The Breaker

by Nick Petrie

  Peter saw his withered legs and realized that the metalworker was partially paralyzed. The work platform was actually a homemade hydraulic wheelchair. The man had turned a physical challenge into an asset.

  “Pretty cool rig.” Peter smiled. “Are you Kiko Tomczak?”

  “Yeah, that’s me.” Kiko’s craggy face looked like a relief map of some harsh, bony desert, lines carved deep by wind and time, eyes disturbingly clear behind steel-framed glasses. “What do you need?”

  Peter put out his hand to shake. “I’m Peter, this is Lewis. We got your name from The Fix, the bike shop on Humboldt.”

  Peter had big hands, but Tomczak’s were meatier, like T-bones cut from an escaped longhorn that had been struck by a train. He was even bigger from the front. A heavy suede welder’s jacket covered his arms and chest and lap to protect him from flying sparks, and suede chaps protected his thin legs. His steel-toed boots had leather flaps over the laces so they wouldn’t burn.

  He reached behind his back to unfasten the jacket, then pulled it from his arms. He was shirtless and sweating, with a Milwaukee Fire Department logo tattooed on one massive bicep and a clock without hands on the other, the second tattoo done in the Bic blue of a jailhouse artist. His grizzled hair stuck up in random clumps.

  He mopped his forehead with a black bandanna, then eyed his visitors in their stained work clothes. “You’re not here for a custom bike frame. What do you want? How the hell did you get in here, anyway?”

  “Someone left the door open,” Peter said.

  Tomczak rolled his eyes. “Artists,” he said. “You’re looking for architectural work, right? Stairs or railings? You won’t find better work for better prices anywhere in town.” He spread his hands to encompass his work space. “I can build anything you need.”

  The shop was the size of a three-car garage. The welding table took up the center of the space, flanked by rolling racks that held rough-cut steel and partially finished components. Shining finished bicycle frames hung from the unpainted Sheetrock like butterflies pinned to a collector’s cabinet. The walls were lined with heavy equipment, including a big drill press, lathe, bandsaw, and hydraulic press, along with a workstation with fine tools for delicate work. Above the door, lengths of raw steel bars and tubes sat stacked across reinforced brackets ten feet in the air. Although how a guy in a wheelchair got those down, Peter had no idea.

  “Actually,” he said, “we’re looking for a particular bicycle that you may have built.” He held out the sketch he’d made at the bike shop. “It’s electric, and totally unique. I saw somebody riding it the other day. Faster than anything I’ve ever seen. I think there’s a real market for something like that.”

  Kiko shook his head. “I don’t build electrics, that’s specialty stuff. I can make anything from a blueprint, I’m real good with structure, but circuits and motors aren’t my thing.”

  “What about your chair?”

  Kiko shook his head. “I swapped work with somebody for the complicated stuff. Hydraulics for custom pressure tanks.”

  “But you do know who owns that bike,” Peter said. “Can you put us in touch?”

  The metalworker reached over his shoulder, pulled the oxyacetylene torch from its place on the back of his chair and rolled the tool idly in one sausage-fingered hand. An old-fashioned spark igniter had somehow appeared in the other. He sucked on his teeth and looked at them over the top of his glasses.

  “I’m supposed to believe, what, you’re some kinda bicycle big shots? Vice presidents from Trek come down from Waterloo, in your torn-up Carhartts and dirty sweatshirts? ’Cause I know for damn sure you ain’t cops.”

  Usually Peter could read people pretty well, but Kiko’s weathered face was locked down tight, probably a survival skill he’d learned in prison. Still, the muscles in his forearms bunched and flexed, an involuntary stress reaction. He knew something. But how to get to it?

  “You’re right,” Peter said. “I’m sorry we lied to you. We don’t build bikes and we’re definitely not cops. Here’s the truth. You heard about the shooting at the Public Market yesterday, right? The place was full of kids. It’s a miracle nobody got killed. Well, the shooter got away on a custom electric bike.” He raised the rough drawing. “This bike right here.”

  Kiko eyeballed Peter, then Lewis. “Why are you here instead of the cops?”

