by Brian Ewing
Andrick, knowing he would never get locked into any sort of organization or club where he had to abide by anybody, deflected. “Which chapters are available? I have been thinking about relocating for years now.”
“We have chapters everywhere but right now we do have an opening in Lincoln City, Maryville, and…actually, we have an opening in a town not too far from our stop in Mustain. An hour South in Saratoga City.”
Andrick pretended to take deep consideration for a moment. A group of prospects approached from the parking lot with a half dozen cardboard carafes of coffee along with boxes and boxes of donuts and breakfast sandwiches. They started setting everything on the brick planters that the row of metal tables had been lined up along. Then a sleeve of disposable cups got tore open and paper plates started getting handed to the table of gentlemen, Andrick included.
A young prospect, barely a scratch of chin hair to him, handed Andrick a steaming hot cup of coffee with what looked to be a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel. Andrick nodded at the young man his gratitude, then drew his attention back at the eager Mason.
“I am not opposed to it, Mason. I just don’t know what the future will hold.”
“The future can be very lucrative and very supportive if you let it,” Mason replied, opting to drop his previous ingenuine happiness.
Andrick knew that it would be a huge benefit for Mason to add numbers to his club, as Mason was not part of any weekend warrior group, but a club quietly recognized for making a good profit doing a ton of bad things. Andrick somehow proved himself to Mason one night when they were all out. A drunk barfly started shit with one of the member’s ladies in 3S. Andrick would have slipped out of the spotlight and into the shadows but the woman shoved the barfly right into Andrick’s back. Ego hurt, the drunk man wanted to save face and shoved Andrick.
Unfortunately for that man, Andrick was having withdrawals from his drug of choice, causing an immediate reflex from Andrick to dodge a pathetic punch and counter with a direct hit to the man’s nose. The small outlet he was given was overcome with greed. Andrick took the man that was no longer a threat and smashed his head against the bar for good measure. Mason loved the act and bought Andrick beers for the rest of that night. Upon consideration, he told Mason he would be willing to meet with the chapter from Saratoga City if they planned on meeting up on the tour.
“I was hoping you would be open to it. That sounds like a plan. You will love my guys there. Púca is in charge there. Great guy.”
“Pooka?” Andrick inquired
“Yeah, Púca, Irish for Ghost.”
Andrick dove into the flash of memory to the backyard of that rented one story behind Rucker’s when Brady had asked, “Do you believe in ghosts?”
I may not believe in ghosts, but I do believe in destiny.
Maybe Ghost, or Púca, was a sign for Andrick to steer clear. Vice versa, it may be just the thing Andrick needed to occupy his time for a bit after the event concluded.
“What kind of name is Andrick?” Mole piped up, the condescending tone in all.
Andrick looked over at Mole and gave him a quick assessment before replying. Mole, hopefully a nickname, had also dissipated any remaining ingenuine politeness in his body language. The gangly, unshaven man had short greasy hair that was matted to one side, had dark gray eyes that bore into Andrick like they were searching for a flaw. Unfortunately for Mole, Andrick spent decades constructing his persona, and not even a big mouth like him would be able to get Andrick to crack.
“My family came from Ukraine when I was two years old. My father found work on an oil rig off the coast of Alaska. I grew up there and then when I turned eighteen, took the fifteen hundred dollars I had saved working at the local restaurant as a busboy, and bought a one-way ticket to Seattle.”
Mole inhaled his cigarette and pondered while retaining the new information he had received about the outsider before retorting.
“So, you’re not American, huh?”
“Actually, I got my citizenship right before I moved to the mainland. So, Mole, I am just as American as you.”
“Not me, no sir.”
“No?” Andrick said, the resilience of stupidity starting to draw him into a game of intellect. “Where does your family call from?”
“My family is from Connecticut,” Mole said, with some fire on the destination name.
“Really? I’m so sorry for what your family went through when Columbus came to America and pillaged your land.” Andrick stated with the flattest, insincere tone he could muster.
