Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  Instinct made me glance downward when my brain registered the flick of the mountain’s wrist. He held a blade, finely carved, the silver edge a sheen in the dim light of the bar. Now pointing at me.

  Eight inches of steel. The knife lashed up toward my outstretched fingers and I dodged the upward swing. In the second he had the knife raised, I hammered a kick into the man’s knee.

  I have a policy of ending fights quickly when some jerk brings a knife into one of my bars.

  And I run. A lot. Sometimes over rooftops. My legs are strong. Guys like the mountain always underestimate me. This amuses me, after the fight.

  The mountain didn’t crumple. He gasped but smiled at me. But it was a smile of a man who didn’t fear or flinch from the threat of pain the way ordinary people do.

  “You are an idiot,” he told me in Russian.

  “You are quite correct,” I answered in Russian.

  It surprised him. For all of two seconds. He didn’t expect it of me and the stupidest reaction can make you pause on the verge of a fight. His moment of indecision let me launch a repeat of the kick; but that wasn’t the best move, because the mountain was ready. He blocked the kick, pivoted, and struck my throat with the flat of his hand.

  Suddenly I was on my back, the ceiling’s waves of steel undulating along the wall. I heard shouts and screams, but they sounded distant, people rushing out of the building.

  And then the mountain leaned over me, the knife pivoting in his grip to point downward, fingers now a fist around the polished pearl handle. I heard screaming and feet stampeding on the concrete floor.

  He raised the blade and plunged it toward my chest. No hesitation, because he did not have time for me. Even as he stabbed I saw his gaze dart toward the woman; I was just a speed bump. I couldn’t die; my brain filled with thoughts of my son. I blocked the big man’s descending wrist with my forearm, the tip of the steel hovering above the lapel of my suit. For two beats, two seconds, the knife stayed still in its arc. It caught the lights from the retro disco ball moving in a lazy turn (still hanging from Wednesday’s seventies night), the bits of broken light like snow against the steel.

  Surprise for those two frozen seconds. I powered a knee hard into the mountain’s groin, hooked my fingers, and jabbed his eyes. He staggered, off-balance, the knife’s edge skimming the floor as he swung downward at me in rage and missed, and I scrambled to my feet.

  Then gunfire. I saw the woman. She’d fired at the suburban dad through her purse, tattering the fabric. The dad type ducked for a moment, then charged at her, grabbed the purse, aiming it upward. After another shot, a bourbon bottle shattered against the mirrored bar. The gunfire cleared a path among the terrified club goers. A river of people surged toward the front exit.

  I delivered a hammer fist to the face of the mountain, twice, faster than he expected. I pressed, grabbing the knife handle. I pivoted so he and I were facing the same direction. This needed to end. I tried to wrench his arm up and across my chest, to break it. He tried to kick out my foot, failed, and instead launched us both into the wall. The air whooshed out of my lungs. But I headbutted him without a lot of momentum, and as we staggered back, the knife fell from his grip, clattering on the floor.

  I wrenched free, sending him crashing into a table of abandoned cocktails.

  The suburban dad dragged the woman toward the back exit, pulling on her purse. They slammed into a cart holding a plastic bin of empty beer bottles, used glasses, and wadded napkins. I saw the suburban dad’s mouth moving, whispering into the woman’s ear. She screamed again, wrenched free from him, swinging a beer bottle at his head. He ducked and staggered away from her.

  The mountain lumbered up, threw himself into me, rage purpling his face.

  I saw the woman grab a drink from the nearest table—an abandoned pint of lager sitting between a couple of purses. She smashed the glass hard into the mountain’s face, beer spraying, the glass cracking. Trying to help me.

  It didn’t slow him.

  The knife was in my hand, but his fist covered mine and the blade stayed steady between us. He caught my leg with his own, sending me crashing to the floor, trying to aim the knife toward my throat. But he lost his balance as I tugged hard on his wrist, fighting for control, and the mountain fell.

  Onto the blade.

