by David Putnam
I moved my head around just a little. More pain that brought on a little nausea.
Next to me sat the highly polished chrome spokes of a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Then I put it together. They’d trussed me up and thrown me into the back of the toy hauler, the one I’d seen parked out in front of Sonja’s house, the fifth-wheel trailer hooked to the one-ton truck. On the inside, all the windows looked taped over.
“Hey, you? I kin see you’re awake. I can see you movin’ around.”
I didn’t need to see him. I recognized the voice, Monster. I craned my neck and looked, followed his voice up toward the front of the trailer. He sat at a small dining table, just a dark silhouette. His face glowed when he took a pull on his cigarette. The cherry tip popped and snapped. Cheap weed with stems and seeds, or maybe laced with bits of rock cocaine. Or more likely some crystal meth, the drug of choice for outlaw motorcycle gang members.
I played dumb. “What’s goin’ on? Why am I all taped up? Come on, man, cut me loose. This isn’t funny.”
He took another toke, not in any hurry as the truck towed us farther and farther away from Marie.
“You slugged the boss. I had my way, I’d take your sorry ass out ta the desert, cut your balls off, and let you bleed out.”
“But you’re not the boss,” I said, “Bobby Ray is, and you’ll do as you’re told. What were you told?”
He took another long toke, the air in the confined trailer filled with the sweet scent of marijuana. He held in a big breath, letting the drug permeate his lungs, enter his bloodstream, take the edge off the job he’d been given to do. He flicked on a small table light, his face mangled with purple and red and swelled-up lumps from the beating Bobby Ray gave him with his fists. Like me, he’d want to transfer some of that pent-up aggression, and I fit the bill perfectly.
The light illuminated the small confines. The back end of the inside of the travel trailer was left open for hauling off-road vehicles. Framed pictures hung on the wall, pictures of Bosco, no more than a child, riding dirt bikes too big for him in the desert. One picture depicted Sonja and Bobby Ray and Bosco sitting in lawn chairs in that same desert under a shade attached to the trailer. All three smiled as if there were no tomorrow. And there was none, not for Bosco, not once I came into the picture.
Monster finally exhaled in a long, slow breath. His eyes squinted from the smoke as he pointed his doobie at me. “I think you know where we’re goin’. For an abba-zabba, you’re not as dumb as most of ’em.”
“Let’s pretend that I am and you go ahead and tell me anyway.”
“Bobby Ray said you’d know, and that there wasn’t any need to explain it all again. Said you’d know exactly what was goin’ down.”
I did, but I had a suicidal need to hear my fate spelled out for me. I said, “Well, I don’t know what he wants. Why am I here in this trailer all tied up?”
He got up, flicked open a knife, and came at me with slow, deliberate steps. I could do nothing but watch him come. My adrenaline pumped, my pupils dilated, and my heart beat hard. Every detail of his boots, his dirty jeans, his denim cut, stood out. I didn’t want this pig to be the last thing I ever saw. He smelled of body odor and marijuana and of an acrid chemical.
He leaned down over me, his body shading the light from the lamp. I tensed, waiting for the knife to slide into my body, slip under the skin, past the muscle and rib bones into my chest, to my lungs and heart.
He cut the tape binding my hands. “Hit ya too hard back there. Didn’t want ya comin’ around when I wasn’t lookin’ and have a big smoke like you jumpin’ me when I wasn’t ready.”
He pulled a chrome derringer from his pocket, made sure I saw it, and handed me the knife. “Here, you can cut loose your own gorilla paws.”
I took the knife and rolled to my side. The small confines rolled like a ship’s deck, and I fought the urge to throw up all the beer. The bastard did hit me too hard. I cut my feet loose, the knife razor-sharp.
I stood on shaky legs, braced one arm on the counter for support, the freedom swelling in my chest. “Now where are we going?”
He held out his open hand. The other held the derringer pointed at my belly. “Gimme my knife.”
I folded the knife and, looking him in the eye, shoved it down in my pants pocket.
“What? Am I gonna get ta shoot your dumb ass? Goodie. Now gimme the knife, I won’t ask nice again.”
