Chase was laughing with the others during the poker game when his grandfather threw down his cards, took a deep pull on his beer, and with no expression at all shot Walcroft in the head.
Only Chase was startled. He leaped back in his seat knocking over some loose cash and an ashtray, the world tilting left while he went right. Jonah had palmed his.22 in his left hand and had it pressed to Walcroft’s temple, a thin trail of smoke spiraling in the air and the smell of burning hair and skin wafting across the table into Chase’s face.
You’d think it would be disgusting, acrid, but it was actually sort of fragrant. There was almost no blood. One small pop had filled the hotel room, quieter than striking a nail with a hammer. It didn’t even frighten the pigeons off the sill.
Walcroft blinked twice, licked his lips, tried to rise, and fell over backward as the slug rattled around inside his skull scrambling his brains. The whites of his eyes turned a bright, glistening red as he lay there clawing at the rug, twitching.
The others were already in motion. Chase saw it had been set up in advance, well planned, but nobody had let him in on it. They didn’t entirely trust him. Jonah opened the closet door while Grayson and Rook lifted Walcroft’s body and carried it across the room. Walcroft was trying to talk, a strange sound coming from far back in his throat. He was blinking, trying to focus his gaze, his hands still trembling.
Chase thought, He’s staring at me.
They tossed Walcroft in the corner of the empty closet, slammed the door, and immediately began cleaning the place.
No one looked at Chase, which meant everybody was looking at him. Nobody said anything as they wiped down the room. So that was how it was going to be.
The room continued leaning and Chase had to angle his chin so things would straighten out. He shuddered once but covered it pretty well by bending and picking up the ashtray. They wouldn’t want the butts tossed in the trash, they contained DNA. Maybe. Who the fuck knew. They were evidence anyway, some keen cop might nail Rook because he always tore the filter off his Camels. It was a clue.
Chase carefully split the cotton nubs apart, stepped to the bathroom, and threw them in the toilet. He washed out the ashtray. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe not. It could be downright stupid. It felt insane. What really mattered was they had to see he was trying, that he was very much a part of the crew.
He dove for the cold spot deep inside himself and seemed to miss it. He couldn’t look at his face in the mirror. His heart slammed at his ribs, trying to squeeze through. He noticed he wasn’t breathing through his nose, was beginning to pant. He started again. He made sure he left no prints on the toilet handle or around the sink. He tried to move into that place again and this time felt himself begin to freeze and harden.
When he got out of the bathroom the closet door was open a crack. Walcroft was still squirming and had kicked it back open. One shoe had come off and a folded hundred-dollar bill had fallen out. Rook said, “Son of a bitch,” grabbed a pillow off one of the beds, and drew his.38. Walcroft kept making the sound.
Chase knew then he would hear it for years to come, in the harbor of his worst nightmares, and that when his own loneliest moment in the world came to pass he’d be doing the same thing, making that same noise. Rook stepped into the closet, stuffed the pillow down on Walcroft’s face to stifle the shot, and pulled the trigger. There was a loud cough and a short burst of flame. This time the pigeons flew off. With his teeth clenched, Rook tamped out the pillowcase. He nabbed the c-note and shut the door again. That was finally the end of it.
Chase was fifteen and he’d been pulling scores with his grandfather for almost five years. First as a kid running two-and three-man grifts, a few short cons, kitten burglaries-as Walcroft had called them-and then working his way up to taking part in an occasional heist. Jonah always packed guns during jobs. Chase knew his grandfather had blasted his way out of a few tight situations, but so far he’d never seen Jonah kill a man.
Now this, one of his own crew, a part of his own string.
Earlier that day, the score had gone down smooth as newborn ass. They hit a bookie joint run out the back of a fish market owned by the North Jersey mob. Jonah had explained how years ago nobody would’ve dared mess with any of the syndicates, but the days of the mob families’ real power were long over. They squabbled among themselves more than they battled the FBI. Sons put their fathers under. Wives turned informant on their Mafia boss husbands. Everybody flipped eventually.
So the four of them went after the book. It was sometimes a little tough putting the string together because a lot of pros wouldn’t work with someone named Jonah, despite his first-rate rep. It was one of the reasons why Chase started as a driver so early on, just so they wouldn’t need to find the extra guy. Besides, Jonah couldn’t drive for shit.
Chase sat behind the wheel of a stolen ’72 Chevy Nova that he’d tuned on his own. He’d also done the body work and new paint job. A Turbo 350 transmission, 454 bored engine, solid-lift camshaft, and a Flowmaster 3 exhaust so the car practically hummed like a struck chord. The horsepower seeped into his chest.
Part of being a wheelman was putting everything you had into a car and then letting it go again. After the heist they’d be able to sell it to a local chop shop for an extra ten grand, which Chase’d keep himself. For what Jonah called his college fund. It was a joke to all the crews they ran with, how young he was. It took a while but eventually they came to respect him. For his scouting and driving skills, his nerves, and the way he kept his mouth shut.
Rook and Grayson came out of the fish market with a sack of cash each. Jonah followed, carrying another two. Five seconds later Walcroft came prancing out the door holding a giant yellowfin tuna, smiling widely so that all you saw were his bright eyes and perfect teeth under the ski mask. It got Chase laughing.
They’d expected forty grand, maybe a little more since the fish market was the hub for six different books who all turned in their receipts on Friday noon, in time to get to the bank before the midday rush. Not a major score, but an easy one to keep them afloat until the next big thing came along.
They climbed into the Nova, Walcroft hugging the fish to him for another second and saying, “I shall miss you, my friend, but now, back to the smelly depths of Joisey with you,” then tossing it in the parking lot. Chase let out a chuckle and eased down on the throttle, moving smoothly out of there.
They had a hotel room on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. Chase had the way perfectly mapped, the streetlights timed, and hit the road heading east just as some of the mob boys came running outside. One of the fat ginzos tripped over the fish and took a header. Both Chase and Walcroft started laughing harder.
The goombahs rushed for their Acuras and Tauruses. Nobody had too nice a car in case the IRS was watching. They followed the Nova for about a mile until Chase made a left turn from the right lane and bolted through a stale yellow light.
This was a family town. The mob mooks had grandchildren going to the school on the corner, their family priests were in the crosswalk heading to the local rectory. The Mafia gave it up with hardly a fight, too worried about running over a nun or crossing guard. It almost made Chase a little maudlin, thinking these guys had a home they cared for more than they did their own cash. He hadn’t stayed in the same town for more than three months since he was ten years old.
He’d been ahead almost 150 bucks in the poker game. Walcroft about the same. Now Chase realized the others had let them win to distract them. He wondered if he’d been a little sharper and seen Jonah palming the gun, and had dared to warn Walcroft, would his grandfather have shot him in the head too.
Rook and Grayson finished wiping the room. There hadn’t been that much to do, they’d been playing cards for less than an hour. They took their split of the score and said nothing to Chase, which meant they were saying a lot.
He listened to their footsteps recede down the hall and then sat back in his chair. Icy sweat burst across his forehead and prickled his scalp. He stared at the closet.
Chase had liked Walcroft. The man had taught Chase a little about computerized engines and how to circumvent the LoJack and other GPS tracking systems. Unlike all of Jonah’s other cronies who’d bothered to teach Chase anything, Walcroft was young, only about twenty-five, and knew about the modern systems. The other pros and wheelmen were Jonah’s age. They’d been at it for decades and only wanted to steal cars that came off the line pre-1970 because they were simpler to boost and reminded them of their youth.
