by Lee Brait
front door. It was locked and the other two bedrooms were empty. He reached the next corner, right again and headed past the kitchen.
There was laughter and four men in leather jackets playing cards around a large round table. And a woman in her fifties, dressed like a teenager and dealing a new hand.
"And that was after the bull took a shit on his shoes!" she yelled.
The others burst into laughter, banging fists on the table and cheering.
"Mama, you crack me up!"
He crawled below the windows and checked the back door and the rest of the windows. Everything was locked up tight.
Linc backed into the garden and sat among the beer cars and waft of cigarettes, out of sight behind a bush. What were his options?
He could smash a window and make enough noise to wake the dead. And surely get caught. He could sit and wait until somebody left. That would probably signal the end of the meeting and the end of his best chance to learn something.
A diversion. That could work. Make a noise and get somebody to go outside. Slip in while they are distracted. He looked around for something to use. A bottle on the fence maybe?
A car pulled up outside. The door slammed and the engine idled roughly, a small engine. A knock on the gate, "Pizza!"
No response from the house. The couple in the bedroom at the front were busy. Probably wouldn't hear anyway. Was the kitchen out of earshot?
Linc crossed to the gate and flipped the latch, opened the fancy black iron gate laden with disjointed iron and wood fortifications.
In front of him stood a stack of white pizza boxes with a teenager behind it. It smelled of grilled cheese and fresh baked bread and sweet tomatoes and his saliva responded. The teenager peered at Linc over the top box. A large pimple that was soon to either burst or dry out and fade away shone at the base of his chin and rested on the top pizza lid. His mouth dehydrated.
"I'll take that," said Linc. "You been paid?"
"Yes." The teenager seemed confused. Perhaps expecting a recipient wearing more leather.
Linc pushed the gate shut with his hip and went to the front door. He balanced the boxes and knocked three times on the expensive looking door. It was a rich brown with a dark, wavy grain. Probably walnut. There were 3 columns and 5 rows of small panels and it had an ornate iron handle.
The lock clicked and the door swung opened.
"Where's the usual kid?" queried a guy with a scar on his forehead and a gray mustache.
"In bed. Sick."
He studied Linc for a moment.
"This way," said scar-head
He led Linc along a high spec hallway. Real walnut floorboards and skirting to match the door, expensive looking wallpaper, covered with photos and posters of motorcycles and mostly naked girls. Past a secondary hallway to his right and into a large kitchen.
"Put them there," he said, pointing to a white marble counter on his right. It was covered with chips and scratches.
"You calling or what, Jimbo?" The woman’s voice was hard and confident, authoritative.
Linc placed the stack on the counter. The kitchen stunk of yeasty beer and body odor. They were well in to the game.
"Alright, I'm comin'."
Jimbo grabbed the top box from the stack.
"Come on brother, Wanda's schoolin' us here."
Jimbo crossed the three paces to the big table opposite the counter, by the window. He dumped the greasy box on the polished walnut, next to the kitty and opened the lid. Cheese and bread and tomatoes combined with the stale air and Linc wasn't sure if it was revolting or intoxicating.
"Shut the door on your way out," Wanda commanded Linc, like she was king of the table and all it surveyed.
By the time Jimmy sat down there were three slices left.
Linc backed out to the hallway.
"Fold," said Jimmy. "These cards suck."
Coins and bills scraped across the table. "You got any more pocket money boys or is this the end of the lesson?" goaded Wanda.
He slipped off his shoes and opened the front door then closed it again, not slammed, but loud enough to hear.
"You ain't cleaned us out just yet Wanda."
He crept back to the side hall and turned right. Toward the meeting.
The wallpaper was covered with more posters of motorcycles and women. This time the women were holding military weapons; automatic rifles, grenade launchers and a Barret M98B sniper rifle. She did look good in that Barret.
He found the door with the meeting and put his ear against it and hoped the card game was an engaging one. It was walnut like the front door, but solid and without the panels. In the center was a coat of arms with ROA at the top. It was intricately carved and the fine polish revealed exquisite details of the dark grain that flowed through the rich brown wood like contours on a rugged mountain map. Somebody had spent many hours carving and polishing that coat of arms. If they applied that same work ethic elsewhere.