  Peter wasn’t going to get into the video sunglasses or his legal issues. “It’s personal. That shooter could have killed us, too.”

  “You’re the goddamn Samaritans from the paper,” Kiko said. His face tightened and the lines deepened into canyons. He turned the thumbwheel with one hand and sparked the igniter with the other. A foot-long flame leaped out of the head, the torch adjusted for maximum length. Heat came off the orange and blue jet like a furnace blast. One pass across human skin would scorch flesh into black blisters. “Who the hell do you work for?”

  Peter raised a hand and took a step back. “Hold up, hold up. I’m telling the truth. We don’t work for anybody. We were just at the market by dumb luck. But we’ll go to the cops if we have to.”

  Kiko considered them for a moment, then turned the thumbwheel again. The flame vanished. “Listen, I didn’t make any damn electric bike and that’s the God’s truth. I don’t do motors or circuits or any of that. The only bike work I do is frames, and I got customers all over the Midwest. Besides, you think I remember every custom job I do?”

  “This was a slim guy with a big beard and mirror shades,” Peter said. “Wore a red Cardinals jacket and hat, if that helps. Ring any bells?”

  Kiko’s face eased, just slightly. If Peter didn’t know better, he’d say the man looked relieved.

  “Doesn’t sound like anyone I know. Anyway, most of my customers I deal with over the phone.”

  “What about your files,” Lewis said. “Billing records, technical drawings. Maybe we find our shooter that way.”

  Kiko waved the torch at the shop. “I look like an accountant to you? I don’t do paperwork. People pay me cash. They want a receipt, I write one by hand.”

  Lewis raised his eyebrows. “How do you run a business without records?”

  “I’m old-school like that.” Kiko looked at them. “Let me spell this out for you two. Back in the day, Milwaukee was called the Machine Shop of the World. Most of that manufacturing is gone now, but you know how many skilled welders and machinists still live in this town? Not to mention retirees with a shop in their garage, making stuff for the fun of it? A couple thousand, at least. Any one of them could have made something as simple as a bike frame. So good luck finding your guy.”

  Lewis said, “Lemme ask a different question.” He pointed at the big machines against the wall. “You have everything you need to be a gunsmith, too. You ever make a receiver for an automatic rifle? One of those old AK variants?”

  Lewis was thinking of the shooter’s weapon. But Kiko didn’t bite.

  “Dude, I’m a damn felon, okay? I don’t touch guns. I don’t need them.” He stowed the torch on the rack behind his back, then reached into a pouch hung off the side of his chair and pulled out a Y-shaped metal frame. A loop of surgical tubing hung loose from the arms of the Y, with a leather pouch in the middle. He unfolded the brace and settled the thing in his hand.

  It was a shop-made version of a wrist rocket, a high-powered slingshot outlawed in several states and many more cities. Peter had one as a kid. Some Internet fanatic had tested its power against various pistols and found that only the .357 Magnum did more damage at close range.

  Kiko straightened his arm with the slingshot in one hand and pulled back the sling with the other, aiming directly at Lewis’s face. “I can bull’s-eye the O in a stop sign at fifty yards, make a hole you can put your thumb through. I can throw a deer slug a quarter mile and crack a damn cinder block. You do not want to be messing with me, you hear?”

&nbs
p; Peter couldn’t tell whether there was a slug in the sling. Lewis gave no sign that he might be bothered. He just gave Kiko that cool tilted smile. “You gonna keep flexing or you gonna tell us why you so worried about who we might work for?”

  Kiko relaxed the slingshot and returned it to its pouch, then pulled the welder’s jacket onto his big arms and torso. “That’s a different thing,” he said. “I got my own problems. Now get the hell out of here so I can get back to work.”

  He flipped a switch on his chair and it began to elongate, rising to work height.

  “Kiko,” Peter said. “If you know something, talk to us. This shooter is dangerous.”

  Tomczak flipped another switch. The hydraulics hissed as the platform rose higher still. Now he towered over them, arms thick as pythons in the heavy suede welder’s jacket. Peter no longer wondered how he managed to get the heavy steel tubing down off the storage rack overhead.

