Stealing Sturgis

by Matthew Iden

  Becky was finally free of the autograph-seekers and was heading to the limo. She glanced around, as if on the lookout for more fans, then hopped in the backseat. The brake lights flashed as the driver started the car and eased out of the parking lot, careful not to tip over the dozens of parked bikes with its front fender.

  Randy hopped on the back of Lee’s bike and slapped him on the shoulder. “All right, partner. Let’s go find the bank.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Randy leaned forward, close to Lee’s ear, and said, “Wait for him to get a head start.”

  Lee didn’t say anything, but thought, I’ve never see a cops and robbers show before? He held on until the stretch limo had left the parking lot and gotten a half block on them before following. It cruised down the street, taking obvious care as it nosed past parked bikes, early-evening drunks, and tourists that stepped onto the road without looking. Limos being a rarity at the Rally, it got a fair share of attention, with some people just staring, curious to see who merited the fancy ride, and others yelling and giving the tinted windows the finger. There were a lot of eyes turned their way, so Lee backed off, slowing down until the limo got a full block lead on him, then two. He figured at fifteen miles an hour, he wasn’t likely to lose it.

  They cleared the narrow lanes in Sturgis and the limo headed west, catching the highway on-ramp towards Spearfish. Once on the highway, the driver punched it and Lee had to work to keep up. He crouched over the handlebars, intent, his eyes glued to the back of the limo. Dashed white lines whipped by as he hit sixty, then seventy. Other cars on the interstate—weaving, passing, slowing down—made it hard work to keep the tail, but Lee kept the limo in sight the whole time, following the taillights in the dusk.

  The air was cooling off and he wished he’d brought a heavier jacket. In nothing but jeans and a t-shirt, Randy must be freezing his ass off, but that was his problem. Lee squinted as the rushing air made his eyes water, but he kept his head down and his eyes locked on the limo. The night smelled of pines and cattle farms, car exhaust and tire tread. The landscape next to them flew by in a patchwork collection of campgrounds, farms, and burgeoning strip malls. He felt strange, disembodied; the wind roared in his ears, deafening and isolating. The entire world consisted of a set of taillights, the wind, and the engine underneath him.

  The limo exited without signaling, well before the Spearfish exit, and headed north. Lee slowed, keeping his distance, and turned off the highway. They passed through the no-man’s-land of exits and on-ramps and followed the road as it climbed a ridge overlooking the highway, snaking around cutbacks to ever-higher elevations. They continued to climb, passing more farms than houses. Lee was really hanging back now, the limo’s distant red taillights his only guide. After five more minutes, it turned onto a gravel-and-dirt lane and Lee almost followed automatically until he realized it was the driveway to the house. He and Randy watched the limo’s headlights panning back and forth as it followed the serpentine driveway to a colossal, multilevel house on the very top of the ridge.

  Lee looked around for a place to wait and settled on a copse of pines and brush about a hundred feet away from the drive entrance. He turned the bike off and popped the kickstand. The night was very still and small noises—the crunch of gravel underneath the tires, the squeak of the vinyl seat as he shifted his weight—sounded loud. Randy hopped off and stomped his feet, trying to get the circulation back.

  “There it is,” Lee said, looking at the house. Every room was brightly lit; the place shone like a lighthouse in the night. Had they known what to look for, they probably could have seen it from the highway. “What now, head back?”

  Randy was slapping his upper arms, trying to get warm. “No. I want to get a look at the place. We’re going to wait for the limo to come back down, then figure a way up there.”

  Lee opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, wondering what Randy was thinking. After about ten minutes they saw the limo retracing its path down the driveway, slowing down for the curves, illuminating the sides of the hill as it descended. The driver went slowly and carefully, then made a sharp right turn and took off down the road. The car’s taillights twinkled as it faded from view.

  “All right, now,” Randy said. “Let’s see what we can see.”