Sound carried through the hard timber well enough to make out words, "...and they haven't found any of the planes yet, so that's going well."
"Alright, next order of business is the trucks. Denny's crew jacked a load of MREs and boots today and got interrupted by some guy who took out one of the crew in some kind of freak car accident. Denny's crew is a man down but other than that it went fine. We passed the MREs on to GlobalShift and burned the trailer with the boots."
GlobalShift? What are we doing? Helping Bikers to hijack our own shipments?
The shock was over faster than Linc would have liked. The way most of them treat their own, he shouldn't be so surprised that someone at his company was involved. He never trusted half those managers. Even so, how could they go this far? Who could it be and how could they live with it?
He would find a way to tell Howard when this was all over. He would never believe it though, it will take some serious evidence to convince him.
He turned his phone on its side to get the bigger keyboard and typed, "Shaz, someone on inside is working with hijackers. Pls check logs for anyone who accessed delivery schedule for trucks that were hijacked."
One hundred thirty nine characters. SEND.
He could trust Shaz. She may be rough around the edges but she was honest as they come. She couldn't tell a lie if she wanted to. And as far as he knew, she'd never wanted to. She spoke her mind and if people didn't like it, well that was their problem. He figured it was the main reason she didn't get that promotion.
He clicked record on his phone and pressed it against the door. He hoped his phone would find a signal, maybe Shaz could find whoever was selling them out.
"How many crews we got now then?" It was hard to tell the voices apart through the door.
"We don't know for sure, and that's how we like it. There's the three we run ourselves in California. Most of our ROA brothers have one or two crew's. Some have three or four. That means we have multiple crews in most all states now."
"So long as we keep taking more trucks from other companies than we do from GlobalShift, they'll keep feeding us the easy pickin's."
"Alright, next item. This Linc Freemore asshole. He killed both my brothers and he's gonna pay for it. We have a location for his wife and kid. Jonesy and his crew will pick them up after this. Then Freemore can try to come and get 'em. He can watch 'em die slow and painful by my own hand before I end him too."
Linc sighed quietly. Damn good thing he sent Angie and Ryan to Carol's.
"They're at the wife's sister's place in Calistoga. Any questions?"
What the hell? How could they know that? This is not the kind of intel a bunch or bikers could come up with by themselves.
"How about we plant some evidence boss? Make it look like he did them?"
"I like your thinking Skiff. Make it look like he offed them at the house and dumped the bodies. Just blood and minor body parts, you hear me? I want them alive. Here."
"That will be my pleasure boss."
"Okay, last thing is the warehouses. They are fill
ing up fas..."
"HEY PIZZA BOY! WHAT THE FUCK YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?"
Linc froze. With all his attention on the door he'd ignored the hallway behind him. He turned slow and faced Jimbo. Scar-head.
"Um, I was just. I mean, I."
He slipped his phone into his pocket.
"You just what, asshole?"
Linc reached behind slowly with his right hand and stepped forward nervously.
"Now you take a beating, pizza boy."
He stepped forward again, on to his left foot. "I'm sorry..."
If he could make it past Scar-head he could make the front door.
He leaned forward and lowered his center of gravity, looking as sorry as he could. He pushed off his left foot and brought the screwdriver up in his right hand, drove all his weight and momentum up behind the screwdriver and plunged into the soft underside of Scar-head's chin. He twisted and wrenched the handle to be sure and the body responded with twitches and shudders, as if the tip of the screwdriver embedded in his brain was some kind of macabre remote control.
Linc dragged the screwdriver out of its fleshy trap and let the corpse fall. Two more card players filed into the hall. He had not noticed how huge they were sitting at the table, six foot three or four and built like wrestlers. No way past. He tried to dodge a right hook from the first. It clipped his left shoulder and spun him off his balance. Instinct kicked in, or training, or whatever and he pumped his legs and drove forward as he toppled. He dipped his head and struck the groin of the first wrestler and felt something squelch. As he reached forward to break his fall a flailing right arm connected with his neck, but there was no power in it.
The wrestler
