Disposable Souls

by Phonse Jessome

  If I wasn’t chasing Glenda or fighting behind the school, I was in that shop with Skynyrd blaring and wrenches flying. Grease taught me to strip a Harley and build it back up faster and louder. I still do all the work on my own ride. He put me up as a prospect when I was seventeen and patched me into the club as a wedding present. I still miss working with Grease, but he took it pretty hard when I walked away from the club after the war.

  I watched my former brothers roll. Snake’s blonde hair twisted in his wake. It slapped his denim-covered shoulders just above his club patch. I smiled. Snake, the only Stallion still wearing an original cut. No leather for the pres. When the club formed, members cut the sleeves off their denim jackets and sewed crude patches on their backs and called the creation a cut. Leather vests long ago replaced the faded old denim, but every outlaw still called his vest a cut. Traditions don’t die hard in outlaw culture. They don’t die at all.

  Snake’s hair danced around blue flames rising from the horns of a Gothic demon. The split tongue reaching beneath the demon’s chin was an identical blue. Even from this distance I could see Snake’s left hand pull the clutch lever into the handlebar as he stomped a heavy leather boot on the shifter. The twelve Satan’s Stallions following their club president downshifted as one. The parade of big bikes slowed, their engines backfiring and coughing again. A parked car’s alarm squealed against the rumble as the bikes passed.

  As vice-president and sergeant-at-arms, Gunner rode to the right, slightly behind Snake. He grabbed the pearl-handled pistol grip that topped the suicide-shifter beside his gas tank. His left boot pushed and released the foot clutch as he shoved the pistol forward. I knew his bike was a bitch to ride and marvelled at the ease of his movements as the group rounded the sharp corner near the terminal entrance and headed toward the clubhouse. Gunner gave the throttle a twist, and his bike rolled up wheel to wheel with Snake. He pointed to the police cars and yellow tape below me. Snake held up two fingers, gestured forward, and kicked his bike down another gear, setting off the backfiring and popping again as the procession slowed with him. Gunner grabbed a handful of brake and forced his bike to a stop at the shoulder of the road.

  He planted his boots on the pavement and turned to watch his brothers. I smiled. The Satan’s Stallion Motorcycle Club was an ominous spectacle, even to a born-to-it Stallion like Gunner. The club name arched shoulder to shoulder at the top of his back. Letters in blue edged in an icy silver. Beneath it, Satan grimaced at the world. At the bottom, curved upward, the rocker that named the territory: Halifax. Air-brushed blue skulls bathed in flames burned across most gas tanks. Barbed wire lined a few others. SFFS stamped on every bike. Stallion Forever Forever Stallion, brother.

  Jimmy Williams, his greasy locks trailing back in the wind, rode the final bike in the group. A radically raked trike with two wide skins in back and one skinny-ass tire stretched way out front. Williams wore a prospect’s patch, the mark of a rider still trying to earn full club membership. He had a blue-and-silver Halifax curved along the bottom of his back, but no Satan’s head or club name above it. Gunner signalled for Williams to join him. The trike pulled in behind Gunner’s bike and stopped. Neither man spoke.

  The Stallion train rolled on, making a hard right turn beneath the smiling face of Sandy Gardner. The bikers rode between the posts supporting the billboard and past a slowly opening steel gate into the club compound. His club safe at home, Gunner jammed his left foot into the clutch again and shoved the shifter lever without saying a word to Williams. He didn’t have to; the prospect would follow. He turned his bike away from the clubhouse and into the parking lot below. That was going to be a problem. I watched as he twisted his right hand hard on the throttle. The big bike howled and slewed violently and then straightened as he raced across the lot, stopping just short of the yellow police tape. The trike carrying Williams screeched to a halt beside him. The two let their bikes idle at a deep rumble as the cop I had badged earlier walked over.

  I didn’t know what the cop was saying but watched as Gunner raised his hands and placed them on the handlebars in front of him, making sure the young cop could see them. Williams did the same. Not exactly surrender, just relaxing.

  I saw the rookie make a move with his right hand. Looking for comfort from the gun. Never say things can’t get worse. I looked down at Gardner’s lifeless form. He’d wait. I headed to the parking lot to try to keep the body count at one.

