Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

Despite already being a deputy sheriff, Lila had to pay for a couple of academy courses and wound up a Suffolk County cop, which was considered a cush job by the New York City fuzz. She said some of the guys gave her a hard time because of her accent, but she liked her partner, a kid a few years younger than her named Hopkins, and so far there hadn’t been too much rough action.

Hopkins was married and had two baby daughters. He and his wife came over for cake and coffee-that’s what you were supposed to do here, married couples, have cake and coffee-and brought the kids with them. Lila left Chase in the kitchen having the fucking cake and coffee while she played with the girls in the other room the whole time. He didn’t blame her, but hell, enough with the cake and coffee.

Lila told him, “Maybe you should quit teaching them kids how to steal cars. Since you started in on their fertile minds, joyriding in the area’s gone up about three thousand percent.”

She was too damn good at her job, giving the guys on the force a complex. Always getting citations, commendations, and medals for something or other. There were plenty of photo ops, the chief of her division and other public servants standing beside her, smiling, sometimes holding their hands up in a salute. It didn’t hurt to get your photo in the paper next to a beautiful young woman. Chase figured they got a little extra thrill pinning the medal to her chest, going in for a quick grope. They’d put one hand on her shoulder and the other on her ass. He noted their faces.

On occasion, she’d have some kind of a banquet or police ceremony to attend and he’d get a free dinner out of it. When the grinning gropers came around to shake his hand, telling him what a fine officer his wife was, the pride of the order, Chase would pretend to trip and give them a cheap shot to the kidneys. It wasn’t much but you retaliated where you could. The Jonah in his head told him to carry a roll of quarters in his fist next time.

Eventually it got back to the PTA that Chase was teaching the kids how to boost rides and he was brought up for review. He sat there in a classroom that had been set up to look like a court, with the judge behind the desk and him in a little chair off on his own. He got scolded by a couple of tight-asses, and he had to promise not to do it anymore. The whole review board thing didn’t carry much weight anyway since he was consistently voted one of the most popular teachers in the school district.

Sometimes at night he felt a little guilty stealing Lila away from the life she had always known before. He held her tightly with his face pressed between her breasts, breathing deeply, and she brushed her fingers through his hair and said, “You don’t have anything to feel conscience-struck about. I love it here. You gave me the ocean.”

“Is it enough?”

“Nothing is except for you, love. You’re enough. And that’s all that matters.” She kissed him and looked into his eyes, going deep again, the way she did. “’Sides, if we’d stayed in Mississippi, I’d be babysitting. Molly Mae just had her sixth.”

“Jesus Christ, six! How’s the judge?”

“He’s ready to walk on water, that miraculous sumbitch.”

T hey hit the city, and Lila fell in love with Broadway. So did Chase, all over again. Back when he was pulling heists with Jonah just outside of the city, he’d managed to take in a number of shows during their downtime, the scheme time. None of these major musicals playing in the elaborate theaters, but the classics held in smaller 99-seat venues. Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Ibsen’s Ghosts, Albee’s A Delicate Balance, and an all-female version of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot . He was only fourteen but had appreciated them greatly, as they stirred him toward understanding metaphor and sentiment. He even caught a revival of Shaffer’s Equus and was surprised to see nudity on the stage. He’d been embarrassed as hell, slinking down in his seat with his cheeks heating up.

He and Lila started going to the theater as often as they could afford it. Prices were outrageous, and he didn’t know how the other stiffs managed to swing the shows. Two tickets, dinner, and parking ran upwards of three or four bills, but they managed to make a night of it at least once a month, so long as Lila wasn’t pulling night shifts.

One evening, after The Producers, which Lila found hysterical and Chase thought was way too broadly acted, they were walking down Seventh Avenue toward a little Italian place they liked when a guy bumped into Chase and said, “’Scuse me, buddy.”

“Sure,” Chase said, knowing something had just gone wrong. It took him a second to check his wallet.

Gone. His pocket had been picked.

Goddamn, that had been a nice brazen, fluid move. A quick dip, lift, and fly. The straight life had made him careless. Getting hit by a nimble, practiced pickpocket, it actually surprised him the way it would a regular citizen. Chase wasn’t sure if he should rush after the mook or ask Lila to go grab him, use her wily police skills all over his ass.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I just had my wallet lifted.”

“You know by who?”

Chase still had his eye on the guy up ahead in the foot traffic. “Yeah.”

“Well? You gonna let him get away with the boodle? Or you want I should do all the work even on my night off?”

“You are the defender of the peace,” Chase said. “My taxes pay your salary.”

“I’m simply a wife expecting to be treated to a nice dinner in a fancy restaurant.”

“Be right back.”

“Don’t take too long, I’m jonesing for some lasagna.”

Pronouncing it la-zanga.

“Get a bottle of Merlot and order me the fettuccine Alfredo,” Chase said and took off down Seventh Avenue after the pickpocket, weaving through the crowd.

He found the guy zipping around the corner, heading for a subway station. Walking hurriedly but without breaking into a run. He was good but not especially smart. He should’ve stayed with the street crowd instead of taking the corner and making for a subway fifteen minutes before the next train. He should’ve had the cash out by now and dumped the wallet.

Chase got up close behind the mook, invading space, and made the guy stop and turn around to see who was breathing down his neck. No one else was nearby.

“I’m curious,” Chase said, “what made you choose me?”

“What?”

Up close, the stealthy mutt didn’t blend in with the urban hordes as much as Chase had originally thought. He was only around thirty but already seriously burned at the edges. Wrinkled, faded, and losing the fight to keep from being swept out to sea. A cokehead but not overly wired at the moment, his eyes a low grade of lethal. What Jonah used to call a skel, a dreg, a bottom-feeder.

“I’m no mark,” Chase told him. “Your kind always go after the tourist trade and folks who are distracted or lost. So why me?”

“What?”

Okay, so no reminiscing over the bent life with this one. Chase would have to settle on getting just a brief whiff of the old days. “Give me my wallet.”

“Get the fuck away. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. Come on, let’s have it.”

“You don’t want a piece of me.”

“You’ve got that right. Just hand over my wallet.”

“I’m not kidding with you, man, go back to fucking Kentucky or wherever you’re from.”

Now that was just mean-spirited. “New York born and bred, fucker!”

The guy drew his chin to his chest, eyes narrowing, squeezing out the world. He went deep, calling up anger and hate and letting it wash over him. You could see it happening, how the guy was just letting himself go, drifting with the worst that was inside him. All of this for what? Chase had maybe eighty bucks in the wallet, two credit cards he could cancel in sixty seconds.