T
urned out the hero who’d gone up against the crew
during the ice heist lived alone in a small two-story house over in Smithtown, the kind of place Chase used to burgle pretty frequently during the early years he ran with Jonah.
It was noon. The time of day when all the kids were at school and the stay-at-home moms and dads and retirees were busy with their soap operas and daytime talk shows, learning how to be better people while slumped on their couches. Nobody ever spotted a cat burglar at noon.
He parked down the block and scoped James Lefferts’s house. Lefferts’s Taurus was in the driveway, the exhaust still dripping. Looked like he had come home for lunch. Chase waited twenty minutes before he saw Lefferts leave, holding his briefcase tightly
The guy had two black eyes and wore a Band-aid across the bridge of his nose. He was going to have a definite tilt to the left for a couple of months until they broke his nose again and could realign the cartilage. Chase watched Lefferts get in his car and head back to the diamond merchant’s.
Chase climbed out and walked through a wooden gate at the side of the house. It led to a fussily kept backyard screened from the neighbors by a high row of hedges. Lefferts lived alone and liked things tidy. Garden gnomes, birdhouses, and little windmills had been planted among the carefully cultivated bushes and flowers edging the perfectly trimmed lawn.
No alarm system. The back door had a dead bolt and the windows were all locked. Took Chase ninety seconds to get inside.
He did a slow and efficient search of the house, going through every closet, drawer, and cabinet. It immediately became apparent that Lefferts was a truly finicky guy. He hung all his shirts on hangers, not just the dress ones but even the V-necks, track suits, and Ts. Kept his sock drawer in perfect order, the whites over here, the blacks over there, his boxers folded and neatly stacked. He recycled and washed out his tuna cans and mayo jars. His electric razor was empty of stubble. All his rolls of masking tape had the first half inch folded over.
The only suspicious items Chase came up with were a box of magazines and videos that bordered on child pornography. Not quite over the line, but man was it close. Some of the stuff was in other languages and came with subtitles. What passed for erotica in Romania would get you strung up in Birmingham. There were also Russian mail-order bride catalogs, featuring mostly pale, seminude chubby girls in ads that read,
My name is Mischa, and I am looking for a successful American businessman who I can love in bed and out. Must own his own home. No children. I prefer no pets but won’t mind one small dog or cat. I enjoy oral sex.
These Russkie chicks laid it on the line.
James Lefferts got
home at seven. He was putting in the hours, no doubt about his taking the job seriously. Someone like that would probably mouth off at three Colt Pythons when one of his fellow employees got shoved around.
Chase couldn’t afford Jimmy getting tough with him now. He needed information fast. He could feel the hours evaporating, the crew getting ready to make their move. They were out there, burning away the downtime until their fence came through with the cash. A couple of them thinking about spending the long green, a couple of others only caring about the juice of the next score. Every string was about the same.
Lefferts walked in and saw Chase in the living room and said, “Who the hell are you?”
Chase punched him in his already broken nose. Lefferts let out a squawk of agony and dropped like he’d taken an ax to the head.
Blood burst down his chin and across his shirt. He tore at his face with both hands, writhing on the carpet, tears flowing down his cheeks as he flailed and rolled. Chase got some ice cubes out of the freezer, put them in a dish towel, and crushed them against the countertop. When he got back to the living room he saw that Lefferts had vomited all over himself and was only semiconscious.
Pressing the towel to Lefferts’s nose induced another cry of pain, but at least it roused him from his stupor. Chase propped Lefferts onto the couch and gave him a minute to wake up.
“Jimmy,” Chase said. “Hey.”
“Oh Christ, my face—”
“Jimmy, listen to me now. I’ve got a question to ask you. And I’d appreciate your honesty here. It’s very important to me.”
“Oh God,” Lefferts said, choking on his blood.
“I can’t breathe, I can’t think.”
On display in one of the high glass-door cabinets were two bottles of Chardonnay. Chase opened one and poured some into a fancy wine-glass.
“Here,” he said, “have some of this.”
“Is that the Chardonnay?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you let it breathe?”
You had to hand it to him. Blood and upchuck aside, he was as finicky as ever. “Just drink it.”
Lefferts drew the dish towel away and tried to sip. It made him gag and he started to moan. “I can’t taste anything except blood! My nose—”
“You’ll be fine. They’re going to have to break it again anyway, eventually.”
“Lord, no—”
“Now, Jimmy, you listening? Seriously, I need you to pay attention here.”
“What? Who
are
you?”
“I want the names of the crew you were working with.”
“The what?”
Chase had the box of naughty porn on one of the end tables and pulled out some of the magazines. “I wonder what the feebs will think of this stuff. I wonder what they’ll find on your computer when they take it in.”
