Jack Wakes Up (8 page)

“Because Ralph is dead.” He points at Jack with his cigarette hand. “If you do not know this, then you are worth less than nothing, Mr. Movie.”

Jack steps back, then rethinks it and steps forward. “How do you know that?” He points at Castroneves for effect, thinking it’s a good character move, but ultimately he’s reaching; it feels like he’s lost the moment, any momentum he had going. Maybe he should never have accepted the cigarette.

“I have people,” Castroneves says. Then he laughs, looking at Jack’s hand. “Put that down,”

he says. “I have people who watch TV. Your Ralph’s death was on the TV news today. The fucking news. In truth, I was very surprised to get your call.”

“Right,” Jack says. He looks down at the concrete, his sneakers. “OK. It’s OK.” The Colombian drags off his cigarette, watching Jack through thin eyes. “I mean it’s fucked up. Ralph 67

got popped, and I want to find out who did this to him, but I’m also working with your buyers now, and we want to go ahead with this. I can make it run.”

Castroneves holds the smoke inside for a few seconds and then exhales out one side of his smile. He laughs, then steps closer to Jack, pointing at Jack’s face. “Do you even know who did that? Or if they wanted this deal to be stopped?”

Jack shakes his head, flicks his half-smoked cigarette into the Bay. “No, but—”

“You had better think, Mr. Palms. Because if someone does not want this to happen, then we had better know who they are. Do you understand?”

Jack nods. “I’m working on that already. Right after I leave here I’m going to talk to another contact about what they know. I will get to the bottom of it.”

“I hope so. Because if you do not, then you are wasting my time.” Castroneves’ eyes narrow as he talks, but then he steps back, brings his hand down.

“And you don’t like to have your time wasted,” Jack says, finishing it for him, stepping forward to close the space that Castroneves has just left as he tries to take control. “Right. I’d imagine that. And I don’t like meeting on docks and talking about drug deals that aren’t going to happen, or the fact that my friend now has a bullet making a breezeway through his skull.”

Jack watches as the Colombian steps back and flicks his cigarette into the Bay. He nods.

“OK,” he says. “Tomorrow then, Mr. Movie Friend. I will call you to set up the time and the place.”

“And one more thing,” Jack says, playing his part, taking another small step forward. “I choose the location.”

The Colombian tilts his head to the side, as if he’s sizing Jack up, waiting to see if Jack will laugh, apologize, or hold his ground. Jack waits him out. “We will see,” Castroneves says, and then turns and walks away.

Back inside the museum and all the way to the car, Jack takes deep breaths. He can feel his pulse racing and knows that yes, he’s found his way back to acting. Even as different as this is from being on the screen—the stakes are higher here, for one—he’s back at it, doing the thing he loves.

When he’s in the car, Jack sits watching people go in and out of the museum. He’s not rattled, but he doesn’t want to drive yet either. He’s thinking about his next move: whether to go back to the Czechs’ hotel or straight to The Coast to talk with Maxine. Then he sees a tough-looking guy in a white suit—slicked-back hair and a pretty good tan—walk out of the museum. The guy’s talking on a cell phone. Then he closes his phone and heads toward Waterfront Park, left to right across the sidewalk in front of Jack’s windshield, moving quickly through the heavy crowds, going the same direction as Castroneves had.

Something about him makes Jack uneasy. Maybe it’s his look and the fact that he doesn’t fit in with the tourist crowd, or maybe it’s just that he’s still thinking about what Castroneves said about someone wanting to stop this deal— Jack stands and closes the door of his car. He locks it and runs his hand over the hood, gives it a pat for good luck. Then he starts after the guy, just to watch, moving quickly so he doesn’t lose him in the crowd.

The guy swings his arms as he walks, sees a woman holding a small child and goes right up to the kid to pinch his cheek. A family stops and walks around him. The mother laughs and the 69

guy’s all smiles as he keeps walking, almost bumping into a couple of kids, but then walking around them.

Jack jogs to the back of the sign about how to pay for the parking. What if he led the killer to Castroneves, right to the other side of his deal? But he could’ve led him to the Czechs too. He shakes his head; better to watch, not to worry. The guy walks with a calm self-assuredness, and Jack crosses the street to start after him, weaving through the people coming the other way. He watches the guy look up, checking around him to see if anyone might be watching. Who is this guy?

