The Cold Spot

1

G eorgie gave him a phone number, in reverse. The guy was going to carry tradition right to the end.

Turned out Jonah’s current home base wasn’t that far away, only an hour upstate in White Plains. Chase couldn’t figure the attraction in White Plains unless Jonah was using it as a headquarters just to be close to Connecticut, maybe the Indian rez casino. It wasn’t Jonah’s usual type of score, all those people and the serious security, but Chase had no idea what kind of heists his grandfather was putting together now.

He called the Deuce and asked a lot more questions, got a few answers. He needed to scrape together whatever facts or rumors he could find out about Jonah’s dealings over the last decade. Deucie said he’d get back to him after he talked to a few other guys, but the information was going to cost and yes, he took credit cards. Chase ran off his Visa number.

A day and a half went by before Deucie phoned back. He’d talked to a lot of people who still liked Jonah and a lot more who didn’t. There was even more bad blood out there now. He told Chase what he’d wanted to know and said, “If you’re getting back into the life I think I’ve got someone who could use you.”

“No thanks.”

“He’s a don’s son, has a pretty solid crew. Good money and he likes guys who can handle cars and trucks.”

That meant the mob was back to doing a lot of big-rig hijacking. Send out crews to work the highways, the syndicate bosses robbing from each other. It was low-class, the families must be having a lot of troubles with each other lately.

Chase told him, “I’ll think about it.”

“Hey,” Deucie said. “I was sorry to hear about your wife. Really, I got to tell you. I mean, if it was my wife, it would be a blessing if she got taken out, you know? The way she’s an anchor around my neck, what with the leather shoes and the Gucci purses and the jewelry, and always with the Mexican pool boys. I turn around, there’s another fucking Mexican un-clogging the filter, she wears these guys out. Me, I let it slide, I don’t know why, maybe one day I’ll hire a torpedo to bury her in the Pine Barrens with all the goddamn shoes and purses. But you, I remember what you did when she got hurt couple years back. You, I can tell, you actually loved-”

Chase hung up.

He dreamed of his father and called out his name. Michael. Chase was nearly as old now as his dad had been when he’d offed himself. It made them brothers of a sort, a part of the same fraternity of pain. He wanted to hear his father’s voice, and more than that, he wanted his father to hear his. A powerful urge swept through him to offer whatever guidance he had to his father. Maybe it would be enough to save him, even now, fifteen years too late. Keep him from taking the boat out in a storm and capsizing this time.

The past drew at him in a way it never had before. His childhood before Jonah seemed to be swarming up, loud and prevalent, trying to yank him backward. He kept watching his father in the snow, cheek pressed to the frozen marble tombstone, wanting to be dead.

Chase knew he was dreaming because his old man suddenly entered the room. It was too dark to see but he knew the body language, the expression of sorrow in every movement. So this was his dad after his mother’s murder. He called out the man’s name again and told him to leave. He barked like a wounded dog in his sleep because his father was sitting on the end of the bed, weeping.

Chase phoned the number that Georgie had given him and got a genderless voice mail. He left his home address, set up the meet for three days from now, and named a busy family restaurant near the LIE where two parkways intersected. It would offer Jonah four directions to run in case he smelled a trap. Chase couldn’t think of anywhere safer that his grandfather might feel secure enough to meet with him after all this time. Jonah’s first thought would be that Chase was still in the life, had been arrested, and was now setting him up on a plea-bargain.

Chase wondered what else he should say-Hey, why the hell didn’t you at least send a wedding card?-but nothing sounded right. How’s it been going, you doing okay? Besides, Jonah wouldn’t want to hear any sappy shit. He’d either show or he wouldn’t.

He’d set the meet for noon, but knew Jonah would leave him sitting alone at the site, checking him out from afar to make sure it wasn’t a sting, making certain no cops had followed. Jonah wasn’t about to come out from cover here. Chase parked at the restaurant, climbed out of a beat-to-shit ’72 Plymouth Gold Duster he’d stolen that morning, sat on the hood, stretched back over the windshield and took in the sun, thinking of Lila.

Forty-five minutes later he got up, slid into the car, and started back toward his house. Jonah would’ve checked out Chase’s story and made sure he knew where Chase lived. The old man would have the route back all mapped out with a good ambush site already chosen.

Jonah never followed anyone else’s rules. He always made sure he got the drop.

It was all right. Chase knew exactly where Jonah would make his play. There was a wide exit down the parkway that opened up onto a service road near a community college, bordered by wooded acreage. Jonah would cut him off, shove him onto the shoulder, and grab him right there. Chase had planned it this way from the start.

Behind him, way back on his left but beginning to speed up now, a white van jockeyed forward. Chase slowed down right as the exit lane came into view, thinking, Here it comes, here it is.

He wondered if his grandfather would hit him. He thought the old man was going to get at least a couple of free slugs in. Jonah didn’t feel things like other people did, but somewhere inside him he must’ve still experienced a small sting of betrayal about how they’d parted.

The van tore out from behind, speeded up alongside the Duster, and crashed into the left front quarter panel, forcing Chase over the curb and into the pine trees. It was a skillfully executed move, pinning the car in the brush and giving him nowhere to run.

His jaws snapped together painfully, and his head rang. He tugged the wheel hard to the left and tried to bump back, but the Duster was already a buckling rust bucket and the crumpled metal blew the left front tire. He stabbed the gas and allowed himself to smash into a tree. The seat belt tore against his chest and he swallowed down a shout. There was an insane uproar of noise as the front end buckled and the windshield caved.

Pretending to be dazed, Chase slumped over the steering wheel, glass in his hair. He quietly un-buckled himself because his ribs hurt like hell and he didn’t want Jonah to haul him against the belt a few times before thumbing the button. The car door swung open and rough hands yanked him from the seat.

Chase offered no resistance. He went down on his back in the grass. The van door slid aside and he was yanked to his feet. Chase tightened the muscles in his belly, waiting for the old man’s fist. He raised his chin and there was his grandfather.

2

A t sixty-five Jonah remained hard and looked mostly the same as when Chase had last seen him ten years earlier. For a guy who should be on social security he was still ready to take on a brigade. His back straight, arms corded, every ridge cut to perfect definition. Same steely eyes.