A surge of nausea hit Chase like a fist. He wanted a bite of something but all the liquor bottles were gone. He spread his hands across the table and held himself in place until his stomach stopped rolling.
“Wipe that table down again,” Jonah said. There was no heat in his steel-gray eyes, no ice.
A confidence man knew how to read human nature. He could see down through the gulf of complex emotion and know what people were feeling, which way they were likely to jump. Chase had gotten pretty good at it over the last few years on the grift.
At least he’d thought so. Now he looked at Jonah and tried to read him. He couldn’t. There were no signs. Nothing but the hardness of stone.
Jonah stood five-nine, about two-twenty of rigid muscle, powerfully built. Fifty-five years old, compact, everything coiled, always giving off intense vibes. Mostly white hair buzzed down into a crew cut, just a flicker of silver on top. Huge forearms with some faded prison tats almost entirely covered by matted black hair.
There was a quiet but overpowering sense of danger to him, like he’d always speak softly and be perfectly calm even while he was kicking your teeth out. You knew if you ever took a run at him you’d have to kill him before he’d quit the fight. If he lost and you left him alive, he’d catch up with you at the end of an empty desert highway, barefoot on melting asphalt if he had to. You’d never stop looking over your shoulder. He’d mastered the ability of letting you know all this in the first three seconds after you met him. Nobody ever fucked with Jonah.
Now that lethal cool was filling the room. Chase had always thought it was directed at the other thugs and never at him, but here it was, turned all the way up, Jonah just watching.
So now Chase knew.
One wrong move and he’d be quivering in the closet. He met his grandfather’s eyes and held firm, as rigid as he could be.
“I liked him,” Chase said. “Tell me it wasn’t because of the fish. You didn’t snuff him because he was dancing around with the goddamn fish.”
“He was wired,” Jonah said.
“What? For who?”
“Who knows?”
Chase shook his head but didn’t shift his gaze.
“No. No way.”
“It’s true.”
“I didn’t see a wire.”
“Even so.”
There was nowhere else to go with it now.
Chase stood and started to make his way to the closet. Jonah blocked him and said, “We need to leave.”
“We were going to stay here for three days.”
“We’ve got another job waiting to be cased. We have to be in Baltimore by midnight.”
“I want to see it.”
“We don’t have time for this. We need to go. Now.”
Unable to do anything but repeat himself, like a brat demanding presents. “I want to see it.”
“Rook took the tape and microphone.”
“I didn’t see him do that either.”
“You were too busy trying not to throw up.”
Said in the same flat tone as everything else Jonah ever said, but somehow there was still a hint of insult in it.
“Walcroft’s chest will be shaved.”
“It wasn’t on his chest. It was down his pants.”
“Then his goddamn pubes will be shaved.”
Jonah crowded him now, refusing to get out of the way.
Had this been coming for a while? Chase wouldn’t have thought so twenty minutes ago but abruptly he felt a fury asserting itself within him. As if this was the natural course for him and his grandfather to follow, the only one, and always had been. The two of them standing here together face-to-face with a dead man in the closet.
The air thickened with potential violence. Chase glanced down at Jonah’s hand to see if he was still palming the.22. Jonah had his hand cupped to the side of his leg. Jesus Christ, he was. It had really come down to this.
Time to let it go, but Chase couldn’t seem to do so. It was stupid, he could sense Jonah’s thin patience about to snap, but maybe that’s what he wanted. He wondered if his need to push the point had anything to do with his parents, with the way his father had ended up.
“Why would Walcroft suddenly start wearing a wire?” Chase asked.
“You say that like it’s an actual question.”
Maybe it wasn’t. Everybody eventually flipped. Chase moved another step forward so that their chests nearly touched. He realized there was no way he could beat Jonah, but at least the man would have to work a little harder for it than a quick tap to the temple. All these years, all the talk about blood and family, of fatherhood and childhood, the discussions about unfulfilled vengeance, going after his mother’s killer, and they’d come down to this. Two kids in a sandbox.
“Why did you really ace him?”
“We need to leave.”
“You didn’t even blink,” Chase said. “You’ve done it before.”
“You asking for any special reason?”
“I’m not asking. I can see it now. You’ve done it before.”
“Only when I had to.”
“You didn’t even let me in on it.”
“Would you have wanted to be?”
Probably not but what was he going to say?
“What if I’d hesitated? Those two would have killed me too.”
“There was no chance of you hesitating. I taught you better than that. You’re a pro.”
It was a comment meant to appeal to Chase’s vanity. There was no substance or emotion behind it. Jonah didn’t quite understand how regular people felt about things, and when he tried to play to any kind of sentiment he always wound up way off base.
“I’m through,” Chase said.
“You’re not through.”
“I’m going my own way.”
“Turning your back on blood?”
“No,” Chase told him. “You ever need me for something other than a score, let me know. I’ll be there.”
That almost made Jonah smile, except he didn’t know how to do that either. “Going to start doing scores on your own? More second-story kitten burglaries, shinnying up the drainpipe? Knock over liquor stores and gas stations? Home invasions? You’ll get picked up on your first run.”
“A minute ago I was a pro.”
Jonah stared at him, eyes empty of everything. You looked into them for too long and it would drive you straight out of your skull. “You’re a string man now. You’re part of a chain. You’re a driver. You going to start working for other crews?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll retire.”
“And deliver newspapers?”
Jonah reached out and gripped Chase’s arm, digging his fingers in deep. It hurt like hell. In the past two years Chase had grown to six feet and gained thirty pounds of muscle, but he knew he wasn’t as icy as his grandfather. He didn’t think he ever would be. He wondered for perhaps the ten thousandth time how his fatally weak father could have come from this man. Chase fought to remain expressionless.
His mind squirmed and buzzed with all his failed tasks and unaccomplished dreams. He hadn’t yet killed the man who’d murdered his mother. He’d never made a major score.
“I don’t have any answers,” Chase admitted. “I just know we’re through after this.” He tried to shrug free but couldn’t break his grandfather’s hold. “Walcroft wasn’t even dead yet.”
“Close enough.”
When you’ve got nowhere to go you go back to the beginning. “I didn’t see a wire. I don’t believe it.”
“You’ve got an overabundance of faith.”
“Not anymore. Let me go.”
“Okay, then try it on your own,” Jonah said, releasing him. “But wipe the table again before you do. You know how to get in touch with me if you need to.”
They each packed their belongings and took their shares and split up as they moved down the hall. Jonah hit the button for the elevator and Chase hit the stairway. Fourteen floors, he wasn’t going to beat Jonah to the ground, but he didn’t want to be in a confined space with the man. When he came out he searched the lobby and didn’t see any of the crew. He rushed out the door and down the block, still trying to take it all in. Got to the garage where the Nova was parked but couldn’t force himself inside it. He had to know.
Chase ran around the block back toward the hotel. They’d forgotten or didn’t care that he had one of the room’s two plastic card keys. He intended to check Walcroft’s body to see if he’d really been wired.
A confidence man knew how to read human nature. He could see down through the gulf of complex emotion and know what people were feeling, even if he didn’t have those feelings himself.