  “Don’t make me mess you boys up, all right? I don’t want to go back to prison.” He plucked a five-pound sledge off the tool shelf and pointed it like an extension of his hand. “Close the door on your way out.”

  He twisted the volume knob on the Pioneer and an electric guitar blared through the speakers, the opening riff from Tom Petty’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream.” It was loud enough to drown out a shout. Then he pushed the joystick and the metal monster powered forward, crowding them backward out of the shop.

  Lewis looked at Peter, who shook his head and let it happen. They could put Tomczak down, but not without taking some damage from that sledgehammer. And there was nothing to be gained by a fight, at least not now. Peter had met plenty of guys like Kiko, more than enough to understand that, no matter what Kiko knew, he wouldn’t tell them shit.

  In the hallway again, with the door closed behind them, Lewis looked at Peter. “You are truly a master of interrogation.”

  “You’re supposed to be a tough guy,” Peter said. “Why don’t you go back in there and talk some sense into him?”

  “I ain’t gonna hit no dude in a wheelchair. Who the hell you think I am? A man’s got to have a code, motherfucker.”

  “That big hammer didn’t have anything to do with it?”

  “Hell, no. And definitely not the fact that he’s strapped into some crazy machine makes him nine feet tall. That ain’t freaky at all.”

  Peter said, “You saw that, right? How he felt better once I told him what the guy looked like?”

  Lewis nodded. “He knew something, though. Until you told him what the guy looked like, he had somebody in mind. Maybe on both sides of that fight. Remember how he asked who we worked for?”

  “Uh-huh. Then he changed the subject,” Peter said. “Hey, what’s with that question about the AK receiver?”

  “The shooter’s weapon was a cold-war variant, the AKSM with the underfolding stock. Originally designed for Russian paratroopers.” Lewis had a ridiculous collection of firearms, although he was most partial to a 10-gauge shotgun. “Last time I looked, it was easiest to find the Polish and Romanian models. You can buy kits on the Internet for a few hundred bucks, but they don’t come with the receiver.”

  The receiver was the central component of the gun, housing the trigger and firing mechanism that made the weapon function as designed. Because firearms had interchangeable parts, the receiver was the component that the U.S. government restricted, with every purchase monitored by law.

  “The cops will look into everything registered,” Lewis said. “But if our guy has the tooling to make and bend the receiver himself, and the expertise to assemble the gun, he’ll have a fully operable and completely untraceable assault rifle.” He flashed Peter a grin. “But he’d have to be a real gun nut to do that.”

  Peter laughed. Lewis had two big Sportsman Steel safes in his basement. “How many firearms do you own?”

  Lewis looked at him sideways. “That’s a very personal question, motherfucker.” They were walking out the way they’d come in. When they came to the bulletin board, Lewis paused to scan the display and plucked a sheet of paper from its pin. “Tell you what, though. I think I found our next stop.”

  It was a flyer for something called the South Side MakerSpace. A shared workshop with a wide variety of tools available to members, and classes in how to use them. Lewis tapped the page. “Kiko Tomczak, owner of Kiko’s Welding and Custom Frames, returns with his popular course, How to Make Your Own Bicycle Frame in a Weekend.”

  Right below that was a scheduled orientation for the MakerSpace’s Electronics Shop, featuring the basics of motor design, battery power, and electrical diagnostics.

  14

  JUNE

  June’s stomach growled as she scribbled the last of her notes on what she’d learned about Vince Holloway and Pinnacle Technologies, including her non-conversation with Gary the receptionist. It was almost two in the afternoon, and the leftover noodles barely made a dent in her hunger.

  Her head suggested riding to Beans and Barley for a spinach salad, but her heart cried out for a grilled Turkenstein with spicy fries at the Comet. She’d camp out in one of their booths, turn off her phone, and knock out the end of her damn chapter. If she didn’t finish this book soon, it was going to kill her.