There were some subtle differences. His face had eroded further, almost imperceptibly, like desert stone after ages of high wind. The seams went deeper, the mileage and wear a bit more apparent. The black hair on his arms had gone mostly white so the sprawl of muddied prison tats appeared much clearer.

Chase could finally see them for what they were now. An angel on the left forearm and a devil on the right, both in midflight with drawn flaming swords.

And names.

Under the angel: Sandra, Mary, and Michael.

Jonah’s mother, his wife and his son, Chase’s father.

Under the devil, peering through a pitchfork: Joshua. Jonah’s father.

And beneath that, not a tattoo but a scar that had gotten infected and was still mottled white and pink.

Chase.

Huh, look at that. Chase had to wonder, was it a comment made in flesh about disloyalty? Is that why his name went on the evil arm? These cons, they sure liked their fucking Biblical imagery.

His grandfather said, “Some getaway man.”

Jonah hurtled a fist into Chase’s gut, threw two jabs into his nose, got blood flowing, and then tossed him in the back of the van.

Still pretty nimble, Jonah hopped in, quickly frisked Chase, and then kneeled on his chest.

A woman was driving. That was certainly something new. She turned back and gave Chase a quick once-over with distinct dark eyes. Woman, girl, she was maybe twenty but you’d never mistake her for a kid. Even through his tears he could see she was on top of the action, in control, her gaze knowing. If she was anything like Marisa Iverson he was already in deep shit.

No hesitation. She hit the gas and the van tires spun, throwing gravel.

Jonah said nothing and neither did Chase. The knee in his sternum hurt like hell but he’d known it would have to go down like this. And it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as that day Lila had kicked his ass on the garage mat.

Now they were going to drive around for a while until Jonah was sure they weren’t being followed. Then they’d finally take Chase back to their local hideaway.

He checked his grandfather’s left hand. Jonah was palming the.22.

The van hummed along. The girl was pretty good behind the wheel. Lying on the floor, Chase could feel the vibrations and shifts as she moved from lane to lane, driving easily and with a deft edge. From this weird angle he could see her in fine detail but upside down in the driver’s seat. She wore tight blue jeans that hung back off her hips, a black thong pulled way up, and a leather vest tight enough to nearly squeeze her tits out the sides. Putting it out there just daring someone to make a run at her. Flat muscular midriff on display, pierced belly button with a gold hoop. A small tattoo of a grinning dolphin on her stomach, poised as if it was leaping through the hoop.

Chase couldn’t figure her, and it took a minute for things to lock into place. Jonah must’ve felt like he’d slowed down a half step over the years and needed to make up for it. Dressed like that, the girl was there for distraction. Even a pro’s eyes would linger on her for an extra second, and that would help even things up.

Looking down at him she smiled sweetly. “I’m Angie.”

Chase said nothing, waiting for Jonah to feel safe.

She took the next exit and headed south toward the bay. In ten minutes Chase could smell the ocean. He decided they were holed up in the Islip area, somewhere around the ferry launch. Jonah must’ve gotten a room in one of the shabby motels just north of Montauk Highway. A once ritzy area that was now a bunch of cluttered dive neighborhoods. Former mansions broken down into low-income boardinghouses, outpatient rehab centers, and homes for the mentally challenged. A lot of seedy old-man bars down by the train tracks. It would be a good drop point if Jonah decided not to trust Chase. He’d get a few drinks into Chase and pop him with the.22, make it look like a suicide in the midst of despair after wrecking his car. Or just dump him in front of a Babylon local. The plan had holes in it but all the best plans did. It kept the cops stumbling.

The pressure on Chase’s chest eased as Jonah stood and Angie turned off the road, slowed, slipped into a spot at the curb, and threw it into park. The clanging bells of a railroad crossing erupted, followed by the scream of a whistle. A train was pulling in. Chase checked his watch-1:28. They were in downtown Bay Shore.

Angie looked back at Chase and said, “Come on, let’s get inside where it’s comfortable. No troubles, right? Wipe your bloody nose with the bottom of your shirt.”

Jonah gestured at the van door with his chin and Chase got off the floor, wiped his nose with his shirt, slid the door open, and stepped out. They were at a motel/bar called the Wagon Wheel. Tucked behind the station, the place looked like every other flop-house where the lifelong drunks and prostitutes shacked at the very end of their games. It was also the sort of spot commonly used as a meeting ground for thieves putting a string together and scheming a heist. Civilians never saw anything or remembered anything, and even if they did, they made unreliable witnesses for the cops. Chase had spent a lot of time in similar environments.

His grandfather put a firm hand between Chase’s shoulder blades, steering him to a room around back. Angie unlocked the door and said, “Welcome to our humble abode. Feel free to put your feet on the furniture.”

Chase sat on a ratty couch with no life left in the springs, backed against the far wall so he was the farthest person from the door. It would be how Jonah wanted it. Angie sat at the other end of the couch and Jonah took a ladder-back chair facing straight on. Usually it would’ve worked the other way around, you always sat as deep in the room as possible in case somebody kicked in the door. But when you were watching somebody, like his grandfather was watching him now, this was the only way to work it.

For the moment it was Jonah’s play. Chase waited. He was losing patience fast but figured he could hold on until-well, until he couldn’t any longer.

“Let’s have a drink,” Angie said.

A bottle of scotch and some glasses were on the coffee table. She poured three fingers into each glass and pushed one in front of Chase. He threw back half of it in one pull.

The girl sipped, smiling, trying to put out a breezy atmosphere. She kicked off her shoes and put her bare feet against Chase’s leg. Her toenails were painted torch red, the same as her fingernails.

The only reason he knew the name of the polish was because Lila had once tried it and said, “Any woman ever approaches you with these nails who isn’t your wife, even if you spot her in the first pew of church Sunday morning, she’s a whore or practicing to be one.”

Jonah wasn’t good at dealing with people and Chase could see that Angie was the front player. It probably made her feel slick and accomplished, but all it meant was that if trouble ever marched in, she’d take the first bullet.

