Downfall (3 page)

T
HE DEAD MAN
—not dead yet, dying—glanced at me. Surprise in his eyes at the turn of fate, the embrace of the unforeseen. He pulled out the knife from his chest and stared at his own blood on the blade, turned over on his side, legs curling, emptying life on the stone floor, red seeping along the broken glasses and bottles.

I saw the woman under the dim light of The Select’s soft Asian lamps, running into the hallway that led to the back exit.

The suburban dad ran after the woman, scooping up the gun from the mountain’s back holster. If he needed the mountain’s gun, then he hadn’t gotten the gun inside her purse away from the woman.

Her I could still help.

I ran after the suburban dad as he hit the back door where the woman had fled. He turned, gun raised, and fired at me. He did it running; there was no bracing his stance or aiming.

He missed and I didn’t know if it was by a foot or by an inch. I kept on him and the man made his choice.

Go after the woman.

The Select’s back door exited into a small courtyard, a narrow parking area for a business behind us and an apartment above it. Pallets of wood and junk lay stacked along the edge. She stumbled out into the night and the man hit the door ten seconds after her.

He said, “Give it to me and we’ll leave you alone”—I could hear the woman’s hard sobbing of freaked-out terror—and I hit him. I knocked him hard into the side of a recycling bin that was fragrant with the sweet-sour smell of discarded liquor bottles. The front of his shirt tore in my grip and in the streetlight I saw a silver gleam: an odd symbol of lines and spaces hanging on a small necklace.

I couldn’t see the woman but I could hear her screaming, “Don’t, please, don’t.”

The suburban dad levered his elbow back hard into my jaw. It hurt and I was surprised; I didn’t think he was much of a threat. The man whirled back, launched another punch at my head. It caught me hard, and I fell back heavily against the metal.

He put me down with another kick to the throat. Unlike the mountain he moved fast and didn’t try to psych me out of fighting. Then he steadied the gun at my head as I fought to breathe. Bracing himself to shoot another human being point-blank in the face. I could see the hesitation in his eyes as I tried to scramble back.

She’d pried the board loose from a pallet next to the bin, and she swung it with a crushing force. She connected. He dropped. The suburban dad made a gagging noise, as though his stomach was wrenched instead of his head, and she dropped the plank to the ground. A twisted nail lay bent in the wood, and a fresh flower of dark hair and blood bloomed on it.

On his knees the suburban dad grabbed at his head with his hand. Making a low humming noise of surprised agony. Stunned.

The woman picked up his gun.

Aimed it at the man.

Her hand shook. I could see her purse with the hole in it, dangling now from her shoulder.

“Don’t shoot him! The police will be here,” I said. “They’ll help you—”

And the woman looked at me again, her eyes meeting mine for the first time since she’d leaned across my bar and whispered,
Help me
. “No police, no!”

“What’s your name? I can help you.” I raised a hand toward her, trying to calm her.

“You can’t. They’ll kill you, too.”

“Who are you?”

The gun wavered and the man said, “Don’t, please…” his voice unsteady as he stared down the gun.

“You’re just like my mom,” she said to him, her voice breaking, and it was perhaps the single strangest comment she could have made.

She looked at me, then at the man, and she decided not to kill anyone that night; then she turned and ran out onto the side street, still holding the man’s gun. A hard left into the thin curling light rain of the night, away from Haight Street.

A car screeched to a stop close to the alleyway—an Audi, it looked like—and the suburban dad bolted toward it, holding his bloodied head.

I was torn for a second, and it cost me—which one did I chase? So I chased him. I threw myself at the car as he slammed the passenger side door and the Audi roared forward.

I landed on the roof, fingers scrabbling for purchase. I tried to hammer my foot against the back window but the Audi swerved hard, barely kissing the steel of the cars parked along the road. I saw a flash of blonde hair at the wheel, a blur of a face, nothing more.

I was thrown. I slid off the Audi, landing on the trunk of one of the parked cars. I rolled, my parkour training taking over, spreading the impact along my backside, landing on my feet on the sidewalk.

The car roared off into the dark, vanishing with a hard right, as the cry of the police sirens grew.

But I saw the license plate before it made the swerving turn, caught in the garish glow of the grow lights seller’s display on the corner. I memorized it.

Where was the woman? I jerked around, trying to find her. Vanished. The crowd at the intersection had cleared, some of the homeless regulars screaming and pointing.