Jack follows him for most of a block, ducking through the crowds and trying not to walk at his full height so he can’t be seen. That part’s hard: trying to keep his knees bent and not looking too weird to the people around him. The guy carves out a wide path through the tourists. Then he turns sharply and goes to an ice cream stand, one of the many. Jack sits down on the closest bench. From what he can see, the guy just waits his turn in line, buys a cone and then, instead of heading the way he had been headed, he comes right back the same way, straight toward Jack.

Jack loses him in a pack of people for a few tense moments, but then the line of sight opens up again and the guy’s right there, ten feet away, looking at Jack and coming right over.

Jack tries to act like he’s doing something else, waiting for someone—where is a newspaper when you need it?—and then he thinks about running, looking to duck into a shop or something, but there’s nothing he can do now. He steels himself for the unknown, tightening his core and sitting up straight.

Jack crosses one leg and rests his ankle on the other knee. The guy walks around a last family and comes right up, holding the ice cream out as if to offer it to Jack. “You like vanilla?” he says.

“Because I got this for you.”

“No thanks.”

The guy brings his eyebrows together. “It’s a gift from us.”

He leans down and puts the cone right into Jack’s hand, so that Jack has no choice but to take it. Then the guy stays there, leaning down over Jack, his face too close. “That’s good,” he says.

“This is the last gift we give to you. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Jack nods. In his movie, he’d kick this guy in the balls, then mop him all over the pavement as onlookers cheered. But here, they’re surrounded by friendly tourists who’d be horrified to witness a street fight in San Francisco, on their sightseeing trip to a big city. Also, Jack’s not sure about this guy, whether he’s a real fighter or not. He’s not sure about himself for that matter; it’s been a long time. As if he anticipates Jack’s thought, the guy taps Jack’s sneaker and pushes it off the knee so that both of Jack’s feet are on the ground.

“I’m just saying this to you,” the guy says.

“OK. I hear you.”

“That’s good. Because you’re lucky to get this word and not something else.”

“Who are you?”

The guy shakes his head. “No,” he says, simply. “No. This is the wrong question.”

Jack doesn’t know what to do next, what would be a good character move. “Do you know who killed Ralph?”

The guy squints his eyes and moves still closer, to where his face is right in front of Jack’s.

What pisses Jack off the most is when he says, “Go back to your Hollywood, you stupid pretty American.”

And Jack head-butts him in the face, right across the bridge of his nose—a move that surprises them both about equally. The guy groans, stumbles back with both of his hands on his face. He juts his nose out over the ground, as far from his legs—and his white suit—as he can, and Jack can see blood dripping through his fingers.

“Wow,” Jack says, more or less shocked at what he’s done. As a kid, he did things like this sometimes, even in L.A. a couple of times, but his actions haven’t taken control of him in a long time. He gets up and drops the ice cream into a garbage can next to the bench. In the movie, this 71

is the part where he kicks the guy in the stomach, gives him a pretty good beating, but here he can already see that this guy’s not used to fights. Everyone he runs into probably gives him what he wants, without many conflicts.

“You fuck,” the guy says. “I kill you.”

And Jack sees red: thinking about Ralph in the tub, the time in Sausalito, in rehab, the bad press and his dreams of being a full-blown movie star moving away from him, he moves in on the guy fast, punches him once in the side, then, as the guy’s doubled over, almost backing into an unsuspecting group of tourists, Jack grabs him, holds the guy in place, breathing hard, feeling the air come in and out of his chest.

The tourists walk a wide circle around them. A woman says, “Oh, my God. What’s happening here?”

“My friend just has a bloody nose,” Jack says. “This happens to him all the time.”

Someone else says, “Oh, that’s awful!”

The guy’s still holding his hands in front of his face, bleeding over the ground, not on his suit. “Oh, watch those shoes,” Jack says, stepping on the toes of one tan suede loafer. “That’s going to suck,” Jack says. He can hear the guy’s breathing: mannered and slow through his mouth. From out of the clean suit, he produces a white handkerchief and holds it over his nose.

He stands to his full height, looks Jack in the eye.

