by Seth Harwood
After he’s eaten most of his steak and eggs—the eggs sunny-side up on top of the steak so he can let the yolk run over it—and had a full cup of coffee, Jack excuses himself to go outside. He’s reached the point in the meal where he’d rather have a cigarette than more food. Out in the parking lot, he leans against the hood of the Mustang as the sun comes up around him. The light of day began when they were eating, and now Jack stands in the twilight of the morning, finally done, finally clear into Sunday, and smoking, finally almost ready to go home.
He takes a long drag of his cigarette, enjoying it as much as anything he can imagine. If he has to chain-smoke for the next two weeks, months even, he’s going to smoke now and for the rest of the next few days, as much as he wants.
He watches the cars cruise past him, still in a trickle of early-Sunday-morning inactivity, feeling the cold chill in the air. He’ll go back up to Sausalito this morning to relax for a few days, eventually go to a doctor to have his ribs and face checked out, then get back into the gym and start up his morning running, but not right away—not anything right away. Jack nods at the thought, exhaling smoke through his nose, enjoying that feeling and the cold, icy buzzing around his bones that comes from the exhaustion mixed with coffee and ignited by the nicotine. There’s something about the feeling that’s so wrong it’s good. A shiver runs through him.
He can see Vlade and Niki in the diner, talking fast. Now that the bullet’s out and Vlade’s through some of his pain, he’s flying on the coke, drinking coffee; he only wants to talk about their road trip and the places they’ll go. Jack has just heard his plans about Yosemite, Yellowstone, Montana, and then driving down across the plains into Las Vegas, clear through to L.A. from there.
Jack looks up at the sky, takes his cell phone out of his jacket to call Hopkins. It’s not something he’s eager to do, but it’s a part of the job he has to finish.
The cop answers on the fourth ring, groggy when he says hello, clearly still sleeping at this hour on a Sunday. It’s not even six-thirty
“Sergeant, this is your friend Jack Palms, calling you in less than twenty-four hours from the last time we spoke, the time when we decided on our deal.”
“Uhngh. What is it, Jack? This better be good, you ungrateful, sleep-depriving fuck.”
Jack can’t help himself from enjoying the moment, waking Hopkins, hearing him struggle to deal with the phone for the second time of the night. “Not such a good night for you sleep-wise, was it, Mills?”
Hopkins grunts.
“Me, I haven’t slept yet, so I feel okay. But I expect I’ll be crashing soon.”
“Yeah. Good. What is it?”
“I wanted to call and let you know that some of the city’s big drug traffic can be found down at The Coast in SoMa, that their supply line is currently handcuffed to a pool table in a back office of the club, very much alive. You’ll find him to be a bald Russian guy with a beard, not very agreeable, but I have it on good terms from Junius Ponds, now deceased, and Tony Vitelli, also now deceased, that this was the Man. Plus, I think he’s your Eastern European problem. Your terrorist.”
“Really?” Now Jack can hear the sergeant coming to his senses, waking up as his police mind thinks through the implications of what Jack is saying: the busts, the investigations, the trials, thinking about the possibility of a promotion.
“I’m serious. Tony V. offed the wrong Colombian, and his army tore up The Coast this morning. You’ll find a bunch of them sleeping the big sleep, along with Tony, Junius, and a bunch of Tony’s thugs. Any other Colombians that were there will be long gone by now.” Jack’s even a little surprised by the upbeat sound of his own voice, but he has to allow it: Right now, he feels good to have this all done.
“Wait a minute, Jack,” Hopkins says. “I’m sitting up now. Tell me all this again.”
“The Russian you’ll find at The Coast was Tony V.’s new supply line. He started selling here to Junius and Tony at the same time. Then Tony got greedy. He tried to cut out Junius and Ralph, also the Colombian, Castroneves. But Ralph wouldn’t stop going for more deals. He went around Tony to get to Castroneves and that’s what pissed Tony off.”
“Pissed him off enough to kill Anderino?”