Jonah had known he’d try it. His grandfather stood on the opposite side of the block, perched just inside a storefront. He was wearing a jacket, his arms crossed against his chest. That meant the.22 was back in its ankle holster and his.38 was on his belt, and his knife was at the small of his back.
Look at this shit, the things you’ve got to worry about now. Like wondering if Jonah or one of the others might tip the cops about the Nova. Was it possible? The fish-market goombahs wouldn’t have called the police so the car should still be clean enough to get out of New York. Unless Jonah had given Chase up directly to the mob, told the fish-market guys, Hey, you want some of your cash back, this kid right here has it.
His grandfather might ace him but would he turn rat? Chase couldn’t see it but he couldn’t see Jonah snuffing Walcroft until he’d done it.
No, the Chevy Nova he’d rebuilt from the tires up was out now.
Chase moved past the garage and caught a bus at the corner heading crosstown. He didn’t feel any fear or hope or excitement. He’d shifted gears again and now his life was on a different road.
Five months later Chase was stealing cars for a Jersey chop shop run by a small-time Mafia bagman called the Deuce.
Deuce had a scam going where he’d strip sports cars and dump the frames back onto the street, wait for the insurance companies to auction them off, buy them up for just a couple of bucks, then reassemble the cars with the original parts and sell them legally to the crime families. He was known as Uncle Deucie to all the Mafia princesses driving around in the Ferraris and Porsches he’d sold them for a flash of leg. All day long the Deuce would be on the phone promising the little darlings anything they might want for Christmas or their birthdays or when they graduated high school. He liked the attention but never let it go any further than that for fear some mob torpedo would punch his ticket for crossing a line.
Tuned in to an oldies station-the vibrant and charged black female harmonies working through his guts like the thrum of the engine-Chase slid into the garage driving a Mercedes SUV, sort of grooving in his seat.
He’d boosted the truck from a high-end dance club on the shore known for its coke trade, where the valet parkers and the bouncers always left the front door uncovered around closing because they were off getting blowjobs in the little security booth. The locked glove box held an envelope with twenty-four hundred bucks cash, a fifth of Cuervo, and a few tabs of acid. Owner was probably a rich dude turned small-time hustler, who brought drunk Jersey City high-hair chicks out to the truck and banged them in the backseat.
Chase had pocketed the money and tequila and tossed the LSD out the window. It was now 3:00 A.M., the slowest time for the shop. He parked in a stall and shut his eyes, swaying and tapping the shift knob while the song finished.
It was rare but, on occasion, usually in the dark of predawn with a suggestion of rain in the air, he could manage to drift from himself just far enough to start thinking about what his next step should be.
Tugging the wires in the cracked steering column apart, he listened to the echoes of the engine stalling across the bay. The place was empty except for a couple of Puerto Rican guys arguing in Spanish and trying to wrestle loose the transmission from a Jaguar. They’d never worked on one before and were perplexed by the layout. Chase didn’t know much about Jags either. He’d just decided to help out and learn whatever he could when the Deuce stepped over, opened his pocketknife, and started cleaning his fingernails.
Deuce said, “Heard about your gramps.”
Now what. Now what the fuck what.
Already sensing he was going to have to cut and run tonight, Chase prepared to make a move. He hoped to Christ this had nothing to do with the mob finding out about the fish-market boost. You never knew when something was going to roll back onto you. He had almost twenty-two grand stashed in a bank deposit box he’d rented with some fake ID and wondered if he’d be able to hold out until morning and go back for it.
“Heard what?” Chase asked.
“Him and Rook and Buzzard Allen were holed up in a museum down in Philly last night. They were going after some Renaissance paintings and rare coins, who the hell knows what fence they got. Only one I know who can move that kind of product is Joe Timpo, and he’s doing ten in Attica. Maybe nine. Nine or ten. Renaissance paintings, the hell is that? Who’s gonna hang any of that in their living rooms, even the private collectors they got today? Rare coins, sixteenth-century, Spanish I think. Spanish or Italian. Or Portuguese.”
“Back to Jonah,” Chase said, checking the door, the guys working the Jag. If this was a setup, it was a slow one.
Deuce put the knife away, pulled a half-smoked cigar out of his shirt pocket, and began chewing the end of it, a sure sign his tumblers were turning, trying to slip into place. “One of them blew away a cop and then started in on the hostages. Killed a security guard so they’d get a chopper. A fuckin’ chopper. Where’d they think they were going? How do you escape in a helicopter, the thing zipping around in the air, buzzing Ben Franklin’s grave, spooking everybody looking at the Liberty Bell? There’s room for what, two or three people in that. Where they gonna fit the paintings? You use a chopper to get out of Hanoi, not fuckin’ Philly.”
“Must’ve been Buzzard.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Me neither,” Chase said, “but the other two aren’t stupid.”
“Well, they left Buzzard there with his brains leaking out his eye sockets, so I guess they didn’t want him around their necks.” Deucie grinned a little and paused, thinking he was clever with that line, a sterling wit making the stretch between buzzards and albatrosses. When he saw he wasn’t going to get any acknowledgment, his smile collapsed and he went on. “Popped him and managed to punch a hole before too many police barricades and roadblocks were laid out and made a run in a getaway car. That’s all I know.”
“Philly’s a tight city,” Chase said. It was like trying to pull a heist in midtown Manhattan. Crammed streets, a red light at every corner, only a couple of ways in and out. Rare coins and Renaissance paintings? The hell was going on? “Cops have their names and faces?”
“No.”
“So how do you know it was Jonah and Rook with this Buzzard guy?”
“That’s what everybody’s saying anyway, so somebody spilled. Maybe Buzzard’s pals are a little steamed about what happened to him. You know me, I spend my day on the phone, the line’s always humming.” Deuce dug around in his pockets trying to come up with his Zippo, even though he’d never light the cigar tip in the garage. “A lot of these solo players, even the solid pros, they got crazy superstitions. They don’t like working a heist with someone named Jonah.”
“I know.”
“And besides”-Deucie found the Zippo, flipped the lid, sparked it, and then put it back again leaving the cigar unlit-“a lot of people were friends with Walcroft. He was popular, dependable, fun in the downtime. They didn’t like how he ended up.”
Chase shouldn’t say anything. Walcroft’s sound swept through him, the man’s blazing red eyes searching him out, even now. He fought for some kind of reply, but whatever he came out with would be totally wrong, there was no chance of otherwise. How aggravating to feel a flush of humiliation and anger rising up his neck and realize he could only react defensively, despite all that had gone down. “Jonah said he was wired.”
Deuce shrugged and nodded, his chin bobbing all over the place. “Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. It does happen. It certainly does.” Saying it like it never happened.
“¡Maricon!” one of the Puerto Ricans shouted, and Chase spun, ready to fight or run. But the guy was just shouting because he couldn’t get the headers of the Jag out and had skinned his knuckles with a socket extension.
“What time did this score go down?” Chase asked.
Deuce realized he’d chewed the cigar butt into tobacco chaw and spit it in the corner. “Eight last night, as the museum was closing.”
There it was, the end of this road. Chase walked away while Deuce called after him, “Hey, where you going? Come on back, I need to pay you for the Mercedes.”
