Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle

by Jerry Langton

  But then he thought about the odds. If Chuck and Bob knew that the Sons of Satan wanted him dead, they would certainly have made a move by now. And they didn’t seem smart or sophisticated enough to pull something like this off. If they wanted to kill him, they wouldn’t put him in a car with a GPS and a thick manila envelope and send him so far across the country; they’d just whack him in the head with a crowbar. He actually couldn’t help laughing to himself as he pictured it—Chuck laying on the beating and Bob going through his pockets.

  Ned wanted to get the hell out of the neighborhood. Even the plan he’d made to legitimize the trip wasn’t relieving his anxiety. If he couldn’t trust Chuck and Bob, then he sure as hell couldn’t trust the people at the other end. But a life of drudgery was no life. Live free or die.

  He quickly looked around. The street was deserted. He picked up the envelope and tore off a strip. Cash. Lots of it. Ned threw the transmission into “drive.” A couple of blocks later, he saw exactly where he was headed. The building looked a lot like all the others in the area—low and broad with that bit of ornate flair you don’t see in buildings made after a certain era. Unlike the others, it had all of its doors and windows intact. But that’s not what made it stand out. While its neighbors were surrounded by trash, piles of tires or abandoned vehicles, the area around this building was cleaned up. The parking lot sported a number of luxury cars and SUVs, all of them modified to some degree and some of them painted in outrageous colors.

  Ned parked in an open spot between a bright purple Cadillac SUV and a snow-white Corvette. He got out of the car and noticed that he wasn’t alone. A young man who looked big with a shaven head and a mustache sat in a small, late-model BMW with an aftermarket spoiler on the trunk. Ned nodded at him. The man did not acknowledge him; instead, he pulled out a cell phone and started to make a call.

  Ned approached the door, which was solid steel, black and windowless. Ned noticed one of those cheap, white, boxy video cameras mounted about ten feet up. It was pointed directly at the space in front of the door. He looked directly at it, smiled and resisted the urge to wave. There was an intercom system beside the door. Ned pressed the “speak” button and said, “Delivery.”

  Ned heard a long buzz and the lock mechanism activated. He pulled the door open and walked in. Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness inside, someone threw a cloth sack over his head and pulled him to the ground. He was rolled on his stomach and his hands cuffed behind his back. A hand grabbed the collar of his sweatshirt and Ned was pulled roughly to his feet. Orders were barked in a language Ned didn’t know and the sack was secured around his neck. One of the men grabbed him by his left bicep and guided him deeper into the building. The men began talking to each other and one kept giggling. Ned identified at least four distinct voices. He heard a door open. The man leading him stepped down. “Careful,” a heavily accented voice said to Ned. “Stairs.”

  Although he knew he was going down the steps, it was hard to negotiate them while blindfolded. Ned took each step cautiously and tenuously, but stumbled twice. Every time he slipped, the laughing guy giggled.

  Down the stairs, Ned was guided a few more steps and then roughly pushed down into an armchair. He heard some talking back and forth, then he felt the sack being loosened. As soon as the sack was removed, Ned was momentarily blinded by a light.

  When his eyes finally adjusted, he could see he was in a windowless basement. The only source of light was a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling no more than eighteen inches from his face. The cement walls were full of cracks and had black marks and patches of mold or lichen. It smelled dank.

  Ned was in a smelly old armchair. Directly in front of him was a massively fat man in an expensive suit. He had a wide face with a downturned, toad-like mouth. He had combed and shellacked his thinning black hair over the top of his bald head and had a wide scar on his right cheek. His smile revealed two gold teeth. As Ned continued to look at him, he saw more and more gold. Rings on just about every finger, bracelets as thick as a man’s thumb on each wrist, big cufflinks and at least four thick chains were visible before his shirt closed.

