Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle

by Jerry Langton

  Five miles down the road, Carter saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror. He put on his right turn signal and slowed down by the side of the road. The cops followed him. Just as the Audi was almost stopped, he floored it. The troopers turned on their siren and pursued him. They called for help.

  Carter kept accelerating, but misjudged the distance between him and a semi. The right front bumper of the Audi just touched the back of the trailer, but it was enough to send the car spinning. It came to rest in a low part of the median strip.

  Carter managed to get out of the car and run a few steps before one of the troopers tackled him.

  Bouchard always felt self-conscious about eating with Mehelnechuk. He just seemed so critical of his eating and drinking habits, and it made Bouchard feel uncouth, like some kind of barbarian compared to the genteel boss. Mehelnechuk never really said anything, but Bouchard could tell from his face and actions. The worst part was that he tended to finish his meal long before Mehelnechuk had even made a dent in his. It made Bouchard feel awkward.

  But this was business. It was a victory dinner of sorts. Ever since Bouchard’s men had bombed the Lawbreakers’ Springfield headquarters, they had been absolutely silent. No shootings, no fires, no threats, no nothing. Mehelnechuk could tell things were working from the little signs as well. More and more often, Sons of Satan were wearing their colors in public, and Bouchard had even stopped wearing his body armor when he was out in public. And at least two recalcitrant dealers that he knew of had returned to the fold on a no-questions-asked basis.

  Mehelnechuk was just getting into his veal chop and Bouchard was starting on his first post-dinner beer when a prospect who had been waiting outside approached the table. He spoke to Bouchard. “There’s a fellow outside who says he needs to talk with you.”

  Bouchard laughed. “Do you know him?”

  “No, little guy, looks like a nobody,” said the prospect. “But he says he has a message for you from Mr. Wentworth and that you would know what that means.”

  Bouchard looked at Mehelnechuk. Mehelnechuk nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “Okay, pat him down and bring him to the table,” Bouchard said. “And make sure he knows you are beside him at all times.”

  The prospect brought the young man to the table and stood beside him as he sat next to Bouchard. Bouchard recognized him from the wedding of DeVolo’s niece. He nodded at Mehelnechuk.

  “What can I do for you, young man?”

  “My boss, he wants to meet you.”

  “Mr. Wentworth?”

  “Yeah, at the usual spot.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow night, about seven—there will be dinner.”

  “Well, you better make a lot of spaghetti and meatballs because I’m coming with a lot of my friends.”

  “That was expected.”

  “Tell him we’ll be there. Now let me eat my dinner in peace.”

  After the prospect escorted the little man out, Mehelnechuk couldn’t help but smile. Bouchard laughed out loud.

  Clegg wasn’t the sort of cop who’d play hunches very often, but he thought he’d try a little something out on the prisoner that the uniforms had brought in. He’d been in the interrogation room with Carter for about forty-five minutes, and was getting nowhere. Clegg could tell the little guy was still tweaking. He was heavily addicted to cocaine or methamphetamine and had been away from it for the three days he was in jail. He shook and twitched and yammered on and on. But still he kept a cap on his mouth when it came to anything valuable, telling Clegg next to nothing.

  So Clegg took out his wild card. He showed Carter Lara’s newspaper article that quoted the unidentified biker about the war. Carter’s lips moved as he read it, then he started laughing mirthlessly about half way through. He looked Clegg in the eye and said: “How do you like that? After everything I’ve done for them, they’re going to kill me.”

  Clegg tried very hard not to look astonished. “Yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes,” he said. “Tough bunch of boys in a rough business.”

  “Tell me about it,” Carter said. “And if that ’s how they want to play it, they can go fuck themselves—what kind of deal will you give me?”

  “Depends on what you have, and what you’ve done.”

  “I’ve got it all, and I’ve done it all,” Carter grinned broadly but without any detectable emotion. “I got people you never heard of doing shit you don’t know about.”

  “Lemme get the prosecutor on the phone,” Clegg told him. “I think we can work something out.”

