Czechmate

by Seth Harwood

“Fuck is that?” Shaw asks.

  Jack dries his face. “If we’re lucky, Gannon. If not…” He takes out the phone and shows Shaw the broken screen, the display that doesn’t show anything now but broken glass and LCD that’s running all over itself.

  Shaw smiles. “Nice.”

  “Tom Gannon to thank for that.” Jack thumbs the phone open and listens for a moment before answering.

  A Russian-accented voice, too much like the one he doesn’t want to hear, comes at him scratchy and raw. “Palms,” he says. “This is your friend Andre. Remember what you did to my car? I have someone here you should to talk with. One of your good friends.”

  “Andre?” Jack holds his hand over the receiver to tell Shaw, “It’s your boy with the M6, the one you nose-cocked.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “How’d you get this number, fucknob?”

  Andre laughs through the phone. In the mirror, Jack meets Shaw’s eyes and shakes his head. “I get this number from a good friend of yours. Would you like to know who? And well, Jack, how is my car now? My beautiful M6 BMW?”

  Jack knows the car’s trashed—not only did the Barrett sniper put a few holes in it, but in driving away from that, Jack knocked and scraped it off a few walls, crashed it up a bit. “About that—” Jack starts to say.

  “No, no, no.” The Russian clicks his tongue against his teeth. “You do not have to tell me. I know. You have to listen. Listen to this sound—” He holds the phone away and for a moment Jack can’t hear anything. He listens: machinery working in the background, a wheezing breathing, and a weak scream. Then he hears a snap and the scream comes through loud, miserable and clear.

  “Ahh,” Andre says, back on the line, the scream still audible behind him. Then it’s cut short. “Did you hear that sound? I have one of your friends here. Someone you know who now has one thumb only.”

  A list of names runs through Jack’s head, but none of them are people he’d consider his friends. Buddha’s name occurs to him, but the scream he heard did not come from Buddha; it was much too deep. “Not Freeman,” Jack says.

  “No, Mr. Palms, but I like your initiative. You take your friend and almost kill him, then torture him yourself, and now you think we have tortured him.” He clicks his tongue against his teeth, scolding Jack. “No, Jack. That is not your friend. We do not have Freeman.”

  Shaw squints at Jack in the mirror. He shakes his head. “Give me the phone.” And then he takes the cell phone right out of Jack’s hand. “Who the fuck is this?”

  Jack leans against the sink, shaking his head. It can’t be Gannon, can’t be Tom Gannon because Jack would assume that they killed him, can’t be Victoria, but it could be—

  “What you talking about now?” Shaw says. “Who?”

  Jack doesn’t want to know the next answer. He’d also never have thought it possible, but then he can also see how there’s no way it can be anyone else.

  17

  Sonata

  “Fuck,” Vlade says. “These fucking polices, these pig dogs will not leave us alone!”

  Niki checks the rearview mirror and sees the two police cars trailing them, lights flashing. Then a third joins the others as they pass the next cross street: Montgomery, the sign says.

  “We have got more company, my bro-heems,” Al says, hitting the back of Niki’s seat.

  Niki jams on the brakes to avoid running into the back of a white Ford station wagon, then slams the gas down as he pulls out into the left lane to get around it. Ahead of him, cars start to pull over to the side of the road, heeding the warning of the police sirens and making a clear path for him to drive the Escalade up California Street, further into the busy San Francisco downtown.

  “Niki,” Vlade says. “You know that I trust you with anything, and that I think you are best driver I known.”

  Niki nods. “Tell Al to stop hitting my seat then.” All it takes is a look from Vlade to make Al stop. Niki points to the side of the back seat behind Vlade. “Sit there!” he yells at Al. “Stop bouncing and fasten your seat belt.”

  “One thousand if you get us through this,” Vlade says.

  In the quick glance that Niki can afford to make away from the road, he makes eye contact with Vlade. “Done,” he says.

  Behind them, one of the cop cars begins to issue commands over its loudspeaker. “Pull over your vehicle now. You, in the black Escalade, pull to the side of the road immediately.”

  “Hmm?” Vlade reaches for the stereo, raising his eyebrows.

