Troubleshooter Read online

  Tim pointed to the other jacket featuring the Sinner flaming skull. “Did Lash get killed, too?”

  “Nah, good ol’ Lash couldn’t behave himself. He had his patch taken back.”

  Tim looked over, catching Bear’s eye. A guy who got kicked out of the club was a guy who might talk.

  “For what?”

  “Nosy fucker, aren’t you?”

  Bear put his feet up on the coffin, and Diamond Dog shoved them off with a boot. “Don’t you got no respect?”

  Bear drew himself to his full height, a head above Diamond Dog. Whelp jogged over, and a moment later Toe-Tag followed, buttoning his pants. Guerrera stood quickly, then Tim, and then eight or ten outlaws pulled behind the other bikers as if magnetically. Annie was in the doorway, cloaking her body with a jacket, breathing hard.

  Bear’s eyes stayed locked on Diamond Dog’s as if the others didn’t exist.

  A knocking of boots on stairs, and then a woman with feathered brown hair and a leather jacket appeared. “Uncle Pete’ll see you now.”

  The bikers’ posture loosened a bit, and Tim, Bear, and Guerrera backed away from the standoff. They followed the woman, her PROPERTY OF UNCLE bottom rocker tilting back and forth as she made her way upstairs. The pinkie on her left hand was missing.

  They threaded their way through dark halls on the second floor. A teenage girl popped into view, startling Tim. Her head was down, her arms tightly crossed above her breasts to hold together a ripped shirt. She flashed past, almost colliding with their nine-fingered escort, mumbling to herself. Her tangled blond hair clung to her moist cheeks, and one eye was swollen.

  The woman in the leather jacket pointed at the double doors through which the crying girl had emerged. “In there.”

  The three men stepped through the door into a large room—the original master suite?—where an enormous figure sat on a bowed kingsize bed. A standard poodle lying at the foot of the mattress bared his teeth silently at them, black skin showing beneath the white hair where it was shaved close. The windows were shuttered; it took a moment for Tim’s vision to adjust.

  Uncle Pete held a spotted rag poised over his flabby arm. He returned to dabbing blood from a meaty biceps, applying himself to the undertaking with the silent contentment of a retired general painting model tanks. Three deep streaks, the kind left by fingernails. A hank of long blond hair lay on the carpet at his feet. The sheets were mussed.

  “Frisky cunt. I like ’em that way.” Uncle Pete folded the rag and reapplied it, his flat eyes never leaving his task. A rubber-banded thatch of beard poked out from his chin like a stiff rope. “You the ones behind all the sudden interest from the heat? We’re catching a lot of static on the streets.”

  “Yup,” Tim said. “That’d be us.”

  Uncle Pete shook his head. “Some mornings, it just ain’t worth chewin’ through the four-point restraints.” He raised his head, and his eyes sharpened. “Get that Mexican outta here.”

  Guerrera’s voice came out a little tighter than usual. “I’m Cuban.”

  “Oh. Well, then …” Pete laughed, his chest rippling beneath the undershirt. “Don’t want no spics of any kind in here. Just born-and-bred Americans.”

  “Okay, Pocahontas.”

  Uncle Pete stared at Tim, figuring him for the front man. “Get that spic out of here or no conversation.”

  Guerrera started for the biker, sharply, but Tim stepped in front of him, cutting off his advance while keeping his eyes on Pete. Guerrera stayed pressed against Tim’s back but didn’t move to brush past him.

  Pete seemed invigorated by Guerrera’s reaction. “Get the spic out of my clubhouse.”

  “You want him out, you get him out,” Tim said. Bear ostentatiously took up position beside Guerrera.

  Uncle Pete squinted through the dim light, no doubt debating an escalation, but then he smiled. “I recognize you. Vigilante guy, right? You’re the one who croaked all those motherfuckers back when. You need a nickname.”

  “Use my real name, thanks.”

  “Sorry, pal, everyone gets a nickname.” Uncle Pete rolled his head back on his neck, appraising Tim. The rag disappeared in the swirled sheets, Pete’s thick hand in the pouf of hair at the dog’s hindquarters. “I’m gonna call you Troubleshooter.”

  “Original,” Bear said. “You might want to take out a trademark.”

