Czechmate

by Seth Harwood

  “This guy’s damaged,” a new SWAT soldier says, taking the few seconds to see what kind of shape Freeman’s really in. “Mushmouth.”

  A quick burst of shots comes from the backside of the building. Then a few single shots, one at a time.

  One cop pushes Vlade down on his face and slips the plastic cuffs on him, while another tries to lift the bed with Hopkins on it, but it’s too heavy. It takes two of them to lift it up to see what’s left of Hopkins underneath, and when they get it up, one of them looks away fast, holds his hand over his mouth. “Fuck!”

  The other one pulls back, cringing at the sight and the blood. “That’s disgusting.”

  “He did that?” the SWAT commander, a black guy with “Marshall” stitched over his heart in yellow letters, says while he points at Andre. Andre shakes his head. He’s still holding his mouth, blood on his hands. He looks about as tough as a young girl’s doll.

  “No man, that motherfucker did this.” Freeman points at Akakievich again, what’s left of him. “That’s Akakievich.”

  The SWAT commander looks at one of his crew, the guy with the M-16. “He seems to think that dead asshole is responsible. Sounds like the shit that took down Clarence.”

  With his face pressed down against the concrete, Vlade says, “And I killed him.”

  The cop behind Vlade pulls him up by his arms, gets him onto his knees.

  “I shoot him for my country and for yours,” Vlade says. “He sell my country’s women as whores. He poison your city with drugs. You should be thank me.”

  Marshall nods and the cop behind Vlade hits him in the back of his head with an open palm, knocking him down onto the concrete. “I’ll be thanking you through the bars of your cell, asshole. Way I rank it, murder is still a capital offense.”

  Then Marshall looks around the room, as if confused. “Where’s the lady fed?”

  Freeman says, “You mean Gannon?”

  Marshall nods. “Where’s she at?”

  With a new sense of relief, finally someone recognizes something he’s said, Freeman tells them, “She left. Took Jack Palms out after these fucks tried to spray his veins full of heroin.”

  The cop holding Vlade down does a double take, looks at Freeman. “You say Jack Palms? Guy from the movie?” Even in the middle of this job, the guy’s almost smiling. Fucking Palms.

  “We have a warrant for him.” Marshall speaks in a monotone, all business.

  One of the guys close to Hopkins comes over to Freeman, pointing at him. “You were with the Jets, right? That was you?”

  Freeman laughs a puff of air through his nose. “That’s me. Can you believe this shit?”

  The cop looks at Freeman funny, like he can’t tell if he’s joking. That’s just how cops always are though. You can never tell what’s going on behind the mustache.

  “Where’s the lady fed then?”

  “She gone.”

  Marshall turns his face toward the radio unit on his shoulder, speaks into it: “Get that suburbs cop here. I got a few questions.”

  “On his way.”

  Into his mic, he asks, “What you get in the back?”

  “Nothing. Dropped a couple of shots at a cat. Looks like someone busted out this back set of windows, but they did, they probably cleared the back fence at the same time. Just a thin alley back here.”

  Marshall shakes his head, not happy to hear this. “Bring in those uniforms for cleanup. We have things secured and prisoners ready to be cleared out.”

  The answer comes back in the affirmative, and Marshall barks orders at his men to start releasing the girls from their bonds, unstrapping them from the bed-tables and getting them something to cover up with.

  “And pick up these bodies to see who’s still alive here.” He points at Akakievich’s various men on the floor.

  Andre stands up too fast and one of the SWAT boys knocks him back down with a quick gunstock across his jaw. Even from across the wide room, Freeman feels the hurt from its sound. As soon as Andre’s down, the guy cuffs him with the plastic ties.

  Marshall gives the order for two San Francisco cops in blue to carry Freeman down the stairs in his wheelchair. “You serious?” one of them asks.

  Marshall waves at them in disgust and walks away toward what’s left of Hopkins.

  Freeman wants to laugh. No way can these two carry his ass in this chair.

  Two more cops come up the stairs with Detective Shaw between them.

  “Commander, we have your boy here.”

