Jack Wakes Up (13 page)

“I guess you’ve been through some tough times,” Sgt. Hopkins says. He pats Jack on the back. “Must have been hard on you running out the back of The Mirage last night. Next time save yourself the trouble and call me when I leave you a message.”

“Why not, Mills? Aquaman’s upset because the fish won’t listen to him anymore? The Wonder Twins having separation anxiety?”

Hopkins looks nonplussed, folds his arms. Twenty years of working in a place called the Hall of Justice and the humor must get old. He shakes his head. “The Hall of Justice is nothing to fuck with, Jack.”

“Let me guess. You’ve heard these before?”

Hopkins nods, so Jack changes the subject. “Why the fuck did you want to meet outside?

They bug your office?”

Hopkins directs Jack toward the diner with his chin. “Not quite.” Inside, he points to a booth by the wall, away from the windows. As they’re walking over, he winks at a waitress, orders two coffees.

“Seriously, Jack. Who knocked hell out of your face? Is it these Czech bastards? Did they interrogate you?” They’re just starting to sit down.

Jack looks at the sergeant. He’s got a tweed jacket on today and a blue button-down shirt stretched tight across his belly. The look’s an improvement, but he still looks like a human being posing as a cantaloupe, or the other way around. Above his pockmarked face, he’s wearing an old-fashioned panama hat. He takes it off, puts it next to him on the table.

“What’s up with the hat, Mills? You trying to get some fashion?”

Hopkins shakes his head. “Cut it. We’re here to talk.”

“I’ll talk, but I’ve got some questions too. We need to share.”

Hopkins frowns. “OK.”

“First off, tell me what you know about who killed Ralph.”

“We have some suspects, but nothing’s panning out. Truth is we don’t know much about that yet.”

The waitress brings two pots of coffee and pours Sgt. Hopkins’ to the brim. Jack asks her for the decaf; he’s already had enough caffeinated with Maxine.

The sergeant takes a sip of coffee. “You don’t drink real coffee?” he asks.

Jack pushes the cup aside. “Listen. I didn’t come down here to have you jerk my chain. You wanted to meet in this place. We’re meeting. I don’t want coffee or to talk about coffee. Stop acting like you get paid by the hour.”

Hopkins looks at Jack, but Jack waits him out. Then Hopkins says, “Last night. Club owner gets a call from Alex Castroneves, a friend, but he doesn’t want the place to get the wrong kind of reputation. Also, he’s convinced there are a lot of young guys coming in, selling ecstasy.

He wants that stopped. Figures he’ll call us before we move on our own, get him in some real 109

trouble. Then I find out Castroneves was Ralph’s man, put two and two together, and I figure out it’s your thing. You had called me back, we could’ve both saved each other a lot of trouble.”

“You mean you could’ve saved me the trouble of going ahead with my deal.”

Hopkins shrugs. “Or you just move the location, we get a big bust of kids dealing x at the club of some asshole who’ll turn over his friends. If your boys are only in it for the drugs, I don’t much care.” He leans forward. “This is all off the fucking record.”

Jack looks at his coffee. “You’re a dirty cop, Mills. You know that?”

He shrugs. “Twenty-three years on the force, two more to go till retirement. So sometimes I’m more concerned with keeping my friends than with every fucking arrest. Is that the worst thing in the world?”

“Maybe not.” Jack sits back. “But friends can get you killed, too.”

Hopkins laughs, sits back in the booth. “What’re you trying to say, Jack? You talking for you, or for me?”

Jack shakes his head. Though he gets Hopkins’ point: that he might be the one with the friends who’ll get him into trouble.

Hopkins taps his knuckles on the table. “Other thing is your boys can lead me to the serious weight in this town. You get me to that, I don’t care how much these out-of-towners want. Show me the supply line, Jack. That’s what I need.”

“You saying I give you a name, you stay off my back?”

Hopkins nods, waits for Jack to say something else.

“What?”

“Go ahead. Tell me a name.”

Jack shakes his head. “I need more time. Right now I don’t have anything bigger than Castroneves. You know him. Let me find out who else is there, who took down Ralph.”

“Done. But—” Hopkins holds his head rigid, his eyes fixed on Jack’s. “There’s one more thing: we’re getting more tips on the Eastern European mobsters coming in, guys who pack 110

serious fire and don’t worry about civilian presence. It’s still the terrorist line. Your guys aren’t them, they can go and do whatever. Your guys are these warlords—and that’s the word we’ve been hearing, Jack, ‘warlords’—then they’re going down.”

