by Seth Harwood
As Jack stands, he sees Tony lying on the floor in front of his desk. He thinks it’s Tony, what’s left of him: In a great deal of blood, Jack can make out Tony’s ponytail, his black clothes. Jack sees one of his hands and recognizes the rings.
Through the space where the mirror used to be, Jack sees the wreckage of the club: tables turned over and most of the bottles and glass shattered with automatic-weapon fire. On the far side of the room, a woman holding a dressing gown to her chest walks across the floor. When she sees Jack, she screams and raises her hands beside her shoulders, still holding the gown to her body with her arms. When Jack shows her that his own hands are empty, she smiles, crying steadily, her makeup running down her face in streaks. She keeps walking toward the front exit of the club. No one else moves outside. One of the front door bouncers lies draped across a table, and on the floor a couple of Colombians lie cut up with bullets, losing what’s left of their blood.
Niki stands too now, still holding his gun on the Russian. “Shit,” he says. “This did not go well.”
“Yeah,” Jack says. “That’s the truth. Other than the fact that we’re alive.”
He carefully makes his way around the couch to make sure there’s no life on the pool table: just two dead Colombians. Beyond them, by the door to the club, Bald Head is crumpled against the wall, still holding the shotgun in his arms, but with a line of black across his chest and red underneath it, where one of the Uzis cut across him at close range.
Just to be secure about the Colombians, Jack takes the automatics—both Uzis, hot to the touch—and slides them on the floor into the corner, away from anyone else. He hears Junius cough from behind the desk. “Jack?”
Jack turns toward the desk and as he does, through the far door, he gets a look at the Surfer and the Professional, both still holding shotguns, laid out on the floor in a great deal of blood. They look as if they set up behind a table turned on its side, but somehow lost this cover and got shot up. What’s left of them looks this way, anyway.
Jack walks over to the desk as Niki takes out a set of flex-tie handcuffs and puts them around the Russian’s wrists, attaching him to one of the legs of the couch.
“Junius?” Jack says.
“Yeah, man.”
Coming around the end of the desk, Jack finds Junius pressed up against the wall in an awkward pose, his shoulders hunched against his chest, as if he’s fallen into this position and it’s not one he would choose. His gun rests next to him on the floor.
Junius shakes his head. “I’m fucked up, man,” he says. He coughs, and a bubble of blood forms over his mouth, then pops. He looks down at his body. Jack can see that he’s been shot in the stomach a few times, maybe also in the chest, in his leg. It’s hard to tell where the bullets went in and where he’s just bleeding. He spits a gob of red onto the floor. “What the fuck can I do, man?” He looks up, his eyes glassy, but not without some hope.
Jack bends down, crouches beside him, and takes his arm. “This isn’t the scene where the drug dealer dies at the end, okay?”
Junius laughs. “This ain’t your fucking movie, man. This shit be real.” He coughs. Jack hears Vlade yell and, turning around, he sees Niki helping him up to his feet. Niki raises his chin at Jack and points toward the door.
Jack pats Junius on the arm. “Where’s Free, baby? We’ll carry you out of here.”
Junius shakes his head. “Find that motherfucker, man, but I ain’t going to make it. I’m fucked.” He spits. “Is Tony dead?”
Jack nods. “He’s shot to pieces.”
“That motherfucker did have this whole shit planned. I used the Russians once. Now he’s their boy.” He takes a few breaths to collect himself before going on. “You heard him say that bald motherfucker was his new connection?”
Jack shakes his head. “I heard that part.”
“Yeah. The dude. He said that.” Junius nods, then he shakes his head, coughs. “Maybe he didn’t say it; I don’t know. I bought from him before. He’s size.”
Jack pats Junius’ shoulder. “Relax, man. It’s okay now.”
“Just the fact that that bald fucker’s here means he was selling to Tony. Man, he only does size. Probably set to have Tony run this whole city.”
“Okay, J. Okay.”
Junius spits. He looks at the desk. “There still blow up there?”
Jack looks, sees there’s enough left for them all to do a few lines tonight, and cups some of it in his hand. “Will this help?”