  Bad luck. There are places in the chest that can survive a bad stabbing. He didn’t land that way. He collapsed, eyes fading of life, just enough to see my face and the wicked blade too close to his heart.

  A man I didn’t know, who’d tried to kill me and now lay dying on my floor.

  Everything going bad for me, in less than a minute. My life was supposed to be calm now. So I could be a father to my son. I wasn’t supposed to be a weapon anymore.

  “Stop her!” I yelled, but nearly everyone was gone, flooding the entrance out onto the sidewalks of the Haight.

  5

  Thursday, November 4, early evening

  THE DEAD MAN—not dead yet, dying—glanced at me. Surprise in his eyes at the turn of fate, the embrace of the unforeseen. He pulled out the knife from his chest and stared at his own blood on the blade, turned over on his side, legs curling, emptying life on the stone floor, red seeping along the broken glasses and bottles.

  I saw the woman under the dim light of The Select’s soft Asian lamps, running into the hallway that led to the back exit.

  The suburban dad ran after the woman, scooping up the gun from the mountain’s back holster. If he needed the mountain’s gun, then he hadn’t gotten the gun inside her purse away from the woman.

  Her I could still help.

  I ran after the suburban dad as he hit the back door where the woman had fled. He turned, gun raised, and fired at me. He did it running; there was no bracing his stance or aiming.

  He missed and I didn’t know if it was by a foot or by an inch. I kept on him and the man made his choice.

  Go after the woman.

  The Select’s back door exited into a small courtyard, a narrow parking area for a business behind us and an apartment above it. Pallets of wood and junk lay stacked along the edge. She stumbled out into the night and the man hit the door ten seconds after her.

  He said, “Give it to me and we’ll leave you alone”—I could hear the woman’s hard sobbing of freaked-out terror—and I hit him. I knocked him hard into the side of a recycling bin that was fragrant with the sweet-sour smell of discarded liquor bottles. The front of his shirt tore in my grip and in the streetlight I saw a silver gleam: an odd symbol of lines and spaces hanging on a small necklace.

  I couldn’t see the woman but I could hear her screaming, “Don’t, please, don’t.”

  The suburban dad levered his elbow back hard into my jaw. It hurt and I was surprised; I didn’t think he was much of a threat. The man whirled back, launched another punch at my head. It caught me hard, and I fell back heavily against the metal.

  He put me down with another kick to the throat. Unlike the mountain he moved fast and didn’t try to psych me out of fighting. Then he steadied the gun at my head as I fought to breathe. Bracing himself to shoot another human being point-blank in the face. I could see the hesitation in his eyes as I tried to scramble back.

  She’d pried the board loose from a pallet next to the bin, and she swung it with a crushing force. She connected. He dropped. The suburban dad made a gagging noise, as though his stomach was wrenched instead of his head, and she dropped the plank to the ground. A twisted nail lay bent in the wood, and a fresh flower of dark hair and blood bloomed on it.

  On his knees the suburban dad grabbed at his head with his hand. Making a low humming noise of surprised agony. Stunned.

  The woman picked up his gun.

  Aimed it at the man.

  Her hand shook. I could see her purse with the hole in it, dangling now from her shoulder.

  “Don’t shoot him! The police will be here,” I said. “They’ll help you—”

  And the woman looked at me again, h
er eyes meeting mine for the first time since she’d leaned across my bar and whispered, Help me. “No police, no!”

  “What’s your name? I can help you.” I raised a hand toward her, trying to calm her.

  “You can’t. They’ll kill you, too.”

  “Who are you?”

  The gun wavered and the man said, “Don’t, please…” his voice unsteady as he stared down the gun.

  “You’re just like my mom,” she said to him, her voice breaking, and it was perhaps the single strangest comment she could have made.

  She looked at me, then at the man, and she decided not to kill anyone that night; then she turned and ran out onto the side street, still holding the man’s gun. A hard left into the thin curling light rain of the night, away from Haight Street.

  A car screeched to a stop close to the alleyway—an Audi, it looked like—and the suburban dad bolted toward it, holding his bloodied head.

