by Andy Maslen
He walked up to the front desk, and gave the receptionist a big, touristy grin.
“Hi. I think you have a car for me? Room 560?”
The receptionist, a young woman of maybe twenty-one or twenty-two, bent to check her screen, long turquoise fingernails clicking on the keys. She looked up from the screen, smiling brightly.
“Yes, Sir. I’ll have David bring it round for you.”
Gabriel went to offer the keys but she shook her head.
“It’s OK. We have the valet key.”
She made a call on the in-house phone next to the keyboard on her desk and a few minutes later, as they were discussing the weather, a deep rumble from outside the main entrance interrupted their conversation. The front doors emitted a high-pitched rattle as the glass vibrated in its frames.
“Oh, there’s your car,” she said, looking to her right at whatever vehicle the valet parker had just brought round to the front. “Going somewhere nice today?”
He looked too. And grinned. Maitland must have decided Gabriel needed to make an impression on the Hells Angel President. The car he’d hired – not from one of the main companies, Gabriel assumed – was a new Ford Shelby GT Mustang. White with two fat, blue stripes, edged with red, running down the car’s midline. It would make a nice contrast with his conservative attire when he rolled up at the clubhouse, which he assumed was the point. Always good if you could keep your opponents off-balance in any way you could.
He tipped a couple of dollars to the guy who emerged from the driver’s door and slid into the dark interior of the car. Inserted his own key into the ignition and twisted it firmly clockwise: one, two, stops and then held it against the spring. The engine fired with a roar, already warm from its journey from the car park. He snicked the gear lever into first, grateful that someone at the hire company had figured out people who wanted a car like this would also want to enjoy a manual transmission, and rolled away from the hotel and into a parking spot by a display of yuccas and agave plants.
He opened the boot – trunk, he corrected himself again – and saw, as he’d expected, a suitcase. Not huge, a mid-sized Samsonite in silver. He opened the side catches and the one under the handle and lifted the lid a few inches. As he expected, it was closely packed with plastic-wrapped bricks of white powder, sealed with brown parcel tape. Jesus! I’m in a bloody movie, he thought. No doubt this was what Maitland had been arranging the day before in his various meetings. Next to the Samsonite was a grey plastic case secured with moulded clips, the sort that would hold a set of sockets or screwdrivers. He flipped open the lid. It contained a Glock 17. He thumbed the catch and dropped out the pistol’s magazine to check it: seventeen cartridges, the chamber empty. He racked the slide to push a cartridge into the chamber and put the pistol back in the case.
He had a few hours spare before he needed to leave for Flint, so he returned to his room and spent the morning reading,watching the news and trying to imagine how his meeting with Davis Meeks was going to go.
Back in the Mustang, and resolving to drive like his first day after passing his test, Gabriel merged into the morning commuter traffic. About thirty minutes later he’d cleared Lansing’s city limits and was on the I-69 heading east towards Flint. The Mustang was straining at the leash, or maybe the reins. Either way it was hard not to give the 627 horses their head. But the thought of showing a curious State policeman a bootful of cocaine – destined for a trade with a Hells Angel no less – acted as a powerful brake on his instincts. He set the cruise control to 65 mph and turned on the radio. He found a station playing old-time stuff and settled back in for the drive while Lead Belly sang Death Letter Blues. Maitland had said not to trust the satnav, but he’d switched it on anyway – it was showing fifty-five minutes as the driving time to downtown Flint.
He kept checking the rearview mirror, looking for the silhouette of a police Crown Vic. The aerials were a giveaway, even if the car was common on American roads. As he started to relax, Gabriel’s mind drifted and he began planning his encounter with Davis Meeks. Play up the Englishness. Don’t be cowed. Lots of eye contact: if the man was sensitive about his looks then this was a simple power-play Gabriel could work to his advantage. He assumed Maitland or one of his contacts had set up the deal so presumably Meeks wanted him out of the clubhouse as fast as he did. He fingered the mic at his throat, not hard enough to switch it on, but just to reassure himself it was still in place. He was just pondering whether to take the Glock in when a bright flash from the mirror caught his eye. He looked up. Shit. Police.
Chapter 19
It wasn’t a cop. It was some hothead in a Porsche flashing his lights.