“The who?”
“The FBI. You can delete stuff and rewrite over it on your hard drive and they’ll still be able to pick it up. I wonder how many lists your name is on in Czechoslovakia. These child brides that you buy from the former Soviet Union, they know English already or do you have to teach them?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Do you have any idea who I am, Jimmy?” Chase asked. “If you knew who I was you might understand the lengths I’m willing to go today in order to get the information I want.”
“I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you!”
“You want me to punch you in the nose again, is that it?”
“Fuck no!”
“I’m the husband of the police officer murdered outside your place of business.”
Jimmy Lefferts’s eyes widened, but it wasn’t with fear. It was simply with an even greater confusion. “So what the hell do you want from me? What are you doing? Why are you here?”
“I want to know who killed my wife.”
“I don’t know anything about that! How would I know anything about
that
?”
Chase got in close, his nose two inches from Jimmy Lefferts’s misshapen schnoz, the bloom of blood wafting so pungently, such a painfully human stink. He looked deep and read the man’s face. The confusion, the ineffectual anger, the willingness to please, but the uncertainty of not knowing how. Chase finally had to admit that he believed him.
“Okay, Jimmy, I’m leaving now.”
“You are?”
“And I can trust you to keep this little conversation between just the two of us, right?”
“Absolutely!”
“I’m sorry about knocking you around, really I am. But if you call the cops or tell anybody else at all about this I’ll make sure the feebs come breathing down your back.”
“All of my erotica is completely legal! You can’t hurt me with that!”
Chase toed through the magazines and thought maybe Jimmy was right. He kneeled, rolled up one of the zines, got it nice and tight and swatted Jimmy Lefferts across his mashed nose. Jimmy screamed and a new stream of blood started running into his mouth.
He waited for Jimmy to focus, pressed a finger to the man’s red lips and went, “Then I’ll just come back and kill you in your goddamn bed one night.”
H
er name was Marisa Iverson and she lived only a
few miles across town from Jimmy Lefferts. Similar small home but she went in for a pretty high-tech alarm system. It gave Chase some pause while he tried to remember the proper way of tricking it out. Took him a lot longer than he expected. By the time he was finished he was bathed in sweat.
The system hadn’t been wired to a security service or the police. Chase wondered about that.
Once inside he made a careful search of the home. A wide living room opened into a dining area, and behind that you had to go through a swinging door to the kitchen. The place was tastefully furnished. She went in for soft blues and paisley, modern lightweight furniture and lots of potpourri and handcrafted wares.
Candles everywhere, a huge CD collection, lots of DVDs held in a large oak bookcase. Mostly guy movies—action blockbusters, shoot-’em-ups, Westerns. The fridge held a lot of beer. A fancy liquor cabinet was filled with a row of half-empty bottles of Jameson, Dewar’s, Wild Turkey, and Jack Daniel’s. Looked like Marisa Iverson entertained the dudes.
It took him ten minutes to find a Browning 9mm, safety off, buried way at the back of the breakfront behind some fake china and cheap crystal.
Like you’re having a holiday dinner with the whole family and somebody says they don’t like the soup, so you make like you’re going for the gravy bowl and put two in his head.
He pocketed it.
In the bedroom, clipped behind the head-board, he found a .22. He could just see how she’d use it. Lure the mark into bed, take charge and get on top, ride him until he was an incoherent mess, then reach over and yank the little squeaker up, press it to the guy’s forehead, pull the trigger. Hardly any blood to clean up. Wouldn’t even have to throw out the sheets. A heavy cotton cycle would do it.
He’d have to send some flowers and a get-well card to Jimmy Lefferts. Marisa ran with the crew.
Maybe she didn’t trust the string that much. So she kept them lulled and contented with booze and sex and cowboys and Indians. Did she fear a double cross? Did she plan one herself?
He pocketed the .22 as well, walked out onto the front stoop, and went through the mailbox. Nothing but bills and a real estate flyer claiming home sales in the neighborhood had doubled in the past eighteen months. Chase could believe it.
He continued combing through the house, looking for anything to tie her to the crew that had scored the ice. An address book lay open on her desk. Not many names, most of them local businesses. A dry cleaner’s, a carpet steamer service, a local Chinese restaurant. The diamond merchant’s office. There was James Lefferts.
Chase figured almost any of the entries could be code and she might be hiding the crew’s contact number out in plain sight.
He got on her computer and found a bunch of password-protected files. He tried “diamond,” “rock,” “ice,” and a dozen other words. Driver. Wheelman. Python. Before long a feverish buzz was reaching through his skull. By the time he typed in “Lila” he knew he was starting to uncoil and had to get a grip.
