The Cold Spot Read Free

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.

F ive 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