  “Please,” Niki answers.

  Vlade turns on the Schubert, a sonata in A that Niki has always enjoyed, and raises the volume until the commands from the cop can’t be heard. Now, surrounded by the light sounds of the piano, Niki eyes the road with the detachment he needs to get them through this. He sees the traffic pattern around: a two-way road in downtown San Francisco, tall buildings on both sides, the downside of a big hill heading into the flatter section of the city. All good. On either side of the street, cars pull off in front of him, away from the middle as they hear the sirens. As they do, Niki goes faster, but so do the police. Behind him, one of the cops shoots ahead of the others and hits the rear bumper of the Escalade.

  “Hang on!” Niki yells, and hits the brakes, causing the front police car to rear-end the Escalade much harder than its driver intended, or was ready for. It swerves, turns too hard, and skids sideways behind them in the street, right in front of the other two cruisers. The closest one can’t stop in time and rams the first car behind the engine, with any luck hard enough in the front driver’s side tire that it won’t be spinning again any time soon.

  The CD changes to a symphony production of Mozart’s chamber music that Niki recognizes. “This is my CD,” he says.

  Vlade shrugs. “I like it.”

  “Cable car!” Al yells from the back seat.

  One of the police manages to swerve around the skidded cruiser behind them.

  Niki says, “I thought I’d lost this.”

  “No.”

  The cruiser that hit the other leader backs up and, still drivable, pulls around it to continue the chase. The one that hit their Escalade remains sideways, stuck in the middle of the street.

  “Cable car!” Al repeats.

  As an oboe starts to match the violins for tempo in Mozart’s allegretto, a large cable car, the familiar San Francisco attraction, moves toward them on the opposite side of the street, its runners and benches full of tourists, people hanging off it on both sides.

  “Wonderful,” Niki says.

  Vlade reminds him that these cars are actually run with real cables underneath the streets.

  The cable car approaches their next intersection, Sansome, and Niki puts the full weight of his foot onto the gas. The big American engine revs loud, responds slowly, but does build its speed. The closest police cruiser is less than five feet behind them as Niki turns in the direction of the cable car, angling the Escalade right in front of it, on a collision course.

  “Left turn coming,” he says.

  The cable car continues forward, on a direct path at them, close enough so Niki can see the tourists’ faces change from concern to fear.

  “Yes,” Vlade says. “Yes, I like this.”

  The drums start to come on strong behind the violins and flutes as the driver of the cable car pulls up on his big handbrake, trying his best to disengage from the cable and brake his wheels at the same time, his eyes like big white candies, peppermints, Niki has heard the Americans call them.

  And just as Niki had hoped for, he can see that the cable car will come to a stop in the middle of the intersection, exactly where he wanted—as long as he can get there first. With a quick look through the intersection to make sure there’s no oncoming traffic, still pushing the Escalade to go faster, Niki swerves in front of the cable car and onto the adjacent cross street ahead of the trolley’s arrival. Passengers in the front cringe and shy toward the car�
��s rear as it scrapes the side of the Escalade, hitting just behind Al’s door and fishtailing the SUV slightly, but Niki brakes, turns the wheel, and hits the gas again, righting them to head northbound. He hears a terrible scream of brakes behind them and, in the rearview, as the cable car rocks to a stop, the front police car’s back end is just visible, facing back toward the south—it must have turned as it skidded to a stop. Behind the cable car, Niki sees the second police car trying to angle its hood between the sidewalk, a light pole, and the back of the trolley, its driver waving frantically at the cable car driver to roll forward.

  “Nicely handled,” Vlade says. “One thousand.”

  “Not yet.”

  Ahead of them a bus approaches from one side of the street and another bus slows to a stop in front of them. Niki hits the gas pedal harder.

  “You’re not,” Al says.

  Halfway up the block, the northbound bus comes to a stop taking up almost half of the street, with the southbound bus ahead of it. In his rearview, Niki sees the second cruiser start to angle around the back of the cable car.

  “I am,” he says.

  “Fucking rental,” Vlade mumbles.

