by Seth Harwood
Maxine laughs once, covers her face. “Oh, Jack,” she says.
“Tony Vitelli. You did all this for him?”
She nods. “He’s the boss.”
“What’s he giving you?”
“Money, dumbass. Bartending I’m making, like, a few hundred a night, if I hustle; then you walk in, Tony offers me five grand to watch you and keep him up to date on the Czechs. That seem like a hard decision?”
Jack looks down at the gun on the table, frowns. “It’s a hard decision if you don’t consider yourself a prostitute.”
She hits the table hard, with both hands. “You motherfucker!” Maxine starts to stand, but Jack takes the handle of the gun, grips it properly again. He holds it on her until she sits back down.
“Get the fuck out of my house.”
“I’ll leave.” Jack stays where he’s sitting, looks around the small kitchen. He’s not sure of what to say next yet, can’t believe that she’s actually rolled him over. “For fucking Tony?” he says. “That sleazeball?”
She shakes her head. “Green money, Jack.”
“You fucking him too?”
Then, before he can lift the gun, she’s standing; she swings and connects with his face as he lifts the gun. He takes the hard slap and nods. “Okay,” he says, though it hurts. “I guess I deserved that.” He touches his cheek. “If you are I don’t want to know, I guess. Matter of fact, I don’t care.”
“Think whatever you want, Jack. You’re an asshole.” She sits back down.
“Tell me why Tony’s so hot after the Czechs.”
She shrugs. “He’s got something going with a guy who knows them. That’s what I think. Some guy from over there.” She waves her hand toward the living room, beyond. “This guy is a whole new line for white products: pills and powder. He’s Tony’s new guy. Now he has a problem with your friends. Turns out he wants to know where they are, what they do, what they’re involved with. It becomes Tony’s concern.”
“What’s he look like?”
“He’s bald. Ugly bald. Bad beard. That’s all I know.”
Jack shakes his head, still unable to believe that she’s been working for Tony the whole time. “Didn’t you know I’d get the money, that it’d be worth more to you to be with me?”
She laughs. “Yeah. I see all that money rolling in from the DVD sales of Shake Me Down just falling off of you. No offense, Jack. Your house is nice, but if you plan on entertaining, you should lose some of the Third Notice—Unpaid envelopes off your dining-room table.”
Jack nods, stands up from the table. “That’s cool, Max. I see how it is. You couldn’t wait. I have the bag of money outside, actually, and all you want is to relieve me of the whole amount. Right? Take it at gunpoint?” He walks close to her, holding the gun down by his side. “That’s good, Maxine. Nice way to be.” He reaches to touch her face and she slaps his hand away.
“Okay,” he says, walking out of the kitchen. “Then thanks for the bandage job. You did a good job of patching me up.”
He lets the door close softly behind him, doesn’t give her the pleasure of hearing it slam.
In the car he goes straight for his pack, doesn’t even bother to try and hold back from smoking. He’s got about ten cigarettes left, half the pack, and if he goes through that tonight, it’s fine with him.
Then he’s driving and for a while he’s not even sure where he’s headed. He’ll ultimately have to meet Junius, he knows, and come up with Vitelli by noon for Sergeant Hopkins.
But he can’t quite wrap his mind around what happened with Maxine: that she was playing him the whole time. There was that part of him that never trusted her, and then she made that part seem so wrong. So much for the idea that he has to trust somebody, or maybe he just has to be more careful about who that person is. Jack knows he’s gone wrong now twice—at least—with women, fucked up and let them take him down. He can only be glad this time didn’t cost him as much as it did with Victoria. Maybe he should just give up on trust for a while. Maxine did him successfully, made him play her game, but he still doesn’t understand why. It’s just another question for Tony Vitelli.
And that’s where it all leads, the only place left with answers: The Coast. He’s got to go there; to do this, he’ll need Niki with him, at least. He turns toward downtown, heads for the hotel.
