Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

“Christ,” he said, and elbowed her in the sternum. She fell to her knees and tried to hammer him in the crotch. He slid backward, got his hands up in front of him like he was in the ring.

He watched her, intrigued and a little sick to his stomach. All his years with Jonah and they’d never worked with a female professional thief. Were they all tough like this? He supposed they’d have to be in order to run with crews that carried Pythons and blew away police officers.

“So, he’s your man, eh?” he said. “The driver. He your guy?”

“They’re all my guys.”

“You must get a lot of chocolate on Valentine’s Day.”

“You don’t have what it takes to roll with me,” she told him.

“We can find out if you really want to push the point.”

“Oh,” she said, chin already swelling and growing black with bruises, gums purple with blood. “I do. I certainly do, baby.” Turning action into fore-play. “Your hand is shaking.”

“All I want is the getaway man.”

“Hold your arms out, maybe he’ll fall through the ceiling right into them.”

Chase was tough, but he didn’t know if he could do whatever it took. Not even now. Not with Lila still alive in his mind, imaging her eyes filled with disappointment and love for him. Jesus, what the hell was he going to do?

“Marisa, I’m kind of appealing to you here, okay? Really. Neither one of us wants to go down this road.”

“You are such a cunt,” she said. “You’re easy. You want to know how easy. Watch.” She came at him again, and when he tried to hold her off, she went at him with her teeth. She turned her head and chewed into his wrist.

He smacked her and then backhanded her, rocking her off her feet. It was a couple of mean shots but not nearly enough to make her stop giggling. Her eyes had told him that she didn’t think he could do the things he would have to do. She kicked out at him and he hit her again. She struck the floor with a snarl and lay there with her shoulders trembling, spitting out looping ropes of blood. He watched her, knowing she was laughing at him.

“Like I said, you’re easy.”

“Marisa, don’t make me do this.”

“I’m not making you do anything, baby. But it’s all right, we’ll be done here soon anyway, and then you’ll get yours.”

Here it was, finally. He was meeting the worst part of himself. He thought of the men who hurt women. The driver blasting Lila. The animals out there that he’d always despised. The bastard murdering his mother.

Chase raised his fist and punched Marisa in the face, the sound of bone cracking bone making his belly twist. She had guts and she stuck to the rule that you never gave up your crew. She’d never break and he felt an odd respect for her, mixed with all the disgust and hate. How far could he go?

Mouthing Lila’s name, he slugged Marisa Iverson again. She barely rocked back on her feet. Her eyes were beginning to close up. She wobbled and dropped, and then shot to her feet again, moving for her purse. He let her go. When she found that the.22 was gone she hurled the purse at him. It bounced off his chest. She turned to face him, still grinning, she’d be grinning in his dreams, he knew, for the rest of his life.

“The driver.”

“You’ll get nothing out of me, baby,” she said.

The Jonah in his head said, Shoot her in the stomach.

Sneering, Marisa came at him once more and pummeled him twice in the chest. She knew how to throw a punch the right way, trying to stop his heart. Then she drove an elbow in his ribs and he almost went down. It filled her with joy and adrenaline. No wonder she and the driver had paired up. She was a lunatic too.

She ran in and tried to bite him in the throat. He slapped her two, three, four times bringing loud grunts and weird laughter from her. She fell to the carpet, tried to stand once more but couldn’t. The surge of crazed energy was fading.

She started panting and moaning a little singsong that reminded him of the preacher overtaken by the power of tongues at his wedding.

Finally she managed to stand, weaving a bit.

“You think I can’t take a few love taps?” she said. She spit at him, her blood landing on his shoes. “I’ve been getting worse than this since I was seven years old. You can’t hurt me. You can’t do anything to hurt me.”

Jesus Christ, she might be right.

He was teeming with sweat. He wanted to moan or roar. He would fucking beg her if he thought it could work.

She was better than him, much harder than him. As icy and tough as they came. But he couldn’t shake the thought, even now. Why hadn’t she pulled out of town yet? What was keeping her here?

And then he knew why she hadn’t run yet.

He’d botched it.

If only he’d waited and watched a few more days, he could’ve caught them all. He’d messed up, hadn’t been thinking clearly.

The crew planned on scoring the diamond merchant again.

“You’re going to have to kill me now, you know,” she told him. He wasn’t sure that she could even see him anymore. “You don’t have any choice. The minute you leave I’ll just call my boys and they’ll scatter. Or worse for you, they’ll hunt you down.”

“They won’t have to.” He found an unused pad and pen next to the phone and wrote his address down. “They can come find me whenever they like.”

“You’re insane,” she said, the smile gone at last.

“You can’t just walk away.”

“Sure I can.”

“I won’t let you.”

“Tell them I’ll be waiting.”

“Cunt.”

After all of this she still managed to launch herself at him, trying to scratch out his eyes. He caught her in midair easily, held her closely for a moment, and then laid her onto the couch. Her adrenaline finally gave out and she slumped back across the cushions, out cold.

Shadows lengthened across them both. He stared down at her unconscious form as the room grew darker, the sun starting to set. His hands were sticky with her spit and blood. He didn’t move. He didn’t know when he would be able to move again but he knew he couldn’t move now.

She was protecting the one who had squeezed off three shots into his wife.

He should take her kneecaps out.

He should put two in her eyes.

The guns were heavy in Chase’s jacket. He tried to will himself to accept and become a part of their exacting pitiless nature, even while Lila said loudly within him, Oh sweetness, what’ve you done?

C hase found himself in the dining room drinking a beer. He finished the bottle and left it in the sink. On the couch, Marisa Iverson gurgled, hissed, and snorted, having a hard time breathing with her face so swollen. He made for the door and another thought hit him.

Carpet steamer service.

Marisa Iverson had only been planning to stick around for a few months at most. Establish an identity at the diamond merchant’s, make the move on the video cameras, stay long enough for the heat to dwindle, and then she and the crew would score the merchant again.

So why the hell would she feel the need to clean the carpets? How dirty could they get that someone in the bent life would care enough to pay to have them cleaned and keep the number on hand?

Chase ran upstairs and got her address book, made a note of the steamer service address and phone number.

Maybe this was her one mistake.

She’d be unconscious for another hour at least. He had that long to see if he could track the crew on his own.

It took him fifteen minutes to get there. The address was real. He drove by it and found an industrial park. She knew the area and had gotten just a touch too clever trying to cover every detail in order to make her sham life seem authentic. She was organized and compulsive. She couldn’t put a number down in the book without an address too. She couldn’t put an address down if it wasn’t an actual place.