She moved her foot toward his lap and he wondered if she was just the playful sort who enjoyed prompting men or if she was hard like Jonah and this was some new challenge devised to test Chase’s sincerity. Whatever it was, now was the time for Chase to quit backing up and make a move. Jonah would be waiting for it. They wouldn’t be able to get the ball rolling until the tension broke.

“Isn’t this nice?” she asked. “So how long’s it been since you two old friends have-”

Chase flipped her legs aside and kicked the coffee table toward his grandfather. The old man was a little slower than he had been, but that didn’t matter much. He was primed and had something to prove. He dropped his left shoulder to bat aside the wobbly old table. It wasn’t going to hurt him. The.22 came up in his right hand and he started to lean forward. Chase did too.

Chase was fast. Maybe faster now than ever.

He could’ve snatched the gun away from Jonah like he’d taken Lila’s that first night. Chase’s head was crowded with doubts and misgivings about a lot of shit, but he had no question about that. He could’ve driven his fist into his grandfather’s belly or whipped low and bird-dogged him, tackling him across the lower legs and possibly shattering his knees.

Chase was certain he could’ve done any of those things, but none of them would get Jonah to help him. And it would wind up killing one of them. So he forced himself to hesitate.

It was painful doing nothing while you waited for the rest of the world to catch up.

The bottle of scotch hit the floor and bounced twice, landing right side up without spilling a drop. One of the glasses struck the radiator and shattered, the others rolled across the stained carpet.

Angie reached beneath a cushion and started to clamber off the couch, moving up behind Chase. She took tiny nips of air between her teeth. She’d cleaned her weapon recently and used too much gun oil.

Without expression, Jonah pressed the.22 to Chase’s forehead.

Maybe a full two seconds later Angie shoved a Bernadelli subcompact.25 into the mass of nerves under Chase’s left ear. It filled his head with electrical colors and his teeth started to sing, but he didn’t resist.

The three of them stood there like that waiting for the next moment to pass.

Staring into the old man’s icy-gray eyes, Chase asked, “Are you going to help me or what?”

Without lowering the gun, Jonah said, “Talk.”

3

C hase told his story as succinctly as he could, hardly mentioning Lila at all. The truth and depth of her, the perpetual excitement and warmth she pressed to his heart, it would be lost in the speaking. He knew Jonah wouldn’t understand revenge like this, where the act was more important than the payday.

Paring down the details of the last ten years, it only took Chase twenty minutes to lay out his whole life up to the moment that Lila was killed. It left him stunned and a little angry to realize it.

It took another twenty minutes to cover the rest of it because Jonah would need to know every detail Chase had found out about Marisa Iverson and her crew. He left nothing out. When he mentioned the part where he’d worked her over with body shots, Angie let out a wild laugh and said, “Chip off the old boy’s block, eh? Your technique must be genetic.”

By the time Chase was done his hair was crawling with sweat, but at least that part of it was over.

The next local came through, the whistle like a bayonet slicing through the slim, water-damaged motel walls. Now that he could relax he heard noises wafting in from the other rooms. The noise of a whiny john haggling over the price, trying to get a cut-rate deal on some kind of deviant action. The whore held steady because it wasn’t part of her regular policy. Working girls of her caliber didn’t go in for that kind of kink. Sixty extra, and he had to pick up another fifth of gin. A door slammed. A figure rushed by the window, heading for the bar to purchase a bottle under the table, which would cost him an extra ten over retail. This guy really wanted to do his nasty thing.

“How do you know I wasn’t in on it?” Jonah asked. “The ice score.”

Chase sat up. “At the time you were on the run after pulling a score with Matteo and Lorelli in Aspen. You tried to clear out two side-by-side mansions in a gated community, using a couple of the private security guards as inside men. One got scared at the eleventh hour and called the cops, hoping to be a hero. When the job went sour you nearly got pinched. It’s rough making a getaway from mountain towns. Both guards went down. Lorelli was aced. You left him there. A couple of his buddies apparently have issues with that. Now you’re in White Plains. Casing the Connecticut rez casino?”

“You did a good job of checking me out. You still have connections besides Georgie Murphy.”

“A few. Some of them helped because they respect you. Some because they hate you.”

“No,” his grandfather said, “it’s because you paid.”

“Sure, but it doesn’t change what they feel.”

Jonah kept those eyes like polished river stone on Chase, seeing if he could crack him with the stare. “Maybe you’ll give me those names later on.”

“No.”

Jonah nodded and turned away, thinking about it all so far, maybe realizing that he wasn’t as on top of the game as he thought he was.

The nasty guy came back, slammed his room door again, and got busy drinking gin and doing his thing. Chase gave a little more attention to Angie, who was sitting there making her silent assessments.

She had a natural provocativeness but wasn’t what you would call beautiful. Black hair, dark features, he thought she must be Spanish. Nose a little too long, her lips not quite matching up. Small, thin scars were almost hidden in the seams around her eyes. Some stitching indents at the corners of her mouth. She’d been mishandled and had had some plastic surgery along the way to put her looks back where they belonged.

He wondered how much weight her word carried with Jonah. Was she a full partner or just a piece of some string who’d come along with Jonah for the fun of it? Was she in on the rez deal, if there was one?

He supposed it didn’t really matter. She was merely someone else he couldn’t trust. The.25 wasn’t on view and he couldn’t decide if she’d jammed it back under the cushion or had it tucked somewhere on her person. If she had it on her, under those skintight clothes, he couldn’t figure out where it might be.

Angie spotted him looking and mistook his intention. She let out a little smile and held his gaze, attempting to appear demure. It didn’t work and she seemed to know it but was determined to give it a go anyhow. Maybe practicing on him, gauging his reaction. When she didn’t see what she wanted to see she glanced away, took an unbroken glass off the floor, filled it, and offered it to him. He threw it back. She poured another and sat there sipping it.

“Letting the woman go was stupid,” Jonah said. “She was the one advantage you had and you gave it up. Phoning them was even worse. Now they know you’re on to them.”

“I want them to know,” Chase said.

“That’s not the way to do it.”

“It’s the way I’m doing it. Are you going to help me or not?”

“Depends. I still don’t know what you want.”

“I want the driver.”

