This Is Life

by Seth Harwood

  After a few minutes, Hopkins rounds the corner, still wearing the same old-fashioned Panama hat he probably thinks makes him look like a real cop. That or he’s old enough to be from the school where people actually wore them. Jack comes around to the idea of the second, ditches his cigarette when Hopkins gets close.

  “Where the fuck you been? I’ve been waiting to show you the scene already.”

  Freeman stands up to his full height from leaning against the car and gives Hopkins a hard stare.

  “Who the fuck is this?” Hopkins points his chin at the big Samoan.

  “This is my backup,” Jack says. “He’s on your payroll too.”

  “That’s great. I get the fucking USA All Stars: an actor and a New York Jet. That’ll keep you two low profile.”

  Jack starts to say something, but Hopkins beats him to it. “Come on. Fuck it.” He points at Freeman. “And you stay here.”

  Freeman waves it off with an “I’m good,” and heads around the back of the car to wait inside. Judging by the look on his face, he’s happier the farther he stays from the cops.

  As they head up the block, Hopkins takes off his hat and hands it to Jack. “Wear this. The fewer people who recognize you, the better.”

  “I’ve got a couple of questions about the shooting. Did you know someone put a fifty-caliber slug through that car?”

  “No, but that sure explains what happened to O’Malley’s head.” Hopkins points toward the next perpendicular street, and they make a turn around the corner. When they do, Jack sees twin light towers illuminating the scene of the police investigation: the yellow tape, a few onlookers, the whole nine yards. In the middle of it all is a maroon four-door Chevy.

  “I saw the Mustang in impound. It has a hole in the roof you can put your arm through. Same for the door.”

  Hopkins takes his eyes off their destination for a second to check Jack’s look, and Jack puts on the hat, pulls it down over his eyebrows. Hopkins holds up the yellow tape for him to enter. “I hear you, Jack. But I think what I’m about to show you is worse.”

  He holds up his badge to the first cop in dress uniform he sees and says “Forensics—he’s our blood spatter expert” when the guy points his head at Jack.

  Hopkins directs Jack toward the car. “We got a call about two hours ago. Somebody sees a girl inside a parked car, she’s not moving, doesn’t have clothes on, doesn’t look good. We get down here and find this. Now these guys are checking the car for prints. Least we’ll get to investigate this one, I hope.”

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “Come on.” Hopkins walks toward a big dark-blue police truck. In the back of the truck, a gurney supports a body covered by a blanket. Hopkins climbs in and motions for Jack to follow. Inside, he lifts the blanket off the girl’s head. She’s as young as the first girl, blond where the first was brunette but with skin just as white, like she never spent a day in the sun. She’s practically translucent, glowing.

  Her blond hair falls around her face thick with dark red blood. The blood looks like it ran up from her neck, over her face, and into her hair, where it’s dried in clumps though some of it still looks wet. She’s clean from the neck down, except a few dark bruises around her shoulders. Her neck is the most shocking: gaping open, as if someone had tried to cut her head off with a saw.

  “Back of that car was clean. Wherever she lost most of her eight pints, it wasn’t there.”

  “Shit,” Jack says. “Any idea who she is?”

  “Huh-unh. We’re trying to see if we can link her to the girl they found in Walnut Creek, the one in O’Malley’s backseat.”

  “Fucking sixteen-year-old girls?”

  Hopkins shakes his head, scratches his chin. “You don’t have to tell me shit about it, Jack. I got a daughter myself coming up on about this age.”

  “This one cuffed?”

  “Same. Left like the first. But no marks on her legs.”

  Jack steps away from the girl’s body. “What’s happening?”

  “Shit, Jack. You tell me someone shot a hole through a cop’s car with something like an antitank gun, and I got two dead girls in two days. Who’s got answers?”

  Jack blinks. When he closes his eyes, he can still see the girl, the blood caked around her face and thick in her hair, trails of it running up her cheeks. Her shoulders look like they could fit into a young boy’s clothes. Her thin lips are already turning white.

  “Freeman says it’s a message.”

  “What?”