  I was torn for a second, and it cost me—which one did I chase? So I chased him. I threw myself at the car as he slammed the passenger side door and the Audi roared forward.

  I landed on the roof, fingers scrabbling for purchase. I tried to hammer my foot against the back window but the Audi swerved hard, barely kissing the steel of the cars parked along the road. I saw a flash of blonde hair at the wheel, a blur of a face, nothing more.

  I was thrown. I slid off the Audi, landing on the trunk of one of the parked cars. I rolled, my parkour training taking over, spreading the impact along my backside, landing on my feet on the sidewalk.

  The car roared off into the dark, vanishing with a hard right, as the cry of the police sirens grew.

  But I saw the license plate before it made the swerving turn, caught in the garish glow of the grow lights seller’s display on the corner. I memorized it.

  Where was the woman? I jerked around, trying to find her. Vanished. The crowd at the intersection had cleared, some of the homeless regulars screaming and pointing.

  I stumbled back into the bar. And there was a dead man lying on my bar’s floor, some of The Select’s employees milling by the bar, in shock. Felix, the bar’s manager, stood near them, studying the body with a calm eye. Felix was fortyish, balding, thin and strong like wire.

  “Are you all right?” he said.

  “Yes.” I knelt by the body and told Felix, “Go to the front door, keep everyone out. Meet the police there.”

  “Sam…we have to know who he is, who he’s from…”

  Like this wasn’t random. Like it was an attack on me. My past catching up with me. He didn’t know about the woman asking for help.

  “Now. Get them out.”

  But as Felix herded everyone onto the street, I positioned myself between the mountain’s body and The Select’s security camera. I stuck my hand in the dead mountain’s pocket.

  I needed to know something. Before the police arrived and I lost all control of the situation.

  6

  Thursday, November 4, early evening

  I’M TAKING YOU TO THE DOCTOR.” Holly kept one hand on the steering wheel, put the other hand on Glenn’s bleeding head. He was hurt badly.

  “No doctor. You know the rules.”

  “Screw the rules. I’m taking you to the hospital over on Parnassus…”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Glenn! Must you argue with me?”

  “I don’t need a doctor.”

  Holly took the next corner hard, barely making the light before it glowed red. She glanced in the rearview. She could hear a distant cry of sirens.

  “Holly! If we get pulled over for running a light, how do I explain a head wound? Think!”

  “I am thinking. I am the only one thinking. I am thinking we go straight to the hospital.”

  “We can’t. He’s dead. The Russian. He’s dead.”

  Holly gripped the steering wheel harder. “She killed him? That little…nothing?”

  “A bartender killed him.”

  “What, he had a gun behind the bar?”

  “He took the Russian’s knife from him and he killed him with it.”

  Holly hit her hand against the steering wheel. “You said this guy was former freaking Russian Special Forces.”

  “He was. Once.” He winced. He clutched at the silver symbol on the necklace, hanging loose from his shirt. “The bartender was better.”

  “I told you you’d made a mistake hiring him.” Her voice rose hard and fast. A dead body left behind. How would they explain this mess to Belias? “I told you it was a bad idea; we could have grabbed her…”

  “I’m going to vomit,” Glenn said, like he was reading a bullet point off a presentation, and Holly wheeled to the side of the road and he was sick on the curb, the few pedestrians walking by averting their eyes.

  While he puked she pulled out the prepaid phone and called the one number programmed into it.

  The voice came on—“I am expecting nothing but good news”—and she thought as always how Belias could sound both like silk and steel.

  “It went badly.”

  She heard a click of disapproval in his throat and terror seized her chest. “Badly like you were caught? Because you better not be calling me.”

  “No. Glenn’s hurt. Blow to the head. She got away.”

  “And where exactly have you two geniuses taken yourselves?”

  “He needs a doctor. I’m taking him to UCSF…”

  “No.” Then a long pause that stretched her nerves taut. “Bring him to me. I have a safe house in the Mission District, off Valencia.” He gave her directions.

