by David Putnam
“You’ve got to be kiddin’ me. After all the evidence he kept stashed? The same evidence that put all of his brother bikers in the can for life? He betrayed them with his huge ego and ignorance.”
“Clay told everyone that the feds planted that shit, that he had nothin’ to do with it.”
“All that evidence? Are you kiddin’ me?”
My voice rose. Drago grabbed my arm and tugged us over to a huge ficus in a pot next to a marble pillar. “No one said these guys would win any spelling bees.”
“That’s amazing, simply amazing. You know, maybe if we can prove he did keep all those trophies and photos, the membership would turn on him. That might be our way out.”
Drago got a faraway look in his eyes. “You know, if we could cut off the head of the snake, the snake might die.”
“Take out Clay Warfield? I thought you said he was in Pelican Bay. That’s not just a regular prison, it’s a supermax, and he’s on the inside, and we’re on the outside.”
“No, no, we get someone on the inside to do the dirty for us.”
I didn’t like the idea of hiring a thug to take care of my problem. It went against the grain. It was also against the law, murder for hire, one of the most heinous crimes you could commit. No matter how bad Clay turned out to be, if I hired someone, I’d be stooping to his level. I’d been a cop too many years for that.
Drago’s theory on life came from a much simpler point of view: you fuck with the bull you get the horn. And in this case, Drago thought Clay more than deserved the horn.
“Let’s think about it,” I said.
Drago shook his head. “I’m sorry, pal, there just aren’t any other options. I think you’re gonna have to sack up, my Negro friend, if you wanna get this thing done the right way.”
“I’m gonna think on it. Right now I have to make a phone call and meet with a friend.”
“Oh no, you don’t. You’re not gettin’ rid a me that easy, pal.”
“It has nothing to do with this thing with The Sons. It’s something else altogether.”
“Really? You tellin’ a brother true?”
“Yes.”
He waved his hand in the air. “Say, old hoss, listen. I think you already got enough on your plate. Let’s get this first thing sorted out first before you go ’round socializin’.”
“I won’t be long.”
He looked confused at my resolve and didn’t know which way to jump. “I’m goin’ with you,” he said, though not as firmly this time.
“That’s fine, no problem, but who’s gonna wait here and cover Marie until your two friends show up?”
After a time, he nodded. “Then you can just wait ’til they get here, and we can both go.”
“By the time they get here, I could’ve gone and come back. And we’re going to need some guns, probably sooner than later.”
“I can deal with that.”
“Here, gimme your cell phone, let me make a call.”
He handed it over.
I dialed Sonja.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE POMONA FREEWAY eastbound at two thirty in the afternoon started to bind up with go-home-from-work traffic. In another fifteen minutes, as folks got off work, the clumps of cars would turn into long moving bodies, and fifteen minutes after that, it would shift to stop-and-go. Another fifteen minutes after that, it would be more stop and a lot less go.
Without any distractions—like a car crash—I could make it to Chino in forty minutes and get back to LA in thirty. The westbound traffic for the return trip would be opposite, everyone trying to get out of LA, not too many trying to get in. I drove with the window down, the warm wind on my arm and blowing in my face.
I noticed the air the most, the difference between the humid, thick air in Costa Rica compared to the dry, light, and smoggy air of So Cal. Too bad I liked the So Cal air better, even with its smog.
I left Drago in the lobby of the hotel, waiting on his security people. He said that he’d have some guns delivered. I asked him to take one up and give it to Marie and reiterate to her not to open the door for anyone.
The phone call to Sonja turned out just as cryptic as the last one with her coded message about Tuesday and the blue Chevy. This conversation didn’t start out with any, “Hello, how are ya?” Just, “Meet at the barbeque place on Pipeline east of Central in Chino.”
“When?”
“Now, right now.”
“Thirty minutes.”
Click.
She’d hung up. I couldn’t blame her. We’d not left on the greatest of terms. That last time, we’d hardly spoken, the night I laid my badge and gun on Rodriquez’ desk, the night I’d watched the paramedics load Sonja on a gurney and into an ambulance.