Uh-huh. Chase got into his own car-a ’68 GTO, primed and touched up but not yet fully repainted-and pulled out, knowing his time here was done. Even in the bent life stigma followed. Betraying one of your own crew, butchering hostages, wasting cops-it all brought down serious heat. Jonah and Rook were going to say Buzzard did it and every other pro would have to accept it even if they didn’t believe it. That or go up against them. The whole mess might never be sorted out. No one would want to help Jonah for a while, and anybody hoping to cash in on a quick reward or plea bargain would blow the whistle. The cops would be beating the brush and back alleys trying to shake any bit of info out. A lot of deals were about to be cut.
Seven hours had gone by since Jonah’s name had started getting kicked around again. Chase would have to leave the cache in the bank deposit box. He couldn’t wait the extra day, too many people knew where he was. If there was a bounty put out on Jonah by Buzzard’s friends, Deucie might turn Chase in himself, hoping he could lead them to his grandfather. You never knew. Chase didn’t blame the Deuce, it was business.
He rushed back to his rented room with the driver’s window down, letting the Jersey breeze wash over him, breathing it in deeply. It had a different kind of odor from anyplace else he’d ever been-full of pollution and pine, money and sex and corruption and action. It’d be the last time he smelled it for a while.
At the apartment he packed up, rolled the twenty-four hundred in with the three g’s stashed in the spare tire, and drove west for five hours until he’d crossed into Ohio. On the way he drank nearly all the Cuervo. His stomach burned and so did the back of his skull.
He got a room at a cheap motel, but, exhausted as he was, he couldn’t sleep. In ten days he’d turn sixteen. He put a couple of quarters in the bed and got the magic fingers going. It felt more like there was a bunch of chubby kids hiding under the bed poking him in the back.
The story continued to break fresh and wide on cable news. He watched the amateur footage of the standoff outside the museum in Philadelphia. It lasted only a few minutes before the robbers burst out of the place and made their run. The sound of gunshots and bullhorns scared the amateur into dropping his camcorder.
When Chase heard the hot Asian correspondent say that the driver had broken through the roadblock and nearly clipped a teenage tourist visiting with her history class for the weekend, Chase knew that Jonah’d had trouble putting together a new string. This time there’d been no driver and his grandfather had been forced to double as the wheelman himself.
They interviewed the girl while her friends mugged and hooted for the camera.
But she was dead-eyed and mechanical in her answers, pretty but stiff with ashen blurs already appearing under her eyes. She understood now just how close she’d come to wiping out of the game and being left shattered in the street without any reason, thought, or mercy.
Despite the goofiness with the chopper and all the rest of it, Jonah was back pulling notable scores within a year. Chase had been worried for the first few months after the botched museum heist so he kept in touch with Murphy, an old-time safecracker who’d done a nine count in the pen, took a bullet in the hip during his last job, and decided to retire. Now Murphy ran a used car lot in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his two adult sons, and passed messages for the pros. He sold cars with clean papers to crews operating in the Midwest, and he always kept an ear out for any buzz or action.
Chase checked in a few times to find out what the word was on Jonah. It had taken a while for the stigma to fall away but eventually everybody just blamed Buzzard Allen for the troubles during the museum heist. Buzzard’s friends apparently didn’t like him enough to argue the point too emphatically.
Murphy asked, “You want me to give your grandfather a message?”
“No,” Chase said and got on with his life.
For three years he worked his way mostly south under different names, stealing cars or driving getaway on various easy jobs. He stayed out of the circuit he had known and wound up in Tennessee running moonshine for a couple of months, listening to the locals talk about the federal government like they thought Lincoln was still in charge. Every time someone mentioned revenuers he’d burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t realized they really said shit like that.
They started acting like he might be under-cover for the Treasury Department and he finally took off.
He met Lila while he was driving for a four-man string knocking over jewelry stores in northern Mississippi. They were a flashy bunch who liked to blow up gas stations for diversions. Nobody had died yet but that was bound to change. When Chase came on board for the job he talked them down from TNT to simply planting homemade smoke bombs in the kitchen of the one fairly up-scale hotel in town. Same effect-a lot of confusion-but no one would get hurt.
They liked to argue among themselves and draw little diagrams and math equations with graphs and vectors before they decided on any move at all. It made them feel smart. You’d think with all the notations and planning one of them might’ve brought a flashlight, but the first thing they did when they got inside Bookatee’s Antiques & Rustic Curio Emporium (Gold, Silver & Jewelry) was pull up the shade to get some street light in the place.
Chase knew this crew wasn’t going to last long, but he’d recently lost a bank account of stashed funds when the guy he’d bought his fake identification from went down in a federal sting. The name was useless now and the money had gone with it. He needed to rebuild a quick cache. Otherwise he’d never have worked with these nitwits in the first place.
The crew assured him that Bookatee had money and knew jewelry. This was where you came for the good merchandise. So at midnight Chase waited down the block in a ’69 Mustang with the lights off while the others boosted the goods. He’d rebuilt the Mustang’s engine from damn near scratch and it hummed perfectly in tune with the crickets and katydids, so that he could feel the darkness throbbing. Sirens erupted in the distance. The fire engine was actually clanging on its way to the scene. He looked over his shoulder through the back window and watched a bloom of smoke rise against the silver-tinged clouds.
It was only because he was glancing in that direction that he spotted the police cruiser easing around the corner behind him. Mostly hidden in the shadows of a large maple, he slid lower in his seat. It was a warm night and hopefully the cop wouldn’t spot the muffler vapor. The driver slowed in the middle of the road, then veered to the curb ahead of him. Chase cursed beneath his breath. A female deputy sheriff climbed out and craned her neck. She’d noticed Bookatee’s window shade.
He sat up and drummed his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. She was pretty as hell and her body language somehow got to him-how she moved with poise and a solid, confident power. She stood at the outer rim of the streetlamp’s circle of illumination. Why wasn’t she calling it in yet, asking for backup? Probably because she didn’t want to pull anybody off the fire detail where they might be needed.
Chase noted her full lips, dark eyes, and the short, feathered black hair that framed her valentine-shaped face. It was a haircut he disliked on most women, but somehow it worked on her. He drummed his fingers harder. She had some muscle and meat to her and she jiggled in all the right places beneath her uniform. He couldn’t stop staring.
When she stood on tiptoe trying to get a look inside the front window, going for her billy club and not her sidearm, he knew he had to move. She was assertive but too optimistic.
He slid out of the ’Stang without closing the driver’s door, moved silently in a wide arc so he’d come up directly behind her. She was still on tippytoe and he liked the way the shadows edged her curves, the streetlamp casting a soft pale light and the moon throwing off a much more vivid liquid silver, accenting every detail. Then someone inside the shop knocked over a vase or some shit and the noise made her stick the billy club back in her belt and start to draw her.38. Goddamn idiots.
He sped up. She was sharp and fast enough to sense him while he was still sneaking up on her. He was maybe five feet away when she turned and swung the barrel toward him. He dove at her, his hand flashing out, and after a brief struggle in which she tried to knee him, he managed to wrestle the gun free from her. She elbowed him in the gut and came in again with a right cross to his chin. It rattled his teeth and he saw stars, but once he held her own pistol on her she settled back. They faced each other.
She controlled her fear. Chase watched as she tightened herself around it, tamping the panic down, and he felt a surge of respect for her. It wasn’t easy to keep calm looking into a gun.
