Troubleshooter Read online

  Behind the vanguard of Sinner officers’ bikes, a flatbed funeral trailer hitched to a Harley Road King interrupted the two-by-two configuration. Every inch of the exposed glossy coffin bore club imagery— licks of fire, clusters of skulls, Nigger Steve’s likeness astride a dragon. Vans bookended the bikes, war wagons piloted by deeds and holding ordnance in case of attack. Another defensive weapon, Dana Lake, was suited up on the back of Diamond Dog’s bike, looking for once out of place, about as hip as Dukakis in the tank.

  Uncle Pete raised both hands over his head and jabbed the tip of the bowie blade into his thumb. He extended his arm, working the thumb below the cut. A bead of blood formed, then dropped.

  “May this be the only Sinner blood spilled on asphalt this year!” Uncle Pete roared.

  The bikers exploded into whoops and applause. Pete saddled up, hammering his heel down on the kick start. The column of motorcycles moved as one, filling the air with the grease-spatter thunder of engines venting.

  Motorcycles flowed down from the San Gabriels’ summit as if poured from the horizon. The Cholos rode erect, knights at attention, floating like a mirage over Palmdale tarmac. They traveled slow, the heavy bikes purring calmly beneath them. A coffin was linked sidecar style between two bikes, a cross spray-painted above the name—CHOOCH MILLAN. El Viejo led the pack, his worn-leather face braving the wind, the feathers of his headdress rippling. Carefully cultivated legend had it that he was half Navajo, half Mexican, descended from the Aztecs. Most of the Cholos wore helmets, but a few, like El Viejo, refused, flouting the law to enhance funereal dignity.

  Cholo war wagons held lead and rear positions, keeping a respectful distance from the bikes. The convoy turned onto a two-lane highway, following the predetermined route to the Catholic graveyard.

  A bagpiper led the procession through Forest Lawn to the first dug grave, the inner circle shuffling along, press and spectators keeping their distance. Palton’s girlfriend showed up and lingered red-faced in the back until Jim went over and unceremoniously suggested she grieve elsewhere. Four helicopters did a flyover, one peeling off in missing-man formation just above the neatly dug rectangle. As a bugler played taps, the honor guard stood at attention, white parade ascots dotting their open collars. After they performed the flag fold, Marshal Tannino stepped in, awarding the firm triangle of nylon to a stoically postured Janice Palton. One of the Palton girls collapsed, and every deputy in the vicinity, glad for an opportunity to be useful, surged toward her.

  The nonuniformed onlookers dispersed, catharsis complete. The cops and deputies remained, trying for impassivity though a few trickles glittered on motionless cheeks. After the brass’s obligatory remarks about sacrifice and unwavering resolve, Jim took the podium. He still hadn’t recovered hearing in his right ear; he spoke with his head inadvertently tilted.

  “I never understood what ‘human resources’ meant. I thought it was more of that corporatespeak I hate. ‘Human resources.’ I mean, what the hell?”

  Some nervous shifting in the crowd.

  “But now I think I get it. You know how long it takes to make a deputy of Frankie’s caliber? An all-state fullback in high school. A B.A. in criminal justice from City. He went through the academy first, you know, before FLETC. Two years as a patrolman, two more as a D-1. Then the Service. SWAT school. Surveillance school. Gang training. Six-month stint with DEA.”

  Janice was crying for the first time.

  “You think that matters to some prick biker with an AR-15?”

  The front rows bristled. Miller started toward the podium but caught himself.

  “I been thinking a lot lately about how easy it is to destroy. To ruin. It took us how many years to learn to fly? Building airplanes, I mean. And the Towers. The engineering and architecture that went into them. The materials. Scaffolding. Man-hours. A whole civilization building on itself, decade after decade, and what?” Jim’s cheeks glistened, but his voice stayed steady, gathering rage. Miller was at his elbow now, contemplating a tactful break-in. “A bunch of jackasses with box cutters can take down the whole enterprise. That’s the thing with it. It’s so goddamned easy. And what do we do? We make pledges. Like we did today. Law and order. Righteousness. Justice.” A noise of disgust escaped between his teeth. “Even if we do nail the guys who killed Frankie …” He caught himself, nodded at Tannino’s wife. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Miller slipped an arm around Jim’s shoulders and, smiling at the crowd, directed him away. Jim leaned back toward the mike. “We won’t replace you, Frankie. We can’t.”