Mason belted out a hearty chuckle as Mole was still trying to process how the conversation had just gotten out of his control.
“We’re all immigrants, you stupid fuck,” Mason playfully explained to Mole, who looked unamused.
Andrick was always composed but had usually been much more reserved with his banter. There had been something in the air though. It was something so minute, yet so intricate to his being, that he couldn’t pinpoint it. Andrick always felt lighter and happier once Tappy was fed, but the euphoria and joy the man had seeping in his veins had been more intense after the previous night of kills. Andrick chalked it up to the possibility that maybe it was the two for one special he indulged in that provided his extra shot of cheer.
Looking away from Mole, who had given up on trying to claim dominance, Andrick looked up at the clear sky. The Sun beamed down on the common area in the early morning hour, leaving warm rays to accent the cool morning weather. A distant squawk from his upper left caught his attention. A flock of birds, indistinguishable to what kind they may have been, appeared in Andrick’s view, flying in their signature “V” formation. They all glided with purpose and a level of unison that looked mesmerizing.
Andrick looked back down at his brethren and smiled cheerfully as he bit into his bagel sandwich. Looking around at the community he integrated himself into, he was proud of his ability to camouflage. Like a patch within a quilt, he was lost within the mix, just as he preferred. Twenty bikers from a handful of different clubs now scattered across the open area, drinking coffee, eating sugary cakes, and laughing while telling stories to one another. Andrick soaked in the moment, as he felt a sense of peace he hadn’t experienced in quite some time.
He looked at the four men that surrounded the table he resided at and saw them oblivious to his true skin. Mason stood up and reached across the table to flick Mole in the back of the ear, as Mole’s attention had diverted to the East end of the common area as two beautiful but worn women exited a room. The other two laughed as Mole let out a painful yelp. Andrick noticed the fine embroidery of Mason’s cut. Underneath the film of dust, as any honorable rider would have, was a pair of red devil horns topping a golden number three. Behind the light-colored number was a red letter “S”, which had a pair of angel wings extending from each side.
The thought of joining the Saints and Sinners club made Andrick feel a need to bury a chortle. He was not sure how much he would represent the Saint portion of his potential mantra, but he was confident he could fulfill his oath as a Sinner. Looking back above, he caught the tail end of the flock as they proceeded South. Most would be drawn to the head bird, the leader of the “V” formation. Andrick stared at the second to last bird on the left bracket of the formation in awe. Andrick connected with that bird as he saw it glide in unison with the others, often going unrecognized. Andrick strived to be that second to last bird. He strived to be unnoticeable, undesirable, unthreatening…until it was time to pounce on unsuspecting prey.
CHAPTER 11
So many things to do, so little time. Sisto tried to put the stress of his new assignment and time crunch out of his head as he sat on his couch. He set his alarm early as he knew he would need as much time as possible that day to get all his errands completed. Ama was going to knock on his door any minute and Sisto was in the middle of an episode of Lie to Me. Tim Roth just interrogated some scumbag thinking they were going to get away with raping a bunch of people but slipped a mi
cro-expression of contempt. Contempt was basically when a person determines that someone or something doesn’t deserve the respect or attention that most normal people would.
Sisto immediately shook his head at the tv screen, criticizing how dumb would have to be to show contempt to Tim Roth. He wrote in his notebook the signs to determine contempt, which was a slight tell where the corner of one’s lip will tighten and raise on one side of their face. After he jotted the information down next to his other homework notes from the works of Tim Roth, he set down the chicken scratch to peel open his Halo mini orange while analyzing the rest of the episode. Sisto planned on waiting for Ama so they could go to IHOP, but he had been up since six, due to thoughts bleeding into his dreams.
Another twenty minutes went by and the smarmy bastard Roth captured himself another bad guy. Sisto looked at his list of micro-expressions and was impressed at his attention to detail. He thoroughly captured changes to the face that could make him aware if someone were hiding their feelings. Fear, disgust, anger, love, and now contempt had been a part of Sisto’s repertoire for capturing criminals. The knock on the door came at a perfect time as the credits started rolling. Sisto turned off the television to see Ama looking impatient.