  “Right. I thought I heard it somewhere. Fox News, maybe.”

  “You know why we’re here?” Tim asked.

  “Does a crack baby shake?”

  “Den’s your go-to guy, your hard charger. He and Kaner don’t get sprung without word from the top.”

  “Den don’t take no orders. And there is no top. Us Sinners, we’re grass-roots all the way.”

  “What do you need him out for?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “What am I gonna say?”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re a bright guy, Uncle Pete. What am I gonna say?”

  The furrow between Pete’s eyebrows disappeared. He didn’t smile, but his expression held amusement, almost delight. “You’ll get a warrant and you’ll make my life hell.”

  “Right. So.”

  Uncle Pete lifted his obese frame from the mattress; even Bear looked narrow by comparison. Pete rooted in a drawer, pulled out a digital recorder, and set it on top of the bureau beside a Z-shaped piece of metal. The bed groaned under his weight when he settled back onto it. He lit up a cigarette, inhaled with obvious satisfaction, and beckoned for the next question.

  “Where are they?”

  “I have no idea. That’s why they’re nomads, ya see. No-mads. Look it up.”

  “How about Goat, Tom-Tom, and Chief? We want to chat with them, too. Know where they are?”

  “Sure. Follow the asphalt to the PCH turn by Point Dume. The twenty-foot skid mark? That’s Goat’s face.” Pete’s booming laugh ended in a coughing fit. “You’re welcome to see if it’ll talk back.” He tugged at his protuberance of a beard, his smile fading. “You citizens don’t got no sense of humor. That’s what I hate about you. You and the whole citizens’ world. I am so far lost from what this fuckin’ nation represents. I read the papers, watch the TV. It disgusts me. It don’t reflect me. So I say, fuck it. I won’t reflect it.” He was winding up, a man used to being listened to. “This country’s all about what you can’t do. Can’t speed, can’t buy a whore, can’t smoke a joint. We can’t even ride our hogs without helmets now. We got a funeral tomorrow for Nigger Steve—we can’t see him off like warriors.”

  “Warriors don’t wear helmets?”

  “Not our brand.”

  “Most real warriors understand that their head’s worth more than their hairdo.”

  “Think of it as a show of respect for the fallen.”

  “We’ve got a couple of funerals of our own tomorrow.” Tim bobbed his head, wearing an appropriately thoughtful expression. “I’ll tell you what—I’ll let you guys do your funeral run without helmets.”

  “I want it in writing. I don’t want a boatload of bullshit when we pull out of here.”

  “I’ll get you a municipal permission.”

  Bear shot Tim an unveiled look of angry incredulity.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll believe it when I see it.” Uncle Pete studied Tim, then Bear’s quite genuine reaction, and the distrust faded gradually from his face. “Maybe you got some class after all, Trouble. We’re not bad guys. We’re just tired of all the bullshit. We never get anything but the rules—nothin’ like a little raping and pillaging to stir things up.”

  Still burned by Tim’s concession, Bear said, “Like the hitchhiker you gang-raped through August? And September? And October?”

  “Shit fool, that ain’t gang rape. That’s training. The boys downstairs are havin’ a group splash with Wristwatch Annie. You don’t hear her complaining.”

  “That’s because her mouth’s full,” Tim said.

  Uncle Pete laughed. “See, there it
is. A little humor never hurt no one. Plus, if we gang-raped that broad, where’s the charges? Well? Shit, we did her a favor. Opened her up some. Know what I think? I think you citizens are jealous. Drivin’ around in your cages, you never get the gurgle in your groin, the wind off your face. And you cops? Shit, you get paid to watch us have fun. I got my slags here all day long. And when I get home, I still knock a few out with my main deed.”

  “Christ,” Bear said. “Don’t you have a TV?”

  Uncle Pete cocked his head, deciding whether to laugh. “We have our own world, we make our own rules, and we live and die by them. Just like you. Except you live and die by other people’s rules.”

  “And your rules involve pissing on each other’s jackets and collecting wing patches for going down on dead women,” Bear said. “Where do I sign up?”

  “Yeah, we do that shit now and then, just to freak the citizens. P fuckin’ R. Don’t underestimate the power of intimidation.” Pete ruffled the poodle’s topknot. “But we stopped making pledges get fucked by Hound Dog here, though.”

