by Amy Law
Him talking about her daddy muddied her feelings even more. Sh gently pulled away to look in his face. He said, “I can’t tell you what it is, but I’m sure that he’s going to do it.”
“He’s not a man you tell what to do.”
“I don’t doubt that. But he’ll do it to get you back.”
Maybe he will, she thought, But then he’ll hunt you like a dog. She knew Daddy was certain to be hunting him already.
He gave her shoulders another squeeze. “It’ll be all right. You have to believe that.”
Chapter 9
Jack Berringer pulled into the almost empty parking lot in front of the small diner. There was one other car, a beat-up Honda, two police cruisers and a black van with black windows, probably FBI. Four uniformed officers stood by the door with two other men in lumpy suits and dark shades.
Jack recognized one of the men, Detective Frank Gracey, by the steps and lifted his hand in a breezy wave as he approached, squinting into the sun.
“Hey, Frank.”
“Good morning, Judge Berringer.” Frank was head of a major task force dealing with gang-related crime. He had appeared as a witness and as an arresting officer in Jack’s court on many occasions.
Jack asked him, “Can a man get his breakfast here?”
“Oh, sure, Judge. We’re keeping a watch on someone inside, is all.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“Shouldn’t be. I wouldn’t poke him or call him names, though.”
“I shall keep it in mind. But there’s no reason I shouldn’t go in for some eggs?”
“None at all,”
“Only, there don’t seem to be any other customers.”
“Yeah, turns out the cruisers don’t work as a great advertisement for the waffles.”
“Should I be worried?”
“There are two armed marshals inside, but watch out if he makes a sudden move for the cutlery.” Jack looked at Frank to see if he was joking. All he saw was his own reflection in Frank’s shades.
Inside one man sat at the center of the bright little diner. There were no other customers, only a bored waitress, a cook behind the order window and two marshals holding shotguns. Jack said Good morning to the marshals and asked the waitress for ham and eggs, sunny side up and a coffee.
He walked to the table where the man sat. He was broad and heavy-set, long, straggly salt and pepper hair, extravagant sideburns and whiskers, and most of his skin decorated. Some of the ink was elaborate and very professional. Some was likely prison art. He hulked greedily over a stack of pancakes with bacon and he looked to the judge like an old, worn bullet covered in graffiti.
He was heavy and clearly strong, but his skin wasn’t tight, he was not at the peak of condition. Still, a man you’d think twice about picking a fight with. Whatever he might lack in tone and agility, he could certainly make up ready aggression.
“Mind if I sit here?”
The man had a voice like a rusty saw. “Free country, aint it?” He didn’t look up.
Closer up, some of his markings looked like the symbols used by a biker gang, though Jack didn’t know which one. He glanced up from his eggs and he looked Jack hard in the eye. Whoever he was, Jack was sure that the man had not expected his visit.
“Good pancakes?” Jack asked.
“You like pancakes?”
“Sure.”
“Then you’d probably like ’em.”
Conversation with him seemed to be almost a contact sport. “You seem to have quite the rock star entourage.”
“You got a badge you want to show me?”
“No, just passing the time.”
“You got a microphone I should be speaking into?”
“Okay, I can tell that you’re under police guard.”
“Got a phone? The Nobel Prize committee should hear about you.”
“I’m just here for some breakfast. If you want, I’ll leave you to eat in peace.”
The man ate his pancakes noisily but he didn’t speak again. When the waitress brought the judge’s coffee, the man told her to bring him a refill. She said, “I’d never have thought of that.”
“You won’t be wanting no tip, then.”
“Don’t matter, you won’t be paying it either way.”
There was a brighter gleam in the man’s eye as he turned to Jack. “Diner waitresses. What do we need an army for when we got middle-aged women can bite your head off from across the room?”
“I think she likes you.”
“I know she would.”
At a loss for any other way to get the man to talk, Jack said, “All that ink must be quite important to you.”
The man glowered back at him for some time. Jack was glad to have gotten his interest and attention if nothing else.
His hard eyes narrowed and at last he began to growl a response. “Every one of these marks carries a meaning. They each represent an event or a person of great significance to me.”
After that, there was no stopping him. He pointed to a tattoo and described at length the symbolism and the meaning that it held for him. Then another. Nothing that he said directly identified any particular person or place. They all were tales either of violent struggle and brutal conflict, or of deep family bonds and betrayals.
Several involved sudden death, sometimes more than one. To Jack they sounded like Greek tragedies.
Jack ate his breakfast, drank his coffee and came away having learned precisely nothing specific at all. The man gave away almost no details about himself or anyone associated with him, and he told all of his stories through a smoke of almost biblical-sounding myth. Jack hardly knew any more about him than he had before they met.