  One each side of him were two very big, very hairy men in garishly colored nylon track suits. One had a wife beater on underneath and the other was shirtless. Every square inch of them except for their heads, necks and hands looked to be covered in ornate tattoos. They both had shaved heads and goatees. Similarly dressed thugs were standing on each side of Ned’s chair. Off a few steps was a young, thinner guy who could barely contain his excitement. Ned identified him as the giggler. He turned his head around and saw another man sitting in a chair. Unlike the others, this guy had neither a beer belly nor manufactured muscles. He was small and slim and was wearing a conventional tailored suit. He was the only one who was not awash in gold and emblazoned with tattoos. When Ned caught his eye, the man in the chair nodded emotionlessly. The nod drew attention to the fact that he was holding a rather large handgun.

  Ned looked at the smiling fat man in front of him. “Who are you?” the man asked in heavily accented English.

  “I’m delivering a package from Chuck and Bob.”

  “I did not ask you that.” The tone was flat and menacing.

  Ned could feel the bile rising in his throat. His heart was pounding insistently. If they were more interested in him than the package, it was not a good sign. Realizing that too long a pause would make him look like he was hiding something, he blurted out, “I’m Eric Steadman.” It was the name the FBI had given him when he entered the witness protection program.

  “Eric Steadman. Eric Steadman from the mailroom,” the fat man said, as though considering the name deeply. “Steadman? That is a German name, no?”

  “No,” said Ned. “It’s English, my ancestors came from England I guess . . .”

  “Maybe,” said the fat man, who was now pacing and not looking at him.

  “He looks Scottish to me,” he heard a calm, lessaccented voice from the back say. “Maybe Norwegian.” That assessment chilled Ned, who was in fact mostly of Scottish origin. Could they know Steadman was not his real name? If they did, it was also likely they knew who he was. Since they spoke in English, he knew he was meant to hear them.

  The fat man said something in what Ned now took to be Russian, and one of the thugs beside him went over and lifted Ned to his feet. “Empty your pockets. Everything.”

  Ned handed over his wallet, keys, cell phone and loose change. The thug passed his wallet to the fat man, who opened it, removed a few cards and dropped the rest on the floor. He examined Ned’s driver’s license in minute detail. Then his Social Security card. After about two minutes, he smiled and shook his head. Then he said something to his men, who all laughed. “I’m something of an expert in these matters,” the fat man said to Ned. “And I have never seen such exquisite forgeries in all my life. They look so close to real that they could have fooled me in other circumstances. Tell me, Mr. Steadman, where did you get these?”

  The truth, of course, was that they were real. The FBI had given them to him with his new identity. But he couldn’t tell them who he really was. These guys might not be bikers, but they were obviously involved in organized crime. They would not take kindly to an informant who testified against his former gang and had close ties to the FBI.

  While he was deliberating, one of the thugs whacked him in the back of the head with a beefy paw. He didn’t say anything, but it was clear that he wouldn’t be allowed any more time to stall the fat man. Slightly dazed from the blow, Ned answered. “I have a guy, he’s from Thailand,” he said. “Used to make phone cards for me; then copies of credit cards.” There was some truth in that. He did know a guy from Thailand who made fake phone cards and credit cards. The Sons of Satan had made a lot of money with him.

  The fat man smiled. “Good. I shall have to meet this master craftsman, this artist,” he said. “You will introduce me.”

  Ned couldn’t help sighing with relief. That slight clue t
hat Ned might have a future outside of the room he was in led him to believe that he may just survive this meeting.

  The fat man said something in Russian and the thug beside Ned stood him up again. He lifted Ned’s sweatshirt and t-shirt over his head and said a single word to the fat man. When he was back in his chair, Ned felt the cold metal of the thin man’s gun pressing into the back of his head.

  “So, now, there remains a few awkward questions,” the fat man told Ned in a scolding voice. “The first, obviously, is who you really are.”

  Cornered, Ned knew he had to come up with something quick. If these guys had been communicating with Chuck and Bob, they knew he was a biker. They had identified him as one by the tattoo his old boss had made him get. The gun at his head insisted he did not hesitate. Ned blurted out, “My name is Jared Macnair.”

