Troubleshooter Read online

  “They chose her. Lydia said they could have grabbed her first. She’s smaller, easier to control. Why would you take a bigger girl?”

  “I don’t know.” Haines shrugged skeptically. “Fetish?”

  Jim fussed with the wad of cotton in his ear. “Like serial killers?”

  Tim remembered Den’s parting words over Dray’s body—Let’s practice on this heifer. The recollection threw him back into his grief, a cold-water immersion. He waited for his disgust to wash clear. “Biker-gang serial killers sound more tabloid than plausible. These guys are strategists.”

  Murmured acclamation. The deputies at the table sat thoughtfully, listening to the pulsing rings at the phone bank.

  Dray had said that everyone counts and everyone counts the same.

  Tim knew this to be true. He also knew she counted more to him than anyone else. He was supposed to carry his badge through the gray zone between those facts.

  “Marisol is the key,” he said. “Not Frankie. Not Mancone. Not Dray. We figure out a motive for the snatch, we’re on our way.” He rubbed his temples, refocusing. He’d dozed off in Bear’s rig on the ride over. “All right, where else are we? Anything on Danny the Wand?”

  “Still looking,” Freed said. “But we got a tentative address on the deposed Sinner—Lash. A CI got word from a mechanic, matched the nickname to a billing address for a radiator. Take it or leave it. We were gonna follow it up in the morning.”

  “Me, Bear, and Guerrera’ll take it now. Stay on the motor shops and Danny the Wand. Haines—how’d the prison interview go?”

  “Like shit. Word of the break’s reached the inside, given the Sinners a fresh tank of defiance. No one’s talking except to gloat.”

  A mounted dry-erase board at the front mapped out the mother chapter’s hierarchy, only a few blank slots remaining. Deeds and slags filled out the split branches. It looked like a dating tree from one of the celeb rags Dray pretended not to read in doctors’ waiting rooms.

  Tim did a double take at a new Magic Marker–rendered name. “You got us an ID on the striker?”

  “That’s right,” Zimmer said. “Rich Mandrell, aka Richie Rich.”

  Tim’s voice, beaten flat by exhaustion, managed a modicum of animation. “His tag is Richie Rich?”

  “Diamond pinkie ring. Doesn’t take much.” Thomas flashed a grin. “Troubleshooter.”

  “Rich Mandrell,” Bear repeated slowly, trying to place the name.

  “You get anything on his date to the funeral?” Tim asked.

  “Tough broad, played chaperone?” Zimmer said. “No, still can’t match her. She might not even be part of the club.”

  Guerrera tugged her eight-by-ten surveillance shot from the wall behind him, and Tim looked over his shoulder. Her cheeks were pitted from earlier bouts with acne, but her features were clean, even pretty.

  “She wasn’t wearing a property jacket,” Guerrera said. “And she sure as hell didn’t act like a slag.”

  Tim said, “So who is she?”

  The thoughtful silence barely had time to establish itself when Bear said, “Wait a minute.” He held up his hands, as if having to stave off throngs of rock groupies. “Rich Mandrell? He that guy who popped …?”

  “Raymond Smiles,” Malane said. “One of ours.”

  Jim said, “It speaks.”

  His first joke—a classic Denley slam on a Feeb—caught everyone off guard. The deputies smiled, more with relief than amusement. Malane kept his eyes on Bear as if he hadn’t heard or didn’t get it. But then his anger seemed to get the better of him, and he turned to Jim. “Raymond Smiles was a good friend.”

  Jim studied Malane for a moment, then bobbed his head. “I’m sorry. That was an asshole comment. But I wasn’t talking about Smiles.”

  Mercifully, Zimmer broke the silence. “We have the hit on a restaurant security cam.” He spun his monitor around, and Tim and Bear watched the soundless MPEG video clip play. A black FBI agent sat at an elegantly set table, perfect posture emphasizing the sharp cut of his suit. He wore a red silk pocket square that blended into the blossoms of the too-high centerpiece of roses. His companion headed off, presumably for the bathroom. A moment later a man stepped into view, back to the camera. His shoulder jerked twice, and more red bloomed on Smiles’s shirt, encompassing the handkerchief. Smiles fell forward into his plate. The assassin turned—same eye patch, same flash of pinkie ring, same clammy-looking flesh.