Junius looks at the blow and his eyes widen. “Is a pig’s pussy pork?”
Jack holds the blow under Junius’ nose, and Junius does his best to inhale, but when he tries, he coughs and blood runs out of one nostril. He laughs, shakes his head. “I’m so fucked, man.” Jack holds up his hand again, but Junius says, “It’s okay, Jack, man. Be good. You did okay.” He looks at the desk, the gun cabinet. He nods, and then he’s quiet.
Jack drops the blow onto the floor, claps his hands clean. He waits to see if Junius will breathe again, and then closes the dead man’s eyes.
Niki’s hand falls onto Jack’s shoulder. “We need to go.”
“Okay,” Jack says, standing. He starts to back away from the desk and then hears the spray of automatic fire and ducks back down again. The bullets cut across the wall to the side of the desk, over the gun case. “The fuck?” He turns and, peering around the desk, sees Maxine holding the Colombians’ Uzis, one in each hand. Niki rolls against the wall and comes up with his gun trained on Maxine’s chest. He yells for her to put the weapon down.
“No,” Maxine says. She’s standing at the end of the couch, where she’s been the whole time, where Jack stupidly threw the Uzis.
“Maxine,” Jack says. He starts to stand up slowly, shaking his head. “This is over. Just put them down, and we all leave, never think about this place again.”
“You don’t,” she says. “I worked for this motherfucker.” She’s crying even harder now, her hair covering her face and mascara running down her cheeks. “I worked here.”
“That’s okay,” Jack says. “Just calm down.” He reaches for Niki’s arm and lowers the gun. “Just put the guns down, and we leave. Okay, Max?” He starts across the room toward her, and she points the guns at his chest.
“Don’t make me use these, Jack.”
“Hey,” he says, raising his hands. “You don’t have to do anything here. It’s all real easy.”
“No,” she says. “Everything is fucked now, Jack.”
Jack opens his arms. “You’re a beautiful girl, Maxine. You’ll be okay.” With his right hand, he gestures toward what’s left of Tony. “You really think you needed this little fucker?”
“I needed his money.”
“You want money?” he says. “Go sell these guns, sell some of the coke lying around here, some of the X. Come out to the car and let me give you a few grand for your troubles.”
“Like fuck,” she says, shaking her head.
“Look around you, Maxine. You see what this kind of shit brings down?”
She lowers the guns, still holding them ready as Jack moves closer, but no longer aiming at him. “Give me the guns,” he says.
She drops them onto the couch, leans forward, rests both her hands on its back. She takes one deep breath and then screams, lets out everything inside her in one huge, penetrating cry that sends Jack and Niki both a few steps backward. Then she stands up straight, looks at Jack. She waves her hands. “I’m okay,” she says. “And I’m done here.”
She walks out from behind the couch, and Jack goes to her, his arms open, ready to give her some comfort, but she holds up a hand, keeps walking. “No thanks,” she says. “I’m better off.”
She walks to the door, nodding at Vlade and Niki. As she passes them, she says, “Boys.” Then she walks out.
“Shit,” Jack says, taking the clips out of the Uzis and throwing them aside.
Niki’s eyebrows are halfway up his forehead. “Chick is fucked,” he
says.
Jack laughs. “Tell me about it. But she can get it together when she needs to.” He starts toward the door, looking around him to see if there’s anything he should take. The place is pretty much destroyed; the only piece of furniture that hasn’t been completely taken apart is the couch, and even that has a line of gunshots across its top, the fabric torn and stuffing sticking out of it. Jack looks at the coke, decides it’s not in his best interest to try to do anything with it. The same goes for the guns. He claps his hands off, looks down at them, and sees the blood on his pants, probably Junius’, and the coke on the front of his shirt. He tries to clean himself off, but knows this’ll take a long, hot shower—maybe more than one.
Jack looks at the Russian, lying on the floor with his hands cuffed to the couch. “Can he move that?” he asks Niki. Jack tries lifting the couch, and it moves a little, enough to worry him about the Russian leaving when he comes to.
