Jack Wakes Up (17 page)

On Market, Niki slows down in the traffic when he sees the Ford obeying traffic laws, driving normally about seven cars up. They stop at a red light and Jack says, “Shit, I can get out and run those bastards down.”

“No,” Niki says. “I drive.” He pulls out into the Muni lane just ahead of a bus that blows its horn at them. Then he drives the Mercedes up alongside the traffic and smashes into the side of the Ford. Jack can see Flattop from The Mirage inside and another guy driving, someone new with big bushy eyebrows and a head shaved bald. What is it with these guys and baldies, Jack wonders. People along the sidewalks start yelling and pointing, stopping to watch. Other cars start honking at the Ford as it swerves through traffic. The Flattop aims a gun at them and Niki pushes the Ford over to the other side of the road, riding it hard, metal scraping, but then the driver sees an opening and floors it to get through some cars and turns onto 10th Street.

Now, with the Mercedes behind him, Flattop turns around in his seat, aims at them through where the back window once was and shoots through their windshield just as Jack ducks down in his seat. Niki has slid way down so that he can barely see over the steering wheel, and Jack feels an impact on his side of the car as they crunch through two cars—one parked—to follow the Ford onto 10th. Now Vlade takes a shot from the back seat. The sound of the shot rings through the car like a bomb going off and Jack’s world goes quiet. They hit the back of the Ford, and Niki takes a shot over the dashboard blindly, then hands his gun to Jack and puts both his hands on the 144

wheel. Jack looks at Niki: still driving, he gestures with his chin ahead of them and at the gun, and Jack gets the message that he’s supposed to do some shooting. He hears a ringing in his ears that’s unlike anything he can remember. Everything moves in slow motion around him with the ringing setting the world in relief.

Jack looks out over the dashboard and sees the Flattop and the back of the driver’s bald head in the Ford. They’re swerving all over the street and so is the Mercedes. He raises his gun even as he can’t believe that he’s doing it. Part of him is thinking that this is absolutely not a movie and that in real life people have to pay huge consequences for taking actions like these, for shooting a gun on city streets, possibly even shooting someone. He can see that 10th Street. is wide open ahead of them: no one on the sidewalks, a green light up ahead. Then he remembers that these guys shot up his Mustang, and he’s filled with rage in places he didn’t even know were empty. Just as he’s about to shoot, Vlade lets off another shot from the back seat, right next to Jack’s head, and the sound breaks through Jack’s silence, leaving an even louder, deafening ringing. Jack’s ears hurt so bad that he drops down below the dash, puts his hands up over his ears. The cat-toy bell feeling starts in his head again. He sees Vlade’s arm and gun above him, realizes that Vlade’s leaning forward and trying to shoot through the windshield himself.

“Get out of here,” Jack tries to say, but it sounds like he’s underwater, trying to yell in the pool like he did when he was a kid. He gets himself up and looks out through where the windshield should be in time to see the Ford turn onto Mission. Now the wind in his face takes away some of the ringing; the underwater feeling is gone. He pushes himself further up, holding the gun, and at the same time feels Niki push the Mercedes faster. They hit the curb going around the turn, and Jack braces himself against the door. He tries raising the gun again to shoot but can’t get into a steady enough position to aim. Then the Flattop rises up in the front of the Ford, shooting at them, and Jack ducks down.

Vlade lets off another two shots, and the Ford spins out, hits an oncoming car, and Jack just has time to brace his knees against the dash before they hit the Ford broadside and send it skidding back into another oncoming car swerving to avoid it.

Jack feels the crashes echo through his body, his knees wracked against the dash with each one, and as the Mercedes turns, he’s thrown against the door, glad to know that Mercedes makes a strong interior passenger cage. Finally both cars come to a stop with the hood of the Mercedes crushed and the two cars smashed side by side. Steam or smoke rises out of both engines. Jack’s knees hurt bad but he looks at them and doesn’t see any blood, realizes he can still move his toes. To his left he sees Niki smiling and removing his seat belt—he was probably the only one wearing one—and then Niki kicks open his door to get out of the car. Behind him the rear door opens, and Vlade steps out and stumbles around the car leaning on it as he moves to the hood.

