“I’m looking for a tweaker named Billy Ray Honnaker. Goes by Creepo.” I had completely fabricated the name and handle. “Jumped bail last week and ripped off a pawnshop. Got some gold and a boom box before the owner showed up and scared him away. Heard he might have come out here looking to score an ounce or so, then move on to Reno and party.”
“Who told you that?” one of the nomads asked. I decided to call him Scar because he had one a lot worse than mine across the bridge of his nose.
“I have my sources,” I said easily. “Why, you know something?”
“What’s it worth to you?”
“Ten percent off on my services when you next need them,” I countered. Because my jumper was a figment of my imagination I knew any lead he provided would be too. Unless it had to do with Frank’s stolen gold and boom box I’d thrown into the pot.
Scar snorted and spat, saying nothing more. I turned to the Niners. “What about you guys?” I glanced at Pork Chop, noticing he looked relieved. Bingo. Whatever he had to hide, I’d just allayed his fears.
“Sorry, ma’am,” Laser said with an aw-shucks drawl. “Never heard of him, and we don’t know nothing about illegal drugs.”
“Oh, cut the crap,” I replied with a smile. “I know bikers and bikers know meth. Chill out. I’m not a cop anymore and what you smoke or snort is your business. I might even indulge now and then. No needles, though.” I gave Laser a stern look. “You don’t mainline, do you?”
He stuck out his arms, showing clean veins and some nice ink. “No way. I party a little, but injecting that shit will kill you.”
“Smart man. But if I wanted to, where would I get ahold of an ounce of crystal? Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
All but Laser’s attitude chilled again, by which I figured they had their fingers in that crystal pie. I really didn’t care, but I was playing the part.
“Look, lady,” Pork Chop said, his voice rising, “we don’t know nothin’ about that shit. If you want to stay healthy you better put that pretty little ass back in your California Special and mustang on outta here, right?”
“My, my, is that a threat?” My adrenal glands suddenly turned this from a friendly conversation into a confrontation, and even though my better judgment was screaming at me to back off, I just couldn’t do it. My own drug of choice squeezed my heart tight, making me feel elevated and alive, like that first moment falling from the skydive plane, like sitting down at a poker table and getting dealt aces. I took a step back and loosened my left hand for a quick draw.
“Whoa, Choppy, back down off the lady,” Laser intervened, and funnily enough, Pork Chop did. I’d thought the bigger man was in charge, but now I realized he wasn’t. That was unusual. Laser looked to be about twenty-five, Pork Chop maybe forty with a lot more geegaws on his colors. What gave the younger man that kind of pull inside the MC?
The seated nomads laughed uproariously, which turned out to be the wrong move. Pork Chop, denied an outlet for his anger, turned around and grasped the heavy wooden table that held their beer bottles and overturned it, knocking both men onto the sidewalk. They scrambled to their feet, but not before Porky had slugged one of them in the jaw and the other in the gut. “Get the fuck out of here before I shove those bottles up your asses,” he roared.
Stumbling out of reach, the two gave the fat man nasty looks as they kicked their bikes to life and roared off. A couple of the locals crossed the street to avoid the brawl and a whipcord-thin man with more ink than blank skin stepped into the door of the parlor from inside, a motorized tattoo needle in his hand. “You guys wanna hold it down out here?” he said.
In the meantime, Laser looked at me and shrugged apologetically. “He’s got a short fuse, our Choppy. Look, you got digits? If I hear anything, I’ll give you a call.”
“Sure.” I pulled out a pen, wrote my cell number on a piece of notebook paper and tore it off, stuffing it into Laser’s jacket pocket, tugging on it a moment, flirting. “Tell you what. If your tip helps me recover this guy I’ll give you a finder’s fee. Hundred bucks. Deal?”
“All right, then!” He smiled broadly and chucked me under the chin. “See you later, Cally Corwin.” Then he slapped Porky on the shoulder and they got on their bikes.
