Jack Wakes Up, page 11
part #1 of Jack Palms Series
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.”
21
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.
22
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.
“Guys,” Jack says. “Relax. We’ve got work to do.”
“Fuck the deal,” Al says. “I want to start we should shoot back.”
Jack shakes his head. “You want to find out what happened to Michal, right? And to Ralph.”
He raises his hands. “That’s not going away if we leave it.”
Al walks over to the bar. “Oh, this is fucked up, Jack.”
“What can we do?” Vlade asks. “Now we have no coke. Our friend is gone. Let us repay the fucks who did this to you.”
“OK. OK.” Jack opens his hand toward the couch. “All right if I sit down?”
Vlade nods to Jack and comes over to sit on one of the couches himself. He waves to Niki that he can come sit down too. “Niki did good job last night. So did your Maxine.” David and Niki both nod. “Without her, we get arrested. She showed us way out.”
Al comes all the way out into the center of the room, stands behind the couches. “Thank you Jack,” he says. “You helped me there.” He’s got his lower lip buttoned up over his upper one, looks like nothing could be worse than how he feels. “Can I make you drink?”
“Sure,” Jack says. “Club soda.”
Vlade laughs. “This has not made you to drink yet?” Al walks to the bar as David drains off the rest of his scotch and holds his glass up, clinking the ice against its side. “Yes David,” Al says. “I hear you.”
In a half-hour, Jack’s got the Czechs telling stories about where they’re from and how they made their money. They explain that they have an importing business in the Ukraine that brings in fish for the fancy sushi restaurants that’ve started popping up in the former Soviet Bloc. It’s doing well enough that they can take a few months off and come to tour America. But not so well that they aren’t thinking about staying on if they can score enough blow to start dealing a little. First they want to rent motorcycles and drive across the plains and around the whole US, stopping at the major cities. Their bikes won’t be ready for another few days, and getting the coke they want for the trip is causing problems—problems they’d like to see end.
Jack wonders whether he should tell them it’s not a good idea to be driving across the U.S.
with guns and a big supply of coke, but he figures that’s their problem, not his. The coke they started with came from Ralph—he gave them a key when they arrived—then he was supposed to connect them directly to his supplier, a guy named Junius. The one Maxine mentioned. Then, Ralph being Ralph, he decided he thought he could get a better deal from Castroneves.
They never got to meet Ralph’s original connection.
“What the hell kind of name is Junius?” Jack asks.
They all frown, then shrug. “We do not know,” David answers. “We just know Junius. That his name.”
This is when Jack remembers Ralph’s message from his machine that morning, telling him to contact Joe Buddha. It’s not a lead to Junius but it’s someone else Jack needs to follow up with.
“Let me get one thing straight,” he says, unable to leave it alone. “You guys want to take ten keys across the country with you on motorcycles?”
Vlade laughs, shakes his head. “Ten is too much. We will take just enough and leave the rest here in San Francisco. They have lockers here, no? We leave and then sell what we can for ourselves, to our own community here.”
“Yes,” David says. “Part we sell, part we keep.”
“OK.” Jack raises his glass and the others follow. They’re all drinking scotch except for him and Niki. “We put this thing back together. Find out what’s happening with the guns, get in touch with Junius if that’s what needs to happen, and find out who did Ralph and Michal. We get you your coke.”
Jack looks at his watch: it’s a little after three in the afternoon.
“It is now Saturday. If you give me until this time tomorrow, we will get these things done.”
Jack holds his glass over the coffee table and waits while the others exchange glances. Finally, they lean forward and touch glasses with his, Niki using his bare fist.
“You are on, Jack Palms,” Vlade says.
“But first we go to The Coast and burn down the motherfucks who have attacked you. About last night, we do not know who. But this,” Al gestures toward Jack’s face. “This we know.”
Vlade picks up his gun off the table and sights down the barrel. Then he holds it back and looks at the gun’s side. “We have business there with Mr. Tony Vitelli.”
23
Jack finds Joe Buddha listed in the phonebook under his real name, John Wesley Taraval, with an address in Noe Valley.
Driving down Market, Jack tries Maxine at home to apologize and gets her machine. “Sorry about before, Max. I just found out you helped the Czechs get out last night. Thanks for that. I guess I owe you in more ways than one.”
