Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle

by Jerry Langton

  None was actually prepared for what came next. First, it was a couple of the Devil’s Own. They walked out of the clubhouse, turned around, held their hands above their heads, and upstretched their middle fingers. Their jackets now bore the smiling skull emblem. The rockers read “Sons of Satan” and “New Hamburg.” After them, a deluge of newly minted Sons of Satan came pouring onto the streets.

  The last of them were the former Lawbreakers. Their jackets now read “Sons of Satan” and “Springfield West.” The Death Dealers had already been christened “Springfield East.” As the former Lawbreakers joined in the festivities with their new brothers, one of the cops yelled, “So much for Lawbreaker pride.” But it was an impotent volley. As far as the bikers were concerned, the Lawbreakers were extinct in Springfield, in Martinsville, and everywhere else within a day’s ride. And those outside the new arrangement were enemies, former brothers or not.

  Lara was running late from yoga at the rec center. She had a meeting at one o’clock to discuss (actually, she thought, to defend) how much time she was spending on the Mehelnechuk project. She knew she had to look professional, so she took her time getting ready in the change room.

  Satisfied she looked the part, Lara bounded from the rec center and into the parking lot. The first thing she saw was the Jeep that the big man who was following her drove. It was parked—illegally—right in front of the door. She stared at it, transfixed. Because of the deeply tinted windows, she couldn’t tell if there was anyone inside. She was about to go back into the rec center (meeting be damned!), when she felt a searing pain in her arm. Then another in her left ear. Then she felt very dizzy and fell face first onto the pavement and lost consciousness. She didn’t see the masked gunman behind her throw his handgun down and run behind the rec center into a waiting car. She didn’t see the Jeep speed away. She didn’t see anything.

  Curt Steele, an assistant district attorney, was exhausted after a two-hour meeting with Carter. He was shocked at how many people Carter had killed, but was even more astonished by what a horrible little shit he was. Steele had dealt with psychopaths and sociopaths before, but had never seen anyone like this. Nobody, he had thought until he met Carter, could be absolutely devoid of empathy.

  Carter told him all about his job as an assassin in Martinsville and now Springfield. He talked about it in the same way an ordinary person might talk about their job. He bragged about the pay and fringe benefits, and he complained about the hours, his bosses, and all the traveling. Carter droned on about killing as though it were some far more mundane task. He felt no guilt, no empathy for his victims. He clearly knew what he was doing was against the law and that he’d been caught—but Steele could detect no indication that Carter believed what he was doing was actually wrong. He looked at murder as another person might look at data entry or trash collection.

  But Steele knew that offering him a deal wouldn’t anger too many people, no matter how egregious the man was or how many people he’d killed. The murders Carter committed rid the streets of killers, drug dealers, and thieves, and the information he had could give Steele the ability to arrest two hundred, maybe three hundred, other criminals, and put a serious dent in both the bikers and the Italian mafia. Besides, a good defense attorney could even make an insanity plea stick if Carter ever went to trial, which would defeat the purpose of prosecuting him anyway.

  If he pulled this off, Steele would be a shoo-in for district attorney, and—if he played his cards right—he could eventually be Springfield’s first black mayor.

  He thought about it all the way back to his office. He made a few phone calls to find out about Carter’s priors and his reputation. He cross-referenced Carter’s admissions with the case files he had Clegg fax over. He came out of his office four-and-a-half hours later convinced he could not only bring down the bikers in Springfield and maybe Martinsville, but he could also make a dent in the local Italian mafia. All it would cost is a deal with a mass murderer, who’d probably end up in a mental home anyway.

  He phoned his wife and told her to call the babysitter. They were going to Le Perigourdine, her favorite restaurant. They had something to celebrate.

  Steele climbed into his Lexus, and pushed the start button. He appreciated the hum of the engine more than usual. After fighting with city traffic, he relaxed a little more on the highway. Very few people in the tidy little town of Herman’s Ford worked in the city, so traffic on the road there was always light. That’s why he was so surprised that an old pickup with two men was tailgating him. Must be some farmers, he thought; they always drive like nuts. His first thought was to step on the accelerator and blow them away, but he didn’t want any moving violations on his record. Unbecoming for a future mayor. Instead, he memorized the license plate. Wouldn’t they be surprised, he laughed to himself, when they realized who they were dealing with.