Jack takes another drag, lets some of the smoke out through clenched teeth. “Enough to have a couple of Russians take him out. They followed orders from the new supply, your bald bearded dude. The killers would be the John Does you found downtown today.”
“The ones that don’t exist,” Hopkins says. “I even recognized the one we had in custody last night.”
“So there you go. Tony V. was behind it, but the guy you’ll find at The Coast was his outside help, his new connection. For all I know, he was the Eastern European you’ve been looking for. He’s definitely a well-connected guy. Ex-KGB, from what I understand. Pretty much has terrorist tattooed across his skull.”
“I’m on it.” Now Hopkins sounds very much awake. “You have a good morning, Jack.”
“Thanks. And one other thing. You have a leak on your force. I’m assuming you know that.”
“Right.” Hopkins grunts. “I’m getting dressed. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“It’s O’Malley. He was there.”
Hopkins whistles. “Shit. He was there?”
“He was. Now he isn’t, but you know your man. Seems he was pretty tight with Tony.”
“Okay,” Hopkins says. “Thanks. I guess I won’t have to meet at the diner anymore.”
“No,” Jack says. “I guess not.” He looks at his sneakers: Scuffed and discolored from the blood, what were recently some new-looking Nikes are now not a pretty sight.
“Go home, Jack.”
“Hopkins,” Jack says, standing up to head back inside. “Don’t let’s talk for a long time, okay?”
After finishing his breakfast, Jack takes the Czechs back to their hotel, Vlade still talking road trip, planning the Miami-Atlanta-DC leg of their ride. Jack’s already told them the police will be very serious about picking up the Russian, taking him in, and making sure something sticks. All along, it’s the supply line and the mob guys that Sergeant Hopkins had wanted; now that he has both in one man, he’ll do what he needs to make some convictions stick.
“You don’t want to see Orlando?” Jack asks, joking. “Disney World? Epcot? You know they have a whole display of the world in there, even your country, probably.”
Vlade shakes his head, very serious. “No Disney.”
In front of the hotel, they pull up to the lone bellhop working this early on a Sunday morning. The Czechs get out of the car and Jack gets out with them, receives big hugs from both: a one-armed from Vlade and a long, two-armed squeeze from Niki.
“I want to thank you guys for coming with me.”
“No,” Niki says. “We started you in this. We help you to finish.”
Vlade nods. “We needed to see our friend again.” He claps Jack on the shoulder, squeezes his bicep. “And you too,” he says, his face breaking into a smile. He laughs.
Jack fakes a punch at Vlade’s stomach, but Vlade doesn’t flinch. He pats his chest. “You hit me. Anytime you like.” He laughs again. With the big coat on, it’s hard to make out the lump of the towel over his shoulder if you don’t know what to look for. In the diner, the waitress didn’t even flinch. Now the bellhop hardly notices them; he’s clearly more interested in Jack’s car.
“Is that a sixty-eight?” the kid asks.
“Sixty-six,” Jack says. “K-Code.”
“Yeah,” the kid says, but then he sees Jack, really sees him, and he stops. “Fuck! You’re Jack Palms?”
Jack nods. He points at the kid. “Shake ’Em down!” he says.
“Too awesome!” The kid grabs behind the stand for his cell phone and starts taking pictures as Jack and the Czechs walk away.
“Tell Al he missed some good violence,” Jack says.
“Don’t worry.” Vlade nods. “He will be asking us about it all day.
”
Jack yawns, realizes he can hardly keep his eyes open. He tells the others he has to go, that they should look him up if they’re ever back in town. “We’ll go out, have some fun.” Jack winks. “But less next time.”
They laugh, are already heading into the building as Jack starts back to his car. He gives the kid a wave as he revs the engine, pulls out of the drive.
Going home through the city, Jack sees the tall green trees, a few of them redwoods, and the grass of Golden Gate Park shrouded in fog. The streets are quiet until he gets to Highway 101, where he meets more cars, still not that many, but a few. The sun is brilliant on the Golden Gate Bridge, and Jack can see that the day is going to be one of those especially beautiful ones that make living in northern California all that much more worthwhile.