And then nine months after that she’d just dropped Olivia off. She walked up the stairs to my apartment and knocked on the door. When I answered, she tried to set her in my arms without a word, not so much as a hello. I didn’t even know she’d been pregnant. How could I have known? She never told me. My entire life shifted that day, tilted out of control. I had a child, a baby girl. I knew absolutely nothing about raising a baby, let alone a baby girl.
Sonja said, “I can’t handle a girl. A girl, of all things, can you believe it?” I thought that’s what she said, anyway. I’d slipped into a kinda groggy shock with that warm, squirming little child in my arms. Her tiny hand reached up and gripped my nose. Sonja simply turned and walked away, still talking, words that drifted into the wind.
I found out later, from a friend who said it wasn’t that uncommon, that Sonja probably had a bad case of postpartum depression. From my experience working the streets, with postpartum depression, sometimes it was better for the child’s safety if the mother and child were separated. Olivia needed to be with her mother. I only took the child because I thought it would be for a short stint, until Sonja felt better. Sonja would one day suddenly snap out of it and say, “What the hell did I do? I gave up my daughter.” Then she’d come running back and snatch Olivia away just as abruptly as she’d dropped her off.
Only that never happened.
With each passing day that Sonja didn’t show, I lost a little more of what I had in my heart for her, until that day I finally hit the peak of my emotions. By that time I didn’t want Sonja to show up anymore to take away my daughter. In fact, after six months, I’d have fought her over custody. That never happened either.
Seventeen years after I received Olivia, I again contacted Sonja and told her that she was now the proud grandmother of twins. Olivia, only a child herself, gave birth to little Albert and Alonzo. On the phone, Sonja sounded indifferent, but said she’d buy some gifts and come right over. She never showed. It saddened me that a grandmother wouldn’t want to meet her grandchildren. I never told Olivia about it.
Out of nowhere, three Harley Davidson motorcycles zoomed up on me, growing large in my rearview. Outlaws for sure, all the chrome, the ape-hanger handlebars, the rumble of their engines, the blue denim of their cuts. They yanked me out of my nostalgic funk.
I didn’t have a gun. I should’ve gotten a gun from Drago, first and foremost. What was I thinking?
How had they gotten on to me so quickly?
Okay, okay, I still had the car. I could use the car against them. Motorcycles didn’t do so well against cars, especially with someone who knew how to use one as a weapon. In my days on the Violent Crimes Team, I ran over three suspects, three different times, suspects who’d chosen to fight rather than go to prison for the rest of their morally corrupt lives.
All three bikes gunned their engines and came around on the driver’s side. I watched their hands in the side mirror for weapons as they made the move. Their hands never left the handlebars. I braced for impact, ready to jerk the wheel to the left, shove my car right into them. What a dumb maneuver, to come up alongside me like that.
In the last second, I caught a glimpse of their colors, the words embroidered on their cuts: Visigoths.
&nb
sp; Visigoths, and not The Sons of Satan.
As far back as I could remember, the Goths had warred with The Sons in a blood feud, the original reason for it long forgotten.
All three bikes continued to accelerate and changed lanes until they rode in the lane right in front of me. Only four more miles until Central Avenue where I needed to get off. I kept it cool. My pulse calmed. No cops, no Sons, I didn’t have any problems.
Coming from behind, two cars caught up to us and rode side by side. Teenagers not paying attention—a little yellow VW and a brown Honda Civic. The passenger in the Honda, a girl, smiled and tried to yell an address or phone number or email address to the blond girl in the VW Bug. Both had their windows down, the wind blowing their hair, their skin tanned and smooth, eyes clear and bright, a vibrant display of youth in its most innocent form.
The Honda swerved—unintentionally—into the other girl’s lane. The girl in the yellow Bug overcompensated to keep from smacking into the Honda, and in doing so, her tires crossed into the Goths’ lane. All three Goths swerved. They yelled and shot the young girl the finger.
The expression of the girl in the yellow Bug shifted from a smile to pure panic. The Goths slowed in front of me, causing me to slow. They came across and got behind the Bug.
