Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle

by Jerry Langton

  Daniela sighed again. “No, we are from a country you have never heard of.”

  “Try me.”

  “Moldova.”

  “You made that up.”

  Daniela laughed. “No, is real; Moldova is tiny country squished between Romania and Ukraine,” she told him. “You would like it; it has beaches, mountains, lots of pretty girls, and everyone sounds like Dracula, even babies.”

  “If it’s so nice, what are you doing here?”

  “There is no money in Moldova and men there—especially army and police—can be very cruel,” she said. “Many Moldavan women leave for better life; every once in a while a man in fancy car comes through town and tells all the girls they can get jobs as models and actresses in America, or Canada, or Australia. The younger ones believe them; the older ones go anyway.”

  “Maybe that’s why Moldovan men are cruel, all the decent-looking women have left.”

  “Don’t flirt with me, is bad for business.”

  Ned laughed. “So tell me about the business.”

  “Okay, men pay five bucks to come in after seven (before that is free), they buy cheap beer for high prices, also have terrible food for much money,” she said. “This is accomplished by naked girls dancing on stage and in back room.”

  “Sounds simple.”

  “But there are complications. Entry to VIP room costs bottle of cheap champagne we charge $100 for.”

  “What happens in the VIP room?”

  “Usually nothing, it depends on the girl—most of them are what you people call ‘escorts,’ you know?” She stuck her tongue in her left cheek and moved her right hand in a pantomime of oral sex.

  “Like Liliya?”

  Daniela sighed again. “Yes, poor Liliya. She has been doing nothing else since she was thirteen, no high school, no nothing.”

  “Boy, things sure must be tough in Moldova.”

  “In Moldova?” Daniela gave him a sharp look. “In Moldova, she was good girl, but her parents gave her to a man who took her to Montreal to teach her how be stripper and prostitute.”

  “At thirteen?”

  “Yes, such papers are very easy to obtain there—Montreal is like Bangkok, they say—and once she is legal in Canada, that makes her legal here, in U.S.A.—it has long been this way.”

  “So how old is she now?”

  “She says seventeen; her papers say twenty-three,” Daniela paused as Sharpe and Liliya came back into the room. “But what is really important is that I get bookkeeping done.” And she went back to her work.

  Sharpe grabbed himself a beer and sat down at the bar. “You ever dance, Daniela?”

  “You could not afford it, big boy.”

  Lara arrived at the Eggs O’Lent diner and was stopped by a pair of big cops. Clegg waved her through, but the cops made her photographer stay outside.

  The bodies had been removed, but Clegg had Lara wait in the doorway so that they wouldn’t contaminate any evidence. “They told me a biker had been shot,” she said.

  “One full-patch Lawbreaker and two hangarounds,” he said. “And another victim: all dead.”

  “Wow! Who was the other guy?”

  “Mario Espinosa, runs a sporting goods shop in the Dover Mall,” he told her. “Don’t put this in that paper, but he had a severe gambling problem.”

  “Is that why he’s dead?”

  “Quite the opposite. Nobody ever kills a debtor: you might break his legs, but you don’t kill him. If you do, how do you get your money?”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Besides, you see that briefcase there? It has what I estimate to be about fifteen thousand in cash in it.”

  “So, Espinosa was paying his debt.”

  “It would appear that he was paying it or part of it, yes.”

  “So the killer didn’t want that to happen.”

  “Not so fast . . . maybe the killer didn’t know it was happening. Your sharp reporter’s mind noticed that the money is still here, right?”

  “Right, so someone just wanted to kill some Lawbreakers—and this guy just happened to be with them.”

  Clegg didn’t say anything, but touched his right index finger to his nose. Then he took her outside, away from the other cops. “One other thing you may be interested in knowing—y’know the bottom rocker?”

  “The patch on the jacket that says which chapter the biker is from?”

  “Yeah, this guy’s didn’t say Springfield.”

  “So he was from out of town?”

