Somehow, I had to get out of this.
Ignoring me entirely he said, “First thing, you don’t drive a motorcycle, you ride it. Hell,” he added with an annoying smirk, “I taught my wife to ride in one lesson. If I can teach her in one lesson, I can teach anyone. That’s probably why Smitty put you in my tender lovin’ care. Don’t worry about it.” Easy for him to say. “Really, Smitty’s right. If you can ride a bike you can handle a hog. I’ll get you started, and then you just follow me and do everything I do. No problem, I promise.”
He told me to follow him into a back room, unlocked a huge locker and trundled out what looked to me like the mother of all motorcycles. He assured me that it was a “kiddy bike,” that it’d be a snap for me. He showed me where the throttle and brakes were and cautioned me against giving it too much throttle too fast. Okay, I was accustomed to brakes on the handlebars, but throttles?
“All right,” he said, “climb aboard.” Actually it was easier to get settled on the motorcycle than on a bike. It was lower to the ground than the seat on my bike. That helped.
When I was settled, he showed me the clutch and said I could start the engine as long as I was in neutral even though the kick stand was still down. That made sense to me. I was looking for a kick starter when he told me that this model could be started just by turning the key, just like a car.
I switched on the engine and Dave told me I was a natural. Then he said, “The rest is easy. Like I said, just watch me and do what I do.” With that he straightened his bike up, took the weight off the kickstand, used one leg to balance the bike and kicked the stand up. I did the same.
He let his clutch out and smoothly went a few yards and stopped. Gradually, oh so gradually I let out the clutch, lurched forward a couple of yards slammed on the brakes and almost hit Dave.
“Perfect” Dave said, “Let’s go!!”
And we went! He was smooth; I wasn’t. Not too bad on the straight-aways, but turning was a real problem. There was so much power, I tended to over-steer. I ended up making a series of short jerky turns instead of the smooth turns that Dave handled easily.
It reminded me of my one attempt at skiing. Every one was “carving turns.” My turns were a series of lurches, punctuated by falls. I was doing the same thing now. Not the fall part, at least not yet – the lurching thing.
I flashed onto a line from my dad’s and my favorite poem. “The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day.” I didn’t think my outlook was too brilliant right then either. The motorcycle was scaring me. I hoped I could somehow stay on the beast till we got to Richmond. Just as I was beginning to think I’d tamed the beast a bit, Dave headed up a ramp and onto the freeway.
At least I wouldn’t have to shift now, but Dave was going much faster. Keeping up with him and dodging the other traffic put my heart in my mouth. All I could do was follow and not think. Then he began to weave his way through the traffic. I had a new problem – I couldn’t make the turns like he did and kept getting caught behind and between cars. He slowed down to accommodate me, probably remembering what Smitty’d told him about my escaping. He shouldn’t have worried. I was so busy trying to avoid getting killed; the thought of escape never entered my mind.
It seemed awfully fast to me. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road to consult my speedometer. Later, Dave told me he was barely crawling along, doing fifty.
Eventually he signaled a move over to the right lane to take an off ramp. I had two lanes to get through in order to take the same ramp, and I made it. Only one driver let out a long blast on his horn and I was off the freeway. One stop at the bottom of the ramp, a left turn on to city streets and I thought the worst was over.
It wasn’t. Now I had to start and stop, balancing the bike whenever I stopped at a stop sign or signal. And crossing streets after a stop was really scary. But somehow I was able to keep up with Dave. He did have to stop and wait for me a couple of times, and I did catch him rolling his eyes at one of my more graceful maneuvers, but we made it.
Finally, Dave waved at me and pointed ahead to a Safeway store parking lot where I could see a bunch of the gang gathered together. A couple of them waved at us. I guessed I was supposed to follow Dave into the lot and park.
He did and I didn’t. He glided and I crashed. Fortunately I crashed into a bush and didn’t do any damage except to my credibility. I got a few snickers but no nasty remarks. I bet Smitty had something to do with that too.
CHAPTER 10
Smitty told the rest of them to hang out here for a while and wait for him to return.
He told me to hop on his bike and asked me if I knew where Point Richmond was.
“Yep, been there lots of times. Why?”
“There’s a bike shop there. I need to use his computer. The owner said his place was near an old hotel in the middle of town. Think you can find it?”
I knew approximately where the place had to be.
“Should be a snap, it’s really small.”
“Have you ever used Google Earth?” Smitty asked me.
“Sure, lots of times.”
“Don’t they have satellite pics of the earth that you can zoom in on and pick out your own house, like up real close? We do that to Richards’ house and we’ll know all about it before we even go there, right?”
Before I could reply I heard him mumble to himself. “These young farts think they know so much.”
Sure enough, the shop had a computer, and sure enough, Google Earth turned out to be just the ticket. We got pictures of the house, front yard, back yard, side fences, neighboring houses and streets. “Terrific,” Smitty said. “We’ve got enough men to cover all the entrances and exits, probably even the windows.” I supposed that one of the men he was referring to was me, but I wished it wasn’t.
