In the Cage

by Kevin Hardcastle

  “You’re late,” Clayton said.

  Daniel looked at each man again. Clayton had pistols slung in the open over his shirt.

  “Why you all got the fucking Kevlar on?” he said.

  “Just get in,” Clayton said.

  Daniel glanced back over his shoulder to where he had parked the car. Smell of burnt rubber in the air. Distant woodsmoke. He climbed up. Wallace shut the door and Daniel took a seat against the divider beside the pale-eyed man. He sat with his forearms over top of his knees and felt the van sink some as Wallace got into the front seat. There came the sound of the driver door pulled shut and the engine firing and then they were travelling.

  “I thought you said we were just goin’ to talk to this dude?” Daniel said.

  Clayton checked the chamber of his right-hand pistol and he didn’t look up.

  “Is that what I said?”

  “Well you didn’t say we were gonna fuckin’ storm a beachhead.”

  Still Clayton examined the gun. He holstered it and leaned back. Laced his hands together in his lap.

  “This shiftless crew of degenerates boosted a vehicle that I owned and a trunk full of weed and oxy,” Clayton said. “And in doing it they took a tire iron to the fellow who was driving. This kid, Jimmy Maher.”

  “I know the guy,” Daniel said.

  “Well they split his fucking head open and left him there against the curb, where he very nearly drowned, laying up against the mouth of a sewer drain.”

  Daniel cleared his throat. Turned his neck so that it cracked.

  “He alright?”

  “Yeah, he’s wonderful,” Clayton said, and set to unfastening and refastening the Velcro straps on his vest. “He isn’t dead, if that’s what you mean. And it took a while to make sure of that.”

  The van banked around a wide turn and the men braced themselves where they sat. They ran straight again and faster now on smooth road.

  “This young biker that robbed you, name’s Dubeau, ain’t it?” Daniel said.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a relation to a big man in the club, charter original.”

  “I know who he is.”

  “You can’t go hard at that guy. They will fuck you where you live.”

  Clayton said no more. After a while he sat forward and got the attention of the shotgunner Armstrong. He beckoned with his forefinger and Armstrong reached down to his side and pulled a semi-automatic pistol. Clayton took it from him by the barrel and then leaned forward, held the butt-end of the pistol out to Daniel.

  Daniel just sat there until Clayton’s hand dropped. The pale-eyed man kept weighing him up from the side but Daniel wouldn’t acknowledge him. Clayton gave the pistol back and it was tucked down into the space between Moreau and Armstrong. They’d all gone solemn. Soon enough the van slowed and went along at a creep. Armstrong reached back down to where he’d pulled the gun and came back with two hockey masks. They set about putting them on and each of the masks were painted to look like a skull. Shaded in greys to show ridges of bone. Clayton pointed to each man and told him to take the fucking things off. Moreau and Armstrong looked at each other and fretfully started to pull their masks. It bothered Daniel that Clayton was so sure they’d not need them.

  “How about you let me talk to this guy before you start layin’ people out,” Daniel said.

  Clayton looked out through a narrow slit at one of the rear doors. He closed one eyelid to better see and then he turned.

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Something in the water up this way,” said the pale-eyed man.

  Daniel did turn then. The blonde man was smiling a little and again he stared. Something sickly there in the pallid deep. He shifted slight and the shortened stock of a double-barrel shotgun stuck out from his far side. The barrels had likewise been sawn short and the man moved again and the gun was gone into his coat. Daniel looked back at Clayton.

  “You got any more Kevlar?” he said.

  “What you need it for if you’re just talking?” the pale-eyed man said.

  Daniel pointed at the man.

  “Who in the fuck is this guy?” Daniel said.

  “My nephew,” Clayton said. “Come back from the states to put in work.”

  “You got a name for him?” Daniel said.

  “Tarbell,” Clayton said. “Aaron Tarbell.”

  “Never heard of him,” Daniel said.

  He settled and breathed calm. The van slowed and slowed and then it stopped. Wallace got out and shut his door and left the keys rattling in the ignition. He came around to the panel door and slid it open and Daniel’s feet were the first on the ground. He walked the dirt and stone, unarmed and unarmoured, and he did not slow nor wait to hear if they were trailing him.

  Three men sat on their choppers outside a four-car garage with Dubeau Motors bolted above the hangar. Two of them were tall with long hair and they were father and son, both named Lennox Merritt. Blonde hair on Merritt Jr. and Merritt Sr. gone mostly grey. Nearer sat Billy-Jo Contois, lean and shirtless under his kutte, a number of crooked scars tattooed over on his arms and torso. Their bikes faced the building, a great brick-built monster with a tired metal awning running the length of the shop. There were picnic tables sat out front and a charcoal grill with smoke spilling out from its sides. Dubeau came out from the garage with a beer in his hand and he settled straddle-legged on his panhead. Patches on his kutte with the top rocker plainly visible. He drank at the beer while the other three men chattered and cursed and then set to laughing. Even sunk low on the bike he was far taller than the other men. Dubeau saw Daniel coming and he sat up straight. When he saw Clayton and the blonde man he stood.