  “There you go jumping to conclusions again, I didn’t say that.”

  “So what did it say?”

  “High Rollers.”

  “What are the High Rollers?”

  “Everybody’s got a theory, Mason—our organized crime guy—says the Italians are recruiting Lawbreakers and other miscreants to fight the Sons and their puppet gangs.”

  “So who’s the killer? One of the Death Dealers?”

  “You tell me.”

  Lara was about to ask another question when Monica Grillo, the reporter from the local TV station showed up. Clegg greeted her and told Lara: “Think about what I said, and I’ll have my press person e-mail you all the details about names and ages of the victims and all that.”

  “Any witnesses I can talk to?”

  “All the material witnesses have been taken to the shop to be debriefed. The only one left is that guy; he didn’t see the shooting, but he did see the alleged killer exit the building—you can have him, we’re done with him.” Clegg put his index finger to his right temple and pulled an imaginary trigger.

  Lara rushed up to the short, bald man who was chattering to the two cops who were trying to keep onlookers back. She introduced herself as the crime reporter from the Silhouette, and he stopped bothering the cops and started talking non-stop to her. He began talking about all kinds of things, not much of it related to the shootings. Finally, she stopped him and asked if he could describe the man he saw leave the restaurant.

  “Oh yeah, oh yeah, no problem,” he said. “As soon as I heard the shots—they went pop, pop, pop, like firecrackers—I ran over, and I saw the guy come out just as plain as day and walk around the corner.”

  “Did you follow him?”

  “No, I started to look inside the diner and, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t move. I was just too stunned.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Well, somebody must have called 9-1-1, because the cops got here first, then the ambulance guys—I told them the same thing I told you.”

  “So you saw the man who left; could you describe him?”

  “He was a white guy, maybe forty, skinny, short with short, dark hair.”

  “What was he wearing?

  “Jeans, one of those hooded sweatshirts the kids all wear—dark blue or black—but there were no pictures or writing on it, just plain.”

  “The victims were associated with a local motorcycle gang . . .”

  “Oh, no, no, no, this guy was no biker, he was real small—like five-foot-four and skinny—and he had short hair, no beard, no moustache, no leather jacket.”

  “Okay, okay, can you tell me anything else about him?”

  “Yeah, yeah, he just kinda looked . . . looked like a nobody.”

  Chapter 14

  Feeney looked at the man he’d just had sex with and sighed. He knew how handsome he was. And with his money, he was pretty sure he could have any gay man and most of the straight women in Springfield. But Ronnie was a big, hairy blob. He had bad teeth, and sometimes he even smelled bad. Feeney wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but even he was surprised at how stupid, how unworldly, how happy not to pursue knowledge Ronnie was. But he couldn’t help but be totally attracted to the big man. There was something indefinable about him. Feeney left it at that. A more intellectually curious man may have delved deeper into the cause of the attraction, but Feeney didn’t want to know. Instead, he looked at the rolls of fat on his stomach, his sweaty, sagging bitch tit
s and listened to his loud, arrhythmic open-mouth snoring and wanted to have sex with him again.

  They met through letsgettogether.com, the dating website Steve set up for Feeney to help launder his drug money. When Joel’s friend Paul showed up to set up the site, Feeney made sure he set up a gay page on the site because “that’s where the money is.”

  And that’s how he met Ronnie. The first person to reply to Feeney’s own ad, Ronnie possessed a number of liabilities when it came to starting a relationship. Not only was he obese, but he was also a part-time criminal who lived with his mother. Ronnie worked nights as a motel concierge, and he was leafing through a lot of gay porn on the motel’s PC until he came across an ad for letsgettogether.com. Two days later, he was rolling around in bed with Feeney.

  When Ronnie finally woke up, Feeney took him out for breakfast.

  At the diner, Ronnie asked: “How long you been in the Sons?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Ronnie laughed. “I knew a guy who pretended he was in the Sons, then they caught up with him—and he still can’t walk right. I seen your tats—they wouldn’t let anyone get away with those—you’re the real thing.”