“Overtake then, arsehole!” Gabriel shouted. “The road’s empty.”
But the 911 wanted to race. Any other day and any other cargo, Gabriel might have obliged: the Shelby Mustang was more than a match for the German sports car behind him. But the thought of being stopped for racing on an interstate didn’t really fill him with optimism. He signalled right and dabbed the brake to disable the cruise control. The 911 got the message and, after tailgating Gabriel for another quarter-mile, pulled out to pass him. For a second, Gabriel seriously reconsidered his decision but then relaxed his grip on the wheel. With a harsh roar from its rear-mounted, six-cylinder motor, the Porsche shot past him. He took a sideways look, expecting some yuppie type in shirt and tie, maybe wearing high-end sunglasses. He was right. The guy looked about thirty, maybe a little younger. Confident, chin up, looking straight ahead. Then he was past and accelerating away from the Mustang, the howl from his car competing with Lead Belly for attention.
So. Meeks. He was dangerous, for sure. And he’d have home advantage. His turf, his gang members. Gabriel decided he would go in with the Glock. But discreetly. Back of the waistband. The satnav was telling him he had about ten minutes to Flint. Now it was useless, Gabriel pressed the button on the dashboard to silence it. The map was his friend now. He pulled off I-69 onto a state road running north. After about a mile he saw the flashing roof bar of a police cruiser, stationary on the shoulder. He slowed, then pushed the Mustang back up to sixty-five. No sense drawing attention to himself by driving too slowly. As he passed the cruiser, he looked right and laughed at what he saw. Parked in front of the cop car was the Porsche, whose driver was no doubt getting a lecture about public safety, along with a ticket and a fine.
He was looking for a county road. Gabriel saw it coming up on his right and slowed to make the turn. He was close now. A north on another scruffy road and he was heading towards a place called Shay Lake. He pulled in to the side of the road and pressed the button to open the boot. He walked round to the back of the car and lifted the Glock out of its plastic case. Its weight was reassuring as he transferred it to the back of his waistband and settled his jacket over the grip. He’d have to drive leaning upright and away from the seat back, but better that than arrive and not have a chance to get tooled up.
The clubhouse was supposed to be down a dirt track on the left just past a gas station. He passed the station, then he saw the sign, just as Maitland had described it on his copious instructions. A small white steel square, “81” painted crudely in red gloss, peppered with silver-grey circular dents where kids had been shooting at it with BB guns or air rifles. Risky, given who’d put it there. He made the turn into the narrow lane and cut his speed to a walking pace. At its entrance, the lane was almost overgrown with bushes, with just enough room for the Mustang to edge through without scratching its pristine paintwork. But then it opened out – all the vegetation had been cut back from its edges – into a smooth stretch of blacktop leading towards a low-slung building with a huge neon sign projecting above the flat roofline. The sign read Hells Angels Motorcycle Club on one line, and Flint Chapter underneath.
Gabriel parked what he judged to be a respectful distance from the building. Then he pushed open the door with his foot and stepped out of the car, squeezing the collar button as he did so. Facing him was a scene stra
ight out of a biker film.
To the left of the door, fifteen or twenty Harley Davidsons leaned over at lazy angles on their kick-stands, like drunks along a bar. Some were wildly customised, with high handlebars and flame-painted tanks. Others were stock. Still others had a distressed look, like they’d never been cleaned since they were bought, matt with grease and road-dirt. The air smelled of petrol fumes, beer and cannabis smoke: a thick, oily vapour that got into Gabriel’s nose and his mouth and onto the back of his tongue. Every now and again a Harley would fire up from a workshop next to the clubhouse, its flatulent, coughing sound instantly recognisable. The rough mechanical noise overlaid the southern boogie guitar music floating from the main door – a band singing about a sharp-dressed man. Hells Angels milled around, holding bottles of beer, smoking, standing by their bikes, chatting.