  I placed a hand on the rookie’s shoulder as I moved past him. Felt him relax. Gunner smiled, all innocence. His ink spoke for him. A blood-red FTW rose from his left shoulder to his ear; FTP matched it on the right side. Fuck the world. Fuck the police. Jimmy Williams’s bare arms showed more ink than a daily newspaper. Gunner stood just over six feet tall and had that prison-yard build that came from too much time behind iron bars. It had been years since he did any serious time, but he still had the hard body. It was Williams at only four foot three I worried about. The fat little man was unpredictable. Gunner had nothing to prove; Williams did.

  I reached over the elevated handlebars on Gunner’s ride and pushed the kill switch beside the throttle. The engine died. I glanced at Williams; the little man on the trike looked down and killed his engine. I grabbed Gunner’s extended right hand, pulled him forward on the bike and embraced him, slapping his patch with my left hand as we hugged.

  “You harassing the troops?” I asked.

  “Other way around.” He spoke to me but gave the young patrolman a hard stare. “Why you bringing your gang into our territory?”

  “Gunner, this whole city is my territory. I just let you ride in it. Now what drags you out of bed at this hour?” I asked, moving to stand between him and the uniformed officer.

  “Haven’t been to bed yet.”

  I looked over toward Williams.

  “Officer, do you have a Breathalyser unit in your car? I think I smell alcohol off this one,” I said.

  “Fuckin’ cops,” Williams muttered.

  “Don’t say another word, prospect,” Gunner ordered.

  “What? I’m not your hero anymore, Jimmy?” I asked

  “Fuck you,” he answered.

  “Your hero days ended when you crawled in with that crowd.” Gunner nodded toward the officers beyond the yellow tape.

  I didn’t have to turn. I knew all work on the crime scene had stopped. Every eye on the parking lot. I’d bet another hand or two made the move to rest on a gun butt. I could feel the hate flow through me in both directions. Once again, I stood between the bikers and the badge. That movie was getting old.

  “Unless you have something to share about the dead man over there, you should head to the clubhouse, big brother. Tell Snake I’ll be over to speak with all of you shortly.”

  “Not coming in behind a badge, bro. Who’s the stiff?” Gunner asked.

  “Go away, Gunner. Tell your fearless leader I want to take a look at the club surveillance tapes from last night.”

  I locked eyes with him.

  “Well, look what we have here.” Blair arrived, looking to toss some fuel on a fire I had under control. Always perfect timing, my partner.

  “We rarely get to see actual criminals at a crime scene. Care to confess, lowlife?” he said to Williams.

  “Fuckin’ cops.” Williams turned away from Gunner as he said it.

  “Brilliant retort there, Tiny. Show me the papers on that tricycle,” Blair said.

  “Not now, partner,” I said. “They’re leaving. Like I said, take off Gunner. Now.”

  Gunner’s eyes stayed on me as he reached down to the kick-start pedal; he eased it down once with his foot to prepare the engine and then released it. He moved his eyes to the young patrolman as he jumped into the air and came down on it hard. The engine exploded back to life. He rolled off to the left in a tight turn. The bike leaned as though it would drop to the pavement before he twisted the throt
tle, and the engine’s torque pulled it upright and away. Williams followed close behind. The horned demon’s head stared back from Gunner’s patch. Williams seemed to have horns of his own.

  I turned to the patrolman and looked at the name on his Kevlar vest. Kid was maybe twenty-three.

  “Constable Barber, you reach for that gun, you better plan to pull it, and if you pull it, you better be ready to use it. That High Noon shit will get you or someone else killed. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” He looked at the ground.

  “You know, Cam, just because he’s your brother doesn’t mean you have to be nice to his friends,” Blair said as we moved away.

  “I know. But if this was Stallion business, the body wouldn’t be so easy to find. Besides, if the clubhouse wasn’t underneath his billboard, they wouldn’t know who Sandy Gardner was. Probably still don’t.”

  I looked up. The paper pastor beamed agreement as the two bikes rolled beneath him through the clubhouse gate. I headed back to the real thing. No beaming going on there.

