“What? Cleaning up after Leo? That just seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Do you hear this kid, Steve? Seriously, you are one in a million—or at least a thousand. Most of our guys would just stay at home and wait it out, or run away. But you went in, beat the cops, and kept the rest of us out of trouble—your instincts are those of a future chapter executive.”
Ned felt warm in the face. He didn’t know what to say.
“Anyway,” Mehelnechuk continued as the waiter brought them desserts and after-dinner drinks. “The organization is very grateful for what you did in the Babineau situation.”
“What did I do?”
Mehelnechuk laughed, and Steve followed suit. “Don’t worry, just keep it up,” Mehelnechuk paused. “So . . . what’s this thief giving you?”
“Sorry?”
“What’s your deal with Steve?”
“Thirty percent.”
“It’s thirty-five now.”
Steve blanched. “Don’t worry Stever, you’ll both be happy to know that Ned’s territory now includes Stoney Point and Rockston; the five percent you lost on this one distributor will be more than made up by his bigger area.”
The three agreed it was an equitable deal, and Ned indicated that he was eager to get back to work. Ivan suggested they go outside to enjoy some cigars.
Outside on the sidewalk, the three men were smoking and chatting, telling jokes, and dissing enemies when Ivan suddenly handed something to Steve.
He, in turn, handed the plastic bag to Ned. Confused, Ned was looking in his hands when he heard the whoop of a police car that had stopped just in front of them. Without thinking, he threw the bag into a nearby hedge.
The cops piled out of the three cars that had arrived and arrested Mehelnechuk, Steve, and Ned.
Three hours later, Ned was in jail for possession of methamphetamine (there wasn’t enough in the bag to warrant a trafficking charge), while Steve and Mehelnechuk were released due to lack of evidence.
Antonio McIntyre knew that when white people he didn’t know approached him on the street, they were either cops or guys looking for drugs. And these guys—two scruffy-looking dudes who piled out of an old Chevy S-10 pickup—didn’t look like cops. But in his line of business, Antonio knew that it was wise to treat ’em all like cops until you knew they weren’t.
The bigger of the two walked out with his hand outstretched. “Tony,” he said. “We’re friends of Paul’s.”
Antonio didn’t shake his hand. “Paul? What Paul? I know a lot of Pauls.”
“C’mon, Tony, don’t be like that—big fat Paul with the beard down to here,” the man paused. Even though he knew which Paul they were talking about, Antonio offered no response. “He thinks we’re cops,” the man said. “Stan, why don’t you show him we ain’t cops?”
As instructed, Stan reached into his paper shopping bag and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. He pumped one shot through Antonio’s chest and another that took off most of his face.
Later that same day, another Martinsville street-level dealer—Don Queen, who distributed weed, hash, and meth at a local bowling alley—received a visit from three tough-looking guys who asked to speak with him in his office.
Unlike Antonio, who was afraid of getting arrested, Don was afraid of getting his ass kicked, so he did what they said. He recognized one of the young men as the younger brother of a guy he knew from high school—Ryan Knowles—and he knew that anyone from that family was too psycho to be a cop, let alone an undercover one.
Don led them into the windowless storage room behind a handwritten “employees only” sign, and sat down on a cardboard box full of toilet paper rolls. He asked what he could do for them.
Their obvious leader asked how much he was paying the Sons of Satan for product.
Rather than mess around with these guys, Don told them the truth without hesitation.
“Wow,” said the tough guy. “Don’t you think that’s a bit high just for weed?”
“That’s not for weed; that’s for hash,” said Don, hoping that they’d sympathize with him.
“Wow. What say we give you weed, hash, and meth for three-quarters of what you pay now? Better stuff even.”
“I’d say I’d love it, but I don’t want to get into any trouble with the Sons.”
“Let us worry about the Sons.”
Then the the younger Knowles brother laughed and said, “Maybe you should worry more about us than the Sons.” Then he kicked Don’s makeshift seat into shreds until Don was sitting on the floor. The Knowles kid was laughing like a maniac. Don tried to laugh along. He noticed that all of them had matching rings. On each of them were a pair of dice and the name “High Rollers.”