4

O nly three o’clock, but the traffic was thick, bottle-necking them among a fleet of eighteen-wheelers as they hit some construction on Sunrise Highway. The road crews stood around holding jackhammers and shovels but not using them, and the left lane’s asphalt lay peeled open. The van didn’t have the best suspension and the stop-and-go jerking started to bounce the whiskey inside Chase. He shouldn’t have drank. He wasn’t used to it and the sourness made him think of the stink always drifting off Joe-Boo Brinks.

He looked over at Jonah and the Jonah inside his mind said, He wants to ace you, but he’s waiting. He’ll grab the score, put one in your head, and leave you at the scene.

Chase didn’t need to give Angie directions to his house. She already knew the way, which was pretty good for someone who hadn’t had more than a couple of days to set up the snatch and memorize the roads. He thought more and more that she wasn’t just along for the ride. Nobody had mentioned her being in on the Aspen heist, but Chase wondered if she’d been there with Jonah and Lorelli, and if she’d been the driver who’d gotten them out of the tight mountain town.

She caught his eye in the rearview. He still couldn’t figure her but decided to think the worst for now.

They came down his street toward the house. He got out, keyed in the garage door code, and said, “Pull all the way in.”

He’d taken down the heavy bag so there was room for the van beside the Chevelle. Angie threw it into park They got out and Jonah stared at the black Chevelle.

“You still got something to shred the road,” he said.

“It’s new,” Chase told him.

He opened the door to the house and led them inside.

“You don’t keep it locked,” Angie noted.

“You’ve got no burglar alarm. You’d think a cop and a thief would know better.”

Chase said nothing. It bothered him having Jonah here, in the home he and Lila had made, even though this wasn’t the same home anymore without her. It meant less and less to him every day. But he could sense his grandfather already scoping the silverware, checking around for loose cash, plotting to walk off with something. 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 somebody else and now I’m with him.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it.”

“Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not.”

“You can always move on.”

“No, I can’t.”

He decided to drop that. “What happened to the somebody else?”

“He left.”

“On a gurney or by his own free will?”

“He made a mistake and died for it.”

“Who snuffed him?” Chase asked.

The smile again, the near-invisible scars adding some mystery and strength to her features, and something else he couldn’t name but which made the muscles in his back tighten. “Who do you think?”

5

J onah poured the last of the scotch in a glass and took a deep bite. He didn’t look the least bit interested in helping Chase. “What’s in it for me?”

At least he put it on the line, first thing. Chase had expected him to say that. He’d assumed from the beginning that he’d have to offer money up front on top of a possible score. At the time, the idea of it hadn’t offended him, but now that he was staring into his grandfather’s face, he found that it did. It stung knowing that the man would never do anything except for a payday, not even for someone whose name was tattooed into his flesh.

And Lila had once asked Chase if Jonah had ever really loved him.

“I’m selling my house,” Chase said. “The price of real estate is still shooting up on the island. I should clear at least a hundred grand, maybe more.”

“And I get it all?”

“Sure.”

“You’re not even going to try to talk me down, see if I’ll do it for less?”

“You’ll cost whatever you cost.”

“And when do I get it?”

“The house isn’t on the market yet. A few months, I guess.”

“And I trust that you’re good for it?”

“I’m good for it. Whether you trust me or not is up to you.”

Jonah showed nothing. “Let me think about it.”

“No,” Chase said. “I need an answer now. If you shake off then I go it alone.”

“How much time do you figure you’ve got left?”

“Almost none. The fence has had over a week to start moving the ice. He’ll have sold some of it by now, and he’ll have a small amount of cash to hand over to the crew. The woman, Marisa Iverson, didn’t cut and run when she should’ve. I think they’re going to score the same diamond merchant again.”

“So they’re close.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe closer than you think.”

Chase frowned and said, “What does that mean?”

“It means you never should’ve given them your address.” Jonah stepped back into the living room and clicked on the video. “If they were smart they would’ve hit you immediately. When did you brace the woman?”

“Four days ago.”

“So they’re good but not that good.” He paused the video where Marisa Iverson was getting shoved.

“She’d have to hide out after you worked on her. She could call in sick for a couple of days, stay away from her house. But if they want to go through with scoring the merchant a second time, they’ll want her back in play. If they’re worried about you fouling the deal, they’ll have to move on you first.” His gaze roved across the TV screen. “She’s got to be fucking the manager of the shop.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because it makes sense.” Jonah rewound, hit play, and pointed out the manager. A puffy guy in his mid-fifties with a bad toupee who stood around looking mildly irritated the entire time the heist was going down. “She’s the insider for the crew and he’s the inside man for her. Feeding her information on when the diamonds are due, what the safe combination is, all that. He’s probably married to a cow and nailing this piece on the sly. Look at him. He only gets upset when the crew pretends to rough her up. He thinks he’s in love with her. She’s driven him out of his head.”

Chase hadn’t considered the possibility of a second inside person. He hadn’t been able to get into the head of a lonely, middle-aged white-collar guy.

He thought about Marisa Iverson moving in his arms, forcing her blood-smeared mouth against his. The manager, yeah, he’d enjoy that taste.

“I see it now,” Chase said.

Jonah leaned over and tapped the TV screen.

“You can tell. Everything in his life is an annoyance except for when he’s in bed with her. She takes him to a whole new place, and he’s desperate for that feeling now. He never wants to go back to what he was before. The straight citizens, most of them are so bored they want to snuff themselves.” Chase looked at the manager being annoyed, wanting out, barely able to contain himself with Marisa in the same room. “The cops will work on him, but right now he thinks he’ll go to the pen before he gives her up. Never underestimate the desperation of a man who has everything.”

The manager would be a liability now. She’d have to get back into play and deal with him. “He’s going to want to run with her.”

“They’ll cap him this time, on their way out, before he spills to the police. If the crew wants that second score they’ve got to go in fast. But they can’t move quick because of you. They know you’re watching, and since you were stupid enough to tell them where you lived, and they were stupid enough to wait, that means they’re watching you.”

His grandfather was right, Chase had been stupid. He’d been so caught up in his own grief and anger that he figured they might want to come at him the same way he wanted to go at them. Head to head. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might be more subtle and monitor him for days.