What he did know was that he had a lethally bad attitude, but the NOAA probably knew that. They might have known who he was, too, since they likely tracked him as a weather system, but Jack still had no idea. He didn’t ask Frank on the way out, either, and Frank didn’t offer to tell him.
He had done what the kidnappers had told him to do but, as his Mercedes swept out across the empty lot and out onto the freeway, the whole thing made no sense at all to Jack.
Chapter 10
Crouched again by the door, she heard a phone ring, then ‘Jax’s end of the conversation.
“Hey… yeah? He went? … And? And you’re certain they met. … Anyone been able to talk to Iron?”
Iron? Who was that?
“No? So he’s got no idea… Must have been some surprise for him with his breakfast. … No, I bet he didn’t. You got no idea how he is then? Yup… Yup, I bet. Okay, good work.”
Then he was talking to Mace.
“We’ve got what we need.”
Mace said, “Not until the morning, bro. Not till it’s done. But he took the meet?”
“He went, yeah. He met him and they talked. Chatted away for about fifteen minutes over breakfast.”
“And we have a reliable witness?”
“Not only, we got pictures.” Now the two men were up on their feet. Tiff flinched each time a step came closer, knowing she should get away from the door but unable to move, desperate to wring whatever she could out of their conversation. They paced around as they talked. One of them opened the refrigerator. Tiff heard the fizz of cans as they popped open.
Mace said, “I wonder what they discussed over their coffee.” His chuckle was a dry rasp. “Must have been a regular country club morning meeting.”
“It’s done, Mace. We have it.”
“We’ll see tomorrow.”
The creak of a boot came towards the door and she jumped back for the bed and under the cover.
The door opened and Mace stood in the frame, his eyes narrow. Tiff kept her eyelids almost closed. She was sure he couldn’t see that she was watching him, but it was hard to keep her eyes relaxed so they didn’t flutter. His lips tightened and he closed the door again. She couldn’t make out what he said as he strode back across the floor of the other room.
Was it Daddy they h
ad been talking about, meeting someone called ‘Iron’ over breakfast? And this ‘Iron,’ whoever he was, had no idea about it? What did it mean? It was hard to keep all of the details straight when she had so few fragments of information to go on.
Chapter 11
Tiff was dozing when she heard the noise in the next room. She woke up fast when ‘Jax’s voice raised. “Someone gets killed, you’ve made me an accessory.” His menacing growl went on, “If you do that, Mace, I swear,” boots clomped and thudded around the next room, “I will hunt you down. I will nail you to a floor and then kill you in the slowest and most painful way imaginable.”
Tiff got her ear to the door in time to hear Mace’s snarl. “Good luck with that, bro.”
“We got what we need.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it and you know it. It’s just what Weinberg said, it’s a done deal. We should close up and clear out of here right now.”
“Oh, I’m fine with that part. I just don’t see us carrying baggage.” A chair scraped, “And not turning loose something that could compromise us.”
‘Jax’s voice hardened, “There isn’t any way that she could compromise us is there.” There was tension in the long silence. Tiffany wished so hard that she could see what was going on in that room. ‘Jax’ again, his voice lower, “How can she compromise us, Mace?”
“I’m just saying, no point in scattering loose ends around, is there.”
“If you’ve done something dumb then it’s on you. We’re taking big risks here for the health of the club, but I’ve had your back all the way, Mace and I still have it. Just don’t act against me.”
“Yeah, and I bet that ain’t all that you had.” There was a rush and the sound of bodies coming together.
After what seemed a long moment, ‘Jax’ said, “This is for later. We’re not done with this.”
“Maybe, but your plan to haul out still looks good. Could be time, bro. I say we clean up and go.”
“Then we do it my way.”
A pause and Mace said, “Then we wait.”
There was quiet for a time, so Tiffany slipped back into the bed. She turned it all over in her mind, searching for ways to interpret what she had heard. Ways to read it which didn’t imply that Mace wanted to kill her and ‘Jax’ was the only thing stopping him.
The next room the sullen silence remained. After a long while, murmurs and grunts sounded like one of the bikers making a call, but she couldn’t even tell which one.
An agonizing half hour passed, maybe more, or perhaps it was only twenty minutes—she couldn’t tell any more. A buzzer squawked, sharp and loud in the next room. Tiff’s body clenched at the shock, at the sound she hadn’t heard before.
There was movement in the next room. The outer door opened. Then voices, low, but calm. Some talk, she couldn’t make out any of it. Then ‘Jax’ said, “Okay, thanks. Bye.” And a response she also couldn’t make out, and door closed again.