  So he patiently waited for them to pass. Just after they both took the off-ramp onto deserted Westcott Road, they did start to pass. As they drew even with him, the young man in the passenger seat rolled down his window as though he had something to say. Steele ignored them. He wasn’t looking when the man pulled out the shotgun. He pumped two shots into Steele’s driver’s side window.

  The Lexus spun out. The pickup stopped and reversed, almost ramming the Lexus. The shooter got out of the truck. He tried the car’s door, but it was locked. He could see Steele inside, still moving. He sent two more volleys of hot metal into Steele’s head. He stopped moving.

  The gunman wiped the shotgun down with his shirt, threw it in the Lexus’s window, and raced back to the pickup. It made a U-turn and sped away, back toward the city.

  Chapter 16

  “Please tell me it wasn’t you,” Mehelnechuk said to Bouchard. He was calm, but Bouchard could hear the anger seething out of every syllable.

  “My hands were tied,” he responded.

  “What?”

  “My cop told me that Carter had spilled everything to the ADA,” Bouchard said. “It was either kill him, or we’d all go to prison.”

  “We’d all go to prison,” Mehelnechuk mocked him in a sing-song voice. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, Carter was prepared to tell them everything.”

  “Carter, right, Carter,” Mehelnechuk said. “The drug-addicted mass murderer who no jury in the world would ever believe.”

  “But he knew everything.”

  “Everything? Really? Who did you tell Carter to kill? Who did I tell Carter to kill?”

  “Well, our men did . . .”

  “Yeah, and they keep their mouths shut and take their punishment or they die,” Mehelnechuk scolded. “That’s the plan, that’s always been the plan, it’s the only way that works.”

  “But Carter wasn’t keeping his mouth shut, and the cops had him under special security.”

  “We could always get to him,” Mehelnechuk commented and paused. “Let me get this straight. Do you really think the way to silence Carter was to kill the one listening to him?”

  “Well, if you kill anyone who listens, people won’t be lining up to listen anymore,” Bouchard said. “Remember, two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”

  That answer enraged Mehelnechuk, who was now shouting. “You stupid fuck! What do you think this is—Colombia?” he screamed. “There are gangs we are not prepared to take on and one of them is the U.S. government.”

  “But we do that all the time.”

  “No, no we don’t.” Mehelnechuk shook his head and spoke much more softly. “We break the laws and the cops chase us around. It’s an equilibrium. We stay ahead of them and we stay safe—they arrest some of our small fry, it makes them feel good about themselves, and then we recruit more small fry. That’s the way it works—business as usual.”

  He paused, then continued. “But you have upset that equilibrium,” he continued. “You just declared war on the wrong people.”

  “I really don’t think so.”

  “Then you are fucked, and I
won’t let you take me with you.”

  “We’ll just wait and see what happens.”

  “Yeah,” Mehelnechuk’s tone lightened. “But I gotta hand it to you with how you handled the Italians. It all went according to plan.”

  “Well, that was mostly your doing.”

  “Thanks, you are too kind,” Mehelnechuk smiled. “Which reminds me, did you take care of the other thing?”

  “I sent a team out.”

  Scott Kreig had always considered himself a man of unusually good fortune. He was nice looking and popular. He was a good friend of Mehelnechuk’s in high school and even rode around with him for a while, but quit before either of them got too serious. Instead, he took over his father’s real estate business when the old man retired. Kreig was adept at the business, and became a millionaire before he was twenty-five.

  He met an older South American man who wanted to buy a house in Springfield for his niece. The older man, Santiago Barajas, introduced Kreig not just to his niece, Yolanda Martinez, but to cocaine. The girl he liked right away and he eventually married her. Things were different with cocaine. He tried it a couple of times and enjoyed the high, but couldn’t stand the hangover. But he did realize he could make a lot more money selling cocaine than he could selling houses. Barajas agreed.