  The bus coming for them blows its horn, a loud, industrial sound, and Niki pushes the Escalade as fast as it’ll go up the slight hill of Sansome Street, taking a last look at Vlade’s side mirror, knowing he’s going to lose it, just before scraping that side of the SUV against the stopped bus and barely avoiding the oncoming bus on the left. The scraping sound on their right is legitimate for a moment, then Niki steers clear of the parked bus and finds the space between the two buses to get through. But the oncoming bus hits its brakes too hard and turns in the street behind them, blocking the middle of the street.

  Ahead of them, Niki sees a clear block leading toward a small northward hill and in the direction of the Bay.

  “Do you know where we are?” Vlade asks.

  On either side, they’re surrounded by tall buildings with shops on the street level, places like Starbucks, fast food Chinese restaurants, and other Pan-Asian options.

  “Hit this right!” Al says, from the back seat.

  Niki glances at the street ahead of them, the allegretto calming to just the violins and a flute playing soft tones, and he makes the hard turn, skidding a bit around the corner. Ahead of them he sees what they want: a Hyatt hotel with a row of three waiting cabs parked in front of it.

  Vlade laughs. “Good work, Al.”

  Now the violins pick up their tempo and the drums join in as Niki passes the Hyatt, turns onto another small side street and comes to a stop at a series of fancy stores called “Embarcadero Center” by a tall vertical sign in front of a Banana Republic to their right.

  “Good enough?” Niki asks.

  “Good.”

  Al’s already out his door as Niki ejects his CD and shuts off the car in a No Parking - Loading Only space outside the string of shops. Vlade winks at Niki. “On my tab?”

  Niki laughs and nods once to his boss. As he gets out of the car, Niki can still hear the police sirens calling from a few blocks away. He pitches the keys to the Escalade under a parked car about four car-lengths up on the left and turns back to see both Al and Vlade coming around to his side of the Escalade, heading across the street and back toward the Hyatt.

  “Your cab awaits, sir,” Vlade says, gesturing forward as he breaks into a light jog.

  “Absolutely.” Niki follows him around the corner, in the direction of the hotel.

  18

  Kill Me

  “That is bullshit,” Shaw barks into Jack’s phone. He hands it back to Jack. “Whose voice is this?”

  Jack holds the phone to his ear. “Kill me,” a voice on the other end says. “Tell them to kill me.”

  “Fuck.” Jack shakes his head. He turns to face Shaw, but the cop’s already looking away. Shaw drops his head toward the sinks, pressing his eyes with the bridge of his hand. He’s shaking his head slightly.

  “Then you think it’s him too?” Jack asks. Shaw nods.

  “These people are true fucks.”

  Andre’s voice comes back over the phone: “Do you see what I am saying now, Mr. Palms?”

  Jack acknowledges that he does. “You fucks have Mills Hopkins alive? How the fuck—”

  “Now you are listening to what I am saying, Jack. Yes. Now we are speaking.”

  Shaw looks up. His eyes are red, but he looks madder for the news, not weaker. He’s definitely not a guy that Jack’d want to make mad. Then again, that’s never stopped him from trying in the past. “Ask what they want,” Shaw says.

  “We would like you to come downstairs and meet our friends in the lobby. Alexi Akakievich will be there to meet you. He would like very much to say hello.”

  “OK,” Jack tells him. “We’re on our way down now.” He flips the phone closed. “Shit,” he says. “They want us to come down.”

  “Then we have to.” Shaw stands up straight, holsters his gun. He shakes his head. “I thought you saw him killed.”

  “Fuck me. I saw a big-ass hole in him and I heard some fucks put him in the trunk of a car. You can see how I’d come to that conclusion.”

  Shaw nods, then puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder. They look at each other in the mirror: two guys standing in an office building’s bathroom, carrying guns, Jack’s arm in a sling—they both look a little worse for wear. Given the circumstances, though, they’re doing fine, or they were doing fine until that last phone call. Now Akakievich and his boys have a card they can’t match, a card they have to call.

  “What can we do for him?” Jack asks.

  “Sounds like they hurting our boy. We need to kill him or get them to do it.”

  “That’s fucked up.” Jack shakes his head. “We’re supposed to save him.”