“You’ve got mean eyes,” she said.
She should only run into Jonah. “If you think so, then you’ve never really seen anybody with mean eyes.”
“I think I have.”
“In this town? Get real.”
It made him itchy, the way she looked at him, and he hated holding on to the gun. He tossed it from one hand to the other, like it was red-hot.
“My, but you’re a fast one,” she said.
“You’ve got some speed yourself, lady.” It was about the finest compliment a driver could pay.
“You set that hotel fire?”
“It’s just a smoker, I didn’t want anyone hurt.”
“People can still be hurt stampeding outta the building. You ever think’a that?”
He’d always hated the Southern accent until he heard it on her. There was flint in her voice, a lot of heat.
“Well, I am a bad guy,” he said, reasonably. “Just not too bad.”
“Stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Tossing that hardware. You’re likely to shoot me without even meaning to.”
Chase almost apologized. He relaxed his hold on the.38 and pointed it down at the sidewalk.
“There’s somethin’ truly goddamned infuriating about having your own gun aimed at you,” she told him.
“I imagine there would be. But it’s not really aimed at you.”
“Too close to shave the difference.” She lifted her chin and stuck her chest out. It was a pretty chin and a damn fine chest. “You gonna pull the trigger?”
“I thought we might avoid all that.”
It made her firm up her bottom lip into a sexy but very serious pout. “You could’ve avoided it by refraining from scoring jewelry shops at near 1:00 A.M. in my hometown.” She held her hand out. “You return that to me now and things will swing a lot easier for you, especially when I drag your ass before Judge Kelton in the morning.”
“Let me ask you,” Chase said, “what kind of antiques and rustic curios is Bookatee likely to have in this rustic curio emporium?”
She thought about it for a second, moonlight glazing her features. “I believe my cousin Ferdie once bought a stuffed gray squirrel dressed up like Robert E. Lee, with saber pointed skyward, astride his horse Traveler, from this here shop.”
“Holy Christ, why?”
“I never asked.”
A small tug in his chest grew stronger. He stared at her, really trying to reach deep and see what might be inside, what gave her such confidence and strength. But the mercury sheen cast against the side of her face faded as clouds passed by the moon, throwing a veil across her eyes.
“You’re by far the cutest cop to ever draw down on me,” he said.
“And you’re just another damn outlaw, though younger than most I’ve seen.”
Chase grinned. “And how many have you seen?”
“Including you and Cousin Ferdie, too damn many. But I reckon there might be time for you yet, to do the right thing. So why don’t you try real hard to follow the smarter course?”
“You’re not much older than me. How’d you become a deputy sheriff so young?”
“The sheriff is my daddy,” she told him, “but don’t let that fact fool you. I earned my way.”
He nodded, sure that she had. “What’s your name?”
That got the pout out again. “Why? You plan on sending me a postcard from Angola?”
He needn’t have asked. What with the Southern hospitality and all that shit, she wore a name tag beneath her cop badge. Shadow-obscured but still readable.
Lila Bodeen.
The klutzes inside the store knocked over something else with a loud ka-klunk. She said, “Not too nimble, your friends.”
“Not my friends either.”
“Well then, what’s a good ole boy like you want to boost a shop dedicated to improving the quality of life with curios anyway?”
“Trust me, I’ve been asking myself that repeatedly.”
“You’d think a smart fella could have answered by now.”
She wasn’t going to give an inch, which made him like her even more. “Why aren’t you at the hotel making sure all your traveling soap salesmen are getting out safely?”
“Somebody’s got to keep an eye on the town. Just in case some less than savorish types might be using smoke to cover illegal actions of one sort or another.”
A laugh rose from him as he turned her name around and around in his head. He smiled and tried to stamp a sweet expression onto his face.
She said, “I’m made of flesh and blood, not tinder. Those eyes aren’t going to burn me down.”
So much for the charm and wit being able to work wonders. He could feel himself moving toward her. She saw him about to take a step. She misread his intentions and almost made a break for it. He held his hands out palms up to show he didn’t mean anything, that he was harmless really, but considering he still had his index finger in the trigger guard of her.38, he figured he wasn’t exactly getting the point across.
The crew came rushing out carrying a couple of gunny sacks each. Hopefully the loot would be of greater value than stuffed gray squirrels posed in those The-South-Will-Rise-Again stances.
The three-man string stopped short and stared at Deputy Sheriff Lila Bodeen. They didn’t ask any questions or run for the car or wait for Chase to say anything. They started talking among themselves and quickly decided they wanted to kill her.
They threw down the sacks while they chattered and Chase took a peek inside. He saw a lot of crap and nothing that might be worth the fifteen grand he’d expected from his share.
The string stood around arguing, discussing Lila’s murder like she wasn’t there. Saying they should give her a double tap to the back of the head and dispose of her body in the hills near one of the old abandoned stills. The corpse might never be found. Another wanted to tie rocks to her feet and toss her in the river. They considered which rocks might work best and which method they should use to attach them to her feet. Ropes or chains, netting or mesh. They still had some TNT stashed, maybe they should blow her up. One of them wanted to rape her first. Then all of them did. Lila kept her face tight, doing her best to force out any fear.
Chase sighed and shot all three of the nitwits in the leg.
It made her jump, which was nice to see. She glanced at him and he was tinder, burning. He stuck the pistol in his belt and disarmed the others while they rolled around in the street yelping and gripping their wounds. Blood pulsed through their fingers. He told them to stop thrashing so much, it would just make them bleed faster. No one listened.
They didn’t know his real name and even if they ever did run into anybody in prison that might recognize his description or skills, taking out these mooks would probably work in his favor.
He turned to Lila and said, “Okay, there you go. You just bagged a few more unsavorish types, cracked another gang of regional jewel thieves.”
“Not all of them,” she said. “There’s still you.”
“Start with these three. Your Judge Kelton will give you a medal. Town this size, they might even throw you a parade.”
“My daddy wouldn’t let them. He believes in humility almost as much as he does justice. I want my pistol back.”
“I hate guns. I’ll leave it and the others on the curb when I pull out.”
“You’re not taking the boodle?”
Christ, maybe he really was in love. Boodle. Your heart had to skip at that. “I wouldn’t be able to unload this shit anyway, they’re the ones with the fence.”
She cocked her head, studying him. He appreciated the way she looked at him, unsure but curious. She moistened her lips and the moon glistened in them. “You’re the damn strangest outlaw I’ve ever run into.”
He shrugged and backed away down the block. “Maybe we’ll run into each other again.”
“Stay in my town and you can count on it.”
Well, all right then. “I might just do that.”
He dropped the guns in the gutter, got in the ’Stang, and started to pull away from the curb. Before he could put the pedal down she was running for her cruiser, leaving the three geniuses still rolling in the road and clutching their legs. He thought it might be fun to get into a high-speed pursuit around here. He figured he could out-drive her easily, but she’d know these roads better. It would even it up, make things a little more interesting.
But no, that wasn’t it, she was going for the shotgun in the trunk of the car. Jesus Christ. He watched her pull it free and cock it once as he went speeding by. It made him grin and he thought she was smiling too, a second before she blew out his back window.
That was the beginning.
Stealing different cars and following her around as best he could without being spotted, he watched her for two weeks. She was keen as hell and seemed to know he was out there keeping an eye on her. Always checking her rearview and making crazy U-turns, suspecting a tail and hoping to shake him out of the shadows.