  The crowd took a moment to resettle. Janice caught Jim stepping off the dais and hugged him, crying into his shoulder. As the coffin began its descent into the grave, a seven-man detail fired a rifle salute, three volleys that rolled back off the foothills.

  Tannino rang the brass bell, sending Frank Palton off duty for the last time.

  You got ’em yet?” Guerrera’s voice crackled through the Nextel. Tim pressed his binoculars to the tinted glass and refocused at the top of the opposing hill. Beside him in the Chevy cargo van, Roger Frisk and another Electronic Surveillance Unit inspector resumed their discussion about virtual dragon building. “Nope. Nothing.”

  Tim, Bear, and Guerrera were positioned around the cemetery, each with a pair of ESU geeks. It would have been too obvious if they’d tailed the biker procession from the clubhouse. The Sinners’ highly secretive route, designed to throw off both law enforcement and revenge-seeking rivals, had most likely been charted out yesterday. Rather than burning resources playing clairvoyant, Tim had decided to pitch camp at the finish line.

  The ground vibrated, ever so slightly, and the ESU inspectors finally shut up and grabbed their long-range lenses. The sound rose to a rumble, then a roar, as a landslide of metal overtook the road.

  Tim had to raise his voice, even at this distance, to be heard. “Cue the locals. Remember, they’ve got to sell it.”

  A sheriff’s car pulled forward, blocking the street to halt the procession, and the two brave souls emerged. Already Dana Lake was off the bike, unfolding the municipal permission. The notion of her accompanying the mourners to protect their right to bare heads—all the while earning her hourly—brought a grin to Tim’s lips.

  An animated discussion ensued, the lead deputy glancing from the paper to the bikers, who looked on with menacing impatience. Tim hoped that Guerrera’s team, holed up in the warehouse beside them, was getting all the shots they needed; capturing the Sinners in formation without helmets would provide a wealth of information on the club’s pecking order.

  Tim keyed the radio. “Who’s the guy front right, next to Uncle Pete?”

  Guerrera’s whispered voice: “We’ll match face to name later, but that’s the road-captain position.”

  “What, in case Uncle Pete gets lost?”

  “You guessed it. He’s got a notoriously bad sense of direction. He once steered an entire run one state wide of the mark, went to the Black Hills by way of Montana.”

  Bear chimed in on the primary channel, “Never said you needed brains for the gig.”

  “No,” Tim said. “But he’s got ’em.”

  Finally the sheriff ’s deputy held up his hands in concession, and he and his partner climbed back into their car and took off. The Sinners continued down the hill and slant-parked, one after another. Within seconds both sides of the road below were filled.

  “Okay,” Tim said. “This is our best shot to capture their faces. Get as many close-ups as you can. Focus on mother chapter members and deeds. With the women make sure you get their property jackets, too.”

  As several Sinners hoisted the coffin and marched it into the grassy flats, the van filled with the click of high-tech cameras and the hum of auto-adjusting lenses. No cemetery workers were on hand; no one threw dirt on a Sinner but a Sinner.

  Toe-Tag, Whelp, and Diamond Dog stayed together, keeping close proximity to Uncle Pete, who seemed to be relishing his master-of-ceremonies role. A ski
nny biker with an eye patch hung at Pete’s side, his posture indicating more-than-usual obeisance. Rather than originals, he wore an armband, Third Reich style, exhibiting the Sinners logo. A stone glinted on his pinkie ring. A woman with a masculine build stayed on his arm, seeming to negotiate his brief introductions to satellite-chapter members.

  Tim clicked on again: “What’s with Himmler at your nine o’clock?”

  “The armband shows he’s a striker,” Guerrera said. “Means he’s graduated from being a prospect, but he’s not an official Sinner yet.”

  Bear’s voice: “How’d he graduate?”

  “He rolled bones.”

  “You gotta kill someone?”

  “From their preselected list of club enemies. Proves you’re not a cop.”

  “Yeah,” Bear said. “That’d pretty much do it.”