On his first full day in jail, Ned was sitting in the exercise yard when he was approached by a handsome young man with glasses. He introduced himself as Sean Feeney. “Ivan wants you to know that he’s very impressed with what you did at the restaurant, and wants you to know that you’ll be taken care of both inside and after you get out,” he said.
“Thanks,” Ned replied, thinking the guy looked more like a car salesman than a biker. “I appreciate that.”
“No, seriously—drugs, booze, smokes, porn, whatever—you just come to me.”
“Well, a little weed wouldn’t kill me.”
“I heard that.”
“It’s a big relief to talk with you. I was afraid I’d get jumped in here.”
“Don’t worry about that, we totally run this fuckin’ wing,” Feeney assured him. “Even the warden is scared to piss us off. See those two fuckers?” He pointed at two huge men with shaved heads, long beards, and tattoos so thick they looked like patterned turtleneck sweaters under their prison shirts. “They’ll make sure nothing happens to you,” Feeney told Ned. “They’re ours. We own them.” The two men acknowledged him with simultaneous nods.
“Great, because to tell you the truth, I was afraid I might run into someone who wants me to be his girlfriend, if you know what I mean.”
“Are you trying to tell me you want a bitch?”
“You can get a woman in here?”
“No, no, no, a bitch—what are you, my grandmother?”
“Oh, oh, oh, not interested, don’t go that way.”
Feeney laughed. “Well, well, Mr. Macho, keep one thing in mind—it’s not queer if you’re on top.”
After the tough guys left, Don Queen phoned his connection with the Sons of Satan. He was sketchy about details, but he told them about the High Rollers rings and the Knowles boy. Within three hours, the news of a rival gang pressuring dealers to sell their drugs had filtered up to Mehelnechuk. He called a meeting of his Martinsville members along with those of the Huns, a nearby puppet club, for that night. The only excuses for not attending, he insisted, were being in a jail cell, a hospital bed, or on a slab in the morgue.
Feeney kept his word and supplied Ned with enough weed to help him go to sleep every night he was in jail. And, much to Ned’s surprise, neither the guards nor the prisoners in adjacent cells ever said a word about the smoke. As Kelli’s visits became rarer, and her attention seemed to wane even when she did show up, Ned found himself hanging around Feeney more and more. They’d work out, play cards, or just shoot the shit for hours.
Ned was a little weirded out by Andreas, though. Andreas was a little Venezuelan guy who hung around and did everything Feeney told him to do. Andreas asked Ned to call him “Vanessa” (Feeney did), but he just couldn’t bring himself to.
Andreas generally didn’t interfere when Ned and Feeney were together, except when he occasionally brought them drinks or smokes. But on one occasion, he erupted into a crying jag, screaming something in Spanish and getting all red in the face. Quickly, Feeney excused himself from Ned by saying, “I gotta go handle this.” He put his arm around Andreas’ shoulders and led him out of the common room. They didn’t come back until the next day.
After he started to be seen with Feeney more frequently, Ned was
generally treated better by inmates and guards alike. The same guys who had called him “shithead” and “faggot” and had handled him with truly unnecessary roughness when he was being brought to jail, now called him Ned, or even Mr. Aiken.
Ned didn’t smoke the night before his preliminary hearing, though, because he wanted to appear absolutely clean and sober before the judge. Instead, he stayed up all night—aware that, while drugs and friends could make prison tolerable, he’d do anything he could to spend as little time as possible there.
Many members of the Sons of Satan didn’t like it when Mehelnechuk called a meeting. Normally, Sons of Satan meetings were rollicking parties with booze, drugs, and call girls; but when Mehelnechuk called one, it was always something important and it was best to arrive sober.
They filed into “church” somberly. Many were surprised to see Dave “Apache” Carter in full colors.