Niki’s already started to cut off the plastic cuffs, and Jack helps him drag the Russian across the room to the pool table. He starts to wake slightly as they move him, his eyes opening slowly, and Niki punches him in the face again. Jack can see he’s still breathing when he looks at his chest, but he’s out again, his eyes closed, blood around his nose and mouth.
“Nice work,” Jack tells Niki. “Very thorough.”
With another pair of plastic cuffs, Niki attaches him to the pool table, an object he definitely won’t be able to move.
“The cops will want this guy,” Jack says. “He’s been dealing blow and X, his setup’s big enough to give Tony V. delusions of grandeur, and they’ve been hearing about him through the wires. Shit, they even think he’s an international terrorist. War on Terror and some shit. They get a case against him, make it stick, and maybe all our troubles go away.”
“Troubles?”
Jack shakes his head. “That thing downtown today? The cars?”
Vlade raises his gun. “No. He is KGB coming after us. We should kill him.”
Jack looks up, surprised to hear Vlade getting involved. “The police come across this shitstorm, they’re going to need someone they can bust. You want that to be us or you want it to be him?”
“But we haven’t killed anyone here,” Niki says.
“Exactly.” Jack fixes Vlade with a hard stare. “Well, most of us haven’t. Let’s keep it that way.”
Vlade still holds the gun aimed at the Russian. “He sent his men after us and now he will want to kill us.” He looks down at the blood coming out of his shoulder. “And,” Vlade yells, “he just fucking shot me!”
“Calm down, big fella.” Jack stands and goes over to Vlade, pats him on the good shoulder. “Seriously. We need the police to find this guy alive. They’ll take care of him.” Jack looks at Niki and then back at Vlade.
Vlade bites his lower lip. “He sent his men to shoot at us. They shot your car.”
“That’s right,” Jack says, turning back to kick the Russian in his legs. “He’s a fuck, but we leave him.”
“We got to go.” Niki straightens up to his full height.
“He’s right,” Jack says.
Vlade puts up the hand on his good side to show that he won’t argue anymore.
“Plus,” Jack says. “We have to get you fixed up.”
Niki comes over to Jack and Vlade, claps his wounded friend on the good shoulder. “I will fix you,” he says.
“Then let’s go.”
“One second,” Niki says. He goes over to the desk, where he puts a small pile of coke onto a credit card. After cutting it into two lines with his finger, he brings it over to Vlade. “This will help with the bullet.”
“Okay,” Vlade says, and then, after snorting the lines, “Yes!” Now wide awake, glowing, he shouts it. “Yes! Take this fucking metal out of my shoulder!”
Niki looks at Jack guiltily, shrugs. “It will help with pain.”
Jack laughs. He has to: Now he’s got a shot-up, coked-up Czech-Russian ex-KGB man to deal with. He just points to the door. “Let’s go.”
They find Freeman in the hall outside the office, partly awake. He’s been shot, but he knocked the hell out of the Colombian who shot him, beat the man with his own gun, using it as a club. They help him up; it takes Jack and Niki to lift him, but soon he’s supporting most of his weight on his own, starting to walk. Jack asks him if he’ll be okay, and Freeman laughs. “This’s just a few shots, is all.”
Jack and Niki exchange a look behind Freeman’s wide back, Jack wondering how much coke the big guy’s done, and Niki raising his eyebrows, probably thinking they should give him more.
They walk outside into the predawn glow of the city, the lights above the parking lot still on, and the dark night sky beginning to lighten. But it’s not daylight yet; the dim glow of the city is still the only light. The cold, wet air surrounds them, the moisture of the fog starting to seep into their clothes and their bones. This is where the city finds its life.
They walk in silence around the corner, Freeman dragging his bad left leg, and Jack and Niki still supporting part of his weight. Vlade comes up behind, breathing with some effort.
“I’m driving my ass to the hospital,” Freeman says as they come around the corner to where they can see the cars. “NFL Players’ Union insurance for life, bro.” He claps Jack and Niki on their backs, moves away from them to limp toward Junius’ car on his own.
“You have the keys to that thing?” Jack asks.
Freeman laughs. “In the car.” He turns to regard Jack and the Czechs. “Rule number one,” he says. “You ever go into some shit like this, you leave the keys in the motherfucking ignition.”
