by Seth Harwood
Maxine comes back to the bar, but instead of coming over to Jack and Tony, she starts washing glasses at a sink at the other end. She steals a look in their direction.
“Maxine’s a nice girl, Jack. Don’t you think?”
“Sure. Absolutely.”
“Be a shame if anything happened to her, don’t you think?”
Jack nods, not sure where this is headed. “Yeah. That’d be not good.”
Tony laughs. “Not good. Right, Jack. Nice talking. But you’re right. That’d be not good. So you know what I mean.” He leans back in his chair, relaxed.
“Right,” Jack says. “But the question I’m asking you is if you know anything about who would actually kill Ralph.”
Tony tenses and sits up straight. He shakes his head slowly. “Maybe you don’t hear so good, Jack. I just told you all I know. And all you need to know about Ralph’s involvement with this club.” He reaches behind Jack, rests his arm on the back of Jack’s chair. “Get me?”
“Okay,” Jack says. “But what I’m unclear on is what you mean about Maxine getting hurt. Are you trying to say—”
“No,” Tony says. “I’m not trying to say anything. I’m trying to—” And before Jack can react, Tony pulls down on the back of Jack’s chair. He pulls it hard, hard enough to tip it and Jack over backward. Jack makes a grab for the bar but it’s already out of his reach—he’s falling, curling into a crunch so he doesn’t hit his head, but falling toward the floor and then hitting it, his feet up over his head. He looks up and sees two of the big bouncers above him, looking down.
“So you want to know some shit, Jack?” Tony yells.
One bouncer stands above his right shoulder and another stands over his left. They both have their arms folded.
Tony hops out of his chair, stands above Jack, and kicks him in the side. “You want to know something, Jack? Do you? You want to know something about Ralph? To come in here and ask me questions?” Tony goes to kick Jack again, and Jack catches Tony’s leg against his chest and rolls over on top of it, bringing Tony down hard against the chairs at the bar. That’s when Jack feels the bouncers’ hands on his back and shoulders, pulling him up, and then something heavy hitting him in the back of the neck.
Through what looks like an indoor fog, Jack can see a strange apartment with paintings on the walls and, beyond his feet, windows letting in the sun. Outside he can hear branches scratching their leaves against the glass. He sits up, feels the pain ringing in his head like a bell in a cat toy.
“Don’t get up yet.”
A hand finds his shoulder, and Jack eases back down onto the couch. Something like a groan passes out of him. He touches his head, makes sure it’s still attached. This is the part in the movie where he asks what happened to him, but Jack doesn’t ask because he knows what happened, remembers the bouncers at The Coast kicking the shit out of him and how he couldn’t do much about it from the floor. This is no movie; no Stuntman came in to take any fake beating. When they were done, they dragged him out and left him in the alley. Jack remembers all of that and now he feels the tape on his face, the gauze along the side of his eye, and the hurt that runs all through him.
“Fuck,” he says. “Where am I?” But he already knows that the only way he ended up in an apartment and not left in the alley for dead or frozen is Maxine, and that this must be her place. Her head comes into his sight from above, and he can see from the look on her face—she’s got concern written all over it—that he must look pretty bad, which is more than he wants to know. She touches his forehead and, though her touch is soft, it starts the bell ringing in his head again and he closes his eyes.
When he wakes up, Maxine has him propped higher on the couch. He can see the plants now, set on the floor in a nice row along the windows. Very tasteful. She holds a bowl of soup up to his face so he can smell the chicken broth, feel the steam against his cheeks and in his nose. “Wow,” he says. She touches the bowl to his lips and tips gently; he drinks, feels the heat in his throat. He drinks more and soon he can sit up on his own. The pain in his head lets him move now, doesn’t increase to unbearable the instant he leaves the pillow.
“I guess Tony had a pretty bad hate for our Ralph,” he says, when he can see Maxine sitting in a chair next to him.
She nods. “I’d say you touched a nerve.”