Less than a year earlier, Mehelnechuk had made an example out of him. Many in the organization thought that Carter was using way too much coke, and when he came to his brothers for help with a $46,000 debt he owed his Italian suppliers, Mehelnechuk was outraged. It was, he said, the responsibility of members to make money with drugs, not to lose it. He had already banned the use of cocaine and methamphetamines among club members and prospects. But the capper for Mehelnechuk was that Carter came into the clubhouse, begging like some junkie. The boss kicked him out of the club, took his bike, took his colors, and made him get his member’s tattoo covered over. Where the smiling skull in the top hat once adorned his skinny bicep, there was now just a dark blue circle the size of a crabapple.
But he didn’t kick Carter out entirely. In order to keep the peace and maintain cordial business relations, Mehelnechuk paid the Italians from the club’s coffers. After deducting the $11,000 Carter’s bike sold for, the disgraced former member still owed the Martinsville Sons of Satan $35,000. Mehelnechuk wanted him to work it off, so he reduced Carter’s rank to hangaround, and said he’d make him perform a variety of tasks for the club until his debt was paid.
There was a problem with that plan. Carter only had one discernable talent. He killed people. Before the war with the Lawbreakers, Carter had proven to be a poor drug salesman, often snorting more than he sold. And at a skinny five-foot-seven, he had no value when it came to intimidating witnesses or debtors. Charmless, he failed as a pimp. He was too stupid to be a reliable arsonist and too disorganized to be a decent fence. But he was a remorseless bastard who could kill someone and forget about it the moment he was paid.
That talent had came in very handy during the war with the Lawbreakers. Of the twenty-one Lawbreakers and associates who had been killed, all but five were shot by Carter. And that didn’t include the two guys he shot just because he thought they looked like Lawbreakers.
Killing, he said, was easy. Get a clean weapon from the club. Find the guy. Get him alone and shoot him. Drop the weapon. Walk away. Get paid.
As surprising as his presence in full colors was, it was even more startling for many to see him take a place at the table alongside Mehelnechuk and the empty seat reserved for Bouchard.
After some initial pleasantries, Mehelnechuk left the room.
His old friend, Mike “Sloppy” Rose, took over. A few months earlier, Rose had been an old-school biker—long hair, beard, body covered in tats, always in filthy jeans. But since Mehelnechuk had become president, Rose had cleaned up. The beard was gone, his hair was short and neat, and he often wore casual but clean clothes that covered most of his ink. He got to the point. “Gentlemen,” he said. “We are at war.”
Rose improvised from the script Mehelnechuk had written for him. An avid reader on the subject of war and strategy, Mehelnechuk was an admirer of Pope Urban II—who taught that the only way to get men to go to war was to make the war seem like a necessary cause against an evil enemy. They had to be convinced not only that they were in danger, but that the enemy was worthy of nothing less than extermination. Of course, psychos like Dave Carter needed no convincing.
“Our very existence as a club is at stake,” Rose told them. “In the last few days, two of our associates have been murdered, and a bomb exploded in Peterson’s Harley-Davidson.”
There was an audible gasp in the room.
“Don’t worry, nobody was hurt. But any of us could have been there—any one of us could have been dead.”
Rose had their full attention now.
“There is a force out there,” he continued. “It is a force that is hell bent on destroying us; on murdering you, you, you, you, and you.” He pointed into the crowd. “They want us dead,” he said. “And they will not rest until you . . . are . . . dead—all of you. . . . But we’re not gonna let that happen!”
The crowd roared. Carter laughed.
Later on, they broke into smaller teams. The prices were circulated. Each member or prospect would be paid ten thousand for the murder of a High Rollers member, five thousand for a High Rollers prospect, and two thousand for a High Rollers associate.
Ned waited quietly and politely as the other hearings dragged on before his name was called. He was disturbed not to see Mehelnechuk, or Steve, or anyone else he knew in the courtroom, but his defense lawyer told him that everything would be cool.
The judge was a mean-looking old bastard who looked very much like he wanted to be somewhere else.