He just wants a drink more than anything else now, thinks of himself at a bar with the smokes and a scotch in his hand. Then he lets himself think about going up to the Czechs and joining them in the powder, and it’s the first time that he’s thought like that in a long while. He shakes his head and puts out his cigarette, curses into the empty car. He knows she hurt him bad if his mind goes that far, if he’s that far out of where he’d worked himself back to being. But the temptation’s been there for the past few days, the whole time this thing’s been going on. What he needs now is to just finish it up, go back to Sausalito, get back into his routine, or maybe even leave town for a while, head up to Seattle or the San Juan Islands, even Vancouver. He can get away and let it all blow over, which it hopefully will, and then worry about getting healthy again.
But what he needs now is to get through this; he takes a new cigarette out of the pack and lights it up.
At the Regis, he leaves the car outside and goes right to the bank of elevators for the penthouse. When the operator sees Jack, he recognizes him and takes him right up. In the car he looks himself over again, checks his reflection in the doors, and actually decides that he looks better now that he’s had it out with Maxine and he’s determined to get this thing over with. There’s a new look of determination on his face that’s stronger than coffee, overcomes even the exhaustion he’d seen before.
“You guys are having some night, it looks like,” the operator says to Jack.
Jack looks at him, a kid not more than twenty, working his way through the night at a fancy hotel. He nods. “It’s all good times with us.”
“You were in a movie, right?”
Jack shakes his head. “You must be thinking of somebody else.”
The doors open, and Jack sees David and Al sitting on the couches, watching TV. Al’s got his hand in a bucket of ice. “You’re back,” David says. He doesn’t get up, just raises his glass: another scotch.
“Boys,” Jack says. “I need a drink.” They point him to the bar, and Jack walks over. Al gets up off the couch and comes with him, carrying the bucket of ice. He starts to question Jack about what’s happening next. Jack has his hand on the decanter of scotch, whatever they’re drinking, and he’s going to tell Al to sit back down when he hears Vlade.
“Jack’s back!” Vlade comes out of one of the rooms, holding a small travel bag. “What is up, Jack?”
Jack laughs. “You want the good news, or the bad?”
“Good news, of course.” Vlade comes around the outside of the room and over to the bar. He claps Al on the back and takes a lowball glass off the shelf, pours it half full from the decanter that’s still in Jack’s hand.
“Where’s Niki?”
“Niki is sleeping. But we will get him up.”
“You call my name?” Niki stands on the far side of the room in a pair of pajama bottoms. His chest is bare, and Jack can see he’s wider in the shoulders than Jack expected, and big through the chest.
Vlade takes the bottle out of Jack’s hand, pours another low-ball, and adds a few chunks of ice from the refrigerator. He puts the glass into Jack’s hand, where the bottle had been. “The good news, Jack.”
“Shit,” Jack says. Even now, this close, he thinks of what he’s seen drinking do to Victoria, what he remembers it did to his father, and he puts down the scotch. “I need a coffee.”
Vlade laughs and claps Jack on the shoulder. He gives him a light slap on the face, just enough to touch and not hurt—it gets the point across.
“Okay. The good news is that Junius is getting sprung from prison as we speak. How’s that for good?”
Vlade raises his lo
wer lip and tilts his head at the same time, as if he’s considering this and isn’t entirely sold on its merit. He takes a drink, shakes his head. “And the bad news?” he says.
“Maxine sold me out. She was working for Tony this whole time.”
“Oh!” They all make the sound at once, a communal groan.
“Ouch,” Vlade says. “Shit, Jack.”
This even gets David to turn around on the couch and look at Jack with a long face. Al just shakes his head. He puts down the bucket of ice and pours himself another scotch.
Niki comes into the room. “What is next?” he asks.
“The Coast, baby. It’s definitely time to take Tony Vitelli down.”
“Shake him down!” Al says.
Vlade puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “You sure you are up to that tonight?”
Jack shakes his head. “Fuck. This is the time and I see plenty of reasons. I came to recruit guns and drink scotch. And I’m not drinking scotch, so who’s coming?”
Niki raises his hand, disappears back into his room to get changed. Vlade says, “Your friend on the police. Why can’t you just tell him to arrest Tony? Why do you have to go there?”