  “Well, that’s an institutional advance,” Tim said.

  “We make the pledges do useful shit now.”

  Tim thought of Guerrera’s claim that Sinners had to kill someone to join the club and wondered if that was the “useful shit” Uncle Pete was referring to.

  “The name of the game now is class. I got a house on the hill. I only bike on runs and funerals anymore. Got me a blue onyx pearl Lexus coupe with cruise control, Paris rims, ivory interior—hell, it’s even got a sat-nav system. Thing practically drives for me. We don’t hang up in the small time. Fuck the white-power shit. We’re color-blind. All we see is green.” He offered Guerrera an accommodating grin. “That’s how we cut in on the other outlaw gangs. We’re younger and meaner. We don’t believe in shit but the backs of our jackets and cold, hard cash.”

  “That how you cut in on the Cholos?”

  “The Cholos, shit, they’re not a blip on our radar. Those motherfuckers are all show and no go.”

  “Chooch Millan, too? I heard he’s no show and no go now.”

  The poodle came up on all fours, and Uncle Pete scratched his belly until he hunched and phantom-scratched with a hind leg. “We’re done now. You want more, you go get that warrant and I call my lawyer and we do the dance.”

  Tim walked over and turned off the digital recorder on the bureau. He picked up the Z-shaped piece of metal and approached Uncle Pete. Bear and Guerrera looked tense, unsure. The poodle bared its teeth at Tim, but—standard or not—it was still a poodle.

  “We both know that the weapon used on the prison break and to kill Chooch Millan was an AR-15. We both know that this”—Tim flipped the piece of metal and caught it—“is an illegal drop-in autosear that converts the gun to full auto. We also know that our lab can’t link this sear to those bullets. Probably wasn’t even this sear that was used. But we could haul you in, give you major static, as you say.” Tim leaned closer. “You spew your own brand of propaganda, but to us you’re an ordinary murderer. I’m not interested in a two-bits weapon charge. I want your ass.”

  He pressed the autosear into Uncle Pete’s fleshy chest and let it fall into his lap.

  Uncle Pete returned Tim’s glare, but then a smile crept across his wide face, making his rope beard bob. He started clapping. “Good stuff, Trouble. I like your delivery.”

  Tim headed out, with Guerrera after and Bear bringing up the rear. Uncle Pete called after them, “I’m gonna hold you to that nohelmet deal for the funeral ride. I got your word?”

  “You have my word.”

  “All right, Trouble. Get it to my lawyer by the A.M. We’re riding at noon.”

  The woman awaited them in the hall and led them downstairs. Tim peeled off at the front door despite her protests. A few of the bikers muscled up to him, but he ignored them, finding the girl with the swollen eye on the couch. A tattoo on her skinny arm read SINNER PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. She, too, had four fingers on the left hand, the knuckle wound still bearing stitches.

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “You all right?”

  “I’m fine, Heat. Get the fuck out of my face.”

  “Okay.” Tim rose from his crouch. “Best of luck with your budding romance.”

  He joined Bear and Guerrera at the door, and they stepped out, blinking into the light.

  6

  Dray was stretched out on the couch when Tim finally got home, her special-order sheriff ’s-deputy pants unbuttoned around the eight-months heft in her belly. She looked up when he came in through the kitchen, and her cheeks were wet. He dumped his files on the table and stepped over the couch back, sitting high so he could cradle her.

  “Goddamnit, I liked Frankie. How’s Janice holding up?”

  “Jim said not good.”

  “These are the risks we take.” She was trying to firm up her face, play it tough as she’d learned from four older brothers and eight years as the sole female sheriff ’s deputy at the Moorpark Station, but her lips kept trembling, and her voice, when she spoke again, came out hoarse. “I want to blame him. I want to know Frankie made a mistake. That he did the wrong thing. That it’s not that easy for our chips to get cashed in. I keep picturing Janice getting that phone call….”

  She rested her head on his thigh, and he stroked her hair for a few minutes. Melissa Yueh, KCOM’s ever-animated star anchor, proceeded with muted vigor, images and rolling tickers providing largely inaccurate tidbits about the prison break. As usual, Tim and Dray had spoken a few times throughout the day, so she knew the real version.

