As if someone had cued him to end the fight, Bolo started to unload. Immediately, Jack heard Jane scream. He didn't need to look to know it was her; she was the only woman in the house.
Bolo's right arm pumped up and down like a piston in an Indy car, methodically beating what was left of Chen's nose, cheeks, and eyes into the sand. When Bolo finally stood up, he had destroyed Chen's face and whatever was left of his soul.
Bolo shook out his right hand, scattering drops of blood across the ring. He turned toward the stage and bowed once to Mr. Ruby. The crowd cheered as though they'd finally lost the last bit of sanity in their collective mind.
Jane looked down at the stage, Mr. Ruby standing over her, clapping in time with the crowd. Bolo bowed at all four corners of the ring, then stepped down. He crossed to the stage and climbed up to stand next to Mr. Ruby, where he took a final bow and then turned to leave.
As he did, he gave a slow nod to Jack, a look in his eye like he wanted Jack to be next. Jack was no lunatic; he knew he'd never last a round with Bolo. He doubted even Niki or a healthy Freeman would stand a chance.
Then Niki was across the arena, standing at the top of the rows, just at the bottom of the entrance steps. He glanced around, realizing the life he'd come to save was already over. Two attendants climbed up to the ring and began to carry Chen's head off the floor in chunks, the separate parts of his skull just so many pieces inside a bag of skin that had once been a human head.
"Jesus," Jack said out loud.
Gannon shot him a look. If anyone inside the bureau found out that a potential informant and witness had been brutally killed on Jane's watch, in front of her eyes, there'd be hell to pay. And after Jane's ex-husband had betrayed the bureau, Jane's career was already on the line.
Jane stood up, as did many of the others in the stands. Jack saw people filing past Niki to be among the first to get out.
Niki and Jack stood on a street corner in China Town, waiting for Jane to come out of a bar. They'd hit two different places, moving on when Jack felt the prying eyes of former fans. Now Jane was using a bathroom, and Jack had his eye up the block at the Li Po Lounge. He'd listened to a story about man-eating zombies who dropped a major mob hit at this bar; it'd been podcast by one of his favorite authors, Scott Sigler. Scott sounded funny as all shit and barely had any teeth in his head, but he could tell a great story. That couldn't be denied.
The Li Po had been rumored to have a secret basement, but as soon as the rumor got out and people wanted to see it, the management started opening it all the time. Anything to please the customers, put the place on the map, or sell another overpriced drink, heavy on the ice.
All Jack wanted to do was get drunk. It was simple as that. One drink led to another, and soon all his fingers wanted was another glass to hold. His head was starting to buzz, but the cigarettes kept him steady, brought him back down. Jane hadn't said much since they left the fight ring, and Niki was still working to get the full story out of them. The more Jack drank and tried to explain it, the less things made sense.
Why had Chen decided to fight again? How had he gotten into the club? Why would he let himself end up in a situation that bad?
None of it mattered as much as the fact that he was gone. Left to be carried off by a couple of ring jockeys like a bull after a corrida, leaving only a trail of blood.
Niki flattened Jack with his eyes. "This Chen was your friend, no? So we must go back and avenge him. We must get in and fight again in this ring."
"Oh, no," Jane said, coming up on them from behind, "that's about the worst idea I've ever heard. We're not going anywhere near that fight ring."
She took a deep breath. "But–" Even before she started explaining what she had in mind, Jack knew he was going to appreciate her plan as a work of genius.
A week later, they were back in Chinatown, on the border of North Beach with Vlade: four figures dressed in black.
Pooling their resources and connections to information, Jane and Vlade had learned the name of Mr. Ruby's restaurant, the place he could most often be found. The building stood around the corner from City Lights and the new Beat Museum. But this was a block tourism had yet to change. The front of the restaurant looked much like any other: big red wooden doors topped in red tiles and set into a wall of bright gold. Foot-high Chinese letters lined the sides of the door.
"This is the spot," Jack said. "Anybody up for a bite to eat?"
