This Is Life

by Seth Harwood

  Jack wants to ask when, or with whom, but he knows she’ll tell him when she’s ready.

  She takes a long drag off the cigarette, one of her own, a Marlboro red, and coughs into the top of her fist. Then she takes out her cell, flips it open, and dials a number.

  “Calling Shaw?” Jack asks. He watches two guys from the coroner’s office lift the girl’s body onto a stretcher.

  “Tom,” Gannon says. For a moment, Jack thinks she’s talking to him, but she’s talking into the phone. “It’s the redhead.”

  The coroners stoop to lift the girl, bending at the knees and crouching like they’re supposed to. As they start to lift, her blanket begins to fall off. It gets caught by the wind, and Jack catches a glimpse of her legs. The guy by her feet lunges for the blanket, braces his end of the stretcher against a hip, and leans forward to try and keep it on her. But this throws the stretcher off balance, and the girl starts to slide. Her calf falls out first, and then her knee bends.

  Gannon says, “The one from my last op. The one from the limo.” She pauses. “Right. Right. That’s her.”

  The guy at the girl’s head drops his end of the stretcher to catch her body, going for her shoulders, as another gust of foggy air finishes pulling off the blanket. Faced with the choice of saving the blanket or the stretcher or letting the girl’s feet fall, the other chooses her feet, and in a moment, the two gray uniforms stand holding a naked girl between them. She collapses at the middle as her body bends into a V.

  Jack watches flashes go off all along the line of yellow tape as reporters take shots of the scene: two men from the coroner’s office standing and holding opposite ends of a young naked dead girl, her face clearly visible in the tangle of red hair. The men lower her to the ground and scramble to get the blanket over her again.

  Gannon is oblivious to all of this; she’s facing the other way, looking toward the street as she talks on the phone. Given how pissed off she is, Jack considers this a blessing.

  “I’m sure,” Gannon says. “The one he said was his daughter’s friend.”

  Jack waits to hear what she says next.

  Gannon agrees with Tom on the phone, says something Jack can’t understand, and flips the phone closed.

  “What is it?” Jack asks. “Who is she?”

  Gannon takes a long pull off her Marlboro, ashes it hard against the lip of the car’s ashtray. “Here’s the thing,” she says. “I’ve been on this case about four months. Four months of following people around, trying to find out as much as I can about Akakievich and his operation. But before that—” She looks at Jack, takes another drag. As she lets it out, she squints, says in a rough voice. “You can’t repeat this to anyone, ever.”

  Jack nods. “Sure.”

  “Before I was on this, I was on a number of duties, but one night I filled in for a guy who normally works the duty outside the mayor’s residence. Since 9/11, don’t ask me why and don’t get me started on the politics of this, major political figures, like mayors of big cities, get federal escort. Full FBI Homeland Security protection.”

  “War On Terror,” Jack says.

  “Right. Exactly. Only thing is, there’s no terrorists even thinking about going after Mayor Grant. The only terror he’s causing is to the girls he brings home when his wife’s not looking.” She exhales hard, rests the cigarette in the ashtray. “Anyway, this is the girl I saw. After three a.m., the mayor calls to have his limo brought in, walks this girl out, and lets her into the back.” Gannon nods toward the scene next to them, where the two men have finally succeeded in securing the blanket and are starting to lift the girl on the stretcher again. “That’s his girl.”

  Gannon takes the cigarette out of the ashtray, pulls a last drag, and grinds it out among the ashes.

  “Shit. Akakievich has the mayor and the chief of police sleeping with his girls?”

  “Not only that, but he’s got balls big enough to go after them.”

  Jack looks out the window, watches the two coroners finally load the stretcher into the back of a black-and-white van. “This thing’s getting bigger and bigger.”

  “That’s part of what scares me,” she says.

  Jack’s not sure if he wants to know the answer to his next question, but he has to ask. “What’s the other part?”

  “It’s that either Akakievich must be close to taking over this city, or Freeman was right about him hurting more of these girls.”