  “Let’s go grab this career-ender and see what kind of shit we can shake out of it.” The fog was gone, and the fresh morning air was rich with possibility.

  “Great idea,” Blair muttered. “Can’t imagine a better plan.”

  The medical examiner worked the body. Blair and I waited. Our vic rated the top doc. Dr. Henry Ian was chief medical examiner for the province of Nova Scotia—the first Canadian province to have an ME, he’d tell you if you gave him half a chance. The heavy-set balding man had stubby fingers that worked magic with a scalpel. Of course, his patients were dead. He rarely left the office, but a famous vic brings out the big players. The ME wore a set of crime-scene coveralls but no hood or mask. He wasn’t trying to keep trace evidence off the body; he was trying to keep the body off his suit. He was taking his time examining Sandy Gardner’s neck.

  The sun felt hot on my face, the fog already forgotten. I looked down the hill. A TV cameraman was pulling gear from the back of his truck. Two others were shooting from behind the yellow tape. Murder moved our evangelical preacher to a new place in TV land. No more preaching the good word for Sandy Gardner; now he was in the breaking news cycle. Crime scenes, burned buildings, and car wrecks fight to fill the space between the commercials on the early newscasts. People like to start the day reassuring themselves that bad things still only happen to other people.

  Two still photographers from the daily papers patrolled the outer edge of the tape, pausing for a shot and then moving on, looking for another. Their long lenses ready to freeze a moment in time, their pictures emailed back to newsrooms for the web.

  A cluster of reporters gathered near the police cruisers. They typed away on smart phones. Tweeting the breaking news to the nation.

  None of the photographers was pointing a lens at the billboard across the street. So far, the identity of the victim was a secret. I hoped it would stay that way. One of our computer techs would search the web for anything linking the victim’s name to the crime. Killers were usually stupid people who tried too hard to distance themselves from a crime. Social media gave them all kinds of room to screw up. The Gardner name would surface on the internet pretty fast, and we’d want to find out who knew it first.

  “And so the fun ends, my partner,” Blair said, looking at the parking lot. “Time for the hand-off.”

  I followed his gaze and watched Inspector Carl MacIntosh strain to duck beneath the yellow tape as Constable Barber pushed the line higher. The inspector walked to the body. The cameras all moved to him. The white shirt and gold insignia of a ranking officer: a stand-out shot at a murder scene. Any crime reporter with three bodies under his belt knows inspectors rarely step past the yellow tape. Now, they knew the victim was somebody important. They’d dig deeper, start calling sources. MacIntosh was a big man, an old-school Mountie who entered the force when size mattered more than anything. His close-cropped grey hair sat on a squared head that rose neckless above his shoulders. He looked like a goon, but the white shirt was proof he had political savvy. A survivor of the boardroom battles.

  MacIntosh walked past the ME and stood in front of us. He folded his arms; the white sleeves of his uniform shirt were rolled up to the elbows. A horse silhouette reared from his wrist, covering a bulging left forearm. The inspector rode for two years with the famed Musical Ride of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and he made sure everyone knew it. The vic, Gunner, and now him; it seemed everybody was flashing ink today. I kept mine covered.

  “Okay, gents, first things first,” he said. “I will not listen to any bullshit about task-force duties or terror threats. You are seconded from that detail as of now. You are on this case. Conversation over.” He turned and moved over for a look at Sandy Gardner. Giving us street tough and boardroom savvy all at once.

  I was used to taking orders from Mounties, but some of the older members of the Halifax regional force still hate it. Halifax is an old city with new boundaries. It grew in one big spurt when politicians pushed the city limits out to cut service costs. Halifax swallowed its smaller neighbours, and those service costs grew.

  The move forced the new city into a policing turf war. Before the shotgun amalgamation, the Mounties patrolled the rural communities while three municipal forces policed the old city and its two biggest neighbours, Dartmouth and Bedford. The municipal forces melted easily into one regional force, but Canada’s national police agency kept its distance. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police force is big on tradition and not given to sharing it. As a national force, it works regularly with the FBI and Interpol on big cases. The idea of merging with a couple of small-time municipal forces on the East Coast did not sit well with the Mountie masters in their Ottawa ivory towers.