“Then his boys touched a lot of mine.” She laughs and he tries a smile, but it hurts to move his face like that.
She touches his brow again and this time it has more of the intended effect: It helps him lean back and relax for a minute, let himself feel the touch of a woman’s fingers on his face. He hasn’t felt this in a while and realizes he’s missed it. He likes the feel, wishes he didn’t have to get beat up first for it to happen.
“You’re good to pull me out of that alley,” he tells her. “And to bring me back here.” He closes his eyes, feels her fingers smooth over his hair. “Thanks.”
“That’s okay,” she says. “I was pretty much done with that job as it was.”
“I guess you can’t much go back now. Especially if you walked out.”
She shakes her head. “No. Not so much.” Jack looks now and sees that she has a sweatshirt on and her hair pulled back from her face in a bun. She looks good in clothes, more like the kind of person you could get to know and not just look at.
“You look good,” Jack says. “I like you in clothes.”
“Ha,” she says, stone faced. “These are my clothes. Remind me to put on something more revealing for you when you feel better.”
“No,” he says. “You’re a lot less distracting this way. I can actually tell you have eyes and a face.”
“That’s funny, Jack. Almost.” She puts on a big, fake smile.
“I mean it as a compliment. You have some really nice—” Jack stops; from the look on her face, he can tell she doesn’t like where he’s headed, any of what he might have to say about her look at the club. “Eyes?” he asks.
She fakes a laugh, then gets up from her chair and leaves the room. Jack hears her walking around in the rest of the apartment. He tries to sit up, to move his feet onto the floor, but even attempting that much motion brings back the bell. He lies back, closes his eyes.
It’s dark outside the window when Jack finally gets up and turns to sit normally on the couch, even puts his feet onto the floor. He can see the bookshelves on the other side of the room, filled with books, too many for him to read the titles. He likes the way they look, though, the sight of the shelves filled up. “Wow,” he says, putting his hands on either side of him on the couch. He falls back into a prone position, with his head on the pillow.
“You already said, ‘Wow’” Maxine’s back in her chair, looking a little more relaxed and less concerned. “How are you feeling?”
“Not that bad.” There’s no bell in his head, no sensation of his skull being a toy that an animal would play with. “I’ll be all right soon. Just give me a few minutes to get up.” Then Jack remembers that Castroneves was supposed to call to set up the meet, or that he was hoping Castroneves would call. “Have you seen my cell?”
Jack’s wearing a T-shirt and there’s a blanket over his legs. He feels underneath and realizes he’s wearing only his boxers. Maxine points to a chair across the room, where he can see his warm-up suit and, under the chair, his sneakers.
“Has anyone called?”
“It rang a few times. But I figured you weren’t in any shape to talk.” She gets up and sets down a steaming mug on the coffee table. Jack can see the string and the tag of a tea bag hanging down its side. She’s got on shorts under her sweatshirt, and Jack sees her legs are thick and firm, good enough that she could’ve been one of the dancers at The Coast and not just a bartender. But he doesn’t bring that up.
She starts to go through his things, pulls out his jacket, and stops to look at him. “All right with you?”
He shrugs. “Of course. You’re my nurse.”
She smiles. In his ins
ide pocket she finds the cell phone and brings it across the room. He flips it open, glad to find it still in one piece. The screen reads “2 missed calls.” One of them is Castroneves. The other Jack doesn’t know. “You mind if I listen?” he says, holding up the phone.
She shakes her head. “Back to business.”
“Yeah. That’s me,” Jack says. He calls in to his voice mail. The first message is: “Mr. Palms. Alex Castroneves. Thank you so much for calling to apologize about your incident with Juan José, though now of course he is very anxious to meet with you again. You understand. He is still very upset. But that is on the side. I would still like to meet with your friends tonight. Can you make that happen?”
If the Colombian’s guy wants to have another shot at Jack, he’ll need to wait in line, Jack thinks, erasing the message. That or he’ll have to deal with just these pieces, and not the whole Jack. Maybe that’s more his speed.