Gabriel had always thought of Hells Angels as having long hair: heavy metal types. Most of these guys wore it short or even shaved, though there were a couple of guys with pony tails or just rats’ nests of dank, greasy-looking hair. Quite a lot of silver, too: some of them looked to be in their fifties at least. As he arrived, the Angels looked over, scowling or huddling to exchange comments while pointing at this corporate-type in a suit invading their territory. But they didn’t approach him. He supposed it was his move to make. He squared his shoulders and strode over to the stoop at the front of the clubhouse. He could smell something else now, a mixture of stale sweat, beer and rank body odour. Like someone hadn’t showered. Ever. Or had once, but decided they didn’t like it. An immense man wearing the club uniform of greasy jeans, leather biker jacket and sleeveless denim jacket covered in patches, chains and metal swastikas strolled towards him. He was a couple of inches taller than Gabriel but what really impressed was his girth. He had a gigantic belly that stretched his black T-shirt tight. His biceps were massively over-developed, pushing his arms out from his sides and giving him the look of an old-school grappler about to fight. Which, maybe, he was.
“Help you?” was all he said, looking over Gabriel’s clothes, which he now felt were ridiculous in this place of testosterone and high-octane gasoline.
“I’m looking for Davis Meeks.” Meet brevity with brevity.
“Maybe so, son. A lot of people are. Now, what would a little faggot like you be wanting with a man like Davis?”
He stared straight back at the man, picking up on a jagged double “S” tattoo on his neck and another reading “Aryan Nations” on his left bicep.
“I’m here to make a trade. So maybe you could let your boss know I’m here. Tell him it’s Toby Maitland’s bagman if you want.”
The man’s eyes narrowed and his giant fists balled into clubs. He took a step closer to Gabriel, close enough to have him within swinging distance, and leaned towards him.
“He’s not my boss, you little punk. He’s our club President. I’m a full-patch, you know what that means?” The man had raised his voice and now two or three other men were ambling over, intrigued by the sight of this out-of-state dandy who’d appeared in their midst on this hot Spring lunchtime like an apparition. “It means you don’t get to walk in here and start giving me orders.”
“Everything all right, Brandon?” one of the other men asked, his skinny frame a complete contrast to the grappler’s bulky gym-built muscles.
“Yeah, sure it is. I got this pissant Englishman disrespecting me, and I’m wondering whether to kick his ass straight out of here or throw him in the pond.”
The other men laughed. A mean, expectant sound like they were hoping their friend might take both options.
Gabriel spoke in a low tone so the man had to lean in to hear him. He looked at the man’s pupils, watching them dilate as the rhythm of his speech altered – as Master Zhao had taught him – and with it, the man’s brainwaves.
“You’ll fetch Davis Meeks … out here and you’ll be … pleased to do it and you’ll tell your friends to … get lost and you and I will … be friends instead and you’ll go and get your President … for me because he’s expecting me and he … knows my boss and his name is Sir Toby … Maitland and you’re doing what I want … because you want to do it and tell your … friends to go back to their bikes … because this is all over for now.”
It was an old trick and he hadn’t used it for a long time. The cadences and the broken flow of his speech coupled with particular tones and eye movements had distracted the man, subverting his focus by not confirming to any of his expectations.
Gabriel shot out his right hand as if to shake and the other man offered his own from instinct. But instead of taking it, Gabriel grabbed his wrist with his left hand and jerked it, then tapped him twice, fast, on the forehead with his right.
“Do it now.”
The big man rocked back on his heels, and looked at Gabriel with a dazed stare, shaking his head like a dog with a flea biting its ear.
“Yeah, sure, whatever. I’ll get Davis for you. He’s OK, boys. Get back to your bikes.”
The other men, tensed to respond to Gabriel’s physical contact with their friend, shrugged at his change of heart and wandered off, grumbling, their hopes of a lunchtime cabaret thwarted. The grappler turned and wandered into the clubhouse. The boogie band were now singing, “she’s got legs”. Gabriel hoped they were sturdier than the rubber items on which the Hells Angel was negotiating the stoop.
An uncomfortable couple of minutes passed. Gabriel remained standing absolutely still, feeling the hot sun on the top of his head. An American TV actor he’d once met in a bar in Belize had given him a lesson in how to command a scene.
“The trick is, OK, you do nothing. The other guys are all fidgeting or looking this way and that, trying to catch the camera’s eye. But it’s just motion, it isn’t action. So what you do is, you just keep very still. Slow your breathing, hold whatever pose you’re in and let the camera come to you. You’re irresistible. And the audience knows it. You’re the one still point in a screen full of movement, so they watch you.”