At the back of her bottom desk drawer he found the paperwork for the house. Turned out she was only renting the place and had only been here four months out of a one-year lease. All the blue and paisley and tacky modern furniture belonged to the true owners, cheapo crap left behind for their tenant.
Four months. Just enough time to establish her identity. He doubted she’d been working at the diamond merchant’s for any longer than that. He realized then how close he’d come to missing the crew entirely. She wasn’t an inside woman at all. She was part of the crew and would be packing up soon to join them.
He stood in her kitchen and checked the dishwasher. A couple of dirty plates, a handful of utensils, one glass. Exactly what you’d expect from a woman living alone. He looked in the fridge again and counted four different brands of bottled beer. He thought the booze was left over from a recent party. She entertained but didn’t live with anyone, had nobody dropping by on a nightly basis. Wherever the crew had gone to ground, they weren’t near enough to stop by much.
There was no reason for her to continue the ruse now. The longer she hung around the more of a chance the cops would tumble to the fact she was part of the heist. She should’ve bailed already. Why hadn’t she pulled up stakes yet?
Two hours later,
at 6:10, the woman who called herself Marisa Iverson walked in the front door clutching her purse and the day’s mail. She deactivated and reset the alarm. She put her purse down on the coffee table and tossed the bills in a pile. Then she headed to the bathroom on the first floor. She closed and locked the door. One of those people who followed form even when they were alone in their own houses.
Chase stepped out from the corner of the living room and went through the purse. Another .22. He figured he’d find more goodies in her car, but he’d let that go for the moment. He took her cell phone and checked the numbers. Maybe she’d slipped up and left him a connection to the crew. He pocketed the phone and the revolver. For a guy who hated guns, he was now packing three of them.
When Marisa stepped out of the bathroom he met her in the hall, said, “Hiya,” and clipped her on the chin.
Man she was good.
Even though he’d caught her unaware, she faded back and rolled with the punch. She was lissome as hell and sweet to watch, landing nimbly on the carpet, tucking in, and immediately getting to her feet. He’d hardly even tapped her. He knew it was his own fault. He’d never struck a woman before and had a natural resistance to this kind of situation.
She rubbed the back of her hand against her jaw. No fear in her at all. Completely cool, a total pro, living out on the wire. Maybe she’d been in the bent life since she was a kid, or maybe the crew had picked her up along the way and had taught her well. Chase really wanted to meet this crew.
Marisa Iverson stood and glared at him, her unforgiving mouth tugged into the barest grin. She was maybe thirty, on the pretty side but made down so you wouldn’t notice. He saw that she used eyeshadow, rouge, and lipstick to slightly alter the contours of her face. Blond hair drawn back in a tight ponytail, with two twists framing but obscuring her jawline. Big round glasses concealed a lot of details to her features. It was a damn good disguise.
The bone-colored business suit fit her well, but it still somehow looked all wrong on her. Chase just knew it wasn’t her real style, and he could see the other person beneath emerging now.
A hard-stepper, she always went at life head-on, and took it as rough as she could because she liked it that way.
“And who might you be?” she asked.
Eyes as dark and lifeless as shale. Alert and sharp as she ran through the current setup, figuring all the different angles, already plotting and scheming.
Chase said, “I might be the Minister of Culture and Communications, but I’m not.”
The grin widened. “So sorry to hear that.”
“I’ll bet.”
She had to be wondering if he was just your usual second-story man or a hitter hired by one of the crew to betray the rest. Or if she’d somehow stepped on the mob’s toes and now had a syndicate torpedo out here looking for restitution. A lot had to be going through her head, but she revealed nothing, just kept giving that knowing look.
“You don’t like to hit girls, do you?” she asked. “That was hardly even a love tap.” Saying it like an insult, trying to get under his skin right from the start and shake him up, force him into making a mistake. Soon she’d try to sex him, and then she’d go for one of the guns.
Chase waited. Marisa took off her glasses and tossed them on top of the television. She reached up to her hair and yanked free the scrunchie holding it in place. Shook it out and let it get wild around her shoulders. It had nothing to do with intimacy and everything with baiting the trap.
Clearly she didn’t think he was worth being subtle for, and that pissed him off a little.
“So what’s next?” she asked. “You plan on spanking me? I hope you are. I know of a much more comfortable place we can do that. I have lots of toys upstairs.”
“Let’s stay here. I’ve already seen the accessories you keep around your bed.”
It brought a humorless smile to her lips. “Well of course you have.”
This one, he thought, this one right here could empty six in my head while making love, and then she’d spit in my blood.
Stepping away very slowly, Marisa eased backward across the living room and forced Chase to follow along. It was a very crafty act and showed she had a lot of patience, moving them toward the table where her purse sat.