“You think they’re somewhere nearby this minute?” he asked.

“Sure,” Jonah said. “They should’ve punched your ticket already but they think you’re on to them, baiting a trap. They believe you’re a pro because you got this close. By now they’ve aced one of your neighbors and have somebody installed.”

A crew that would murder a civilian in his own living room, just to keep an eye on somebody. Maybe the driver wasn’t the only wild dog. Marisa Iverson was at least a little crazy, going through what she had for the sake of the driver, who’d popped a cop. Chase had been thinking too positively. He wasn’t going to get the driver without taking them all down.

He glanced at Jonah, who was staring back at him.

“You didn’t think anybody else might get hurt in this fight of yours?” his grandfather asked.

Chase said nothing.

They moved to the front window together and peered through the blinds. Jonah pointed across the street on the diagonal. “Who lives there?”

Sarah Corvis and her kids. They’d sent over a roast after Lila’s funeral. “A middle-aged woman, has a teenage son and daughter.”

“Too many to take out and keep quiet.” Jonah pointed to the house opposite it. “There?”

The Wagner family. The children had brought over a card. “Husband, wife, three children grade-school age.”

“No.” Now, pointing down the block the other way, again diagonally from Chase’s house. “And there?”

Mrs. Nicholson and Freddy. Freddy would sometimes walk to the very bottom of the lawn and watch Chase tune the car, but he’d never come any closer than that. “Elderly lady, seventy, seventy-five. Has a mentally handicapped son who’s maybe fifty. They’re shut-ins, live on government checks, have their groceries delivered. They have lots of cats.”

“Call her.”

Chase got out the phone book and dialed the number. He let it ring ten times and hung up. He swallowed thickly, thinking of the poor woman, in her kitchen, Freddy in the bedroom, the cats going hungry. “No answer.”

“They’re dead.”

He didn’t waver or tremble, but inside he fell in a heap and the hatred bloomed further, for the crew and himself, and he was screaming.

The volume inside his skull was turned way up. He had trouble hearing his grandfather.

“When it gets dark we’ll go over there for a visit,” Jonah was saying. “Pack up your shit because we’re leaving here. We’ll get another place up near the diamond merchant.”

He held out his arm and Angie immediately slid next to him. He toyed with her hair and she plucked at his fingers, as if they’d practiced the action many times before, like a dance neither one of them enjoyed anymore.

Jonah told Chase, “Stand watch for a few hours, we’re tired from the trip. You think you can handle it?”

Lila had liked Mrs. Nicholson and Freddy. She used to go over there and bring pies. She’d made the effort to be generous and sociable. Chase never had. He’d be out in the garage working the speed bag and Lila would come back from across the street with her breath smelling like peach cobbler and say, “No reason under God why such lovely people as them have got to be alone in the world. Living in a houseful of cat piss. That Freddy, he admires you.” After the funeral, Freddy had come a little farther up the driveway and waved.

Even Freddy had made the effort, and now he and his mother were dead because of what Chase had set in motion. The Jonah inside his head said, You didn’t think anybody else might get hurt in this fight of yours?

He’d be saying it forever.

Still putting Chase to the test, Jonah wanted to see how far he could push. He walked to the master bedroom and said, “We’ll take this one.”

“No,” Chase told him.

“You’re alone, you can take the smaller bed in the guest room.”

“No.”

Thinking now, So maybe this is where I get to shove that popgun.22 up his ass.

He looked at his grandfather and his grandfather looked at him, and they both stayed that way for a while until Angie pressed a hand tenderly to Jonah’s face and made him turn aside, then tugged him down the short hall to the guest room.

Jonah, who didn’t feel things like a regular man did, but somehow still acted like someone stung by an ungrateful child. Chase turned back to the window and stared at Mrs. Nicholson’s house, imagining the scene.

The crew wouldn’t let the driver go along because he was a wild card and might try to pop Chase without first checking him out thoroughly. So one of the others would be sent in, someone who liked to work quietly, maybe with a knife. He’d park up the road from Chase’s house, checking out his house and everybody on the block. Watch the kids play, the men cutting their lawns, the women heading off to work or shopping. See Mrs. Nicholson limp out onto her front stoop to get the mail or pay the paperboy. Contemplate Freddy standing out on the cement driveway doing nothing.

So he’d knock on the old lady’s door and say he was selling Bibles, keep a conversation going while he scanned her place, making sure she lived only with the retarded guy, except for all the cats. The stink of the cat piss would make his nose run. He’d look out her front window at Chase’s house and wonder what was going on in there, why Chase had fuckin’ invited the crew to come crush him. There had to be some kind of setup.

The old lady asking him, Aren’t you going to show me the Bibles?

What Bibles?

The gold-inlaid fine end-paper illustrated and annotated text Bibles that you’re selling.

Maybe knifing her right then. Or, not wanting to get any blood on himself, just strangling her, garotting her. It didn’t take much to snap the neck of an eighty-year-old woman with osteoporosis and light bone density.

Freddy letting out a perplexed and terrified shriek. Or maybe not, maybe just standing there unsure of what just happened. Going, Ma? Ma?

Standing there going, Mama? While the knife appeared. While it slid into his belly and the great overwhelming pain engulfed him, but still not great enough to drown out his fear for his mother. Ma?

Falling to his knees, then on his face, the cats scattering.

The killer calling his crew and using their little code, two rings, hang up, three rings, hang up. Whatever. Telling the boss, the schemer behind it all, I’m in.

Watching the house across the street, seeing Chase come and go. Now a van pulling up with an old man and a hot chippie with him, sliding into the garage. Watching the blinds part a little bit in the living room over there now, somebody staring back out at him.

Chase went for the cold spot and let it ice him down, the burning fury that threatened to consume his thoughts slowly being quelled until he could think again.

He stood watch, staring at the house for four hours. He heard Jonah and Angie in the guest room going at it. Maybe not so tired from the trip, after all.

Chase remembered being thirteen, and Jonah holding the mostly empty pint of Dewar’s and introducing him to the cute and less-cute girls named Lou. His grandfather had stolen the one Chase wanted to be with simply because he could. It had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power, which reminded him of Marisa Iverson and why Chase had called Jonah in the first place.

