Jack Be Nimble: The Crystal Falcon Book 3

by Ben English

  “This business of ducking bullets? Errol Flynn used to do this stuff all the time, or so I hear.” He came back to the wall and sat. "No, Mercedes, I'm an actor, that's all. A few years back I did some research for a cloak-and-dagger World War II movie—”

  “Storming the Castle!” Mercedes interrupted. "The one directed by Kenneth Branagh."

  "Come to find out I'm not half bad at that sort of thing. It just came naturally, like the time we went free climbing up Zion Rock. Remember that?"

  The ghost of a smile played across Jack's face, and he continued. "We were filming in England when a terrorist group made an attempt on William's life." He began piecing the metal fragments together. "Is this gold? I think I might be able to fix it. So William and I hid out in the sewers for a few days and pulled a surprise or two on the terrorists."

  “William. The William I’m thinking about?”

  He smiled slightly, despite himself. He had always loved to tell Mercedes stories. The stubborn buckle was almost back to working order in his nimble fingers. "When certain people found out what I did, they allowed me to train with a few of the different agencies and groups that teach . . . rather specialized skills. And for some reason I seem to remember pretty much everything.

  “Our group is very well organized. I guess you could say we work behind the scenes, helping out a little here and there. Everybody's got other jobs, of course, out there in the real world."

  He sat next to her on the low wall at the edge of the roof. Concentrated on fixing the belt buckle.

  Her next question came quickly. “That was Alonzo, wasn’t it? From Forge? I didn’t recognize him until I saw the two of you together.”

  He nodded.

  “And the FBI guy? Dressed like an L.L. Bean cover model? He’s with you too, isn’t he?”

  She was good. That kind of perception didn’t come from coincidence.

  Mercedes smirked. “Next you’re going to tell me you had something to do with the fire in London.”

  “Imagine that.”

  Her Egyptian-green gaze flicked to the corners of his eyes and mouth. Jack recognized the pattern almost offhand, and wondered if she could read microexpressions. Would a photographer naturally develop that skill?

  “Jack, come on! Seriously? London?”

  Apparently she was very good.

  The she looked at his hands and swore. “Jack!”

  What? The buckle wouldn’t be new and pretty anymore, but it might still work. Then he saw: redness seeped from the creases of his fist.

  “Jack, you’re bleeding!”

  So he was. "Yeah, well. The other guy had a knife."

  Her expression widened, so he added, “It's okay; I can take care of this.”

  He ripped the top off a small packet and sprinkled powder liberally across the cut. It was a hemostatic. The flow of blood instantly stopped.

  Mercedes watched him carefully. “You actually carry QuikClot in your pocket?”

  “No, this is Celox. QuikClot gets too hot when you use it, especially in large quantities.” But he was impressed. “How do you know about this stuff?”

  “I used to work with John Holdaway, the war photographer.”

  “Big John, really?”

  She didn’t say anything for a bit after that, but tore off a strip of her sleeve and helped him wrap his hand.

  “Thanks,” he said. “This can’t be good for you.” He flexed the hand. Havana had a decent Chinatown; he’d find the right herbs later and be fine by morning.

  *

  Mercedes watched him as he spoke. Jack’s face came alive with expression, each emotion flickering into view before being replaced by another. The years had layered him, redefining the young man she knew. Young Jack was still there, she could tell. The craziness though, the endlessly active creative spark, had been strengthened by confidence and experience. A magnetic pull emanated from him that had nothing to do with his looks.

  She couldn't tell exactly what it was about Jack that made him seem so different, so larger-than-life. She couldn't fit him into any categories, which intrigued her. At the very least he had a sort of unaffected panache.

  Usually she could pin a man down quicker than this. Jack, though—.

  And she had yet to see the full version of the smile she remembered, the smile that could light up the whole city.

  Careful, she told herself, it took you a long time to get over this guy. For crying out loud, he's an actor, he's very good at manipulating people and their feelings.

  She did feel good, she had to admit. Almost giddy.