  Lee started the bike and they looked around for a while until they found an access road that ran parallel to the ridge and appeared to go in the general direction of the house. They bumped their way along the road, keeping an eye out for their position in relation to the house. Lee turned off the headlight and they drove in near darkness, trusting in the little bit of starlight and the contrasting shades of the road and berm to get by. Three or four minutes later, Randy tapped Lee on the shoulder.

  “I think we’re nearly on it,” Randy said. “Let’s leave her here and take a look at the house. We can’t be more than a couple hundred feet away.”

  Lee cut the engine and pushed the bike off the access road. He heeled the kickstand and propped the bike, then looked around, not sure even what direction to go, but Randy started off confidently through the scrub, pine, and brush. Lee followed, pushing branches aside and placing his feet carefully.

  Lee’s heart was pounding in his chest as they made their way towards the house. The road noise from the highway drifted on the air, reaching them as a distant buzz. Randy cursed quietly as he slipped on a rock and almost went down. Lee grabbed his elbow to steady him, but Randy shook him off. They crept on, letting the warm glow of lights guide them through the woods until they were at the edge of the clearing that surrounded the property. Lee looked back, trying to get his bearings so they could find the bike again, then turned to see Randy crouching by a large pine. They were less than a hundred feet from the house and could see into most of the windows. A spotlight shone on the front door and illuminated a large gravel turnaround.

  Lee stared at the house. Brumley had nothing like this. The home had three levels, probably, or gigantic ceilings at the least. Two huge outdoor decks jutted from the back of the house, peering over the valley below. There were ten or twelve bedrooms if there was one, he guessed, and that probably meant five or six bathrooms, with probably a swimming pool in the back and, now that his eyes had adjusted a bit, he could see there was a huge pond in the front yard, to one side of the turnaround. Surrounding the pond were several stone benches, a handful of sculptures, and a pagoda pond. A rock path wound from the pond to the back of the house.

  It made sense that movie stars would stay at a place this nice, he figured, but it sure was different when you actually saw it. An ugly surge of jealousy welled up in him as he thought about his own little trailer that could slide right in the garage, with room to spare for his bike and the truck. Every light was on in the place. No doubt the electric bill was bigger than his mortgage payment.

  All thoughts stopped, though, as he saw a figure pass in front of one of the windows. It was Becky, looking distracted, her expression clear from where Lee crouched. She was getting something from the kitchen and she passed by the window again, running a hand through her hair. A minute later, blue-tinted flashes from several first-floor windows meant that a TV had been turned on.

  They sat for five more minutes. The cold was starting to make Lee’s feet go numb and he said, “All right, Randy. We through here?”

  Randy shook his head. His teeth were chattering and he was hugging himself to keep warm. “Not yet.”

  “What are we waiting for? You to freeze to death?”

  “Not yet, dammit,” Randy said, a vicious note in his voice. “We’ll leave when I say.”

  Lee looked at him in the dark, wanting to push him down the embankment. Randy was edgier than usual, like he was expecting something. Lee sighed, settling in. If the idiot wanted to catch his death of pneumonia, let him.

  They sat that way for half an hour, the only break when Lee relieved himself against a pine tree. He walked back and waited some more and was about to lay it on the line for Randy
when he heard the unmistakable chug of a Harley engine. They both leaned forward, listening. Lee was sure it was coming up the drive and thirty seconds later was proved right as a single headlight came into view. It was wobbling a little bit, and the biker had trouble negotiating the driveway, spinning out on the gravel a few times and weaving from one side to the other in the lane. It was difficult to see details in the dark, but Lee could see it was a custom Harley with one rider in chaps and a jacket. As he came in sight of the house, the rider hit the gas too hard, as if it had surprised him, and the bike lurched forward, off the turnaround, and rammed into one of the stone benches by the pond. “Good Lord,” Lee said as the bench tipped into the pool with a deep splash. The rider turned the bike off, let it fall on its side as he jumped free and promptly fell to the ground.

  The biker rose creakily to his feet. Using the spotlight near the front of the house as a beacon, he successfully stumbled to the door. It was locked and he pounded against it with one fist, leaning on it for support. He started again when no one answered and then fell clean inside the doorway as it was yanked open by someone on the inside.