They were two of a kind. He’d been right. He needed Jonah.

Chase stood at his front window staring into the evening as it became night, wanting to kill someone.

6

B y the time Jonah was ready, Chase had a bag packed with a few changes of clothes and some personal items. There was nothing else he wanted from the house. The bag was out in the trunk of the Chevelle in the garage. He’d brought in many of Lila’s guns and laid them on the kitchen table.

“In case you want something to carry.”

“Yours?” Jonah asked.

There were things he would talk about and things he wouldn’t. Chase didn’t want to say anything about Lila to Jonah. The very act of discussing her with his grandfather seemed disrespectful to her memory.

So he said, “Yes.”

“Don’t need them right now. Got a.38 I like. But pack them up and bring them along. We might have use for them later.”

Chase still had Marisa Iverson’s 9mm and two.22s, all three of which he’d cleaned. He felt more comfortable with them than he did with any of Lila’s weapons. It was a complicated emotion that he couldn’t quite untangle.

But he knew that thinking about Lila would make him soft, even if only while holding her pistol. His concentration would fail, even as it was failing now, his mind wanting to take him back to her, to hear her laughter, think about her smile. He had to hold on.

Angie walked out of the guest room and picked up Lila’s twelve-gauge shotgun. She checked the load and racked it. “I’ll be able to hold the fort with this.”

“We won’t be far,” Jonah said. “We’ll cut through the backyard, circle around the block, come up behind the house.”

Mrs. Nicholson’s place was dark except for one dim light in the living room.

The sun had only been down a few minutes, but Jonah didn’t want to wait for fear the crew might come by and make a hit before he and Chase could get over there. They went out the back door, hopped the fence, and worked their way through neighboring yards, circling in a wide arc.

There was a sense of time moving very quickly now. The understanding that it was running out, or had already run out, and they could do nothing but wait for whatever was so nearby to strike. There was no averting it, no deflecting it.

Chase was very quiet but still louder than Jonah, who moved silently and kept to the shadows like he owned them. They spotted and avoided motion-detector lamps, property with dogs, a couple of loud households where rowdy cadres watched a late baseball game. Everybody was losing money on the Mets.

They got to Mrs. Nicholson’s backyard and eased through an overgrown hedge. Chase put a foot on the lawn and felt something brush his ankle. The cats were loose. Seven or eight of them, slinking about, pooling in the gray patches of light bleeding through the clouds. Their eyes glowed a fiery amber, and the curves of their fangs were outlined in blue detail. They mewled and me-owed. Whoever was inside had tossed them out and they were aggravated about it, maybe starved.

Jonah whispered, “Make sure none of them follow us inside.”

Chase and Jonah moved to the back door, which opened into the kitchen. Jonah let him take point, of course. He’d expected that too. He had a very clear image of getting gut-shot and lying there while Jonah ran away and ransacked Chase’s house, stealing Lila’s candlestick holders.

The thought of it made his shoulders tighten. Jonah noticed and put a hand on his back, pushing forward because he thought Chase had frozen with fear. The old man really never had known him at all.

Drawing his tools out of his jacket, Chase got to work. It took fifteen seconds to pop the door. He inched it open and squirted oil onto the hinges so there wouldn’t be any squeaking.

A sharp crew but maybe not sharp enough. The guy should’ve blocked the door with something-a chair, a beer bottle, a stack of glasses. Anything to warn him that somebody was coming in, but he hadn’t taken the precaution.

So, either an oversight or a trap.

Chase crept in, his grandfather at his heel.

Mrs. Nicholson and Freddy were seated at the kitchen table. Side by side. Their heads almost touching.

At least Chase figured it was them. Two body-sized shapes wrapped in garbage bags and cocooned with duct tape. The roll was still on the counter. The bodies didn’t stink all that much, considering. The cat piss smell overpowered it.

Chase thought, Because of me, because of my mistakes.

He tasted Marisa Iverson and didn’t know what it meant until he realized he’d bitten through his tongue and his mouth was full of blood.

The fire began to burn again but he fought off a wave of guilt and forced himself to stay focused. He pulled the 9mm, hating the feel of it in his hand but adoring its intention.

The guy was napping at the front window, sitting in a worn love seat with an MP3 player in his hand and the tinny sound of music coming from his earplugs. He’d been here a day or two and the boredom had made him sloppy.

He was slim, a little younger than Chase, with a pretty-boy roguishness and his hair moussed all to hell. Probably took him forty-five minutes every morning to affect that nonchalant hipster messiness. Dressed down in a wife-beater T-shirt and stained jeans. Young girls would’ve found him beautiful.

Chase didn’t get a pro vibe off this guy. Something was wrong.

He smelled setup but couldn’t see any kind of trap. He quickly walked up and cracked the fucker across the head with the butt of the 9mm. The guy’s eyes shot open and then quickly closed again as he tumbled to the floor. The solid thunk of metal on bone was so satisfying that Chase had to restrain himself to keep from doing it again and smashing the guy’s skull in.

Jonah had drawn his favored.38 and was searching through the small house. He returned and gave a headshake. Nobody else in the place.

First thing Jonah did was rifle the guy’s wallet and pull all the cash. Looked like three or four hundred bucks. Jonah pocketed it and checked the driver’s license. “It’s a fake. Shitty work too. Looks like it was glued together in a half hour. First time stopped at a traffic light he’d be busted. Name on it is Timmy Rosso. He can’t be a pro, sleeping on the job. They killed the old lady and her son and then suckered him into taking this fall.”

“Is he carrying a phone?”

Jonah found the guy’s cell and handed it to Chase. Only one number programmed in. Terrific, he thought. Now we have to go through this shit again.

Chase walked away and Jonah said, “Where are you going?”

You couldn’t do much but you had to do something. Chase went to the back door and opened it, letting in the cats. There were empty food and water bowls in the corner of the kitchen. He found the cat food under the sink, filled the bowls, poured water, and watched the hungry cats tearing in. He turned and stared at the figures of the dead old woman and her retarded son wrapped in their own garbage bags. Lila was in his head saying, Sweetness, you gone far enough for me, I’m proud of you. Now it’s time to stop. And don’t let that granddaddy of yours touch the good silverware.