  She threw her new laptop in her new bag, pulled on her raincoat, and wheeled her bike out the side door into the softly falling rain, pausing to double-check the knob to make sure it had locked behind her. She put her weight on the pedal and pushed off to get the bike rolling, then swung her leg over the seat and began to ride. A smile came to her face as it almost always did at this moment. The daily miracle of the bicycle.

  At the end of the block, a big white van came around the corner. The street was narrow with cars parked on both sides, so she hopped up to the sidewalk until the van passed, then bumped down the curb again and turned into the city.

  Riverwest was a funky old neighborhood of modest houses, duplexes, and small apartment buildings. It had a nice mix of people, working-class folks and students, creative hipsters and retired people, black and white and every shade of brown. Milwaukee was a more interesting city than she’d expected, with a buzzing art and music and film scene. Although with Peter’s face on a wanted poster, they didn’t go out as much as she’d like.

  The rain on her face reminded her of Seattle, where she’d lived when they met. Biking in the rain made her feel strong and capable and virtuous. She was a firm believer that there was no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear, and June was all about good gear. The real problem with wet days was the damn drivers, who sat all cozy inside their heated bubbles with their wipers on and seemed to forget cyclists even existed. At least Humboldt Boulevard had a bike lane.

  Midafternoon traffic was light enough that she wasn’t worried. She only had to slam on the brakes once, when another van passed her with the passenger-side tires riding the white line of the bike lane, the driver looking at his phone, oblivious to her and everyone else. This was why she didn’t clip into her pedals in the city.

  Still, her legs felt good, and the thought of a Turkenstein and fries made her ride harder. She saw the unwritten end of her chapter laid out like a schematic in her mind. The line of parked cars scrolled past on her right. She was going twenty-one miles an hour.

  Directly in front of her, a car door flew open. Without thinking, she leaned left and hit the brakes with both hands. But she was too late.

  Her front wheel hit the lower edge of the door, which flexed back slightly on its hinge but not enough to make a difference. She had strong arms and a good grip on the brakes, so when her momentum threw her weight forward, the back tire rose off the ground.

  She had just enough time to hunch her right shoulder and tuck her head to take the hit on her helmet so the window frame didn’t break her face. She bounced off the metal and rolled sideways with the bike turning beneath her until her legs got tangled and she fell onto her but
t on the wet asphalt.

  A man climbed out of the big white van that had doored her. “Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.” He smiled at her. “I bet that hurts, huh?”

  Did she hurt? She didn’t know yet. Mostly she was embarrassed. She scrambled up and pulled her bike out of traffic. The impact had turned her front wheel nearly parallel to the handlebars, which explained the sideways roll. She gave the wheel a spin and it turned just fine. She was lucky the stem hadn’t been fully torqued down. Otherwise the rim would be bent and unrideable.

  Standing in the bike lane, she took a quick inventory of her body. Nothing broken, no serious blood. Her neck turned without pain. She’d find the scrapes and bruises when she undressed for the shower. Her left butt cheek would be six shades of purple in the morning. She didn’t think her backpack had hit the ground, so her new laptop should be fine.

  Cars drove past as if nothing had happened. It could have been worse, she told herself. She could have missed the door and veered into traffic. Three tons of implacable steel would have made a much bigger impact. She’d gotten off easy.

  The man said, “Good thing you wear a helmet, huh?”

  She glared at the idiot. “Did you even think to look before you opened that door?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I did look.” His voice was earnest. He walked toward her. “But I didn’t see anything. You must have been going pretty fast. Sorry if you got hurt.”

  But he didn’t seem particularly sorry. He still wore that cheerful smile on a fleshy face over a big round body made rounder by the starched white dress shirt untucked over unfashionable jeans. The raindrops on his shirt were translucent dots that showed the pale, hairy skin beneath. June wanted to get out of there.

  Instead she pulled out her phone and took a quick video of her bike. Aside from the misaligned wheel, a torn grip, and a few scrapes, the old girl didn’t look too bad. She wasn’t some fancy carbon-fiber hothouse flower, she was a sturdy steel workhorse that wasn’t taking any shit from some asshole passenger van. She was still rideable.