  34

  Whether he wants to be in the middle of this for the rest of the night, Jack’s not sure, but it’s not like he has much choice in the matter. Gannon’s got a look on her face like she could bend iron, and she’s driving like she means it.

  Ahead of them a taxi door opens on the street side, and she leans on the horn, swerves to go around it, and doesn’t look back when they’re past.

  “I’m going to say something now, Jack, that you’re not going to like.”

  “Okay.” Jack holds up his hands. Whether she sees him or not, it’s his natural show of backing off.

  Gannon doesn’t look over. She’s still driving too fast, her fingers tight on the wheel. “I think we should go after Akakievich now. Call in Shaw, bring the forces down on his house before something happens that we can’t tie to the mayor anymore and before someone else gets killed.”

  “You mean another girl.”

  “Another girl or the mayor or Clarence or one of us.”

  “Call Shaw,” Jack says. “I’m with you.”

  She nods. “First I have to call Tom.” Gannon takes her phone out of her purse, flips it open, and dials by hitting one button. When Tom answers, she says she’s considering taking a look inside Prescott.

  Then she starts agreeing a lot, nodding and listening to what Tom’s saying on the other end of the phone. Jack wishes she’d put Tom on speaker.

  “I don't care if it’s Saturday night. Tell them that the girl who just got hit is connected to Mayor Grant and that Chief Clarence is involved in this.”

  When the light turns to green, Gannon crosses the intersection and pulls over, double-parks the car, her hazards blinking. She’s listening again. “I hear you,” she says finally, “but this whole thing’s going to blow up in our faces if we don’t see what we can find.”

  Then she’s quiet again, listening. “Okay,” she says. She hangs up.

  “What?”

  “He’s not in love with the idea—”

  “Let’s call Shaw, see where he is.”

  “—but I convinced him to call in to our superiors and ask for the green light on a visit. He’s doubtful, but he’s working on a third opinion.”

  “Call Shaw. He might—”

  She nods; she’s already dialing, saying Shaw’s name into the phone and asking him where he is, what he’s turned up in North Beach.

  Jack looks out the window, up at some apartment buildings. They’re all painted white with security grates in front of the doorways. On the other side of the street is a big industrial building.

  “I know,” Gannon says. “And I don’t care if we have to go in by ourselves.”

  “I want to go in too,” Jack says.

  “Okay,” she says after a while.

  Jack’s not sure she heard him. “I want to go in,” he says.

  Gannon agrees to something Shaw says on the other end. Then she’s listening again.

  “Good,” she says. “We’re there in ten.” She hangs up.

  “I’m going in if you are,” Jack says.

  “I heard you.” She puts the car in drive and pulls out across two lanes with just a quick glance behind her to make sure it’s clear. At the end of the block, she turns north, away from her building toward North Beach.

  Her phone rings, and she flips it open one-handed, spits her last name into the mouthpiece.

  “It’s me,” Tom says. Now he’s on speaker. “We have a problem.”

  “Dockery,” she says.

  “This is you getting pulled back from up above. We don’t
have the authorization to go into the house on Prescott yet. They think if we go in now, we won’t find enough to break this up. Maybe we’ll get some of Akakievich’s goons, but we’re not going to get Alexi and we’re not going to get his list of customers.”

  Gannon shakes her head; Jack’s starting to like her more and more every minute. “No,” she says. “We go in now, we clean this up and let the customers walk. They will anyway. We need to stop this before any more of these girls get killed. They’re the biggest victims in this whole thing. They—”

  “Jane.”

  There’s silence on the other end of the phone, a silence Jack doesn’t like. Gannon slows down, moves to the right lane, and parks the car against the curb.

  “Janey,” Tom says. “You’re called off.”

  She shakes her head and then squeezes the bridge of her nose between her thumb and two fingers. “Okay, Tom. I hear you.”

  “Good, Jane. Why don’t you come home? Bring Palms in, and we’ll call it a night.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good thinking, soldier,” he says. “I know this isn’t an easy call.”

