Czechmate

by Seth Harwood

  CRIMEWAV Books

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  1

  Czeching In

  In the hospital, Jack wakes up to more pain than he’s used to, more pain than he’s known in some time. But that pain is only the tip of the iceberg when he looks around him and realizes who else is there.

  The first person he sees is Vlade standing over him with a too-big smile, nodding. The second face he sees is Al’s ugly mug on top of a white turtleneck sweater. Seeing that? That’s pain.

  “Ha ha. He is alive, this soldier.” Al breaks into his biggest grin, tries to do his impression of Dr. Frankenstein: “He’s alive!” He juts his arms straight out and starts pacing around the room with his knees locked, wobbling from side to side. When he gets beyond the foot of Jack’s bed, Jack loses sight of him. He tries to lift his head off the pillow, and it won’t move; he doesn’t even have the energy to do that.

  Speaking doesn’t come easily, but Jack manages to mumble, “Who let these guys in?”

  “Ha ha. Supercop in the hospital.” Shaw’s face appears by Jack’s bedside, close to his left hand.

  “You let them in?”

  “No, sir. You are the super investigator.” Shaw smiles.

  Jack knows he’s ripe for some busting on, some shit talk after what he and Shaw went through at the house on Prescott Court and in the Gannons’ garage, but he shakes his head. After what he’s seen Shaw do, some of the moves he’s made with and without a gun, Jack knows he’s lucky to be around, to have this man on his side.

  “I’m like Batman,” Jack says. “And you’re my Robin.”

  “Exactly.” Shaw smiles. “That’s good.”

  “I like this one,” Vlade says, clapping Shaw on the back. “He is good police.”

  “And who the fuck are these guys?” Shaw nods at Vlade, and just as he does, Al makes another pass by the bed. He’s still holding his hands out, talking about, “He’s alive.”

  “How you know these ball breakers?”

  Jack breathes hard. He’s got the Craftmatic bed, he realizes, and finds the control close to his hand. “These are my favorite coke-lord Czechs,” he says, starting to raise his torso to a higher angle, bringing his frame of vision to where he can see the whole room. In a chair on the far wall, he sees Jane Gannon sitting quietly, her chin on her fist.

  “Jane,” Jack says.

  She shakes her head. “Palms. I’m so sorry about what happened in the garage.” She stands up, comes to the bed, and kisses Jack on the cheek. “I still can’t believe I shot you.”

  As she bends over him, Jack can smell her soft smell, feels her hair brush his face. She moves her hand across his head, running it over his hair. She smiles. As she moves away, she touches Jack’s leg at the shin, rests her hand there. It’s the kind of touch that Jack wants to last.

  “I got shot,” Jack says. “You shot me. I’ll live.”

  Shaw nods. “That’s the truth. They said they never seen a bigger pussy in this hospital. Most guys would be out playing basketball already after a grazing like that.”

  Gannon looks at Shaw and shakes her head. She forces a smile at Jack, fingering the gold cross at her neck. Just as Jack’s about to tell her not to worry about it, Vlade pats Jack on his good shoulder.

  “Look at me now.” Vlade waves his arm. “I was shot and now I am OK. You will be back fine, Jack. In no time.” Vlade raises his right arm, brings it up about as high as his forehead and stops. “You see,” he says. “Lots of mobility.”

  “Great.” But seeing that Vlade still can’t lift his arm all the way makes Jack feel even worse. “So when the fuck can I get out of here?”

  “As soon as we get Akakievich off the streets and cool out his group. You come out now, they on you like white on Russians.” Shaw smiles at Vlade, holds up his right hand with the tip of his first finger touching the tip of his thumb and the other three fingers outstretched. “No offense, man.”

  “OK,” Vlade says. “Black man.”

  Shaw does a double take at Vlade and stops smiling.

  “Bullshit.” Jack forces himself to sit up on his own, away from the bed. “Once I get these drugs out of my system, I’m good to go.” He looks at the sling on his arm, the bandages around his shoulder. “This doesn’t mean I’m not ready.”