“Really, Sisto? I have been waiting for you for the last half hour.”
“I thought you said you would be coming by to get me when you were ready?”
The look given could have bore a hole through his skull, had Ama obtained superpowers in the last ten hours.
“I said that I would be ready soon and for you to come by so we could leave! Why would I go up two floors, then go down to the lobby? How does that make sense?”
The fury threw a glint in her dark eyes, making them pop through her mascara and dark eyeshadow. Sisto tried to not be obvious in checking her out, but Ama was a sexy woman. She had her own style and it suited her well. Sisto had no style to speak of, so that may have had some factor in his thought process. Arms crossed, covering up the Sevendust logo on her tank top, Ama tapped her index finger on the opposite arm as her appendages had been interwoven into each other, probably to stop her from smacking Sisto at that moment. Ama stared, waiting for an apology, or an explanation at the very least while Sisto stood in his doorway and smiled at her.
“Anger!” Sisto gleefully shouted as he pointed at Ama’s flawless, Spanish-European face.
“What?” A confused Ama asked.
“You have a glare in your eyes, your lips which are normally full are now narrowed, and the center of your eyebrows are bunched into a downward angle. You are exhibiting anger like my show taught me!”
“You think?” Ama replied, sarcasm present and totally unwarranted in Sisto’s mind.
Sisto threw the spiral, peeled exterior of the mini-orange into the trash can, rinsed his hands, then put on a plain, maroon shirt. He grabbed his gray hoodie with a stitched-in black denim vest and put it on.
“Sisto, it’s eighty degrees outside,” Ama explained.
“It gets chilly in the evening and we have a lot to do. No idea when we will be back.”
Ama’s eyebrow had been stuck in an arch from her earlier rage but that dose of rationale surprised her and knocked the look of fury down to mild annoyance.
Sisto grabbed his keys, wallet, and phone off the kitchen table and shut the door behind him so they could get prepared for his first undercover gig.
“You know, Fitz said that as long as you don’t look too clean-cut, no one will suspect a thing,” Ama assured, reading Sisto’s mind once again to his dismay.
“I’m not worried,” Sisto said, no confidence to back it. “I haven’t shaved in a few weeks. Feels good to not have to shave every day like I did when going through the academy.”
The two walked down the hallway to the stairwell exit, a routine they both preferred, especially since the higher volume the building had obtained lately. After Sisto took down Carson Vinnova last year, the newspapers had the story and Sisto’s name in it every day for weeks. Word got to the owners of the apartment building, Corden Palisades, that a local hero lived in their building. That put a bug in Fred Corden’s ear to start doing renovations and ride the wave of free media, courtesy of Sisto’s unwanted praise. Fred and his wife, Teri, hadn’t visited the building almost two years before the event. When news broke out about Craig Allman being murdered on the roof, then another pair of tenants having something to do with assisting the SCPD in taking out a ruthless serial killer, they decided to get involved. The best part of the situation was how nervous Sisto and Ama’s slimy, degenerate, dirtbag superintendent, Dave Carlsen became, with the Corden’s looking over his shoulder constantly.
Dave Carlsen, or Super Dave as Sisto aptly named him, after infamous Super Dave Osborne from ’90s television fame, was a corner-cutter, drug pusher, womanizing, scumbag. Dave, with his lanky frame and signature cocaine bullets that were always sweating down his face even in the dead of winter, almost had a coronary when Fred and Teri Corden told him they were moving into a room on the eighth floor while the renovations were going on. Teri Corden, a cheery but clueless woman in her late sixties, jumped at the chance to join Fred, more so since their twenty-one-year-old granddaughter, June, lived on the eighth floor as well. June was wrapping up her final year as an undergraduate at SMCC, Saratoga-Mustain Community College. She had taken a year and a half off right after high school to travel abroad and when she came back, her grandparents offered to house her for free if she chose to go to college locally.