  It was Becky. Lee could see the disgusted look on her face from where he sat, but she leaned over to help the biker anyway. The screen door swung closed on the man’s feet and she kicked it to keep it open as she dragged him into the house. Light spilled onto the drive from the open door.

  “And that,” Randy said, his teeth gleaming white, “is our movie star.”

  “Okay,” Lee said, straightening with a groan. “We know where they live, it looks like they’re alone, and they leave all their lights on. Let’s go.”

  “That’s not the plan,” Randy said, also standing. Lee stared, openmouthed, as Randy left the shelter of the trees and started across the lawn to the house. “C’mon.”

  “Randy,” Lee said in a loud whisper. “Randy!”

  Randy didn’t reply, just started walking towards the front door like he was making a delivery. Lee took a few steps forward, stopped, then hurried after him. He grabbed Randy’s arm as he pulled even.

  “Randy, what the hell are you doing?” Lee said. His scalp prickled—they were just outside the bright splash of the front spotlight.

  Randy spun around, yanking his arm away. “Don’t do that again, Lee.” There was a tone to his words that Lee hadn’t heard before. His friend’s face looked hard and unforgiving in the shadow, split in harsh planes of light and dark. Randy caught himself and his voice took on the down-home twang Lee was used to. “We’re going inside to join the party, is all.”

  Before Lee could grab him again, Randy turned and loped to the door. In one motion, he yanked the screen door open and walked into the house. Lee, his pulse hammering in his head now, hesitated. He didn’t know what Randy had in mind, but he hadn’t liked the look on his face. A voice inside Lee’s head told him to get the hell out of there, to leave Randy to do something stupid on his own. Lee had taken two steps back to the woods when he thought of the night in Onalaska when Randy had come close to beating the kid to death. The way his face had lit up, almost from inside, how he’d been smiling while he’d done it and laughed afterwards.

  And then Lee thought of Becky.

  He took a deep breath and ran into the house.

  Randy was just inside the enormous foyer, hands on his hips, looking down into the living room. Becky, looking frazzled and confused, was kneeling in front of an enormous fireplace, holding the drunk biker by one arm and trying to prop him up from where he’d fallen to the floor.

  Randy shook his head and said, “My, oh, my. Looks like movie stars get drunk just like us regular folks do.”

  Becky looked past Randy as if he wasn’t there. “Lee?”

  Lee didn’t look at her but stared at Randy, who turned around with a smile on his face. “Lee, is it? Son, what’ve you been doing in your spare time? Getting it on with movie stars? Goodness. You shoulda told me you had Miss Winters’ acquaintance. Would have made our looking around a lot easier, saved us some time.”

  “Lee?” Becky said again, standing. “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

  Lee opened his mouth to invent some kind of story to cover the mess, like this is my crazy cousin, loves all your films. He heard we’d met and just had to see you. But it sounded so insane even to him he forgot about it and just said, “Randy, what the hell are you doing? We didn’t have to come in here. You’re screwing everything up.”

  “Screwing what up?” Becky asked, her voice rising. “What the hell is going on?”

  Randy smiled again. “I’m sorry, son, there’s been a change in plans. I’m afraid we did have to come inside.” He reached under his thin t-shirt and brought out the Glock, casually holding it against his leg. It looked like a brick in his hand. Becky made a small sound when she saw it, but didn’t move. Lee felt the pulse pounding in his ears. The butterflies in his stomach turned into a pitching mass that made him want to vomit.

  “Randy, don’t do anything stupid,” Lee said.

  “I’m sure I won’t,” Randy said. “See, this is the real deal now.”

  Lee looked at him. He noticed that Randy had half turned to keep both him and Becky in sight. He was quiet for a moment, then said, “This was it the whole time, wasn’t it?”

  “You catch on quick,” Randy said.

  “Lee, look at me,” Becky said. “Please, what’s going on?”

  Randy replied instead. “I guess your new boyfriend didn’t tell you what he was really doing at Sturgis, did he, Miss Winters? He and I had a goal in mind when we made the trip from Virginia. Don’t look surprised. That part’s true. What he probably didn’t tell you is that we came here looking for you.”

