by Seth Harwood
It looks like David and Vlade both have briefcases; Jack can’t imagine how they got these past the bouncers and metal detectors outside, especially if one (at least) is full of money. But then, showing a briefcase full of money is a very convincing mode of negotiation. That and saying you’re there to meet with Alex Castroneves, a friend of the owner of the club, like Jack told them to.
Jack watches Al push a few club kids out of his way. They weren’t really blocking his path, but he does it anyway.
He points out their pack to Maxine, nods at the far part of the balcony, where Alex and a few of his friends are sitting on black leather sofas around a low table. Jack can see the bottle of champagne chilling in a bucket of ice, and the unsuccessful bodyguard, Juan José, sitting at the end of a couch, with tape across the bridge of his nose. He sees Jack at that moment and raises his glass, smiles as if he wants to break every bone in Jack’s body. He’ll have a few less to break now, Jack thinks, feeling his ribs, testing to see if anything moves around. The right side hurts worse than the left, but both shoulders seem equally tight. What Jack needs is a long, hot bath.
With extra couches added to the Colombian area, Jack and Maxine sit across the table from Alex. Jack sits next to Juan José, who leans in close and yells, “You broke my fucking nose. I hope to do the same to you.”
He moves to shake Jack’s hand, Jack thinks, but then slaps Jack on the chest, hard, feeling around his chest and arms to make sure he isn’t wearing a wire or weapon, and, finally, slaps him once across the face. It’s enough to make Jack wince.
Juan José smiles wide, nodding. “It looks like someone else may have beaten me to you. But I will still have the chance, no?”
Maxine pats Jack’s knee and gets his attention. Her knees are close to his, one leg crossed over the other with her dress riding up to reveal the fleshy part of her thigh. Her legs look clean-shaven, smooth to the touch.
The Czechs make over pronounced gestures of friendliness to the Colombians, ordering drinks all around, Jack still opting for club soda, though he feels more and more that he should just knock back a bourbon and Coke. He thinks this through for a second, remembers Victoria drunk, the times she’d tear up their house. Just add another day of sobriety, he thinks. Even this one.
As the drinks come and the Czechs and the Colombians all start talking, Jack tries to look at their faces, but Al’s shirt keeps drawing his eyes back like a magnet.
He wonders if any of them were the ones who killed Ralph and his dog. It’s possible that one or two of the bodyguards, the Colombian’s or the Czechs’, could have done it, but Jack doesn’t think so. Though Juan José couldn’t have pulled it off, Michal would have done it. The other guy, the one who never talks, the one Hopkins pointed out in the picture, he could have done something. Who knows what he could have done?
Jack reaches into his inside pocket to check his cell phone and, bringing it out, sees he has a missed call from Hopkins, nothing else. He looks at Maxine and she smiles at him, nods back toward a friend of Castroneves’ who’s talking at her. Jack leans close to her to whisper, “Do you think one of these guys killed Ralph?”
She shakes her head.
Then she leans closer, and here the music’s reasonable enough that he can hear. “I wish I knew,” she says. “Maybe I’d feel better right now.”
Jack can feel her breath against his neck. “It wasn’t Tony,” she says. “He just got pissed off that Ralph didn’t pay his—” Jack can’t tell whether the last word is bills or girls but figures it’s pretty much the same thing either way.
Then Jack’s phone lights up, and he sees he’s gotten a text message, something that’s never happened before. But the phone has a button clearly marked “Show,” and he pushes it: The text is from Mills Hopkins’ number. Know you’re at Mirage. Need to talk.
“Fuck,” Jack says, though in the noise he hopes no one else can hear him. But Alex Castroneves catches his eye. “Jack,” he says. He comes over to where Jack is sitting and crouches in front of him. “I am not angry over what happened with Juan José. He can be difficult, I know.” Castroneves raises a finger. “He is, of course, angry, but I will let the two of you sort through that.”
Jack leans forward to try and speak, opens his hands.
Seeing the bandage on Jack’s temple, Castroneves winces. He reaches to touch it. “I guess someone has beaten Juan José to your acquaintance,” he says. “Who did this?”