“Sounds like you found your boys last night,” Jack says. “Two punks come in shooting up the place. That sound like they fit your description? Did you get them?”

Hopkins shakes his head. “That’s another part of the problem. One’s dead. That we know.

We’re still trying to find out who he was. The other one we had in custody until six this morning when one of the city’s finest, and by that I mean most expensive, lawyers comes down to spring him. You don’t get those fuckers out of bed in the morning without some heavy cash flow, maybe even political pull.”

Jack slides his coffee cup back within easy reach, adds some sugar and milk.

Hopkins drinks, sets his cup down on the table. “Now you’re waiting, Jack. What’s the next question?”

“Someone tipped them off about our meet. Say they popped Ralph, now someone’s looking to sour his deal, hit his supplier and take him out of the picture. Why?”

Hopkins shrugs. “The way these things go? My guess is we follow this long enough, we find someone’s trying to take over the action in this town. That’s the supply line we want, because that’s the one who’s going to be big. Castroneves? He doesn’t give a shit about San Francisco.

He’ll be gone in a week. We want the local line.”

“Someone had to tell them about our meet.” Jack makes sure he’s looking Hopkins in the eye when he asks, “You know who dropped that tip?”

Hopkins shakes his head. “I’m with you. Either we got a hole somewhere in our force, or this club owner, guy who owns The Mirage, wants a raid and a shooting in his place in one night.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not banking on that one. He wants bad elements out, he calls us. He’s not looking to call in a murder.”

“Agreed.” Jack looks across the room at a few of the other cops. “So you think there’s something wrong within your hallowed halls?”

Hopkins shakes his head. “There may be, but these blue-suits ain’t it. Something’s up in my task force. That’s why we’re here.”

“Ahh,” Jack says. “Some truth finally comes out.”

“OK.” Hopkins holds his hands in front of him, pushing down air. “But be quiet about it.”

An officer from a booth across the aisle gets up, comes over to Jack’s side of the table. “You Jack Palms?” he asks, extending his hand with a pen in it and pushing a beverage napkin across the table toward Jack. “My kids loved your movie.”

Hopkins laughs. Jack signs the napkin, shakes the guy’s hand and thanks him. Then Hopkins tells the guy to get out and make some arrests for a change.

Jack excuses himself, stands up. “I got to go too, Mills. You have any other questions?”

Hopkins shakes his head. “But next time you call me back. After this little talk, I think you’re the one who owes me.”

Thinking about the press he got for the bust at his house, the pictures of him handcuffed in the newspaper and Hopkins laughing in the front seat of the squad car, Jack drops a dollar on the table for his coffee.

“Oh, no,” he says. “We’re not even close to square.”

Walking back to the car, Jack thinks over who knew they were meeting at The Mirage: Castroneves, the Czechs, the club owner, a few cops on the force, it turns out, and Maxine. It’s a small part of him, but there’s a nag inside that he’s got to get to the bottom of.

She wasn’t away for long, just his time in the shower, but she was away. Part of him hates that he’s even thinking it, but Jack’s never had good experiences with trust and women. He thinks of Victoria, remembers Ralph lying on the bottom of his tub.

Once he’s in the car, he heads for her apartment.

Maxine’s home, buzzes him up as soon as she hears his voice through the speaker. When he comes up the stairs, he sees her door open and she leans into the hallway, her hair wet, wearing a thin Kimono that only comes down to the middle of her thighs. “Hey,” he says to her.

“I didn’t think you’d be back so fast.”

Jack gets to the top of the stairs, and she kisses him once, long and wet, her skin still warm from the shower and her mouth hot. She smells like apples.

Inside her apartment, he can smell the steam of the shower and the sweet smell of her shampoo. Her hair hangs wet to her shoulders, stringy instead of full, and Jack remembers the soft feel of it on his face last night. She sits down, her robe showing off more of her legs.

Jack puts his hands in his pockets, then takes them out.

“What’s the matter?”

He rubs his hands together, not sure where to start. “Tell me everything you know about Tony. Start with how you got work in his club.”