“That’s the deal,” Jack says. “I have until noon and he wants names and faces, who’s doing what in this town. It’s not just about Tony; it’s about finding his supply, finding out what he has going with Maxine. It might be about finding his connection to the KGB. And I have to know for myself what happened to Ralph, who sent the guys who shot up my car, and who killed Ralph’s dog. I want no guesses, so I can rest when this is all over. I’m not going home until I find out for sure.”
“What guesses?”
Jack takes a step back and counts them out on his fingers. “Maxine working for Tony? That’s not a guess. She told me she was. Junius getting put in the lockup as part of Tony’s design to help get him off the streets, I still don’t know for sure, but Tony didn’t go in. That’s one. Tony killing Ralph and sending the Russians who shot Michal, that I still don’t know. That’s two big ones. Why would someone kill Ralph?” He looks at his hand, and then puts it on Vlade’s shoulder. “This guy with the beard being Tony’s new supply? I’m getting close on that one, but I want to know it for sure. I still don’t know what’re my guesses and what I’ve actually figured out. That’s what’s killing me.”
“If this is what you want, Jack, we are with you. Since you brought us this far, we cannot leave you now.” Vlade puts his opposite arm on Jack’s shoulder so now they’re in a kind of odd yin-yang embrace. “But for you, you sure you do not want to take the money and relax, as they say?”
Now Jack takes his hand off Vlade’s shoulder and gives him a light slap on the face. He steps away. “I can’t do that, V. The money will be there. I can go home to rest tomorrow.” Jack knows he won’t sleep for weeks thinking of the Russians or Freeman knocking at his windows if he goes home, wants to ride this thing out so he can personally put all the pieces in place. “Tonight I got to get to the bottom of this. Tomorrow I go home and know that the people who killed Ralph, shot my car, and put Maxine up to this are taken care of, that they’re not going to come looking to find me. That,” he says. “That, Vlade, is for me.”
Niki comes out of his room dressed and holding a big gun. “I am ready,” he says.
Vlade nods, his lower lip pushed up toward his mustache. “We go.”
Jack calls and leaves a message on Junius’ cell phone for him to call back when he gets out of the clink, and then not five minutes later, the phone rings.
“Yo, Jack! It’s J.”
“That was fast, man.” Jack’s still in the Czechs’ penthouse, drinking room-service coffee now and standing close to the windows, looking out at the night skyline. “Nice work.”
“Shit, man. You’re the one did the work. Now tell me what’s next.”
Jack takes a sip of the hot coffee, liking the way it burns going down. It’s not scotch, but it’ll leave him one hell of a lot better off for what he’ll be getting into tonight, and it keeps his two-year wagon intact. He rests his forehead against the glass. “We take The Coast,” Jack says.
“That’s what I wanted to hear.”
“We go into The Coast and say hello to Tony. My sergeant on the force needs a bust out of this shit bad, and I need to give him one: the new supplier. Bad as I want Tony, I’m going down there to piece this shit together for myself, and then we send in the cops.”
“I like the sound of that as long as I get to say what’s up to the man Tony, myself.”
“Freeman with you?”
“Yeah. He here. Where you want us to meet you at?”
Twenty minutes later, Jack pulls up next to Junius’ Mercedes on Minna, a small street parallel to Market, just one block south and not yet into SoMa. In the Fastback, Jack’s got Vlade next to him up front, and Niki in the back.
Junius rolls down his window. “Ow! Jack Palms. That’s one damn nice ride! Sixty-seven?”
“Sixty-six,” Jack tells him. “K-Code.”
“Fuck! Hi-Po! Those things are rare as shit. You just rose up about ten pegs in my book, son.”
“Thanks. This afternoon some of these fucks shot up my driver’s side. That’s another reason I’m here.” Jack tells Junius who Vlade is and they lean forward to see Freeman wedged into the front passenger seat of the Mercedes like a bull in a chute. Freeman just nods at the two of them, holds up two fingers.
Jack guns the engine of the Mustang, and Junius howls. Then he holds up his hand. “One word, Jack?” he says, opening his door.
Jack looks back over at the Mercedes. “What?”