I stumbled back into the bar. And there was a dead man lying on my bar’s floor, some of The Select’s employees milling by the bar, in shock. Felix, the bar’s manager, stood near them, studying the body with a calm eye. Felix was fortyish, balding, thin and strong like wire.

“Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes.” I knelt by the body and told Felix, “Go to the front door, keep everyone out. Meet the police there.”

“Sam…we have to know who he is, who he’s from…”

Like this wasn’t random. Like it was an attack on me. My past catching up with me. He didn’t know about the woman asking for help.

“Now. Get them out.”

But as Felix herded everyone onto the street, I positioned myself between the mountain’s body and The Select’s security camera. I stuck my hand in the dead mountain’s pocket.

I needed to know something. Before the police arrived and I lost all control of the situation.

I
’M TAKING YOU TO THE DOCTOR.”
Holly kept one hand on the steering wheel, put the other hand on Glenn’s bleeding head. He was hurt badly.

“No doctor. You know the rules.”

“Screw the rules. I’m taking you to the hospital over on Parnassus…”

“Absolutely not.”

“Glenn! Must you argue with me?”

“I don’t need a doctor.”

Holly took the next corner hard, barely making the light before it glowed red. She glanced in the rearview. She could hear a distant cry of sirens.

“Holly! If we get pulled over for running a light, how do I explain a head wound? Think!”

“I am thinking. I am the only one thinking. I am thinking we go straight to the hospital.”

“We can’t. He’s dead. The Russian. He’s dead.”

Holly gripped the steering wheel harder. “She killed him? That little…nothing?”

“A bartender killed him.”

“What, he had a gun behind the bar?”

“He took the Russian’s knife from him and he killed him with it.”

Holly hit her hand against the steering wheel. “You said this guy was former freaking Russian Special Forces.”

“He was. Once.” He winced. He clutched at the silver symbol on the necklace, hanging loose from his shirt. “The bartender was better.”

“I
told
you you’d made a mistake hiring him.” Her voice rose hard and fast. A dead body left behind. How would they explain this mess to Belias? “I
told
you it was a bad idea; we could have grabbed her…”

“I’m going to vomit,” Glenn said, like he was reading a bullet point off a presentation, and Holly wheeled to the side of the road and he was sick on the curb, the few pedestrians walking by averting their eyes.

While he puked she pulled out the prepaid phone and called the one number programmed into it.

The voice came on—“I am expecting nothing but good news”—and she thought as always how Belias could sound both like silk and steel.

“It went badly.”

She heard a click of disapproval in his throat and terror seized her chest. “Badly like you were caught? Because you better not be calling me.”

“No. Glenn’s hurt. Blow to the head. She got away.”

“And where exactly have you two geniuses taken yourselves?”

“He needs a doctor. I’m taking him to UCSF…”

“No.” Then a long pause that stretched her nerves taut. “Bring him to me. I have a safe house in the Mission District, off Valencia.” He gave her directions.

She glanced at Glenn. His skin was pale, the blood bright against it. “He needs a doctor,” she repeated.

“Roger is here and he can tend to him.” Roger. This was getting worse. If she had a broken leg, she wouldn’t want Roger for her impromptu medic. He’d give her aspirin and tell her to do fifty push-ups, to take her mind off the pain.

“Why is Roger in town?”

“Get here.” Belias hung up.

Holly threw the phone out onto the sidewalk—now useless to her—and pulled away from the curb, and at the next light she looked at Glenn. His eyes were half-open.

“Who’s the president?” Holly asked.

Glenn answered correctly.

“What year is it?”

Glenn mumbled the answer, but he had to pause and think about it, and that scared her.

“When is my birthday?”

“The day I met you,” he said. “You asked if I was your present.”

She swallowed past the steel in her throat. “That was a long time ago, stupid.”

“It was?” He blinked at her, the blood running in his face. “Holly? Are we still married?”

“No.”

“We’re not?” he said. “Baby, it hurts.”

Baby?
How long had it been since he called her that? She told herself she had no time for sentiment; Belias might kill them both for this mistake. “It was a long time ago,” she said, and she veered the Audi through the light. “Listen to me. Our lives depend on this. You cannot tell him about the Russian. You can’t.”

“Whatever you say.” His words slurred.

She said, “I’m serious, Glenn. You let me do the talking.”

“It’s fine.” He tried to give her a reassuring smile. “I’ll handle him. So who am I married to now?”

