Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

But the mook had skilled hands all right. One second there was nothing in his fist, and the next he was holding a fold-out blade. It snapped open with a dramatic click. Chase hadn’t been expecting a blade or pistol. Most pickpockets went into the trade because of its relative safety. No confrontation, no muscle, nobody gets hurt. No weapons were used so any jail time was light.

But this one, he’d worked a lot with his knife. Maybe it was the coke. It kept him up three days straight with nothing to do but practice.

He kept the blade down low, out straight before him. He did everything right so far as Chase knew. A couple of strings he’d been a part of had had knife fighters on them. Guys who did nothing but sharpen blades and throw them into dart-boards between scores. Almost all of them went down after carving up someone in a barroom brawl.

You saw a guy with a knife in this day and age and you knew you were looking at a serious asshole.

The mutt unleashed a nice speedy move, and suddenly the knife was coming in at a nasty angle. None of this slashing shit, not even the usual stabbing motion. A low-slung swinging arc coming up from the groin. If it hooked into Chase’s belly it would yank out his guts.

The fuck was wrong with these antisocial sons of bitches? You could rob a man without butchering him.

Chase barely avoided the maneuver, got his left arm up to block and shot off two rapid-fire punches to the guy’s nose. It brought blood but didn’t slow the mook down any. He made another low, slicing action.

“You’re fast but you don’t know when to call it quits,” Chase said.

The guy was too focused to respond, on a complete burn with his heart rate up. He looked like he just didn’t give a damn about anything anymore, like he might as well kill or die as soon as walk away.

Chase was only twenty-five and in prime shape, but the straight life had worn him down a little, made him soft. He saw what might happen. Imagined himself snuffed on the curb, with Lila eating breadsticks for the next hour thinking what the hell had happened to him, and wondering when she could crack the wine and get some pasta.

“Shit,” Chase said.

The blade came upward toward Chase’s groin and he caught the guy’s wrist, squeezed and bent it back, feeling the little bones grind into sand. The knife dropped and clattered on the cement. Chase tugged forward and sidestepped. The mook let loose with an outraged yelp as he passed by Chase’s shoulder, the light stir of breeze sort of singing, and Chase spun and elbowed him hard in the back of the head.

The pickpocket went down like he was dead.

Bathed in cold sweat, Chase staggered against the side of a building, gasping for air. It took him a minute to get back his cool. He went through the mutt’s pockets. Tore open a folded envelope and poured out a gram of coke on the sidewalk. Found a tightly rolled wad of eleven hundred bucks and took it. Got his wallet and five others. Another grand or so, not including his own eighty bucks. He pocketed it all.

Fuck off for the night, straight life.

Turning the corner, he found a mailbox and tossed the other wallets in.

At the restaurant, Lila had already ordered and was digging into a plate of lasagna, a hunk of buttered bread on the side of her plate, an open bottle of Merlot in the center of the table. God he loved to see her eat. His fettuccine was still steaming. Perfect timing. He sat and poured two glasses, downed his own quickly, and poured another.

She said, “Go wash, there’s blood on your hands.”

He hadn’t noticed. It took him a minute in the men’s room to scrub a stain out of his cuff. He knew she’d never ask him anything about it, giving him plenty of room to move. When he got back, the waiter was passing by, and Chase ordered Dom Pérignon.

She said, “Champagne?”

Why the hell not, he was twenty-one big ones ahead. “It’s a celebration.”

“My. And just what are we celebrating, sweetness?”

“That you’re not a widow,” Chase told her.

T hey went to another specialist at the Center for Human Reproduction in Manhasset. A real fat cat who blinked and sniffed a lot. This time the doc had a big chart on a wall and he drew on it with an erasable marker, showing the ins and outs of all their plumbing. Chase was a little sorry he’d been given the grand tour. Of all the mysteries that needed to be solved, he figured this one was better left in the shadows of the bedroom. The doc told him to wear boxers. Chase hated boxers but he’d been wearing them for years, since the first specialist told him to wear boxers. The doc gave him pills so he could power up the little guys and get them to do their business despite the hardships they faced.

In the deep night, when she thought he was asleep, Lila would whisper that she was sorry. But he wasn’t sure she was saying it to him. Just putting it out there to the universe. Sometimes he just let her talk, and sometimes he’d feel the need to tell her it wasn’t her fault. He’d fight for the light, but by the time he got the lamp on she’d be pretending to be asleep.

Chase got a call from Hopkins saying Lila had taken a wrench to the back while busting up a roadside car lot in Wyandanch.

Hopkins described the scam even though Chase already knew it. He’d been the one to explain it to Lila, who’d then told Hopkins.

Failing auto shops would partner up for a hit. Clean out the garages and claim that all their tools and cars brought in for servicing had been stolen. They’d put in insurance claims and shut their doors. One day there’d be a thriving auto shop on the corner, and the next everything was wiped clean, not even a can of motor oil left behind. The cars would be sold off cheap at a highway rest stop or a corner lot someplace, mostly to old men who knew the score and didn’t care or teenagers who’d learn fast the first time they caught a ticket.

Whatever didn’t sell in twelve hours was taken to a chop shop. After the insurance came through, a new garage opened up across town, with all the same tools and stock, and everybody would take their part of the kick.

Lila mentioned the trouble they were having in the Wyandanch-Deer Park area and Chase told her exactly how the scam worked. Three days later, she and Hopkins went out and caught one of the roadside lots going full swing. They got into a high-speed pursuit with the guys running the show, racing down the Sagtikos to Ocean Parkway. Lila always drove. She’d learned a lot from Chase over the years. She rammed the getaway car and nearly drove it off the Robert Moses Bridge into the Great South Bay.

They arrested a trio of perps right there on the bridge. While Hopkins was reading them their Miranda, a skinny guy with a lot of grease on his hands managed to slip his cuffs and come at Lila with a twelve-inch crescent wrench he’d hidden down the back of his overalls.

Doesn’t look like much until you get hit with it. That fucker can powder bones.

At the hospital, the doctors told Chase there was nerve damage and pressure on her spine. She couldn’t feel her legs. They weren’t sure if she’d ever walk again.

In her hospital bed she laughed it off while he tried to shake his terror and smile at her. She said, “A’ course I’m gonna walk again, the hell kinda foolishness is that? I’m just a little bruised.”

Turned out she was right. Not even twelve hours later she was up and walking around, feeling fine. The goddamn doctors, they’d give you their very worst right out of the gate just so you couldn’t come back at them later with a lawsuit for building up your hopes. Still, they wanted her to stay put for observation.