  Becky looked from Lee to Randy and back. Lee couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Randy went on. “Well, not you, exactly. Lee actually came for your bikes, including that nice, smooth ride of Mr. Ford’s, there—that is him, ain’t it? Good—I’d hate to make a mistake at this stage of the game. Anyway, that bike might not mean much to big shots like you or Mr. Ford there, but that one and a couple of others mean salvation for Lee and his little garage back home. Or so he thought. That was the plan when we started, but I got to thinking on the way here. If these people can afford to piss away a hundred grand on a hobby, to buy a goddamned motorcycle, what might they not pay for something more important? Say, themselves?”

  “Hell, Randy,” Lee said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Not a thing, bud,” Randy said. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “Not a damned thing. I’m just tired of penny ante shit that don’t get me more ’n bus fare from one town to another. And—no offense—I ain’t going to hang around Brumley, flushing brake lines for you the rest of my life. This score is going to be my retirement fund.”

  “I don’t want any part of this,” Lee said.

  “Too late, son,” Randy said, looking at him, hard. “You’re already an accomplice to two counts of kidnapping. Abduction is the legal term, learned that in jail. You’re in for thirty to life just by giving me a ride up the hill.”

  “This is stupid,” Becky said. “When the others get back, you’re going to have a house full of people. You can’t kidnap everyone.”

  “That’s a good one, Miss Winters,” Randy said, grinning. “But there ain’t anybody else, I’d bet my left nut on it. Big shot like Jason Ford would want this place all to himself and his honey, am I right? Maybe throw a big party, invite his boys here to drink once or twice, but he’s not one to share, exactly. I think I’ll take my chances that it’s gonna be just me, Lee, and the two of you until the money arrives.”

  Lee was still, weighing his options, his thoughts burning a hole through his brain. Becky looked at him—her mouth was working but there were no words. Randy blew out a loud breath through his nose, then looked from Lee to Becky and back.

  “If we’re all done staring at each other…Lee, hog-tie those two. I don’t think they’re going to be much of a problem, but you never know.�
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  Lee looked at Randy, his mouth partway open. “Randy, I don’t—”

  “Do it, Lee.” The grin was gone and the lines running from his nose to his mouth were deep creases. Randy’s eyes were wide and he was squeezing the Glock so hard his hand was quivering. Lee looked at him as if for the first time, saw the shaking hand, the wild look. He turned, slowly, and walked to the kitchen, feeling Randy’s eyes on him the whole time.

  Lee searched the cabinets and drawers. Not finding any rope or twine, he grabbed a butcher knife and cut the cords from several lamps. He walked back to the living room and rolled Jason over and tied his hands behind his back. He kept his eyes down and away as he moved on to Becky. Her body was rigid, but she moved so he could finish. When he was done he looked at Randy.

  His partner seemed to have recovered his composure. “All right, that makes things nice and tidy. Now, if you’ll just give me the keys to your Harley, Lee.”

  “What do you need those for?”

  “Let’s just say I want to make sure you know which team you’re on. See, I saw you and Miss Winters walking along the other night, doing everything but holding hands. It was real sweet to watch, I got to tell you,” he said, grinning. “And that’s when I asked myself, Randy, are you sure you want to keep your old friend Lee on this score? Well, sure I do, I said. Lee’s really just after money. Shouldn’t matter if it’s from bikes or from something else.”

  Becky made a sound. Lee stared at Randy.

  “But, you know,” Randy continued, “I thought, maybe he’s going to try and be some kind of hero. Maybe save Miss Winters from his friend with the gun. If that’s what’s in your head, son, maybe you should stop and think for a second.”

  “About what?” Lee asked.

  “About the fact that, we don’t lose our cool, no one gets hurt, just like we planned it. About the fact that, if we pull this off right, we’ll have ten times the money you were expecting from stealing a couple of motorcycles. About the fact that, even if I didn’t shoot you or her, you’re still a criminal.”