The Coldest Mile (15 page)

When Chase saw them a knifing pain took him low in the guts and he nearly went down. Jesus Christ, they'd had their own kids. He hadn't even thought of that before. Showed how he'd been obsessing but not thinking.

He bent and righted the trikes. One green and one pink. A boy's and a girl's. So look at that, they'd had a little boy. What would Jonah have done to the kid? Chase knew his grandfather didn't feel things like regular people, but could he have snuffed a child? Chase caught a flash of his own eyes in the chrome of a trike. They seemed to think the old man could.

A huge jungle gym designed of steel and block wood rose from the sand. He could imagine Dash doing chin- ups there, holding on to the metal rings sunk into the crossbeam while beside him Kylie and his boy clambered around on the little ladders. Chase figured she was young enough and had been away from Jonah long enough to call Dash her daddy. Why not. Would she even know Jonah? Chase couldn't see it.

A wooden privacy fence separated the yards on both sides of the house, and farther back down the sand snow fencing marked vague property trails. It was called snow fencing on Long Island. Here, maybe cyclone fencing. The murmur of distant waves began to filter into his head above the sound of his own
heavy breathing. He looked at the eyes in the chrome again and they were telling him something.

A sharp call echoed up from the shore with a harsh snap. “Hey … you!”

Chase stood and turned slowly toward the voice. You always moved slow when somebody spooked you, it showed you weren't edgy and you had a right to be wherever you were.

Marching up the sand came a squat, overweight woman wearing a one- piece bathing suit. Blue nylon with little frills around it that flapped when she walked. You had to give some credit to folks who wore what they wanted to wear and didn't give a shit about what anybody might say.

Frowning, she plodded forward, mounds moving one way or another or in two directions at once. She really knew how to put it out there, chin held high. Chase knew a lot of guys who would appreciate that and would've been wowed by her.

She'd been in the water for a while. Her fingers were all pruney. Hair drying in the breeze into a wild horsetail. Her cheeks and forehead were so sunburned that he almost winced just looking at her.

He waved and said, “Howdy.”

She didn't respond until she got up close. Real close, jutting a forefinger into his sternum. “Who are you?”

“Is this the Dash place?”

“I asked you a question.”

She wasn't offering anything. Lady was on the
ball, wasn't about to be dissuaded and let him take the lead. She leaned slightly to the right, toward the fence, like she belonged on the other side of it, and he figured this was the next- door neighbor, keeping an eye out.

“I'm a relative.” It was the truth, but the wrong answer. He should've just said he was a friend.

“Of Dash's?”

“Of Milly's.”

“Yeah, then what's her maiden name?”

When you're cornered you might as well smile, hit 'em with the charm. He grinned, trying to look abashed. “I have no idea.”

She let her teeth slide out from beneath her lips in an affectation that was pure Spanish Inquisition. Chase didn't know how someone who lived right on a beach in a mansion could ever look so pissy. “You expect me to believe you're related to Milly, but you don't know her maiden name?”

“I'm a distant relative.”

“Get out of here before I call the cops.”

“Who are you, lady?”

“I'm Esther Williams. What, you don't recognize me?”

Chase let out a chuckle. It was a stretch of a reference for modern filmgoers, but some of Jonah's pals had liked Busby Berkeley films. When Chase was a kid he'd watched a few during a marathon on Channel 9 while they'd put together a plan to score an antique- gun shop.

“What happened here? Someone told me he was murdered.”

“I said to take off.”

“What about the girl? Kylie. And they had a boy?”

“Who the hell are you, mister?”

“I told you—”

“Yeah, but I'm not buying that bullshit. You a reporter?”

What the hell. “Yes.”

“No, you're not that either or you would've said so right off. You're a liar twice over now. Get your ass out of here.”

She wasn't about to play it any other way. He liked her even more for that. No cajoling, no buying her off. She was raw and rude, and she must've had her reasons. He couldn't push too hard or she might actually follow through. Everyone who was in the know liked to rub it in the faces of those who weren't, and he got the feeling he could work this pruney fat lady if he could just figure out the right opening move.

She was tough but real. Maybe he should respond in kind.