Jack looks out over his door and only sees the Ford, its steering wheel but not the driver. It is locked in place, sandwiched between their Mercedes and the two small Japanese imports that it ran into. Then Jack sits up a little more and he sees the Ford’s driver slumped against the wheel of his car, blood running down his forehead. The back of his head is a mess where Vlade’s bullet went in.

“Jesus,” Jack says, looking at all the blood, the hole in the back of the man’s skull, thinking that that had to be one damn lucky shot. He sees Niki jump up onto the hood of the Ford and go over to pull the Flattop, already half-hanging out of his door, all the way out of the car and onto the hood.

In the distance, Jack hears the ringing in his head, and then it comes back in full and it’s all he can bear. He closes his eyes.

When he looks again, Niki has the Flattop up off the hood and backhands him hard across the face once, then twice, followed by a stiff cross to the nose. Jack sees a stream of blood slap across the car’s fractured windshield. Vlade says something to Jack, reaching across the driver’s seat, jostling his shoulder. At least in some respects his hearing is still there, he can hear rough 146

sounds, but not words—more of the underwater effect. Then Vlade waves his hand at Jack to get out of the car, and he crawls out across the driver’s seat, onto the asphalt on his hands and knees.

Realizing there’s glass all around him, he tries to stand and, by putting his hands against the car, is able to brace himself and get up. Vlade picks up Niki’s gun off the floor of the car and hands it back to him as Niki comes around to where they are. There’s not much left of the Flattop: Jack can see where his head broke the Ford’s windshield as it crashed, and there’s a lot of blood pooling around him on the hood.

Vlade grabs Jack by the shirt-front and starts to pull him away from the cars, toward the sidewalk. Jack wonders if they should head north, thinking that if they can get onto BART or the Muni, that maybe they can disappear into the crowds and get far away from this whole scene, but Vlade pulls him toward an adult video and porn shop on the other side of Mission. Niki follows. On the sidewalk, the few witnesses look at them awestruck, their mouths open. Jack’s sure he looks like hell, maybe worse. The drivers of the other cars that hit the Ford seem to be calling something out to them, their cell phones to their ears, no doubt calling the police, but Vlade doesn’t stop. He leads them into an auto detailing and repair shop next to the porn store, where some Asian guys in blue jumpsuits look on, horrified. Then Vlade says something they can understand in a language that Jack can tell isn’t English. He makes wide arm motions and talks at them fast. Even though Jack’s still underwater, the sounds are shorter and faster than how he thinks English would sound.

The guys in jumpsuits take Jack and the Czechs to the back of the repair shop, and there Vlade pays off a guy at a desk by peeling off fifteen crisp hundred dollar bills and dropping them in front of him. The guy’s face gets brighter and brighter with each one. Finally, he nods and another guy in an oil-stained jumpsuit shows them a back exit and leads Jack and Niki out to a dirty white van. He opens its sliding side door and motions for Jack and Niki to get inside. Then he goes around to the driver’s side and lets himself in. They’re in an alley parallel to Mission, 147

removed from any other cars. With what works of Jack’s hearing, he can make out police sirens calling from not far off.

Another guy in a jumpsuit comes out the back door of the shop with Vlade, shows him to the back door of the van, and closes it behind him when they’re all inside. This guy gets into the passenger seat, and then the driver starts the engine and pulls away.

Jack can’t see out the back of the van because it has no windows and, from where he’s sitting on the floor, all he can see out the front windshield is some tall buildings and blue skies. He sees a few street lights pass over him, but can’t tell where they’re going.

Gradually, the sound of the van comes through his ears and he starts to hear the rudimentary elements of life: the rumble of the van, the sound of wind blowing in through the windows, the sound of people talking—Vlade on his cell phone and the two guys in the front seats arguing—

and the occasional car that has a huge bass system banging outside on the streets. Somehow the thumping of these sounds gets through.

The van drops them off at another Asian auto repair shop, this one somewhere in the Tenderloin. The two guys let them out without saying anything else.

Vlade walks up to the front window, says something to the passenger and hands him a few bills. The guy reaches behind him and pulls the side door shut as the van drives off. Jack can see the Mustang right away, a new tire on the back wheel, and hopes that Al and David didn’t drive her here on the flat, knowing that they probably drove her here on the flat.