  And Kreig had it much easier than most. He had one trustworthy supplier—hell, he was family—and one reliable client. He never sold directly to Mehelnechuk, but always to somebody in the Sons, who he knew worked for him. Right now, his contact was Rose.

  Kreig didn’t even have to keep the books; that was Yolanda’s job. In fact, Kreig did little other than look good and collect money. He had a kid who picked up a package at the airport once a month, another kid who gave it to Rose, and a third who brought a knapsack full of cash back to the house. And as long as he kept the real estate business running, nobody suspected a thing. Tall, blond, and given to wearing impeccable, but utterly conservative suits, he certainly didn’t look like a drug dealer. He even drove a Volvo.

  And it was in that Volvo that he decided to take Yolanda on a surprise trip. She’d been working hard lately, so Scott decided to treat her with a long weekend at Cambridge Hall, a spa resort just outside Springfield.

  After dinner, they were returning to their suite when they saw the housekeeper’s pushcart in front of their door. Yolanda said something angrily in Spanish, and the housekeeper apologized and pushed her cart out of the way. Still a little bit drunk, the Kreigs stepped into the suite. As soon as Scott shut the door behind them, two men in ski masks emerged from the suite’s bathroom and attacked them. The first grabbed Yolanda, threw her to the ground, held her down, and prevented her from screaming. The other man knocked Scott to the ground and pumped six shots from a silenced handgun into his chest. As soon as he threw the gun to the ground, they both ran.

  Yolanda, shocked, crawled over to Scott on her hands and knees. He was dead.

  Ordinarily, Clegg would be irritated by a trip to the hospital. The antiseptic smell, the groans of the elderly, and stink of the food were a part of his job he could do without. But he was there to see Lara, so things were different. The overwhelming feeling he had was concern. He didn’t want to betray any emotion as he sat in the chair beside Lara’s hospital bed. But he couldn’t help himself. “You know this wouldn’t have happened if I was here,” he said. “And I’ll catch the bastard who did this.”

  “I know you will,” Lara said softly. “And it’s not because you’re a good cop.”

  “What?”

  “It’s because I’m a good reporter,” she said. “The license plate number is TAC 820.”

  He laughed and wrote it down.

  It didn’t take that long to track down Lara’s shooter. Clegg visited the owner of the Jeep registered to the TAC 820 license plate, who said it had been stolen and had a copy of the police report to prove it. He told Clegg who he thought had stolen it—a neighbor who lived down the road and had always admired the Jeep. He ran with a tough crowd, might even have been a biker. Clegg asked for a more thorough description. The description matched what Lara had told him, so he called some of the cops he trusted the most and told them there was someone dangerous he absolutely had to take down.

  Thirty minutes later, eight cops had surrounded 4915 Walmer Road. It was a run-down little shack just out of town. It had boarded-up windows and the remains of a chain-link fence. There was an old washing machine rusting away in the back yard. And there was a stolen Jeep parked in the doorless garage. Clegg figured the man inside was bold but not very smart. He considered that a dangerous combination.

  He sent Detective Jimmy Lewis to go look into the front window. Lewis signaled that the man was inside and he trained his gun on him. Clegg kicked the door down, and he and another cop came rushing in with their guns drawn.

  The man inside, Preston Wilhite, ran for the back door. Two cops had already come bursting through it. Preston put his hands up. Clegg grabbed them and put them in cuffs. He read him his rights as he led him to the car.

  Back in the interrogation room, it didn’t take Wilhite long to crack. Once presented with a charge of first-degree murder, he quickly admitted that he was involved, but was not the triggerman. After very little convincing, he gave up the name Pat Duncan.

  He didn’t know his address, but it didn’t matter. Clegg was well aware of who Duncan was. A former Lawbreaker, he changed sides after he saw how quickly the Sons of Satan routed the Lawbreakers in Martinsville and how his fellow Springfield Lawbreakers brothers did nothing to help their brothers in the big city.