  He hadn’t made it up. There really was a Jared Macnair. Ned had heard that he was a secretary of the Sons of Satan chapter in Yuma, Arizona, until he was caught stealing thirty-five thousand dollars in club funds. With a death sentence on his head, Macnair had gone into hiding. Nobody had seen or heard from him for at least a year.

  The fat man grinned wryly. Then he nodded to the man behind Ned. The gun withdrew. The fat man took a cell phone out of his suit’s breast pocket. He pressed two keys and waited. Finally, he said, “It’s me.” Pause. “Give me details on a Jerry Macnair, a biker.” He looked at Ned during the long pause. Ned did not correct him. “Yes, okay, okay, okay . . . good . . . what does he look like?” The fat man nodded as he listened, and looked intently at Ned. “Yes, yes, blue eyes, dark hair, what? What is six-foot-two?” One of the thugs said something in Russian. Ned could make out something that sounded like “centimeter.” The fat man sized Ned up and asked the person he called about tattoos. Ned’s entire body clenched. “Okay, okay, yes, yes, it’s good, thank you.” Then he hung up. He said something to the grizzly bear-shaped man beside Ned. The man then took the handcuffs off. Ned had bet right. He knew they’d kill a rat, but they had no beef with an embezzler.

  The fat man offered his hand. “A pleasure to meet you, Macnair,” he said with a wide, satisfied grin. “I am Grigori.” Ned smiled weakly and shook his hand. The other men in the room laughed. “But I have more questions . . . why is my package open?”

  Ned stammered. “I don’t know Chuck and Bob that well . . . and I have some enemies . . .”

  “Yes, I would say that you do.”

  “. . . and I wanted to make sure I was carrying . . .”

  “Money.”

  “Yes, money. When I saw that it was money in the package, I realized it that it had to be a legitimate delivery.”

  Grigori said something to the giggler, who Ned noticed had the envelope in his hands. He answered back quickly. Grigori laughed. “So this man, this Macnair, will steal lots of money from his brothers in Sons of Satan gang, but will not steal a penny from me,” he said. “He is very smart.”

  Everyone in the room laughed, and Ned did his best to join in.

  Grigori said something in Russian, and the big man put his wallet back in order and handed it to him, along with his cell phone, keys and cash. Grigori barked out something else and the brutish young man handed Ned fifteen hundred dollars. “Okay, Macnair, you have done your job; you go back now to those two Serbian idiots and tell them to be more careful next time,” Grigori said with what seemed like sincere warmth. “And if you are asked to make this trip again, the package is never opened . . . you got that?”

  “I got that,” Ned’s voice cracked halfway through the sentence. The men in the room laughed.

  “Here, Semyon will show you out.”

  Semyon, the man Ned identified as the giggler, approached him and shook his hand. “This way,” he said, motioning over his right shoulder.

  As they walked up the stairs together, Ned could hear the men in the basement talking and laughing. He looked at Semyon. He was maybe in his late twenties, thin and full of energy. Unlike the other guys in track suits, he had not shaved his head and his face was clean-shaven. He had a few tattoos and the same fondness for gold that the other men had, but clearly had not collected nearly as much. He was smiling at Ned, which made him think Semyon expected him to say something.

  “Is this how you guys treat everybody who shows up at your door?” he asked.

  Semyon cackled like a chimpanzee. “You can’t be too careful,” he said. “We did not know you, you could be anyone . . . the Serbians . . . they are, like Grigori says, idiots. They could have sent DEA or even FBI without knowing it.”

  Ned acknowledged his statement with a snort.

  Semyon continued. “The Serbians thought you were a cop spying on them at first. Why else would a white American who is not stupid work in a mailroom?” He laughed again. “They told Grigori about you, he told them how to spot if you are cop or not, they saw your tattoo, told him about it, then he said he wanted to meet you.”

  “And this is how he meets people?”

  “Some, if he thinks he might want to work with them.”