  “Where’s the female fed?” Marshall asks, coming back toward Shaw. “I don’t see no important FBI clientele here. Just some dead fucking Russians, a dead cop, and some half-dead Russians.”

  Without smiling, Shaw says, “I see a future NFL Hall of Famer and some drugged-up prostitutes who need medical attention.”

  Marshall’s jaw clenches and he puts his face an inch from Shaw’s nose. “You see an FBI agent here? Because I don’t. And top it off, we don’t have a hostage situation up here. Just the aftermath of a ton of shooting that went down while we were outside getting bullshitted by you!”

  Shaw does his best to shrug, but with his wrists cuffed, he can only raise his shoulders in a strange way.

  “Get these fucks out of here!” Marshall points to Shaw and Freeman together.

  “It better be all four of you carting my chair down those stairs, boys,” Freeman does his best to tell the cops.

  48

  Back to the Grill Again

  The parking lot outside of Alexi’s building is filled with police cruisers, two ambulances, and a black SWAT van when Jack and Gannon get back. Two cops lead Andre out of the building—the ugly Russian holding a bloody, once-white towel to his mouth—while a set of paramedics wheel an empty stretcher toward the front door.

  “Jesus, fuck!” Jack’s already halfway out the door of the car when Gannon puts her hand on his shoulder—his bad shoulder. He winces, looks back at her.

  “Remember, Jack: nothing stupid here. I can probably vouch for you about the stuff the other night on Prescott, but you do anything crazy here, in front of these cops, and I can’t protect you.”

  “I will. I mean, I know.”

  “Just watch it, Jack. That’s all I’m saying.”

  When Jack steps out of the car, the two cops leading Andre, as well as another who’d been just standing by his car, turn their guns on him. “Freeze!”

  Jack raises his good hand. He turns around and leans against the car. Gannon gets out of the driver’s side, holding her badge over her head. “FBI,” she says. “I can vouch for this man. He’s not a threat to you or to civilians. In fact, Chief Clarence is probably the bigger threat.”

  It’s not exactly the most ringing endorsement Jack’s ever heard, but it appears to do the trick a bit, as the cops lower their weapons.

  “Clarence is ass out, on the run,” one of them says.

  “Good,” she says. “I hope they catch that scumbag.”

  “How about telling them they can trust me, that I’m actually a good guy?”

  Gannon shoots Jack a look that says don’t stretch it and continues around the car and to the cops. “Who’s in charge here, Officer?”

  “Marshall in SWAT, lady.” The cops all look at her like she’s the enemy; to start with, these local cops are bound to hate an FBI agent, especially a woman, coming in and running the show. On top of that, they’ve probably heard her husband was the cop-killing sniper.

  One of them even asks it. “You the lady fed whose husband was killing our boys?”

  She nods, resigned to this introduction. “That’d be me, Officer. You got a second question about it?”

  The cop just stares, and Gannon matches him. He chews the inside of his cheek for a moment, two, then looks down and away from her.

  “Now take me to see Marshall.”

  Jack turns to go with them, and one of the cops lifts his weapon.

 
“Come on, touchy,” Gannon says, putting her hand on his wrists and lowering his arms. “Give that a rest. I vouch for this fucking guy.”

  “Me too.” The throaty voice can only come from one man; Jack sees Shaw coming out of the warehouse, escorted by a San Francisco cop. He steps around a big metal desk at the base of the stairs and into the open front room.

  “My motherfucker,” Shaw says. “Glad to see you off the hype.”

  “No fucking way.” Jack steps forward, then stops to get permission from the touchy cop who told him to stay still. The cop shrugs, looks away, and Jack steps forward toward Shaw. The two clap hands, Jack bumping his sling into Shaw’s chest as Shaw puts a quick hug on him.

  “Niki and the boys OK?”

  “Niki’s gone. Vlade’s banged up. Akakievich is dead. I don’t know where Al is. They bringing Freeman down now.”

  The two turn to look inside at the stairs as three regular cops carry Freeman and his wheelchair down the last of the stairs. Freeman looks even worse than Jack’s seen him before, his face a bloody mess and the bandages on his hand and knees showing blood through the white. But through it all, he winks when he sees Jack and holds up the middle finger on his good hand.