Niki nodded. "Yeah. I want a soup from the nose of a gangster. I see his face, I bite his nose off and take it home to make the stew."
"With that. . . " Jane said, and she started up the wide, red stairs. She un-tucked her shirt and drew her weapon from the small of her back. The Beretta hung at the end of her arm, alongside her thigh. It was dark and so was she. Vlade reached up with the barrel of the AK-47 he held and knocked out the bulbs above the entrance. If there were any cameras, they weren't going to catch much now.
Jack gripped the weapon they'd given him: a .44 Charter Arms Smith & Wesson. It held six shots, and Jack meant to make every one of them count. In his pockets, he had a series of speed-loading cylinders ready to go. He'd hang back, but he wanted to be able to light somebody up if he had to.
All the work with Shaw, Vlade, Niki, Freeman, and Jane had hardened him to this. He wanted to see someone go down for what happened to Chen. Shit, if he got a clear shot at Bolo Yeung, that motherfucker was over.
Inside, the only people Jack saw were a couple of waiters, skinny old men who looked so harmless he wanted to laugh. Jane waved them down onto the floor with her gun, and the old men pressed their faces into the cheap carpet, avoiding the sight of Jack and the others.
Jack's group went through the kitchen at a trot, Jane and Vlade waving down the cooks and dishwashers as fast as they could. Mercifully, none of them made a sound. Jane stopped at the back door and listened. Then, satisfied with what she heard, she nodded once and stepped back.
Niki started his run at the biggest chef's station and crashed, in a mid-air side kick through the door. It hung in pieces as Jack followed Jane and Vlade into Ruby's back room.
Inside, Mr. Ruby sat at a small, round table with three other men. Two of them were bald and the third hard a short crew cut across the sides of his head. "Tsk, tsk, tsk," Ruby said, sucking his teeth. He wagged a finger at Jane.
The other men were eating noodles out of small bowls. For a moment they had lowered their food, but now they raised the bowls and chopsticks back to their faces and continued to eat.
"Shut the fuck up," Jane said.
"What are you going to do, Agent Gannon? You have your guns, and I am not impressed. You want to live in this city, then you will not cross me. You will behave."
She nodded at Niki, and the big Czech moved behind Ruby. He dragged Ruby up onto his feet, then produced a knife from his sleeve and held it up to Ruby's neck.
"Careful," Jane said, "is a quality you might consider. What you don't seem to understand right now is you're dealing with a federal agent who does not give a simple fuck. You hear this? Whatever you're thinking, it doesn't hold now.
"We've talked to Johnny Tang and the Lin brothers, and they say they don't give a shit what happens to you either. So for the time being, you're mine. And if I decide you don't grow up to see tomorrow, then that's a decision I make on my own."
Ruby smiled and started to laugh, but at the first sound, Niki pressed harder with the knife. Jack saw a thin trickle of blood slide down its front edge.
"What do you want?" Ruby asked. "Really, what can I give to you?"
"First you can start by telling me why you set up Chen."
"This is simple. He cross the fight. He challenge the rules of kumite and lose. When he did…" Ruby trailed off until Niki loosened up his grip. "When he did he knew he had upset the balance. He had to come back and attempt for redemption of his honor."
"But that was not to be," the oldest of the three other men said.
"Also," Ruby said, "he heard
that his family had had a visit. Back at home. He knew they would die if he did not return to the ring."
The old man said, "This not necessary, Agent Gannon. These actions cannot stand."
"Where's the fighter who killed Chen?"
The three men looked at one another. Ruby shook his head. "He not here. You want him? For what? Why not take in any of the fighters who have entered kumite? It is the duty of any to bring victory by death. These are the rules. Our rules.
"It does not matter. I only put on the fights. The fighters, they come. Hardship. Call it our country of United States. These men? They no different from any you see on streets outside." He waved a hand across the room.
Vlade stepped forward. "He's just trying to buy time. Something's coming down on us. I can smell it."
