“I’m pretty sure you’ve heard ’em before,” the cop said, leading him over to the Mercedes. “C’mon, into the car, we’re going in.”
The cop showed him his badge and introduced himself as Detective Halliday, and asked Ned again what he was doing in the neighborhood, and why he had been in the building for almost an hour.
Ned smiled and stalled. He knew his Delaware plates made it unlikely that he would have just stumbled into this neighborhood. He planned on needing a story for moments like these. No point being a stranger in a strange land without a story. With the money the FBI had given him when he turned state’s witness, he had bought himself a 1956 Indian motorcycle as something of a reward. He’d found getting his much-needed replacement parts to be tough (the motorcycle was more than fifty years old, after all). There was a dealer in Detroit and he realized he could tell the cops—or anyone else he’d need to convince—that he was looking for the dealer’s shop.
Ned explained that he was there looking for parts. “They advertised on Craigslist that they had parts, and they’re really rare,” he said. “But this represents a major investment for me, so I had to check them out before I bought anything.”
“And?”
“And they have some good stuff there, it’s definitely Indian and from the era,” he said. “But nothing I need right away.”
The cop looked him up and down, obviously sizing him up and assessing him for signs of nervousness. “What if I told you those parts are probably stolen?”
Ned grinned. “I’d say I was surprised.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Aren’t stolen goods usually sold cheap?”
The cop snorted out a small laugh. “You come to a part of town that looks like this to a building that is not only not crumbling from disrepair but attracts an affluent clientele, and you don’t even smell a rat? Listen, son, do yourself a big favor and stay away from here.”
“I will, I will. So I’m free to go?”
“Just as soon as I finish writing up your ticket . . . you don’t think you can run stop signs and get away with it, do you? Things can’t be that different in Delaware.”
Ned sighed. “No, sir, they are not.”
He took his ticket from Halliday and waited to be let out of the car. As he stood up, he caught the cop’s eye again. “Seriously, I see your stupid face or your piece-of-shit car in this neighborhood again, I’ll throw your ass in jail and then take my time figuring out what’s going on with you.”
“I understand,” Ned said as he walked back to his car. After he got in, he made a big deal out of putting on his seatbelt, looking both ways and signaling as he took off. He saw Halliday get back in his car and turn the opposite way, back towards the clubhouse.
Ned took a right as the GPS instructed, and had barely straightened out when he heard his phone ring insistently. He looked at it. The display flashed “Unknown caller.” He answered.
Even before he could say hello, he heard a heavily accented voice ask, “What did you tell him?”
“What did I tell who? Who is this?”
“What did you tell the cop?”
Realizing that stalling wasn’t going to help him, Ned replied, “Nothing.”
“I’m serious, Macnair. What exactly did you tell him?”
Ned pulled over. “I told him the truth—that I was lost in this big city and stopped to ask for directions.” He heard the man on the other side laugh, then continued. “I also told him they invited me in for a drink. Since I have no criminal record, he let me go with a ticket.”
“Give the ticket to the Serbians, they will take care of it.”
Then the man hung up.
Chapter Three
Even before he arrived at work Monday morning, Ned had even more contempt for his dead-end job. His taste of adventure and money making had made him hungry for more. And it had ratcheted up his dislike for his job and the people there. When Dolores—a short, fat and smug woman who liked to laugh at things that weren’t funny and had decorated her cubicle with hundreds of photos of her cats—told him that he looked like he had “a bad case of the Mondays,” it was all he could do not to smack her.
Chuck and Bob had been avoiding him. When Ned finally cornered Chuck, all the Serbian would say was “wait until lunch.”
When lunch break finally arrived, Ned was anxious. Chuck and Bob ushered him outside. The few picnic tables on the grassy area beside the building were already filling up with chattering employees. In good weather Ned and the Serbians usually ate in the parking lot with the Mexicans, but they passed by their normal spot without stopping. Instead, they took him to a freeway on-ramp about a hundred yards away. It was so loud beside the steady stream of cars that they literally had to shout to hear one another.
“They like you!” Chuck told him. “They want you to come back! They think you are funny.”
Ned smiled. “I don’t know about that. I got stopped by a detective on the way back. I think he’s watching who goes in and out pretty good.”
“Don’t worry about cops,” Bob said.
“No, this guy seemed pretty adamant.”
“What is ‘adamant’?”
“Serious, he was serious.”
“Only because cops have no sense of humor.”
“No, this one knows what’s going on.”
“Really? I don’t even know what’s going on,” said Chuck. Then he paused. “Look, if you don’t want to work for us, that’s fine we can always . . .”
“I didn’t say that,” Ned said, hoping he hadn’t sounded too desperate. “It’s just that this cop . . .”
“Let us take care of the cops.”
Ned felt his phone vibrate. He pulled it out of his pocket. The call display indicated that he was getting a call from “Asshole.” He pointed to it. “I gotta take this,” he told Chuck and Bob and started walking away from the on-ramp.
When it was quiet enough, he answered. “Hey, Dave, waddaya want?”
“Hey now, is that any way to talk to the man who keeps you alive and out of prison?” Dave asked mockingly. “How about a ‘How was your weekend?’ or ‘How’s it going?’”
Ned grunted.
“Okay, be that way,” Dave said. “But you have got some pretty big questions to answer, my young friend.”
“Like what?”
“Like what the fuck you were doing in the middle of Detroit without telling me?”
“Well, I . . .”
“Stop right there, I don’t have time for one of your bullshit stories right now. Get your ass in here tomorrow.”