  Ned was driving back to Hamner when his phone rang. It was Mehelnechuk. “Is this a fresh phone?” he asked. Ned assured him it was. “Okay, then pull over. We need to talk.”

  Ned did as he was told.

  “How do you like it there in Hamner?”

  Ned told him he liked it a lot, especially since Stockton had shown up.

  “Good,” he answered. “How would you like to stay there?”

  “Of course,” he said. “But I don’t know what Steve needs from me.” He could hear Mehelnechuk laugh. “Steve? Remember, he works for me . . . actually, he works for somebody who works for somebody who works for me. I’ll take care of him.”

  Ned laughed. “So what did you have in mind?”

  “Well, I’m thinking about setting up another club up there in Hamner, just clean-cut guys like you—short hair, no beards, no jackets, no patches, no tats, just a bunch of normal-looking guys,” Mehelnechuk said. “You’d do the same sort of thing that you’re doing now, just attract a whole lot less attention to yourselves—hell, you could even give up the Harley—and you’d be my top guy.”

  Now Ned was smiling. “That sounds exactly like something I’d really like.”

  “Yeah, I thought so,” said Mehelnechuk. “Let’s get together later this week and we’ll talk—I come in to Springfield most Sundays to take my folks to church. Maybe we can hook up afterwards?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  After he hung up, Ned raced back to Hamner. When he arrived, he hugged and kissed Daniela. Liliya giggled. Daniela found herself laughing. She said something in their native language and Liliya nodded and left the room.

  “What’s gotten into you?” she asked Ned. “This is not how you usually greet employees.”

  He smiled broadly. “Well, everything has changed,” he said. “I don’t work for Steve anymore and I’m about to get very rich. How does that sound?”

  “It sounds great.” Daniela was still confused.

  “It’s better than great. Look, why don’t you and I go out to dinner tonight to celebrate?” he said.

  She turned her head but kept looking at him. “Sure.”

  At dinner that night, Ned explained to her about Kelli, about how Mehelnechuk wanted him to be president of a new kind of club. They talked, they ate, they drank, and they flirted. He brought up her vacation again and suggested they go to North Beach for a few days. By the time she woke up in Ned’s house, they had already decided she’d move in. It was, she thought to herself, perhaps the happiest she had ever been.

  Ever since she had taken the crime reporter job, Lara’s parents had been reminding her constantly to be careful. They’d call her, e-mail her, text her, and even write her letters telling her to be careful. At first, she thought it was sweet, but then it really got on her nerves. It wasn’t that she didn’t think they had faith in her, just that they never got more specific than “be careful.”

  She was actually very careful and never had felt that her job put her in any danger. Most of the lowlifes she dealt with were more stupid than frightening, and she almost always ended up talking to them after they’d been caught. Sitting in a cell or an interrogation room, they tended to drop their tough-guy personas and look to her for understanding to tell their side of the story. None of them were guilty in their stories, just great guys who were tricked, made a mistake, or were bedeviled by mistaken identity or someone out to get them.

&nbs
p; It helped to have Clegg around too. Not only was he the biggest guy around, he was plenty tough. All he had to do was show up and things quieted down. Over the time they had been working together, they had developed not just a trust, but a friendship. She felt a lot safer with him in town.

  But things had changed over the last couple of days. Just after Clegg had left to take part in a joint-district task force project in Martinsville, Lara started working on a story about Mehelnechuk. She went around to all his old haunts—his high school, the fast-food restaurant he had worked at for two weeks, his friends, his lawyer, and the businesses she had heard that he owned—and nobody wanted to talk. It was like there was an invisible wall of silence that emerged whenever she mentioned his name.

  She also noticed that a certain type of man always seemed to be around, staring at her, no matter where she went. Because she was so pretty, Lara was used to being stared at, but not in this way. These men weren’t hoping to meet her. They were keeping an eye on her.

