Jack Wakes Up (31 page)

Vlade says, “Now we eat!”

Jack laughs, watching Niki sterilize the knife that he’ll use to dig the bullet from Vlade’s shoulder. Vlade glows, triumphant in the morning buzz of the two big lines of coke, luminescent in the fog and the blur of the streetlights above them. Niki was right, Jack realizes; Vlade’s not about to feel any pain.

They talk Jack into letting them take the bullet out in the back seat of the Mustang as he drives them to breakfast. He’s not a fan of the idea, but when he hears the sirens in the distance as they stand in the parking lot, he goes along, moves to get by. Even if the cops aren’t headed for The Coast, it’s time to get the hell out of this part of the city, as far away as they can manage, 262

and operating on someone’s bullet wound isn’t the kind of thing you want to be doing out in public, even in this section of town.

Jack gives Niki a towel out of the trunk, an old one, to catch any blood that Vlade might lose, and Niki tells him not to worry. “OK,” Jack says, taking a look at the leather bag full of money.

He touches its side, feeling the heavy leather. “It’ll be OK,” he says.

Vlade barely screams as Niki goes to work in the back seat. He’s cut off a part of the towel for Vlade to bite down on, and he’s biting so hard that Jack can see lines sticking out on the sides of his neck in his rear-view. There’s sweat on Vlade’s brow, but he still doesn’t make a sound.

“No bumps, Jack,” Niki reminds. “Or you tell me first.”

“Either of you see any bullet holes in the leather back there?” Jack asks. “You see where any shots went in?”

“I am looking at where the bullet went into Vlade, actually.”

Jack sees the Market Street trolley tracks coming up and slows the car. “We’re going to bump.”

In the rear-view, Jack sees Niki stop what he’s doing with the knife and blot Vlade’s shoulder.

He says something in Czech and Vlade nods.

Niki points up ahead on the road. “Will you pull over ahead?”

Jack turns to really see them for a moment: Niki’s holding the towel hard against Vlade’s shoulder, and Vlade’s really starting to sweat. He turns off Market and slows as they head onto Van Ness, going toward the Tenderloin and the Cable Car diner. When Jack stops the car, he watches Niki insert the tip of his knife into Vlade’s shoulder at least three inches. Vlade screams into the towel in his mouth, and it comes out muffled but loud enough for people outside the car to hear, if there were any. Luckily, there’s no one on the streets here at this hour. Even the homeless have gone to sleep in their makeshift beds; the shoppers have all long gone home. Niki works the blade for a second, takes something in his hand, and presses the towel against Vlade’s skin.

Niki holds up a small, round, bloody piece of metal. “He’s OK,” he says. “Let’s go get some food.”

At the Cable Car—the only other diner Jack knows in the city is the Blue Diner, the one across from The Hall of Justice, and he’s not about to go there with a bloody, coked up Czech, blood on his pants, and whatever other remnants of what’s just happened clinging to the three of them—Jack just eats, drinks enough coffee for the ride home, thinks about the shower he’ll take and how well he’ll sleep for the next three or four days. They sit at the opposite end of the dining room from where he sat with Ralph before this all started, but Jack looks at the booth, knocks wood three times as he thinks of Ralph.

After he’s eaten most of his steak and eggs—the eggs sunny side on top of the steak so he can let the yolk run over it—and had a full cup of coffee, Jack excuses himself to go outside.

He’s reached the point in the meal where he’d rather have a cigarette than more food. Out in the parking lot, he leans against the hood of the Mustang as the sun comes up around him. The light of day began when they were eating, and now Jack stands in the twilight of the morning, finally done, finally clear into Sunday, and smoking, finally almost ready to go home.

He takes a long drag of his cigarette, enjoying it as much as anything he can imagine. If he has to chain smoke for the next two weeks, months even, he’s going to smoke now and for the rest of the next few days, as much as he wants.

He watches the cars cruise past him, still in a trickle of early Sunday morning inactivity, feeling the cold chill in the air. He’ll go back up to Sausalito this morning to relax for a few 265

days, eventually go to a doctor to have his ribs and face checked out, then get back into the gym and start up his morning running, but not right away—not anything right away. Jack nods at the thought, exhaling smoke through his nose, enjoying that feeling and the cold, icy buzzing around his bones that comes from the exhaustion mixed with coffee and ignited by the nicotine. There’s something about the feeling that’s so wrong it’s good. A shiver runs through him.