  “Sit down, man,” Daniel said. “It’s alright.”

  The other three bikers shut up but Contois’ hand went to his waist.

  “Do not fucking draw any pistols,” Daniel said to him. “Don’t you fuckin’ do it.”

  The hand kept creeping.

  “B.J.” Dubeau hollered. “Knock that shit off.”

  The man let it fall.

  “What’s up, fellas?” Dubeau said. “Don’t see you all out here much.”

  Dubeau pointed past them.

  “I don’t know you,” he said to Clayton’s nephew.

  Tarbell took a step and started to say something.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Daniel said. Tarbell froze and looked to Clayton but Clayton would only eyeball the bikers. Dubeau just sat there.

  “You know what you done,” Daniel said. “You all jacked that car and put a kid in the hospital. I’m guessin’ you didn’t know who he worked for. But you gotta give up what you took or hand over what it was worth.”

  Dubeau nodded.

  “I already got this talk at church, from the big men,” he said. “We knew you’d be comin’ for it.”

  “What else did they say?”

  “Said give it to you.”

  Dubeau got up and the bike rose on its springs. He downed his beer and scratched at his chest and lifted his left leg clear over the bike. He stood about six-foot-five and had wide shoulders and nearly no neck and short black hair slicked to one side. He pitched the beer can into an oil drum a few feet away from the grill and then he started for the garage.

  “Hold on,” Daniel said. “I’m comin’ in there with you.”

  “Okay,” Dubeau said.

  Clayton told Daniel to go on but Daniel had already started walking over to Dubeau. The other bikers watched them go. Dubeau led the way into the building through the open hangar.

  “I heard you were about done with this shit,” Dubeau said.

  “I’m here, ain’t I?”

  They walked through the shop, past countless parts and filthy utility shelving and an ancient hydraulic lift. Daniel kept his eyes on Dubeau’s back and on the biker�
�s hands. When they got to the dim back room Daniel stopped in the doorway. He inventoried the place quick while Dubeau retrieved a large duffel bag. Hefted it out to the shop floor so that the insides of the bag could be seen under the ceiling fluorescents.

  Daniel didn’t check it. He just nodded and took up the straps. Waved Dubeau by and followed him back out toward the front of the shop.

  They were not five feet out into the lot before the shotgun bellowed. Daniel sunk to his haunches and went sideways toward the building. Streak of muzzle-fire against the black. Dubeau spun forty-five degrees and as he turned there were pieces of him flung out in the open air. One part of the man flew skewered with rib-bone. His leather kutte had been shot to ribbons on one side and stuck wet to the man. He sat on the tarmac with his right leg bent at the knee and his left leg straight out. Sat funny like that for just a second before his weight carried him over and put him facedown to the asphalt. Metals were ringing in the shop. Out in the darkness the concussions echoed and came back to them over miles of hard and mottled field.

  Daniel managed to get up by the garage wall and as he stood so did the Merritts, father and son. They were looking at Clayton and Tarbell, his double-barrel shotgun held low with the sawn muzzles leaking smoke and vapour. The Merritts were barely upright when Moreau and Armstrong showed at the other side of the lot and opened up on them. They’d both circled around the building and waited and now they came forward deliberate. The biker Contois had drawn his pistol sitting and fired twice but missed and he took shot to the neck and chest and slumped to the bike and somehow as he folded he fired one more round into his own leg, just below the hip. His jeans began to turn maroon. Moreau and Armstrong did not let up and spent shotgun shells were spat clear and new shells racked and the Merritt’s were blown backward through their motorcycles and landed dead or dying, crumpled strange near the outer brick wall of the shop. The barbeque took shot and went over slow, puked up a mess of seared meat and lit coals when it hit ground.

  When the firing stopped, Daniel climbed back to his feet near to the building and stood with his hands up and out. High, steady tone in his right ear and . all over his jacket. He looked at the shotgunners and the killed bikers. Dubeau had bled out with his right leg bent up under him and his mouth open, eyes wide and staring blind to the west. The bikes dripped red and Merritt Sr’s had fallen on him after he’d gone over it. Daniel took a step forward to check on the younger Merritt, laid out beside his bike with all his fluids spilled to the asphalt. He’d known that man most of his life.

  Daniel stared into the hangar by the thin inner light. He counted steps from the doorway to the spot where Dubeau fell. Figured on how close he’d been when the man was hit. He put a hand to the near chopper’s handlebars and gripped it hard as he could. Took hold of the affixed mirror and wrenched it from its moorings. Then he turned and walked toward Clayton with his eyes cold on Clayton’s nephew. Tarbell had been observing his work and he didn’t look up until Daniel was nearly on top of him and even then he seemed not to know what he was looking at. The shotgun rose like he were using it to wave and Daniel pushed it aside with the outside heel of his right hand and cracked the man hard at the cheek with a left hook. Turned over full with most of his weight behind it. Tarbell let go of the gun as he fell and it clattered to the ground. Daniel kicked it wide and went on. An angry red line had been drawn high in the felled man’s cheek and as he tried to crab his way backward the cut opened up and the blood came fast and ran the underside of Tarbell’s face. Daniel stopped and waited and Tarbell got to one knee all at once and his hand was already reaching inside of his jacket. Daniel beat him to it and yanked the pistol loose and then got hold of the blonde by his shirtcloth and drove the butt into the bridge of the man’s nose. Tarbell would have dropped again but Daniel held him up and hit him clean between his rolled-back eyes before Clayton and his two hired-men wrapped Daniel up and wrested the pistol from his hand and dragged him clear.