  Tim caught a glimpse of an attractive brunette swaggering through the crowd. A few of the Sinners cleared out of her way, their deference drawing Tim’s attention. Trying to keep her in sight, he came up off the stool until his head pressed against the roof of the van. Her bottom rocker—property of den—flashed into view before she disappeared behind a stand of trees.

  He keyed the radio. “Bear. You spot Den’s deed? Far side of the trees?”

  “We have a worse angle than you. How ’bout you, Guerrera?”

  “We lost our view to a moving van.”

  Tim grabbed a camera and slid out of the vehicle, easing the door closed. He jogged in a crouch a few feet along the wrought-iron fence and fell to a flat-bellied sniper’s position. The brunette stepped back into the scope of his lens and he fired off a series of shots. The whir of his advancing film seemed to echo back at him. He pivoted with the camera, tracking the sound.

  A short biker sat on an Indian about twenty yards upslope, a camera raised to his helmet. For a frozen instant, he and Tim regarded each other through their lenses. The biker flipped down his wind visor and took off up a cross street. Tim was on his feet, sprinting for the van, the information coalescing—Chief, the Sinners’ intel officer, taking pictures of Tim taking pictures.

  Tim leapt into the driver’s seat and peeled away from the curb, the ESU guys going ass-up in the back. Barking for backup into the radio, he careened around the turn in time to see the bike cut down another street ahead. By the time the cul-de-sac flew into view, Chief was heading back directly at them, a game of chicken he was sure to lose. About twenty yards from a collision, he turned sharply, motoring up a walkway toward a house. He hopped the three steps onto the wide porch, a fusion of man and machine, and screeched left, leaving a wake of fire. The bike took flight off the porch and landed in a flower bed, throwing off a shower of dirt and petals. Chief reared up, his front wheel smashing down a rickety gate, and disappeared into the backyard.

  Tim skidded to a halt, Frisk rolling to strike the cushioned front seats, and reversed hard. He raced around the block in time to see the bike drop down a sloped median—a ten-foot fall ending in concrete— and race off, heading the wrong way, cars and trucks honking and veering as Chief split the road down the middle.

  A glance in the other direction showed Bear’s van and Guerrera’s G-ride boxed in by a cluster of strategically repositioned Harleys.

  Suffused with frustration and no small measure of admiration, Tim had no choice but to turn and watch Chief disappear.

  The Cholos rolled along, a river of flying colors. Aside from the war wagon twenty yards ahead, El Viejo led alone—no road captain to detract from his eminence. His face and bearing were classics, torn from pulp-western covers and second-rate cowboy etchings that tour-group participants hung in bathrooms. The narrow highway stretched flat and unforgiving through Antelope Valley, where the high Mojave grudgingly gives way to dusty civilization. The occasional car flashed by on the sole opposite lane, an anxious pale face or two pressed to a window.

  The ride was windless and serene. Just the purr of the bikes, the flutter of synthetic rubber over blacktop, the whistle of air through helmets.

  The front and rear war wagons exploded simultaneously, lifting off the ground and sending out a burst of heat and orange flame.

  The Cholos went down in waves, only those in the middle of the convoy managing to stay upright. The trapped bikers wheeled and revved, wild horses corralled.

  Two Harleys peeled out from behind an embankment shoring up a hillside ahead, Den and Kaner in the driver positions. Goat and TomTom rode sidesaddle behind them, AR-15s at low-ready. They shot through the orb of fire engulfing the front war wagon, racing along the side of the convoy, AR-15s blazing. The Cholos absorbed the fusillade in tangles of metal and flesh, engines revving, tires biting through cloth and skin.

  The Sinners screeched to a halt at the end of the run, guns smoking. The procession had been decimated. A few weak groans and coughs. Limbs rustling among the bodies and machinery. The smell of burned flesh.

  The four Sinners dismounted, pulling handguns from their waistbands. They walked calmly among the fallen, kids at a tidal pool, shooting the wounded in the head.

  In the front El Viejo lay broken-limbed ten yards from his steaming bike, an ideal chalk-outline model. His headdress lay behind him, ablaze. The heat from the fiery van had baked his rich bronze skin auburn. His cheek was stuck to the asphalt.

  Den strolled over and stared down at him, blotting out the midday sun. “Look at me.”