We zipped back to the Safeway parking lot where Smitty outlined the specifics of the house and assigned one or two guys to each door and window. After making sure that everyone knew exactly where the place was and how to get there, he cautioned them about coasting in. “We want to surprise him, not scare him,” he coached “We’ll scare him after we’re in.”
He told me he wanted me on his bike with him. I think he was afraid I’d lose control again and spoil the whole surprise party. He was probably right.
We coasted up to the place, got off the bike and stood talking to each other as if we were just a couple of locals. The other Devils had stopped a block or so away and were converging on the house from several different directions. I could see them out of the corner of my eye ’cuz I knew what to look for. They were kinda’ sauntering, trying to blend in, trying to not be too conspicuous. To me, frankly, they looked like a bunch of elephants in a tea house. We could only hope that our suspect wasn’t watching.
After a couple of minutes, as soon as he judged that all the Devils were in place, Smitty surprised me again. He left me on the sidewalk, took Red with him, calmly walked up to the front door and knocked.
Nothing. A minute went by. Smitty was about to knock again when the door opened.
“Yeah? What d’ya want?”
“Mr. Richards?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
With that Smitty shoved the door aside, grabbed the guy by his arm and marched him into the house. Richards was tall and skinny, totally unprepared for the two to them, and was easily handled.
After all the preparing and planning it was over in a second. Smitty called the gang in and told them to search the place. In a few minutes they reported back that as far as they could see, there were no guns or weapons of any kind in the house.
Richards was tied to a kitchen chair. Smitty pulled up another chair in front of him, turned it around backwards and straddled it, his well muscled arms crossed across the back. The guy was scared. A gang breaks into your house, ties you up and searches the place. The tattooed leader is huge and strong and treats you like dirt. Who wouldn’t be scared?
Smitty stared at the guy for a few minutes and sa
id, “D’ya know who we are?”
“No, sir.”
“Ever heard of the Oakland Devils?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you’re now entertaining the Devils, and we’re real unhappy with you!”
“For god’s sake, what’d I do?”
“We know you shot that guy on the boat in Oakland, and that it was probably an accident.”
I looked at Smitty in surprise. I thought we had pretty well decided it had been a planned murder. Smitty leaned back in the chair, front legs off the floor, the very picture of nonchalance.
“We’re pretty sure it was an accident,” Smitty continued, “but the police think it was a premeditated murder. Unfortunately for you, the guy was a friend of ours, and the cops have no idea who you are or where you are. Question is: shall we turn you over to the cops, or keep you and you help us find the guy what hired you? Just to sweeten the pot a little, if you help us, we may not be quite so unhappy with you”
It looked to me as if Richards was more scared of the Devils than he was the cops. The Devils were in his house and the cops weren’t.
“Look, I’ll tell you everything. I’ve got no loyalty to Carpenter. You’re right, it was an accident. Carpenter told me to lay in wait for someone to come onto that boat, no matter how long it took.
Smitty held up a hand, “hold on a minute. Who’s Carpenter?
“He’s the guy you’re after. The guy that hired me. All I was supposed to do was stake out this guy’s boat and wait for the owner to show up. He said it should only take a couple of days. I was to follow the guy on to his boat and get whatever papers he had. Carpenter told me, whatever it takes, get the papers. I didn’t know the guy was gonna fight. I ended up slugging him. I got what he wanted and ran, I never shot him.”
“You work for this Carpenter?”
“Hell, no. He hired me as a private eye. To be honest with you, I’m not really a private eye. I mean I’m not licensed or nuthin’. I never heard of him before this job. Now I wish I’d never heard of him at all. He paid me two grand up front and promised me another two grand when I got the papers. No, I don’t work for him. I never even seen the guy.”
“What ‘did you do with the papers?”
“There wasn’t any papers, just a small black notebook. So I took all his identification off him and stuffed them in with the notebook and mailed ’em, like he told me to.”
A notebook! I’d told Smitty that’s what I thought it might be.
“How do you know Carpenter’s name?”
“That’s where I outsmarted him. He sent me a big envelope to mail the stuff in. It was addressed to a post office box, but the envelope it came in had his return address on it. No name or nuthin’, but as long as I had the address it was easy to get his name. I can prove it to you. I’ve still got the two grand he sent me when he got the notebook. In fact it’s still in the envelope it came in.”
Terrific. It looked like we had the name and address of the guy that hired Richards. Smitty still wanted to know what was in the notebook.
“Honest to God, I don’t know,” he said convincingly. “It was wrapped in brown paper. It felt like a small notebook but I never opened it except to stuff his ID into it.
“You gotta do better than that,” Smitty said. “Don’t tell me this guy Carpenter sent you down there without telling you some way to ID the right notebook.”
“Honest, I’m telling you the truth. He said a small paper-wrapped package. On top of that he, made me swear not to open it, and I didn’t. And honest, it was an accident. I really didn’t mean to hurt the guy.”
That’s when Smitty’s demeanor abruptly changed. He’d been fairly cordial to Richards up to that point. He stood up and jabbed his finger in Richard’s chest. “That’s real bullshit, pal. First off, you didn’t ‘accidentally’ club the guy. You shot him in the chest. Secondly, he didn’t have a gun. You used your own. Third, it was cold-blooded murder. You deliberately waited for him to get the package out of the boat and then you shot him. We can make a lot of points with the cops by turning you in. What’d you do with the gun?”
