The Cold Spot

The cold spot beckoned. Chase slid into it. He was hard and he was cool. Cool enough to know you didn’t snuff some prick just because he’d done business with the guy you really wanted. He couldn’t lose focus on the driver.

“Let’s go in the back.”

“I told you, I’m not a threat! You don’t have to do this!”

“Shonny, you get all uptight at the worst times.”

He slugged Shonny across the back of the head, a blow he figured would keep the guy unconscious for a few hours. It would be all over by then, one way or another. He could feel that now.

The icy breeze in the cold spot whispered the truth to him. There was an understanding about death and murder and the extent of blood and heartache. How grief could drive you out of your head, the way it threatened to do with him right now, the way it had done with his father. He had to hold steady.

Jonah said, “You’re still playing it wrong.”

Chase dragged Shonny Fishman to his back room. There was another cage back there full of jewelry and other high-end items he didn’t leave out front on the floor. He got Shonny’s keys out, tossed the guy inside, and started to close the gate. Jonah stepped forward and pulled a canvas bag from underneath his jacket. He cleaned the shelves and slammed the gate shut.

On their way out he threw the tapes in the bag too.

They walked to the Chevelle and Angie was in the driver’s seat. Chase glared at her and she slid away into the back. She’d played it smart. She’d been prepared in case something went wrong and they had to bolt out of there fast. But you never got behind the wheel of another driver’s car. Unless you were stealing it.

Chase pulled away from the curb and drove like a little old lady up through SoHo, heading for the Holland Tunnel. The engine wanted to scream. So did he.

7

N ot even nine-thirty yet and the motel manager’s office was locked. It was that kind of a place. Nobody needed to spend a night over in this part of Newark unless they were blowing through on a job or looking for a twenty-minute hooker. The manager would be some old man off getting a few beers around the block. He’d be back on deck in a half hour and then he’d go off again when he got too bored. The whores wouldn’t be out in full swing until midnight when they started pulling over tricks on the turnpike or Route 9a. It had once been a residential area and a few dilapidated houses remained. Foundry Street was a dead road in a dead part of a dying city.

Chase popped the door and checked the wall where the room keys were set on hooks. The motel hadn’t upgraded to computerized cards and never would. They’d raze the place first. Seven rooms were currently in use.

He drove slowly through the parking lot peering through the slits between drapes. He spotted some addicts getting wasted, a couple of teenagers watching television getting ready to jump each other, and some drunks with nowhere else to go. Only two rooms had the drapes completely drawn. They were side by side. Chase backed into a spot directly across from them.

He looked for a car that had some real muscle to it but couldn’t spot anything a wheelman would drive. That meant Earl Raymond either parked off site, wasn’t here at the moment, or the crew had already moved on.

“If they’re here, they’ll be in one of those two rooms,” Jonah said.

Angie had one of Lila’s.32s on her now, not quite as small as the Bernadelli but in a tight, closed room you wouldn’t need much more than that. “Or maybe both.”

“That means we have to go into both, at the same time,” Jonah said. “If you hadn’t left the pawnbroker alive we could’ve taken more time and checked things over for as long as we needed to. But this has to end tonight.”

“I want it to end tonight,” Chase told him.

“If you’re still in a talkative mood, get over it now. We go in fast and hard. You ice them or they’ll ice us. They’ve been smarter than you so far because you haven’t wanted to take this all the way. Are you ready to do that now?”

“Yes.”

Angie’s current was riding a little high. Chase could feel her ramped in the backseat. He found her eyes in the rearview and felt a flush of shame for having dragged her into this mess. The old man owed him but she didn’t. He wanted to tell her that she should stay behind, but he knew she’d just give him the whole full-partner spiel again. He didn’t want her baby daughter to grow up without a mother, stuck with a father like Jonah.

Jonah kept watching Chase another few seconds, trying to read the truth. Finally he turned away and said to Angie, “You ready?”

“Yep.”

“Let’s go.”

It was difficult turning the engine off. Chase pocketed the keys and felt the brutal weight of Ellie Raymond’s 9mm against his body. He thought, This isn’t how it should be. I just want the driver. Me and Earl, we should be doing this one on one, with nothing else except our cars. We should rip through the night shredding road, our tires smoking. We should get it up to triple digits and haul ass along empty highways, alone except for the engine and the radio.

Chase tried to hit the cold spot but every time he did he found Lila there, filling it with warmth.

Not much of a plan, really. Jonah took the room to the left, #19, and Chase the one to the right, #18. He got out his tools. He thought they should count to three and do it together, but before he could start he heard Jonah abruptly breaking down the door. So it was like that. No time to slip the lock.

Chase kicked the door in on #18. It wasn’t as easy to break down doors as they made it look in the movies. It hurt and it threw him off a step. Now he was three-four seconds behind, and by the time he got his bearings he saw, with a mixture of relief and revulsion, that he’d found them. Ellie Raymond and two men were inside, scrambling for their weapons.

And goddammit, his grandfather had been right. Chase still was in a talkative mood. He had things to say. The world sped up around him and he was fast enough to meet it, but he couldn’t get out all that was inside him. He heard gunfire next door and wondered if the other guys on the string had come back from Atlantic City early or if Jonah had walked into a drug deal or some shit like that. Ellie Raymond was bending forward, and Chase finally got a good look at her without the disguise. Lovely, firm, vicious, cool and cold, radiant with her lips flattened but her eyes alive with joy. She was an adrenaline junkie, she wanted it rough and wild. She recognized him and let out a heartwarming giggle. The sound of it knifed through his chest. His gaze slid sideways and he saw one of the men moving, digging for a gun under the bed. These people, they all had pistols clipped to the bed frames, they all wanted to cap whoever might fuck them. The guy looked a little scared, worried. His face was flat and ugly, and he had a terrible scar on his forehead. Slip Jenson. Chase checked the other guy and knew, right then, there, that’s him, that’s Earl, the mad-dog shooter, the driver. The guy was smiling, sure. He was all flash. He was handsome as hell, a hard-stepper like his sister, taking it as rough as he could because he liked it that way. Chase wanted to talk but had no idea what to say. Maybe he wanted to ask them their story, what made them this way. They all had their hands on their pistols now. If he couldn’t talk to Earl then they should at least meet each other’s eyes, make that connection, where they both understood that this is the moment to settle all accounts. But Earl was looking at Chase’s chest, bringing up a Glock. The Jonah in Chase’s head said, Fucking shoot them already. The Lila in his head told him, Sweetness, it’s time, it’s time. Of course it was. Chase started firing and so did they.

8