  With great effort El Viejo pulled his cheek free of the road. He met Den’s eyes defiantly, his wrinkled face hardened into a grimace.

  A single report.

  Goat pulled a bike over, and Den slung himself onto the back. As they took off after Kaner and Tom-Tom, the heat ate deeper into the war wagons, setting off a crackling of ammo.

  10

  Tim crouched among the bodies, some charred from the bonfire blazes, taking in the quarter-mile death scene. The smoldering shells of the war wagons remained, exhaling black smoke. An upended bike framed his view, its tire spinning lazily like a pinwheel in a faint breeze. Tim closed his eyes, trying to drown out the pervasive buzz of black flies, and images pressed in on him with the smell—Blackhawks circling, desert sand swirling, dossiers smudged with camo-face-paint thumb marks. His combat memories underscored what he’d already gathered: This wasn’t macho bikers squaring off over wayward glances at club mamas but a tactical hit, expertly planned and executed.

  A sheriff ’s deputy chuckled and pointed to the quarter-size holes that the cooked ammo had punched in the war wagon’s metal. “Looks like they got their twenty-one-gun salute.”

  Tim said, “This is funny to you?”

  “They cut irony outta the federal budget, too?” The guy casually went back to scribbling in the crime-scene attendance log.

  Tim rose and walked over to a cluster of criminalists by the CSI van. Before the hit TV show, they’d called the division Crime Lab, but a number-one ratings winner can be a strong impetus for change. Guerrera stood a few feet off from the group, finger in his ear, phone pressed to his head. He gave Tim a quick nod.

  Aaronson was squinting at a slug he held up before his face on tweezers. He was a slight man, prone to wearing crisply ironed, tissue-thin button-ups that showed off the lines of his undershirt. His crime-scene reports were filled out in a hand that looked like typewriting. “Explosives look to match?” Tim asked.

  “Those used on the transport convoy? Oh, yeah.”

  “AR-15s again?”

  “Yup. They don’t call ’em street sweepers for nothing.” Bear jogged over, high-stepping through the wreckage, and beckoned Tim and Guerrera. By the time they reached him, he was holding a handkerchief against his mouth and nose.

  “So get this. I found out where Uncle Pete was after the funeral.” Bear undercut his dramatic pause with a sneeze. “In church. He and the whole chapter rolled into First Baptist, scared the hell out of all the blue-hairs. Not the pastor, though. He thought he made the score of a lifetime.”

  “The times line up?” Tim as
ked.

  “Perfectly. Before that the entire mother chapter was mourning peacefully under our surveillance. No way they had time in between to get out here. It was a nomad job, all right.”

  “They got solid intel for this. They knew the route, which vehicles to rig.”

  “Maybe they had someone on the inside.”

  “With this rivalry? Doubt it.”

  “They could’ve put the squeeze on one of the Cholos.”

  “Can’t interrogate them now.” Tim surveyed the steaming landscape, the wooden box of the coffin resting untarnished amid the destruction. A mournful club mama sitting out the ride with a broken leg had turned over the restricted Cholo mother chapter’s roster; a preliminary check matched a body to every name.

  “That’s why they shot Chooch Millan,” Guerrera said suddenly. He looked at them expectantly, then seemed to realize they were waiting for him to connect the dots. “What’s the only thing that gets a whole club together in one place?”

  Tim bobbed his head—of course. “A funeral ride.”

  “Right. Shoot someone in the rank and file, within a few days you’ll have the entire club assembled right before your sights.”

  Bear surveyed the scene with watering eyes. “Hell of a revenge for Nigger Steve.”

  “This isn’t revenge,” Tim said. “This is extermination.” He took in the baked tableau. “They’re paving the way to something bigger.”

  Bear made a muffled noise in his throat, and Tim started back to his car. Before driving off, he sat for a few minutes, staring at the wheel. He headed toward downtown in silence, stopping off at Forest Lawn.

  His phone chirped as he climbed out of the car.

  “Hey, babe. Jesus, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  He heard Mac shout something in the background, and then Dray said, “Shoot, I have to peel out. You think you’ll be home?”

  He chuckled.

  “Right. Okay, the captain needs someone to pick up a few overtime parole hours—this case is stretching us thin on man-hours, too. I’ll take ’em if it’ll be a late one for you.”