The trailer continued to shimmy this way and that.
I walked up to him until the gun stuck right in my gut, my nose inches from his. “You shoot me, how’re you gonna explain that to Bobby Ray? Now sit down over there and tell me where we’re goin’.”
He held his ground a second longer, a move his testosterone demanded, then backed up to the table with the half-circle couch around it. He sat at one end and I at the other. I wanted to close my eyes to help quell the nausea.
He let his hand rest on the table with the gun pointed at me. He’d have to pull the hammer back in order to fire it, so it couldn’t go off accidently with the shimmy and bounce of the trailer.
He nodded. “That bag over there on the stove.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s for you. Bobby Ray said you’d know how to handle it.”
I got up and reached the short distance to the bag. Opened it. In the dim light from the small table lamp, the rolls of beat-up cash looked like about fifty thousand.
“Bobby Ray still wants me to make the payoff?”
“How the fuck do I know? They don’t tell me shit. I don’t know about any payoff. He just said give you the bag, drive you ta Compton, and let you off at Atlantic and Alondra.”
“And?”
“Said to give you his wheels.”
He pointed to the Harley Davidson I’d been lying next to.
“No one,” he said with contempt, “and I mean no one’s, ever rode Bobby Ray’s hog. He’s gone and lost a lotta juice with our crew over it, too. I’ll tell you that much for sure. Lettin’ some no-account smoke ride his bike. That’s a bunch of buuullshit.”
I still didn’t understand. “What about Bosco? Why are we making the payoff if Bosco’s dead?”
“Bosco ain’t dead. He’s banged up for sure, might not ever wake up again, either, but he ain’t dead.”
I sat down, stunned, as post-traumatic stress from the incident on the freeway played the whole thing over again in my injured head.
I watched the look in Bosco’s eyes as I flipped him in the air—the long, yet too-short, span when he just floated in the air.
The way the car snatched him with a screech of tire and a thunk as his body hit solid metal and glass moving sixty miles an hour. Speed plus steel, versus flesh and bone—the body comes out a loser every time. How in the hell could Bosco have survived that?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE FIFTH WHEEL trailer slowed, made a turn, and bumped. The rig came to a stop.
“Where do I take the money?”
“Ta the back of the old Sears, on Long Beach, in the parking lot.” Monster checked his watch. “You got about ten minutes.”
I picked up my stocking foot. “Shoes?”
“Whatta bunch of buuullshit this is. I ain’t givin’ ya mine. No way in hell, not for some smoke ta wear.”
I got up and moved to the small bedroom section of the trailer and opened a closet. Inside the confined space, some men’s clothes took up half and women’s the other. I reached in and touched the blouses. Sonja’s, for sure. Her bras and panties hung on a hanger as well. I didn’t touch those. Couldn’t if I wanted to. I no longer loved Sonja, but felt the need to protect her from the likes of Bobby Ray. The fact that he could corrupt such a good woman still wormed its way in, and with it came the anger that needed a vent.
I leaned back and looked at the king-sized bed that encompassed the entire upper birth—the overhang of the trailer. I shook off the image it conjured and reached down and grabbed the only shoes there, a pair of rattlesnake-skin cowb
oy boots.
I went back into the kitchen area, sat on the couch, and pulled the boots on. I wore size thirteen. Bobby Ray, well, he didn’t. For someone so large, he didn’t have a big foot. My toes didn’t like it one bit, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I stood and stomped my feet into them the rest of the way.
The back gate came down as Monster undid the nylon stays holding the bike upright. The young biker whom Bobby Ray had shaken until his teeth banged helped Monster roll the bike down the ramp to the asphalt parking lot. I grabbed the bag of money and followed.
The sun sat low in the sky, maybe four or five o’clock. Where had the day gone? Marie must think I’d gone off and taken care of The Sons all on my own, never to be seen again. I had thought about it. Get it over with and leave her out of it.
But it didn’t work out that way. I’d convinced myself I needed to see Sonja first, see what she had to say, and then all hell had broken loose.