When Ned’s case came up, the opposing lawyers informed the judge what had happened. Acting on an anonymous tip, a police task force had descended on Cowan’s Fine Dining. There they saw Ivan Mehelnechuk, Steve Schultz, and another man they later identified as Edward Aiken standing on the sidewalk. One officer saw Aiken throw an object into the hedge, recovered it, and determined it was methamphetamine.
Before the prosecution could even speak, the judge interrupted. “This officer, Darrell Tucker, is he the same Darrell Tucker who was indicted for planting evidence in the Vontae Williams case?”
“I’ll have to check my notes,” said the prosecutor, as he glanced through some papers. “Yes, yes he is.”
“And he, Tucker, is the only person who saw the accused in possession of the controlled substance?”
“Yes.”
“And he was acting on an anonymous tip?”
“Yes.”
“Can you read to me exactly what his statement says?” the judge asked. “Just the part about when he saw the accused with the substance in question.”
“Yes, here it is.” The prosecutor then read from Tucker’s statement: “. . . ‘at that point, I exited the car and, as I approached Mr. Mehelnechuk, Mr. Schultz, and Mr. Aiken, Mr. Aiken then appeared to throw an object into the shrubbery’ . . .”
“And Tucker was the only witness to this act?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re telling me, Ms. Prosecutor, that the only person who ‘appeared’ to see Mr. Aiken throw the controlled substance is a police officer who has been indicted previously for planting evidence?”
“He was not convicted.”
“As I recall, he plea bargained down to a lesser charge,” the judge snapped. “And he was the only one who saw this, despite the fact that it allegedly happened on a Saturday night at one of the most popular restaurants in the city’s entertainment district?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, I just don’t think you have enough evidence to bring this case to trial,” the judge said. “The controlled substance could have been anyone’s. Case dismissed.”
Ned’s defense attorney looked him in the face and grinned broadly. “See, I told you everything would be all right.”
On their way to school, two twelve-year-old boys decided to take the long way to school. Seventh-graders new to New Aberdeen Middle School, they had already been targeted as nerds and subjected to a great deal of bullying. Security was pretty tight at the schoolyard, but they knew better than to take the obvious way home.
They walked through an alley they had walked through many times before, when Brian
noticed a refrigerator box on its side. Of course, both boys said they were too old to play in a refrigerator box, but they just couldn’t resist poking it.
Sunil, the bolder of the two, looked inside first. He fell to the ground and started gagging. Shaking, Brian peered into the box. Then he ran all the way home.
When he got home, he told his mom what he had seen and she didn’t believe him. The police did. They eventually recovered the body of Daniel “Bamm Bamm” Johansson from the alley. It was nude, bound, and every inch of it except for the face was covered in burns the coroner later determined were inflicted by acetylene torches.
Lara called Clegg. She was working on one of those stories that she knew would be e-mailed around the country once it was published. Two kids tried to rob a warehouse, and they would have gotten away with it, but two other guys were trying to rob it the same night. The kids saw the older guys and fled. Their only means of escape was to climb an eight-foot fence with barbed wire. One made it over; the other didn’t. The one who didn’t—a sixteen-year-old named Rodney Morgason who had a number of prior arrests—managed to make it over the crest, but got his shoe caught in the wire on the top of the fence. Unable to extricate his foot from his high-top sneaker, he was still hanging there a half-hour later when the police arrived.
It was one of those stupid criminal stories people loved. She knew it would make its way around the world just minutes after it was published. Since she had grown quite fond of Clegg, Lara thought it would be nice to let him come up with some kind of witty quote that would make him—at least momentarily—world famous.
But he wasn’t up to it.
One of the things Lara liked about Clegg was that he was always upbeat, always ready for a laugh. It didn’t matter how horrifying, how heartbreaking the situation was, Clegg could always say something that would either make her laugh or at least want to. But he couldn’t today, despite the fact she had served him up a situation that was just begging for a punchline.
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 14