There wasn’t much to his mustache but he let it grow and eventually dyed it. It made him look like Fu Manchu planning to take down all of Western culture. He wore a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses he picked up at Bookatee’s Emporium.
The minute he stepped into the shithole store filled with Southern kitsch items-these people had a thing about stuffed animals, a shellacked bullfrog, the hell was up with this part of the country?-he was filled with a new sense of pride for having shot the crew for choosing this place to knock over.
There were maybe fifty Jeb Stuart statues and Dixie flags hanging from the rafters. Guns, Bowie knives, plenty of Civil War pistols and cutlasses in the cases. The antique jewelry was right back on display. Some of it looked fairly impressive. He paid three bucks for the sunglasses, put them on, and thought for maybe the hundredth time, What am I doing?
Tuesday was her day off. She went out to a matinee with a chunky friend of hers, poofy frizzy hair out to here, bad skin, the two of them heading down to the Piper Cub Movie Theater. It doubled as a place where country bands played on weekends, folks hopping out of their seats, yee-hawing and dancing in the aisles.
No chick flicks for Lila, she liked the bang-’em-ups. This one was about terrorists who take a cutiepie ten-year-old girl hostage and she turns out to be some secret government assassin trained since birth. Pretty soon she’s flying a jet at Mach 2.0 and handling a high-powered rifle with laser sighting, icing evil dictators. Chase had seen the trailer on his rented room’s television and thought it looked like it might be a decent way to kill a couple of hours.
He was staying at a boardinghouse two counties west, almost forty miles away, stealing cars over there just in case Lila’s father was still scouting around for his Mustang. The lady who ran the house was crocked on lightning half the time and never quit listening to Conway Twitty. There was a framed picture of the guy hanging on the wall over Chase’s bed where you usually found Jesus or Elvis. Chase felt a little uncomfortable with Conway looking down over him like that, especially considering the weirdo hair on that fucker.
A pretty big crowd at the theater for a Tuesday morning, lots of toughs with torn-off sleeves who carried snap knives on their belts. A group of teenage girls clamoring for attention, blouses tied at the midriff, showing off their belly-button rings. He wondered if they went in for Conway too.
Everybody knew Lila and they cooled their action when she walked by. Her friend was loud and talked a lot on her cell phone while they paid for their tickets.
Playing with the mustache, the damn thing driving him crazy, Chase hung in close enough to hear the friend’s name-Molly Mae-and tried to think of a way to get her out of there. She was an attention hound, practically shouting into her phone at somebody named Hoyt, telling him to fix the busted axle on Lottie Belle’s-seriously, you can’t mean it, Lottie Belle?-truck or she wasn’t going to make briarberry pie this Saturday. Chase tried to figure out how to use this information to his advantage but came up empty.
He needn’t have bothered. Turned out she was going to help him. At the candy counter she picked up a Mega-Box of popcorn, three candy bars, and a Jumbo Coke, the thing going forty ounces. She’d have to break for the bathroom by the end of the second reel.
The little-girl assassin was poking out the eyes of a big bearded guy in a turban when Molly Mae made a beeline up the aisle and disappeared through the door into the lobby.
Chase’s pulse twisted in his neck, and with death on the screen and maybe a jail term coming up due to this next move, his mind wandered back to a scene of happiness when he was a kid. His mother and father dancing in the living room on New Year’s, their laughter forever alive inside him. Their deaths forever seared into him. A thief never followed his heart, he always planned every move out and had at least three escape routes in place. You scored or you ran. Chase fought the instincts ingrained in him by his grandfather. He understood with a sudden clarity that he was terrified of his own mounting loneliness, for fear he would become even more like Jonah.
Chase slid next to Lila, easing into Molly Mae’s seat, and put his feet up on the chair in front of him. She’d left some of her candy behind and in the darkness he plucked a few pieces out of the box.
The little killer chick was crying about her lack of a normal childhood and the government black ops and scientists who’d created her were making speeches about fighting for the American Way. A few moments later she was chopping the main villain in the throat as a nuclear bomb ticked down. Chase kept trying to think of something slick to say and thought maybe he had it now. He opened his mouth.
Without turning to look at him, Deputy Sheriff Lila Bodeen pressed a snub.32 into his ribs and said, “Now that there is one hell of a disguise, stranger.”
Okay, now he needed something else to say instead. Nothing was coming, the bomb beeping at ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven-
“But what do you think of the mustache?” he asked.
“Is it real or is that a rat’s ass glued to your lip?”
Christ, that was a much better line than anything he could come up with. She was going to trounce him at this. “Only one way to discover the truth. You’ll have to gather the empirical datum on your own.”
She frowned, the bright light from the screen igniting the furrows in her brow. “You one of them college-educated outlaws?”
Someone shushed them and they leaned their heads closer together.
“No,” he whispered. “The fat scientist guy just told the little vicious chick that.”
Lila nodded and dug the.32 in deeper, and Chase ground his back teeth together. She said, “Do I take it you’ve been struck with a case of conscience and are planning on turning yourself in?”
“I just wanted to watch the movie.”
“I admit I was liking it myself. Now the call of justice will interrupt me on my day off.”
“I regret that,” Chase said. He let out a chuckle, feeling cool but not cold. A nervous tremor worked through him for a lot of reasons besides the fact that an extra foot-pound of pressure from her index finger would blast his spleen over the teenage couple sitting behind him.
“Be a shame if you had to waste your $3.25 matinee money,” he said. “How about if you turn me in afterward?”
“You think I won’t?” Lila asked.
“Let’s find out.”
It was then that Molly Mae returned from the ladies’ room and said, “Who’s this roughneck that’s been eatin’ my peanut clusters!”
After gathering up her remaining candy, Molly Mae picked up on the undercurrents, maybe spotted the gleam of the gun in Chase’s ribs, and with a huff that blew more poof into her poofy hair, she moved an aisle down.
The assassin girl defused the bomb, discovered the whereabouts of her real parents, tried to act like a normal girl but eventually garotted a terrorist in front of her mother’s coffee klatch, and finally decided to go live with the scientists again. Chase and Lila finished watching the film and sat in their seats, nodding as her friends and neighbors walked by, his bruised ribs really starting to kill him, until the theater completely emptied.
She said, “Guess it’s time to escort you over to the jail.”
“Nice day out. Maybe we can walk it.”
“You’re taking this lightly.”
“No, I’m not. It’ll give me a chance to breathe in my last bit of fresh air for a while.”
“I suppose we can do that. Especially since Molly Mae drove and you done run her off with your peanut cluster heist.”
Lila tried hard to keep from smiling but couldn’t entirely manage it. She grinned, her chin dimpling, her eyes on him but not looking into his. A rush of warmth brimmed inside him and he thought, Maybe this is how you beat the cold spot, this is how you stay out of that place.
He said, “It was about as worthy a score as knocking over Bookatee’s Emporium was.”
“Don’t you tell her that though.”
So they walked through town toward the police station, and he found himself rambling about how the last three years had gone, saying nothing of Jonah, nothing of his mother’s murder or his old man’s suicide. People waved to Lila and she waved back with her free hand, the snub jutting into his side every once in a while, mostly hidden by her purse. Chase smiled and waved too.