  They watched it through a few more times, Tim growing unsettled. Maybe he’d just soured on reviewing footage of law-enforcement officers getting whacked.

  “The hit took place October third,” Zimmer said. “It seems to have gotten Richie Rich bumped from prospect to striker. Word is, he came out of the San Antonio chapter. A real bruiser. And he’s another disappearing act—his last-knowns put us back to ’03.”

  “Where are the case files?” Tim asked.

  “We can’t get them. We keep running into red flags, classified Feeb bullshit.” Zimmer shot a sideways glare at Malane, picking up the thread of a not-so-buried disagreement. “And we’re not getting much interdepartmental cooperation from our task-force liaison.”

  Bear directed a displeased scowl Malane’s way. “Can’t you play well with others?”

  “Yes, but I can’t break Bureau protocol. I’ve issued a request to try to expedite matters. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Have we gotten the Uncle Pete files?” Tim asked. “The Continuing Criminal Enterprise stuff?”

  “I’ve also put in a request to—”

  “Stop requesting. Start doing. You’re here for a reason.”

  “I know why I’m here, Rackley.”

  “Good. Then work with us. We could certainly use it.”

  Put a pin in the anger and use your head. Get results from this joker or get some answers.

  “On second thought,” Tim added, “what are you doing here?”

  Malane matched Tim’s calm stare. “To help. What else?”

  Bear’s brow was furrowed, deep ripples in shiny skin. Keeping his eyes on Malane, he said, “Freed, how ’bout that address?”

  Tim rose, stretching through the pain in his lower back. He took the slip of paper from Freed and followed Bear and Guerrera out. The white face of the wall clock above the door looked down as he passed under.

  Twenty-four hours since she was shot.

  24

  It was nearly 2:00 A.M. when they eased up to the two-story North Hills apartment building. Pink stucco and cheap concrete had fallen away in chunks, rebar twisting from the holes like spider legs. Around cars, stoops, and rickety ovoid barbecues, men gathered in tight, menacing clusters, all glittering eyes and hands in pockets. Bing Crosby crooned holiday tunes from an eight-track deck in an off-kilter eggshell blue Karmann Ghia, an anachronism of Russian-nesting-doll proportion.

  Tim, Bear, and Guerrera rolled out of Bear’s Dodge Ram, and the groups seemed to hunch together. Overpowering Bing’s velvet barum-ba-pum-pumming, brassy Wagnerian trills wafted from an open second-floor window. Tim picked off a slouched kid with a scruffy goatee and a cocked-back Stetson. “A biker named Lash live around here?”

  “You mean the Great Mustaro?” A few of his cohorts snickered, and the kid lifted his eyes to the window screen upstairs. A curtain undulated between the mesh and a man’s form in a bodybuilder flex. Thick shadow. Biceps like softballs.

  Tim and Guerrera gladly let Bear lead the way. He knocked, but the classical music had reached a deafening pitch. The doorknob gave up 180 degrees. Bear leaned into the room, a hand riding his still-holstered gun.

  A refrigerator of a man, naked, did deep-knee bends, exhaling prodigiously. The Sinners logo occupied his entire back, the flaming skull rippling with the movement of his muscles. SINNERS had been excised from the tattooed top rocker—a purple twist of scar tissue in its place—so his back read, ridiculously, LAUGHING … and then, beneath, FILLMORE.

  On a flickering black-and-white, a hunting-ca
p-bedecked Elmer Fudd goosestepped through a forest to staticky Walküre accompaniment. Lash turned, revealing twinkling eyes, a nest of facial hair, and more, and grinned agreeably. He gave voice to the rising crescendo with a not-bad bass.

  Tim flashed on Kaner’s hulking figure facing him down on the Malibu road, the nomad’s sheer size impressing itself on him anew. Huge as Lash was, Kaner still had a good four inches and hundred pounds on him.

  “Mind if we turn down the TV?” Bear roared.

  “What?”

  “Mind if we turn down the TV?”

  “What?”

  This repeated a few more times until Bear resorted to sign language. The volume eased, and pleasant introductions commenced, the man shaking their hands vigorously, Tim’s elbow aching with the snapping gesture. Lash seemed unsurprised by the appearance of three deputy marshals, even pleased to see them.