“A friend.” Jack holds up a finger. “Excuse me.” He gets up and sees Maxine’s look of concern—part Where are you going? and part Don’t leave me with this guy I He points to the bathrooms, hoping that will be enough of an answer for her.
In a polished-metal stall, Jack leans his head against the cold side and takes a deep breath. His rib cage feels like it’s on fire as the constant thump of the bass rattles his chest. It’s less loud inside the tiled walls of the John, but the pumping beat still comes through without remorse.
Jack stands up, listening to his own breathing, trying to gauge whether any parts of his ribs might be poking his lungs. He calls Hopkins on his cell, thinks about sitting down, but knows that’s not a good idea. He leans up against the metal side of the stall. Then he thinks he hears his own name come through the phone.
“Mills,” he says. “What the fuck?”
“This is your favor, asshole. Get your ass out of that club.”
“Whatever you’re thinking of doing, Mills, don’t.”
“Oh, we are, Jack. Sorry, but the SFPD is about to crash that party hard. Nothing I can do about it now.”
That’s when Jack hears a pop that’s louder than any of the beats he’s heard all night: a sound that comes through the walls loud and sharp instead of muffled. A gunshot. Then two more: pop, pop.
“Shit,” Jack says into the phone. “Fuck is this?”
“What’s happening, Jack?”
He flips the phone closed and rushes out of the stall. But before he can get to the bathroom door, he bumps into a guy in a black suit and his woman racing in, pupils like big black dimes. The woman screams.
Jack pushes past them.
Outside the bathroom, people run in panic, kids on ecstasy scream, and the music pumps on. Some still dance and drink like nothing’s happened, but the ones who’ve lost their shit are running wild in the club, crashing into one another, knocking people over, flailing for the exits.
In the midst of this, around the couches, two guys stand over the Czechs and Castroneves with guns. One has a handgun and the other holds an automatic with two hands—something with a big clip. They both wear black suits, the first with dark glasses and a shaved head, pale face and scalp—he looks like a cue ball on black felt—and the second with a flattop, brown hair, and wraparound shades.
Jack can’t see Maxine. He stands still for a moment, a breath, and then starts toward them, pushing his way through the crowd. His friend from the Wharf stands up and goes after Flattop, but Cue Ball knocks him down with a backslap of gunstock. Juan José falls back onto a couch and Cue Ball opens up on him: two shots, both to the chest.
For just an instant, a tiny part of Jack is relieved, thinking that there’s at least one less person in the world that wants to break his bones. But this relief is short lived: He’s looking at two new guys busting up what was supposed to be his deal, putting bullet holes in the couch he was just sitting on.
Castroneves rolls Juan José off him and starts moving to the side. Cue Ball points his handgun at him, but Michal jumps up and starts shooting at both of the guys, first Cue Ball and then Flattop. He hits Cue Ball—some of him sprays out his back, but Flattop gets down behind a couch. Jack’s ten feet away and closing. The running hurts in his ribs and neck, but he keeps going.
Then Flattop pops up and rips through Michal with a spray of bullets that assures the whole club something is going on. Abruptly, as if the power were pulled, the music stops. Everyone on the balcony who hasn’t already panicked loses it: Some head for the bath
rooms and fire exits, some for the ramp and the main floor. From the dance floor some drugged-up club kids begin screaming like they’re four-year-olds, maybe because they’re on acid, or whatever else they’re on that stops them from seeing with any remove; they blindly freak out, lose all control, the sound awful: naked terror without a sound track.
Jack keeps moving forward, toward his group, knocking suits out of his way as he moves. The other Czech guard starts shooting, tearing up the couch, but Flattop stays behind it. Castroneves and his friends start to crawl toward the main floor. When they clear the couches, they get up and run, heading down the walkway into the crush. Jack sees one of them carrying a silver case.