  “That these girls are somebody’s message. There’s a slave trade for sex and if you own this girl, it’s somebody telling you to be ready.”

  “Ready for what? More killing?”

  Jack follows Hopkins out of the truck now. Back down on the street, Hopkins waits, staring at him for an answer.

  “I don’t know. Something bad.”

  “Does this mean terrorism?”

  “I don’t know.” Jack shrugs. “These girls go to people with power and money. If someone’s pulling the plug on their fun, it’s not going to sit well.”

  Hopkins spits on the ground. “I found out more about O’Malley: They had him stationed in North Beach, watching a porn-and-prostitution ring. Word is it had links to the Russian mob and some high-level shit, also that he asked for the job specifically.”

  Jack’s about to tell Hopkins about Alexi Akakievich’s goons in the alley when he sees an attractive blond in a gray business suit on the other side of the crime scene. She’s talking to a couple of guys in dark suits. “Who the fuck is that?” Jack asks. He nods at the threesome and Hopkins turns to look, but as soon as he does, he spins, grabs Jack by the arm, and ushers him toward the Chevy.

  He speaks softly, close to Jack’s ear. “That’s the Feds. They see you in here and I’m entirely fucked.”

  “What are they—”

  “Fuck.” Hopkins spits out the word with a jerk of his neck. “I’m fucked anyway. They show up here, they’re probably going to take this one too.”

  “Too?”

  “Word I got about O’Malley’s stakeout is it got taken over last week. Taken away from him by the Feds.”

  Jack ducks behind Hopkins to get another look at the blond. She’s intent on her conversation with the two men, looks like she’s getting upset.

  “I interviewed the painters who found O’Malley’s body. They said they saw a blond who looked just like your Fed friend walking away from the scene after they heard the shooting.”

  “Shit.” Now Hopkins takes a quick look over.

  Jack checks out the car. A few fingerprint guys move around, dusting the car’s handles with little brushes.

  “Whose car is this?”

  “Stolen.” Hopkins shakes his head. “Gives us nothing.”

  “Let’s go over and ask the Fed if she was at the scene of O’Malley’s murder. Ask her what she saw.”

  Jack starts to move, but Hopkins catches his arm above the elbow. “Can’t do that, Jack. That would be a very big mistake.” He leads Jack away from the Chevy toward the yellow police tape on the side of the scene opposite from the Feds.

  “Why not? If she knows something, then we should go find out, right?”

  Hopkins squeezes Jack’s arm tighter, bumps him as they walk. One of the blue uniforms sees this and looks at them funny, but then turns away quickly when he sees Hopkins’s gold badge.

  “Just shut up, Jack. Shut the fuck up.”

  When they’re outside the yellow tape, Hopkins lets go of Jack’s arm. He leads them back toward the Mercedes. “You don’t want to mix with the Feds,” he says. “Do I need to tell you how fucked we are if the Feds are involved in this city’s corruption.”

  “But I—”

  “No. Fuck that. It’s no shocker if some of my compatriots are taking payouts and stand knee-deep in shit with a guy like Akakievich, but if the Feds are tied up in it too, then we’re talking about a mess on a national level, something neither of us gets to walk away from.” />
  They both stop. They stare back up the street at the bright lights of the crime scene. One of the Feds is talking to a cop on the perimeter, pointing back in the direction of the car. The blond stands beside him, gesturing toward the truck where the girl is.

  “We got to back off on this for a minute, Jack. I need to talk to someone who might know what all we’re getting into.”

  “Who’s that?”

  15

  After Freeman’s dropped him off at his hotel, Jack can’t sleep.

  He finds himself sitting at the desk in his room at 2:14 a.m., smoking and staring out the window at the lights of Union Square.

  He’s still unsure what it’ll take to make his house safe territory again, what he can do about staying somewhere permanently if it’s not safe. For now he’s happy to be in the hotel, away from where he can be found, but he knows this can only go on so long, that sooner or later someone will find him or Hopkins will find out how much this is costing.

  His gaze turns to the bright Macy’s across the square, its gleaming lights. In a couple of months, Christmas will come and the square will be decorated like this but way more. Brighter, louder, with more energy. And maybe people in the hotel will still sit up at two-thirty in the morning, making plans for the next day.