  A circular scar stretched tight and shiny over his right biceps, pinched at the edges like a Reese’s peanut butter cup. The twitch at his jaw and scurrying fingers showed off a meth high in overdrive; pockmarks said it wasn’t a new habit. A silver-dollar-size patch of skin at his massive left pectoral fluttered to his heartbeat, an incongruous fragility. Scabs and bruising spotted the crooks of his elbows, his wrists, between his fingers. Continuing to stretch, Lash stepped on the end of each of Bear’s sentences.

  “We understand you used to ride with the S—”

  “Seven years of full-color-flying mayhem.”

  “We had a few questions—”

  “No problemo, podnuhs. You pay, right? For info? I’ll leak you a few words for a price. Times are tough, my friends, times are tough.”

  Bear fed Lash a twenty to keep the wheels greased, letting the hundred show beneath his money clip. Lash snapped it up, the bill disappeared into a drawer, and then he was stepping into a seventies-appliance-yellow wrestling singlet, bouncing on one hairy leg as he strained into the Lycra.

  Bear asked, “Why’d you get kicked out?”

  “Little trouble with the needle.” Lash fluttered the curtain a bit, letting the breeze pull through the screen. “ ’Scuse the ripeness, lads, enchiladas been chasin’ me around the room all night.”

  “The club gives a shit you used drugs?” Bear asked.

  His fingers picked at the fabric, readjusting it to his contours. “Loyalty to the needle is greater than loyalty to the Sinners. We could sell but not partake. That’s a lot of road time with the lady calling out from the saddlebag. I never liked the ‘ow’ in ‘willpower.’ And so it goes, my friends, and so it goes.”

  Guerrera indicated Lash’s disrupted top-rocker tattoo. “The nomads take the ‘Sinners’ off your back?”

  “Yup. With a wire brush. I’m appreciative, actually. They could’ve knifed the whole backpack—infection woulda killed me for sure.” He gripped his biceps, displaying the circular scar as if offering it for purchase. “Burned over my one-percenter tat with a hot spoon. I miss that one the most, cuz I saw it every day.”

  “How long ago?”

  “It was, shit, two years back. Before they went down for croaking those spics.” A glance to Guerrera. “No offense.” Lash hoisted one knee to his chest, then the other, grimacing at the hamstring tug. “They’re not bad guys, Den and Kaner. They showed up, we was all like, ‘Let’s get this motherfucker done.’ They let me have a few shots of whiskey before they held me down. Didn’t use the electric drill or nothin’.” He broke wind once, decisively, and headed for the door. “I’m late for an appointment. Walk with me. Your cash is still good across the street.”

  Lash took the steps two at a time, his stentorian humming picking up the Teutonic Warner Bros. melody. They scrambled to keep pace. He crossed the dark street, a few of the guys laughing at him and calling out. “Hey, Great Mustaro, good luck.”

  Lash offered a warm, crooked grin and a celebrity’s departing wave. “Thanks, lads.” They approached the double doors of a decrepit gymnasium, Lash still humming.

  Bear said, “Listen, we really just need a few more minutes to—”

  Lash hit the swing panels, and the roar of the waiting crowd inside was so shocking it put Tim back on his heels. The ropes of the elevated boxing ring had been restrung with barbed wire. The wall-folding bleachers were packed with chanting fans, men and women holding up fistfuls of cash like cartoon gamblers. A menacing form clad in orange tights and a flickering cape waited in the boxing ring. A banner overhead announced EXTREME FIGHTING SEMIFINALS.

  A voice thundered, “And his opponent, at six-six, three hundred and five pounds …”

  “I haven’t seen three-oh-five since the eighties,” Lash muttered to Bear, giving his fellow scale-tipper an elbow jostle.

  “… the Great Mustaro!”

  The room erupted. Lash continued his Mike Tyson charge to the ring, with Bear, Tim, and Guerrera still pursuing, befuddled. “They say grapplers are tougher than strikers,” Lash shouted to them above the clamor, “but I’ll take on a grappler any day.”

  Lash waved off an anxious older man—the gym owner? “The badge boys are okay. They’re with me.”

  The fighter in the ring who—unintentionally?—resembled one of the dreadlocked albinos from The Matrix, beckoned with both hands; the gesture was Bruce Lee by way of Chris Farley.

  “All right, lads, gimme a sec.” Lash fisted the barbed wire and hoisted himself into the ring, leaving the deputies standing in the front row.

