This Is Life

by Seth Harwood

  And then, as fast as it started, it’s over. She licks his upper lip once and lowers her face away from his. She’s smiling, and Jack can feel a smile on his face too. Outside it’s cold and the cold is blowing into the club, moist and breezy like the city.

  “Thanks?” Jack says.

  She shakes her head, pushes the hand with the twenty back toward his pocket.

  “See you around,” she tells him, and then she turns and walks back toward the bar.

  Jack stands in the doorway, watching her blend back into the crowd. “Okay,” he says, and he ducks outside. When the door closes, he sees he’s back on Columbus. He starts to head away from Broadway and pulls out his phone.

  “What the fuck was that?” He has to ask it, even if there’s no one to listen. He shakes it off; there’s work to do tonight, and he’s got to catch up with Shaw.

  Jack finds Shaw’s card in his pocket, fishes it out, and looks at the back. It’s still the same: a cell-phone number written in Mills Hopkins’s hand. Jack flips open his phone and punches in the numbers, then waits, listening to it ring as he crosses the street and turns onto a side street heading toward the Bay. Away from Columbus, the streets are quiet, darker.

  Shaw answers the phone, more bark than greeting.

  “Yeah. It’s Palms.”

  Shaw speaks fast. “Palms, where you at? I’m here waiting. Broadway and Columbus.”

  Jack turns again, heads up toward Broadway.

  “Too bright there. Can you meet me on Broadway and—” Jack remembers a small street right across from the Pretty Lady. “Rowland?” It’s his best guess at remembering the street name.

  “Yeah. I can get there. What about Gannon?”

  “She’ll act pissed, say I ducked her, but she knows this is how it needs to be.”

  “Do you?”

  “Give me one hour, Shaw. We check out Prescott for that long, and then we see.”

  There’s a pause on Shaw’s end. All Jack hears is his own footsteps.

  “Okay,” Shaw says. “One hour: That’s how long you have to show me what the fuck we can do.”

  Part III

  Into the night

  37

  As Jack walks, he stays ready to duck into an alley or between two cars if he spots anyone who looks like either of the two Russian Suits. It’s mostly people out for the night, wearing flashy clothes and noticeably buzzing, so suits like the Russians wear stick out. He watches for Gannon too, any car that looks like her big American Town Car, just in case she changed her mind.

  With the phone back in his pocket, turned off, he zips up his leather jacket for warmth, digs his hands into the pockets. He tells himself that he’s okay, that he made a good move losing Gannon. Shaw will either help him out, take him back to her, or let him go. If it’s the last, Jack’s not sure where he’ll head, but he can figure that out when it happens. No going back now.

  The streets get brighter as he nears Broadway. Broadway itself is lit up like day with the extra large strip-joint signs and the overhead streetlights. At least the city planners know what streets to keep honest—though if they really gave a shit, they’d put a spotlight over the Tenderloin.

  Jack ducks into an empty doorway where he can see the Pretty Lady and Broadway up toward Columbus without being seen. It’s a residential building, one where no one’s bothered to change the burned-out lightbulb over the entrance. Here in the shadows, he takes out his pack and lights up.

  Something about the fog and the cold makes a cigarette nicer, a pleasure you don’t find smoking in the summer when it’s hot, hot like it gets down in LA or back on the East Coast. Here, even in the summer, you can count on a good chill rolling in every night—sometimes all day. Jack lets it embrace him as he takes the first solid drag.

  Outside the Pretty Lady, the same two bouncers stand talking. Jack wonders if Freeman’s old pals know he got shot, how they’d react if they knew Jack pulled the trigger. He’s been trying to get that whole scene at the hotel out of his mind, push it away and pretend like it never happened. Jack takes a deep drag, considers whether he wants this, how it feels to be in his body in this world.

  He takes stock. It’s the same him: the same leather jacket against his arms, the same skin feeling the cold, the same face that he knows needs a shave, the same hair now that he’s had a cut and lost his highway craziness. He looks down and sees his feet, feels them on the ground, holding his weight. Sure he could use a few trips to the gym, and he needs to stretch, loosen up, and start caring for his body again. But it’s him. Even the stiffness feels familiar.