  Jack imagines the strip bars over in North Beach going full swing on this Friday night, girls dancing at the Pretty Lady and Larry Flint’s, maybe going home with guys or taking them into dimly lit back rooms for handjobs and more. He shakes his head and crosses the room to the dresser, starts to pull on his jeans.

  Downstairs Jack hails a taxi, knowing he’d be better off with Freeman, but he’s determined to get what new information he can find tonight. Fuck sleeping or waiting; there’s enough going on out there to keep him busy.

  As his taxi heads north, he thinks back to the incident in the alley and the way it might have ended for him without Freeman. Now he’ll be more careful. Now he knows. He wears his old Red Sox baseball hat pulled down, glad for the anonymity it offers.

  Out the taxi window, he sees the same streets he saw when he came looking for Freeman. Soon he sees people walking the streets in club clothes—lots of leather jackets and women in tight black pants or short skirts. He sees the nightclubs and bars, closed now, leaving only the action of the late-night strip clubs, which is exactly how Jack wants it. He has the cabbie turn onto Broadway, heading toward the Bay. They pass by Freeman’s club, and Jack says to stop and let him out.

  In front of the Pretty Lady, the same two big guys in suits stand ready to bounce, ready to start kicking people out when the place closes at four.

  Jack walks up to the two guys, nods.

  “No hats inside, pal. We have a dress code.”

  Jack looks at the bouncer, holds up his hands. “I’m a friend of Freeman’s. You remember me from before?”

  “Right. Right. Shit, yeah. We saw you with him the other night. He says you Jack Palms from the movies.”

  “I owed Big Free some money off an old bet and when I gave it to him, he said he was going to find some nice ass.”

  The guys laugh. One elbows the other and shakes his head. “Fucking Freeman.”

  “The guy never touches a girl the whole time he’s here, doesn’t tell us nothing, then you come along and he’s popping his cherry. What a fuck.”

  Jack laughs. “Yeah. He said he’d heard about a place he had to try, kind of deal where he could get a nice lily-white girl, high gloss. Said he’d never had the right kind of money to blow on that tail before.” Jack acts the part, shrugs off that this might seem a strange thing for Freeman to do. “You know where I can find some of that?”

  The second guy nods. “You mean Top Notch. Place is the fucking speakeasy Holy Grail right now. The most secret. But Free ain’t getting in there, hear?”

  The two laugh, slap hands.

  Jack smiles. “Yeah. Exactly. I just came into some cash myself, you know?” He raises his eyebrows.

  “Right.” The big suit hits Jack in the arm. “Yeah. They exclusive, but for a guy from the movies, they’ll be sure and let you in. Just don’t be yapping about it.” He pauses, squinting at Jack. “So what was you in?”

  “You’re an idiot,” the other bouncer says, and turns away to pat down a couple of businessmen looking to go inside.

  Jack shakes the guy’s hand. “I’m Jack Palms. I was in—”

  “Ha! Yeah! Shake That Around.”

  “Exactly.”

  When the other bouncer turns back, he nods and points at Jack. “Right. Sorry about this dumbass, Jack.” He hits his friend across the chest. “Shake ’Em Down. 1999.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “But you know it was bullshit you’d kill that many guys in the movie.” He catches Jack’s arm at the bicep, gives it a squeeze. “No fucking way. I’d believe that shit from Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan or Jet Li, some martial arts master, even Steven fucking Segal. But not some regular dude.” He shakes his head. “No, not you.”

  “Yeah, you got a point, bro.” Now the other bouncer scrutinizes Jack. “Yeah. I mean fun movie, but if you were expected to believe it? Forget that shit. Who the fuck are you?”

  Jack smiles, holds up his hands. “I don’t write ’em, boys, just act ’em.” He shrugs. “They tell me where to stand, who to kick and punch, I say the lines, right?”

  “And get paid!” They both laugh and give each other high fives. “Yeah, man. Let me know when you’re doing a sequel and I’ll really make it believable. I’ll fucking tear through some guys.” He opens his hand and turns the movement into a big hand-shaking affair.