In front of him, the tan hills climb up into Sausalito and his days of peace and quiet. He yawns, crossing the bridge, knowing he’ll be in a shower, then in his bed soon. It’d have been nice to end up there with Maxine, finish this whole ordeal by going home with her, having someone to share his bed with. Given the way that worked out, though, it’s hard to be too upset with her loss. Jack realizes he’s more sad at the loss of someone than with the fact that she’s not around; and still he knows there are other women out there. He’ll get out; he’ll meet them. There’s plenty of nightlife left in the city, now that he knows he’s ready to find it.
But for now, he needs to sleep. Home inside of a half hour, his whole body hurting now that the caffeine has lost a fight with his exhaustion, he drops his jacket on the floor in the hallway and his shirt outside the bathroom. He starts the water in the shower, strips off the rest of his clothes, and climbs in under the hot spray. In steam and with heat running all over his body, he watches some of his dried blood run down the drain, stands and lets the stream work out some of the muscles in his back, his neck.
From the shower, he’s in bed and under the sheets as soon as he’s dry, before he’s even looked around the house. The only thing he sees is his alarm clock on the dresser, the time just coming up on eight o’clock.
He sleeps through most of Sunday, gets up in the late afternoon and orders Chinese food for dinner, eats it in a daze, watching TV, and then goes back to bed again.
The clock is the next thing he sees when he wakes up the following morning, Monday, the time 9:07, and his front doorbell going off. He realizes that it’s been ringing for a long while, that he’s brought the sounds into his dreams, incorporated them, and now, finally, he realizes it’s a reality that he needs to get up and deal with. He shakes his head, not happy with this situation.
Jack rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling, feeling his ribs with his hands as he takes a deep breath: Nothing seems to be loose there. Just bruises, he hopes, no broken bones. Taking a few more deep breaths, he feels the sleep slowly fall away from him as the doorbell rings again. He still has an ache in his bones and a tiredness that’s not going to leave for some time, but he manages to sit up, and then stumbles to the closet, takes out a robe. In what works of his mind at this point, he imagines Mills Hopkins at the door, a bright, Monday-morning crew of cops in blue uniforms and photographers behind them snapping shots of Jack going off to jail again, this time in his robe, going away for accessory to murder or organized crime. The thought of this scene jolts him further awake, enough to be mad as he walks out into the hall, tying the robe closed around him.
In the living room, he can hear pounding on the door, a harder knock than knocking, and someone calling his name. “Fuck!” he yells, getting close to the door.
The noises stop.
Jack looks through the peephole and doesn’t see anyone. He’s expecting the police, rows of cameras, newspaper reporters, and, at this point, he’s capable of imagining them hiding on either side of the door, in the bushes. “Who is it?”
“It is us,” Niki says, the voice unmistakable.
“Shit.” Jack opens the door and sees three motorcycles parked in his driveway, one with a big red sidecar, and the four Czechs standing along the sides of his front stairs. They’re all smiling, wearing leather pants and tight leather jackets. They look like something out of the future, versions of bikers descended from outer space or Eastern Europe, helmets on the backs of their bikes and wide smiles on their faces. If they’re not coked out now, they will be, and that’s all part of the futurism of it, Jack guesses.
“Jack,” Vlade says, grabbing him into a tight one-armed hug. He’s got his other arm in a sling close to his body and it gets in the way when they hug, makes Vlade call out in pain, but he pulls Jack closer, laughing and saying his name.
Al laughs. “Nice robe.”
Jack looks down and sees that he’s got the robe open in the front. He’s tied one of the ends of the belt into a knot without having done anything to join it with the other. He’s wearing just boxers and nothing else, greeting the neighborhood in his stripes and paisleys. He laughs, pulls the sides of the robe closed, and properly ties the belt.