  “I’ll bet you have a code name.”

  That almost earned her a smile. Not quite. “Nobody calls me Aquaman or Potatohead anymore.”

  “I’m glad we still have that between us.” Whoops. Now, why did she say that? Mercedes spoke again, quickly. “Your turn,” she said.

  “What?” He turned the belt buckle over and over in his fingers.

  “You aren’t really asking me any questions. It’s your turn.”

  “Maybe I’m saving them all up for a really, really good one.” Jack grimaced and squeezed hard with his fingers. The metal gave a little pop, and he held the whole buckle up for her to see.

  "Amazing," said Mercedes. "Why do you do it, Jack? I would think Hollywood kept you busy enough. Frankly, I don't see how you do all this."

  “I get a lot of work, sure, but the Hollywood A-list is written in disappearing ink.”

  “And the stress? How do you deal with—”

  “I write. Heaps and heaps of really bad novels. Which have nothing to do with my real life.”

  “Real life. Where you ‘help people’. Tell me again what that means.”

  He stood and examined the roof around them. "Do you see your belt around here anywhere?" He snatched up the leather strap and faced her. “We try to fix things when they’ve gone wrong. Usually nobody even knows we’ve been there.”

  “What have you done, exactly?”

  “Haven’t you ever wished you could fix something? Steal something back from the people who took it? Help someone find their way out of an addiction or an impossible circumstance? So you might, say, blow up a road through a mountain pass while an ousted dictator was trying to escape the people she used to, ah, dictate. You might break up a white slavery ring, expose an active pedophile. For instance,” he gestured carelessly. “Seize the nuclear control stations of two small countries about to go to war with each other. Maybe you’d take a criminal enterprise and exaggerate one part of it until the whole applecart tips over.

  “We’ve hypervalued currencies. Hacked websites, databases. Gone after kidnapped kids. Pulled down as much corruption in high places as we can. Alonzo calls it ‘general kickassery.’ All that crazy stuff we used to pretend to do when we were kids, we’ve done. We stay behind the scenes. And in the process we’ve broken pretty much every law and most of the fun commandments.”

  There must have been something critical in her expression, because he added, “It’s not all cloak-and-dagger. I got Alonzo some pretty good reservations at a restaurant a few days ago.”

  He threaded the leather through the buckle. “There are a lot of people who need help. Not just the Miguel Espinosas of the world.

  “I suppose if I’m completely honest,” he gripped the air in front of him. "It does give me some fantastic plots and characters to work with."

  “For those really bad novels you mentioned earlier.”

  He nodded.

  “Are you going to write about tonight?”

  “You think I should? Where would the story start?”

  “Where would it end?”

  Jack carefully shut his mouth, but Mercedes swore she saw the hint of a smile.

  The pause in the conversation was not uncomfortable. Despite herself, Mercedes felt the edges of her doubt beginning to fray.

  “But these are killers, Jack. People like Armand Lopez, they don’t care two shakes about law. And they defend themselves with guns
and money. What happens then? Mr. Potatohead puts on his angry eyes?"

  When he didn’t answer right away, Mercedes looked at him with care, especially his eyes. She didn’t see guilt, or remorse, didn’t even see arrogance. After seeing Jack in action on the roof, she knew he had an intimate relationship with violence.

  He sat on the wall next to her, gently working with her belt buckle. Eventually, he said, “Is it me, or are the questions harder than they were the last time we did this?”

  She gestured at their surroundings. “It’s not exactly two kids sitting on a big rock next to the Clearwater River.” Though it was starting to feel, more and more, exactly that.

  She thought about her time with Big John. Remembered battlefield faces; men and women who needed to act fast and hard at civilization’s edge, where there was no rule of law. This was something she understood, at least the beginnings of it.

  But Jack Flynn? Jack Flynn does this kind of thing?

  He nodded, as if coming to an internal decision. “How about this for an idea: I have to go back to L.A. tomorrow morning. Let me give you a ride.”

  “A ride to L.A.?”