Now I stood in a parking lot in Lynwood wearing too-small snakeskin cowboy boots, about to mount a hog with a paper grocery bag of money on my lap. What the hell?
I walked over to the bike, my toes screaming for relief.
The bike, all chrome and fat tires, reflected the orange and yellow from the fading day. The gas tank, a true work of art, depicted Peter Fonda riding a Harley, with the wind in his hair, his sunglasses reflecting the image of someone riding beside him on another bike. Probably meant to be Dennis Hopper, but the image lacked enough detail to tell for sure. One of the nicest bikes I’d ever seen.
I’d ridden a bike for a short time in my misguided youth. Then I responded to three fatal bike accidents in one week, none of them the fault of the bike rider, and I gave it up for good.
I went up to Monster and held out my hand, much like he did when he wanted his knife back.
“What?”
“I need a gun goin’ into something like this.” He gave me a hard look.
“If I come outta this whole, enough to talk,” I said, “you want me talkin’ smack to Bobby Ray about how you didn’t do what I asked?”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out the little gun, and slapped it into my hand. I checked the loads, snapped it shut, and stuck it in my waistband for easy access.
“Now,” I said to him, “gimme your helmet.”
“No way in hell am I lettin’ you put your nappy head in my brain bucket. No. I won’t do it. I don’t care if you do rat me to Bobby Ray. I won’t do it.”
I turned and looked at the young biker, who stood by watching. He hesitated, then went to the truck. He came back with one of the small helmets that barely met DOT regs. Not much protection, but without it I stood a chance of getting pulled over for a helmet-law violation. I took it. Now I wore too-small boots and a dumb-assed helmet that hurt my head all the more.
I kick-started the bike, which roared to life. Monster shook his head and said over the rumble, “You look like one of those bike-ridin’ chimps in the circus.”
I’d had it with him. “After this is all over, you and I are gonna talk.”
“Look forward to it.”
I stuck it in gear and took off. The power of the bike almost got away from me. The handlebars jerked, stretched out my arms, and all but peeled my fingers from the grips. I zoomed out onto Atlantic, a little out of control. A white Ford van honked and swerved to avoid me.
I took Alondra west over to Long Beach Boulevard and turned north. If my feet hadn’t hurt and the helmet hadn’t been too small, I might’ve even enjoyed the ride.
After years of sitting vacant, the old red-brick Sears had been converted into a daily flea market. Lots of cars cluttered the entrance. Farther out, the parking lot sported cracked asphalt and tall weeds. I parked in the weeds and put the kickstand down. I sat on the bike and waited. My brain wanted to shut down and sleep. I fought the urge.
After ten minutes, a light-blue Chevy lowrider with four Hispanic gangbangers drove through the rear parking lot. I sat on what would be a highly sought-after bike with a brown paper grocery sack filled with fifty thousand dollars on my lap. I must’ve looked like a guy with a dead goat tied around my neck in the county zoo tiger cage.
They gave me the stink eye. I stared them down. They drove on. I gave the odds fifty-fifty that they’d be back. I undid the blue bandana Bobby Ray had tied to the handlebars and tied it around my neck. I pulled it up to cover my mouth. With the helmet, I’d be hard to identify if I had to shoot someone trying to take my lunch money.
A white van with tinted windows pulled up and parked by the cluster of cars. Two minutes later, a white Lexus with limo-tint windows cruised through and went back out onto Long Beach and out of view. Two more minutes and the Lexus pulled in again, this time from the south, and drove right over to me.
No one got out.
From ten feet away, I stared into the reflective windows. The driver’s window came down four inches, not enough to see inside. “Who are you?”
“I’m the guy with the bag of money.”
“That’s not your bike.”
“Give the man a cigar. You want this money or not? I’m not gonna stick around.”
The window went up. The Lexus engine kicked up in RPMs as the air conditioner pulled more juice.
I flipped out the kick-starter and stood to fire up the Harley. The driver shut off the Lexus. The door opened and out stepped a skinny man with ears too large for his elongated head. This wasn’t an ATF agent. I knew this man. John Ahern, AKA “Jumbo,” and he knew me. He hated me, wanted me dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I PULLED THE bandana up higher over my nose, like a bandit about to rob a stagecoach. “My orders are to give this money to a fed. You a fed?”