Junius stands up out of his car, motions to its rear end with his hand. “Let me just talk to you for a second.”
Vlade gives Jack a look like he should be careful, that maybe they’d be better off just driving away now, but Jack shakes him off. Vlade takes a gun out from below his seat and presses it against the door, pointing at Junius. Jack looks in back at Niki: He’s got his knees pressed up into the air in front of him and he’s sunk way back down in the seat. He nods once, pats the side of his jacket.
Jack looks back up the street in his rearview, making sure no one’s coming down behind him, and sees it’s empty. At this hour of night, Market may be busy with cabs, but no one’s coming down the one-way side streets; most of them don’t even run for more than a few blocks. He gets out of the car and walks around the back to meet Junius at his Mercedes.
Junius waves him closer and walks around to his trunk. “What you need, man?” he says, opening the trunk. Jack sees an array of weapons—guns mostly, but also some brass knuckles and knives—that would make most any urban warlord giggle. The weapons are all neatly laid out inside a foam-covered trunk liner. He sees a few small automatics, a couple of assault rifles, an assortment of handguns, including a shiny silver Magnum with a barrel long enough to poke your victims’ eyes out.
“I’m all right, man,” Jack says, holding up his hands. He takes an inadvertent step back away from the trunk.
“No, man. Listen,” Junius says. “You might need some of this shit if things get tight in there.” Jack looks back at the Mustang: Vlade and Niki watch with their full attention.
“I’m okay.” Jack produces Maxine’s revolver from his pocket, drops it into the trunk.
“You sure?” Junius asks. “You heard what happened to the Colombian?”
“No.”
“Police found his ass in back of The Mirage, stuffed in one of the dumpsters. Motherfucker had holes in him, Jack. I mean plural.”
“Shit.” Jack spits onto the asphalt, rubs it out with the toe of his sneaker. A car starts down the street behind them, its light bright in Jack’s eyes. He holds up his arm to shield them from the light. “I’m all right, J.,” he says.
Junius grabs his arm. He regards Jack with complete seriousness as he presses the side of a gun against his chest and tells Jack to take it. Jack can feel the gun in his hand: It’s warm, like molded b
lack metal made to fit your palm.
“This is the Glock, Jack.” As the oncoming car gets closer to where they are, it honks once. Junius pats Jack across his collar. “You’ll be glad when you need that.”
The car honks again and Junius rushes at it, his hands raised, yelling at the driver to get out and fight or shut the fuck up.
Jack walks back around to his side of the Mustang and gets in. He hands the Glock off to Vlade and guns the engine. Vlade nods at the weapon. “This is good, Jack. A nice gun.”
With the driver of the third car sufficiently scared and quieted, Junius goes back to his Mercedes, closes the trunk, and slowly gets in.
“He gave you this?” Vlade says. “Does he think we do not have weapons?”
“I don’t know,” Jack says. “And I don’t care.”
As they drive to The Coast, Junius follows the Mustang lazily, as if he knows their path even better than Jack, dropping back and then coming up close to them at turns, fading off and drifting behind them for blocks on end. Jack smokes a single cigarette, taking his time to enjoy it. Vlade and Niki smoke too, hurrying through their cigarettes like normal smokers, and Jack watches them, monitoring his own inhales and exhales, watching the road, putting in a tape of some slow bass-heavy jazz to calm his nerves.
For all he knows, he’s the only one sober at this point in the night, the only one who’s not on coke or something else. Junius was drinking at The Mirage and probably with dinner, and it’s Jack’s guess from the smell around their car and coming out of the trunk, that he and Freeman smoked something potent after he got out of jail. With a gun he should feel safe, in Junius’ view, but Jack actually feels less safe with a loaded weapon. Long term, it just doesn’t make sense if he’s going to get out of this and go back to his life. He thinks of the bag in the trunk, the bills he’s had on his kitchen table for the past few months and how he’ll be able to pay them off now, get the bank and the mortgage straightened out, push the credit card bills off his back. Then he’ll get back into his routine of healthy living: running, weights, cereal for breakfast. At least that’s something to hope for.