The apartment was on a quiet side street, not far from the intersection of Valencia and 16th Street. Most of the entrances were gated—not for grandeur, but for security—and several featured decorative barbed wire or spikes in the spaces above the gates. Holly pulled the Audi in front of a
DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT PARKING HERE
sign that correlated to the house number Belias had given her. Faded graffiti looped beneath the sign. The street itself was dark, a few windows lit, the bright glow one street over coming from the funky shops and restaurants of the Mission District. She could smell food cooking, a heady mix of Korean and Indian, and under it the sharp tang of brewing coffee. She heard the laughter of young people. She felt her heart twist as she hurried around the side of the car and opened the door to pull Glenn out.

Belias emerged from the doorway and hurried down the steps to help her. He was dressed, as always, in his jet-black suit: black pants, jacket, shirt. She thought crazily that Glenn’s blood wouldn’t show on the dark fabric.

An older man, in his fifties, came down the wooden stairs. He was shaved bald, thickly muscled. He had long been a soldier and he looked like it. Roger. Normally he greeted her with that cruel flexing of his thin-lipped mouth he thought was a smile. Roger carefully eased his hand under Glenn’s shoulder and steadied him.

The two men got Glenn past the front door and into a back bedroom. A bed was already covered with sterile paper.

“Didn’t exactly show management skills today, did you, Glenn?” Belias asked Glenn, in a falsely hearty voice, who didn’t answer as he eased onto the bed. Holly stood back, arms crossed, her heart heavy.

Roger pulled on latex gloves and began to inspect Glenn with brisk efficiency. Belias waved fingers over the injury on the side of Glenn’s head. “Do everything you can for him.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Holly said. Then she noticed what else was in the room. A chair with straps. Plastic spread on the floor. A tray of surgical tools.
Because we were going to bring them Diana Keene. They would strap her in that chair. With plastic so it wouldn’t make a mess. That poor girl.
Holly’s stomach somersaulted again.

“Holly, let’s get out of the way. You come in here with me,” Belias said.

Holly said, “I can help…”

“Roger trained as a field medic. He can handle his injuries.” His tone didn’t brook argument.

Roger was no doctor. Roger knew far more about inflicting pain than relieving it. For a moment Holly thought of taking Glenn back out to the car and finding him a real doctor. But Belias wouldn’t let her, she knew that. Now she bitterly regretted not going to the hospital. So Holly said, “All right.” And she followed him into a small den. It was clean and neat, but there was a city of bottles on one table, bourbon and vodka and whiskey, and Holly stared at the glass.

“Those were for Diana in case we needed to calm her down. Roger’s sober, no worries.”

Holly sank down into the chair. “Great. Sobriety is something I look for in my medical professionals.”

“What I look for in my people,” Belias said, “is the ability to grab and capture an unarmed, untrained little idiot off the street.”

She looked up at his face and wondered how far she could stretch her lies. He was a bit older than her, midthirties, sleek with muscle under the suit, with two premature graying streaks through the dark of his hair. Eyes blue as the sea, almost an unnatural blue. She wondered if he wore contacts to disguise his real eye color. It would be like him to wear a lie on his eyes, to keep a constant mask in place. Even his voice—American but with a British accent trying to work its way through the top. She knew nothing about him except that she feared him.

Be calm. Save Glenn. Fix this mess.
Holly said, “We checked her mother’s usual hangouts; we spotted her near a bar her mom frequented in the Haight. She’d gone to the bar last night and used her credit card before she realized we could track her. Glenn followed her into the bar, and I brought the Audi around so he could inject her with the sedative, pretend to be her friend helping her after she’d drunk too much, get her out the back. Then we’d force her into the car.”

“What a nice, simple plan.” His tone was mocking. He folded his hands in his lap. “How’d he get hurt?”

“She ran out into the alley; the bartender came after her, Glenn said. One of them hit Glenn. It must have been the bartender.”

“This bartender was protecting her?”

“I guess.”

“And you let her get away.”

“You know we can’t be caught.”

Now he knelt before her. He had a sharp, angular face, all lines and cheekbones and chin, and it broke into a smile that made her think of graves. She’d wondered if Belias’s smile would one day be the last sight in her eyes. “Holly. Haven’t I always been fair with you and”—he waved his fingers in the direction of the other room—“Glenn?”

“Yes.” She was afraid to give any other answer.

“I give so much. I ask so little.”

“I know.”

“But I do ask for the truth.” A pain crossed his face, as if a memory of a lie lingered.