“Fuck you,” he says. “You fucking fuck.” With his other hand, he reaches into his suit jacket and Jack, anticipating gun, backs him up against a big sign advertising the fares for the Alcatraz ferry, holding his arm where it is, the hand still inside his jacket.

“You know,” Jack says, when he’s got the guy’s arm under control—all his time in the gym over the past two years is actually helping, he thinks—“I really hope you’re not thinking about pulling a gun here.” The guy tries to knee Jack, but his kneecap finds only Jack’s quad—not his balls—and though it’ll probably leave a good charley horse, Jack stays upright.

“OK,” Jack says, pushing up against him harder. He reaches inside the jacket and feels the gun handle in the guy’s hand. “Shit,” Jack says, shaking his head. “Now that’s just not right.”

He pulls the hand out with the gun and forces it low, down along the guy’s side. Then he hits it against the sign enough times—it only takes three—for the gun to fall to the ground.

“That the gun you used to kill Ralph?”

“The fuck you talking about? Ralph?”

Jack pushes the guy away and stoops to pick up the gun, sliding it into a jacket pocket. “Now what?” Jack says.

The guy bends over, both hands over his face. “Who is Ralph? Anderino? He is our contact.”

“Contact?”

“Yes. The man who we are supposed to make the deal. Who the fuck are you?”

“You’re with Castroneves?”

The guy stands up to look at Jack. “You fuck,” he says.

“Oh,” Jack says, putting the nice suit and the slicked back hair together, something he should’ve done sooner. “I’m sorry about your nose.”

The guy just looks at Jack, the handkerchief over most of his face. “Fuck you,” he says.

“Oh.” Jack knows this isn’t the cool rejoinder that he should be able to come up with, but it’s already escaped his lips. He holds his hands down by his sides, open and empty. “Now that’s not nice,” he says, knowing he’s losing more cool points by the second. “What can we do here?” The guy doesn’t answer, just stares at Jack; then he takes away the handkerchief and spits a big gob of blood onto the sidewalk.

“Castroneves is my boss,” the guy says.

“Damn.” Jack brushes off the guy’s sleeve. “I hope you won’t let this ruin our relationship.

I really do.” He looks at his watch; he first met with Castroneves less than a half-hour ago and already he’s breaking ties, fucking up one of his associates. Jack takes out the gun and removes the clip. He thumbs out the bullets into his hand, dropping one handful into his pocket and then 73

another before he’s done emptying it. When he’s replaced the clip, he offers the gun back to its owner. “Like I said, I’m really sorry about all this. I hope we can still be friends.”

“I will fucking kill you,” the guy says.

“I got to go, friend.” Jack pats him on the shoulder. His suit is soft to the touch, definitely linen. “Nice suit. At least you didn’t mess it up, right?”

The guy shakes his head. He takes away the handkerchief, looks at the blood in it. From what Jack can see, the bleeding has stopped, but the nose looks like it might be broken.

“Yeah. I’m sorry about that.”

The guy makes like he’s going to swing at Jack, and Jack pulls back, but the guy’s hand doesn’t go past his shoulder. He laughs. “No,” he says. “Not right now. But soon, yes.” As he starts walking back toward the way he’d been heading, he looks back at Jack once, shaking his head.

“Really,” Jack calls after him. “Let’s not let this interfere with what could be a profitable business.”

The guy takes a few more steps looking back, then turns, walks away into the crowd.

Jack calls Castroneves from the Mustang, trying to head off any harm he’s done as early as possible. But there’s no answer at the number he used before, just a blank message that announces the phone number in a computer-generated female voice. Jack’s on the spot to leave his message before he’s ready, stumbles out something about being sorry and hoping that they’ll still go ahead with their business despite the “unfortunate incident” that’s just occurred, and hangs up.

“Fuck,” he says. He hits the steering wheel a few times, trying to work through feeling like he’s just ruined the whole deal, and then the phone rings in his hand. It’s Castroneves’ number.

“Hey,” Jack says, leaning back, looking out at the museum.

“This is Jack?”

“Yeah. I just— I wanted to call and apologize. I just got a little carried away with an associate of yours. You have to understand I’m edgy about what happened to Ralph.”

“Ahh.” There are more sounds on the other end of the line, but Jack can’t make them out. It sounds like someone else is having a conversation there. “Yes. He has just come in.”