  “So, what are you, a cop?”

  Ronnie looked startled, then sheepishly answered. “Actually, I tried to be, but I had some trouble with my record and the written exams. I grew up wanting to be a cop, but it didn’t work out.”

  “So what do you do now?”

  “My real job is as a night desk man at the Shangri-La. Of course, I sell a little weed there and take a few bucks from the whores for looking the other way.”

  “Oh, so you’re an outlaw, are you?” Feeney laughed. “Who do you work with?”

  “A variety of people.”

  “I’m getting the feeling you pay retail for weed and sell it for about the same.”

  Ronnie hung his head and giggled. “Yeah, and I’d like that to change.”

  Feeney put his head in his hands and sighed. He knew he was in deep now. If Ronnie told anyone about their tryst, the results could be harsh, even fatal. Having a prison bitch is one thing, but having a boyfriend outside was another entirely.

  That meant he had to get rid of Ronnie—or keep him happy.

  Ned was sitting in his office at Buster’s watching Daniela work when Liliya, unasked, brought him a beer and a plate of french fries. She smiled shyly and hurried out of the office. Ned had tried to get Liliya off the stage by teaching her how to be a waitress, but Daniela convinced him it would be bad for business.

  “She likes you,” Daniela said without looking at him.

  “I think she likes everybody.”

  “No, she likes almost nobody; but she does like you, really.”

  “Wonderful, maybe we can adopt her.”

  Daniela laughed. “You should be nice to her; she makes us a lot of money.”

  “I’ll tell you what would make us a lot of money,” he said. “Putting you up on that stage and letting you shake that thing—every guy who comes in here asks me why you aren’t up on stage.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” she said. She couldn’t tell from his face where the conversation was going. So she sighed and told him the story. “I used to dance, but my visa ran out, and I was denied another one,” she told him.

  “So you’re an illegal immigrant?”

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “And that limits what I can do.”

  “Officially, you can’t do anything.”

  “Officially, yes, but when the immigration people come, they check every dancer very carefully, but they don’t bother with the employees who have their clothes on,” she said. “I’m just another bartender. I look like American girl, I work for cash, I stay off books, I walk free.”

  “And they check Liliya?”

  “Every time, but she has papers—they are totally inaccurate, but they are official.”

  There were a few moments of awkward silence as Ned contemplated what she had said. “I have a feeling this is a situation you find suits you,” he said. “That maybe you kind of forgot to renew your visa, so that this exact situation might just come around.”

  Daniela did her best to look innocent. “I’m not that smart,” she said.

  They both laughed.

  Realizing that she’d better change the subject, she said; “Your friend, Mr. Mike, you know he just sits in the bar and takes beers from the fridge all day.”

  “Good,” he said. “Better he sits here getting drunk all day than he gets busy trying to help run our business.”

  Daniela grinned. “We have a saying back in Moldova—today he steals beer, tomorrow he steals money.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “We should.”

  Bouchard was extremely happy to see Mike Rose. “What’s up, Sloppy? Tough day at the office?”

  “A good day, my friend, we got two girls down.”

  “Members?”

  “One prospect, one hangaround.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, before everything went black, these two decided to talk, you know, negotiate for a better deal.”

  “Isn’t that nice; what did they say?”

  “Pretty much what you said they would: The High Rollers started out with Gannon’s Lawbreakers and DeVolo, then added some bar owners, all the unattached girls in the state and a rogue’s gallery of other weirdoes and oddballs.”

  “So who were these girls?”

  “You remember the Black Vipers?”

  “Yeah,” Bouchard laughed. “Frank Lotti’s gang—used to meet in his mom’s basement and specialized in boosting kids’ Nintendos from minivans . . . they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower.”