"Good," Jane said. "Get him out."
At that, Niki pocketed the knife and slung Ruby over one shoulder. The restaurant had a back exit, and it stood to reason it'd be right off this back room. Jack led the way, stepping around the table of men and pushing past bags of white rice.
He found the door and pushed through it. Outside, three black Honda Civics blocked the alley's open end. The men with guns leaning against them looked expectant and tired of standing around.
"Federal agent!" Jane said, holding up her badge and gun. The guys at the Civics looked unimpressed, as if someone had just told them they could order a pizza by phone. "We're bringing this man out!" Jane said.
One by one, the men pushed up off the cars and aimed their guns at Jack and his crew.
"Fuck me," Jane said.
"I'd–"
Before Jack could say anything else, Vlade said, "Yo, fuck this shit," and ripped off a stream of shots with his Kalashnikov. Two of the men fell immediately–one shot across his stomach and the other across his thighs–as the others scrambled to get low behind the cars. The gut-shot man stayed quiet; he pressed his face into the asphalt. But the man shot in his legs bellowed with pain and rage.
In a moment, Vlade had already emptied his clip and ducked back inside the restaurant. Jack aimed his Smith & Wesson down the alley and fired once into the passenger door of a car. The shot was loud, echoing off the brick walls. Then Jack followed Jane and Vlade inside as bullets sang off the brick wall behind him.
Niki stood holding Mr. Ruby by the bags of rice.
"I walk out with him, they will not make noise. They will not shoot him."
Mr. Ruby smiled. "They will when I tell them to! Which I will, you motherfucks. This ends now."
"You are right about that part." With a new clip rammed into the Kalashnikov's breech, Vlade spun into the doorway and let off a stream of shots that hit underneath the cars. Jack heard a ricochet and then a scream from one of the gunmen, and saw the man's knees land on the pavement behind the car. Jack aimed and shot again, this time at the undercarriage of the car, and another man screamed as Jack's shot hit him in the foot. Then one of the others raised a small machine gun and let off a series of rounds. Jack turned and saw the rice streaming out of four small holes in the bags just behind his head.
"Shit," Jack said, settling his back into the inside wall.
Niki started for the door, pushing Ruby in front of him. As Ruby made the doorway, he held up a hand to alert his men, but he was too late. They'd already started firing at the movement, and Niki pushed forward–holding Ruby's body in front of him like a shield and firing from his waist with a small black Uzi.
"Shit," Gannon said. "That was my witness. Now I don't give a fuck about what goes down here." She spun into the doorway and fired past Niki. Jack heard an explosion as she shot the gas tank of one of the cars. He looked out in time to see the next Civic and then the last one blowing up in a chain reaction, meeting together in the air and then crashing back down to the ground.
The final gunmen scattered, but Vlade spun out into the alley with his AK and leveled them like the rest.
When Vlade had finished, the alley was quiet but for the sound of the burning cars. Jack stepped outside.
Jane looked around and then back in at the older men sitting around the table with their noodles. "I guess you'll have to do as my witnesses," she said, curling her index finger. "Let's go, little old boys. You fucks are coming with me."
At the sound of Niki ramming a new clip home into his Uzi, all three stood up and made for the door.
"Thanks for your cooperation," Jane said. "I thought you'd see it my way."
Jack and the others walked up the alley with the three old gangsters in flex-tie cuffs, pushed ahead by Vlade's and Niki's guns.
As the group squeezed around what was left of the burning Civics, Jack saw movement ahead, and then Bolo Yeung stepped around the corner from the street. He looked more than surprised to see the four of them with the old men. In fact, he looked scared shitless.
And that suited Jack just fine. He raised the Charter Arms that still held four bullets. Four shots that would set him up just fine.
He took the first shot and knee-capped Bolo, who fell against the alley wall, pain across his face and only one foot on the ground.
"Yeah," Jack said. "I just might like this."
"You want me to?" Niki asked.