“Judge Kelton didn’t show much mercy on your friends.”
“I told you, they weren’t my friends.”
“Your former crew?”
“Hardly. When thieves working together aren’t all that tight we call it a string. Those idiots weren’t even that.”
“You probably shouldn’t have gotten involved with them then, a stand-up professional villain like yourself.”
“I know it. I needed some quick money.”
“It’s only an assumption on my part,” Lila said, the “my” coming out mostly as “ma,” “but I’m guessing that’s what every thief says just about every time he’s doing any thieving.”
It wasn’t true, but he liked listening to her.
When they got to the police station she marched him up the front steps to the door. A couple of deputies moved in and out. Chase really hoped he hadn’t misread the whole situation, because if he had, he was going to have to cut and run now, and probably take a bullet in the spine.
He turned and faced her, pressing her back against the brick building. Now the snub was in his belly. He almost went in for a kiss, but veered off at the last second. She’d flattened her lips, still trying to read him and figure out what she was dealing with. It was good to know he wasn’t the only one who was confused.
“This is a helluva dangerous way to woo a girl,” Lila said.
“Yeah, but is it effective?”
“I’ve had worse dates,” she told him.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t want to hear about them and I don’t want to relive ’em.”
“No, I suppose not. Well, here we are at the halls of justice.”
“Yeah,” she said, showing just a flash of teeth.
“Time for your just reward.”
The gun in his guts didn’t hurt that much, but the smile-like a knife in the heart.
Afew days later, while they lay in bed in a rough-and-tumble spot called the Skeeter Motel-these people just didn’t think their names through down here-Lila asked him about his parents, how he’d wound up such a young outlaw. He was starting to like it when she called him that.
Chase had already told her a lot about Jonah, but this was different. He did what he’d trained himself to do, separating himself from his emotions and keeping memories of his childhood as blunt as possible, letting the words drop from him like stones.
He lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags. His voice took on the hollow ring he expected, and he smoked and listened to the person speaking as if it was somebody familiar whom he hadn’t heard from in a long time. The man spoke fast.
“Nine years ago my mother was murdered, shot through the head in our kitchen. She was eight months pregnant.”
“Sweet Jesus-did you…?”
“No, I didn’t see it. I was at school. So was my father. He was a college professor who taught world literature. After her funeral, we’d visit her grave every day. He was wrecked. It was a bad winter, but we’d go out there and stand in the snow, sometimes for hours. Even back then I knew it was at least a little crazy.”
“He was grief-struck,” Lila said.
“There are only so many prayers you can say. He was out of his head and stayed there. He’d recite poetry and scenes from Greek plays. He was soft.”
“He was doing the best he could.”
“Sometimes that’s enough and sometimes it’s not,” Chase said. “He’d get drunk on whiskey. So would I. It was all we had to keep us warm out there in the cemetery. He used to sink to his knees and hold on to me while he wept. Sometimes he’d pass out from exhaustion or just because he was bombed. I’d stand there with ice in my hair, loaded on scotch, and try to keep him from freezing to death.”
Not exactly the best postcoital topic of conversation, but he knew Lila was the one, and he was glad she’d asked. He had his arm around her and raised his hand to brush the hair from her face.
She reached for his cigarette and took a few puffs, handed it back to him. “And you’re angry with your father for that?”
“I guess I sound like it, don’t I?”
“Because he acted weak in front of you. Because you were so young, and he put all of that responsibility on your shoulders. So you hated him.”
“Not about that so much as what came next,” Chase admitted. “After the cops hit a brick wall with their investigation, my father asked a newscaster if he could go on television and appeal to the killer. The newscaster said he thought that instead of my dad doing the pleading, I should do it instead. Maybe I’d warm the murderer’s heart. Like he’d suddenly crack and give himself up.”
A tiny groan drifted from the back of Lila’s throat. “And I said that thing to you about your being struck with a case of conscience and turning yourself in.” She gently pressed her lips to his neck. “I’m sorry for that.”
“When you said it, it was funny.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“But what they wanted me to do, it was stupid, just a ratings ploy. But I was a kid and had no say. They put cameras and lights on me and instructed me on what to do. When my eyes didn’t look wet enough they made me repeat my performance. When they still weren’t wet enough, they used glycerin on my cheeks. There was a makeup woman and somebody kept coming over and brushing my hair. It was like a movie set. Me doing twelve takes begging the man who killed my mother to give it up. Looking left, then right, then straight on while they decided which was my best side.”
“I like ’em both.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. Now that the mustache is gone, anyways.”
“They put mascara on me to thicken my eyelashes.”
“It was callous and cruel,” Lila said, “that’s for sure, but still, it’s understandable. If they had no hard evidence or suspects after the first few days, the police would’ve been willing to try damn near anything. They wanted to get the killer.”
“That’s the logical, adult way of thinking about it. But my head is still wrapped up in what I saw and felt back then. That afternoon, my old man, he looked like he’d swallowed rat poison. Later, my father and I watched the news together. He sat around waiting, like the killer might phone him up and apologize. My dad was already mostly out of his head but now he went even further. I knew he was going to kill himself, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
“You were just a little boy.”
Chase shrugged, ground the cigarette out against the side of the nightstand.
Lila sat up, propped by the pillows and took his face in her hands. It felt like the most natural kind of touch in the world, and he knew he’d never felt it before. “You were already proving yourself tough and strong, bearing up under that kind of pain.”
“Maybe that’s why Jonah came back for me. Just because I made it through. Even my father buckled and went out the easy way.”
She stiffened and frowned. “I’m not sure that’s such a generous comment to make about your own daddy.”
“It’s not, but it’s hard to feel charitable to someone who quits the game and leaves you on your own at ten years old.”
“I’m guessing if he could’ve found another way, he would’ve. Not everyone is made of the sternest stuff.”
“No.”
“So what happened to him?”
There was the question. He saw his father again, holding a bottle of whiskey to his chest as if it might somehow save him. The snow mounting on the tombstones, the man as cold outside of her grave as she was in it.
“He had a sailboat. We used to go out on the Great South Bay during the summers. One morning, about a month after the murder, we were expecting another blizzard. I got ready to go to the cemetery as always, but instead he drove down to the marina. He started to dig his boat out of the ice with an ax. The bay itself wasn’t frozen, just the edges of the channel where the boats were docked. People drove by and called to him but he ignored everyone. He didn’t say a word to me. I said nothing either. When he got too tired, he looked at me like he might begin crying again, so I took over chopping the ice. Eventually the boat got loose. He left me on the dock. Climbed on board and took it out of the bay and toward the ocean channels. I lost sight of him fast. The storm hit maybe an hour later. I hitchhiked back to the house.”
Lila’s lips drew together, bloodless.
Chase said, “You’re not liking him so much anymore, are you.”
“I just wish he’d found another way. One where you weren’t dragged in so deep.”
“The wreckage washed up on Fire Island that night. His body was never found. Probably threw himself overboard as soon as he was far enough from shore that the tide wouldn’t take him back in. Has a romantic kind of quality to it, I think. Going out like Shelley and Hart Crane.”
“I don’t know who they are.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“He didn’t say anything at all to you before he sailed off?” she asked, her fingers tangled in his chest hair.
Chase thought, I shouldn’t be talking about this. I should’ve kept it under control. We ought to be laughing, rolling over each other, getting ready for another bout. I’m doing her a disservice.
