The Giveaway bn-3

by Tod Goldberg

  Being better doesn’t really matter when a dozen violent bikers are beating you to death with lead pipes because you’ve cornered yourself due to poor planning, which is why Fiona and I were down the street from the Ghouls’ clubhouse just west of the airport watching who was coming and who was going, and attempting to figure out what the odds were that we could bust in and start making outlandish demands. I was keeping watch with binoculars and a camera with a telephoto lens. Fiona was keeping watch by reading InStyle magazine and periodically taking cell phone calls

  “Why are the police able to pester Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan every ten minutes but can’t arrest these men at their own clubhouse?” Fiona asked.

  “Because they aren’t doing anything wrong,” I said. It was true: Their clubhouse was technically a bar and they were technically patrons, which is perfectly legal. And since you could refuse service to anyone as a shop owner, they didn’t have a problem with not serving a person who might wander in off the street. Though the monster sitting in front of the door absently twirling a baseball bat probably dissuaded most casual onlookers. In the last hour, we’d watched about a dozen men who looked essentially just like Baseball Bat roll up on their bikes and enter the bar. Usually these guys had a few women with them-you could tell who they were since they wore jackets that said PROPERTY OF THE GHOULS on the back, because the Ghouls aren’t exactly known for their grand subtlety-but not today. It had been been a bad week for the company and it looked like they were doing some official business. Trying to place a legal bug into what is ostensibly a public place is a significant legal issue, which made the Ghouls’ use of a de facto clubhouse right out in the open a pretty savvy bit of criminality.

  “This article says Britney is an excellent mother,” Fi said.

  “I don’t think anyone thinks these guys are excellent mothers,” I said. “It’s going to be a challenge getting to the front door without hurting someone.”

  That got Fi’s attention, so I handed her the binoculars. “That’s a cute bat he has,” she said. “Looks like he also has a cute gun under his gut.”

  “I saw that, too.”

  “If you’re that fat,” Fi said, “isn’t it hard to ride a motorcycle?”

  “Maybe he just stands around looking tough,” I said. That was part of the Ghouls’ game: Scare the crap out of you just by looking frightening. Baseball Bat fit that description. He was over six feet tall, had long, shaggy hair that reached past his shoulders, a handlebar mustache, a classy tattoo on his throat of a gun barrel pointed into his chin, which was sort of imposing until you considered that it probably just meant he was suicidal or incredibly stupid. Probably both. He also ran at least three bills. Maybe three-fifty.

  “How long would it take for you to take him down?” I asked.

  “I could do it right now,” she said. “I’d just walk by with a bag of donuts and some crystal meth and he’d follow me like a dog.”

  “I mean if push came to shove and Sam and I were fighting the other ten guys.”

  Fiona focused the binoculars. “I could have him down in ten seconds. One punch to the throat. Maybe a kick to the knee first. He must be in terrible knee pain holding up all that weight.” She handed me the binoculars and went back to reading her magazine.

  “That’s my girl,” I said.

  “And if neither of those moves worked, I’d just shoot him.”

  A gold Lincoln Continental pulled up in front of the clubhouse-which was actually a bar called Purgatory, which made it about as inconspicuous as the Baseball Bat out front-and three men got out, two from the front seat, one from the back. The man from the backseat was huge, too, but wore a suit, nice shoes, a big watch, like he was a pit boss in Las Vegas. The two other men wore jeans and boots, had long hair, handlebar mustaches and lots of neck ink.

  “What do we have here?” I said.

  Fi looked up from her magazine but didn’t bother taking the binoculars. “Do Lincolns come stock in gold?”

  “Not usually,” I said. I set down the binoculars and picked up the camera and took a couple of pictures through the zoom lens.

  Baseball Bat greeted the man in the suit with a fist pump, the other two men the same way, and let them into the clubhouse and then quickly closed the door. He took several steps down the street and looked around, though not very well. He didn’t bother to notice me and Fi in the Charger less than a block away. But then, maybe the people he was worried about weren’t the kind to sit in a car a block away with binoculars.