  He pushes the image of Freeman’s bloody hand, the big man squeezing his whole face in rage, out of his thoughts. He tries to concentrate on the street in front of him.

  That’s when he sees Shaw. The cop has on a dark leather jacket—shiny, tight, not like Jack’s. It has nothing to do with a motorcycle at all. He wears a tight black beanie pulled down to his eyebrows. With his hands in his pockets, he could be anyone. Here in San Francisco, twenty miles or more from Walnut Creek, he might as well be. And that’s what Jack needs, what he hopes will get them through.

  When Jack sees that it’s clear, that Shaw’s alone, he drops his cigarette to the stoop and grinds it under his toe. He steps from the door frame and into the thin light of Rowland.

  The cop recognizes Jack, gives the upward nod and starts coming toward him.

  “This better be good, Palms.” He comes up to Jack, stands close enough that he could hit him. “I get caught in some shit, that’s not good.”

  “Maybe we’re better off without the Feds right now,” Jack says. “Maybe Gannon even knows it. You see any other choices?”

  “I go in myself. Or I go home and call it a night.” Shaw sticks a gloved finger into Jack’s chest. “I’m not sure you know what you’re doing.”

  Jack knocks Shaw’s hand away. The two stare at each other for a long moment, then the cop nods. “Okay. But I’m not saying we go into that house just the two of us. I’m not saying I agree with that.”

  “Not yet,” Jack says. “Come on.”

  Jack starts walking up Broadway, toward the Bay, keeping an eye out for the Russians. He stays across the street from the Pretty Lady, doesn’t make eye contact with the bouncers outside. From there, he follows the same path he took the other night, back when they told him how to get to Tedeschi’s Café.

  Shaw says, “This whole area was O’Malley’s stakeout. This is Akakievich’s hood.”

  “Then we’re in the right place. Keep your eyes open. If you see any nice cars, try to pick out who’s in them. Maybe we can find out who’s buying these girls.”

  Shaw nods. “Okay, Jack. It’ll be that easy.”

  They walk for a few steps and reach the corner of Bartol. Jack looks up the dark, narrow block and sees the café, the same Russian sitting at one of the outside tables under a single light, reading a newspaper. “That’s the place,” Jack says. “And that’s our guy.”

  “Right.”

  “You want into the Top Notch, you go there, buy a dessert, and they give you the code. A password. That’s what Freeman did the other night.”

  “Yeah? So what’s your idea?”

  Jack walks back around the corner. Broadway’s noticeably brighter but still quiet, a few cars going up and down and not much foot traffic. Jack doesn’t see any snipers waiting in lit windows, no eyes following their moves. But that doesn’t mean no one’s watching.

  He’s doing what Mike Haggerty would’ve done in Shake ’Em Down. Sometimes people don’t expect you to try the most obvious approach—the front door. That’s what he’s banking on.

  That, and maybe a little of him is starting to feel like old Mike. He’s got blood on his hands now; he’s in this new world.

  “Palms.”

  Jack snaps back to see Shaw looking at him, waiting for an answer.

  “I’ve got two thoughts: Either we go take that motherfucker and break him down in an alley, hold a gun to his head and
make him tell us everything he knows. That’s the easy method.”

  “Fuck.” Shaw spits on the sidewalk. “What’s the hard?”

  “The hard is you go up and pretend you’re just some dude, tell him you heard about this place, try to get him to let you get the password. Then we both bust into the house when they open the door, and we try to find out what’s what.”

  “Nice,” Shaw says, already shaking his head. He puts a firm hand on Jack’s shoulder to make sure he’s listening. “Let’s entertain the thought for a minute that in fact the mayor is involved. You know how cocky Akakievich would have to be to try to start that war?” Shaw shakes his head. “We assume he’s been working under some sanction, some look-the-other-way shit. Now he’s ready to drop that and take on the city. You really want to take that on?”