  “OK,” Shaw says. “You be like Shaft and come back from injury to finish this thing off. I won’t stop you.”

  Gannon brings her hand up farther on Jack’s leg, comes closer to him. “I might stop you, you idiot. Just rest for a few days.” She pushes his chest back down onto the bed. “Let us see what we can find out. You’ll be safe here. We’ll post a guard at your door. Somebody you can trust.”

  “Who?” Jack says, pointing at Shaw. “Not this guy.”

  “No,” Vlade says. He nods his chin toward the far corner of the room behind Shaw, to where Niki leans against the wall, picking at his fingernails with a bowie knife. “You remember your old friend?”

  Niki looks up from his hand and winks at Jack.

  Jack nods. “How are you, Niki?”

  “Good. I am better than you, it appears.” Niki smiles. Beside him is the doorway, a space only slightly wider than his shoulders.

  “So I just stay here? Lean back?”

  Vlade, Gannon, and Shaw all nod. From the other side of the bed, Al says, “You got to get repaired so that you can roll with us, my main man.”

  Jack exchanges a look with Shaw. The Czechs must’ve been hanging out in LA since he last saw them. No other explanation for where Al would have picked up more hip lingo like “my main man.”

  “A couple days?”

  Shaw crosses his arms. He steps back toward the wall and leans against it, beside the window. “Long as it takes,” he says.

  Outside, Jack sees nothing but light blue sky.

  Shaw says, “Tell him about Akakievich.”

  Gannon sits down on the bed. “After the phone call last night, getting the girls into my condo, and the FBI trucks rolling around my garage, we haven’t heard from him.”

  “Fuck disappeared,” Shaw says. “Even broke his promise to kill me.”

  “And Tom?”

  “He’s all right,” Gannon says about her husband. “He’ll make it. And then we’ll see where he and I go from here.” She shakes her head and given the look on her face, her lips tight against her teeth, Jack’s glad he’s not Tom Gannon. “Can you believe,” she says, “all this time and he never told me he’d been a sniper in the Gulf War? Fucking Marine sniper in Desert Storm. He never told me.”

  “Black Ops,” Shaw says, shaking his head. “Guys can’t talk about that shit. Best not to even ask.”

  “You tell your wife.” Gannon shakes her head. She doesn’t say anything about her husband fucking Akakievich’s whores and killing a couple of cops, and none of the rest of them do either.

  Shaw says, “So, will your boy help us?”

  “You rest, Jack. Just go easy now.” Gannon smiles and pats his thigh. “We’ll take care of things until you’re ready. OK? We’ll talk to Tom.”

  Shaw stands up off the wall like he’s ready to leave. He touches Gannon’s shoulder and she stands from the bed.

  Before they go, Shaw takes Jack’s good hand and curls it into a fist, bumps it against his own knuckles. “Good looking out last night, Palms. You’ll get there.”

  Gannon breaks away
from Shaw and comes up to hug Jack around his neck. He can smell her shampoo now, a smell of fruit, apples maybe.

  “We got to get back to the girls,” she says. She pulls back and their eyes meet. “You did a good thing, Jack Palms. Do you know that?” He nods. “Those girls needed you.”

  “There are other girls who still do,” Jack says. He tries to sit up, but Vlade holds him back. “Tell me no more girls have turned up dead.”

  “No more girls have turned up dead,” Shaw says in a voice that’s deep enough to pass for Darth Vader. “Like we said, no word from our man Alexi.”

  Gannon straightens her jacket and the collared, cream-color shirt beneath it. “It’s only been one night though. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  Shaw rubs his hands together and takes Gannon’s elbow. “The SFPD got the Top Notch under wraps. They swept it, didn’t find any girls. Alexi must have them stashed somewheres else.”

  “We know there are others?”

  “Yeah,” Gannon says. “We’ve confirmed three more. Now we just have to find out which of Akakievich’s clients has them. And that brings us back to the list. The one that Detective Shaw doesn’t think exists.”