  “Futh you Palms. You still owe me big for all thith shith.”

  Jack gives him the nod and turns to face him as the cops him down and wheel him over.

  “I’m seriousth Jack!” he yells again.

  “Akakievich is dead?” Jack asks.

  Shaw nods. “Dead. Looks like Niki got the job done and cleared out of here when the SWAT showed.”

  “Vlade,” Freeman says. “Vlade did the lasth shoth that killed Alethi. But I futhing helped them. Me. They both be dead without me.”

  Jack raises his chin at Freeman. “You helped them out? Got tired of helping a dirty Russian?”

  Freeman angles his head toward one shoulder. “Shith. I couldn’th let my boysth down.”

  “This man needs medical attention,” one of the cops says.

  Shaw backs away, opening a path toward the ambulances. “By all means, take him in. This man’s a hero.”

  Jack adds, “Or some shit.”

  Freeman puts up the middle finger again, looking straight ahead like he didn’t hear anything that Jack said. Two of the cops wheel him away toward the EMTs.

  “They’ll take Vlade in for this, no doubt,” Shaw says. “But he didn’t seem worried about how that would play. Motherfucker thinks he got some diplomatic immunity, I guess.”

  “And he’s got me,” Gannon says. “I’ll do what I can for him, especially seeing as how I called him over here.”

  “What about Hopkins?”

  Shaw shakes his head. “Freeman says he dead by your hand.”

  “Fuck.” Jack turns away, squeezes his eyes shut and clamps his thumb and forefinger across the bridge of his nose. He doesn’t want to know any more of the details that have gone foggy from all the drugs. Something tells him that none of it will be good.

  “Clear the stairs.” From up above them a stern, solid voice announces the order. Jack looks up to see two of the SWAT guys walking with Vlade between them. His wrists are cuffed behind him, and by the look of his jacket, he’s bleeding pretty good out of his bad shoulder.

  “Got to get you one of these,” Jack says, holding up his sling.

  Vlade looks up and his face goes from ashen to living again. He smiles. “Fucking Palms. Who dragged you in here?”

  Shaw says, “This man needs medical attention,” pointing at Vlade, but the SWAT guys don’t acknowledge him. Still, they walk Vlade in the direction of the ambulances, each keeping a grip on one of his arms.

  Vlade looks back, raises his head. “I will see you Palms? We will share with you some drink?”

  “Yeah,” Jack says. Then he looks at Gannon. “He getting out anytime soon?”

  Gannon raises her shoulders and then drops them. She looks tired. “We’ll have to see. Chances are all three of you could end up behind bars tonight.”

  “Three of us?” Shaw asks.

  She nods. “Or in the hospital, at least.”

  “Everybody clear the stairs. Clear the stairs.” As another couple of SWAT boys reach the midway point of the stairs, Jack can see they’re carrying somebody down on a stretcher between them. Then, a moment later, he sees it’s Akakievich they’re carrying. They haven’t covered the body yet with a blanket or anything and it’s just him there, the bald, bearded Russian coming down the stairs and toward him, laid out, dead as they come.

  From the feet up, he looks fine to his waist and then he’s a mess of blood. There’s red all over the front of his shirt, around his crotch, and up from there. Each of the shoulders of his jacket have burns from close gunshots, the fabric scorched black. His arms are by his sides. His left eye is a swollen mess, and this is the first thing that triggers a real rush of memories in Jack. As soon as he sees the black eye, the purple swollen skin over it, Jack knows he did it—he punched Alexi with all he could as he was strapped into a chair and shot up with drugs. And that’s not the only thing he did. He remembers the metal cuff around his wrist and the revolver in his hand. He remembers Mills Hopkins pleading for Jack to shoot him. And last, he remembers shooting him.

  “Fuck,” he says. Suddenly his legs feel weak, like he hasn’t used them in a long time. He remembers Akakievich burning his forearm with a cigarette lighter in an H2, and as he does, it starts to hurt again. His shoulder hurts too.