  Dray thumbed down her zipper with a groan and slid a hand over the bulge, Al Bundy style. Her muscular frame accommodated the baby well. She carried the weight mostly in her midsection, though in the past month her toned arms and legs had swollen and softened, which Tim remembered from the last go-around and adored. Dray hated it.

  “You ate?” he asked.

  “In excess. You?”

  “Not since breakfast.”

  He noticed her scowling and followed her gaze to the TV. Dana Lake, a component of that bizarre Los Angeles order of substars—the celebrity attorneys—sat in a swivel chair, fielding questions from Yueh about her two escaped clients. Dana was in the press constantly, representing everyone from the Westwood Rapist to an al-Jihad shoe bomber taken down at LAX. With her porcelain skin, precise features, and rich chestnut hair, she was stunning. She should have been beautiful, too, but she lost something in the summing of her parts. Despite her overwhelmingly apparent femininity, something about her was off-putting. Too hard a jawline, perhaps, or too severe a set to her mouth. Her face was like a beautiful mask, hardened from shaping itself pleasingly against its will. She rested her forearms on the news desk, squaring her shoulders and showing off the lines of her impeccably tailored suit.

  “I hate this broad,” Dray said. “She’s been making the rounds all night. Larry King introduced her as ‘the flashy female lawyer who never wears the same suit twice.’ As if that’s something admirable. Besides, what does she do with the suits when she’s done? Is there some exchange program for anorexics?”

  “She donates them to the needy.”

  Dray snickered, still wiping her cheeks. “Yeah. I’m sure the homeless are using her DKNY silk to stave off the holiday chill.” She glanced at the field files piled up on the kitchen table, then thumbed Tim’s Marshals star dangling from the leather tag at his belt. “Of course, now they want you back on the Warrant Squad.”

  “I’m the Troubleshooter.”

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot.” She shoved her short blond hair up off her flushed face and fanned her olive deputy shirt. “I’m hot all day. I sweat like a pig in the vest. I feel like I’m melting. Except when I’m cold. Then I’m freezing.”

  “Maybe you should start your leave now.”

  “And miss all the fun of rousting biker assholes? Me and Mac pulled over three today. Yeah, wipe that surp
rised expression off your face. While we can’t all stroll into the lion’s den like a certain big shot, we’re doing our part, even out here in bumfuck Moorpark. Captain said the database is coming along nicely?”

  “That it is.” He slid down next to her. She raised her boot, and he tugged it off and rubbed her foot. She groaned with delight, arched her back like a cat. “My visit with Uncle Pete actually gave me some good ideas,” he said. “I decided I want you to start wearing a property jacket. And I want a tattoo. Right … here. ‘Property of Tim Rackley.’ ”

  “Then you’ll let me sled with you?”

  “Then I’ll let you sled with me.”

  “Bring on the ink, Big Daddy.” His Nextel chirped—radio freq this time—and Dray laughed. “Here we go. Don’t mind me. I’ll just be here on the couch, sweaty and knocked up.”

  Tim flipped the phone open, heading back to the kitchen, and keyed “talk.”

  “Rack, it’s Freed.”

  “How’d it go with the Cholos?”

  “How’s, ‘Chíngate, pinche cabrón’ sound? I’m not really sure how to interpret that.”

  “Well, we figured, right?”

  “I couldn’t even get in to see El Viejo—they keep the boss man pretty well shielded. I sat a local unit on the clubhouse. We can’t do much more than that. The Cholos buzz out of there like gnats. If the Sinners want to pick ’em off, they’ll find a way.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “After this day? I’m gonna head home and see my kid.”

  “Don’t blame you.”

  Tim clicked off and dialed the command post.

  Haines said, “I told you already, we’ll call if anything breaks.”

  “Anything. My phone is on.”

  “So you mentioned.”

  Tim pored over the files as Dray focused on the TV, making occasional wordless exclamations—disgust, contempt, derision. The only thing Dray liked more than watching the news was reviling it.

  He spread out the photos, marveling at Goat’s face, Kaner’s breadth, Den’s dark, baleful eyes. He scanned over the crime-scene report, feeling the cold weight of the scientific phrasing. His eyes stuck on the name of his friend.