Almost at the couches, a panicked clubber runs into Jack at full speed, hits him from the side like an end rush on the quarterback, knocks him into the rail and almost over the edge. Jack holds on, closes his eyes, and feels the bell ring in his head again, the pain coming from his ribs starting all over. When he opens his eyes, he sees a few of the club’s bigger bouncers coming up the ramp, and below him, at the far end of the dance floor, Jack notices Mills Hopkins and a few of his boys in blue trying to get in past the throng of panicked club kids who are trying their best to push themselves out of the club. Mills and the others have their guns drawn, but they still can’t get anywhere through all the kids. It’s like the running of the bulls down there. He has about a minute before they start shooting in the air to clear a path, Jack guesses.
Now the rest of the Czechs start to rush the couch with Flattop behind it, but the guy raises his gun, and lets off a spray that gets everyone down, mostly knocks out a few lights above their heads. Still, it’s enough to make the Czechs, except for Al, think twice about moving on him. Al starts over the back of the couch, and the gun sprays again before Vlade and David pull him back, unharmed somehow, and drag him away in the other direction. They start to head the same way as Castroneves and his friends, carrying their briefcases over their chests.
The guard who doesn’t talk opens up with his and Michal’s guns now, shooting up the couch, but in a heartbeat, the club bouncers reach the scene and they shout at him to stop. As he looks their way, the shooter with the automatic stands and opens up again. Jack, the Czech, and the bouncers all get down fast. Maxine emerges from the other side of the couches, in a crouch, moving toward the bathrooms. By the way she’s moving—long and swift fluid movements, no pauses—Jack can see she’s all right.
In all of it, Jack has a moment of indecision, a point where he doesn’t know which way to turn. He’s moving toward the guns and realizes that’s not the best direction but isn’t sure of the best way to go or what to do. The main entrance has the cops, and the ramp leads to the panicked crowd. There’s got to be another way out. Maxine starts pointing at something behind him, and he looks, sees a red exit sign off down a hall beyond the bathrooms, and starts to go back that way as he hears the automatic open up again and more glass breaking. He looks back to see Maxine cutting down a different hall, standing and running full out now, her heels left behind. There’s no time to go after her when he hears shouting and someone, probably Sergeant Hopkins, shoot a gun from the dance floor below and shout, “Everybody stay put! This is the police!”
Jack breaks through the exit door and into the emergency stairwell just in time to hear more shooting. He hopes Maxine will get out fine; she looked like she knew where she was going. But he stops before he gets to the stairs and knows he’s got to go back. Ahead of him suits and women in dresses go for the flights of stairs that lead to some exit, but back there behind him are the Czechs and a serious mess; maybe Maxine is also stuck in it. “Shit,” he says. “Shit.” Before anything else goes through his head, he’s turning back to go find out.
Jack pushes his way past the suits coming at him heading for the door, and starts toward the shooter. Flattop’s behind the same couch, but now it’s pushed back all the way to the wall, and the club bouncers are holding him there. One of them is hitting him with the back end of his own gun, they’ve knocked the wraparounds into oblivion, and it’s starting to get bloody. Maxine is nowhere to be seen. Jack looks where she’d last been heading and sees a long corridor with another exit sign at the end. She’s probably gone, he hopes.
But Al, in all his wild-suit attention-grabbing glory, is standing at the balcony rail, waving a gun around and aiming it toward the dance floor. The balcony is still full of people, club kids and the suits now, as some of the scared clubbers have run up the ramp to get away from the cops. What was once a nice bar with backlit glass shelves behind it is shot up, destroyed: broken bottles, booze, and glass everywhere. Jack closes on Al as he starts aiming again and, thinking there’s no way this bastard is even worth it, Jack tackles him to the floor. He gets hold of his gun and, holding Al’s face in front of his, he says, “We have to get out ofhere.”
With wide eyes, Al speaks in Czech.
“Listen to me,” Jack says. He gives him a light slap on the face.
Al’s eyes focus. “Show me.”
Jack gets up, pulls Al to his feet. The ribs hurt, his leg’s bothering him, he wants to vomit. But he can see the door. Cops are coming up the walkway from below, battering their way through the crowd. “Come on,” Jack says, pulling Al toward the bathrooms. Al’s got one of the briefcases and it slows him down, but they make it to the bathroom and down the corridor to the emergency stairs before any further orders come from the police.
