all that internal- war shit was true, and if it was, how long it would take for someone to make a real move. Jackie bulldozing his sister, or she popping him? Or Moe Irvine taking out both of them, then going upstairs to whisper in Lenny Langan's ear, “You treated me like shit for thirty years, you prick, now I'm in charge.” Then pulling the dying guy's plug.

Jackie eyed him up and down, noticed right off that Chase didn't have the hat and gloves on. He said, “Hey, one second here …”

Chase ignored him and opened the back door of the limo for Sherry Langan. It was a cloudy day but she wore big dark sunglasses. He offered his hand but she didn't take it, climbing in on her own and swinging her legs clear of the door. She stretched them out, her toes pointed, muscles perfectly defined, the skin pale but exquisite. She wasn't showing off for him. She hadn't even looked at him and probably thought he was the dead chauffeur.

It annoyed him and he didn't know why.

He continued holding the door open, his shadow thrown across her knees, until she slowly turned her chin and shifted in her seat, those shades finally focused on him. He could feel her innate strength and knew right then that the Deuce was right, she was sharp and primed to take over.

He pretended to tip the hat that wasn't there and said, “Hello, Miss Langan.” Then closed her in.

Moe walked out of the house and started giving
orders to one of the capos but stopped talking when he noticed Chase wasn't wearing the hat and gloves.

These people, Jesus Christ.

Jackie Langan stood back and waited for Chase to open the door of the limo for him. Chase walked past him, slid behind the wheel, and tapped the door lock. The security gates were already open. He left Jackie, Moe Irvine, and the rest of the stumble-fuck crew standing there while he kidnapped the woman.

I
n the back of his head, Lila whispered, Sweetness,
why're you doing this?

It was a good question.

Maybe the answer was blood, maybe it wasn't, you just couldn't tell anymore. Chase hadn't intended to play things out this way, but he went with his instincts. Jackie didn't matter. Jackie would only have chump change around, even in the safe. Sherry Langan was the real head of the family and would probably be whacking her stupid- ass brother any day now. Chase had to get on her radar somehow, so why not be bold about it? His grandfather always told him never to follow someone else's rules.

Jonah in his skull said, You're doing this because you want to die.

Chase gunned the limo toward the Holland Tunnel. He'd overhauled the engine and was able to squeeze some real speed out of it, the front end perfectly aligned, tires balanced, the extra length of the vehicle cutting a nice channel as he cruised.

The satellite radio had been set to sophisticated talk shows and classical music. He found an oldies station and kept the volume low, the sweet harmonies of Motown reaching out and filling his belly with a nice thrum.

The partition window was down. Sherry Langan said, “So, you're a showoff.”

“Not really,” Chase told her. “I'm just a driver, not a chauffeur.”

“What's the difference?”

“Among other things, I don't wear the hat and gloves.”

“Then I daresay this wasn't the job for you. Perhaps we should have weeded you out during the interview.”

The backs of her hands were covered with thin wisps of veins. She made herself a drink at the bar and sat back, sipping it, sighing a little as she swallowed.

She crossed her legs. They were her best feature and she knew it. He suspected that she was always hoping for a reaction—had probably heard the old wiseguys whispering about her stems since she was a kid.

“Are you the one who's been raiding my Glenlivet?”

“No.”

“Your friends then.”

“I don't have any friends,” he said, and the truth of it rang inside him, echoing through the emptiness.

She watched him taking the smooth turns, weaving through traffic, in no real hurry but still making good time. “Are you trying to play out a flash move here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Earn your bones by creating a stir? Garner respect and rise through the ranks by pissing off your employers?”

“People really give that a whirl?”

“They have in the past, yes.”

“Were any of them still breathing the next day?”

A demure laugh rippled up her throat. “I suspect not many, at least not in the old days. So tell me, what's your game?”

“I don't have one,” Chase said. “I'm just taking you to the bank on Madison and then to Pietro's for lunch.”

Nails clinking the rim of the glass elicited a sharp tone. “But you abandoned my brother.”

Chase tried to force his features into a shocked expression, knowing it probably wasn't going to work. But how well could she see him anyhow? Way back there through those big black shades?

“What?”

“Yes, he was supposed to join us.”

“Nobody told me he was coming.”

“He was standing there in the driveway next to the limo.”

“Really?” Chase said. “So why didn't he get in?”

“He was waiting for you to open the door for him.”

“Oh, right, I'm supposed to do that. I thought he was just seeing you off.”

Her top leg began to bounce slightly and she held the glass against her bottom lip, rolling it, the ice clicking in time with the shoop- shoops on the radio. He could feel the depth of her concentration, the way she pored over him now. It ignited him somehow, made him perk up in the seat.

She took off the Jacqueline O's.

He met her eyes in the rearview. They were hot and calculating and full of education and traces of the dead. That was her strength. Crippled and crushed boys scattered down the years in her wake, starting when she was about thirteen. A few maimed but alive enough to limp along in the world, deformed but still thinking about her, maybe even loving her. She'd never been struck with a pinprick of conscience. That was the tragedy she'd never feel. He'd seen a few like her before.

The road rolled in and out. He could feel her trying to assess the situation, wondering if he was working with one of the other outfits and making a grab. Or if he might be a feeb fucking around with her. Or just another dumb member of the crew overstepping his bounds, perhaps looking to nail the boss's daughter. She kept her purse close. He knew she must be packing. Probably a little lady's snub .25, something that would do real damage if she got close enough to put it to a guy's head. The bullet whipping around in there turning everything to cream.

