unable to do so. He tried to speak but couldn’t hear himself.
Both women looked up with a start. They stared at him with real worry. His mother’s features quickly shifted into a frown, and Lila gazed at him with loving concern.
He’d made another mistake. What had he done wrong?
He tried to speak again and this time heard himself say, “All right, I’m listening.”
In weak and unrecognizable voices, they began to speak
“You were moaning,” she said. “You woke us.”
Chase cleared his throat and said, “Sorry.”
Behind her, Jonah stood wearing nothing but briefs, looking well laid and rested, holding his.38. There wasn’t an inch of sag on him, his muscles were still large and cut. His chest was thatched with thick white hair. His numerous scars were even more marbled. A couple of old bullet wounds, some knife slashes, a lot of beatings. You looked at his body and you couldn’t figure out how anybody had survived all that. He glanced at Chase but said nothing. He silently receded and half a minute later there was the sound of the shower.
“What were you dreaming about?” Angie asked.
Chase sat up and scrubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t remember,” he told her, wishing it was the truth.
He finally noticed she was dressed in Lila’s clothes. A rose silk blouse he’d bought her for their first Christmas in Mississippi together, and black leggings that Lila only tried on once and said made her ass look too big. They hadn’t. They didn’t make Angie’s ass look too big either. They held tight and really drew the eye, which seemed to be the reason she’d chosen them. The.25 must be in the waistband at the small of her back.
It meant she’d gone through the drawers while he was sleeping. He shouldn’t have been so out of it, but the lack of sleep had finally caught up with him, and the nightmares were getting worse.
He looked at her, trying not to show anything.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Angie said. “I wear the same size your wife did.”
“So I see.”
“She had good taste. Not exactly mine, but very nice anyway. We had to leave most of my stuff back in Aspen when the last score went bad, and I haven’t had a chance to do any shopping.” She checked herself in the mirror. “Does it bother you?”
Chase fought to smile. He was glad he couldn’t see the result. “Not at all. You look wonderful in them.”
“Thank you for that. All women like a passing compliment, even me, and I never put too much stock in them.”
“Why not?”
“Too many guys use them just to fuck you. Fuck your cunt or fuck you over. But they’re still nice to hear.”
He didn’t quite get that one, but let it slide. He got a change of clothes and used the three-quarter bath to take a quick shower. When he got out, the old man was just finishing up in the other bathroom. Jonah had spent a hell of a long time in there. He hadn’t put the fan on and the steam burst into the corridor. Maybe he’d needed to loosen up, his muscles bothering him after all the sneaking around through the neighbors’ yards last night.
After Jonah got dressed, Chase took them out for breakfast. He drove by the Nicholson house without glancing over at it. Jonah was looking nowhere and everywhere, and Chase knew his grandfather must be wondering if he’d soon drop an anonymous tip. If Chase would be able to take the idea of a house full of bodies right across the street.
The dream had helped him on that point. Chase already had his own house full of bodies, he didn’t need to sweat another one.
The Chevelle wanted to roar and he wanted to with it, really let it rip up the street. But he tamped the need down, holding on to it. There’d be another time. He knew right then, there was still one last chance. He held on to it the way he gripped the steering wheel. With dead-white knuckles.
At the diner, while they ate, Angie slid a slice of raisin-bread toast almost between her teeth and left it perched while she asked, “So what are you going to do now? Go back to teaching?”
“No,” Chase said.
“Start stealing cars again?”
Chase let it sit out there and didn’t answer. Jonah chewed his eggs and bacon, watching him without watching him. He’d talk about the house money pretty soon, just to make sure Chase hadn’t forgotten about his promise.
“Then what?” Angie said.
“It’s not entirely over yet,” he told her.
“No? What do you mean? What else is there?”
“One last shot,” he said.
Jonah looked up. “Cleveland.”
“Yeah.”
Jonah shook his head, his eyes black and endlessly steady. “That’s no help. They were running a game on that idiot.”
“Yeah, but that piece of it rang true. The two crew members talking. One a little drunk, a little too loud. It sounded like a slip to me.”
“Not to me. They’re too good.”
Chase shrugged.
“You still owe me a hundred grand.”
“I know.”
Angie fluffed the shoulders of her blouse. Chase was sure it was just so he’d take another look at her rack. It was a good head game, wearing Lila’s clothes. Angie was young but she’d picked up a lot of hard-fought insight. Working with Jonah had just refined her own natural facility.
“Are you still with me on this?” Chase asked his grandfather.
“There isn’t anything anymore. You had a thread and let it go. I told you that you were playing it wrong.”
“Yeah, you did.”
Chase stood and paid the check. He didn’t say anything on the way back. He found himself in the rearview and thought that perhaps he had changed just enough to go the rest of the road alone.
3
Chase went out to the garage and worked on the Chevelle a little more. Fifteen minutes later Angie came out. She leaned against the passenger door and he heard the thump of the.25 clocking the metal. She watched him milking the carburetor and timing chain for every last second he could pull from it.
She said, “You get overzealous too.”
“I like things clean.”
Angie said, “You really going to pay him a hundred g’s for doing nothing?”
“Yes.”
She looked at him like he was an idiot, and said, “You’re an idiot.”
Chase let it slide. He was letting more and more slide and wondered when it would stop, and what would happen right after that.