  Four days after she started the research on the Mehelnechuk story, Lara was driving home from the paper when she noticed a Jeep trailing her. She turned towards the highway, he turned with her. She turned back into town. He followed. At a stoplight, she studied his face. He was a big guy with long hair. He was wearing sunglasses and had a Fu Manchu style moustache. Just before she parked at her condo, she memorized the license plate.

  When she got out of the car, she was surprised to find herself running for the door. Once inside, she was shocked to find her laptop missing. Nothing else was wrong with the place, but the laptop was gone.

  She called the police and asked for Clegg, even though she knew he was in Martinsville.

  The sound was thunderous. Bouchard had collected twenty-five of the meanest-looking bikers he could, put them in full colors, and rode them down Hartford Street, Martinsville’s main drag. In open defiance of the law, not one of them was wearing a helmet.

  They stopped in front of the Wentworth Hotel, dismounted, and walked in the front door. Bouchard was in the lead. They went into the grand ballroom. DeVolo and his men had already taken their places on one side of the table. Suits, ties, gold, and hairspray faced off against leather, denim, patches, and beards.

  But the atmosphere was cordial. DeVolo stood up and shook hands with Bouchard. If the press were invited, that would have been the money shot, the one that made the front pages. But of course they weren’t. This was business: the business of organized crime.

  Over the evening, many topics were discussed. The Italians would supply the Sons and their vassals, and nobody else. The High Rollers would be disbanded. The Sons would have their pick of the best of them. The others would be run off. Both sides agreed that coke must be sold at $50,000 a kilo. The penalty for selling for less would be death. The Sons would continue to supply labor to the Italians for jobs like debt collection, witness intimidation, and protection rackets. The Sons would buy drugs from no other suppliers. And Scott Kreig would die.

  Bouchard had a problem with the last item on the agenda. He knew Kreig was an old high school friend of Mehelnechuk’s, and that he had stood by the Sons when the Italians and their Lawbreaker stooges were at war with them. Bouchard excused himself from the table.

  “This is most unprecedented,” said DeVolo.

  “Calm down, Mario,” said Bouchard. “I just gotta take a leak.” He headed toward the men’s room. Two bikers started to come with him, but he waved them off.

  When he finally got into the men’s room, he checked to see that it was clear. It was. He dialed Mehelnechuk.

  “Yeah?” was his answer.

  “It’s going exactly as you said it would, except for one thing,” Bouchard said. Then he paused. “They want us to kill Scott.”

  “Yeah? That’s not too surprising. He is their biggest competition in town.”

  “But isn’t he your friend?”

  “Aren’t the Lawbreakers their friends?”

  Bouchard laughed. “Okay, cool, I was just checking.”

  “Just do what I told you.”

  Ned sat through Ukrainian Orthodox mass with Mehelnechuk and his octogenarian mother and father. It was mostly in Ukrainian, so he just tried to mimic what everyone else did. Afterwards, they went back to Mehelnechuk’s mom’s place for cabbage rolls and coffee. She spoke about Ivan’s success as a plumbing supply salesman (which was his official job), and how proud she was of him. And before she would allow them to go, she made Ivan promise to take care of his young friend and keep him out of trouble.

  As they drove up to Johnny Reb’s in Mehelnechuk’s black Jaguar, Ned asked him why he went to Martinsville, why he just didn’t set up shop in Springfield, or move his operation back there once he was successful. Mehelnechuk just smiled and tersely said, “You don’t shit where you live.” Ned suspected the real answer was more complex.

  When they got into the bar, they walked straight into the office. There were already five young men inside it. They were all clean-cut, with short hair and no obvious tattoos or jewelry. They wore clean jeans or khakis with collared shirts or sweaters. Ned noticed one held a Nike baseball cap in his right hand. He was presumably polite enough to know to take his hat off indoors.

  “This is your team, Ned,” Mehelenechuk said as he waved his arm at the young men. “These are the Managers.”

  “The Managers?”