  Baseball Bat moseyed back to his post, which took him some time and effort. Fi was right: Kicking him in the knee would probably take him out of commission for the foreseeable future.

  Motorcycle gangs have tried to diversify their business practices. The Hells Angels have a very popular fund-raiser for sick kids, for instance, and sell stickers and buttons and T-shirts. The Outlaws have tattoo parlors where sorority girls get dolphins inked onto their hips. The Ghouls, however, were trying to keep it real by selling drugs and hurting people for fun and profit, but the appearance of the man in the Lincoln had me interested. Clearly he was of some serious importance, because no one else driving a gold Lincoln would be treated as well by old Baseball Bat. And also the man in the Lincoln was the last person to arrive. All of the other bikers got there plenty early.

  Real power is the ability to arrive late and without an excuse while knowing that not a single person will question you. If you want to prove to yourself just how important you are, waste other people’s time.

  I reached into the backseat and grabbed the Ghouls’ constitution and flipped to the section on leadership structure. The odd thing about the Ghouls’ constitution was that it was actually quite well constructed, even in how it meted out payments on drug sales, shy-lock business and prostitution and a nebulous other category called “incidental accruing accounts,” which I suppose could mean just about anything from stealing wallets to knocking over a Brinks truck. It made sense, really, since the first members of the Ghouls were ex-military coming back from Vietnam, guys who lived by a code and were shit on for it and came back with drug problems and a desire to flip off the government they worked for.

  And it looked like they’d succeeded. Not that any of the current members were likely ex-Delta Force, but the militaristic formation of the group added layers of bureaucracy to their business dealings, which meant you needed one guy who wasn’t always driving around on a chopper to make decisions and order punitive damages.

  A guy in a gold Lincoln, for instance.

  “I’m going to say the gentleman in the bad suit and pinkie ring is the local president,” I said. There was also a vice president, a recording secretary, a sergeant-at-arms and even a road captain, who was in charge of booking hotel reservations and such when they went on long rides. Sort of sweet, really, like a cruise director who will beat you to death for looking at him wrong.

  “What kind of man becomes the president of a motorcycle gang and then consents to drive that car?”

  It was a good question.

  “Why don’t you go find out?”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Why don’t you go see if you can use the restroom in Purgatory. See what they’re talking about. If you can’t hear them, leave some ears behind.”

  Fi closed her magazine, leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. “The day is not a total waste,” she said.

  She reached into the backseat and started rummaging through her purse, dumping out various weapons. She probably wanted to travel light.

  When you’re planning an assault, occasionally the best use of intelligence is to throw it all out the window and send in your best person to shoot the man in charge in the head.

  That’s usually been my job.

  When you have a weapon like Fiona, who looks as if she’d blow away in a brisk breeze but who relishes violence like most women covet new shoes, you have to learn to use her wisely. Sending her into the Ghouls’ clubhouse would assure two thi
ngs:

  That when I went back the next day, I’d know all the avenues of escape, precisely what might be used as a weapon and all of the soft spots in the men.

  That when I went back the next day with Fiona by my side, they’d know I already had the upper hand, that they’d been gamed, and, maybe, they’d start wondering if someone in their midst was talking to the wrong people.

  All of that was working on the assumption that Fiona didn’t end up permanently disfiguring anyone.

  I took her by the wrist. “Take as many guns as you like,” I said, “but please try not to kill anyone. It won’t help Bruce in the least.”

  “I will try not to kill anyone. Kneecapping is allowed if need be, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “If I’m not out in ten minutes,” she said, “please come and get me.”

  “If you’re not out in ten minutes,” I said, “I’ll already be inside.”

  “That’s sweet,” she said.

  “Be careful.”

  “Michael, I must say that I like this new sensitivity. Where did you learn it?”

  “Something I’m trying out,” I said.

  “It doesn’t really suit you,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “But keep trying, will you?”