I didn’t like this at all. The older Goth, with long, dirty brown hair flowing from under his helmet, came up beside the Bug and kicked in the driver’s door, denting it. The older Goth recoiled from the strike, swerved, and almost went down.
What a fool.
The girl screamed, now frantic to get away. The next Goth came up beside her, pulled a ball-peen hammer from a loop on his belt, and whacked the top of her car again and again, the metal-on-metal thunk easily heard over the loud roar of the bikes. He eased back and broke out her side back window. Safety glass sprayed everywhere.
The girl screamed again, her eyes wide in terror.
I put my foot on the accelerator to move over and ram them just as a siren from behind us lit off with a squeal.
I checked the rearview. A black-and-white California Highway Patrol car—red and blue lights flashing—coming up fast. I’d been so involved in what transpired right beside and in front of me that I’d not kept up my constant vigil for law enforcement. In this case, it worked out. The patrolman didn’t want any part of me. He’d seen what the Goths did to the VW and the terror they inflicted, the threat they caused to the safety of the drivers on the freeway.
I backed off on the speed.
The Goths looked back. They nodded and yelled something to each other as the CHP got in behind them. In one large group, the CHP and three motorcycles moved across the two lanes over to the shoulder.
I didn’t intend to follow until I saw the driver, the CHP officer, a petite woman with a blond pageboy hair cut. I fell in behind and pulled to the shoulder, stayed several car lengths back, my intent being to remain until her backup arrived.
But the Goths figured the same thing about the back-up.
The bikes stopped. The kickstands slammed down.
Things started to happen fast, too fast to think twice about leaving.
CHAPTER THIRTY
IN A REALLY screwed-up sort of way, outlaw motorcycle gangs mirrored the Boy Scouts. The bikers earned patches to wear on their cuts, their denim vests. Each patch or “rocker” symbolized an accomplishment they’d achieved. Dirty, ugly achievements like having sex with a cadaver, armed robbery, rape, murder, and even assaulting a police officer.
Two of the young Visigoths wore new cuts without any patches. They had everything to prove. The older one with the long brown hair, his cut hung heavy with soiled patches, supervised the other two. He would bear witness to their accomplishments. The young ones would want to make a good show for the older one, and that made the situation that much more dangerous.
They all got off the bikes and stood in a group. The CHP officer stayed too long in her car calling out the stop. If she wanted any chance at all of controlling the situation, she needed to get out right away and start giving orders before the Goths had time to develop a plan and work up their nerve. Patrol tactics 101.
I got out and moved around to the shoulder and stayed by the rental.
The CHP got out. She looked to be about five-one or -two and weigh a hundred and twenty-five with all her equipment on.
The old biker with the dirty brown hair and one of the young ones looked white-Caucasian, but overly tanned to the point of looking Hispanic. The third one took his helmet off to show curly red hair. He wore his gunfighter handlebar mustache bushy and untamed against a dark complexion. He didn’t look ugly like the other two; his angular features and his freckles made him handsome in a boyish kind of way. He displayed an innocence that didn’t jibe with his costume or with the men with whom he rode. All three stood at least six feet and weighed in at a buck-eighty at a minimum. Any one of them, alone, would be a handful for the officer.
As soon as she got to the front of the patrol car, the group of bikers started to move on her. She froze, hand on her gun, and pointed with her other hand. “Please step to the shoulder of the road.” Over the roar of the traffic on the freeway, I could barely hear her.
Hundreds of cars zipped by, all those drivers unaware of the disaster unfolding on the side of the freeway.
The bikers didn’t obey but instead continued to step closer to her. I didn’t have any doubt. They were going to take her on. I ran a few steps up to the side of her car. The older biker saw me and hesitated. The young bucks followed suit and stopped. The CHP officer chanced it, took her eyes off her threat to look at what had caused the bikers to react.
I held up four fingers and mouthed the words “Code-Four?” to let her believe that I was a cop, and at the same time ask if she was okay.
