Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

Angie looked back at Chase and said, “Come on, let’s get inside where it’s comfortable. No troubles, right? Wipe your bloody nose with the bottom of your shirt.”

Jonah gestured at the van door with his chin and Chase got off the floor, wiped his nose with his shirt, slid the door open, and stepped out. They were at a motel/bar called the Wagon Wheel. Tucked behind the station, the place looked like every other flop-house where the lifelong drunks and prostitutes shacked at the very end of their games. It was also the sort of spot commonly used as a meeting ground for thieves putting a string together and scheming a heist. Civilians never saw anything or remembered anything, and even if they did, they made unreliable witnesses for the cops. Chase had spent a lot of time in similar environments.

His grandfather put a firm hand between Chase’s shoulder blades, steering him to a room around back. Angie unlocked the door and said, “Welcome to our humble abode. Feel free to put your feet on the furniture.”

Chase sat on a ratty couch with no life left in the springs, backed against the far wall so he was the farthest person from the door. It would be how Jonah wanted it. Angie sat at the other end of the couch and Jonah took a ladder-back chair facing straight on. Usually it would’ve worked the other way around, you always sat as deep in the room as possible in case somebody kicked in the door. But when you were watching somebody, like his grandfather was watching him now, this was the only way to work it.

For the moment it was Jonah’s play. Chase waited. He was losing patience fast but figured he could hold on until-well, until he couldn’t any longer.

“Let’s have a drink,” Angie said.

A bottle of scotch and some glasses were on the coffee table. She poured three fingers into each glass and pushed one in front of Chase. He threw back half of it in one pull.

The girl sipped, smiling, trying to put out a breezy atmosphere. She kicked off her shoes and put her bare feet against Chase’s leg. Her toenails were painted torch red, the same as her fingernails.

The only reason he knew the name of the polish was because Lila had once tried it and said, “Any woman ever approaches you with these nails who isn’t your wife, even if you spot her in the first pew of church Sunday morning, she’s a whore or practicing to be one.”

Jonah wasn’t good at dealing with people and Chase could see that Angie was the front player. It probably made her feel slick and accomplished, but all it meant was that if trouble ever marched in, she’d take the first bullet.

She moved her foot toward his lap and he wondered if she was just the playful sort who enjoyed prompting men or if she was hard like Jonah and this was some new challenge devised to test Chase’s sincerity. Whatever it was, now was the time for Chase to quit backing up and make a move. Jonah would be waiting for it. They wouldn’t be able to get the ball rolling until the tension broke.

“Isn’t this nice?” she asked. “So how long’s it been since you two old friends have-”

Chase flipped her legs aside and kicked the coffee table toward his grandfather. The old man was a little slower than he had been, but that didn’t matter much. He was primed and had something to prove. He dropped his left shoulder to bat aside the wobbly old table. It wasn’t going to hurt him. The.22 came up in his right hand and he started to lean forward. Chase did too.

Chase was fast. Maybe faster now than ever.

He could’ve snatched the gun away from Jonah like he’d taken Lila’s that first night. Chase’s head was crowded with doubts and misgivings about a lot of shit, but he had no question about that. He could’ve driven his fist into his grandfather’s belly or whipped low and bird-dogged him, tackling him across the lower legs and possibly shattering his knees.

Chase was certain he could’ve done any of those things, but none of them would get Jonah to help him. And it would wind up killing one of them. So he forced himself to hesitate.

It was painful doing nothing while you waited for the rest of the world to catch up.

The bottle of scotch hit the floor and bounced twice, landing right side up without spilling a drop. One of the glasses struck the radiator and shattered, the others rolled across the stained carpet.

Angie reached beneath a cushion and started to clamber off the couch, moving up behind Chase. She took tiny nips of air between her teeth. She’d cleaned her weapon recently and used too much gun oil.

Without expression, Jonah pressed the.22 to Chase’s forehead.

Maybe a full two seconds later Angie shoved a Bernadelli subcompact.25 into the mass of nerves under Chase’s left ear. It filled his head with electrical colors and his teeth started to sing, but he didn’t resist.

The three of them stood there like that waiting for the next moment to pass.

Staring into the old man’s icy-gray eyes, Chase asked, “Are you going to help me or what?”

Without lowering the gun, Jonah said, “Talk.”

C hase told his story as succinctly as he could, hardly mentioning Lila at all. The truth and depth of her, the perpetual excitement and warmth she pressed to his heart, it would be lost in the speaking. He knew Jonah wouldn’t understand revenge like this, where the act was more important than the payday.

Paring down the details of the last ten years, it only took Chase twenty minutes to lay out his whole life up to the moment that Lila was killed. It left him stunned and a little angry to realize it.

It took another twenty minutes to cover the rest of it because Jonah would need to know every detail Chase had found out about Marisa Iverson and her crew. He left nothing out. When he mentioned the part where he’d worked her over with body shots, Angie let out a wild laugh and said, “Chip off the old boy’s block, eh? Your technique must be genetic.”

By the time Chase was done his hair was crawling with sweat, but at least that part of it was over.

The next local came through, the whistle like a bayonet slicing through the slim, water-damaged motel walls. Now that he could relax he heard noises wafting in from the other rooms. The noise of a whiny john haggling over the price, trying to get a cut-rate deal on some kind of deviant action. The whore held steady because it wasn’t part of her regular policy. Working girls of her caliber didn’t go in for that kind of kink. Sixty extra, and he had to pick up another fifth of gin. A door slammed. A figure rushed by the window, heading for the bar to purchase a bottle under the table, which would cost him an extra ten over retail. This guy really wanted to do his nasty thing.

“How do you know I wasn’t in on it?” Jonah asked. “The ice score.”

Chase sat up. “At the time you were on the run after pulling a score with Matteo and Lorelli in Aspen. You tried to clear out two side-by-side mansions in a gated community, using a couple of the private security guards as inside men. One got scared at the eleventh hour and called the cops, hoping to be a hero. When the job went sour you nearly got pinched. It’s rough making a getaway from mountain towns. Both guards went down. Lorelli was aced. You left him there. A couple of his buddies apparently have issues with that. Now you’re in White Plains. Casing the Connecticut rez casino?”

“You did a good job of checking me out. You still have connections besides Georgie Murphy.”

“A few. Some of them helped because they respect you. Some because they hate you.”

“No,” his grandfather said, “it’s because you paid.”

“Sure, but it doesn’t change what they feel.”

Jonah kept those eyes like polished river stone on Chase, seeing if he could crack him with the stare. “Maybe you’ll give me those names later on.”