  Many considered Duncan something of an up-and-comer in the organization, but it was clear that the Death Dealers were forcing him to go through a period of hazing, perhaps penance, before they would allow him any real responsibility. It made sense to Clegg that Duncan would have to kill for the club to gain membership—and that a high-profile daytime job would definitely cement the deal.

  Clegg left Wilhite to chill in his cell, and collected some of his friends to bring down Duncan. They arrived at his innocuous but valuable suburban house in unmarked cars. After it was established that he wasn’t home, they waited in their cars. When a silver Honda pulled up in front of the house, Lewis ran the plates. It was registered to a sixty-two-year-old woman named Deborah Duncan. “It’s him,” Lewis said.

  Just as Duncan was getting out of his car, the cops stormed him with weapons drawn, laser sights converging in a red spot on his chest. He dropped his briefcase and put his hands in the air. When they got to the car, Lewis arrested Duncan, and Clegg grabbed the briefcase.

  Back at the station, they couldn’t get Duncan to talk. But it didn’t matter too much because Wilhite had already ratted him out. The best he could hope for would be a plea bargain down to aggravated assault. And Wilhite wasn’t smart enough to ask for a deal, so he was going down for a few years at least as well.

  But what puzzled Clegg was Duncan’s briefcase. Inside, it was stuffed with spreadsheets. Pages and pages of spreadsheets, no less than two-and-half inches thick. Each of them had sets of numbers set against names. It was obvious that it listed dates against amounts and dollars. He didn’t know exactly what he had, but he knew he had to keep it.

  Clegg didn’t like Steele’s replacement as district attorney, Murray Hamilton. He knew him from when he was in private practice and considered him something of a soulless ambulance chaser. That he was appointed to take Steele’s place after the murder was a great disappointment. Steele could be a bit of a pain with his ego and pomposity, but he put bad guys behind bars. He was thorough and fearless. Clegg didn’t think that Hamilton would have quite the same ethical discipline.

  Although it was unorthodox, Clegg asked Hamilton to meet him in the interrogation room. He sat in the small, windowless, pea-green cell. He wasn’t bothered by its harsh fluorescent lights and their prominent hiss. He had grown too used to them to notice.

  Hamilton arrived with a few associates, but they stayed
outside the interrogation room. Clegg closed the door.

  “Nice place you got here,” Hamilton began. “A few plants, some drapes, could be something.”

  “C’mon, man,” Clegg laughed. “You’re a prosecutor now, Murray; you’re not on the criminals’ side any more.”

  “Oh, I forgot, I’m dealing with Mike Clegg—judge, jury, and from what I hear, executioner, of Springfield’s east side,” Hamilton said. “Why don’t we just get down to business?”

  “Fine with me,” Clegg answered. “With this Carter asshole, we got them all dead to rights.”

  “Uhhhhh, about that John . . ..” Hamilton said. “I can’t do it, old buddy.”

  Clegg exploded. “Whaddaya mean, you can’t do it?” he shouted at him. “ We have an assassin—the assassin—who is ready to give up everybody in the Sons and half the Italian mafia and you’re telling him ‘no thank you?’”

  “But that’s exactly the problem, John,” Hamilton responded calmly. “You have to think about what he’ll look like in court—what we have is an admitted serial murderer who is also a lifelong drug addict and petty thief. He’s not exactly the type juries identify with.”

  “You’re really saying no, you don’t want his testimony to bring down most, if not all of the organized crime in this city?”

  “Nobody will believe him, John. They just won’t and you know it—and we don’t want to be seen as letting him get away with murder.”

  Clegg sighed and ran his hand over his short, bristly hair. “They’ve gotten to you Murray.”

  Hamilton grinned. “What do you mean, John?”

  “What I mean is that they have gotten to you,” Clegg said monotonously, without looking at Hamilton. “Either they have paid you off, or they’ve told you that you’ll end up like Steele—who was twice the man you’ll ever be.”

  “Those are some pretty severe accusations,” Hamilton said. “You’re lucky nobody else is in here to hear them or I’d have your ass.”