  She popped out of the car then and began sashaying up the sidewalk toward the bar.

  The Ghouls didn’t stand a chance.

  10

  When you’re hot, you don’t need to know a bunch of spy tricks to get information. Men, women, small children and the occasional pet all tend to respond to a pretty girl. This made being Fiona a rather pleasurable experience. She didn’t like to think that things had been handed to her on a silver platter simply because she was attractive-and really, if you’re going to have something on a platter, would it be a life of crime? No, Fiona tended to believe that she was given good looks to combat the other, less desirable aspects of her personality.

  Like the tendency she’d had since childhood to punch people in the neck when they bothered her. Or her general desire to watch things blow up. And then there was her attraction to unavailable men, who, if they had even a smidgen more moral turpitude than she did, would turn her in for what were likely hefty rewards offered on her worldwide. You sell guns to revolutionaries and just common scumbags and people tend to take it the wrong way, but that was okay by Fiona.

  A girl has to earn a living. Particularly if she doesn’t want to depend on a man for a living. That was the one thing she just couldn’t resolve in her mind as she walked up to Purgatory. How could women consent to being the property of not just one drug-dealing biker but an entire gang? Oh, maybe a certain brand of woman found that exciting for a few days, but eventually didn’t you wake up in bed next to the sweating beast and realize you were being treated worse than a whore? Didn’t that bother those women? InStyle tended not to cover that side of life, but Fiona wondered if maybe Oprah could talk some sense into those women. Or maybe that nice Michelle Obama. Now there was a person Fiona thought could handle herself in any situation.

  If there was one thing Fiona was certain of, it was that she could handle herself and if you got in her way, well, she’d step right over you. After knocking you down, of course.

  She was only a few yards from Purgatory and was overwhelmed by the smell of urine coming from an alley between the bar and the empty shop she was passing. It was odd. All of the stores in this strip of shops were vacant, even though they faced a busy intersection. But then biker piss had a way of driving away business.

  The presence of Baseball Bat probably wasn’t helping commerce, either. Fiona could see his shadow on the sidewalk, and even that was huge. She also had the sneaking suspicion that some of that smell was coming off him. Nevertheless, when she skipped past the alley and found herself in front of the bar (which was rather daintily designed out front, with a low retaining wall lined with big decorative planters), she gave Baseball Bat a smile that could have melted lead.

  “Well, hello to you,” she said and that big, scary-looking thug actually blushed.

  This was going to be fun.

  “Hello to you,” he said. His voice was surprisingly sweet-sounding. Somewhere under all of that menace was a boy, Fiona thought. Not much of a boy was left, granted, and probably what was left was a boy who liked to kill animals and melt things, but a boy no less. On his left hand, across the knuckles, was the name CLETE. On his right hand, over his fingers, were the words WILL KILL YOU.

  Subtle.

  “That’s a nice bat,” Fi said.

  “It gets the job done.”

  “Cricket?”

  “Not quite. You lost, sweetheart?”

  “My car broke down,” she said. She pointed back toward the Charger, but there were several beaters parked on the street near it and Fiona didn’t think Baseball Bat’s vision was that great. She could see that even though he had that rather foul- looking tattoo on his neck he also had the darkened rings around his neck that indicated diabetes. Poor bastard, Fi thought. Too tough to get his blood sugar looked at. No wonder he limped around. He probably didn’t have any feeling beneath his knees. “And wouldn’t you know I have to use the powder room, too? Isn’t that how it always is? Just one problem after another.”

  Fiona started to make her way toward the bar’s door and Clete lifted the tip of his bat off the ground and tapped it on Fi’s shin. Not hard. Just enough to stop her momentum. “No ladies’ room inside,” Clete said. Ah, there was the gruff voice.

  “I don’t need to have a pretty place to sit,” she said, moving forward again. “A little boys’ room will be fine.”

  And there was that bat again. This time two taps on her shin. Not a very polite way to treat a lady having a bad day.