  Jack chews his lip. He’s been hearing this shit since he teamed up with Freeman. People telling him this thing’s too big for him. The only one who hasn’t given it to him is Jane Gannon, the only one he’s not sure he can trust. And just like that, Jack sees it all turn around on him, sees maybe all his assumptions could be wrong. But if Shaw’s a dirty cop too and this whole thing extends clear to Walnut Creek, he might as well go straight to Akakievich now. Because there’s no fucking way he’ll be able to run.

  “Yeah,” Jack says. “Not only do I want to be here right now, but that war is what I’m counting on.”

  38

  Jack can feel his heart beat in his chest, his blood moving faster. Both men have their hands by their sides, like old gunfighters daring each other to draw. If Shaw takes a swing, Jack’s ready for it.

  “You have a gun?” Shaw asks.

  Jack shakes his head. “No. But I’ll bet you good money that guy with the newspaper does.”

  “So?”

  “So you get the drop on him and hold your gun to his head, we have two guns.”

  Shaw meets Jack’s eyes and neither of them blinks. Then Shaw laughs, spits on the sidewalk less than six inches from Jack’s shoe. “You better hope he’s packing something special. Because it’s going to take an automatic to get our asses into that house.”

  Shaw starts toward the corner of Bartol, looking around the edge. When he can see the guard, he moves out of sight. “We get the drop on that dude and just talk to him. See what we can find out.”

  Jack stands in the open. If the guard turned around, away from his newspaper, he’d see Jack, and Jack doesn’t care.

  Shaw pulls him back. “You follow me,” he says.

  “Be my guest.” Jack gestures toward the guard.

  “Fuck you, Palms.” Shaw slaps him lightly on the side of the face—maybe it feels good to get that out of the way—and takes two steps around the corner, looks at where he’s headed, and walks straight for the café.

  As Shaw walks up the alley—the café is in the middle of the block—Jack watches him go. He doesn’t want to advertise that Shaw’s not alone. But he doesn’t want Shaw to be alone either.

  Jack starts up the opposite side, mirroring Shaw. When the cop gets close enough to the café that the guard sees him, the guy stops reading and puts down his newspaper. Jack watches as the guard takes a cigarette out of a pack on the table and flips it in the air, catching the filter between his lips. A nice trick. He lifts his lighter as Shaw gets close, but the other hand drops down out of sight.

  If this guy’s worth his vodka, he can probably peg Shaw as a cop from a block away. But maybe that’s not bad; maybe enough cops come by for the password that it doesn’t raise suspicions anymore.

  The guard lights his cigarette one-handed.

  Jack angles his face toward the wall to light a cigarette of his own.

  As Shaw speaks, the guard blows smoke into his face. Shaw keeps talking, gesturing with his hands and, Jack guesses, going too fast. Then again, why not give Officer Shaw the benefit of the doubt?

  Jack glances back up toward the top of the alley. There’s nothing there, but his mind’s starting to play that trick, making him think he saw something.

  The guard says something, and Shaw nods. He puts his hands back into his pockets and heads inside the café. This is where he’ll either get what they need or he won’t. And Jack’s not much on waiting to find out.

  “Shit,” Jack says, dropping his cigarette onto the sidewalk and heading across to the café.

  When the guard sees Jack, he stands, starts shaking his head. He takes a long drag then puts his cigarette into his ashtray. Jack’s about five feet away, coming across the little alley right in the middle. There’s no turning back now. The guard starts cracking every knuckle he has, wringing his hands like he wants to break every bone in Jack’s body. He waits on the sidewalk.

  Behind the guard, Shaw turns away from the register. His face goes a shade lighter. Jack sees him mouth the one word he doesn’t want to see: “No.”

  The Russian’s big across the chest but he has a spare tire that could fit on an Indy 500 race car. He starts to nod at Jack, says his name out loud.

  “Yeah, buddy,” Jack says, unzipping his jacket for ease of movement. If it comes to it, he’s ready to go, to do whatever he can to this dude. Inside the café, a pair of coffee-sipping old men stand up to see what’s about to happen.