  “Yeah, here’s how it’s going to go down: you get rid of all the biker gear, dress like an ordinary businessman, do your taxes, buy a house, all that shit,” he said. “You run things in Hamner exactly as you have been, but never get your hands dirty. Someone needs a beating—call a biker. Someone wants drugs or a hooker—call a biker. They work for you now.”

  “Kind of like how a prospect works for a member?”

  “No, the bikers aren’t your slaves. They are your employees. It’s gonna work more like how, say, the Death Dealers represent the Sons’ interests in Springfield,” Mehelnechuk corrected him. “I expect you will treat them with the respect they deserve, and that means money as well.”

  “I get it.”

  “And be smart about who you ask to do what,” he said. “And you only take orders from me or one of my closest associates.”

  “Like who?”

  “Bouchard, Vandersloot, Rose, those kinds of guys.”

  “Okay.”

  “And one other thing, you kick up to me now, not Steve.”

  “Thirty percent?”

  “Yup.”

  “Does Steve know?”

  “I have a feeling you’d like to tell him.”

  Ned laughed. “And these guys?”

  “They do what you do, but in other cities,” Mehelnechuk told him. “Peter here runs Ransberry. Dominic runs Clarksborough. You get the picture—work the details out among yourselves.”

  “Can I keep Stockton?”

  “I expected you would. He fits the mold.”

  “Why are we doing this? I mean, I’m not saying I don’t like it. But why are we adding yet another gang?”

  “What we are adding is another layer,” Mehelnechuk spoke as though he was talking to a five-year-old. “Suppose I need a job done. I tell Rose, he tells you, you tell one of Steve’s men who hires some skel.”

  “I see, the skel gets caught and he can only rat on Steve’s guy. If Steve’s guy rats, he can only nail me . . .”

  “And you were specifically chosen not just because you are a good earner and because you clean up well, but because you know that the wages of exposing your superiors to prosecution is death.”

  Ned laughed weakly.

  Clegg had been called up to Martinsville for a reason. According to at least a few informants, the Martinsville Sons of Satan were planning something huge. Clegg had been assigned to the group of officers from various forces who were watching the Sons of Satan clubhouse.

  It was mostly boring, sitting in cars or on the curb watching the clubhouse. Now and then, another cop Clegg knew would come and talk with him
, but they didn’t have much new to say. Once, a prospect he arrested a year ago in Springfield dropped by to say “hi,” but wouldn’t say anything of value. He basically just wanted to show Clegg that he was back on the streets and in good standing with the club.

  Clegg was tired and bored, actually yawning, when he first heard it. All the officers fell silent and looked at one another. It was a low rumbling, not unlike what you’d expect a tsunami or coming storm to sound like. And it got louder, and louder, and louder.

  When the first of the bikers finally turned the corner, Clegg could make out some of the Sons’ biggest brass. There was Bouchard, Vandersloot, and Rose. He was surprised to see Mehelnechuk in the very front—a spot the bikers usually only allow the most high-ranking member to ride—and he made a mental note to talk to Lara when he got back to Springfield.

  Behind the bosses rode the lesser Sons members. Some were from Springfield and other cities. Next came the prospects and members from puppet clubs like the Death Dealers. Behind them were members of clubs that Clegg knew the Sons had been actively recruiting. He saw patches for the Devil’s Own, the Black Diamonds, the Huns, the One-Eyed Jacks, and several others. And then, at the very end, Clegg saw something he never could have predicted. Behind the flotsam and jetsam of the biker world were no less than three dozen Lawbreakers, some of whom he recognized from Springfield. At the front of them was Moe Gannon.

  While most of the bikers were jubilant, the Lawbreakers—especially the ones from Springfield—filed into the Sons of Satan clubhouse pretending it was no big deal. One wide-eyed young cop bumped Clegg on the arm and said, “There must be every biker for a thousand miles in there.” All Clegg could do was nod.

  For about forty-five minutes, the dozen or so cops and the few reporters who showed up buzzed with anticipation. The consensus was that this was a giant biker summit that would at best establish a peace among them and at worst align them against the Italians.