Holly stared at him, then her lap.

“It’s very touching that you’re worried about Glenn. You are really the better person, after all he’s done to you. It’s not like he’s shown you loyalty and consideration. You need not lie for him.” Belias took her hand in his. His skin was always so dry, so cold. His fingers so pale. Once she had dreamed of those pale hands with strings attached to his fingers, strings that led back to her shoulders, her wrists, her brain, her heart.

“Lie?” She hated how he always knew.

“I listen to the police dispatch. There’s a dead man on that bar’s floor. Who is he?”

She listened to five loud ticks from the red clock on the wall. “Some bystander.”

“Glenn killed a bystander. That is unusually…reckless.”

“Yes. The bystander interfered.”

“The police dispatch report is saying that there were
two
men attacking a woman in The Select. Two men.” He raised a pale finger on each hand and pushed them together. “Who was the other man, Holly?”

You’re a great liar
, she told herself.
Lie like you never have before. For Glenn. For your kids.
“The news reports are wrong. It was chaos. So Glenn said.” Holly pulled her hand from his cool grip.

He let her; he folded his hands before him in the gentle pose you might see with a saint’s statue. The silver ring he wore was a match for the symbol on her husband’s necklace, and she stared at it like it was a mark of the devil. She was suddenly very frightened, a terror that touched her bones. She stared at those folded hands.
Your life has been in this man’s hands for how long? And now it’s come to this. Your ability to sell one little lie.
“How are the kids, Holly?”

She looked up at his face. “What? They’re fine.”

“Isn’t that why you do what I ask you to do? So your children have a ‘better life’?” He smiled the smile a knife might give if it suddenly came to life. “Who was the other man, Holly?”

“A bystander, maybe he intervened in the fight.”

“And Diana?”

“Ran out into the night. The cops were coming, we had to go.” She kept her gaze steady. “We…we had to protect your investment in us.”

Belias smiled and she knew her lies hadn’t worked. He touched the tip of her jaw with his finger. “You make me sound mercenary when all I care about is your well-being.” He got up, poured her a glass of ice water. She drank it silently while he watched. “Let’s see how Glenn is doing.”

Roger, with his typical efficiency, had cleaned Glenn’s wound, shaved the hair away, and butterfly bandaged the wound. “How is he?” Holly asked. He looked bad. So pale. But his breathing was steadier.

“Blood loss, concussion. He could have a hairline skull fracture,” Roger said. His accent was rural, English, thick. “When did he last have a tetanus booster?”

Holly wanted to say,
It’s not my business anymore to keep up with his medical records
, but she found herself trying to recall what Glenn’s file at home said…Did she still have one for him? Wouldn’t he have taken it when he moved out?

But Glenn answered for her, as though cogency were returning to him. Roger went to a fridge and checked supplies and gave Glenn an injection.
Lord only knows what’s in that fridge
, Holly thought.
Truth serum?

“We have to find Diana,” Belias said.

“She’ll go to the police now,” Holly said.

“No, she won’t. She won’t send her own mother to prison. I’ve profiled this young woman. Her mom is everything to her.” Belias glanced at Glenn. “You’re off the job, Glenn. She knows your face. And this dead bystander’s face.”

She wanted to say,
Be smart, Glenn
. But he was hurt, disoriented, and in pain.

Roger said, “The police dispatch say another man at this bar was stabbed. I thought you were strictly a gun man. You never did that well when I trained you with the knife, Glenn.”

“I thought the knife would be better,” Glenn said. “I needed a way to scare her, to get her into the car. But she had a gun. She fired it at us through the purse.”

“I’ve underestimated her,” Belias said, more to Roger than anyone else.

“Bring her mother back to deal with her. Her mother calls her and tells her to meet us, she’ll come straight out of hiding,” Holly said.

“Would you do that to your own child, Holly?”

Holly looked at the floor. “If I needed to make my child understand…” But she knew it was a lie.
Please don’t let my kids ever know about Belias. Don’t let them know what I’ve done.

“Her mother is busy on a very important job for me. For us. Busy, busy bee.” Belias wiggled pale fingers in front of his face.

“Well, Glenn could have been killed,” Holly snapped. “She’s not that busy.”

“And you two are screwing up so bad we have collateral damage on the bar floor. Do you think the police will ignore a customer killed inside a Haight-Ashbury bar, where tourists frequent? Well. They. Won’t.” Belias crossed his arms.