The Cold Spot

The Deuce phoned the next afternoon. “They put the hurt on him. Busted a couple of ribs, three or four of his toes. Hope that’s not too rough for you.”

Chase thought it was a little light but said, “Fine.”

Her first day home, lying on the couch with a bunch of satin pillows propped behind her, she got a call from Hopkins. He must’ve told her about what had happened to Cordell Williams, but she just hung up, flipped on the television, and started watching some cooking show. If she suspected Chase had anything to do with it, she never said a word to him about it. But once, during a commercial, he caught her grinning at him.

9

A couple of months later her parents came in for a weeklong visit during Lila’s vacation. Chase picked them up at Newark and played tour guide, showing them some of Manhattan. Passing by the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall. He crawled up Fifth Avenue pointing out the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum Mile, the Guggenheim. Right from the start they were both withdrawn and spooked. The traffic terrified them, the noise, the smell. He figured he’d botched the mission by killing them with culture shock on their first day in town, and he got them back to his house as fast as he could.

Lila had an itinerary: barbecue that afternoon. Head out to Montauk Point the next day, go see the seals. Later in the week, go take in a Broadway show, visit to the top of the Empire State Building, do the Circle Line, see the Statue of Liberty.

But Chase had blown it. There, fifteen minutes after her parents set foot in the living room, both he and Lila realized none of it was ever going to happen. They grilled steaks in the backyard for five days straight.

Sheriff Bodeen sat on the patio chair and drank a case of beer a day. Watched a lot of television, commented on the state of the front lawn, and cleaned Lila’s already extremely clean guns. And every afternoon, when Chase got home from work, Bodeen found the need to ask him, “So when you gonna put my little gal in a family way?”

The week crawled by like a gutted animal. Chase started staying at the school later and later, even after everyone had gone except for him and the janitors. The custodial staff played their radios and buffed the floors, and Chase would sit in the automotive shop pulling out and rebuilding transmissions for the hell of it.

At the end of the week, Lila’s mother, the quietest woman Chase had ever met, hugged him good-bye, squeezing hard and putting all her burly muscle into it, said, “When you gonna put my little gal in a family way?”

They went to another specialist in Manhattan. This one doused any last hope. He looked at the files and charts and focused his attention entirely on Lila, explaining why she couldn’t get pregnant, patting her lightly on the shoulder and running his hand down the back of her hair, flattening it with his hesitant touch. He occasionally pressed his fingers to her belly, drawing little maps of where her internal organs were. Which ones were doing their job, which ones weren’t. When he jabbed at the offending parts of her anatomy, Lila’s face would darken. He told them that miracles were always possible, and he said it like they’d have to be fucking idiots to believe it. He walked out without another word.

No one else would’ve noticed the shift in her expression. In every way it appeared to be the same as before the doc had entered the little room and poked at her and said his piece, but Chase saw a world of difference. She wouldn’t want to break down in front of him, but it was an hour’s train ride back to their station on Long Island. He didn’t think she’d be able to make it.

They took a cab to Penn and he felt the guilt and remorse within her straining to break free, the small space separating them in the backseat filled as if by the presence of a remote but solidifying dream. He didn’t suggest adoption because he knew that, more than wanting to bear a child, she wanted to bear his child. She’d always hoped to offer Chase the stability of the healthy, happy family he’d never had growing up. No matter how often he told her that it was all right with him, she wouldn’t accept it. It was just another reason to love her.

They entered Penn Station from Seventh Avenue and moved quickly down two flights of stairs to the Long Island Railroad waiting room. They had almost a half hour before their train and he decided to give her a few minutes alone to cry in the ladies’ room if she needed to.

He asked if she wanted anything and she told him to get a slice of pizza for her. Italian food was the one thing she loved better than Southern cooking. They had pizza three times a week. He didn’t mind, he’d been missing it badly for years, and it reminded him of Friday nights when he was a kid and his father would bring a pie home for dinner.

He had to fight the rush-hour throng to make it to the parlor on the other side of the station. The place was crowded and he hung back waiting a few minutes until he thought she might be through with her crying jag. He ordered four slices and a couple of sodas and carried them back to the waiting room.

Three cops were there waving their billy clubs in the air, and Lila had her knee on some guy’s throat. He was a well-trimmed youth in a camouflage jacket, his mouth bleeding and his face going purple while he struggled to breathe. He wasn’t having much luck with it since Lila was kind of crushing his thorax. Her purse was on the floor beside her with a few bills on the loose.

Chase quickly put together what must’ve happened. The kid asking for spare change, Lila handing him a dollar, and then the punk making a grab for the wallet.

She was saying, “If your mama ain’t learned you no manners, then maybe the fine gentlemen at Rikers Island will!” When she was pissed her accent came on even stronger. “You goin’ to see what they there charge you for lessons in flesh and bone, boy!”

With every word she nudged up and down on his neck and he went “Gug!”

The cops finally wrestled her off and nearly arrested her until she flashed her badge. They hauled the punk off, she gave her statement and signed the papers. It had all taken less than ten minutes.

Chase stood there as she stepped over and took the bagged pizza from him. “I’m a damn sight on the far side of hungry, sweetness,” she said, tearing into a slice. “Bless yer soul.”

10

I t rained like a son of a bitch the day she died.

He was showing the kids how to flush a transmission and do a fluid change when one of the math teachers appeared at the door. He called Chase aside. He’d been on break in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette listening to his car radio, and told him what he’d just heard. The breaking news report hadn’t mentioned any names, but when they said a female police officer had been taken in for emergency surgery after a shoot-out at a diamond wholesaler in Hauppauge, he thought he’d better tell Chase.

Chase kept his cell phone turned off during class hours. He snapped it on and checked the messages. There was one from Hopkins. Chase could barely make out what the fuck he was saying due to all the sirens in the