In the diner, he can see Vlade and Niki talking fast. Now that the bullet’s out and Vlade’s through some of his pain, he’s flying on the coke, drinking coffee; he only wants to talk about their road trip and the places they’ll go. Jack has just heard his plans about Yosemite, Yellowstone, Montana, and then driving down across the plains into Las Vegas, clear through to L.A. from there.

Jack looks up at the sky, takes his cell phone out of his jacket to call Sgt. Hopkins. It’s not something he’s eager to do, but it’s a part of the job he has to finish.

The cop answers on the fourth ring, groggy when he says hello, clearly still sleeping at this hour on a Sunday. It’s not even six-thirty.

“Sergeant, this is your friend Jack Palms, calling you in less than twenty-four hours from the last time we spoke, the time when we decided on our deal.”

“Uhngh. What is it Jack? This better be good, you ungrateful, sleep-depriving fuck.”

Jack can’t help himself from enjoying the moment, waking Hopkins, hearing him struggle to deal with the phone for the second time of the night. “Not such a good night for you sleep-wise, was it Mills?”

Hopkins grunts.

“Me, I haven’t slept yet, so I feel OK. But I expect I’ll be crashing soon.”

“Yeah. Good. What is it?”

“I wanted to call and let you know that some of the city’s big drug traffic can be found down at The Coast in SOMA, that their supply line is currently handcuffed to a pool table in a back office of the club, very much alive. You’ll find him to be a bald Russian guy with a beard, not 266

very agreeable, but I have it on good terms from Junius Ponds, now deceased, and Tony Vitelli, also now deceased, that this was The Man. Plus, I think he’s your Eastern European problem.

Your terrorist.”

“Really?” Now Jack can hear the sergeant coming to his senses, waking up as his police mind thinks through the implications of what Jack is saying: the busts, the investigations, the trials, thinking about the possibility of a promotion.

“I’m serious. Tony V. offed the wrong Colombian, and his army tore up The Coast this morning. You’ll find a bunch of them sleeping the big sleep, along with Tony, Junius, and a bunch of Tony’s thugs. Any other Colombians that were there will be long gone by now.” Jack’s even a little surprised by the upbeat sound of his own voice, but he has to allow it: right now, he feels good to have this all done.

“Wait a minute, Jack,” Hopkins says. “I’m sitting up now. Tell me all this again.”

“The Russian was Tony V.’s new supply line. He’s sold here to Junius and Tony before, and now Tony was trying to cut out Junius and Ralph, also the Colombian, Castroneves. I think that’s what pissed Tony off.”

“Pissed him off enough to kill Anderino?”

Jack takes another drag, lets some of the smoke out through clenched teeth. “Enough to have a couple of Russians take him out. Those would be the John Does you found downtown today.”

“I know,” Hopkins says. “I could still recognize the one we had in custody last night.”

“So there you go. Tony V. was behind it, but the guy you’ll find at The Coast was his outside help, his new connection. For all I know, he was the Eastern European you’ve been looking for.

He’s definitely a well-connected guy. Ex-K.G.B., from what I understand.”

“I’m on it.” Now Hopkins sounds very much awake. “You have a good morning, Jack.”

“Thanks. And one other thing. You have a leak on your force. I’m assuming you know that.”

“Right.” Hopkins grunts. “I’m getting dressed. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“It’s O’Malley. He was there.”

Hopkins whistles. “Shit. He was there?”

“He was. Now he isn’t, but you know your man. Seems he was pretty tight with Tony.”

“OK,” Hopkins says. “Thanks. I guess I won’t have to meet at the diner anymore.”

“No,” Jack says. “I guess not.” He looks at his sneakers: scuffed and discolored from the blood, what were recently some new-looking Nikes are now not a pretty sight.

“Go home, Jack.”

“Hopkins,” Jack says, standing up to head back inside. “Don’t let’s talk for a long time, OK?”

After finishing his breakfast, Jack takes the Czechs back to their hotel, Vlade still talking road trip, planning the Miami-Atlanta-Charlotte leg of their ride. Jack’s already told them the police will be very serious about picking up the Russian, taking him in and making sure something sticks. All along, it’s the supply line and the mob guys that Sgt. Hopkins had wanted; now that he has both in one man, he’ll do what he needs to make some convictions stick.

“You don’t want to see Orlando?” Jack asks, joking. “Disney World? Epcot? You know they have a whole display of the world in there, even your country, probably.”

Vlade shakes his head, very serious. “No Disney.”