Jonah stared at him like he’d gone insane, which was fine. Chase found a vase full of dead flowers, filled it at the sink, walked back into the living room, and tossed it in Timmy Rosso’s face, dried stems and all.

As the guy came awake Chase looked at Rosso, pointed the 9mm in his face, and asked, “Hey, any chance you’re the driver?”

7

T he look Jonah gave him said, What the fuck kind of question is that? He knows you want the driver. Even if it is him, he won’t admit to it.

That’s because Jonah didn’t understand that wheelmen had their own thing going. They wanted to be known. It set them apart like the old-time juggers, the safecrackers. Or the demolition men, who were the only ones willing to touch nitro. They had special skills, talents that made them distinct from the rest of the string. It made them a little vain.

If it was him, he’d say it.

“No,” Rosso told him, dead flower petals in his dripping hair. Blood pulsed across his forehead and threaded into his eyes. “I don’t do that.”

There was a whine and some real fear in his voice. “And I didn’t kill those two in the kitchen either.”

“I didn’t think so,” Chase said. “Do you know who they were?”

“No, I never saw them. They were already…covered when I got here.”

“So who snuffed them?”

“I…I can’t say.”

“I think you can.”

“No, really, listen to me-”

Chase held up a hand and cut him off. Rosso wasn’t one of the string. The guy was holding back out of fear, not loyalty or professionalism. They’d hired him especially for this part of the job, to watch and report, and then go down.

“All I want is the driver.”

“The driver of what?” Rosso said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Was this another desperate man who had everything but still needed Marisa Iverson?

“What do you know?” Chase asked, sounding tired even to himself. “Come on, tell me your story.”

Trying to hold out, Rosso struggled with himself and ran all kinds of scenarios through his mind. His eyes danced and darted. Chase could tell the kid was thinking about throwing himself out the front window, tucking and rolling, doing some kind of ninja shit. He started to pant and flex a little. Gearing himself up to launch at Chase, fight him for the gun, shoot his way out.

“This is why you always tie them up before you throw water in their faces,” Jonah said.

Chase nodded.

But the fact was that Rosso remained too dazed from the blow to the head to think clearly enough about how weak he was. If he tried to get up, he’d fall over on his ass. Chase waited for him to try.

Rosso tried and flopped out of the chair and landed among the cats. You’d think they’d been rehearsing this gag for a while, the way the cats just watched him fall and then slunk against him.

Chase picked the guy up and threw him in the chair again.

“I’m going to call you Timmy, okay?”

“It’s not my-”

“I know it’s not your real name. I don’t care about your real name. But I need to call you something, right? So, Timmy, tell me about the crew who set you up in this house with these dead bodies.”

Rosso began to cry.

It wasn’t something Chase had been expecting and it made him break out in a sweat. Rosso continued sobbing. He really was only a kid, in way over his head. Chase figured Marisa had fucked and scammed him too. Given him the bad fake ID to make him feel like a part of her lifestyle. She would’ve promised to take care of him.

The guy tried to talk through his blubbering but Chase couldn’t understand the words. Chase went, “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay.”

Finally Rosso calmed down, tried again, and managed to form coherent sentences while he sniffled. “I don’t know any crew…I just know Mary and Gus.”

“Tell me about them.”

“You already know Gus. That’s what this is all about.”

“Sure,” Chase said, “but pretend I don’t know Gus. Just tell me about him and Mary. How you met them, all that, okay?”

“Well, she’s…she’s…my girl. He’s…her husband. You know this!”

Jonah drew out a knife from a sheath at the small of his back. A two-inch blade, which was more than enough if you knew what you were doing. He moved in on Rosso very quickly. His face, as always, showing nothing. Rosso’s eyes grew wide and he parted his lips to shout. Jonah covered the kid’s mouth with his left hand, almost gently holding it there in an oddly loving gesture, then stabbed the blade down into the thick meat of Rosso’s leg.

The kid dropped forward with a muted shriek and Jonah held him there while Rosso wailed beneath Jonah’s thick, callused palm. Tears again spurted from the kid’s eyes and he sucked air loudly through his nose.

Jonah mimicked Chase and said, “Shhh, shhh, it’s okay. I just want you to stay focused and tell the truth, okay? Tell the truth and you’ll get to go home soon. All right?”

It took a couple minutes but eventually Rosso managed to nod.

The leg wasn’t bleeding much. The knife had only gone in a half inch and the wound had sealed around it. Jonah moved his hand from Rosso’s lips and saw that the kid had vomited a little. Jonah left the knife in Rosso’s leg and wiped his hand on one of Mrs. Nicholson’s cats.

“You…stabbed me.”

“Keep talking. Now. Come on.”

“She’s married to Gus,” Rosso said, panting, “but he doesn’t take care of her the way she needs, all right? I met them at the Plead the Fifth in Smithtown, on 25a. It’s a hole-in-the-wall joint, I’m a bartender there. They just moved here from Sacramento, and he can’t find a real job. He’s done time and he’s drifted in and out of drugs. You know all this! Please, my leg. Get me a bandage.”

He made as if to grab the blade and Jonah said, “Don’t you touch it.”

Chase told him, “In a minute, Timmy, we’ll call a doctor. Come on, keep going.”

“She started coming in alone and, well…she wants to leave him. He hits her, she had bruises on her face. He beats her and makes her do things. With his friends. With you! She doesn’t love him anymore.”

“She loves you now.”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“What do you want? What do you want from me?”

“So what did she tell you about the people in this house? And about me?”

“About your deal with Gus.”

“What deal, Timmy?”

“Don’t call me Timmy. About how these two were your partners, and you double-crossed and killed them because you’ve got a big shipment of drugs in your house and you’re going to sell them to Colombians and make at least a hundred thousand dollars. Afterward, when you were sleeping, I was going to steal the cash. And then you and Gus will probably go back to Cleveland where him and Mary grew up, and me and Mary can go anyplace in the world with the money. Maybe go to Italy and buy a villa. She wants to visit Italy.”

Jonah said, “Nobody can be this stupid.”

