Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

The number would belong to a cell phone. It would be untraceable, and it would be ditched a minute after he called.

He had only one shot at this, and he had to make it count.

T here was probably a code they stuck to when contacting each other. Two rings, hang up, three rings, hang up, some kind of shit like that. A lot more discriminating than on Jonah’s circuit.

Chase called the number. After it rang twenty times, he disconnected and tried again.

They weren’t a twitchy bunch but there would be rules to follow. No matter what though, even if they figured the cops were on the line, they’d eventually have to answer. It was Marisa’s phone, they’d need to find out what happened to her and see how badly their action was blown.

After another twenty, a dead-calm voice said, “Yes.”

“Are you the getaway man?” Chase asked.

Silence.

Let him roll it around for a while, get the questions burning, but without being able to ask any of them. Give nothing.

Chase said, “Are you the driver? All I want is the driver. I left a message with Marisa Iverson. I’ll leave it with you too. I don’t care about your knockoffs or what happened inside the ice merchant’s. I just want the driver. Don’t tell me he was your regular guy. A maniac like that firing out a car window on a heist is a wild dog. The cop killing has got to have put a lot of heat on your ass. Give him to me and the rest of you can walk.”

“No.”

“Then I’ll take you all down. You the driver?”

Silence.

“If not, pass the word on.”

Chase broke the connection and threw the phone out the car window. He got onto the Long Island Expressway heading east and put the hammer down until he hit 110. The world blurred around him but not enough. Traffic parted before him like flesh opening before the intent of a knife.

He shut his eyes and drifted, hearing Jonah telling him he’d fouled up again, leaving the girl alive and warning the crew. When Chase opened his eyes again and checked the rearview he had three cruisers trying to box him in, the sirens and lights suddenly surrounding him. He smiled his first real smile in weeks, squeezed out 135 from the engine and watched them fade behind him as he jockeyed around family SUVs. Before any more backup showed he took the next exit off, parked behind a firehouse until all the sirens dissipated in the distance, and stole a fresh pair of plates. He took back roads toward home. Every time he looked in the rearview and saw his own eyes he got a minor jolt. He kept thinking someone else was in the backseat, scrutinizing him.

H e called Murphy in Fort Wayne and found out the man was dead-heart failure, six hours on the table, ten weeks in a coma before finally giving it up-but the elder son, Georgie, had taken over the crime line while the younger son ran the used-car lots. Georgie knew who Chase was and said, “You still a grease monkey?”

More stupid-ass code. The old men had been using it since 1958. They still said “dropped a dime” and never knew how much a phone call cost. If the feds were listening, how hard would it be for them to fucking reverse the numbers?

Chase said, “Georgie, listen closely. Forget the double-talk. Tell me where Jonah is. I need to see him.”

G eorgie gave him a phone number, in reverse. The guy was going to carry tradition right to the end.

Turned out Jonah’s current home base wasn’t that far away, only an hour upstate in White Plains. Chase couldn’t figure the attraction in White Plains unless Jonah was using it as a headquarters just to be close to Connecticut, maybe the Indian rez casino. It wasn’t Jonah’s usual type of score, all those people and the serious security, but Chase had no idea what kind of heists his grandfather was putting together now.

He called the Deuce and asked a lot more questions, got a few answers. He needed to scrape together whatever facts or rumors he could find out about Jonah’s dealings over the last decade. Deucie said he’d get back to him after he talked to a few other guys, but the information was going to cost and yes, he took credit cards. Chase ran off his Visa number.

A day and a half went by before Deucie phoned back. He’d talked to a lot of people who still liked Jonah and a lot more who didn’t. There was even more bad blood out there now. He told Chase what he’d wanted to know and said, “If you’re getting back into the life I think I’ve got someone who could use you.”

“No thanks.”

“He’s a don’s son, has a pretty solid crew. Good money and he likes guys who can handle cars and trucks.”

That meant the mob was back to doing a lot of big-rig hijacking. Send out crews to work the highways, the syndicate bosses robbing from each other. It was low-class, the families must be having a lot of troubles with each other lately.

Chase told him, “I’ll think about it.”

“Hey,” Deucie said. “I was sorry to hear about your wife. Really, I got to tell you. I mean, if it was my wife, it would be a blessing if she got taken out, you know? The way she’s an anchor around my neck, what with the leather shoes and the Gucci purses and the jewelry, and always with the Mexican pool boys. I turn around, there’s another fucking Mexican un-clogging the filter, she wears these guys out. Me, I let it slide, I don’t know why, maybe one day I’ll hire a torpedo to bury her in the Pine Barrens with all the goddamn shoes and purses. But you, I remember what you did when she got hurt couple years back. You, I can tell, you actually loved-”

Chase hung up.

He dreamed of his father and called out his name. Michael. Chase was nearly as old now as his dad had been when he’d offed himself. It made them brothers of a sort, a part of the same fraternity of pain. He wanted to hear his father’s voice, and more than that, he wanted his father to hear his. A powerful urge swept through him to offer whatever guidance he had to his father. Maybe it would be enough to save him, even now, fifteen years too late. Keep him from taking the boat out in a storm and capsizing this time.

The past drew at him in a way it never had before. His childhood before Jonah seemed to be swarming up, loud and prevalent, trying to yank him backward. He kept watching his father in the snow, cheek pressed to the frozen marble tombstone, wanting to be dead.

Chase knew he was dreaming because his old man suddenly entered the room. It was too dark to see but he knew the body language, the expression of sorrow in every movement. So this was his dad after his mother’s murder. He called out the man’s name again and told him to leave. He barked like a wounded dog in his sleep because his father was sitting on the end of the bed, weeping.

Chase phoned the number that Georgie had given him and got a genderless voice mail. He left his home address, set up the meet for three days from now, and named a busy family restaurant near the LIE where two parkways intersected. It would offer Jonah four directions to run in case he smelled a trap. Chase couldn’t think of anywhere safer that his grandfather might feel secure enough to meet with him after all this time. Jonah’s first thought would be that Chase was still in the life, had been arrested, and was now setting him up on a plea-bargain.