After a while, the door to her room opened and Mace brought in a pizza. The whole pizza in its box. With a beer. He set the box on the little table with the beer on top.
“I’ll leave you a spliff, too.” And he drew a fat blunt from the top pocket of his shirt and placed it on top of the pizza box before he left, closing the door softly behind him.
She shivered.
Rubbing her arms she realized that she wasn’t even cold. It’s adrenaline kicking in, she told herself, the fight-or-flight response. Only it was bad timing on her body’s part. There was no good way she could either fight or fly right now.
Unless… Tiff thought about the lighter.
The expression on Mace’s face when he brought the pizza and left it with the beer, the kindly way he put a joint on top, Tiff was sure he was thinking of it as a kindness—that he thought of it as him bringing her last meal.
She couldn’t sleep all night. She heard every strike of the bell in the clocktower.
Chapter 12
When Jack stepped up to his court bench, he looked out at Frank Gracey behind the prosecution table with his head in his hands. Then Jack saw the defendant and he knew why. Before the indictment was even read out he called the two counsels to his chambers.
The mood in Judge Berringer’s chambers was solemn. The opposing attorneys both sat in front of Jack’s wide mahogany desk. One looked like the cat who got the cream, the other looked like the cat he took it from.
Jack said, “Mr State’s Attorney, I have always had a good opinion of your command of the law. In this matter, as you know, there is no room for debate. I have met the accused, I know him personally and, as such, I cannot hear the case against him. I must recuse myself.”
“Your Honor, I have to admit, I’m curious about how you came to know James Aaron Farrier, president of the Red Skulls motorcycle club, AKA ‘Iron.’ Did you meet him at one of his cocktail soirées, or is he a member of your bridge club?”
“The details are irrelevant, as you well know. You are at liberty, if you wish, to request an inquiry where another judge, one senior to myself, will ask me in a closed meeting about the circumstances, and I will describe them to him in confidence. If you think that will further your aims, go ahead and apply for an inquiry.”
All the while Ira Weinberg, the defending attorney, sat serene with his hands folded on the fine cotton over his ample gut.
State’s Attorney Kelvin Crane’s voice was strained, “It’s going to mean lengthy delays, Judge. Two months at the least. The State needs this matter expedited.”
“I know the defendant and that means that he also knows me. There is no way around it. This hearing is over, Kelvin. Let it go.”
“But…”
“Mr Crane, if I don’t recuse myself, then the defense will rightly apply for a mistrial, and they would be bound to succeed. What would be the state of your prosecutorial evidence if that happened after you had started presenting your witnesses?”
With everyone back in the courtroom, Judge Berringer’s announcement set a small clump of journalists into busy huddles over their tablets, while another little herd rushed the courtroom doors while as they stabbed at their phones and bumped into each other.
The only people in the court who showed no change of expression at the news were the defendant and his attorney.
Chapter 13
After the long night alone with her dread and her racing thoughts, Tiffany’s mind could focus only on the one thing that she could see to do. The only thing that would be in her control. “Take control of the situation,” was what her Daddy would say.
What would give her that now? The lighter. The pizza box, stained with oil and a flame. She could start a fire. Smoke would bring the emergency services.
If the room was on fire, the bikers would have to do something and they wouldn’t be prepared for the situation. In the panic maybe she could escape. What else could she do?
She could wait and see who won the debate between ‘Jax’ and Mace outside about whether to kill her. There was that. Or she took things into her own hands.
Take control of the situation. She could set the pizza box on fire; use that to set the bed covers and the curtains ablaze. Create a diversion. It didn’t make much sense and she knew that. It made a lot more sense than doing nothing though.
She had eaten more than half of the pizza, and the cardboard box was greasy. The grease was oil and oil was flammable. Surely it should burn well. Should make a great accelerant.
Tiff was proud of herself remembering ‘accelerant’ from a documentary about fire investigators. She tried to keep her mind off the grim realities of her situation by replaying in her mind the interview with grizzled fire marshal, talking about the ‘seat of the fire’ and ‘accelerant’ and ‘propellants.’
She saw him in his big old fire hat as she flicked the lighter under the corner of the pizza box. Maybe he would come out to this fire. The corner of the box started to turn dark brown, then black, but there wasn’t any flame.
The cheap lighter became hot in her fingers. She couldn’t hold it alight any more, but a red smolder spread along the inside corners of the box. She heard a movement in the next room. Footsteps coming to the door.
Tiff stomped on the box as fast as she could. It seemed like it was out and she slung it under the bed as she dived for the cover. Mace flung the door open and he stood looking at her. He knew that she was up to something, but he couldn’t tell what.