He hopes he hasn’t pissed her off completely but thinks she’ll be OK once she settles down and has some time to unwind. If he has time, he decides, he’ll stop by her place again before meeting the Czechs at The Coast.
But that’s after Joe Buddha’s, where he pulls up in front of a white row house on Church Street, at Chavez. As he gets out of the car and walks closer, Jack notices a little altar mounted high up beside the front door, that it’s a small shelf screwed right onto the side of the house. It holds a bowl of pears, a small collection of incense sticks, and a ribbon, what looks like the prize from a horse-riding contest, but with Japanese characters on it.
Jack rings the bell and in a little while hears feet in the hall, then a small Asian woman opens the interior wooden door, regards him through a thin metal grate.
“Joe Buddha?” he says, and when that brings no response, “John Wesley Taraval?”
“Oh,” she says. “You are here to see John? Come right in.” She opens the metal grated door and leads Jack inside a dark, carpeted hallway that smells like incense. At the end of the hall, 120
Jack can make out a kitchen in the light of the room’s windows. Inside, at a small table, a small, wide man sits on a chair, eating in silhouette. Jack can tell it’s Joe Buddha even without seeing his face; nobody else has the body, the round paunch like Joe—the reason for the nickname Buddha. The woman leads Jack down the hall, and before she can announce him he bellows,
“Old Joe Buddha!”
Buddha turns fast, surprised, and stands up. Jack comes into the kitchen and sees him in the full light: before him stands his old friend, only smaller, older, more wrinkled, and with an even more pronounced middle. He’s always had one of those bellies that look like someone stretched the skin over a watermelon: tight looking, but large.
“Holy shit,” Jack says. “You look even more like the old man now than ever.”
Buddha nods, spreads his arms. “As it has turned out to be.”
Jack fakes a punch at the paunch. “Don’t tell me you’ve finally gone Asian in your old age, turned religious on us.”
“This?” Buddha raises his short arms. “No,” he says, waving at it all with both hands. “This is all her. You just met my wife, Yuko.” He puts his arm around her and she smiles. They both laugh.
“Joe Buddha,” she says, rubbing his belly. “My little religious icon.”
Buddha runs his hand over his scalp and then around to the sides of his head, where he still has a bar of hair behind his ears and around the back. Otherwise, he’s shining bald. “Old Buddha,” he says. “Haven’t been called that in a while. You heard from Ralph then?”
Jack nods. “Before he passed.”
Buddha shakes his head. “Yeah. We saw that one on the news. Not good.” He shrugs. “But what can you do? He got popped.”
“He told me to come find you.”
“He would. It was only a matter of time.” Buddha tucks in his chair at the table, carries the bowl of cereal he was eating over to the sink. He turns to look at Jack. “How are you?” he asks, all serious concern.
Jack nods. “I’m all right. Getting by.”
Yuko leans against the counter and looks at Jack sideways, regarding him. Buddha shakes his head. “We were worried about you, Jack. Really worried.”
Jack sits down at the table. “Yeah, well. I’m OK now. How long have you been up here in S.F.?”
Buddha shrugs. “Two years.” He moves to the table and puts his hands on the back of a chair.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get in touch with you. I wanted to. I was concerned about how you’d be doing.”
“So you saw what happened?”
“Who didn’t? I’m still so sorry about Victoria, about what happened to the second picture.”
Buddha was like that: he liked to call movies “pictures.” He’d been involved with Jack’s sequel, Shake It Up, as one of the producers. When it came down to it, though, the others all pulled out around the time of Sgt. Hopkins’ arrest. “The thing is, Jack, we could all see that coming for miles.”
“And you tried to warn me,” Jack says. “I know.”
“Victoria, Jack. She was fire.”
Jack nods. “But it was me too. I wanted some of that. I got into the coke myself, I guess H
was just a matter of time. What did I know?”
Buddha shakes his head. He pulls out the chair and sits across from Jack at the table. “You know, Jack, we knew. We could see it all happening too slow. I’m just sorry I couldn’t help you.”
“I don’t know.” Jack shrugs. “Maybe it had to happen.”
Buddha nods. Then he shakes his head as if he’s considered it and decided that it did not have to happen. “No Jack,” he says. “We could’ve helped you more, gotten you out of that mess, helped you clean up. I have to believe that now.”