  “They’re out there,” Shaw says. “We just have to find Akakievich and get him to tell us where.”

  2

  Business

  When Gannon and Shaw have gone, Vlade sits down in a plastic chair next to the bed. It hisses as it slowly accepts his weight.

  Al goes to the window and tries to open it. It doesn’t budge. “You cannot smoke in this room?”

  “No.” Vlade points him to the smoking lounge down the hall and watches as Al leaves.

  “Where’s David?” Jack asks.

  “David has gone back. He finished his time on motorcycle, and now he leave.” Vlade shrugs, his lower lip buttoned to the bottom of his mustache. “He will care for our business back home.” Vlade touches the side of his nose, a motion Jack takes to mean that David’s selling off some of their blow back in Czech.

  “And how is business?”

  Vlade shakes his head. “Business is good. We cannot complain.” He waves to the rest of the room, where Shaw and Gannon had stood. “Who are these two in your room now? The police officer and an agent of the FBI? What is this, Jack? This is not so good.”

  Niki comes closer to the bed. He’s produced a red apple from somewhere in his pockets that he starts to cut slices out of with his knife. He offers a slice to Jack on the blade, but Jack declines—he already feels like he has a lead ball in his stomach. Probably the medication. “They’re who they are. Sergeant Hopkins brought me in on a case and when things started getting big, these two got involved. Freeman fucked me over and they helped me out.”

  “Oh, Jack.” Vlade reaches forward to touch Jack’s shoulder. “You are breaking my heart.”

  “I know, it’s weak. What can I tell you? Freeman flipped. He tried to give me to Akakievich. Hopkins got killed.”

  Vlade spits on the floor. Then he realizes they’re in a hospital room and apologizes, scuffs it away with his shoe. “Freeman? This is Junius Ponds’s man, the football player?”

  Jack nods. “He fucking turned.”

  “And Junius Ponds?” Jack shrugs his good shoulder. As far as he knows, Junius Ponds is dead and he says so. Vlade nods at Niki. “You see him die?”

  Niki turns to face the wall as if he’s thinking it over. Then he nods.

  “I saw him die,” Jack says. “That motherfucker, God rest his soul, hit the skid at The Coast and passed into the players’ mansion in the sky. Sorry, guys. We’ll have to find you a new supply.”

  Vlade takes the remote for Jack’s bed. He starts to flatten it again, lowering Jack’s head and torso. “You rest, Jack. We do not need to talk now.”

  “What’re you not telling me?” Jack tries to sit up on his own. “What do you guys have planned now you’re back in San Francisco?”

  Vlade winks at Jack. “We came to throw you party, my man. Take you out on the town. And now look at you: shot up to shit. You are fucked up.”

  Niki laughs. Then stops. He holds his hands up and apologizes.

  Vlade goes on. “What good are you to us now? No fucking party.”

  “OK,” Jack says, lying down. “Fuck you, Vlade. Fuck you very much.”

  From his back, Jack can see Vlade standing over him. “Do not worry,” he says. “We are here to stay. And we will be here when you are ready. That is when we get what we came back for.”

  “To party?”

  “To make sure the bastard who shot me, Alexi Akakievich, that KGB pig, does not continue to walk freely or bring any more girls here from our country to serve as his slaves.”

  “Really?” Jack doesn’t know why he should be particularly surprised by this, but he is; it takes him back for a second.

  “These are our sisters, Jack. This is not right.”

  “But you two don’t—”

  Vlade cuts him off; he clicks his tongue against his teeth. “It is disgusting. Not like this. Not these young girls. Not where they do not have choice.”

  For a moment, Jack wonders how Vlade knows so much about what’s going on. His concern passes. Maybe the only thing that’s a secret in this town is Alexi’s client list—and maybe not even that.

  3

  Friends

  “What do you think?”

  Shaw looks over at Jane Gannon as she drives back toward the Bay in the direction of North Beach and his car. He hasn’t been home in over a day and he’s got one thing on his mind: bed. With any luck, he’ll get four or five hours of sleep before the girls get home from school.