Richards broke out in a sweat and started looking evasively around the room. Everywhere he looked there were Devils staring at him.
Thatreally scared the guy. Trapped in his home by a dozen or so murderous bikers, threatened with arrest? Premeditated murder’s a tough charge. I was thinking that the guy probably had some previous convictions against him, that he’d be up against the third strike law on top of it all. Third time caught and it’s automatic jail time or maybe worse.
“What d’ya want? I’ll tell you anything I know. Don’t turn me over to the cops. Honest, I’d rather take my chances with you guys than the cops.”
“What else can you tell us about this guy Carpenter?”
“All I know about him is his name and address. Outside of some rumors. I heard he’s a big shot in Sacramento, that he can get things done for a price. That’s it.”
Smitty was silent for a minute or so, then, “What did you do with the car?”
“What car?”
“You know damn well what car. The car that belonged to the guy you murdered. Don’t get cute with us. Trust me; we’re way worse news for you than the police’d be. You don’t want us for an enemy. Right now you’re skating on pretty thin ice.”
“It’s down there. I was told to drive it a few blocks away and leave it unlocked with the keys in it and it’d probably be stolen.”
Smitty shot me a look out of Richards’s sight and raised his eyebrows. I thought he was thinking the same as I was. In my mind that definitely made it premeditated murder. Both him and this guy Carpenter. If he’d been instructed to get rid of the car after the deed, that was the only conclusion.
“Okay, that’s it then,” Smitty said to the rest of the guys. “We’re through with this guy but we need to put him on ice somewhere. Anybody got an idea?”
Red spoke up, said that his sister and brother-in-law would be happy to have him as a guest for a few days if there were a few bucks in it for them.
Smitty agreed to that and said, “Let’s get the hell outta here.” He told Red to use Richard’s car to take him to his sister’s house.
“Keep him handcuffed to something real solid like a pipe or something. And Red, you stay with your sister and make sure they know this guy’s a murderer and they got him locked up secure. Make damn sure! Tell your brother in law to stay in the house and not leave your sis alone with this guy. Tell him I’ll make it worth his while.
Then he told me I could take Red’s bike back with the gang. He had a lot more confidence in my ability than I did. Red looked kind of stricken. Smitty had a lot more confidence in me than Red did, too.
“What about the bike Casey rode out here?” Red asked.
“Just leave it at my friend’s place, we’ll get it later.”
“Saddle up and meet me at the house,” Smitty told everyone. “Red, get there as soon as you can. Sailor boy, you follow me.”
The ride back to his house was fairly uneventful. I’m sure he went really slow just for me – or maybe he was more concerned for Red’s cycle? At any rate, I was able to coast in without hitting anything. I was thinking I was getting the hang of this thing until Smitty turned around to watch my last half block.
He shook his head. “You could never be a Devil, not riding like that.”
CHAPTER 11
“We’re in luck,” Smitty said, “The address for this guy Carpenter is nearby, up in the hills of El Cerrito. Anybody familiar with El Cerrito enough to know where this street is?” and he gave the address. Nobody did but one of the guys said that most Oakland maps included El Cerrito, or at least part of it.
Sure enough, it was there and the street was pretty easy to find. It was a short street backing up to a golf course, way up in the hill area.
“Now it’s gonna get more difficult. We need to find out who this guy is, and what’s more, we’ve gotta find out what was in t
he package and why it’s so freaking important to him. Important enough to get some guy killed.”
He continued. “I think this guy Carpenter’s guilty of murder. He’s the one that told Richards to get the package at all costs. In my book that makes him guilty of murder.”
“Why don’t we just turn the guy in, after all he confessed.” I asked.
“Hell no, are you crazy?” Smitty explained reality to me, patiently, the way you would to a college freshman.
“First off, the damn sergeant’s in charge of the case. Every thing’ll end up in his hands. Second, he’s so biased against us that he wouldn’t believe us, no matter what we said or gave him. You know what he’d say? He’d say we planned the whole damn thing ourselves and set Richards up as the fall guy. No way in hell he’s gonna listen to us. Best thing we can do is just stay as far away from him as possible.”
Smitty stopped and rubbed his head like the subject was giving him a headache.
“And don’t forget,” he went on, “we’ve both violated a direct police order by leaving Oakland, so no way we’re going to him. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. As far as Richards is concerned, we’ll just keep him outta circulation till the time’s right. Then we’ll see if we can get around the sergeant somehow. Eventually Richard’s gonna take the fall.”
Smitty thought for a moment. “We need to find a way to get the package and its contents from Carpenter, if we’re ever getting to the bottom of this thing. The only way I can think of is to get into his house and search the place. Find the package. I know that sounds crazy but I can’t think of anything else. I’m gonna google his address and see where he lives.”
A little while later he came back. “I can’t tell enough about the place to figure out what we’re up against,” he told us. “It looks like it backs up to the golf course, but I can’t tell where his property ends and the golf course starts. Somebody has to go up there and take a good hard look around to see what’s what.”
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