by Seth Harwood
“You fuck,” the guy says. “I kill you.”
And Jack sees red: Thinking about Ralph in the tub, the time in Sausalito, in rehab, the bad press, and his dreams of being a full-blown movie star moving away from him, he moves in on the guy fast, punches him once in the side, then, as the guy’s doubled over, almost backing into an unsuspecting group of tourists, Jack grabs him, holds the guy in place, breathing hard, feeling the air come in and out of his chest.
The tourists walk a wide circle around them. A woman says, “Oh, my God. What’s happening here?”
“My friend just has a bloody nose,” Jack says. “This happens to him all the time.”
Someone else says, “Oh, that’s awful!”
The guy’s still holding his hands in front of his face, bleeding over the ground, not on his suit. “Oh, watch those shoes,” Jack says, stepping on the toes of one tan suede loafer. “That’s going to suck,” Jack says. He can hear the guy’s breathing: mannered and slow through his mouth. From out of the clean suit, he produces a white handkerchief and holds it over his nose. He stands to his full height, looks Jack in the eye.
“Fuck you,” he says. “You fucking fuck.” With his other hand, he reaches into his suit jacket and Jack, anticipating a gun, backs him up against a big sign advertising the fares for the Alcatraz ferry, holding his arm where it is, the hand still inside his jacket.
“You know,” Jack says, when he’s got the guy’s arm under control—all his time in the gym over the past two years is actually helping, he thinks—“I really hope you’re not thinking about pulling a gun here.” The guy tries to knee Jack, but his kneecap finds only Jack’s quad, not his balls, and though it’ll probably leave a good charley horse, Jack stays upright.
“Okay,” Jack says, pushing up against him harder. He reaches inside the jacket and feels the gun handle in the guy’s hand. “Shit,” Jack says, shaking his head. “Now that’s just not right.” He pulls the hand out with the gun and forces it low, down along the guy’s side. Then he hits it against the sign enough times—it only takes three—for the gun to fall to the ground.
“That the gun you used to kill Ralph?”
“The fuck you talking about? Ralph?”
Jack pushes the guy away and stoops to pick up the gun, sliding it into a jacket pocket. “Now what?” Jack says.
The guy bends over, both hands over his face. “Who is Ralph? Anderino? He is our contact.”
“Contact?”
“Yes. The man who we are supposed to make the deal. Who the fuck are you?”
“You’re with Castroneves?”
The guy stands up to look at Jack. “You fuck,” he says.
“Oh,” Jack says, putting the nice suit and the slicked-back hair together, something he should’ve done sooner. “I’m sorry about your nose.”
The guy just looks at Jack, the handkerchief over most of his face. “Fuck you,” he says.
“Oh.” Jack knows this isn’t the cool rejoinder that he should be able to come up with, but it’s already escaped his lips. He holds his hands down by his sides, open and empty. “Now, that’s not nice,” he says, knowing he’s losing more cool points by the second. “What can we do here?” The guy doesn’t answer, just stares at Jack; then he takes away the handkerchief and spits a big gob of blood onto the sidewalk.
“Castroneves is my boss,” the guy says.
“Damn.” Jack brushes off the guy’s sleeve. “I hope you won’t let this ruin our relationship. I really do.” He looks at his watch; he first met with Castroneves less than a half hour ago and already he’s breaking ties, fucking up one of his associates. Jack takes out the gun and removes the clip. He thumbs out the bullets into his hand, dropping one handful into his pocket and then another before he’s done emptying it. When he’s replaced the clip, he offers the gun back to its owner. “Like I said, I’m really sorry about all this. I hope we can still be friends.”
“I will fucking kill you,” the guy says.
“I got to go, friend.” Jack pats him on the shoulder. His suit is soft to the touch, definitely linen. “Nice suit. At least you didn’t mess it up, right?”
The guy shakes his head. He takes away the handkerchief, looks at the blood in it. From what Jack can see, the bleeding has stopped, but the nose looks like it might be broken.