The next message starts, “Jack, my man.” He can recognize the sergeant’s voice now. “Just calling in to see what’s up. Got a few items back from Ralph’s house I want to discuss, get your feedback on. Know what I’m saying? Call my cell.” He leaves the number.
Jack hangs up and calls the Czechs, gets David. “Jack Palms,” David says. “We have been waiting here to get your call.”
“Good,” Jack says. “I’m here. You ready to make this meet?”
In front of him, Maxine shakes her head like he’s violating doctor’s orders.
“Hold on,” he says.
Jack puts his hand over the receiver and Maxine says, “There’s no way you’re going out tonight!”
Then Vlade comes on the line. “Jack,” he says. “What has happened? We thought we would hear from you before this.”
“Sorry. I’ve been out of it. Nothing to worry about, though. I’m back. How about a meet with the Colombian?”
“Yes,” he says. “We can do.”
“Tonight. Get ready. I’ll be back to you about location.”
“That is good. Yes, we would like to go out, but we will do what you say.”
Jack hangs up. He tries to pull it all together, quiet the buzz in his head, and focus on the task at hand. Maxine sits across from him, holding her tea. “You’re not seriously going to try and go out, are you?”
“Business. You know? If I can walk…”
She nods, blows on her tea. “You’re fucking nuts.”
Jack slides his feet back onto the floor and feels a wave of pain and exhaustion run through him. “Shit,” he says. “What hit me?”
She shakes her head. “You should stay on the couch, Jack.”
He looks around the apartment, asks, “Where are we?”
“Inner Sunset,” she says.
“Shit. Where’s my car?”
“It’s here. I drove us.” She smiles, letting on any number of things from going into his pockets to get the keys, to driving the Mustang that no one else but Jack has driven in five years. But Jack doesn’t mind. Despite the thought of someone else driving his car, there’s no one he’d rather have doing it than a beautiful woman.
“How were you on the gears?”
“As nice as you could ever imagine.” She nods.
“Thanks,” he says. Then, dialing Castroneves on his cell, “Thanks again. I guess it’d sound stupid to say you saved my life?”
Maxine nods her head. “You sound a little stupid, but I kind of like hearing it.”
“No,” Jack says. “I was just asking, not really—” But Maxine’s already laughing at him and the phone starts to ring.
A few hours later, Jack pulls up outside a club in South Beach that Alex Castroneves decided on. He said he knows the owners, that they’re okay with him spending a night partying and making a big trade. Business is business, Jack thinks, as he parks the car in the pay lot across the street, parking it himself instead of letting the valet get behind the wheel.
“That’s okay,” he tells the kid when he asks for the keys. “I’ll be back out in a few minutes.”
“Sir, we need your keys in case we have to move it to allow other cars to—”
“You won’t,” Jack says, palming a twenty into the kid’s hand. He usually lets people have what they want, but a pimple-faced kid driving his Fastback, even around a parking lot, that’s not going to happen.
Crossing the street to the club, he hears the blood pumping in his head, has a momentary relapse of the pain from the afternoon. Where his side still hurts he holds his ribs, thinking of the ways he’d like to repay Tony Vitelli. Maxine steps carefully down off the curb in tall heels, looking good in a black cocktail dress she threw on as Jack struggled to get up off the couch. When he finally did get up, he took a shower and it felt good: the hot water helping him to forget some of the pain and washing some of the dried blood away down the drain. He shaved with one of her disposables, soaked his face in a hot washcloth until the red from the heat took away some of the swelling, or at least made the rest of his face look red enough to match it. He changed the bandage, washed out the cut by his eye. In the mirror he saw the big bruise, the new dimension to his forehead, and the cut along the side of his swollen lips. The one by his eye, on the other side from the bruise, is probably good for about six or eight stitches, depending on when he gets himself to a hospital. Comparing it to the few serious fights he’s been in, growing up and after, this is just worse than the norm. Except for the extra hurt around his torso and shoulders, where he figures he took some kicking—that and the slight ringing in his head.