  She glanced at Glenn. His skin was pale, the blood bright against it. “He needs a doctor,” she repeated.

  “Roger is here and he can tend to him.” Roger. This was getting worse. If she had a broken leg, she wouldn’t want Roger for her impromptu medic. He’d give her aspirin and tell her to do fifty push-ups, to take her mind off the pain.

  “Why is Roger in town?”

  “Get here.” Belias hung up.

  Holly threw the phone out onto the sidewalk—now useless to her—and pulled away from the curb, and at the next light she looked at Glenn. His eyes were half-open.

  “Who’s the president?” Holly asked.

  Glenn answered correctly.

  “What year is it?”

  Glenn mumbled the answer, but he had to pause and think about it, and that scared her.

  “When is my birthday?”

  “The day I met you,” he said. “You asked if I was your present.”

  She swallowed past the steel in her throat. “That was a long time ago, stupid.”

  “It was?” He blinked at her, the blood running in his face. “Holly? Are we still married?”

  “No.”

  “We’re not?” he said. “Baby, it hurts.”

  Baby? How long had it been since he called her that? She told herself she had no time for sentiment; Belias might kill them both for this mistake. “It was a long time ago,” she said, and she veered the Audi through the light. “Listen to me. Our lives depend on this. You cannot tell him about the Russian. You can’t.”

  “Whatever you say.” His words slurred.

  She said, “I’m serious, Glenn. You let me do the talking.”

  “It’s fine.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’ll handle him. So who am I married to now?”

  The apartment was on a quiet side street, not far from the intersection of Valencia and 16th Street. Most of the entrances were gated—not for grandeur, but for security—and several featured decorative barbed wire or spikes in the spaces above the gates. Holly pulled the Audi in front of a DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE sign that correlated to the house number Belias had given her. Faded graffiti looped beneath the sign. The street itself was dark, a few windows lit, the bright glow one street over coming from the funky shops and restaurants of the Mission District. She could smell food cooking, a heady mix of Korean and Indian, and under it the sharp tang of brewing coffee. She h
eard the laughter of young people. She felt her heart twist as she hurried around the side of the car and opened the door to pull Glenn out.

  Belias emerged from the doorway and hurried down the steps to help her. He was dressed, as always, in his jet-black suit: black pants, jacket, shirt. She thought crazily that Glenn’s blood wouldn’t show on the dark fabric.

  An older man, in his fifties, came down the wooden stairs. He was shaved bald, thickly muscled. He had long been a soldier and he looked like it. Roger. Normally he greeted her with that cruel flexing of his thin-lipped mouth he thought was a smile. Roger carefully eased his hand under Glenn’s shoulder and steadied him.

  The two men got Glenn past the front door and into a back bedroom. A bed was already covered with sterile paper.

  “Didn’t exactly show management skills today, did you, Glenn?” Belias asked Glenn, in a falsely hearty voice, who didn’t answer as he eased onto the bed. Holly stood back, arms crossed, her heart heavy.

  Roger pulled on latex gloves and began to inspect Glenn with brisk efficiency. Belias waved fingers over the injury on the side of Glenn’s head. “Do everything you can for him.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Holly said. Then she noticed what else was in the room. A chair with straps. Plastic spread on the floor. A tray of surgical tools. Because we were going to bring them Diana Keene. They would strap her in that chair. With plastic so it wouldn’t make a mess. That poor girl. Holly’s stomach somersaulted again.

  “Holly, let’s get out of the way. You come in here with me,” Belias said.

  Holly said, “I can help…”

  “Roger trained as a field medic. He can handle his injuries.” His tone didn’t brook argument.

  Roger was no doctor. Roger knew far more about inflicting pain than relieving it. For a moment Holly thought of taking Glenn back out to the car and finding him a real doctor. But Belias wouldn’t let her, she knew that. Now she bitterly regretted not going to the hospital. So Holly said, “All right.” And she followed him into a small den. It was clean and neat, but there was a city of bottles on one table, bourbon and vodka and whiskey, and Holly stared at the glass.