  “No sequel plans yet,” Jack says, his hand cupped inside the bouncer’s palm. “Maybe they agree with you about me being a regular guy. But if it changes, I’ll let you know.”

  “No. I mean it.” The guy pulls a card out of his jacket, hands it to Jack. “You call me up. I definitely want to get in on that Hollywood bank.”

  Jack gives the card a quick look and pockets it. “You were going to tell me how I get to the Top Notch?”

  “Yeah. Yeah. Top Notch. They run that shit out of the back of Tedeschi’s Café. It’s three streets up. You go left on Bartol.” The bouncer points farther up the hill. “Ask for dessert, you know what I’m saying? That’s the hookup.”

  16

  At Bartol, really more of a glorified alley than a street, Jack can see the small café—a storefront with a couple of tables and a naked light bulb. It’s a good front; you’d never believe this little late-night coffee-and-dessert spot off the beaten path would be selling access to women.

  If the other bouncers thought Freeman could find the place on his own, then why didn’t the big man say something to Jack earlier? And what else is he holding back?

  Then Jack gets his answer. He sees Freeman start down Bartol coming from the other direction, walking toward Tedeschi’s, his head down and his eyes intent on where he’s headed. Jack ducks into a doorway and watches. Freeman nods at a guy smoking a cigarette at a sidewalk table out front of the café, then walks by him and heads inside.

  “The fuck?” Jack says under his breath. He feels as though he’s just been jabbed in the gut.

  What else can he do? He moves slowly up the alley to get a better view of the café, making sure the guy at the table isn’t watching. Inside, Freeman’s wide body blocks his transaction at the counter, but then he turns around, holding some kind of dessert—maybe tiramisu?—on a little plate and sits down. He forks a few spoonfuls into his mouth and then gets up, dumps the rest in the trash, and puts the plate in a gray plastic bin on top of the trash can. Then he looks at his receipt, a small rectangle of white paper, pockets it, and walks out.

  Jack ducks into a dark doorway. He hears Freeman bark something at the smoker, a guy Jack thinks is a little too slick to be hanging out by himself at a late-night café. He’s got gelled-back hair and wears a thick shearling coat, the fuzzy white collar standing up around his face. He reminds Jack of someone he�
��s seen before, or maybe he just looks too much like the standard bouncer.

  When Jack looks again, Freeman’s walking away, back up the alley in the direction he came. Jack lets him get ten yards farther on before he starts to follow. At the next street, Vallejo, Freeman makes a right. Then, less than a block later, he turns right again. Jack walks up Vallejo, listening for steps or someone breathing before he turns the corner. If Freeman’s made him, he doesn’t want to walk into the big man’s fist. He doesn’t want to walk into the big man’s anything.

  But when he finally peers around the corner, into a dark, even thinner alley than Bartol—a sign reads prescott court—what Jack sees is a short dead end, not even a full block. About halfway down, Freeman walks up the stairs to a house, knocks, and then holds up his receipt and says something. Jack can make out the loud click of a lock opening, and then Freeman steps inside. The door closes.

  “Fuck me.” Now Jack knows he’s lost a friend.

  He pulls out his pack and mouths a cigarette between his lips, lights it. Trying to look as nonchalant as possible, he walks down the right side of the narrow alley, staying opposite the door Freeman went into. There are no houses on this side, nothing more than a few doors, places that probably have a main entrance somewhere else. At the end it’s a Dumpster and another building and a thin walkway that probably leads out to another street.

  Jack makes to look at the windows—just a friendly guy out for a night stroll on a dark dead end—and then glances over at the door Freeman went into. He can’t tell if he’s being watched; the windows on the front of the house are all black. At the end of the alley, he turns around, looks up at the windows on his right. He wonders if O’Malley was ever on a stakeout in one of them, or if he’d been working for the Russians in the house the whole time.

  Jack wonders if there’s a stakeout going on now. Maybe the blond Fed is watching from one of these houses. Shit, Jack thinks, she could be inside the house Freeman just went into.