The Cold Spot

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.”

“When was that?”

“Three years ago.”

“You couldn’t have been sixteen yet.”

“I wasn’t.”

She turned away just when she got to the part Chase wanted to hear about. “When did you go to the cosmetic surgeon?”

It made her lips stiffen. “I don’t like to talk about that.”

“Scars look pretty fresh.”

You never mention such things to a woman, and he knew it. But he needed more info and hoped she had enough vanity left to let something slip.

Angie just breezed out a giggle. “You bastard.”

Yeah, she was definitely hard, with that same sharpness and ability to take pain that Marisa Iverson had. He wondered if she’d picked it up on her own or if Jonah had helped her find it along the way.

She grabbed up a photo of Lila and Chase sitting beneath a wild maple with a blur of children rushing by in the background. “She was pretty.”

“Yes.”

“Looks like a picnic.”

“Down the road from my in-laws’ house. They had a lot of family.”

“The way you say that, I can tell you never considered yourself a part of it.”

“I did my best.”

Brushing a fingertip over the edges of the photo, tapping with that red nail where the river jutted just into frame. “Where was this taken?”

“In Mississippi.”

That surprised her. “You spent time down south?”

“Seven years or so.”

“Usually when someone’s there for that long they pick up a hint of accent. You don’t have any.”

“I’ve been back in New York for a while.”

“That’s not the answer. You’ve never had an accent of any kind, have you. Not even a New York one.”

Chase shrugged. He’d been a lot of places and talked how he talked.

“You really going to kill this crew?”

“If I have to. If I can. I only want one of them.”

“I don’t see it in you. I’ve known guys who could put down their own mothers, but you-” Her eyes searched his face, looking for every character flaw, each weakness and desperate intent. The lips turned up in a soft kind of sneer, the scars dimpling back into view. “I don’t think you could put down a dog.”

“Depends on the dog.”

“I think the old man will have to get it done for you.”

“We’ll see.”

He’d found where she’d stashed the Bernadelli. There was a small extra pocket right at the bend of her left hip. Easy to reach and draw from, and the subcompact showed almost no bulge as she moved. The pocket fit a regular seam in her jeans. She knew how to sew too.

Chase’s hand flashed out and he snatched the.25 from her.

“Hey!” she said.

Only nine ounces, he couldn’t believe how light it was. Less than a toy weighed, no wonder these people liked to pull them so often and keep them so close. There was a sense of power without the burden of potential murder.

He said, “You use too much oil.”

“I get overzealous. I like things clean.”

“No use hiding it so well if someone can sniff it out on you. You walk into a score posing as a lady just doing her banking or shopping and one of those retired cops turned security guards will know you’re carrying.”

“I’ll remember to dab on more perfume. Now give me my sweet little cap gun back. You don’t want me throwing a tantrum.”

He handed her the pistol and watched her slip it back into the secret pocket, where it vanished once more. “That’s a clever hideaway.”

“And you’re a naughty boy, dipping your hand in there like that. If you want something, all you need do is ask.”

“I’d like to know how you hooked up with Jonah.”

Her eyes deadened for an moment and then brightened again almost instantly. “It’s simple enough. I was with