The exit stairs come out onto a back alley: dumpsters, a chain-link fence, and the city’s hot clubbers running off into the night. Jack holds Al’s arm. He lets him go, and Al stands still, more confused than ever.
“What was that shit?” Al says. “Who were they?”
Jack puts his hands on his knees and notices they’re covered in blood. He wipes them off, realizes it’s not his blood, might even be wine and other drinks, and that now he’s a mess. The whole night is something worse than he could’ve imagined. He can hear the bell starting to ring in his head again.
“Who was that?” Al yells. “Fucking who? They kill Michal!”
“Calm down,” Jack says. “You’re all right?” He looks Al up and down: His face looks fine but his suit is wrinkled and messy around the knees, and sweat shows through his silver shirt. It’s no loss to the world. “We have to get out of here,” Jack says.
“Who! Who!”
“Stop.” Jack grabs Al by the shoulders and yells in his face. “Listen to me! I don’t know who did that, but we will find out. Right now we have to go!”
Al brings his arms down, finally stops shouting.
“Go!” Jack says, pointing to the other end of the alley. “Find your car.”
He turns to head toward his Mustang, goes a few steps, and when he looks back, Al has disappeared into the crowd.
At the front of the club, Jack sees the street packed with clubbers and police cars with lights flashing. He ducks around the barricade, crosses the street, and makes his way to the parking lot, straight back to the Mustang. The valet kid is gone and people’s keys are locked up inside his little booth. No one’s going anywhere. Jack sees Maxine leaning against his car, still looking hot in her dress, smoking a cigarette.
“What took you?” she asks.
He opens her door and lets her in, walks back around to his side of the car. He sees her reach across the front seat and unlock his door—she’s his kind of woman, he decides now, if he was ever unsure. When they’ve both got their doors closed and the roar of the engine has calmed, he says, “I guess it took a while because I went back for you.”
She laughs. “Get us out of here, hero.”
Jack backs up to fit between the cars parked in front of him, a tight squeeze, then slowly rolls up the concrete embankment onto the sidewalk, first the front wheels and then the back bumping over the rise. Then down off the curb, two more bumps, and they’re on the road, leaving the police cars and tripped-out crowds behind as they head north toward Market. In his rearview, Jack sees the kid
s spilling out of the police barricade, some of them running and getting away into the night.
He slows down to make the turn toward Market and later, as he shifts up to third gear heading onto Van Ness, Maxine puts her hand over his.
They wake late the next morning, make love slowly, gingerly, Jack trying to protect his bruises and delicate ribs, Maxine as beautiful naked as Jack imagined, her bare skin practically glowing in the morning sun. She reacts to every touch, her skin soft under Jack’s fingers, her body so real, so sweet.
They share a cigarette after, giving in to the cliché, but enjoying the soft exchange, the sharing, the slow inhales, the opposition to their bodies’ desire to eat. Sun seeps in through thin curtains.
By 11:30 they’re in Jack’s kitchen making coffee, Jack in pajama bottoms and a robe. He sees he has four messages on the machine. Mills Hopkins, he guesses, and the Czechs, but who else? Castroneves? He starts the coffee. Maxine’s found herself a seat on one of the high bar stools Victoria bought to go next to the kitchen island. She has on one of Jack’s old robes, a green plaid, and it looks good with her dark hair and green eyes. He can see a light spray of freckles on her skin at the robe’s neck.
“What is this?” Maxine asks, gesturing toward a six-inch gold statue of Bruce Lee on a small black pedestal. Jack looks at it, something he hasn’t thought about in a while.
“That’s my Action Movie Guild award for Best New Actor. You didn’t know?”
“Right,” she says, smiling, holding back a laugh. “That’s a nice place for it, right next to your bowl of fake fruit.”
“Victoria,” Jack says, nodding at the plastic produce. “What can I say?”
He picks up the statue, looks it over. He’d forgotten about this thing, can’t remember the last time he noticed it. “It’s funny,” he says, running his finger over the stern features of Bruce Lee’s face. “You can get used to things and then completely forget them sometimes; you get so focused on everything else.” He puts it back down, thinking about the time when Victoria threw everything on the mantel at him, piece by piece. “I’m not even sure how this got here.”