“Yeah. I’m sorry about that.”
The guy makes like he’s going to swing at Jack, and Jack pulls back, but the guy’s hand doesn’t go past his shoulder. He laughs. “No,” he says. “Not right now. But soon, yes.” As he starts walking back toward the way he’d been heading, he looks back at Jack once, shaking his head.
“Really,” Jack calls after him. “Let’s not let this interfere with what could be a profitable business.”
The guy takes a few more steps looking back, then turns, walks away into the crowd.
Jack calls Castroneves from the Mustang, trying to head off any harm he’s done as early as possible. But there’s no answer at the number he used before, just a blank message that announces the phone number in a computer-generated female voice. Jack’s on the spot to leave his message before he’s ready, stumbles out something about being sorry and hoping that they’ll still go ahead with their business despite the “unfortunate incident” that’s just occurred, and hangs up.
“Fuck,” he says. He hits the steering wheel a few times, trying to work through feeling like he’s just ruined the whole deal, and then the phone rings in his hand. It’s Castroneves’ number.
“Hey,” Jack says, leaning back, looking out at the museum.
“This is Jack?”
“Yeah. I just—I wanted to call and apologize. I just got a little carried away with an associate of yours. You have to understand I’m edgy about what happened to Ralph.”
“Ahh.” There are more sounds on the other end of the line, but Jack can’t make them out. It sounds like someone else is having a conversation there. “Yes. He has just come in.”
“So I just wanted to say I hope we can still do business.”
“Yes, Mr. Palms. Oh. Well. We will have to see about that, I’m afraid. I have to say good-bye now.” And the call ends.
“Shit,” Jack says. He hits the steering wheel again, looks at the pack of cigarettes in the passenger seat, and shakes his head. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says, starting the engine.
A few hours later, Jack sits at the bar in front of Maxine, a club soda with lime in his hand and a tall blonde dancing naked on the stage. He’s come here because he didn’t know where else to go. He couldn’t face the prospect of going back to Sausalito, a night alone up there with his thoughts, the idea of whether he fucked up the deal the Czechs are paying him for, or the possibility that Ralph’s killer might come looking. So he chose to take Maxine up on her offer. After all, it’s The Coast where he’s had the most fun in a while.
It’s the first dance of the night, and the rest of the bar stools stand empty. Just a few lonely guys from the after-work crowd have made their way in after hitting happy hours downtown.
Jack figures he’ll get whatever background Maxine can give, and then head up to the Czechs’ hotel to tell them about the meet with Alex, hoping they’ve come up with some ideas on who might have killed Ralph and that he can convince them things are still okay with the Colombian.
“I just lose my temper sometimes,” he tells Maxine. “It’s always been my problem when I end up in a situation I don’t know how to control.” Jack looks at his hands: plain and white, pink really; long, thin fingers. A couple still have swollen knuckles from basketball and football injuries growing up. “It’s not like I’m happy about hitting the guy or like it makes things any easier. I think it actually makes things worse.”
She nods. They’ve already been over the fact that she’s seen Ralph’s death on the news and that she feels awful about it. She’s cutting lemons for the night’s drinks, looking up at Jack from time to time. Tonight she’s got on a tight black tank top, plenty of cleavage,
and Jack’s not sure if she just doesn’t feel up to taking it off, she’s trying to make a different impression, or if that usually doesn’t happen until the night picks up.
“Has this happened before?” she asks.
“One of my friends gets killed?”
“No, you’ve lost your temper like that.”
Jack thinks about it for a second, decides that it hasn’t happened since he did rehab, since he’s been reclaiming his life. “Yeah, it used to happen from time to time.”
Maxine’s brows come together and she looks up. “I guess I read about that in the papers.”
“No,” Jack says. “The papers made me out like I did this with Victoria but that never happened. I was so keyed out on H I couldn’t have lifted my arm.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know. I thought I had the guy who killed Ralph.”