“You know Kylie wasn't their kid, right? She's the child of Milly's sister, Angie.” He tried to remember everything Angie had told him about her life. He hadn't known her long and they hadn't talked much, but she had tried to win him over so that he'd make a play against Jonah, and she'd spoken some about her childhood and her sister. “Their mother died of uterine cancer when Angie was nine. Their
father was a Cuban boozer who loved the Miami club scene and was a part- time gigolo. She hated him because he'd spend eight hundred bucks on a pair of shoes but wouldn't have money to feed the kids. He hit on a drug dealer's girlfriend and got snuffed in a men's room. Their aunt took them in after that. Any chance Milly ever mentioned any of that?”

“Only the part about her mother dying of uterine cancer,” the lady said. A breeze drifted in off the water and flapped the little frills on her suit. “She had a scare herself a couple of years ago and we talked about it some. The rest at least sounds like you're finally talking the truth.”

“I need to know what happened here,” Chase said. He let the truth rise up from the depths of his chest and soak his words. “I have to find the girl.”

Her name was
Francie Goodwin and she had a very large dog she called Assassin. Chase saw how it could fit.

Chase sat at Francie's kitchen table drinking some herbal shit he couldn't stand and tried to ignore the fact that Assassin was staring with an unhealthy amount of interest at Chase's groin. Assassin was a white German shepherd and more than large enough to turn Chase into a eunuch with one bite. It was hard to keep his mind on what Francie was saying but he was doing his best.

He'd given her the latest fake name and she
hadn't believed him but didn't push it. She said, “You're trouble but you're not serious trouble. You really do care about Kylie.”

“Yes.”

“I've been married six times, and yes, you heard that right, me, six times, and they all thought they were the best charlatans, cheats, operators, swindlers, scam artists, bullshit artists, and rip- off artists in the state. The first three broke my heart. The next three, well, I wound up taking them for everything they had. Why they wanted me was their problem, and why I wanted them is my problem. But I learned from my experiences. You can't run a game or a racket on me.”

“So I've learned.”

She nodded. “Okay then, who are you really?”

“I knew Milly's sister Angie,” Chase told her. “And I actually am related, in a way too weird to go into right now. I heard Aaron Dash was dead. Mur dered.”

Her face tightened with displaced anger. “Ten days ago. Somebody shot him in the heart and left him to bleed out in his own living room.”

Ten days. Right as Jonah was trying to set up his new string with somebody named Dex. Chase had been too slow, too late, he'd known what was going to happen and he'd stopped off to pick up cash he could've done without.

But no, that wasn't what it had really been about at all. Chase had been sick and needed to decide for himself whether he wanted to live or die.

Francie said, “He was strong. It took him three days to die. Milly and Kylie and Walt are missing. Possibly kidnapped, the police said.”

Chase looked her in the eye and said, “But you're smart enough not to believe them. Nobody would take them and leave a body behind. You don't kill the person who would pay the ransom. They haven't been kidnapped.”

Francie shook her head. “And her car was gone. Kidnap victims don't drive off on their own.”

“That common knowledge?”

“No, but she always parked her SUV in the drive and it's gone.”

“You see anything? Hear anything?”

“No,” Francie said. “No one did.”

“Not even the gunshot?”

“No.”

“What time did it happen?”

“Around three in the afternoon.”

Made sense. In the middle of the night, slamming doors and shouts and screaming engines might stir the neighbors, but in the afternoon with the waves roaring, who notices anything?

“Who called the cops?”

“Aaron managed to crawl to a phone before he passed out. He never woke up again.”

Sipping the tea, hating the taste and glad for that, Chase tried for the cold spot again and was shocked when he felt the spreading chill that quieted his mind and shut down his emotions, allowing for clarity.

He reached out and patted Assassin's head, the dog licking his hand, sensing the change.

“You know who did this, don't you?” she said.