  “Yes. I have to film special effects tests for a project coming up, a sequel to the MacArthur movie. The studio just greenlit the new movie, and it’s in my contract.”

  Give her a ride? What, did he have his own plane or something?

  “Here’s the thing, Mercedes. Let me take you out to lunch while I’m there. I’ll tell you everything.”

  She must have hesitated too long. The man—the boy —fidgeted.

  “There’s a spot on the Pacific Highway called Dean’s Place, I’ve been dying to eat there. Can’t get it out of my head for some reason—”

  She knew about Dean’s. “An old friend of my Dad’s lives near there.”

  Still. She tried to keep the doubt from her voice. “These aren’t things that a normal guy would do.”

  “Your point being?” His eyes glittered in the moonlight. “We are what we are because this is what we choose to be." He stood and looked over the edge of the roof. The light from below spilled over his face. "Too many people shut their eyes in life because they don't believe they can live up to the expectations they set for themselves when they were young. Or they didn’t have someone to show them a hint of the extraordinary things they might accomplish. And so many people die every day just from hopelessness. Because they don’t know where to look." His gaze rose.

  “Where should I be, Mercedes? Dying a slow, safe death in a cubicle somewhere?”

  Jack looked directly at her. Touched his forehead, then his heart. "We were made for joy. Struggle and hardship, sure; that too. But we were made with joy in our blood." He chuckled, looking over the crowd. "I'm starting to sound like a bad self-help book. Here, stand up a minute."

  Mercedes stood, and Jack deftly slid the belt around her. She found herself looking fully up into Jack's face. His expression was questioning, curious. She felt very warm; whole.

  “You didn’t answer my question.” he said, clicking the buckle back into place.

  “Lunch with you, in L.A.? Just you and I.”

  “You can bring a chaperone if you think it would help.”

  She considered. It was difficult. He was very near. The last time he’d stood this close to her, rational thought had been the last thing she wanted.

  A grin played at the corners of his mouth. She tried to look away.

  “Jack, my life is very . . . deliberate. People depend on me–”

  “I can save you time. We can make it from this roof to L.A. in two hours. Really.” Jack's enthusiasm nearly bubbled over. She found it catching. “We’ll go tonight if you’d like, after we pick you out a new camera. Oh, and some new clothes too, I guess. At least a patch or something. Maybe a handbag would cover that hole," he said, eyeing her torn dress.

  “Jack, slow down! I can't believe this. How would you expect me to keep up with you? This is really all very nice, but I just don't see—”

  “Mercedes.”

  Her heart skipped through a funny little soft-shoe routine, danced right around the easy edges of his voice, and the world itself took on a hue she hadn’t noticed in a long time. A subtle thing, a hint, a whisper of a feeling.

  “I don't know what to say.” She said it so only he could hear.

  “Be original; say yes. Everybody else says no.”

  She burst out laughing. That released an emotional floodgate of some sort. Jack handed her a handkerchief, and Mercedes noticed she was crying for some reason.

  “You’ll tell me all of it, the whole story?”

  “Everything, from the very beginning.”

  “Lunch might not be enough time. Better make it breakfast.”

  “Look, I can’t promise – wait, what?"

  “What?”

  “Did you . . .‘Breakfast’?”

  She grinned. He did, too.

  Ah, there it was, the famous smile. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to be the complete focus of Jack Flynn’s attention.

  He staggered back a step as the sky filled with thunderbursts and explosions of light. The crowd below cheered as Espinosa reached the end of his speech. Mercedes lowered the handkerchief, surprised at what the illumination revealed. A pattern of frogs spread across the cloth.

  Jack snapped his fingers and snatched a pink rose right out of the air. "Trade secret, my dear," he said as he handed it to an astounded Mercedes.

  He took her hand and they both sat on the edge of the roof. The echoes from the crowd below rose up around them, and Jack nearly shouted, “Hang on, Mercedes! It’s amazing. There are people to rescue and mountains to climb and pirate treasure to find. So much to tell and the world’s not going to look the same to you when the story’s done. No limits, Mercedes! No limits to the things we’re going to do.”

