Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

Chase walked away and Jonah said, “Where are you going?”

You couldn’t do much but you had to do something. Chase went to the back door and opened it, letting in the cats. There were empty food and water bowls in the corner of the kitchen. He found the cat food under the sink, filled the bowls, poured water, and watched the hungry cats tearing in. He turned and stared at the figures of the dead old woman and her retarded son wrapped in their own garbage bags. Lila was in his head saying, Sweetness, you gone far enough for me, I’m proud of you. Now it’s time to stop. And don’t let that granddaddy of yours touch the good silverware.

Jonah stared at him like he’d gone insane, which was fine. Chase found a vase full of dead flowers, filled it at the sink, walked back into the living room, and tossed it in Timmy Rosso’s face, dried stems and all.

As the guy came awake Chase looked at Rosso, pointed the 9mm in his face, and asked, “Hey, any chance you’re the driver?”

T he look Jonah gave him said, What the fuck kind of question is that? He knows you want the driver. Even if it is him, he won’t admit to it.

That’s because Jonah didn’t understand that wheelmen had their own thing going. They wanted to be known. It set them apart like the old-time juggers, the safecrackers. Or the demolition men, who were the only ones willing to touch nitro. They had special skills, talents that made them distinct from the rest of the string. It made them a little vain.

If it was him, he’d say it.

“No,” Rosso told him, dead flower petals in his dripping hair. Blood pulsed across his forehead and threaded into his eyes. “I don’t do that.”

There was a whine and some real fear in his voice. “And I didn’t kill those two in the kitchen either.”

“I didn’t think so,” Chase said. “Do you know who they were?”

“No, I never saw them. They were already…covered when I got here.”

“So who snuffed them?”

“I…I can’t say.”

“I think you can.”

“No, really, listen to me-”

Chase held up a hand and cut him off. Rosso wasn’t one of the string. The guy was holding back out of fear, not loyalty or professionalism. They’d hired him especially for this part of the job, to watch and report, and then go down.

“All I want is the driver.”

“The driver of what?” Rosso said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Was this another desperate man who had everything but still needed Marisa Iverson?

“What do you know?” Chase asked, sounding tired even to himself. “Come on, tell me your story.”

Trying to hold out, Rosso struggled with himself and ran all kinds of scenarios through his mind. His eyes danced and darted. Chase could tell the kid was thinking about throwing himself out the front window, tucking and rolling, doing some kind of ninja shit. He started to pant and flex a little. Gearing himself up to launch at Chase, fight him for the gun, shoot his way out.

“This is why you always tie them up before you throw water in their faces,” Jonah said.

Chase nodded.

But the fact was that Rosso remained too dazed from the blow to the head to think clearly enough about how weak he was. If he tried to get up, he’d fall over on his ass. Chase waited for him to try.

Rosso tried and flopped out of the chair and landed among the cats. You’d think they’d been rehearsing this gag for a while, the way the cats just watched him fall and then slunk against him.

Chase picked the guy up and threw him in the chair again.

“I’m going to call you Timmy, okay?”

“It’s not my-”

“I know it’s not your real name. I don’t care about your real name. But I need to call you something, right? So, Timmy, tell me about the crew who set you up in this house with these dead bodies.”

Rosso began to cry.

It wasn’t something Chase had been expecting and it made him break out in a sweat. Rosso continued sobbing. He really was only a kid, in way over his head. Chase figured Marisa had fucked and scammed him too. Given him the bad fake ID to make him feel like a part of her lifestyle. She would’ve promised to take care of him.

The guy tried to talk through his blubbering but Chase couldn’t understand the words. Chase went, “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay.”

Finally Rosso calmed down, tried again, and managed to form coherent sentences while he sniffled. “I don’t know any crew…I just know Mary and Gus.”

“Tell me about them.”

“You already know Gus. That’s what this is all about.”

“Sure,” Chase said, “but pretend I don’t know Gus. Just tell me about him and Mary. How you met them, all that, okay?”

“Well, she’s…she’s…my girl. He’s…her husband. You know this!”

Jonah drew out a knife from a sheath at the small of his back. A two-inch blade, which was more than enough if you knew what you were doing. He moved in on Rosso very quickly. His face, as always, showing nothing. Rosso’s eyes grew wide and he parted his lips to shout. Jonah covered the kid’s mouth with his left hand, almost gently holding it there in an oddly loving gesture, then stabbed the blade down into the thick meat of Rosso’s leg.

The kid dropped forward with a muted shriek and Jonah held him there while Rosso wailed beneath Jonah’s thick, callused palm. Tears again spurted from the kid’s eyes and he sucked air loudly through his nose.

Jonah mimicked Chase and said, “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay. I just want you to stay focused and tell the truth, okay? Tell the truth and you’ll get to go home soon. All right?”

It took a couple minutes but eventually Rosso managed to nod.

The leg wasn’t bleeding much. The knife had only gone in a half inch and the wound had sealed around it. Jonah moved his hand from Rosso’s lips and saw that the kid had vomited a little. Jonah left the knife in Rosso’s leg and wiped his hand on one of Mrs. Nicholson’s cats.

“You…stabbed me.”

“Keep talking. Now. Come on.”

“She’s married to Gus,” Rosso said, panting, “but he doesn’t take care of her the way she needs, all right? I met them at the Plead the Fifth in Smithtown, on 25a. It’s a hole-in-the-wall joint, I’m a bartender there. They just moved here from Sacramento, and he can’t find a real job. He’s done time and he’s drifted in and out of drugs. You know all this! Please, my leg. Get me a bandage.”

He made as if to grab the blade and Jonah said, “Don’t you touch it.”

Chase told him, “In a minute, Timmy, we’ll call a doctor. Come on, keep going.”

“She started coming in alone and, well…she wants to leave him. He hits her, she had bruises on her face. He beats her and makes her do things. With his friends. With you! She doesn’t love him anymore.”

“She loves you now.”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“What do you want? What do you want from me?”

“So what did she tell you about the people in this house? And about me?”

“About your deal with Gus.”

“What deal, Timmy?”

“Don’t call me Timmy. About how these two were your partners, and you double-crossed and killed them because you’ve got a big shipment of drugs in your house and you’re going to sell them to Colombians and make at least a hundred thousand dollars. Afterward, when you were sleeping, I was going to steal the cash. And then you and Gus will probably go back to Cleveland where him and Mary grew up, and me and Mary can go anyplace in the world with the money. Maybe go to Italy and buy a villa. She wants to visit Italy.”

Jonah said, “Nobody can be this stupid.”

Chase was awed by the clever manipulation. Take a dumb, immature, mostly honest kid, make him think he was in love, give him an awful task like sitting in a house with two corpses, and so long as he thought it was for the right reasons, saving his woman from a brute of a husband, he’d do it with no hesitation at all. She’d even worked in the bruises Chase had given her and used them against the kid as well. The fact that none of it made any sense only added to the beauty of it. Rosso was a romantic, and he was more than willing to believe the fairy tale. Details only would’ve confused him.