  “Use the alley,” he said

  Fiona admired Clete’s code. She really did. He had a job to do and he wasn’t going to be swayed by a pretty woman with a small bladder and a broken-down car.

  “Are you sure?” Fiona said. She stepped closer to him this time, let him get a whiff of her scent, let him really see her up close.

  “Beat it, skank,” he said and this time brought the bat down onto her foot. Not hard enough to break anything, nor even cause much pain, but with the clear intent to show Fiona that he could, and would, break her foot if she didn’t vacate the premises. Even less polite than poking her in the shins, really. In Fiona’s opinion, he’d shown a gross lack of chivalry with her when all she needed to do was use the restroom of the establishment.

  Or, well, she believed that if she’d actually been someone in that actual position, his lack of chivalry would have been gross. As it was, calling her a skank was not the right thing to do, no matter the situation.

  Fiona kicked the barrel of the bat from the top of her right foot, sending it out of Clete’s hand and straight into the air. She caught it in midair with her right hand and in the same motion brought it down across Clete’s right knee. As he tumbled forward, she grabbed him by the back of his collar and tossed him down the three short steps in front of Purgatory.

  He landed with a dull-sounding thud and Fiona could already tell that she’d fairly ruined his knee, because people’s legs really aren’t supposed to bend inward, are they? It also seemed like the fall had caused him to break his left wrist and nose, since his face was bleeding profusely and his wrist was bent at a nauseating angle.

  She’d done a nice amount of damage to his knee, but Fiona reasoned that other injuries were Clete’s own fault. His mass multiplied by the acceleration of his fall did the real work. If he’d bothered to take care of himself, he would only have a broken knee now. Alas, people just didn’t take care of themselves as well anymore. Fiona thought that was a personal choice that said legions about a person’s self-confidence.

  Despite all of this, Clete was trying to get up to go after Fiona, but was clearly having a pretty hard time of it.

  Fiona walked gingerly down the steps-after seeing how Clete took them,
she was sure she’d didn’t want to slip and land on him, even though with her weight, she’d probably bounce harmlessly off-and stood a few feet from Clete.

  “It’s not polite to call a girl a skank,” she said.

  “I’ll kill you,” Clete managed, but there wasn’t much in the way of honest-to-goodness malice in his voice, seeing as he was choking back tears. It’s hard to sound really tough when a girl has busted out your kneecap and tossed you to the pavement, though Fiona admired him for trying.

  Then she remembered that gun she’d noticed in his belt earlier. Unfortunately for Clete, she remembered it at the very moment he remembered it, too. So as he tried to extract it from beneath his sizable girth, she brought the bat down into the small of his back. Not hard enough to separate his spine, or paralyze him, but certainly hard enough to shatter his tailbone.

  Fiona had been taught early on in her life that if you really want to disable someone, you need not run the risk of killing them as well. Breaking someone’s tailbone isn’t a pleasant experience for anyone, especially since if you do it the right way, it will temporarily make the person feel paralyzed, and if you do it the wrong way, it will make the person think they’re paralyzed and knock them out.

  So Fiona made sure she did it the wrong way, and then, when it was clear that Clete would not be getting up in the near future, she reached into his pants and removed his gun. It was by far the most disgusting thing she’d done all day. Fiona didn’t understand how someone could have that much hair coming up out of their pants. Quite vile.

  But the gun was nice. A Star Model D. 380. Beautiful finger grooves. Platinum plated. A perfect all-purpose killing machine. She slipped it into her purse and then took another look at Clete. She almost felt bad for him, splayed out there on the sidewalk as he was, until she realized she needed to move him, lest someone notice the enormous biker beached in front of Purgatory. Or at least she needed to hide him. She tried to pull him by his leg, but he was just too damn heavy and the dragging would simply take too long. She opted instead to tip him over against the low retaining wall in front of the bar and then drag a few of the handsome planters around him so that he was effectively boxed in from view.