This Is Life
Page 19
Jack looks at Tom’s phone in his lap and the gun in his right hand. Tom’s not in any shape to move, isn’t near any guns, and Jack can watch him. “Alexi, my boy. How you doing?”
“Palms?”
“That is me.”
“Palms. You are fucking dead, Palms. We will kill you by morning.”
“Yeah. You might have to hurry, though; I’m already shot and bleeding.”
“Yes, Jack Palms, I can see this.”
Jack looks around, unsure if Akakievich is bluffing or if he’s really here. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.
On the other side of the garage, he sees Gannon talking on her phone, hurrying to get the girls away from the car. Shaw’s not with her.
“Did you see what I did to Officer Matsumoto? You must have seen in basement.”
Jack hears the creaking of the garage door sliding open, a vehicle entering on the upper level: It’s loud, something that sounds big.
“You here, Alexi? Is that you?”
At the bank of elevators, Gannon starts waving toward the upper ramp. She’s loading the girls into the elevator now, no longer talking on her phone.
All of a sudden, Shaw’s standing next to Jack. “Yo,” he says. “Cavalry’s here. More Feds.”
Jack breathes a sigh of relief. He knows he’s not in any condition to deal with an angry Russian mobster.
Shaw looks at the phone in Jack’s hand. “You still talking to this guy?”
Jack shrugs, hands Shaw the phone.
“Gotta go now, Alexi. You take care.” Shaw looks around on the phone and presses a button. It beeps. He tosses the phone to Tom, who’s still lying on the ground, wheezing. It bounces off his chest and hits the ground, chirps again.
Shaw gets under Jack’s good arm and drapes it across his shoulders, starts to pull Jack up off the ground. “Easy now,” he says.
Jack grunts. He can feel the pain again, but the sight of two big black FBI vans coming down the ramp eases it more than a little.
“For better or worse,” Shaw says, “these our boys now.”
“Think any more of them were working with Tom?”
Shaw shakes his head. He takes the gun off the trunk and holsters it inside his jacket. “Only one way we’ll find out.”
“Just tell me they called an ambulance.”
57
In the back of the ambulance, Shaw rides next to Jack’s stretcher on the way to the hospital. He looks down at Jack in a way that suggests he knew Jack would end up like this all along, shaking his head slowly as he sucks his teeth.
“You know,” Shaw says, “Mrs. Agent Gannon feels really bad about all this.”
Jack knows. Gannon apologized at least three times for her husband shooting him before getting together with a gang of Feds who were there to lock things down and take Tom, the girls, and very nearly Jane into custody. When her superior, a guy named Dockery, showed up on the set as if he owned the whole building, Jane was able to talk her way out of hock, but only barely.
Shaw shrugs. “I almost let her ride with you.” He looks at his watch. “You know how much I want to get home, right?”
“A lot.” Jack hears his voice come out deep and crackling. He has started to have trouble breathing since the paramedics strapped him down. “You want to fuck your wife in the morning, make breakfast.”
“Exactly. You know me. But that’s how it goes.”
Jack looks at the cop.
“Besides, what would you do with all of Jane’s fine feminine attention right now? All strapped down and wheezy.”
“Luckily, I have you instead.”
Shaw laughs. “Seriously, Jack. You know it’s better for Jane to handle all that negotiating with those Feds. I’m no good at that shit.”
Jack tries to nod, but a shot the paramedic gave him has his body numb all over. He can barely feel his feet.
“We can trust Jane. She’s solid.”
Shaw nods. “About time you got that.”
Jack thinks back to the other Feds strapping Tom onto a stretcher and loading him into another ambulance. Jane could have gone with him, but she didn’t even consider it. Things get cold real fast when your husband crosses over and starts swinging with foreign pussy for hire.
Jack feels light, floaty.
“Shame,” Shaw says. “Beautiful woman like that. Now she’ll be heading for divorce. It would be nice to have her hold your hand in here, eh?”
“My ass.” Jack pushes out the words. He can see the white ceiling of the ambulance and the bright fluorescent lights.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t believe it either.”
“No,” Jack says. He speaks softly—it’s the best he can do now—and Shaw’s forced to bend toward him to hear. “My ass. I want you to kiss it.”
Shaw sits up again, laughing loudly. He pats Jack on the leg, a part of his body Jack can still feel. “That’s nice, Palms. Real nice. I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.”
Jack’s phone starts to ring. They look at each other, and Jack closes his eyes. It’s inside his jacket, the jacket he’s only half wearing since the paramedics had to get at his shoulder. Somewhere underneath the straps and under his body, the half of the jacket he’s not wearing has his phone.
It rings again.