  They left the city limits by the narrow highway to the north. Daniel following the van in the borrowed car. Soon the van pulled off of the highway entirely, went down into a gravel gulley beneath an unfinished overpass with the rebar exposed. Tarp tied over the length of it and rippling in the wind while one loose corner slapped hard against the formed concrete. Daniel would not follow them down. He’d parked on the soft shoulder and waited until they started flashing the lights. His phone vibrated inside his coat.

  “If you think I’m goin’ down there you are out of your fuckin’ minds,” he said, and hung up.

  They waited yet in the construction site. Daniel put his knuckles hard to the horn and kept at it until the van’s running lights came on and it started to climb back up the grade.

  He followed the van at a distance until they reached Marston. Already he guessed where they were going. They came into the town by some grim county roads and had one set of traffic lights to hold them up. Daniel was back behind them in the lane a good deal though there was no one else between the two vehicles. As they waited for the lights to turn, a slick new police cruiser passed Daniel in the next lane and pulled up beside the van. Painted grey and black to better hide it on the sideroads and cutaways. Daniel saw the silhouette of just one head moving about in the driver seat.

  “Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” he said.

  They were like that for minutes and then the light turned. The cruiser peeled off to the right and turned down the crossroad, no signal before he went. The van rode through the intersection slow and Daniel kept pace.

  Just inside town limits they took a road that led them down a modest line of shops and apartments, a good number of them vacant or for sale. There were just a handful of cars parked spare along the length of the street. The streetlamps were few and not all were on. Dark among the buildings was an old corner tavern that Clayton owned in principle if not in name and it had been closed for perhaps two hours when the van took the curbside out front. Daniel slowed and put the car in reverse and wheeled backward so that he was sidelong to the building on the cross street. From where he stopped he could see a fire exit and a door that he knew opened by pushbar on the other side.

  Wallace got out of the van and walked the pavement toward Daniel. All Daniel had for arms was an old, weighty cudgel that Murray kept between the seats. He watched Wallace come close and got out from the car empty-handed.

  “You’d better keep him in the van,” Daniel said.

  “I know,” Wallace said.

  Daniel had his thumbs hung in his belt and his fists pressed to his thighs. He stood square to Wallace until the big man settled and crossed his arms and rested his ass to the hood of the Monte Carlo.

  “Who the fuck even has a gun like that?” Daniel said.

  Wallace shook his head. He couldn’t say.

  Clayton had his pistols on the table and his hands in plain view, one flat to the hardwood and the other holding a glass of whiskey. There were stacks of bills set in rows by Wallace as he tallied them up. They’d taken their dope back and whatever else they’d found at the garage. Daniel sat opposite and upright and he seemed not to even blink. Clayton kept telling him to simmer down but Daniel almost had a frequency as he waited in the chair.

  Wallace called out the count to Clayton and Clayton said okay and took five short-stacked bundles and set them on the table in-between he and Daniel.

  “If you stay on,” he said.

  “It ain’t about the money,” Daniel said, to the both of them. “The MC is gonna bury every last one of us.”

  Clayton didn’t seem moved by the idea. Nor Wallace.

  “They work for the same people I do,” said Clayton. “Those in the club that want to be part of what’s coming knew they’d have to burn some deadwood.”

  “I don’t believe that. There’s gonna be blowback.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you, son?” Clayton said. “Things are changed.”


  Someone knocked at the bolted security door to Clayton’s office. Clayton drank at the whiskey. He didn’t turn to see. Wallace went to the door and looked through the lens and unbolted it long enough to talk to the man on the other side. He shut the door and locked it again.

  “His nose ain’t broke,” Wallace said.

  “Good enough,” Clayton said.

  Wallace went to the bar and came back with the whiskey bottle. He set it down in front of Daniel aside his empty glass. Daniel drank right from the bottle and stood it near to the money.

  “You gotta cut that kid loose,” Daniel said.

  Clayton thought on it.

  “He’ll do the things that other men won’t do,” Clayton said.

  “He’s awful blonde to be working out at your place up the highway. They ain’t gonna tolerate the likes of him for long.”

  “He’s got Mohawk blood. I can prove his line, whether they know the man or not,” Clayton said. “Doesn’t matter what he looks like. In fact, it’s a little more than useful, his looking the way he does. How often do you see the cops pull over a clean-cut white boy?”

  Daniel stood and drank once more. He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and told Wallace to get the door for him. Wallace wouldn’t move until Clayton said okay and that aggravated Daniel more than he could hide. Clayton stood then and took up a bound stack of bills and pitched it sidearm and it caught Daniel high on his shoulder and fell to his side. Daniel turned sudden and swatted late at where the money hit and then saw it on the ground.