Then he’d drained his mojito and fallen sideways off his stool. Gabriel guessed keeping still is easier to talk about than to do.
A couple of the Angels were staring at him from the row of bikes, hands held loosely at their sides or resting on the throttles, but none approached. Presumably they were waiting to see how their President reacted. Gabriel had no illusions on the score. If Davis Meeks smelled a rat, then he, Gabriel, would simply disappear. Then the door to the clubhouse banged back against the wall with a loud crack like a dropped pile of books. Show time.
The man strolling towards Gabriel exuded power, authority and control. He looked to be in his sixties. The other Angels watched him, not Gabriel, as he approached. He towered over Gabriel, and he was heavy, too. No gut, just a solid wall of muscle. He wore no T-shirt like the others, just a scuffed leather waistcoat above his jeans and biker boots. His abdominal and pectoral muscles weren’t the sculpted sheet of neatly quilted flesh sported by urban gym bunnies. These were cruder: slabs of flesh bestowed by nature and maybe bulked up by hauling timber around a sawmill, or bike parts, or something heavy, hard and dangerous in a factory.
Davis Meeks’s chest was a riot of tattoos, dominated by the winged death’s head and the words “Hells Angels” as recorded in Lauren’s report. Cradling the winged skull was a loop of stylized wolf-heads, interlaced with complex plaited strands: maybe a native American design. It looked like a chain of office. Both arms had full sleeves of inking: a fan of aces, more skulls, pneumatically-breasted Amazons wielding swords, gothic letters, a rose dripping blood, and Hells Angels symbols, including a red “81” in a diamond – H and A being the eighth and first letters of the alphabet, it wasn’t hard to decode.
But it was Meeks’ face that commanded attention. Trim white-flecked moustache and goatee framing a wide slash of a mouth, pulled down at the corners like he was disappointed at being called out to meet this foppish Englishman. Shaved scalp, the grey stubble revealing a receding hairline. One e
ye, the right, was staring at Gabriel, the iris a pale blue, like a husky’s. The left eye was present, but not correct. Whoever had knifed him across the face had slit the eyelid and damaged the cornea. The lid was badly-healed, puckered somehow: it didn’t sit right over the eyeball. The eye itself had a curdled look, maroon in places, its iris and pupil distorted into an oval.
Meeks spoke, a softer tone than Gabriel was expecting. Maybe he had no need to intimidate with his voice, looking as he did.
“You Maitland’s boy?”
“That’s right. Are you Davis Meeks?”
The tall man stared down at him, his mouth hardening into a thin line, one good eye boring into Gabriel’s.
Then he let out a huge guffaw, revealing a mouthful of big, off-white teeth except for a shiny gold fang on the right.
“You hear that, boys? Am I Davis Meeks?”
The Greek chorus gathered around them either found this genuinely funny or knew it was good policy to show their appreciation for their President’s jokes. Either way they joined in the laughter, a mix of harsh crowing, high-pitched giggling and throaty rumbles, liquid with cigarette smoke and years spent breathing road dust.
“Who did you think I was, boy? Brad Pitt?”
This set off another riot of hooting and cawing. Gabriel decided to take the initiative back.
“No. You’re far too good looking.”
Meeks paused for a split second and scratched his chin.
“Funny guy, huh? Yes. I am Davis Meeks. Why don’t you come inside, have a beer and we can talk business?”
Meeks slung a heavy arm around Gabriel’s shoulders, and walked him into the shadowy interior of the club-house. Gabriel tensed for a blast of the other man’s sweat, but instead got a blast of citrus, overlaid with aftershave. You just never knew.
Chapter 20
Inside the clubhouse, there were comfortable-looking leather armchairs, not in the first flush of youth but still in good condition, their buttoned wine-red coverings nailed to the dark wood frames with brass studs. A couple were occupied by more Angels, their legs slung over the chair arms or kicked out in front of them resting on a low glass-topped coffee table. Two men were playing pool. There were a couple of women there too. Teased up hair and more tattoos, tight jeans or denim cutoffs so short the front pockets poked out below the hems, and tiny bikini tops. They all looked up when Meeks entered.