“You have any idea why I’m here?” he asked. It wasn’t the way to start off, but she’d thrown him already.
“Is that a serious question? I mean, do you actually expect an answer?”
He wanted to take it back and try again. He said, “Listen, I don’t care about you or your string or the diamond heist. I just want the driver.”
“Oh? Which driver?” She slithered away another inch, inviting him closer.
“He’s all I want. The rest of you can walk with the score.”
She cocked her head, jutted her bottom lip, and tried to make her eyes soften. As if whatever she said next,
that
would be her being completely, totally, utterly honest. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Really. That’s the truth.”
Chase sighed.
It was such a forlorn sound, advertising his frustration and sorrow so clearly that it made her let loose with a small yip of laughter.
Marisa Iverson shrugged and held her hands up in front of her, telling him, You expected me to say something else?
It was only an impasse if you didn’t have what it took to force your way through. “Your crew was slick but no wheelman carries a gun, much less makes flash moves like firing out the window. Left-handed.”
“You smacked Jimmy Lefferts around some last night, didn’t you? He was even uglier when he came in to work today.”
“It was either you or him.”
“Well, I dare say it’s him.”
“No,” Chase said, “it’s you, Marisa.”
“You’re an intense one, honey. Tell me your story. Did some poor girl break your heart?”
“Yes,” he said, “you did.”
He tagged her hard. Backhanded her so fiercely that she was propelled across the room and over the arm of the couch. She flipped backward and hit the floor, blood already pulsing from her mouth. She turned over laughing and dabbed at her bottom lip with her fingers. She looked up at him.
“I was wrong,” she said, “you do like to hit girls. But only sometimes. You’re quick on the button.”
So he’d told her something about himself. That was inevitable. But she’d let him know something about herself, too.
She only cracked out of turn and broke character when he insulted the driver. There was something there.
She spit blood on the floor, got to her feet, turned, and sprinted for the china closet. Her first instinct wasn’t to try for the door but to get the Browning, cap him, keep everything quarantined, under control. She dug behind the crystal and grimaced when she found the weapon gone.
“Got that one too,” Chase said. “And I hate guns.”
It didn’t stop her. She started hurling the plates and glasses at him.
Chase covered up and rushed forward. She kicked out and connected with his shin, then twisted her knee into his groin. It hurt like hell but he fought through the pain. A black shimmer bordered his vision. He slapped her again and she flew into the wall, laughing. She threw herself into his arms and kissed him with her bloody mouth.
“You gonna rape me now, big daddy? Come
on.
”
“The driver,” Chase said.
She got her hands on his neck, dug her nails in, and tore them across his throat. He grunted in pain and the gouges dripped blood down his chest. She’d felt the guns in his jacket while pressed against him, and now she had her hand in his pocket, fumbling for the Browning and trying to get her finger on the trigger.
“Christ,” he said, and elbowed her in the sternum. She fell to her knees and tried to hammer him in the crotch. He slid backward, got his hands up in front of him like he was in the ring.
He watched her, intrigued and a little sick to his stomach. All his years with Jonah and they’d never worked with a female professional thief. Were they all tough like this? He supposed they’d have to be in order to run with crews that carried Pythons and blew away police officers.
“So, he’s your man, eh?” he said. “The driver. He your guy?”
“They’re all my guys.”
“You must get a lot of chocolate on Valentine’s Day.”
“You don’t have what it takes to roll with me,” she told him.
“We can find out if you really want to push the point.”
“Oh,” she said, chin already swelling and growing black with bruises, gums purple with blood. “I do. I certainly do, baby.” Turning action into fore-play. “Your hand is shaking.”
“All I want is the getaway man.”
“Hold your arms out, maybe he’ll fall through the ceiling right into them.”
Chase was tough, but he didn’t know if he could do whatever it took. Not even now. Not with Lila still alive in his mind, imaging her eyes filled with disappointment and love for him. Jesus, what the hell was he going to do?
“Marisa, I’m kind of appealing to you here, okay? Really. Neither one of us wants to go down this road.”
“You are such a cunt,” she said. “You’re easy. You want to know how easy. Watch.” She came at him again, and when he tried to hold her off, she went at him with her teeth. She turned her head and chewed into his wrist.
He smacked her and then backhanded her, rocking her off her feet. It was a couple of mean shots but not nearly enough to make her stop giggling. Her eyes had told him that she didn’t think he could do the things he would have to do. She kicked out at him and he hit her again. She struck the floor with a snarl and lay there with her shoulders trembling, spitting out looping ropes of blood. He watched her, knowing she was laughing at him.
“Like I said, you’re easy.”