Made a mistake there, Laser, I thought. I hadn’t told him my real last name. In fact, the only person in this town that knew it was Marilou, from when I’d showed her my bondsman’s license. To the others I’d given “Jones.” Now that was interesting, and very specific.
I waved at the two Niners as they roared up the street out of town toward highway 132, the way I had come in. The tattoo artist stared at me for a minute before shaking his head and going back inside. I heard the whine of the ink gun start back up and shivered. I didn’t like needles.
Now I was really at a dead end unless I wanted to lean on Marilou a bit, find out her connection to the bikers. Not yet. I thought I’d squeezed all I could out of this town for now, at least until I got back and talked with Frank. There were some details I wanted to ask him about, starting with the burglary.
Back at the Old Mill I turned west on 132 toward home. Less than a mile later I saw the sign for La Grange Road. On impulse I turned northward toward Don Pedro Reservoir up into the hills. Somewhere in front of me I should find the rest stop where Jerry Conrad had been robbed of his bicycle. While the likelihood of a connection seemed minimal, it was only a few miles out of my way. My cop sense made me want to take a look.
Right on time I spotted an old sign announcing the rest stop a quarter mile ahead. When I rounded the last curve it came into sight. I braked and pulled in before the two Harleys parked by the restroom building registered in my consciousness.
Oops. I recognized the nomads’ bikes and the better part of valor prevailed. It’s one thing to take a stand on a public street with the whole town watching, quite another to ask for trouble at a remote spot in the hills. I passed them and turned left at the exit to head back the way I had come, down toward 132. Behind me I heard a yell and then the roar of engines starting.
Oh, hell. I sped up. Five miles or ten minutes should get me back to the main road. I just had to stay out of trouble until then. Besides, I asked myself, what can two bikes really do to a car? It’s not like they could run me off the road if I didn’t want to be. Unless they had guns and were willing to use them.
Now I wished I had brought Molly. I could have left them in the dust with her three hundred horses and tuned suspension but Madge, while a classic and pretty nice for her time, was still the product of 1960s technology.
At least it was dry and sunny.
The bikes came up behind me despite all I could do. I could see them in the rear-view mirror trying to wave me over, but I wasn’t having any of that. My best way out of trouble was to keep moving down the foothills and into the more populated towns of the Valley. If they wanted to follow me all the way into Turlock and talk to me at the police department they were welcome.
In spite of my best efforts, one of them got in front of me, cutting inside Madge on a curve. The one behind backed off a bit and the one in front zoomed ahead, reaching inside his leather jacket for something.
Double shit. I drew my automatic and stuck it under my thigh, but my right hand was too weak to control the car singlehandedly on these twisty roads with no power steering and if I used it to fire my weapon it would probably recoil out of my grip. I resolved to devote more time to physical therapy and started praying.
Instead of a gun, though, the biker in front of me held something else pointing my way, something metallic and shiny. I wasn’t sure what it was until he drifted back, but then I recognized it.
A badge.
Any fool can buy a badge. I had a couple myself. It would be a good trick to use to pull people over, rob them or kill them. If it was real and these guys were undercover cops I might be making a mistake, but if it was fake it was worth my life.
No dice. I gunned it and Madge lunged toward his back whe
el.
That spooked him and he swerved to the side, so I took the opportunity to pass, giving him the finger as I did so. He fell back further and soon both of them had disappeared, either stopped or turned around. I was happy to see 132 come up and I blew through the stop sign in a power slide westbound and onto it. No bikers in my rearview mirror, so I stuck to five over the speed limit and took deep breaths for a while before holstering my weapon.
Nothing changed if they were faking with the badge, but if they were for real, why show me? That was dangerous for undercover cops of any sort. What if I was dirty? They couldn’t know I wouldn’t rat them out and collect a bundle from the bikers, who’d kill them and bury them in unmarked graves. I’d worked undercover a couple of times and they pounded it into us to never ever tell anyone who we were until the op was over. Too easy to just…disappear. No, it had to have been a trick. That was the safe bet.
