12
Chase showed up at the Deuce’s chop shop. “That don’s son. He still need someone who can drive?”
“Yeah,” Deucie said, “but things are really ugly over there. I was an asshole to mention it to you in the first place. Infighting, mob-war bullshit. Between different families, in the same family, between New York and Jersey and Chicago, and the feds up everybody’s ass with a microscope. A lot of bodies are turning up in the East River, or not at all. They’re icing each other in restaurants, on street corners, wiping out girlfriends and kids like in the bad old days.”
“Make the call.”
Chewing the end of his cigar, Deucie frowned and stood there for a minute studying Chase. Then he let out a sigh of defeat and ran off to do it. Chase climbed back into the Chevelle and shut his eyes, the engine humming, crooning a love song to him.
The house was gone. Lila was buried twelve hundred miles away. He thought of Jonah out there, maybe with his baby girl and maybe not. The thought of the girl growing up in the life, following Jonah’s lead, as bent as him, made Chase’s stomach tighten. Sweat swarmed his back, but he was still too weak.
He figured there couldn’t be that many professional surfers in Sarasota with wives named Milagro, who they called Milly. He could find the kid one way or another, his two-year-old aunt Kylie. He’d track her eventually, when he had a choice to offer her. Jonah had been right about one thing. Blood was important.
Chase had questions. He wanted to know why his father had said that he’d asked to make an appeal to the killer, when the truth was the cops had backed him into doing it. Chase wanted to know why his mother had cried so much right before she died.
The dream returned in full force. His unborn sibling tugging at his hand, Chase listening intently to the child, who knew the answers. A couple lines repeating themselves.
Angie had said,
Jonah had said someone else had tried to kill him over a kid.
Chase couldn’t shake those words. They hummed and buzzed and bit at him.
He thought, Did Jonah murder my pregnant mother?
Waving a scrap of paper, Deuce returned and tried once more to talk Chase out of the job. Chase checked the name and address and said good-bye.
He cruised out of the shop and hit the street. He didn’t feel any fear or hope or excitement. Just a nagging curiosity about his own past that would sharpen within him and drive him forward into another, perhaps a more decisive, confrontation with Jonah. Chase had shifted gears again, and now his life was on a different road. He still had things to do. Soothing music on the radio promised escape and intimacy as he drove on into the darkness thinking, Here it is. Here I am.
About the Author
TOM PICCIRILLI lives in Colorado, where, besides writing, he spends an inordinate amount of time watching trash cult films and reading Gold Medal classic noir and hardboiled novels. He’s a fan of Asian cinema, especially horror movies, bullet ballet, pinky violence, and samurai flicks. He also likes walking his dogs around the neighborhood. Are you starting to get the hint that he doesn’t have a particularly active social life? Well, to heck with you, buddy, yours isn’t much better. Give him any static and he’ll smack you in the mush, dig? Tom also enjoys making new friends. He’s the author of twenty novels, including