  She flips the phone closed.

  “What is this?” Jack asks.

  “I don’t know.” Gannon rests her forehead against the steering wheel. “But it fucking sucks.”

  35

  The car’s gotten warm, and Jack reaches to turn down the heater, then changes his mind and opens the window. He takes a cigarette out of his pack and lights it, then blows the first drag out into the night. It’s cold outside, the usual severe drop in temperature after the sun goes down, even more so when a fog’s rolled in for the night like it has. Moisture has condensed on the windows of the parked car next to them.

  “Cold night,” Jack says. The dashboard clock reads ten-thirty.

  Gannon sits up. She starts to say something about having a drag or a cigarette of her own, but stops midsentence and drops her hands into her lap. Her purse with the phone in it drops to the floor.

  “What’s next?” Jack asks.

  “I go to sleep. Live to fight another day. Maybe let the mayor walk his way out of this mess.”

  The thought of sleeping on her couch or in a guest bedroom in that condo strikes Jack as less than appealing. Much less. He doesn’t want to be anyone else’s responsibility or need someone watching his ass. And the last thing he wants, really, is to back off Akakievich now.

  With Shaw in North Beach already, heading to Prescott, Jack wants to be there; he wants to be in on what happens tonight. At least that’s what he thinks as he looks up at a tall, dark building, takes a long drag, and feels the calming warmth flow into his lungs. As he looks up to the building’s top, he sees it’s the former Bank of America Building with jagged edges along the top, where the sniper fired from in the opening scene of Dirty Harry.

  “Maybe,” Gannon says finally, “there’s another option for you.” She looks around and then shifts into drive, starts moving slowly again.

  Jack thinks about Dirty Harry, Sergeant Mike Haggerty, and what those guys would do in a situation like this. Maybe Shaw’s more like them than Jack knows. He wants to be around to see. He wants to be like these characters.

  “Sometimes this job doesn’t make any sense, Jack. You think you’re going after one thing and then you’re not. Or you’re told that you can’t. It’s enough to piss a woman off, you know? But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “You can go in. I turn you over to Shaw’s custody, and then it’s you two.” Gannon’s expression hasn’t changed: She’s focused on the road, facing straight ahead.

  “Okay,” he says. “I’m up for that.”

  She smiles. “Good.”

  That’s when the phone beeps, like walkie-talkie phones do, and then Shaw’s unmistakable voice comes out of Gannon’s purse. “Jane.” She starts to pick up the purse, and Shaw says her first name again.

  When she gets the purse, the phone beeps. “I’m here,” Gannon says. She raises her eyebrows. “Shaw, I got called off. No Feds.”

  Jack takes a last drag of his cigarette and flicks the butt out toward the curb. He knows it’s a bad habit but doesn’t want to start fixing his habits tonight. “Tell Shaw I know how we can get inside,” Jack says. “Tell him I’ll meet him in North Beach in ten minutes at the corner of Broadway and Columbus.”

  “Jack says—” Gannon stops. She holds the phone away from her face and looks at Jack.

  “You go home. Be with Tom, follow your orders.”

  She brings the phone back to her mouth.

  Truth is, all Jack knows in North Beach is the café and the house on Prescott. But he wants to be on his own again and working the night like he was before she picked him up. Sure, Freeman’s gone and this is dangerous, but Jack likes his chances with the cop from Walnut Creek, the only other outsider in all this.

  He needs to play this role, the only one he has.

  36

  In North Beach the streets are full of life; crowds of people wait outside the clubs and well-dressed twenty-somethings patrol for possible hookups.

  “Wait,” Jack says. “Stop here. I see someone I know.”

  He sees the bouncer at the club with the blue neon sign, the script he still can’t read. He’s spoken to this guy for less than five minutes, but it’s an opportunity to get away from the Feds and provide Gannon with an excuse or a good story to explain his absence.

  “Who?”

  “Stop for a minute. I see a guy who might know something.”