But she had her cell phone and Chase hadn't made any overt moves, and they were still on their way to the bank. Not like he was hijacking her to Atlantic City or the Poconos. He liked the way she showed no alarm, sure of herself, on top of the action.

After a moment she said, “No. You're not one of us.” She finished her drink, grabbed her purse, slid up directly behind him, and spoke through the partition. He heard her digging around past her lipstick and hairbrush. “There's something not right about you.”

A mob princess putting him in his place. Chase felt oddly insulted. He said, “Hey now, is that a nice thing to say?”

“Let's keep focused, shall we? All right, driver, so are you actually such a moron that you left my brother behind by accident, or is this some kind of a shakedown? Are you abducting me? And please be quick in answering, I do have a .38 pointed at the back of your head. The partition glass isn't bulletproof though the windshield is.”

He glanced in the mirror again. It wasn't a small, lady's snub, but a nice pearl- handled revolver. No chance of jamming, she went in for practicality.

Sherry Langan was like nearly every other woman he'd met in the bent life. Hard, calm, and a lot smarter, tougher, and more on the ball than most guys. You could never call her beautiful, or even pretty really, but there was something about
her that made you look twice. And not just at the legs.

Maybe it was self- assurance or icy composure, the way she held herself above and out of reach. Or maybe it was the inherent understanding that some guys liked that sort of woman. Chase was a little afraid he might be one of them.

He'd been right. Jackie wasn't in the boss's chair. And the real power behind the family since Lenny had taken to living under a plastic tent wasn't Moe Irvine either, it was Sherry. Moe really did care about ties.

Chase thought it was pretty ballsy, her just coming out and asking, Are you abducting me? Like you'd have an honest enough abductor to tell you flat out, Yeah, I am.

“I didn't abduct you, and you know it. If you really thought so, you'd stick that thing in my ear.”

She stuck the revolver in his ear and said, “I planned on doing that anyway.”

“If you ace me, you'll have a long walk to Pietro's.”

They entered the tunnel and crossed over toward Manhattan. In the dark now with the interim lights flashing overhead, and that sense of pressure growing over them as they got deeper under the Hudson he focused on the cool gunmetal against his neck. Freezing actually, which made him think of his mother's grave, standing there in the snow with his father drunk and sobbing on the ground, his hair growing thick with ice.

“What's your name?” she asked, sitting back, placing the .38 on the seat beside her. She poured herself another drink and turned so that she was casually facing the partition, her hair wafting in the breeze from the air- conditioner vents.

He gave her the name of the fake ID he'd gotten the job under. It would hold up, at least for a while, depending on how hard she pushed it.

“You've got nerve but that's not enough, you know.”

“For what?”

“For being one of my employees.”

He caught her eyes again, astute as hell, but she wasn't onto him as a heister. She thought he was trying to show off to her, trying to impress her so he could get in her pants, marry her, share in her millions. “I'm just doing my job.”

“But without the gloves and hat.”

“I am wearing a tie,” Chase said.

“I don't like it.”

“Me neither. You can blame Moe.”

A crisp smile twisted across her lips. “It's an old man's style.”

“Yeah, like Jackie's aftershave.”

“Yes. Our home is draped in ancient history. My father's, the men who've worked there who are dead or in prison now. The families that came before us. My father bought the estate from Jimmy ‘Toots’ Defazo, who was machine- gunned in the living room by his own consigliere. There are still some paintings in the halls of him. My father liked taking
the man's home. And his belongings. And his heritage, and then adding it to his own. My brother is trying to do the same thing. Like this incident, for instance. Jackie can get one of the other men to drive him into the city, but he won't allow that. It is, after all, why we have a chauffeur.”

“Why doesn't he just take the Ferrari?” Chase asked.

“It doesn't run.”

“It does now. I gave it a tune- up.”

“The car doesn't actually matter. He's afraid of it, I think. It's too much style for him to live up to. Did he get angry with you for touching it?”

“Yeah, he tried to have two of his bodyguards break my appendages.”

“But they failed,” she said.

“Mostly.”

She gave a slow
tsk tsk tsk
with a pursed bottom lip, making it sexy. “Be careful fooling with someone's conceit, even if it is broken. It's what people fear most. Being forced to face up to their own charade, having their weakness exposed. They'll die with their teeth in your throat before they allow that to happen.”

Telling him this after cleaning his ear out with a gun barrel.

“When I was a girl my father once took us to Asbury Park, before the renovations began, when it was nothing but a dead boardwalk in a mostly lifeless city. Autumn. But without the colors, or the leaves, or
anything else, really, just the empty sand. It was very cold, a dark day, overcast, but with no wind. More than that it was bleak. You couldn't touch anything without getting covered with splinters. All the buildings creaked and complained. Broken glass everywhere. You could feel how motionless and lonely and
corrupted
the pier was, the ocean barely rippling. The birds already gone.”

She took a sip, rattled the ice in tune to her own memory. “Jackie started crying as we looked out over the park, our backs to the water. He thought the corpses of drowned sailors were going to grab hold of his ankles between the slats of lumber. I believed our father was angry with us for some reason, even though he seemed in a happy mood. He'd invested in some property there as a tax write- off, and knew that in the years to come the city would rebuild itself and his interests would pay off in a big way. It was something for him to be proud of on every level. Outfoxing the IRS, contributing to the community, investing in the future. It's one of the few things he'd ever done with his money that he felt was truly clean, but he had to do it in a murdered place.”