But washed up and wearing clean clothes—a button-down shirt and crisp black jeans from the gym bag in his trunk—and with about five Advils kicking around in his bloodstream, he feels all right, good enough to drive and make sure things go according to plan at the club. He waits to cross the street with Maxine on his arm; she takes it as they leave the sidewalk and he looks over at how she’s done her hair: still up but now wet-looking, with chopsticks holding it together in a tight bun. She wears her makeup like a pro, tasteful and not overdoing it, a bit less than when she works behind the bar. Her dress is low-cut, showing off her assets even better than the tight top and the pants, more left to the imagination but the lines all clear, her smooth legs and her arms revealed; the tease and the want get Jack’s mind racing.
At first Jack didn’t think Maxine should come, but when she came out of her bedroom ready, looking like this, he couldn’t argue. Her waist is slim, the dress accenting it, making her top and bottom individually stunning. As she walks ahead of him to the ropes and a bouncer, Jack notices that her calves look great, tight over her high heels: enough muscle that he knows she works out.
The bouncer waves them through a set of red velvet ropes toward a door under a sign that says THE MIRAGE. When he recognizes Jack, he smiles, claps him on the back, which hurts, and says, “My man. Nice to see you out tonight. Looking good.”
“Good,” Jack says, thinking the last time this guy probably saw him was a mug shot from the cover of a tabloid, his face gray from junk and taking Victoria’s clubbing. “What’s up?”
They shake as Maxine pulls Jack along, toward the open doors.
Inside, Jack follows her through a set of black curtains, to where she hands two red tickets to a blonde working the register at a window. Next they walk down a hallway and come out into a huge, high-ceilinged, wide-open two-level room with loud techno music and kids dancing all around them. When Jack’s eyes adjust to the light, he sees there’s a walkway leading up to a balcony, and points it out to Maxine, leans closer to try and talk, wanting to say that Castroneves said to meet upstairs. Instead he just yells, “Upstairs.”
As they make their way through the kids and across the dance floor, Jack takes Maxine’s hand. He leads her up a set of stairs and then to the walkway above the main floor. At the entrance to the second level, there is another set of bouncers, and these two smile when they see Jack, say his name even, and let him by. “Good movie,” it looks like one of them says, but Jack, r
eading lips in the loud techno cacophony, can’t quite believe that’s what the guy really means. Still, he smiles back and touches the guy’s bulky arm.
They walk up to where tables have been set up around the balcony so men in suits and women in dresses can sit in black chairs, drinking cocktails out of glasses, and look down on the dance floor below. The drinks of choice seem to be wine and martinis here, instead of the bottled water and drinks in plastic cups downstairs. This much is still like Jack remembers the clubs from his days on the scene, back when he and Victoria would make it out at least two nights every weekend, their days turning more and more into nights that became a push to see the sunrise, and then they would sleep through the day.
Now Jack’s life features order, exercise, and calm, the view of the Bay in the morning, and knowing that he’s doing the right thing. He thinks of the satisfaction he’s supposed to feel, but he misses this: the music in his chest and the excitement of being in a place where there’s energy in the air—a destination instead of a means to an end. He’s slept through the day, still feels pain in his ribs, and knows he’ll need extra sleep tomorrow, but for now he and all the other people here are doing something good, something that they like.
The feeling of Maxine’s hand in his, for example, is something as good as or even better than anything Jack’s felt in a while.
They go over to the edge of the balcony, its rail, and look down onto the action just in time to see the Czechs walk in with Michal and his twin in tow. The five of them look ridiculous, so clearly out of place with their dark suits and serious faces, caught in the spin of young, small, American kids dancing to a techno beat. Al stands out from them even, a light blue blazer sticking out in the crowd, his silver shirt doing something in the flash of blue lights that is dazzling, mesmerizing to look at. The five move across the floor, pushing space in front and around them as they go, disrupting the rhythms of the dance, though Jack bets on the kids’ ecstasy highs to help them recover.