  “Oh, so I have a future with this company?”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

  Chapter Two

  Ned sat in the driver’s seat of the Kia. He drew his hands over his hair a couple of times nervously, sighed and gave into an involuntary shudder. He remembered the man in the BMW. He turned to see if the car was occupied. Ned’s eyes locked with his watcher’s. Ned turned the key and felt a little bit calmer when he heard the engine spring to life. He pulled out of the parking lot and back onto the road. He felt like taking a different way back, but the whole area looked equally depressing and there was a strong chance he could accidentally wander into an even less pleasant neighborhood.

  His thoughts flashed back to what had just happened. He had been afraid for his life, had had a gun pointed at the back of his brain, but somehow he felt good about the whole thing. Not only was fifteen hundred bucks a decent amount of money for a weekend car trip, but the fact that he had fooled the Russians gave him a shot of confidence he had not had since he had decided to turn informant. Maybe he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life in the mailroom after all.

  He was thinking about how he could quit his job without Dave Hiltz, his FBI caseworker, going nuts, when he saw a car coming up fast behind him. At first it was maybe a half-mile away, but now it filled up his rearview mirror. It was so close behind that Ned could no longer see its headlights.

  It looked like a low-rent gangster’s car. It was a Mercedes C-class, maybe ten years old. It was painted a sort of burned-looking brown and all the chrome trim was gold-plated. The windows (even the windshield) were blacked-in, so Ned could not make out the driver’s face, or even if there was more than one person in the car.

  Ned knew he couldn’t outrun his pursuer, but he had to try to get to a more populated area. He floored the Kia. With a reluctant and wheezy whoosh, the Kia took off. Ned was not surprised to see the Mercedes make up lost ground right away. Just as Ned passed through an intersection, he saw something that surprised him. Through the windshield of the Mercedes, he could see a flashing red light. As soon as he noticed it, he heard the siren.

  Ned wasn’t sure if it was a real cop or not. It certainly didn’t look like a cop car, but he knew that cops used cars seized from drug dealers as camouflage. He pulled to the side of the road. The Mercedes pulled in behind him.

  “Driver, please put your hands on the back of your head and exit the vehicle,” a loudspeaker-assisted voice ordered. Ned complied. “Keep facing forward!” the voice commanded.

  Ned didn’t look back. He heard the car door open and close and the steps of the officer as he approached him. “Do you know why I stopped you?”

  “I went through a stop sign.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  Ned didn’t know what to say. He remained silent.

  “Yeah, uh-huh, what’s a nice boy like you doin’ here?” The plainclothes cop made a sweeping gesture
, as if to introduce Ned to the neighborhood.

  “Just passing through.”

  “Just passing though, eh? The problem with that, you see, is that I saw your car parked for almost an hour among all those Cadillacs and Lexuses over there.”

  “I was asking directions.”

  “Funny man,” the cop said. “This could have been so easy, but you just had to screw me around.” He placed a handcuff on one wrist and then the other. “Siddown here,” he said, dumping Ned on the curb. He was a big man, about forty-five years old with a bowling-pin physique in a cheap gray suit and a small, almost childish head. His skin was very dark and his hair extremely short. When he talked, Ned could see he had a big space between his two front teeth. “You mind if I search your car?”

  Ned knew there wasn’t anything incriminating in the Kia, but he didn’t want to make it easier for the cop either. “I do mind.”

  “Well, then, I’m just gonna have to impound it,” the cop said to him. “Uh-huh, gonna call a tow truck, have your shitbox taken to the pound, all at your expense, uh-huh. What do you say to that, funny man? Probably run you maybe eight hundred bucks.”

  “Okay, okay, search the car.”

  “Naw, don’t feel like it anymore,” he said. “How about you just tell me what you were doing in that building and I’ll see if I can just write you up a ticket?”

  “All you got me for is going through a stop sign.”

  “And wreckless driving and obstruction of official procedure—and if I think that’s pot I smell on you, you could be in a whole lot more trouble, uh huh.”

  “You haven’t even read me my rights yet.”