Forty minutes later I cruised into Turlock. People there called it a small town, but pushing 60,000 it was a metropolis compared to Granger’s Ford. The afternoon rush hour bustled, which meant ten cars at each light instead of two, nothing like the City’s jams. A few minutes later I pulled up at the police station.
Walking inside felt like going back to a beloved high school, like I didn’t belong there but wanted to anyway. I was no longer a cop, though I should have been, but I’d closed off that avenue when I sued the Department.
At the time I’d been crusading for my own justice. The department, specifically a jealous bitch named Nina Stanger, had done me dirty.
The day it happened, Lieutenant Stanger had stood there by the yellow tape and told me I had to go in and assist the explosives guy. He’d needed a steady pair of hands to help, as the other tech had come down with food poisoning. The bomb was ticking and so they suited me up and sent me in.
Technically she’d made it voluntary. “It’s your call, Cal,” she said with a straight face, “but it’s either get in there or we throw mattresses on it and clear the area, let it blow. You know how that will make the Department look. Like we can’t protect our own town. I’m counting on you to make the right decision.”
Yea verily, I sure didn’t want the Department to look bad, so I went in there and the bomb had gone off and the heavy protective equipment had done its job. I’d been leaning away and diving for the ground when it exploded. The blast came up under my helmet and ripped it clean off, blowing the hair and most of the skin off the right side of my head, bursting my eardrum and slapping my gloved hand with a pressure wave that killed most of the nerves there, or so they told me after I woke up on the gurney.
The kid with me hadn’t been diving. He’d given me a critical half-second warning and had partially shielded me from the block of C4. Saved my life, but he didn’t make it.
Of course there was an investigation, and if Stanger had been a standup guy she would have told the truth and I would have told the truth and it would have been tragic but everyone would have recovered. Instead, the bitch had dropped the frame on me. Said I went in against her orders and I’d screwed up somehow. Said if I hadn’t, the bomb tech wouldn’t have died.
Her report was enough to put my career in jeopardy but the police union, a little belatedly, took up my cause after I showed them unused video footage of the two-minute conversation I’d had with my boss, a present from Cole Sage. Lip-readers brought in as witnesses verified my side of the story and along with the other corroboration I’d dug up got me exonerated, along with a million-dollar settlement.
But in that case, winning was losing. No PD in the western states would take me now except maybe Turlock’s. I sure as hell wasn’t moving back east begging hat in hand to small-town chiefs, knowing that the only job I would get was from someone desperate enough to overlook what the thin blue line inevitably classed as betrayal, police union or not.
I could have – sometimes I think I should have – used the evidence only as leverage. With union backing I might have made it all go away, perhaps restored the status quo with a transfer to a nearby city.
Instead, I’d played hardball, burning the backstabbing bitch down…and yes, myself with her.
Fortunately a few fellow officers understood – especially the ones who knew the former Lieutenant Stanger well. Elle Saint John, Turlock’s Chief of Police, was one of them.
After showing the desk sergeant my credentials, I knocked on the jamb of Elle’s open office door. “Hey, sexy,” I said. Elle is gay, I’m straight and I like to jerk her chain, but she’s a big girl and she can handle it.
“Don’t you forget it, cutie.” Elle was my height but much more muscular, with rich black hair that spoke of the Armenian blood in her family tree, and wore her usual charcoal pantsuit. She came out from around her desk to hug me, and then held me at arm’s length. “Looking good.”
“Thanks. You too.” That was true in its way. I wasn’t attracted to her, but she appeared fit and healthy and cheerful in that butch way she had about her. Which meant she looked even more like a female cop than I did. The job molded us, I guess, as I’d been accused of batting for the other team now and again. “You still with Aa…” I stumbled over the word. “A-something, right?”
“Alexis,” she said. “Yeah, still with her.”