  Mercedes began to smile as she stared into Jack's eyes. For a fleeting second she almost believed the words.

  Short Skirt, Long Jacket

  Ian lost his tie somewhere between the conference center and their hotel, where he finally removed his suit coat. Still had yet to enjoy his first beer. The team naturally gathered again at the crow’s nest for a debrief, but a bit of an accidental party sprang up instead. Electrical power was returning slowly in the city, block by block, and they ended up sitting practically in the dark, laughing at everything, using Steve’s laptop screen for illumination, while he filled shot glasses with melting ice cream from the tiny freezer he kept under his chair.

  Alonzo used his phone to call up a list of music, and placed it in a ceramic cereal bowl—an old trick to amplify sound. Short Skirt Long Jacket, by Cake, echoed out of the makeshift loudspeaker.

  Save Jack, they were all there—everyone had come through the night alive, though not unbloodied. The Tanner brothers and Alonzo had each tested the resilience of their body armor, and Nicole nursed a nasty bruise in need of a raw steak—apparently she’d led the Secret Service after the main crowd, out of the ballroom and down the service hallway, where one of the gentlemen aristocrats gave her an elbow in the face in his haste to be first through the narrow door at the bottom of the stairs.

  Even Peter was present, using both hands to describe his adventures to Allison Griffin, still in her evening gown. Ian couldn’t help but notice Alonzo, seated next to her (and at least three beers ahead of everyone else), obviously counting the freckles on the Major’s bare shoulder.

  “—So there was Jack, right in the middle of the action,” Pete said. “Mack on one side, fighting the whole jazz ensemble—“

  “Guy had a gun in his damn tuba case,” Mack said, “Threw a drum set at me.”

  “And Vern on the other side, beating somebody with a plate of hors d’oeuvres and a big bowl of salad, so I’m trying to second-guess Jack, thinking maybe he’s going after the tuba player, maybe he’s going to help Vern because really, he’s got nowhere else to go.”

  Allison was rapt. She’d been swept up by the cr
owd, among the first to go down the service entrance. Had nearly missed the whole show. Her ice cream sat untouched.

  Peter warmed to his story. “Nowhere to go but up! ‘Shoot these out’, he growls, and grabs the chandelier chain, gets yanked right off the floor and goes through the skylight. Douglas Fairbanks!” A fresh round of laughter nearly drowned his last words.

  “Really hope that thing’s insured,” said Jack, from the doorway.

  He had a girl with him. She raised her hand.

  “Hi.”

  That was the period on the end of a sentence of laughter, but the mood didn’t turn sober, as Ian expected. The girl moved smoothly; relaxed, like Jack. They stepped into the room and eased into introductions, and Jack was using everyone’s real name, and it didn’t seem odd at all, even considering the girl had a badge around her neck clearly identifying her as a member of the press.

  She stopped when she got to Peter, and said, “You were at Armsign, in L.A.?”

  “Absolutely,” he replied. “By way of San Francisco, just like you.” Pete looked at her curiously, then at Jack. “Ollie, would this be ‘Stan’?”

  And another piece of a very strange evening and a singularly odd life made a bit more sense. Ian decided it was time for that first beer.

  Alonzo gestured at their clothes. “Looks like you guys almost made it out of prom alive.”

  A Cupful of Ink, A Revel, the End of Us, and Mercedes’ Idea

  “Can’t tell if my body wants a late dinner or an early breakfast,” Allison said, and Alonzo agreed wholeheartedly. Following Jack and the Adams woman through the hotel lobby took an act of deliberate concentration. Ostensibly they were walking the two women back to their hotels—this was the mission—but the couches and rattan furniture (pretty much every vertical surface they passed) looked incredibly inviting.

  Mercedes noticed. “Coffee might help you decide.” Then she and Jack fell back into their natter. “Is it true you and Penn Gillette beat those two guys from the Lakers?” She held his arm, comfortably. Alonzo wondered who was leading whom.