He walks over to his car, looking at the bullet holes, and counts them again, three in the door and two on the side of the trunk. He runs his hand across the door, feeling the welts, rests his head on the top. “Fuck,” he whispers. He gets down low and crouches to see the holes, looks at each one to see if it went through. In the back seat, it looks like a bullet went through the door, but he can’t see any damage inside.

He opens the door, and slumps down into the driver’s seat tired and somewhat defeated. The pristine body of a ’66 Mustang Fastback does not come into one’s life often. And now Jack’s is gone. His hearing is still partly wrecked too, and now the Czechs and he are probably wanted by the police. Or they will be. He closes the door behind him to sit in the quiet of the car’s interior by himself. Outside, the Czechs are talking, gesturing with their arms. After a few breaths, Jack takes the cell phone out of his jacket: no calls and they have less than an hour to get to where 149

they’re supposed to meet the Colombian. He figures he’ll probably be hearing from Sgt. Hopkins about what just happened before the hour’s up, if not sooner.

Vlade comes over to the car and taps on the passenger window, so Jack reaches over and unlocks the door. Vlade gets in, sits down and starts talking to Jack.

Jack looks at his face, trying to get a sense about what Vlade’s saying.

“What? My hearing’s fucking fucked.” Jack points to his ears. “They shot up my car.”

Vlade holds up his hand and rubs his thumb against his first two fingers: money. “You want to go back to the hotel and get the money for the meet?” Jack asks. Vlade nods. “Good,”

Jack says. “Something should come out of this.” Vlade nods again. Then he reaches across the seat and takes Jack’s face in both hands, pulling him forward. Normally, Jack wouldn’t be comfortable with this, but right about now, with the world a quiet ringing place, a little human contact seems to narrow his spectrum in a good way. Vlade’s face looks serious, but his eyes are calm, relaxed.

“Jack,” he says. He may be shouting. By the look of his face, he probably is. But Jack can just barely hear him, make out what he’s saying by reading his lips.

“You are OK?”

Jack nods.

“Good,” Vlade says. “We need you.” He lets Jack go.

Jack nods again. He gives Vlade the thumbs up.

Outside the car, the other Czechs are looking in at Jack. He gives them the thumbs up, and they seem to look relieved: their faces soften into smiles. Then Vlade takes out his wallet and shows Jack some kind of official-looking I.D. card. He points out the letters K.G.B. to Jack, then points to himself and Niki.

“You’re K.G.B.?” Jack shakes his head, does his best to speak, but he realizes it’s difficult when you can’t really hear.

“No,” Vlade shouts. He makes an X with his arms. “We are ex-KGB. No more.”

“I don’t know,” Jack says, shaking his head. “Explain to me later.”

Vlade nods. “OK, but let me tell you. These men, the ones we left back there, in their car.

These are K.G.B. too. These are not happy because we leave. We left. Now they see us here and they do not like. There is also… there is also something that they are doing here.”

He says something else to Niki out of the car, then shuts the door. Niki walks over to a new rental, a too-big white Escalade that Al probably picked out. Niki and David and Al get into it.

It’s nice looking, but large, a brand new American-made SUV.

Jack looks over at Vlade, and the Czech nods. “I’m riding with you,” Jack thinks he says.

When Jack starts the Mustang engine, it breaks through his world of silence and ringing with the roar of its 289 cc V8. The sound washes over him in waves of relief because he can hear it and also because it still sounds like it should; he can tell right away it didn’t catch any bullets.

It’s not the biggest engine around, but it makes enough noise for you to know it’s alive. And alive is how he wants it. The body of the car he can fix, maybe, but the engine, that’s a much more serious job. He closes his eyes, living in the sound that he can hear, revs up the engine louder and then still louder, enjoying the noise until Vlade taps him on the arm. He opens his eyes, then pulls out behind Niki and the Escalade, following them out onto Polk, heading downtown.

They make a quick stop at the Regis, long enough for the Czechs to go up and get a briefcase of money.

Jack washes his face a few times in the brass-sink bathroom off the lobby. He doesn’t look good, but the water helps bring him back to his senses and, pushing his fingers into his ears, he starts to feel the hearing come back. It’s been returning since the accident and as he started driving, but he’s still a little cloudy. The downtime in the bathroom, his face in a sink full of water, definitely helped.