“That’s right, boss, I am.” He pulled out his wallet and flashed it like the feds did, too fast to get a name or agency. Only I’d caught a glimpse of it, saw the California driver’s license he’d tried to pass off where the tiny fed badge should’ve been. The dumbass played it like a kid would.
He wore a white linen suit with a baby-blue silk shirt underneath, open at the neck with a gold necklace.
“You’re no fed.”
“I’m not here to play games with you, asshole,” he said. “Gimme the money.”
“Tell your friends in the van to come out. I’ll give the money to you as long as they identify themselves as feds. I need to know who I’m dealing with.”
Jumbo didn’t flinch. “I ain’t gonna fall for any of that old bullshit. You can do better than that. Ain’t no one in no white van that has anything to do with us. Cut the crap and gimme the damn money.”
Jumbo lost his smile and pulled a small .25 auto from his pants pocket, a no-account lady’s gun. “Give me the money or—”
“Or what? Just what do you think you’re gonna do, little man?” I put the kickstand back down and swung my leg over the bike, let the sack of money drop to the ground.
“I’m gonna cap your black ass, that’s what. Whatta ya think of that, huh?” He started walking toward me, using up the last essence of his bluster and bluff.
“You don’t have the balls for it, Jumbo.”
He froze.
“I know you?”
“Damn straight. Put that gun away before I take it from you and stick it up your ass.”
“You gonna go hands-on against a gun? You’ll lose, pal, garunfucking-teed.”
“Tell me who you’re working for. Who are you here to represent?”
I’d figured it out. Some fed had arrested Jumbo for one of his illicit dealings and flipped him, forced him to come pick up the money for him. The fed watched from the van. Jumbo never did menial work like picking up the money, not for his operations. He always sent his flunkies.
A few years ago I’d done some train heists for him that turned out to be financially beneficial for the both of us, although he cheated me out of my last payoff. We never liked each other, and if I revealed myself to him, he’d know I’d take great pleasure in sq
uishing him like a bug under the too-small snakeskin cowboy boots.
“I don’t have to tell you shit, Negro.”
“You’ll tell me by the time I get done with you, Dumbo.” He hated to be called Dumbo.
“Who are you, damnit?”
I advanced on him. He raised the gun again. “Stop or I’ll cap your ass, I swear I will.”
I stopped. “I don’t think so.” I pulled down the bandana.
He hesitated, then squinted. He dropped the gun and swayed on his feet. He whispered, “My God, Bruno, The Bad Boy Johnson. I . . . I heard you were dead.”
I quick-stepped over to him, grabbed him by the throat, and backed him right up to the Lexus. “Wishful thinking,” I said in a harsh whisper right up by his ear. “Now tell me who you’re working for.”
He choked and gurgled. “McCarty, John McCarty. He’s a gun fed.”
“Where are you supposed to meet him after this deal?”
“Said he’d call me.”
I let him go. He wilted to the ground, choking. He smudged the knees of his white linen suit.
I wanted to shoot him dead. He and Robby Wicks had killed Crazy Ned Bressler, stuffed him in a trunk of a car, and laid the whole thing off on me in a near perfect frame. Not that Ned didn’t deserve it. Robby took his payoff with a bellyful of buckshot, close range, from my friend John Mack. I never thought I’d see Jumbo again and had put him out of my mind.
I picked him up and held him against the car. “Where’s the two hundred and fifty thousand you owe me?” The anger rose inside me as I thought about what he’d done and what he’d tried to do.
“I got it, Bruno, I got it. When you want it?”
I hadn’t been ready for him to roll over so quickly. His sudden shift in emotion, his eagerness to give away money, a character trait he’d never possessed, brought me out of the anger and back to my senses. I held him by the throat with one hand and, with the other, ripped open his shirt. He wore a microphone high on his chest. Wired for sound by the fed running his game, monitoring the deal. He didn’t trust Jumbo.