"No. I think I want to handle this fuck myself. All by myself." Jack smiled at the others, and Vlade smiled back. He didn't know who Bolo was, but he knew what Jack meant.
"Not my crime scene," Gannon said, pushing Niki and the old men around the corner, headed back toward the main street and her car. "Got what I need here. This guy?" She looked at Bolo. "Didn't see him here tonight. Sorry."
Soon she was around the corner and gone. Vlade stepped back, holding the Kalashnikov by his waist. "You are show," he said to Jack.
Jack opened up the cylinder on the Charter Arms and took out the three spent casings. He spun the cylinder and knocked it back in place.
"Want to have some fun now?" he asked Bolo.
Bolo made a face to look strong, but the pain from his leg showed plainly . He tried dropping into a fighting stance, but–unable to put weight on his front leg–he let himself slump back against the wall.
"Yes," he said. "We have fun like I did with your friend Chen. Show me your fun."
"Not a problem." Jack smiled. He pointed the gun at Bolo's other leg and pulled back the trigger. Its hammer clicked on an empty chamber. "That's about as much fun as it's gonna get. And it's gonna get much, much worse."
The Following is an excerpt from
THIS IS LIFE – a Jack Palms Novel
Now available at sethharwood.com
1
As Jack sits up to steal a look over the back of the couch, he wonders if the person in his backyard is the one who set his bed on fire, burned it down to the frame. A welcome-home message from an unknown friend.
He can still see the remains in his mind’s eye: the wood frame scorched black and the mattress crispy where the sheets and blankets used to be. Even Victoria’s Tempur-Pedic pillows—the plastic foam you wouldn’t think would be flammable—burned. A black line of charred rug outlined where the bed had stood, but nothing else in the room had been touched by fire. A professional pyro.
That was one of two disturbing items Jack found when he got home from the open road.
Another creak in the night, a stick breaking outside the patio doors. The VCR clock flashes 12:00; the wall clock reads two forty-five.
When Jack looks over the back of the couch, he sees darkness all the way to the rock wall of the garden. Then he hears another sound like the last but louder: a crunch from something heavier than a deer—someone walking outside, just past the little evergreen trees Victoria planted along the back wall of the house.
Jack hits the floor on all fours, crawls between the couch and the coffee table, then around the end table toward the double patio doors. Whatever’s out there, he wants to know it before it knows him.
At first, all he sees is his own reflection in the glass. Then, just inside the edge of the garden, a glint of something
metal pointing out of a bush—the shiny round barrel of a gun. Jack drops to his chest as the gun goes off. He hears the whistle of a silencer, and a bullet pierces the glass above him, right where he’d be if he had been standing.
He looks out through the bottom row of windows in the door, and sees a man come out of the bushes—a man right outside his living room, not five feet away. His face is hard to make out in the shadows, but he’s white, serious-looking. Jack’s seen him before, but that’s just a hunch—maybe not even right.
The man in the yard raises the gun and its long silencer, and shoots three times through the right-side windows of the door. What he’s shooting at, Jack has no idea, probably his own reflection. Shards of glass fall onto Jack’s back, and he covers his head with his hands, hoping he won’t hear another shot.
After a moment, he looks up and sees the three sets of metal locks at the top, the handle, and the bottom of the door, and goes to slide the first one. To his surprise, it’s already open. He tries to remember if he locked it, but he hasn’t thought about doing that since he left for his road trip with the Czechs. Or maybe his bed-burner left it unlocked.
He gathers himself into a four-point stance, his arms straight down from his shoulders, hands on the floor, and his legs bent behind him, resting on the balls of his feet.
He focuses on the shooter’s knees, hoping the man is still looking at his own reflection. The shooter steps forward, oblivious to the crunching sound from the wood chips in the yard. And that’s when Jack goes. He jams his body forward, his legs straight then pumping, arms shielding his face as he hits the patio doors’ wooden center with both forearms. He blasts the doors open, shooting his body out onto the short wooden porch, and in the next moment he’s in the yard going headfirst for the intruder’s knees.
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