She barely moved her head, indicating she wasn’t Code-Four, the fear plain in her eyes yet not in her expression. I moved up to the front of the patrol car and stood three feet from her, about six feet from the bikers.
She yelled to the bikers, “I won’t tell you again, step to the shoulder of the road, and I want to see some ID.”
The two young bikers looked at the older one for guidance. The older one locked eyes with me. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m just the guy standing here on the side of the road, trying to keep you honest.”
“You better step off, nigger. You don’t want any part of this.”
I shifted my footing, taking a combative stance. “Not gonna happen.”
“Move to the side of the road. Do it now,” the officer said.
No one moved for a long, fat moment.
Then the old lion took a step toward us, his hand on the side of his belt under his cut.
“He’s got a ball-peen,” I said. “I saw him use it on the VW.”
“I know, I saw it, too.” She drew her gun and pointed it at him center mass. “Show me your hands. Do it now. Do it right now.” Her other hand moved down to the top of her radio and pushed the red emergency button. Her action changed the whole game. Now every cop in a twenty-mile radius would be responding Code-Three to assist her.
Except that we stood on the side of a busy freeway without easy access, not with all the traffic. Backup would take longer than normal.
Too many cops would arrive in minutes. When they came on scene, they’d ask for my ID. One of them would surely recognize me from all the bulletins put out over the last two years. The FBI wanted me for kidnapping and various other felonies. I’d walked head-on into a no-win situation. I couldn’t leave and I really needed to get out of there.
The older biker smirked at the officer. “What, the split tail’s got the balls to drop the hammer on me? I don’t think so. Take her, Dirk.”
The young one called Dirk hesitated, then leapt forward, hands outstretched, shoulder down. I took two quick steps to intervene, planted my feet, and gave him a roundhouse right. He saw it coming, dodged a little, but not enough. My fist struck right on his ear and skull and vi
brated up my arm. I followed with a quick uppercut to his chin that landed solid, jammed his teeth together, and mashed his lips. He stumbled, shaken to his core. He went to one knee to shrug it off.
The older biker, at the same time, took hold of the young redheaded biker and shoved him into the fray. Both junior bikers acted as cover so he could make his move on the officer.
The redheaded biker shoved hard into me. My footing ended up out of position from the punches I’d just thrown. He hit me at waist level. I backpedaled. We landed on the hood of the car, his chin close to mine, his breath minty fresh. He flailed his arms, trying to slug me, inexperienced. I took hold of his ear and pulled with everything I had, while I watched, helpless to intervene, as the older biker made his move on the officer.
The older biker swung the ball-peen high and wide. The officer, distracted for a brief moment with the fight on the hood of her unit, saw the assault too late. The hammer came down on her arm, the one holding the gun. The bone snapped with a crack. The gun flipped in the air. The older biker watched it as it fell to the ground. If he got to the gun, the bad guys would win with smoke and blood and two broken bodies left to die on the side of the road.
I kneed the redheaded biker in the belly again and again as I yanked on his ear.
The officer yelled, not in pain but in anger over the loss of her weapon. She charged, shoving forward, her head down, her good arm cradling the shattered one. She torpedoed her head right into the older biker. He saw the move, chuckled, and sidestepped her. He swung the hammer again and caught her on the back of the head.
She dropped to the ground face-first, absolutely still. Her breath puffed the dirt.
I shoved the kid off me and dove for the gun down in the grit and broken asphalt.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I LANDED ON the gun, a Glock nine, groped for it, fumbled it. The older biker kicked me in the face. The world wobbled, the air turned thick like a heat wave. The redheaded biker grabbed my foot, tried to pull me off the gun and came away with my shoe. He fell back on his ass. The older biker kicked me again. I moved my face out of the way this time and took it on the shoulder. I rolled off the gun when he came at me with the ball-peen. Had to, no choice. His swing took him off balance. The blow struck me on the left arm. White pain shot up to my shoulder and turned my arm numb. Still on the ground, I swung my leg wide and hard, kicking his legs out from under him. He flopped onto the ground.