“Yeah,” she says. She stops her cutting, slides the lemon slices into a trough. She looks Jack in the eye. “So how much do you know about what happened to Ralph?”
“Not that much. Just the details.”
“Right. Any clues on who would do that?”
Jack looks her over, tries to piece it all together: her calling, talking about Ralph, what she said he had to come to hear. “What do you know?”
“That’s right, Jack. You want to be asking me questions, finding out what I can tell you.”
“So?”
“So here’s what you probably know: Ralph was dealing.”
Jack nods. “That’s where I came in.”
“Yeah. But you don’t know about Ralph and Tony, that Ralphie was dealing here until recently, when Tony told him to stop.”
“And then Ralph became unwelcome, right? So why would he come in last night?”
“Good question.” Maxine shakes her head. “Seems like an odd move to me.”
“You know those guys we were with?”
“Never seen them.”
Jack leans back against the seat as he watches her move down the bar to help a few guys at the other end. He takes a deep breath, letting out all the anxiety about what’s just happened, about the deal, about someone killing Ralph. He feels like he needs a drink to wash it all out of him. Seeing Ralph’s body, the dog’s, meeting with Alex, hitting the other Colombian, it’s all taking a toll. He figures he’s earned a shot of something strong, maybe a double, but he’s been on the wagon too long to let that go. Jack presses his thumb and index finger into the corners of his eyes, across the bridge of his nose, squeezes his eyes shut.
He tells himself that he doesn’t want to slip back on anything he’s accomplished, all the days he could’ve had a drink or gotten his hands on some coke or weed or horse and found a way not to. He doesn’t want to let that all go.
There’s something else behind all the crap he’s feeling: something inside him that feels good, like a part of him that’s been bottled up has been let out, like his blood is flowing faster than in a while.
Maxine comes back. “Where’re your friends tonight, then?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know, eating dinner. Probably getting coked up.”
She looks good, even better than Jack remembered. Even as much as he noticed her last night, he didn’t notice her compared to how he sees her now. She has green eyes to go with her brown hair; her skin is just a touch darker than the rest of the girls’, enough that she might be part Latina. She has a mole on her chest, on the inside of her cleavage, that Jack didn’t notice last night, in a place that’s as nice for any mole to land as Jack can think of. Her body is put together right, with all the curves in exactly the right places.
“Hello?” She smiles. Does she recognize how he’s been looking at her? Jack decides that probably doesn’t make him any different from anyone else in this place. He smiles back. She turns to look at the blonde, then down at her chest, and does kind of a propping, a boob-fluff “It’s not a bad place, right?” She laughs. “Lots to see here.”
“So what’d you want me to come down to hear?”
“Just this,” she says. “What we’re saying.” She takes Jack’s drink glass, swirls the remaining ice around the edges. “Let me get you that liquid dinner.”
“What can you recommend? Something nonalcoholic.” She’s already got the good gin out of its rack. “Maybe just mix up an orange juice and a cranberry, will you?”
“Oh,” she says. “The virgin madras. You don’t like people to think you’re a virgin, do you?”
Jack laughs. “That’s usually not a problem.” He looks her over again: The tight black pants stop a few inches below her belly button. He’s glad it’s not pierced, what’s become the cliché of clichés at the gym and everywhere else he goes. “If you want to think I’m a virgin, you can. If that’ll make you any more friendly.”
Maxine smiles and makes the drink. Jack looks her over, doing his best not to be too obvious—not too hard, considering there’s a six-foot blonde in a white G-string behind her, humping a shiny metal pole.
“Here.” She sets the drink on the counter. “Drink up, buttercup.”
“Tell me what I need to hear.”
Maxine’s eyes are green, green and serious. A guy at the other end waves a twenty and calls for her but she tells him to hang on. She looks at Jack. “Ralph had made some enemies in here, around town,” she says. “There’s a guy who he was dealing for that you might want to watch out for. A guy named Junius Ponds.”