  “We are. Just we’re saving him from them, from what they can do.” Shaw goes to clap Jack on the back and stops at the last moment, his hand a few inches from Jack’s bad shoulder. “Sorry, man. I was just going to tell you this ain’t the movies. That’s all. This shit is real; it’s not all happy endings.”

  In the hall, they wait for the elevator to take them back down. They pressed the button, now they’re waiting—all very normal. Jack’s surprised they don’t have an alternate plan, something else they can use or do to hit Alexi in the lobby. “We should do something.”

  The elevator arrives with a ding, and the doors open.

  Shaw nods as he gets in. “Come on Jack, you’re not going to fix this by stalling out in the hallway.”

  “You get off on two, at least. Sneak up on them and see what you can see. I’m the one they really want.” Shaw furrows his whole forehead; with no hairline, Jack can see the wrinkles carry practically to the top of his skull. “We’ve got to try something.”

  “You don’t think they know I’m with you?”

  “I’ll tell them you took off, that we split as soon as we left the others.” Jack steps into the elevator.

  “Yeah,” Shaw says. “And what if they take that out on Mills.”

  Jack thinks it over: if they have anything left they haven’t done, he’d be surprised. Mills sounded worse than he could imagine the tough cop sounding. It’s hard for Jack to even guess what would make that tough cop want to die, but the hole in his shoulder Jack saw the last time they were together would make a good start.

  The elevator doors close. The car starts downward. It runs express from forty to four, then Jack pushes the button for two. “Fuck this. We both get off on two. I walk down. You don’t.”

  Shaw doesn’t say anything, just looks forward at the doors of the elevator. Jack counts his breaths. Then the elevator passes four, then three, and then chimes once as it stops on two. The doors open. The two of them both get off and before Shaw can say anything or do something else, Jack salutes him, “Do your thing, man. Hook back up with Niki and the Czechs if you need to.”

  Jack ducks back into the elevat
or just before the doors close. Shaw stays put. He gives Jack the upward nod with his chin. “Take care of yourself, dumbass. Don’t forget what they did to Matsumoto and Mills.”

  As the doors close and the car starts down to the lobby, Jack recalls the scene in the basement of Akakievich’s Top Notch on Prescott Court: the half-dead cop, Matsumoto, hung up from a water pipe with meat hooks through his shoulders. He shakes his head, even as the thought sends a fresh pain through his bad shoulder, he knows he has to get Hopkins out. He’s not sure when he became so loyal to the burly cop who first arrested him and splashed his face all over the tabloids when things went sour with his wife, but somehow now he gives a shit.

  The car stops at L and Jack’s time for reveries is over.

  19

  The Long Kiss Goodbye

  As Jack comes out of the elevator and turns toward the front of the building, he sees a wall of floor-to-ceiling glass and beyond it, downtown San Francisco, cars passing on the street, other tall buildings, and freedom. But in front of those windows he sees three people waiting for him: a Russian thug with a neck like a Christmas ham, Akakievich, and Jane Gannon. Gannon’s wearing a dark gray suit with a tight skirt that ends about a hand’s width above her knees. Funny that now her husband’s gone over to the dark side her skirt lengths have immediately decreased, a definite improvement as far as Jack can see. But what’s she doing with these jerks?

  As he comes toward them, Akakievich holds his arms out, his hands spread. “Jack Palms,” he says. “Now isn’t this so much more easy? You are hurt. This running, this does not suit you.”

  As Jack gets within a few feet of them, he can see three other thick Russians standing to the sides of the elevator banks, watching him. One of them has a semi-automatic pointed at Jane.

  She shakes her head. “They got the drop on me. Took my gun. I’d kill this fuck, but—” She looks around at the Russians. “We don’t appear to have things under control.”

  “Yes.” Alexi clicks his tongue. “It is unfortunate, as they say. But without the police officers here—I believe they are following a threesome of fugitives in a black Escapade. How do you call it?” He shrugs. “No matter. And without our agent Gannon having her backup as in the last time we spoke, Jack, this is a different story, no?” He comes forward, taps Jack lightly on the bad shoulder. “Your arm is hurt?”