In front of the hotel, they pull up to the lone bellhop working this early on a Sunday morning.

The Czechs get out of the car and Jack gets out with them, receives big hugs from both: a one-armed from Vlade and a long, two-arm squeeze from Niki.

“I want to thank you guys for coming with me.”

“No,” Niki says. “We started you in this. We help you to finish.”

Vlade nods. “We needed to see our friend again.” He claps Jack on the shoulder, squeezes his bicep. “And you too,” he says, his face breaking into a smile. He laughs.

Jack fakes a punch at Vlade’s stomach but Vlade doesn’t flinch. He pats his chest. “You hit me. Anytime you like.” He laughs again. With the big coat on, it’s hard to make out the lump of 269

the towel over his shoulder if you don’t know what to look for. In the diner, the waitress didn’t even flinch. Now the bellhop hardly notices them; he’s clearly more interested in Jack’s car.

“Is that a 68?” the kid asks.

“66,” Jack says. “K-code.”

“Yeah,” the kid says, but then he sees Jack, really sees him, and he stops. “Fuck! You’re Jack Palms?”

Jack nods. He points at the kid. “Shake ’em down!” he says.

“Too awesome!” the kid grabs for his cell phone behind his stand and starts taking pictures as Jack and the Czechs walk away.

“Tell Al he missed some good violence,” Jack says.

“Don’t worry.” Vlade nods. “He will be asking us about it all day.”

Jack yawns, realizes he can hardly keep his eyes open. He tells the others he has to go, that they should look him up if they’re ever back in town. “We’ll go out, have some fun.” Jack winks.

“But less next time.”

They laugh, are already heading into the building as Jack starts back to his car. He gives the kid a wave as he revs the engine, pulls out of the drive.

Going home through the City, Jack sees the tall green trees, a few of them redwoods, and the grass of Golden Gate Park shrouded in fog. The streets are quiet until he gets to Highway 101, where he meets more cars, still not that many, but a few. The sun is brilliant on the Golden Gate Bridge, and Jack can see that the day is going to be one of those especially beautiful ones that make living in northern California all that much more worthwhile.

In front of him, the tan hills climb up into Sausalito and his days of peace and quiet. He yawns, crossing the bridge, knowing he’ll be in a shower, then in his bed soon. It’d have been nice to end up there with Maxine, finish this whole ordeal by going home with her, having someone to share his bed with. Given the way that worked out though, it’s hard to be too upset with her loss. Jack realizes he’s more sad at the loss of someone than with the fact that she’s 270

not around; and still he knows there are other women out there. He’ll get out; he’ll meet them.

There’s plenty of nightlife left in the city, now that he knows he’s ready to find it.

But for now, he needs to sleep. Home inside of a half-hour, his whole body hurting now that the caffeine has lost a fight with his exhaustion, he drops his jacket on the floor in the hallway and his shirt outside the bathroom. He starts the water in the shower, strips off the rest of his clothes, and climbs in under the hot spray. In steam and with heat running all over his body, he watches some of his dried blood run down the drain, stands and lets the stream work out some of the muscles in his back, his neck.

From the shower, he’s in bed and under the sheets as soon as he’s dry, before he’s even looked around the house yet. The only thing he sees is his alarm clock on the dresser, the time just coming up on eight o’clock.

He sleeps through most of Sunday, gets up in the late afternoon and orders Chinese food for dinner, eats it in a daze, watching TV, and then goes back to bed again.

The clock is the next thing he sees when he wakes up the following morning, Monday, the time 9:07, and his front doorbell going off. He realizes that it’s been ringing for a long while, that he’s brought the sounds into his dreams, incorporated them, and now, finally, he realizes it’s a reality that he needs to get up and deal with. He shakes his head, not happy with this situation.

Jack rolls onto his back and looks up at the ceiling, feeling his ribs with his hands as he takes a deep breath: nothing seems to be loose there. Just bruises, he hopes, no broken bones. Taking a few more deep breaths, he feels the sleep slowly fall away from him as the doorbell rings again.

He still has an ache in his bones and a tiredness that’s not going to leave for some time, but he manages to sit up, and then stumbles to the closet, takes out a robe. In what works of his mind at this point, he imagines Mills Hopkins at the door, a bright, Monday morning crew of cops in blue uniforms and photographers behind them snapping shots of Jack going off to jail again, this time in his robe, going away for accessory to murder or organized crime. The thought of this scene 271