“Well, Jack.” She crosses her legs and sits up very straight, as if it’s an interview. “I met Tony when I applied for a job as a bartender. I’ve wanted to tend bar for a while, went to some dumbass bartending school, and when I got out, there were no jobs. I saw one opening at a bar in the Oakland airport and then I tried Tony’s because a friend of mine used to dance there and she said he’d put me on. Then he did. Does that answer satisfy your curiosity?”

“What’s Tony like?”

She shrugs, relaxes her posture. “Tony’s mostly OK. He can be an asshole, but mostly he takes care of his girls. Sure, he tries to put his hands on once in a while, but he’s not that bad. At least he wasn’t with me.” She nods at Jack’s fresh bandage, points to his torso. “Wish I could say the same about you.”

Jack walks over to her bookcase, starts reading the spines. She has some good books—

Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Jayne Ann Phillips—things Jack’s started to read in his downtime.

“I just want to know that you don’t give a fuck about this guy, that you wouldn’t tell him what’s going on if he called.”

“You know, Jack?” She raises a finger, points at the front door. “I almost want to ask you to leave right now. What are you really asking me here?”

“Someone called someone and let them know where our meet was last night. I know the club owner called the police, but those shooters didn’t just happen by.”

She stands up. “And you think it’s me? You’re going to fucking stand here in the room where I cleaned your cuts and say this shit?” Her chin crinkles as she says this, but she doesn’t cry.

“What is wrong with you, Jack Palms?” She comes over to him, stands close, and slaps him across the face.

Jack turns away, feeling the sting of her slap. Luckily she hit his good side. He tastes blood; then touches his lip and looks at his finger: red. “I just have to know,” he says.

“If you don’t already, then there’s nothing I can do.” She moves toward the bedroom, then looks back once, tells him to fuck himself, and goes inside, slamming the door.

Jack waits a few breaths, tapping his finger against her shelves. He knows she’s not coming back out. He finds a pad on her kitchen table and writes a note, Sorry I had to ask. I shouldn’t have, but I did. You’re right, I’m an ass. Call me.

Then he leaves.

Jack’s not sure about his next move, so he heads to the Hotel Regis, figuring he owes the Czechs a visit. He’s prepared for anything when the elevator door opens, so when the bodyguard has his gun raised at Jack’s head, he’s not surprised. Jack looks right at him, raises his hand to point at the guy’s face. “Now what did I tell you about that?”

A moment passes where Jack’s eyes and the guard’s eyes meet. Then the guard blinks, and lowers his weapon. Jack looks around the suite. “Can somebody tell me this guy’s name?”

From one of the couches, David salutes Jack with a thick glass of scotch and then turns his attention back to the TV. He’s wearing a while hotel robe, has his white-socked feet up on the glass coffee table. “That is Niki,” he says.

“OK, guys,” Jack calls out to the room. “It’s me. I’m still not the one fucking you, but we got to start working together on this thing.”

Al comes out of a bedroom, holding a handgun of his own, a semi-automatic Beretta. He’s wearing jeans now and a too-tight yellow polo shirt, tucked in. “No, fuck this, Jack. Why we need this trouble?” He frowns. “We want coke, we can get. Do not need all the shit in this town, people shooting, people dying. If we need that shit, we need to be the ones doing it.” He holds up the gun. “We kill. We shoot.”

Jack can hear Vlade call from somewhere in the suite. “People die here.” He comes out to the main room. “We come here to have fun. In America we plan big drive, big fun: San Francisco, 116

L.A., Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, New Orleans. Who knows?” He raises his shoulders toward his face, holds his hands out. “Maybe keep going. All the way to New York. We don’t know.”

“New York is good,” Al says. He waves his gun around the room as he talks. “New York we don’t have this shit. Why in San Francisco we have? Why this trouble?” He comes closer, stops when he sees Jack’s face. “Jack Palms,” he says. “What happened to your face?”

“Come on guys!”

“No,” Al says. “What happened? Did that occur last night?”

Jack shakes his head. “It was dark. You may not have seen it. This was yesterday, day before.

It happened at The Coast.”

“The Coast!” Al yells. “We will demolish that place to the ground. I go in there and burn that place gone. I will kill Tony Vitelli! We stop everything else right now.” He’s pointing his gun around the suite.

Jack looks at the others; Niki and Vlade appear serious, like they want to do what Al’s saying, like they’re mad enough to go after Tony and whomever else they can find, take out all of their anger on somebody. David looks drunk, like he’s not going anywhere.