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t take much manpower to kill,” Rose reminded him. “Just before it all went down, the hangaround decided to try to make things a little better for himself by telling us a little bit more about the prospect—including the fact that he was the one responsible for the unpleasantness at the baseball game.”

  “Casey?” Bouchard was referring to Casey Setterstrom, who ran a very successful independent drug distribution center from his comic book shop, and had been killed at a baseball game only three weeks after forming an alliance with the Sons. Setterstrom had just finished watching his son play a little league game and was headed for the rest-room a few steps from the field, when a gunman shot him twice and ran into a van which promptly sped away from the scene.

  “Yep,” said Rose.

  “Did they say anything else?”

  “Nah, mostly just crying.”

  Bouchard laughed as he went to the safe to get Rose’s money. “How many people are you sharing this with?”

  “One member and two prospects, who will be paid accordingly.”

  After dismissing Rose, Bouchard called Feeney into his office. “I have an assignment befitting someone of your talents,” he said. “You heard of Freddie McAfee?”

  “Sure,” Feeney responded, “isn’t he with the Springfield Lawbreakers? Big dude, maybe three hundred pounds, dangerous.”

  “That’s the man, but he’s not in Springfield right now. A friend of ours told me he’s gone to Webster’s Falls to recruit the local bikers there to come over to the High Rollers.”

  “Webster’s Falls? That’s at least six hundred miles away,” Feeney said. “Don’t we have some kind of presence there?”

  “We did, and all six of them are inside because they leaned on one of their whores too hard.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, one of them told her his cut of her gross went from twenty percent to forty percent, so she went to the cops,” Bouchard said. “After she finished talking, they all wound up inside—we sent some guys down there, but we can’t spare ’em anymore because of the current unpleasantness, so now we just have a few prospects trying to keep it alive.”

  “So McAfee’s down there stirring up shit?”

  “Uh-huh. The local girls—they call themselves th
e Devil’s Own—have been on the fence for a while,” Bouchard said. “Ivan’s been there a couple of times to wine and dine their president, but he got sent up, so we’re not even sure who’s in charge there anymore.”

  “So why doesn’t Ivan go back down?”

  Bouchard glared at him. “You don’t question what Ivan does,” he snapped. “Besides, with God knows who in charge of the Devil’s Own, we thought it would better to get rid of the High Rollers option than to compete with them.”

  “So that’s where I come in . . .”

  “Yep, do it whatever way you want—it should be easy, nobody knows you down there—but you better get started right away, before McAfee convinces them to join.”

  “Can I fly?”

  “Better to drive.”

  “Can I bring a friend?”

  “None of my guys, we need them all.”

  “No, no.”

  “Don’t bring a woman.”

  “No, just a friend.”

  The little guy had been sitting in the back of the bar since noon. He was on his second beer four hours later, and the waitress was getting more than a little frustrated with him. Her mood changed when she saw the bikers come in.

  There were two distinct rules of thought about bikers at Chauncey’s. Two of the older waitresses refused to serve them because they were lousy, ass-pinching outlaws; the rest of them loved them because they ordered big and they tipped big. In the worst end of a town that had almost no money, the bikers were a much-desired source of income.

  Maura Swiminer was one of them. She didn’t mind a few slaps on the butt in exchange for what the bikers gave her. Besides, it was dead that night. The only other customers were the old couple who sipped coffee, read newspapers, and always left a few quarters for a tip, and the little weird guy who had taken a couple of hours to finish two draft beers. Even at an outrageous-for-Springfield twenty percent, his tip would be less than two bucks.

  So she rushed to the bikers. She took their order. One of them smacked her ass—business as usual. She returned to their table with a mess of wings and fries and beer. Just as they were digging in, the little guy in the back stood up. At first, it looked like he was getting ready to go. But then he approached the bikers’ table, as though he had something to say. They looked at him, confused. The stranger pulled a sawed-off pump-action shotgun from his coat and killed two of the three of them. The other one, the only full patch, grabbed Maura by the neck and by the thighs and held her in front of him like a shield.