Chase tried to work it out. It started the same way as before. Jonah showing up at the door, saying he wanted Kylie back. Milly asking about her sister. Jonah maybe telling her the truth, explaining how Angie had shot him twice in the back. Looking into his dead eyes, Milly would know her sister was gone. She'd scoop the kid up and make a run for it. Both the children. Angie had told her about Jonah, she knew what to do. The surfer standing there in his flip- flops and threatening to call the cops. Jonah slugging him two or three times in the gut, turning abruptly and driving his elbow backward into Dash's face. The surfer in good shape, stronger than Jonah expected. Giving him a much tougher fight while Milly and the kids made it to the front door, got outside, clambered into a truck and booked. Jonah thinking enough was enough and popping Dash once in the chest, probably with a .32 because the sound hadn't even carried to next door. Then making his way outside and heading after the woman and the two kids. Chase had grown frustrated thinking that Milly hadn't left the house, but now he saw that she'd been smart and sharp and had immediately run. But where? Miami? It's where she and her sister had been raised.

Or had Jonah caught up with them a few miles down the road and dumped her car and the bodies of Milly and little Walt in the ocean?

Francie repeated herself with more force. “You know who did this.”

“I think I do,” Chase said.

“Who is it?”

“Kylie's father. Milly ever say anything about him?”

“No. Just that she was watching the girl while her sister worked things out. It sounded like drugs were involved, rehab, that sort of thing. I didn't push it and she never said anything more.”

“If she did run, do you have any idea of where she went?”

“No. But she was strong too. Both of them were always swimming, jogging. She was a semipro surfer herself.”

Tough, smart, on the run with two children. Or dead in the water.

Francie, her sunburned face going even redder, that righteous anger rising, fists on the table, turning her head toward the home next door where nothing walked, allowed the opening note of a sob to break from her.

Assassin moved to her, put his enormous chin on her enormous lap as the single note rang throughout the tremendous house of ex- husbands. Then it was done, buried beneath the silence, and she turned back to stare at Chase, still not trusting him, but trusting him enough.

“You're going after him.”

From inside the place where he was cool and smooth, iced down and feeling right, he said, “Yes.”

H
e got a hotel room on the water and called Deuce
and Georgie, checking in and putting pressure on. He needed to find Jonah. Any news at all, rumors, gossip, mutters or bitching, he needed to hear it. Put the word out, turn his cell- phone number over to everybody, whatever it took.

In the meantime, Chase tried to stay active. He swam and ran on the beach. Shadowboxed and used the hotel gym. He ate well in Sarasota's restaurants and enjoyed the food.

After a week he'd put on some weight and regained muscle mass and speed. Cessy's stitches were ready to come out and he carefully clipped the threads and tugged them free. The bullet- wound scar was red and ugly but didn't bother him.

Georgie called from his car lot in Fort Wayne, Indiana. There was a huckster in the background shouting something into a bullhorn about low interest rates and no money down. “I got some word on your gramps. He's down South. Florida.”

“Where?”

“I just told you. Florida.”

Chase had to remember that even though Georgie was a second- generation, he'd mostly centered in on the car salesmanship and that seemed to still be where his heart was. “It's a big state. I was hoping for something a little more specific.”

“Oh. I think he's vacationing in Sarasota.”

“Yeah, that's what I told you, Georgie.”

“Oh yeah, but I heard it again this morning. The info I got was a few days old.”

So the old man was still nearby. Killing Dash hadn't made him move on, the way he normally would have. What did that mean? Was he still hunting for Milly and Kylie? Or was it because of the score he had set up with this cat Dex?

“What's Jonah doing down here?”

“I'm not sure. There are these new circuits popping up. They don't do things the way we were taught. They're more … independent. He got in touch with Lamberson and Sloane about opening his own car lot.”

Still with the outdated code words. “What did they tell him?”

“Not certain what the business proposition was,” Georgie said while the bullhorn blared, “but they turned him down. Lamberson's been struggling with prostate cancer, they got him in for radiation treatments once a week, so he figures he's got to be selective.”

“He told you this himself?”

“Yes.”

“Anything about Dex?”

“No. I checked into that. He's got good references. Been around a while, does good work, a lot of happy clients, for the most part. But he can be expensive and he, well, you know how those chiropractors are. One wrong touch and they can break your back. His name turns up every so often, but he doesn't usually work with the guys we do.”