Jack nods. “That’s sage advice, big guy. What about Junius?”
Freeman just looks at them. Even with the tattoo covering half of his face, blocking his expression, Jack can tell he doesn’t like the question. “He’s dead, right?” None of the others says anything, but Freeman reads the answer from their expressions. “He’s dead. If he wasn’t he’d be here now. What else can I do?”
He shakes his head. Then he limps around the car to the driver’s side, opens the door, and waves without looking back as he gets in. “I’ll see you all when I see you,” he says.
When he’s in, the car dips down noticeably on his side. The engine starts and the rear lights come on. All the windows in the car are tinted black, so Jack can’t see him, but he imagines Freeman giving them a last wave before he backs out and pulls off.
Mouthing a cigarette out of the pack, Jack looks at Niki and Vlade: Niki looks serious, taking out a knife and wiping it against his pants. After Jack lights his cigarette, he hands him his lighter, and Niki nods, runs the flame underneath the blade.
Vlade says, “Now we eat!”
Jack laughs, watching Niki sterilize the knife that he’ll use to dig the bullet from Vlade’s shoulder. Vlade glows, triumphant in the morning buzz of the two big lines of coke, luminescent in the fog and the blur of the streetlights above them. Niki was right, Jack realizes; Vlade’s not about to feel any pain.
They talk Jack into letting them take the bullet out in the backseat of the Mustang as he drives them to breakfast. He’s not a fan of the idea, but when he hears the sirens in the distance as they stand in the parking lot, he goes along, moves to get by. Even if the cops aren’t headed for The Coast, it’s time to get the hell out of this part of the city, as far away as they can manage, and operating on someone’s bullet wound isn’t the kind of thing you want to be doing out in public, even in this section of town.
Jack gives Niki a towel out of the trunk, an old one, to catch any blood that Vlade might lose, and Niki tells him not to worry. “Okay,” Jack says, taking a look at the leather bag full of money. He touches its side, feeling the heavy leather. “It’ll be okay,” he says.
Vlade doesn’t scream as Niki goes to work in the backseat. He’s cut off a part of the towel for Vlade to bite down on, and he’s biting so hard that Jack can see lines sticking out on the side
s of his neck in his rearview. There’s sweat on Vlade’s brow, but he still doesn’t make a sound.
“No bumps, Jack,” Niki reminds. “Or you tell me first.”
“Either of you see any bullet holes in the leather back there?” Jack asks. “You see where any shots went in?”
“I am looking at where the bullet went into Vlade, actually.”
Jack sees the Market Street trolley tracks coming up and slows the car. “We’re going to bump.”
In the rearview, Jack sees Niki stop what he’s doing with the knife and blot Vlade’s shoulder. He says something in Czech and Vlade nods.
Niki points up ahead on the road. “Will you pull over ahead?”
Jack turns to really see them for a moment: Niki’s holding the towel hard against Vlade’s shoulder, and Vlade’s really starting to sweat. He turns off Market and slows as they head onto Van Ness, going toward the Tenderloin and the Cable Car diner. When Jack stops the car, he watches Niki insert the tip of his knife into Vlade’s shoulder at least three inches. Vlade screams into the towel in his mouth, and it comes out muffled but loud enough for people outside the car to hear, if there were any. Luckily, there’s no one on the streets here at this hour. Even the homeless have gone to sleep in their makeshift beds; the shoppers have all long gone home. Niki works the blade for a second, takes something in his hand, and presses the towel against Vlade’s skin.
Niki holds up a small, round, bloody piece of metal. “He’s okay,” he says. “Let’s go get some food.”
At the Cable Car—the only other diner Jack knows in the city is the Blue Diner, the one across from the Hall of Justice, and he’s not about to go there with a bloody, coked-up Czech, blood on his pants, and whatever other remnants of what’s just happened clinging to the three of them—Jack just eats, drinks enough coffee for the ride home, thinks about the shower he’ll take and how well he’ll sleep for the next three or four days. They sit at the opposite end of the dining room from where he sat with Ralph before this all started, but Jack looks at the booth, knocks wood three times as he thinks of Ralph.