  “What do I think about what?”

  “Tom, for one thing, and also these new boys hanging out with Jack.”

  They come to a red light and she stops the car. Just when Shaw thinks she’ll look over to face him, Gannon lowers her eyes to her hands. She juts out her lower lip, resigned to the truth about her husband: that he was the sniper, that he worked all too closely with Alexi Akakievich, fucked his girls and killed two cops from the local force. She shakes her head, almost like she’s still ready to deny it, but Shaw knows she isn’t. The fact that he put a bullet in her husband last night and she’s still talking to him today more than confirms that.

  “You do what you have to,” he says. “We all do. Each and every one.”

  “That doesn’t change things though, does it?” She looks up from her hands, sees the light has turned green, and crosses the intersection. “Where you parked?”

  Shaw points ahead, waves in the direction of the Bay. His car’s a ways away and he tells her. “You pop Jack, he lives. You deal with that. He deals. Doesn’t mean either of you feels good about it.”

  She nods.

  “Tom fucks up. I’m not even going to pretend I know what you’re going through. You two were married how long?”

  “Exactly. Too long for this shit.”

  They get to Powell, and Gannon turns left to head north. Another block, Shaw knows, and they’d have passed Dashiell Hammett Street, really not much more than an alley, but a sign of the city’s history as well as a monument to one of the writers he loved to read as a boy. There’s a good chance that without his father’s collection of Hammett and Chandler novels, even the Mickey Spillanes, he’d have never become a cop or learned to carry a gun, served his country or returned to San Francisco as an adult. Sure, he made the concession to his wife and his new family when he transferred to the safer, prettier, and better-to-raise-a-family village of Walnut Creek well out into the East Bay, beyond the hills and the Caldecott Tunnel, where the public schools were as good as you could ask for, but when one of SF’s own boys, Officer Joe O’Malley, happened to get killed on his watch, in his village, it brought Alvin Shaw back into the bigs: Russian Mob thugs, underage hookers and a chance to clean up some of San Francisco’s finest trash from the commissioner on down—or up, as the case might lead.

/>   Gannon touches the underside of her right eye, maybe to push herself to keep from crying, maybe to quell an itch. She doesn’t say anything more about her husband, the case, or Jack Palms. At Broadway she turns right to head east, toward the Bay again and Shaw directs her in the direction of his car. In the last twenty-four hours, he’s seen enough trouble in North Beach, enough of it torn up, that he’s ready to take a break from this part of the city for a long time.

  “They do any serious cleaning on Prescott?” he asks Gannon, hoping she’s heard more about the situation at Akakievich’s whorehouse than he has.

  She pushes out her lower lip and shakes her head slowly. “They took it over, held things down.”

  “They find that cop in his basement?”

  “Matsumoto?” She nods. “Fucking what was left of him. Somebody hooked his ass up like a fish and burned him with cigarettes. But I guess you know that.”

  “I was the one cut him down.”

  “He and O’Malley were the ones on the in. Them and Tom. But don’t ask me what Akakievich was trying to get out of him, what he’d want that Matsumoto might know.”

  Gannon hangs a left on Stockton to head north, and Shaw starts to see places he doesn’t want to remember from the night before.

  “That’s how I see it too. What could Matsumoto have had? Nothing I can think of. Only way I see it is Akakievich wanted him dead and didn’t think it was easy enough to just put him down. It looked to me like our man wanted to make him feel some serious hurt before he got to go.”

  “That’s who we’re dealing with?”

  “It surprise you?”

  Gannon steals a quick look at Shaw, comes to a stop at a busy intersection at Columbus where Shaw instructs her to turn onto Green Street. His car’s only about a block farther on.

  “Shit. After my husband winds up being the leak and the killer I’m looking for, there’s not a thing left that I should be surprised by.” She hits her palm against the steering wheel, blows some of her hair out of her eyes. “You think Jack will be OK?”