“Guys. What’s up?” Jack rubs the sleep out of his eyes, trying to get his body and mind both to start.
“Look at these bikes!” Vlade says. “Look at these!”
Jack looks. At the end of his driveway are two Ducati and a Harley-Davidson with a sidecar—some nice-looking machinery.
“Damn,” he says, starting out onto the steps before realizing he’s not wearing shoes. “Those are fine.”
“Yes, they are, Jack Palms,” David says. “Yes, they are.”
“Nice,” Jack says.
Niki claps a hand onto his shoulder. “We just came to say good-bye,” he says. “And see if you want to come.”
“Come?” Jack says.
“Come along for the ride,” Vlade says. “The open road.”
“We will take you to where we got our bikes,” Al says. “You can pick. This fucking trip is going to be awesome, my man.”
Jack laughs. He comes farther outside of the house, sees the morning sun glorious on the streets, the bikes shimmering in their newness. The leather seats look big and comfortable, the Ducati sleek and fast. Each of the bikes has compartments along its sides, hard ones on the Ducati and saddlebags on the Harley, more than enough room to put your essentials: a few clothes and who knows what else. A toothbrush?
“The Ducati for you?” Vlade says, practically singing. “We will buy …”
Jack thinks of the money in the leather bag on his couch, enough to make a trip across the country, pay off the bills on his kitchen table, and then some. He thinks about the big house behind him, its empty rooms, his morning runs, and the taste of the cereal and the milk, the fact that it’s not as good as the cigarettes. He thinks of his solitary afternoons in the gym listening to the music he doesn’t like, and the nights with no one else in his bed. He thinks about the San Francisco tabloids and the people who still recognize him when he goes out, admittedly not as bad an experience over the past few days as he’d have thought, but still. That and the fact that one of these days, not today and maybe not the next, but one day soon, Mills Hopkins will call and Jack will have to go downtown to talk about something, testify, sit in a small room and discuss all that’s happened, that he’ll be lucky if he gets out when it’s over.
And he looks at the bikes in the sun, new and gleaming and fast-looking, very fast-looking, and the Czechs in their futuristic riding outfits, all four of them smiling.
Then Jack feels himself start to smile too.
“Well…,” he says. And his thoughts run to what he should start packing first.
CRIMEWAV Books
for my father
“It’s a cold world and this is life.”
Part I
Beside the Law
1
As Jack sits up to steal a look over the back of the couch, he wonders if the person in his backyard is the one who set his bed on fire, burned it down to the frame. A welcome-home message from an unknown friend.
He can still see the remains in
his mind’s eye: the wood frame scorched black and the mattress crispy where the sheets and blankets used to be. Even Victoria’s Tempur-Pedic pillows—the plastic foam you wouldn’t think would be flammable—burned. A black line of charred rug outlined where the bed had stood, but nothing else in the room had been touched by fire. A professional pyro.
That was one of two disturbing items Jack found when he got home from the open road.
Another creak in the night, a stick breaking outside the patio doors. The VCR clock flashes 12:00; the wall clock reads two forty-five.
When Jack looks over the back of the couch, he sees darkness all the way to the rock wall of the garden. Then he hears another sound like the last but louder: a crunch from something heavier than a deer—someone walking outside, just past the little evergreen trees Victoria planted along the back wall of the house.
Jack hits the floor on all fours, crawls between the couch and the coffee table, then around the end table toward the double patio doors. Whatever’s out there, he wants to know it before it knows him.
At first, all he sees is his own reflection in the glass. Then, just inside the edge of the garden, a glint of something metal pointing out of a bush—the shiny round barrel of a gun. Jack drops to his chest as the gun goes off. He hears the whistle of a silencer, and a bullet pierces the glass above him, right where he’d be if he had been standing.
He looks out through the bottom row of windows in the door, and sees a man come out of the bushes—a man right outside his living room, not five feet away. His face is hard to make out in the shadows, but he’s white, serious-looking. Jack’s seen him before, but that’s just a hunch—maybe not even right.