  Practicality won out when the bigger force realized the new municipality in Halifax was planning to cancel its RCMP contract and expand its own new regional force through the entire city. The Mounties play nice now. They’ve added their considerable resources to the mix, making Halifax Canada’s only city with a fully integrated municipal and RCMP service.

  The ink wasn’t dry on the deal when a couple of second-generation drug lords barely out of their teens decided to play king of the hill in the Spryfield area of the city. The drive-bys and body count pushed Halifax to second place on Canada’s deadliest cities list at the time. Hard to call the police merger a success. I’m a Halifax city cop; Blair is a Mountie. At our level, the job is the same, no matter the shape of the badge. It works fine for us. It’s the Royal Canadian Mounted high priests like MacIntosh who still struggle with it.

  Blair leaned in. “Guess we’ll get to see what that horse tattoo is all about.”

  “There’s that.”

  It was shit for a case, but I could still feel the rush. I pulled my notebook out, logged the time and orders from the inspector. I drew a line under it and began to jot questions. What did that tattoo mean? Probably a minor thing, but until you know otherwise, nothing is minor. Where were the cuffs that left those marks on Gardner’s ankles? Where did he die? Tracking Sandy Gardner’s moves last night was critical. A visit to his home would be our number-one priority. Viewing surveillance footage from the container terminal and, with luck, the Stallion clubhouse made the to-do list next. We’d need a warrant to get near the Stallion video. I drew a heavy line under three questions: Who was Sandy Gardner with before he got himself killed last night? Where and when did he die? How did he end up outside the container terminal? Writing it down felt good. It’s how I started every major case.

  “Got a time of death, doc?” I asked, hoping to put something in the answer column.

  “Hard to say for sure, Detective.” Dr. Ian looked up as he pulled a thin rod from the body. “Liver temp may not be reliable. He is naked, and it was cold last night. It’s safe to say he was moved after death, and that complicates it further. No way to know how long he was in the first location or what the a
mbient temperature there might have been. A little lab work will help narrow it, but I would guess some time around midnight. Just a guess, don’t hold me to it.”

  “It’s a start, doc. Thanks.” I jotted that time next to the note on the surveillance tapes.

  “Preliminary cause would be ligature strangulation. There is a stab wound, but it looks post-mortem. Again, hold me to nothing said here in the field.” He went back to the corpse.

  Inspector MacIntosh lectured Carla Cage and her crime-scene techs at the bottom of the hill. Blair and I went down to join the fun. The inspector explained his theory to Cage. He already had the whole case figured out. Drive-thru detecting at its best. Carla held her own, dismissing his musings with facts. Like me, she’s a Halifax regional cop. The ranking Mountie didn’t seem to intimidate her.

  I glanced past them to the clubhouse across the street. I saw two security cameras pointed this way. There were probably more. I hoped my five years riding as a Stallion brother would buy me enough goodwill to see the tapes. I left the club in good standing, if not in good favour, when I got back from the war. They say war is hell, but anyone who’s been there will tell you war is mostly days of boring routine. Now, combat, there’s a head fuck that makes hell seem appealing. I came back more fucked than most. I blamed myself for the death of my spotter, the only real friend I ever had. I knew Ronald wouldn’t blame me, but I did.

  The six months I spent in chains in a Pakistani village shifted my priorities. It wasn’t the daily whippings with the knotted ropes that did it. I watched from beside my rock as my Taliban captors traded poppies for bullets. I knew where those poppies were headed and didn’t want to work the other end of the pipeline when I got back home. I didn’t deal heroin as a Stallion, but I enjoyed some of the profits sent the club’s way. I knew I could never party with that cash again. That doesn’t mean I believe in drug laws. I just couldn’t send money back to that place. I believed then, as I do now, the drug war is an unwinnable waste of time and money. Outlaw clubs are about freedom, and every member will tell you legislated morality is an attack on freedom of choice. It’s an easy stance to take when you are raking in the cash selling sex and drugs.