Within the first week back, Fred Corden, a stern old goat at the age of seventy-two, gave Super Dave a list of things he saw that needed to get addressed. It was right after a long day at the police academy last October when Sisto had been walking through the lobby towards the stairwell. Sisto, while not intimidated by anybody, always felt the odd sensation to get across the lobby as fast as possible, to avoid unwanted conversation. That evening, however, it was quiet, and he could see the door to the manager’s office open.
Within the opening, Sisto could see Fred Corden was unleashing hellfire onto Super Dave. The frail-looking drug addict looked even weaker and withered as the conversation progressed. Once, Sisto even caught Super Dave with a ladder, putting up Christmas lights with a staple gun on Ama’s floor back during the holiday season. Sisto had asked Dave why he was putting them on the third floor and not the lobby. Apparently, Teri Corden loves Christmas, and Fred, being the phone book tearing, ex-Marine he was, told Dave to decorate the building, starting with the top floor and work his way down.
At the beginning of the new year, Fred ran an ad in the local newspaper, The Saratoga Sentinel, promoting upcoming renovations and “Updated Hands-on Management”. The building was fuller than Sisto had experienced in years. Sisto wasn’t a fan of people in general, but overlooked it, as he knew it would bring joy to his face every time he saw Super Dave flustered atop a ladder until the Corden family packed up and moved out. Currently, the building had already been completely repainted with premium paint. It would have been a sight to watch Dave try to keep steady enough to paint a building, but even Fred Corden knew that Dave couldn’t accomplish that feat. The flickering lights in the hallway entrance to the building that Sisto thought may have been blacklights from one of Super Dave’s drug-induced parties, had finally been fixed as well.
Walking into the stairwell, it was the one place that felt the same since Sisto moved in. The musty stairwell was full of concrete steps and the air was saturated in damp minerals.
“You get ahold of Winter yet?”
“Yeah, I texted her this morning. We are planning on video linking later to talk about the case and flesh out a game plan.” Ama responded.
“How’s the kid?”
“The baby is healthy and doing great. I’ll tell Winter you say hello later. So, what is on our agenda today?”
“Well, it’s my first assignment going deep undercover. So, I was thinking—”
“Deep undercover? Sisto, you are putting on a leather ves
t and will go drink beer with other guys wearing dirtier vests. Speaking of, do you even know how to ride a motorcycle?”
“I resent the assumption that I don’t know how, because I do, but that reminds me, we need to hit up a thrift store at some point and look for a medical boot or cast, and arm sling.”
Ama squinted, searching to find some sort of logic in the statement.
“I am not going to be on a death cycle and have The Reels come by for a visit. I planned on faking an accident and having my friend Fitzgerald Cornelius Ackerman escort me to Mustain.”
“Fitz’s middle name is Cornelius?”
“Probably.” Sisto shrugged.
The two made way across the lobby when a voice from the back corner boomed across the room.
“Sisto!”
Sisto and Ama turned to see Super Dave was already risen from his chair and halfway out the office door to approach them.
“Sisto! Hey, I need to talk to you.”
“We are in a bit of a hurry today, Dave.” Ama tried to interject.
“Whoa, sister. I got some business with Sisto to deal with then you can get back to your stuff.” Super Dave spatted, eyes darting in Ama’s direction fiercely before simmering down and checking her out. “And, if you want to scrap this bum, I am free tonight around nine if you want to come by my apartment? A little jazz, some candlelight?”
“I would rather get back-to-back colonics.”
Sisto’s feeble attempt to hold back a laugh escaped his lips before he realized it. Dave glared back at Sisto.
“What can I help you with today, Dave?”
“You are aware ever since you got your face plastered all over the papers, you have been a thorn in my side, right?”
“One of the few perks of my line of work, yes.”
“Fred and Teri Corden are having a grand re-opening event next week and specifically asked you to be there.”