Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

“No.”

Jonah nodded and turned away, thinking about it all so far, maybe realizing that he wasn’t as on top of the game as he thought he was.

The nasty guy came back, slammed his room door again, and got busy drinking gin and doing his thing. Chase gave a little more attention to Angie, who was sitting there making her silent assessments.

She had a natural provocativeness but wasn’t what you would call beautiful. Black hair, dark features, he thought she must be Spanish. Nose a little too long, her lips not quite matching up. Small, thin scars were almost hidden in the seams around her eyes. Some stitching indents at the corners of her mouth. She’d been mishandled and had had some plastic surgery along the way to put her looks back where they belonged.

He wondered how much weight her word carried with Jonah. Was she a full partner or just a piece of some string who’d come along with Jonah for the fun of it? Was she in on the rez deal, if there was one?

He supposed it didn’t really matter. She was merely someone else he couldn’t trust. The.25 wasn’t on view and he couldn’t decide if she’d jammed it back under the cushion or had it tucked somewhere on her person. If she had it on her, under those skintight clothes, he couldn’t figure out where it might be.

Angie spotted him looking and mistook his intention. She let out a little smile and held his gaze, attempting to appear demure. It didn’t work and she seemed to know it but was determined to give it a go anyhow. Maybe practicing on him, gauging his reaction. When she didn’t see what she wanted to see she glanced away, took an unbroken glass off the floor, filled it, and offered it to him. He threw it back. She poured another and sat there sipping it.

“Letting the woman go was stupid,” Jonah said. “She was the one advantage you had and you gave it up. Phoning them was even worse. Now they know you’re on to them.”

“I want them to know,” Chase said.

“That’s not the way to do it.”

“It’s the way I’m doing it. Are you going to help me or not?”

“Depends. I still don’t know what you want.”

“I want the driver.”

O nly three o’clock, but the traffic was thick, bottle-necking them among a fleet of eighteen-wheelers as they hit some construction on Sunrise Highway. The road crews stood around holding jackhammers and shovels but not using them, and the left lane’s asphalt lay peeled open. The van didn’t have the best suspension and the stop-and-go jerking started to bounce the whiskey inside Chase. He shouldn’t have drank. He wasn’t used to it and the sourness made him think of the stink always drifting off Joe-Boo Brinks.

He looked over at Jonah and the Jonah inside his mind said, He wants to ace you, but he’s waiting. He’ll grab the score, put one in your head, and leave you at the scene.

Chase didn’t need to give Angie directions to his house. She already knew the way, which was pretty good for someone who hadn’t had more than a couple of days to set up the snatch and memorize the roads. He thought more and more that she wasn’t just along for the ride. Nobody had mentioned her being in on the Aspen heist, but Chase wondered if she’d been there with Jonah and Lorelli, and if she’d been the driver who’d gotten them out of the tight mountain town.

She caught his eye in the rearview. He still couldn’t figure her but decided to think the worst for now.

They came down his street toward the house. He got out, keyed in the garage door code, and said, “Pull all the way in.”

He’d taken down the heavy bag so there was room for the van beside the Chevelle. Angie threw it into park They got out and Jonah stared at the black Chevelle.

“You still got something to shred the road,” he said.

“It’s new,” Chase told him.

He opened the door to the house and led them inside.

“You don’t keep it locked,” Angie noted.

“You’ve got no burglar alarm. You’d think a cop and a thief would know better.”

Chase said nothing. It bothered him having Jonah here, in the home he and Lila had made, even though this wasn’t the same home anymore without her. It meant less and less to him every day. But he could sense his grandfather already scoping the silverware, checking around for loose cash, plotting to walk off with something. The loss of property didn’t matter, Chase had already decided to get rid of it all and sell the house. He didn’t regret giving everything up, but he didn’t want the old man to steal any of it.

Angie went through the fridge, grabbed fixings for sandwiches, and said, “We’re hungry.”

“Most of it’s probably stale.”

“That doesn’t bother us. Anything to drink?”

“Only what’s in there.”

“There’s nothing in there. Guess we’ll finish the scotch.”

Plural again. Angie spoke like she was half of an old married couple, and he wondered if he was hearing it right or reading into it. He could imagine them lovers. Jonah always went in for the young stuff. But he’d never heard a woman talk about the old man like a husband before. Jonah’s silence lent itself to the idea that he felt the same way about her. Chase regarded them without any interest as they both ate, throwing back the whiskey, Jonah eating and drinking the way he did everything else. With no wasted action, no sign of enthusiasm, utterly emotionless.

When he’d finished he asked, “So what do you need me for?”

“You already know that,” Chase said.

“Yeah, I do. You don’t want to get your hands dirty.”

“I’ll get them dirty, I just want you there to help me do what needs to be done.”

“Don’t talk in euphemisms, it only muddles the situation.”

“I’m going to kill the driver,” Chase told him. “The others too, if they get in my way. That clear enough?”

“You got the stomach for that?” Jonah asked.

“You either believe me or you don’t.”

“You said you nabbed the store’s security videos of the heist from the cops?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see them.”

While Jonah viewed the tapes in the den, Angie wandered the house touching stuff, picking up framed photos and putting them down again. Grabbing up knickknacks, the vases and candles, looking at the paintings and prints. Chase followed behind, watchful. She said, “You like clutter. Or your wife did.”

Chase had never thought about it before. He said, “You need to fill a home.”

“I wouldn’t know. Never had much of one. My mother croaked when I was nine. Uterine cancer. You ever see what that does to a woman? It makes her horrified that she is a woman. Knowing the part of her that is woman is what’s killing her. She died with this look of confusion and terror on her face. My father was a Cuban boozer who loved the Miami club scene and thought he was a gigolo for the pasty-white divorcees. If he was lucky they’d let him drive their Porsches home. They’d tip him like the pool boy. We lived in a two-room apartment. He’d spend eight hundred bucks on a pair of shoes, but wouldn’t have money to feed my sister and me. He got drunk at a club, hit on some drug dealer’s woman and got snuffed in the men’s room when I was eleven. He died with his head in the toilet. My aunt took us in. Altogether with her kids there were fourteen of us in her house. I started turning tricks as soon as my tits came in. Hooked up with a third-rate crew in St. Pete’s Beach a couple of years later. At first I was just there for laughs, but soon I was planning some easy jobs. We wound up moving around a lot for a while. Then I got on a string with your grandfather and stayed with him after the boost.”