Now They Call Me Gunner

by Thom Whalen

  * * *

  Tuesday, I rode up to Russo.

  “What can I do you for?” Johnny asked.

  “We got to talk,” I said.

  “I said, ‘three weeks.’ It’s only been two.”

  “I’m not here to collect. I’m here to talk,” I replied.

  “So talk.”

  I looked around. There was nobody in sight. It felt strange talking outside in a gas station parking lot but it was probably safer than in the office. “One of my guys got busted,” I said.

  “What’s that to me?” he asked. He spoke in his normal slow drawl but he suddenly looked nervous.

  “I just want to assure you that it wasn’t because of us. He was careless. Practically selling in the open. Not like your operation at all.”

  “Okay. So what’s that to me?”

  “There’s a back door connection. He’s talking to the cops. He doesn’t know anything about you. Nobody does unless you told someone. But he’s telling the cops that Billy sold him his drugs. That might lead the cops back to you. Not because they know anything, but because you’re Billy’s brother. If that happens, you don’t say anything about us and you’ll be fine. You never knew anything about Billy’s business and you don’t know who he knew and you don’t know about any drugs. Then the cops’ll have nothing on you.”

  “I know that.”

  “You know it and we know it, too.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure that there was no misunderstanding between us.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  We stared at each other for a minute.

  “The thing is,” I said, “that I’d like to talk to whoever else Billy did business with. Give them a heads up, just like I gave you. The more people know what the cops know, the more they can be ready for them.”

  “Makes sense. But like I told you before, I don’t know nobody else that Billy did business with. Except the Road Snakes up in the mountains. They’re the only guys Billy talked about. He used to talk about being in tight with them. Made out like they were the next best thing to the Hells Angels. Maybe better because he figured they were even tougher than the Angels. Maybe they were because the last time I saw him, he didn’t seem so confident about him and them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He seemed worried. Maybe even scared. He told me that if the Road Snakes ever came looking for him that I didn’t know where he was. That was easy because it was true.”

  I thought back to our last conversation with Johnny. He’d claimed that he didn’t know anything about Billy’s business except for Gus. Now it seems that he knew all about the Road Snakes, too.

  “Did the Snakes sell for him?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Beats me. That’s not something that he talked about. Like I told you before, he didn’t talk to me about any business except what he and I did together.”

  Wrong question. “Was he hiding from the Road Snakes?”

  “I told you what he told me. That I wasn’t to tell them where he was. If you think that’s hiding from them, then it probably is.”

  “I think it is. Was he hiding from anyone else?”

  “Not that I know. He didn’t warn me not to tell anyone else where he was. But, you know, that went without saying. If you don’t want nobody to know something, you better make sure that nobody knows it.”

  “Did any of the Road Snakes ever come here asking about Billy?”

  “I wouldn’t know a Road Snake if it bit me on the ass. The only bikers ever come here asking about Billy is you and that other guy.”

  “The one who bought Billy’s bike off him.” I decided to get that out in the open before it festered any longer.

  “Yeah,” Johnny said.

  “We’re not Road Snakes.”

  “That’s exactly what a Road Snake would have to say if’n he wanted to me to talk about Billy.”

  I saw his point. “Do you think I’m a Road Snake?”

  “I don’t guess you are,” he said. But he was looking hard at my bike.

  “I’m not. You can trust me on that.”

  We stared at each other in silence for a minute Of course he couldn’t trust me on that. I rode a bike. Worse, he’d seen Randal riding Billy’s bike. And Randal was in jail for murdering Billy. I wondered if he knew that. Better if he didn’t. I wouldn’t mention it.

  “I still want to know who killed Billy. You had any more thoughts about that?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly what did Billy say when he said that he didn’t want you to tell the Road Snakes that you’d seen him?”

  “Just that.”

  “He didn’t say why?”

  “He said something about girl trouble. But that was nothing. Billy always had girl trouble. No matter what got between him and the Road Snakes, he would have said it was girl trouble. It was like a joke between us.”

  That didn’t tell me much.

  I poked my bike to life. “I’ll see you next week,” I said. “How’s sales?”

  “It’s okay.”

  I had a thought. “We fronted you the key, but if you got the cash, I could give you another key now instead of fronting it to you.”

  Johnny shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “I’ll pay you next week, but I’m not going to need another key for a bit. Maybe two or three weeks from now.”

  I understood. If he’d sold half of the last key at a hundred percent markup then he could pay for it but he wouldn’t have enough money to buy another one until he’d sold all of that one.

  I thought hard on my ride back to Wemsley. It felt like I’d learned something from Johnny, but I couldn’t figure out what.