  Gannon brings the car to a stop at the corner where Kearny and Columbus meet at an angle, the club walls coming to a point—like the Flatiron building in New York, but much smaller.

  The end of the line to the club is right outside Jack’s door.

  “I need to do this,” he says. “Just like you need to follow your orders to go home.”

  She nods, but barely.

  As Jack’s getting out of the car, Gannon calls him back. “Jack,” she says. She leans across the seat to look him straight in the eye, a gold cross hanging from a chain around her neck. “Be careful.”

  Jack winks. “That’s the only way to be.”

  “No, Jack,” she says. She reaches across the front seat and grabs his hand. “Be careful. And get that fucker who’s killing these girls.”

  He nods. “I will.”

  At the front of the line, he clasps hands with the same flat-topped bouncer, and the guy seems happy to have Jack come back. “Nice cut,” he says, nodding toward Jack’s head.

  Jack runs his hand over the new buzz, thanks the guy. In the line, a woman in a tight red dress says something to the guy she’s with, pointing at Jack with her pinky, trying not to make it too obvious.

  “I need a favor,” Jack tells the bouncer.

  “Put me in a movie and I’ll give you anything you need.” The guy laughs, either partly embarrassed about the pitch or because it’s an actual joke. Jack’s not sure which.

  He nods, agrees to find the guy a spot in his next movie, but doesn’t tell the guy he isn’t sure that’ll ever happen. “I need to get in,” Jack says.

  “Shit. That all?” The guy starts to unlatch the red rope. “If that was it, you should’ve just asked. No problem.”

  Jack thanks the guy and gives him a touch on the shoulder as he walks onto the black carpet and under the entranceway heater. He glances back toward the end of the line to where Gannon parked her car. She’s already gone.

  ***

  On the dance floor, Jack makes his way through the crowd slowly, trying to squeeze through the couples and small groups, the guys pressing their asses into women. The music comes strong out of the DJ booth at the back of the big room and from speakers all around. It’s reggae: hard lyrics with a beat strong enough to make the whole crowd move in one motion, people nodding their heads and bending their knees as one. Halfway across the floor, Jack makes eye contact with a beautiful brunette. She’s dancing with a big bodybuilder type, and she smiles w
ide at Jack as she presses her ass up into the guy’s crotch. Then she squeezes her lips together in a kissing motion, her lipstick shining and her eyes closing for a moment. Jack makes sure he’s not still looking when her eyes open.

  At the bar, he squeezes in between a few other clubbers and puts down a twenty. “Give me a bottled water,” he says. “And tell me if this place has a back exit.”

  The bartender pulls the water out of a cooler behind the counter, flips it once, and sets it down onto the bar. Jack keeps his hand on the twenty as the bartender reaches for it. She’s tough-looking, a young Asian American woman with nice arms and a kind face.

  “How can I get out the back door of this place?”

  “Jack Palms?”

  He nods, laughs to himself because getting recognized like this still strikes him as funny. “Yeah. Help me out?”

  “Come on.” She lets go of the twenty and walks to the side of the bar. There she ducks under it and gets out from behind. Jack takes longer to get around the people and through the groups, but he gets to her, and she takes his hand, leads him toward the back of the room.

  Her hand is cool and maybe a little wet; she’s been handling cold drinks. But there’s something nice about the touch of someone else’s hand, about being pulled along like this by a good-looking woman. She leads him to a black wall and to a black door he’d never have noticed, and unlocks it by entering a code.

  As the door opens, Jack hesitates for a moment, and so does she.

  She looks up at him, still holding his hand, and he offers her the twenty. She shakes her head. “No thanks. Can I have one kiss from the movie star?”

  Jack laughs again. “Sure.”

  She stretches up onto her toes, and Jack bends down. He kisses her—what else is he supposed to do?—and then he feels her hand on the back of his head and it becomes a long kiss: soft at first with a few gentle puckers as their lips get to know each other and then harder and wet. Jack takes her middle in an arm. She smells like candy: some sort of sweet smell. What is it with him and bartenders, he wonders.