“No,” Chase told her.
“Didn’t have the heart to kill himself right in front of you, so he just slipped away.” She looked into his eyes, figuring him out a little more now. “He thought he was doing a kindness to you, but that was the worst part, wasn’t it.”
“I don’t know.”
“You know it really wasn’t his fault. There’s no shame in having a nervous breakdown ’cause of such misery. He loved your mama so much, some people can’t go on brokenhearted like that.”
Saying nothing because there was nothing to say, Chase drew Lila to him and kissed her. The solidity of her body on his connected him not only to the world but somehow also to himself. What had been kept frozen in the cold spot for so long was beginning to warm and loosen. He had always thought of his father as fragile, perhaps even cowardly, but now he saw the man in a different way. A new perspective, thanks to Lila.
“So how’d you wind up with Jonah?” she asked.
“My old man wasn’t considered legally dead yet so the house and bank accounts were all tied up in court. I had no relatives I knew of and was sent to live with a foster family. A rich, sweet, older couple, the kind of folks whose favorite game is reading random quotes from the Bible and seeing who can guess the chapter and verse. They had a couple kids of their own and had taken in another six or seven to care for. All different colors and nationalities. Half with prosthetics of some kind. One girl with her face badly disfigured with burns. All of us in a huge home on the North Shore of Long Island.”
“And you were eyeing the silverware.”
Even now, she got him grinning. “I wasn’t with the family long. After only about a month Jonah showed up at the front door one day and said, ‘I’m your father’s father. You never heard of me, have you?’ I hadn’t and told him so. He said, ‘We’re blood, that’s important, and you’ve got a choice. You can stay with these people and live life on the map, or you can come along with me.’”
“Life on the map?”
“I didn’t even know what it meant, but he said it in such a way that I understood and believed him. He said, ‘It won’t be pretty, some of it, but it’s a part of who you are.’ So I went with him.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. My foster parents raised hell while I was packing, but they were scared of Jonah. He sat in a chair in the living room and stared at them until I was done. The girl with the burned face wanted to come too, if you can believe it.”
“She liked you, and the two best sides of your face.”
“No, she liked Jonah. His strength and his calm. So I just walked off the map and out of the system. I didn’t want school and a college education. My mother died in her quaint kitchen. My father was a professor. I wanted to be anyone but them.”
“An outlaw from the start.”
“I guess so.”
With a slight shrug against the sheets, Lila curled beside him, and the dried sweat on her flesh scritched against his own. “What would your daddy think of the way your life’s been going these last few years?”
Chase thought about it, looking up, scanning the ceiling as if searching for the man. He lit another cigarette and smoked it all down to the filter. Lila was still staring at him, expecting an answer. He tried to give her one.
“I don’t really care. He made his choice and I made mine.”
The next day, Lila invited him back to her place. A single-story house off in the woods, pretty much on its own, maybe two miles down the road from her parents’, three or four from the center of town where the police station was. He’d followed her here a couple times and cased the place. He showed her what was wrong with the locks on her windows and how easy it was to break in the back door.
“How romantic,” she told him, “sharing methods on home invasion prevention.”
He shrugged. “I stick to my strengths.”
She made roasted wild turkey and stuffing with sharp, tangy flavors he’d never tasted before. While they sat there eating, without the need always to fill the silence, he realized with some surprise that this was his very first date.
He’d lost his virginity at thirteen when Jonah had brought home two waitresses from a truck stop in Cedar Rapids, where they’d been working a short grift picking up a few easy bucks. Jonah had brought other women around before but no relationship had ever lasted more than a couple of weeks.
Carrying a mostly empty pint of Dewar’s, Jonah introduced both ladies as Lou, which got them giggling. He said their names again and they guffawed so hard they had to sit down. Chase didn’t get the joke, but what the hell.
The whiskey reek coming off them filled the room like smoke from a three-alarm fire. Chase couldn’t handle the smell anymore, not since the days when his father had taken bottles to the cemetery. His stomach tumbled and he began to breathe shallowly.
The cute Lou turned out to be Louise, who gave Chase the eye and licked her lips. She got up and lurched toward him, saying she wanted to dance. She hummed in his ear and pressed her huge breasts to him, where they wobbled proudly. She whispered how she liked younger men because they could ride in the saddle all night long. He’d never heard it called that before, but he was a bright kid and could pick up on the metaphor. It tightened his guts and scared the shit out of him, but the heat rising through his body seared away any doubts.
The much less cute Lou was Lulu, who was nearly unconscious but still making the effort to hang in there. She gave Chase an unfocused gaze where her eyes mostly crossed. Her chin fell to her chest as she struggled to stay awake. Her teeth were smeared with red lipstick.
Chase looked at Jonah and realized his grandfather, who never drank on a job, was stone sober.
It was only when cute Lou was about to dance off to the bedroom with Chase that Jonah put his arm around her in a blatant territorial gesture. No subtlety there, no mistaking the meaning. He held up a hand to Chase’s chest, not quite touching him, grasping the girl tightly under his wing.
So there it was. Chase got the chick who was nearly out cold for his first lay. Before he could do anything he made her brush her teeth and gargle. It still didn’t kill the whiskey smell, and for the eight minutes he was in the saddle he had to keep his face turned away from hers.
It was terrible, but at least he didn’t have to take the blame for the general lack of success all by himself. In the morning, it didn’t seem to matter. Lulu didn’t remember much. They went for a second bout on the couch that was much better than the first go-around.
At Lila’s dinner table, thinking of Lulu made him realize all the more what he’d been missing for so long.
After they’d finished eating she said, “Let’s have wine in the den.”
He looked around the place. “You don’t have a den.”
“Sure I do, there’s even a fireplace.”
“Most folks call that the bedroom,” he told her.
Holding up the bottle of wine, easing him along as she pressed forward, she said,” That right?”
Afterward, while he was catching his breath, she asked him again about his past.
It was getting a little spooky now, always talking about the worst things that had ever happened to him while her chest was powdered with salt and his neck burned with her teeth marks.
He slid aside and stared into the cold fireplace, wondering why anybody in Mississippi would ever need one in their house, much less in the bedroom. It was October and nearly eighty degrees outside.
“I always wondered what it would’ve been like,” he said, “if my old man had been able to hold on. If he could’ve ever bounced back from being so broken. But Jonah told me I would be better off without my father. Maybe he was right.”
Lila tensed and reared up, giving him the pout, and brought her small, hard fist down on his belly. It hurt and he gasped.
“Don’t you say that.”
“Ouch.”
“Don’t you ever say such a thing, you hear me now?”
“All right.”
“Fathers are important.”
She was so powerful in her presence, standing up for people she’d never meet, who were already nearly ten years dead. He’d never shared so much with anyone before.
As the sun went down, the shadows lanced the bedroom, growing thicker second by second, stabbing across the sheets. The window was open, a breeze stirring the lace curtains. Despite having shoved his childhood behind locked doors, he could still hear an occasional noise come through. Now he heard the sound of his old man chopping at the ice with an ax, needing to die so badly.
“I hope he’s not dead,” Chase said.
“Your daddy?”
He let out a small snort of surprise. “No, the man who murdered my mother and the baby. I can’t let go of the idea that one of these days I might get a chance to kill him.”