“That’s nice.” Awkward silence. “I’m happy for you.”
“Last time you said ‘Alexis’ sounded like a porn star name.”
“Soap opera, I think were the words I used.”
“Is there a difference?” She winked. “Come on, Cal. You’re not here to talk about my love life or yours.” Elle raised an eyebrow. “Or are you?”
“No, nobody for me right now. I’m working on it, okay?”
“Which means your usual unrequited yearnings? That reporter still?”
“I’d rather not talk about it. Anyway, I was just driving through and thought I’d stop by.” I closed her door behind me and we sat down.
“You wouldn’t shut the door if there wasn’t something else. You could stay for dinner.”
“You’re right, but I’m sorry. I’m on a case. Have to get back. Next time?”
“Sure. Cough it up.” Elle leaned back in her chair and put her feet up on the desk. I guess it was a Chief thing. I sure as hell had never done that on the force. On the other hand, I’d never had my own office.
“I had a blackmail case walk in this morning. Guy’s a teacher by day up in Granger’s Ford, San Francisco drag queen by night. Someone took pictures of him on stage and in bed with a woman and they’re asking for money. That’s the nutshell.”
“Sure. How can I help?”
“You know a deputy there at the substation named Mike Davis or a receptionist, Marilou Monroe?”
Elle laughed. “She’s a pip, huh?”
“Yeah, but is she clean? Some very specific information that I believe only she could have known leaked within hours of me talking to her.”
Elle’s face turned sour. “Talks too much. That’s probably all.”
“Maybe so. What about the deputy?”
“Mike’s all right. Doesn’t push back too hard. People that live up in those hills don’t like to have their rights trampled on. Not like your town full of sheep.”
I sighed. “Yeah, old arguments. Self-righteous overreaching liberals in everybody’s business. On the other hand, people like them are fighting for people like you.”
“Yeah, how’s that for a dilemma? All I want to do is be left alone to catch the bad guys. Why do the hardcore law-and-order types care who I sleep with?”
“And all my client wants to do is be left alone to teach kids by day and dress up as a woman and party by night, but you know parents. They’ll assume a drag queen is a pedophile despite hard evidence to the contrary. Anyway, what do you know about the meth trade up there?”
“It’s always around. Bust a lab, another one crops up. Like weeds.”
“What about bikers?”
“They move some, use some. Usually they aren’t
real big players, ever since RICO. Why?”
I didn’t notice any sudden change in her demeanor so I went ahead and asked, “You have any indication there are undercovers there? Say, among the nomads?”
“Don’t know anything about that.”
I cocked my head at her.
“Really. Only ones big enough to do undercover up there are CHP or feds. They’re not gonna tell a small-town cop like me.” Many people didn’t realize it, but the California Highway Patrol was the state’s police force above county and municipal. As she said, if it was a State op it would be CHP. If federal, it could be any of several agencies. DEA, ATF or FBI were the top three possibilities.
I said, “You got thirty officers in Turlock PD. Granger’s Ford has, count ’em, one assigned. You’re more likely than him to know something, or one of your guys.”
“Maybe the sheriff knows, but not the deputies.” Elle shrugged. “Not my jurisdiction. I got enough trouble with the drugs that come through here, but that stuff generally gets brought straight up 99 from L.A. by the gangs. I could use thirty more guys. You sure you don’t want to come back?”
I sighed. “Tempting, Elle, but I’d just be a liability. People would think it was our relationship that got me the job, maybe not even our professional one, and then your reputation is shot. How long would you last when the townspeople started screaming at the city council?”
“Dammit.”
“Thanks anyway. The offer means a lot.” We stared at each other for a moment the way good friends do.
“Why’d you ask about the undercovers?” she said.
I told her about my encounter with the bikers on the road, and then expanded my tale to hit all the high points in my day. I saw her eyes brighten.
“Interesting that they were there at that rest stop. You think they were laying for you?”
In a Bind Page 5