The guy calls for Maxine again and she taps the bar, tells Jack to enjoy his drink. As she moves down the bar, Jack feels a hand descend on his shoulder. “Hello, friend.” Jack turns, half-expecting to see Castroneves or his guy, but finds himself looking eye to eye, though he’s sitting and Tony is standing, with Tony Vitelli, the owner of The Coast.
“Nice to see you, Jack,” he says, sliding onto the next stool. “Buy you a drink?”
“Just got one.” Jack holds up his madras.
Tony works his way onto the stool, then reaches behind his head and adjusts his ponytail, pulling it tight. Maxine comes back, pours out two fingers of Talisker scotch for the little man as he taps the bar with his knuckles. Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” has just started, as a girl in a lace maid’s outfit comes out onto the stage. As she hears the song, Maxine gives Jack a wink and a big smile. Tony gives her the thumbs-up. “Why don’t you go turn up the music for me, won’t you, dear?”
“Sure, Tony.” Maxine looks at Jack like she wants to laugh out loud, then heads off, ducks under the bar, and moves toward the entrance to the club.
When she’s gone, Tony turns to face Jack. “Saw your boy got popped.” He shakes his head. “That’s a sorry thing, there.” He takes a long pull of the Talisker.
Jack fingers the side of his glass. “You know anything about it?”
Tony laughs. “Wish I didn’t. I wish that bastard had never come into this place.” As he talks, Jack notices new details about Tony’s face: that he has lines along the sides of his mouth, a cleft chin, and that his brow wrinkles when he speaks. “Shit, Jack,” he says. “That fuck was a loser. Had it coming for miles.” He raises his glass and drinks, turns his attention to the stage. They watch as the maid finishes her dance and the song ends.
Now a woman with black hair and huge fake breasts comes out onto the stage. She wears a tight leopard-skin outfit. A voice announces her as “Brenda from Brazil.”
Tony shakes his head, says, “Only a matter of time, really.”
Jack leans forward, turns to look at Tony’s face. It gets Tony’s attention and Jack says, “Why don’t you tell me some more about that.”
Tony gets a serious look on his face. “You tell me, Jack. Tell me about his new boyfriends and their deal with the Colombian. Tell me about that.”
Jack doesn’t say anything, waits to hear what’ll come next. After a few breaths, Tony shakes his head. “I can tell you about how he came in here for a while, always loaded and getting worse by the drink.” He gestures to the room wi
th his chin. “Touching the girls.” Tony frowns, shrugs. “I could tell you about that.”
Jack spreads his hands out on the bar. “But?” he says.
And Tony turns to clamp his hand onto Jack’s shoulder. “But why should I bore you, Jack? You’re a grown man. You knew Ralph on some level, had gotten to see the kind of slob asshole he was. You’d already know everything I’d say.”
Jack holds up his arms, trying to shrug off Tony’s hand, but Tony doesn’t let go.
“Easy, Jack,” Tony says.
“Okay.” Jack sits still. “But you don’t kill someone for that, at least not where I come from.”
Tony tightens his grip, brings his face closer to Jack’s. “That’s right,” he says. “You’d have to start dealing behind someone’s back to get killed like that, wouldn’t you?”
“So that’s why he wasn’t welcome here anymore?”
Tony laughs. He shakes his head and then comes close again, says in a low growl, “Maybe you didn’t hear me, Jack. I said he put his hands on my girls.”
The music comes up in volume, Cameo’s “Word Up” blowing out of the speakers and across the room. Tony turns toward the stage, where Brenda from Brazil is down to a thong. She has just taken off her bikini top and thrown it to a few guys in the front row, and now she gets down on her knees and starts crawling toward them. She stops a few feet from where they are and slides onto her back, raises herself up on her hands and knees and starts pumping her torso in front of them.
“You see this,” Tony says louder, showing Jack with his hands that he means to include the whole room. “This is my castle, my palace.” He taps his finger on the bar. “I built this place up from just a SoMa shithole to a nice, respectable club. A venue.” He shakes his head. “And nobody touches my girls here.”
