The Cold Spot Read Free Page B

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