Chase was awed by the clever manipulation. Take a dumb, immature, mostly honest kid, make him think he was in love, give him an awful task like sitting in a house with two corpses, and so long as he thought it was for the right reasons, saving his woman from a brute of a husband, he’d do it with no hesitation at all. She’d even worked in the bruises Chase had given her and used them against the kid as well. The fact that none of it made any sense only added to the beauty of it. Rosso was a romantic, and he was more than willing to believe the fairy tale. Details only would’ve confused him.

He’d been in this house for two days and had never really looked at the pictures on the walls. Photos of Freddy, of Mrs. Nicholson as a young girl, as an old lady, all the cats. Shelves and shelves full of framed photos of the cats. Crochet and knitting magazines on the coffee table. Balls of yarn and knitting needles in a wicker basket on the end of the couch. And yet when Chase looked in Rosso’s terrified eyes he saw the kid really believed all the idiotic shit he was saying.

Chase asked, “So what makes you think Gus is from Cleveland if they said they were from Sacramento?”

“That’s because of the guy with the scar. Please, my leg. It really hurts!”

“Forget your leg. Tell me about this guy with a scar.”

“One night Gus came in alone for a couple of beers. I hate him. I hate him so much I thought of putting ground glass in his beer. It’s a sin what he does to her. But I can’t do anything until after the deal goes down. So he was sitting there and…and a guy with a scar going across his forehead comes in and sits next to him. They pretended they didn’t know each other but I could tell. It’s in the body language. They made a big show of shaking hands and introducing themselves, but I knew.” Holding his chin up, trying to eke out the last of his courage, Rosso did a pretty good job of it. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“I know,” Chase said. “Tell me about Cleveland.”

“The guy was whispering. He said imagine if they’d hung around in Cleveland like their fathers. They’d both have had heart attacks and hernias by now. Meanwhile, this guy, his forehead all disfigured like that, looks like he went through a windshield.”

Maybe the driver. Why a public meet? Because they were both getting antsy holed up for so long, waiting for the fence to get back to them?

“You did good, Timmy.” Chase held up the cell. “Now, what’s the stupid phone code you’re using?”

“No code, Mary just picks up.”

“What have you been telling her about me?”

“That you’re always in the garage tuning the car. And that your connection showed up this afternoon.”

“What did she say to that?”

“She said she couldn’t wait to get the money. She couldn’t wait to be with me. We’re in love. Gus-”

“Yeah, I know, Gus is a piece of shit. When was the last time you spoke to her?”

“Around then, when he showed up with you in the van.”

“When are you supposed to contact her again?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

Chase hit REDIAL and the phone rang once and immediately went to voice mail. Marisa Iverson’s voice came on the line and said, “You’re too late. I know who you are now. Sorry about the wife. See you on the road.”

Chase disconnected and said, “Shit. It could be too late already. They might’ve scored the merchant this afternoon. Put on the television.”

Jonah switched on the set, and it was all over the news. The diamond merchant had been robbed for a second time in less than two weeks. The manager was dead, shot right before the thieves left. James Lefferts’s nose was swaddled in bandages but he seemed comfortable in front of the cameras this time.

Lila’s photo appeared behind the cute newscaster and they brought the whole thing up again.

“They’re out,” Chase said. “All of this was a diversion.”

“You’re the one who gave her the edge,” Jonah said. “She was a step ahead. I’d like to meet this woman.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Chase told him.

They had Marisa Iverson’s face but they didn’t really have her face. They’d never track her from the employee photo or security tapes they had. She’d pitch the glasses and let her hair down, wipe off all the overdone makeup and let the strength and confidence cut loose again. No one would take her for the same woman.

Timmy Rosso stared at the TV but still didn’t make any connection. He said, “Look, I don’t want the money anymore. I just want to leave. Me and Mary, we’ll go, right now, tonight. You’ll never see either of us again.”

Jonah walked over to Rosso and tugged the blade out of his leg. A small spurt of blood came along with it, a dollop arcing onto the carpet, just missing the cats. The kid screamed and this time Jonah let him. Rosso fell out of the chair and gripped his leg, thrashing.

The old man started to raise his.38 and Chase gripped his wrist.

Jonah was still incredibly strong. Chase could only keep hold of him because Jonah allowed it. His grandfather stared hard into his eyes and said quietly, “We have to kill him.”

“No.”

“He was watching us.”

“He was watching me. And so what? He’s got nothing.”

“He can describe me to the cops.”

“And tell them what? That he was keeping my house under surveillance while he sat here with two dead bodies wrapped up in garbage bags? Nothing he could say to them will make any sense at all.”

“It’s still trouble we don’t need.”

“He was a sucker. He doesn’t have to die for that.”

“That’s how everybody dies.”

There was nothing else to say to that. Either the old man would make his move and Chase would be able to stop him, or he wouldn’t. If nothing else, his grandfather broke the complicated world down into a much simpler form. Every moment brought you right up to the edge. You could either win against him and live, or lose and die. Sometimes it was nice not having so many options to choose from.

Jonah watched Rosso another minute and finally turned away. “All right, but let’s wipe this place and leave now, before he stirs any more shit.”

Chase had planned on it anyway. He’d touched the back door, the cat food, the water bowl, what else? He looked around, seeing the photos again, thinking of Freddy staring at him in the garage, wondering how in the hell anyone could kill an old lady and a retarded man who never stopped smiling.

Had he touched the kitchen table? Had he brushed against the garbage bags? He couldn’t take any chances, he had to clean it all. The cats looked at him. He took a step toward the kitchen and caught a blur of motion from the corner of his eye.

Rosso said, “Oh God, no-” as Jonah took hold of the kid’s hair and eased his head back to expose the throat.

Chase moved and opened his mouth but nothing came out except Walcroft’s noise.

Fast, his hands always so fast, but now, for some reason, he was far too slow as he reached out and Jonah jabbed the guy called Timmy Rosso once under the left ear, severing the carotid.

Then the old man cleaned the blade on the dying kid’s pant leg, two smooth strokes back and forth as Rosso’s face contorted into a look of profound amazement, and his hand started to come up, reaching with some urgency for Jonah’s hand the way a helpless grandson might reach for him across a short distance of enduring darkness.