  As Jack moves onto the curb, the guard closes on him and throws a big sweeping haymaker that Jack can see coming two seconds away. He ducks the punch and hits the Russian in the gut with a right, putting everything he has into it, getting him just under the ribs. The guard doubles over and steps away from the parked cars. Jack follows. He throws a left uppercut, a punch he’s not used to throwing, that only grazes the Russian’s chin and connects more with his cheek. That sets up the guard for a takedown, some kind of move Jack thinks about instead of acts on, and in that moment of indecision, the guard comes at him with a left that Jack barely manages to step away from, then a right that catches him in his ribs.

  Jack steps into the table, the wind knocked out of him, and the Russian comes at him hard, angry, and big. He scoops Jack up with both arms, by the shoulder and between the legs, and throws Jack onto the sidewalk. Jack never would have thought the guy had a move that fast in him, but then what’s he know about this guy—any of this, really?

  When the guard gets close enough to follow up, Jack hears Shaw’s voice: “Stand still or I send your brains back to the tundra.”

  “Nice,” Jack says, raising himself up to sitting and then pulling himself up with the table. The guard backs away from Jack and raises his hands, but Shaw closes on him fast and hits him square in the face with the butt of his gun, right across the bridge of his nose. A sound of something breaking comes from the guy’s face, and he doubles over fast, his hands covering his nose. Shaw presses the gun’s barrel against the big thug’s temple.

  Inside the café, the two old men draw handguns and move toward the door. In the second their move affords him, Jack jumps on the big Russian from the side, taking him down, and yells to Shaw the word “café,” which gets Shaw down and moving. He rolls across the ground, comes up prone, and, seeing two guys pointing guns, opens up—shooting through the glass and wood of the door. The first guy jumps back hard and fast, caught in the chest by Shaw’s first shots, and the second ducks behind the wooden door frame.

  “Oh, fuck,” Jack says, aware it’s not helpful at a time like this. But what can he do? It comes out.

  No going back now. It’s on.

  Jack takes the guard’s head and plants his face into the asphalt. The guy makes a muffled, gurgled scream—something you wouldn’t expect to hear except from someone with a broken nose—and brings his hands up to his face. Easy to see how this works. Jack makes a mental note to break big guys’ noses more often.

  Shaw rolls again and comes up onto one knee, takes a few more shots at the front of the café, close to where the guy last was. The guy comes out of the other side of the door frame, and he shoots through the window, shatters it on his first shot, and Jack puts his head down. He’s still
on top of the Russian, and he hopes that doesn’t make him the first hit.

  Shaw fires again, and this time a scream comes from inside the café. Jack can’t see anyone. The girl must be crouched behind the counter, and the man’s out of sight.

  “You hit him?”

  Shaw shakes his head. “Can’t tell. I made contact, but I think I just clipped him.”

  The big guard starts to push himself up, and Jack wrenches both of his arms behind his back in a tight lock. He puts all his weight down in the middle of the guy’s back.

  “You got that one under control?”

  “Yeah.” Jack twists an arm and the Russian grunts. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  39

  “Hold that fucker, Jack.”

  Shaw starts a low crawl toward the café. That’s when Jack notices headlights turning into the alley at its bottom end, filling the narrow opening between the buildings. He strains to look up—more from instinct than thought—and in that moment, the Russian thrusts his head back hard and high enough to catch Jack in the jaw and knock him off. With his arms free, the Russian rolls Jack to the side and, getting up, pushes him away. As Jack scrambles onto all fours, the Russian reaches inside his jacket with one hand.

  Jack pounces on him, knocking him back onto the sidewalk, and head-butts him in the face, He follows it up with a right to the stomach, and the Russian squeezes his eyes. Jack knows this guy’s developed a major-league pain button right in the center of his face.

  A shot comes out of the café—Jack can see the older man shooting from around the side, through the window—and Shaw stands up and rushes the building. He times his leap and flies through the air in front of the window, emptying his clip into the old man. When Shaw hits the ground, he rolls and comes up next to the guard’s head. Faster than Jack can move, Shaw reaches inside the guy’s jacket and comes out with the gun: a small automatic that looks like a Glock but probably isn’t. Shaw trains the second gun on the old man, who slumps to his knees, then falls quietly into what’s left of the glass in the windows, the shards cutting his face open from his temple to the other side of his nose.