  The albino charged in a football tackle, and Lash caught him over the clutching arms and hurled him against the barbed-wire ropes. The guy hung for an instant, snagged, before hitting canvas. He staggered to his feet, and Lash caught him in a surprisingly fluid fireman’s carry, flipping him. He slammed the canvas so hard Tim felt it through his boots. The albino rose, snapping his fingers, and his cornerman tossed him a wooden chair. He grabbed it by a leg, whipping it at Lash’s head. Lash caught the chair, yanked it free, and set it down on all four legs. He head-butted his opponent, who staggered in a sloppy circle before collapsing into the chair. Lash straddled him stripper style, continuing to administer forehead smashes like a deranged woodpecker. The chair disintegrated, but Lash kept banging away, sitting on the guy’s stomach like a kid playing Chinese torture, his face splattered with his opponent’s blood.

  Before the deputies could intervene, the whistle blew and Lash rose. His opponent gasped and coughed blood. Tim scrambled into the ring and rolled the albino on his side; he drooled out a crimson mouthful. Lash grabbed Tim’s hand and raised his arms in victory, the crowd going wild, referees and cut men pouring into the ring. Lash fisted the barbed wire and tugged it down for Tim to step over. He blazed through the boisterous crowd, Tim, Bear, and Guerrera following in his wake and ducking high fives.

  They finally arrived back in a small office, the closed door providing an abrupt and disorienting silence. Lash settled into a chair, gauging the cuts in his hands with a scientist’s detachment. “Sorry, lads. Where was we?”

  Perspiring heavily from the near confrontation, Bear looked unamused. “The Sinners.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. You got more dead presidents in that pocket of yours, chief?”

  Bear withdrew another Jackson but kept the Franklin buckled down. Lash added the twenty to his take from the fight—fifty-five bucks in crumpled tens, fives, and ones.

  Bear said, “You know about the transport-van break. And the Cholos massacre. Something big is going down. What?”

  “I dunno. I’m out of that game. But Den and Kaner, those boys don’t fuck around. From the aftermath, looks like they got their mitts into something tasty.”

  “Like what?”

  “Two years out, pal. Can’t help you there.”

  “You know anything about a Rich Mandrell? Goes by Richie Rich?”

  “Must be a new addition.”

  “How about a Danny the Wand?”

  “Course. Best sprayer you’ll ever meet. An artist.”

  “You have a real name?”


  “Nope. Just Danny the Wand.”

  “This Danny, he rides his rep pretty hard.”

  Lash’s hearty laugh was part roar, part grumble. “You’d better not tell Danny that, man.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Where can we find him?” Tim asked.

  “Beats the hell outta me. Used to have a shop over on …” Lash snapped his fingers a few times. “I think it was by the Harley dealer in Glendale. But Danny closed up shop. Have spray gun, will travel. I think freelance spraying pays better dough anyway. We lost track.”

  Bear removed his money clip, tapped it against his palm. Lash’s eyes tracked its movement; he reflexively fingered the bruises on his arm.

  “We want to find the nomads,” Bear said.

  “Good luck, man. The Sinners got safe houses all over the state, no papers on ’em, nothing. They roll ’em over every six months.”

  “Do you have any addresses? Relatives, girlfriends, ex-wives? That’s what we need here, Lash, an address.”

  Lash chewed his lips for a while, his beard bunching like a fist. “Intel officer’s who you want. He’s the keeper of the plans. The one with the files, the hard facts.”

  “Chief?”

  Lash looked surprised that Bear had produced a name. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Where’s he lay his head?”

  “No one knows. Not Uncle Pete. Not even the other nomads. And that’s God’s truth. The intel officer runs separate from the pack, never goes to the clubhouse. Keeps his own safe house, even. That’s where all the dirt is.”

  Bear slid his fat money clip back into his pocket and angled toward the door. Tim and Guerrera shadowed his body language.

  Lash half rose out of the chair. “He’s got a deed, Chief, but you won’t get shit from her. Not a damn thing. Don’t even bother. The Cholos one time got ahold of her, kept her for three days. She didn’t squeal. Not a sentence. Den and Kaner caught up to the spics six months later, took care of them. Chief showed up for that party. Yes, sir, Chief loves that cunt something fierce.”

  “You got a name?”