The ambulance bumps over something in the street that rocks Jack’s shoulder as though he’s on a boat in the open sea. He closes his eyes to fight the nausea.
“Let me get that,” Shaw says. “Might even be Gannon, calling to apologize again.”
Jack would bet that it’s the angry Russian in the black suit, André, calling to get his car back, or even Alexi, ready to tell Jack he’ll meet him at the hospital.
Shaw pushes his hand under Jack to go through his jacket pockets.
The phone rings again.
Jack feels Shaw’s hand moving under him, pushing against his ribs and forcing his body against the straps. Even through his drugged fuzz, Jack feels as though Shaw’s sticking him with an ice pick.
“Just one second,” Shaw says. “I think I can feel it.”
The phone rings again as Shaw brings it out in his hand. He flips it open in mid-ring. “Jack Palms’s line. He’s been shot right now, and he can’t come to the phone. Can I take a message?”
Jack angles his head toward Shaw, watches the cop’s face to see who the call is from. Shaw’s face goes from happy to concerned, as if he’s trying to understand what the speaker on the other end is saying. He winces, and his eyebrows squeeze together.
“Say that again.” Then he nods. “Sure,” he says. “Let me give him that information.” He holds his hand over the receiver.
“Some guy, says his name’s Vlade.”
Jack feels sleep coming on but fights it back, holds his eyes open to look at Shaw.
“Dude says he just got back in town and he wants to take you out to start the party?”
Jack watches Shaw’s lips as they move. He wants to say something to stop them, to tell Shaw to hang up on the crazy Czech bastard, even if it really is Vlade and not Alexi, but he’s starting to feel dizzy. His eyes close against his will and he fights to open them.
“Right,” Shaw says into the phone.
Then Jack’s eyes close again and he can hear the EMT saying something, touching his face and letting him know that soon he won’t be feeling any more pain.
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ALSO BY SETH HARWOOD
Have you read them all?
JACK PALMS CRIME
If you haven't already, now it's time to read the first book in the series...
Jack Wakes Up
Washed-up movie star Jack Palms left Hollywood, kicked his drug habit, and played it as straight as anyone could ask for three years. Now the residual checks are drying up and the monastic lifestyle's starting to wear thin. When Jack tries to cash in on his former celebrity by showing some out-of-town high rollers around San Francisco's club scene, he finds himself knee-deep in a Bay Area drug war.
And the thing that scares Jack the most? He's starting to enjoy himself.
It'll take the performance of a lifetime to get him through it alive.
Buy it: US UK
Or, if you’re curious about JUNIUS PONDS and want to read his origin story, you’ll enjoy:
Young Junius
In 1987, Junius Posey sets out on the cold Cambridge (MA) streets to find his brother’s killer in a cluster of low-income housing towers—prime drug-dealing territory. After committing a murder to protect himself and his friend, he finds himself without protection from retribution. Shocked by the violence he’s created and determined to see its consequences through to their end, he returns to the towers to complete his original mission.
Buy it: US UK
JESS HARDING, FBI
In Broad Daylight
During the endless days of an Alaskan summer, a fiend slashes his way through the rural community, where everyone knows your name and always distrusts the outsider. FBI agent Jess Harding treks back to Anchorage to hunt down this sadistic killer who's reemerged from a five-year hiatus—a killer who has already slipped from her grasp once before.
As Jess attempts to immerse herself in the area's culture, she finds a strange rural village inhabited by Russian Old Believers hell-bent on protecting their way of life. Soon Jess needs a safehaven from the glare of daylight—a blood-stained message left at the scene of a murder says she’s no longer the hunter, but the hunted.
Buy it: US UK
CLARA DONNER, SFPD HOMICIDE
Everyone Pays
Detective Clara Donner worked vice in San Francisco for years alongside the runaways and vulnerable women who walk the night. She thinks she’s seen the worst people can do—until she’s assigned to investigate a particularly ruthless serial killer.
As the body count rises and a pattern emerges—each victim is known for his brutal abuse of women—Donner follows the killer’s trail across the city. In spite of a nagging sense that the world may be better off without these men, that maybe this killer is doing good, she pursues every lead… until she finds a damaged girl with links to both the killer and his prey. Is this new witness the key to unraveling these murders or another victim left in the killer’s wake?
Buy it: US UK
About the Author
Photograph by Eric Fernandez
Seth Harwood is the author of the bestsellers Everyone Pays, In Broad Daylight, and Jack Wakes Up, as well as Young Junius and This Is Life. He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing for Harvard and Stanford. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and daughter. Find more online at sethharwood.com and patreon.com/sethharwood
CRIMEWAV Books
Copyright © 2011 by Seth Harwood
All right reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN-10: 1611097878
ISBN-13: 978-1611097870