  Akakievich’s face is pale as the stretcher passes Jack, headed for the ambulances. His left eye is swollen even worse now than the last time Jack remembers seeing it. It’s black and blue, completely covering his actual eye. Just above that, on the side of his forehead, there’s a burn mark from a weapon fired at close range; this looks much worse than the shoulders. Here the skin is burned, and beyond that Akakievich’s skull exposed and broken by a bullet, a shot that went in and left a trail of ooze coming out. Jack steps away from the SWAT guys and their stretcher, but still he sees this damage and the place on the back of Alexi’s head where the bullet and blood and brains came out. The skin on his neck and head are both washed in blood.

  It’s Ralph Anderino all over again, but closer and worse this time, and even though Jack knows he’s supposed to feel good about this, relieved that the man responsible for his friend’s death is now dead in a similar fashion, Jack only feels disgust, nausea, and dizziness washing over him. He catches Shaw’s arm to keep from falling down.

  “Ho! You all right?” Shaw asks, stepping back and catching Jack by his good arm.

  “Yeah, man. No sweat.” Jack says it, but it’s the last thing he’s thinking. He looks at this bald Russian, battle scarred, with a black eye, a hole in his skull and blood splatters on his clothes, and the truth is Jack feels like shit. The epinephrine has worn off, his bad shoulder feels like something’s torn loose again inside it, the burns on his right arm still sting like a bitch, and his body feels like someone’s been using his veins to pipe lead around his insides. Whatever was left of him after the H ride has gone with the epinephrine. Jack blinks slowly, a wave of exhaustion sweeping over him, and stumbles, then blinks hard and rights himself. He shakes his head. In the moment his eyes were closed, he saw the sight of Mills Hopkins’s ravaged body in front of him and his head shot open also, this time by Jack’s own hand. Without any blemishes on his certainty, Jack knows Mills Hopkins died at his hand, with his finger pulling the trigger.

  Gannon crosses the gap between them to come closer, reaching to catch Jack, but she’s coming at him from the left, toward his bad shoulder and Jack pulls away, flinches instinctively in the opposite direction. But it’s too much for his balance, his shaky legs, and Jack knows he’s going down.

  Gannon doesn’t catch him, but Shaw does.

  How did it get to this? Jack wants to know. How the carnage around him mounted to the point where he’s watching a procession of bloody bodies being carried out of a bu
ilding, he has no idea. And how a guy he was working with, even drank with, died a nasty, tortured death, Jack has no idea. The thought occurs to him that he was responsible for it all, that none of this would’ve happened without him trying out this new attempt at a career. Maybe they would’ve all been better off without him.

  The SWAT guy closest to Jack looks him over and whistles. “You better get that guy to the EMTs too,” he says.

  “You OK, Jack?” Gannon asks him. He looks up, sees concern on her beautiful face.

  He says, “I got to sit down.”

  49

  Bumps

  The next thing Jack sees is the inside of an ambulance again. He looks up at the paramedic’s ashen face and Jane Gannon beside him, feels a pressure against his arm and sees the paramedic hold up a needle. At the open end of the ambulance, Niki’s and Shaw’s faces look up at him. Niki nods. Behind them a cop wheels Freeman Jones toward another ambulance, one with Vlade sitting on its rear bumper getting looked over by a paramedic.

  Someone else is inside Vlade’s ambulance, strapped down to a bed, with bandages over the lower half of his face. Cops walk around the scene, leading the thin girls out of the building. They’ve got heavy police jackets wrapped around them now, covering their lack of clothes.

  “Relax, Jack.” Gannon pats his thigh. “We’ve got everything under control here. It’s all going to be all right.”

  “I’m in an ambulance again.”

  “You’ve been through a lot, Jack. Your arm’s going to have to be cleaned up and they’re going to have to close up that shoulder all over again. After this, you’re through with anything active for a while.”

  “For a while?” Jack looks up at the ceiling of the ambulance, the bright white lights. He feels woozy, like he’s got more drugs in his system again, probably a painkiller from the paramedic’s needle.

  From the direction of his feet, he hears Niki’s voice. “Not anymore of this for you, Jack. You rest now and you rest after. No more of this party anymore.”

  “Yeah,” Jack says. “I can handle something like that.”