“I got work.”
“I’ll call your boss. Just get in here. If we make it three, you can have the rest of the afternoon off without you having to go back to work.”
“Thanks.”
“Whatever, but you had better have a good reason and you had better be telling the truth. If it’s anything other than someone stole your car and your wallet and drove to the Motor City, you could find yourself in a world of shit.”
“I understand. Tomorrow at three then.”
Chuck and Bob had gone back to the parking lot to eat. Ned joined them, and they talked about lots of things, none of which had anything to do with what happened in Detroit.
As one o’clock approached, people began filing back into the building at different rates. Ned trudged back in between Chuck and Bob. “I don’t see how it’s going to work out,” he told them.
“Don’t worry about the details,” Chuck said. “We will work it out.”
Ned did not actively hate Dave—and he knew that his association with the FBI had allowed him not only to beat a murder rap, but had also probably saved his life—but there were few things he hated more than visiting his watchdog. Sometimes they met at coffee shops or fast-food places, but when they had something serious to talk about, they met at his office.
Since a big part of Dave’s job involved meeting with victims, witnesses and those in the witness protection progr
am, he had a small office in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, about halfway between Wilmington and the FBI’s regional headquarters in Philadelphia. It was upstairs from an old knick-knack shop and had a sign that read “F & E Schwartz, Immigration Law.” Ned asked him about it once and Dave said it kept locals from nosing around and “justified the clientele.”
Inside, it was a stuffy, nearly windowless office cluttered with the sorts of detritus an immigration lawyer might require. Dave was behind the desk. He was a robust, red-faced man with what had once been reddish blond hair. His ruddy complexion was made worse by his habit of wearing blue shirts with white collars and cuffs and augmenting them with gold pins and cufflinks. Nearly always a size or two too small and crisply starched, his shirts seemed to be struggling to hold in his saggy neck. He turned to face Ned when he heard him enter, and Ned saw that his watery blue eyes were looking at him with a great deal of suspicion.
“How’s my favorite snitch?”
Ned just smirked. “Hey Dave.”
“You have a lot of explaining to do, little mister.”
“Do I?”
“I’d say so . . . hmm, ah, here it is . . . I get to work on Monday morning and get this.” He tossed a printout of a spreadsheet to Ned, who was now seated across the desk from him. Ned could see the name “Eric Steadman” covered in neon pink highlighter. Beside it was a charge and farther along was the place of the infraction and some other factual information, including the name “Det. Halliday.” Dave snorted, and asked “What do you have to say to that, Sonny Jim?”
Ned smiled as confidently as he could muster and shook his head. “I got a ticket.”
Dave looked as him with a face that was half condescending and half beseeching. “While I realize that running a stop sign isn’t really a federal matter,” he said to Ned mockingly, “the fact that you drove about six hundred miles through—wait, Delaware, Jersey? No, not Jersey. Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan—four states just to get one is actually what I find interesting.”
Remembering that his “looking for parts” story worked well with the cop in Detroit, he tried it again. “Y’know my bike?”
“Yeah, I know your bike,” Dave scoffed. “The one I told you not to buy because it makes you stand out? The one that makes you easily recognized and therefore vulnerable? The one I told you repeatedly not to buy? Yeah, I remember that bike.”
“Well, it needs parts.”
“Of course it does,” Dave hissed. “The damn thing’s older than Jesus.”
“Yeah, and these guys have them,” Ned softened his tone, feigning contrition. “I knew you were against the bike in the first place and would be angry if I went cross-country for parts, so I didn’t want to tell you.”
Ned looked at him questioningly.
“And not telling me could lead to the end of your eligibility for the program and perhaps even criminal charges and potentially prison time.”
Ned’s look of anxiety was genuine.
“Yeah, there are a lot of guys inside and out who’d like nothing better than to be known as the guy who killed off Ned Aiken,” Dave said gravely. “You lose our support, and you might as well put a ‘shoot me’ sign on your back.” He couldn’t help but laugh a little.
Ned sighed and said, “Understood.”
Ned had hardly gotten back to his place when he slumped down in the only chair in his one-room apartment. He really wanted to lie down in bed, but that would be too much like giving up. He took the Wendy’s burger and fries he had bought himself for dinner out of the paper bag, and absent-mindedly turned on the TV. As he was unwrapping his dinner, his phone rang. “Unknown number” flashed on the display. Ned thought about ignoring it, but eventually answered. “Hello.”
“Eric, it’s me, Chuck,” said the voice on the other side. “You eaten dinner yet?”
“I was just about to.”
“Look, we wanted to talk with you after work but when you left early we did not have a chance,” Chuck said. “We have a few important things to discuss—things that will make you very happy.”
Ned laughed. “I’m kinda busy right now.”
“No, you aren’t.”
Ned laughed for real this time. “Okay, you got me, you can buy me dinner.”
“Good, go to the Sandwich Shoppe out in Hilltop.”
Ned knew where it was. He didn’t live far away. “Right. Well, it’s better than what I have. What time?”
“We’re already here.”
It did not take Ned long to get there. It looked like any one of the thousands of Sandwich Shoppes across the States, except this one had a “Closed” sign on the door. Ned found that to be strange considering that it was probably the busiest time of day for such a restaurant, except maybe for lunch. He saw Bob and Chuck inside and tried the door. It was locked. Chuck saw him, walked over and unlocked the door.
“Hey, Eric. Come on in.” Ned noticed he locked the door behind him.
“Shouldn’t this place be open?” he asked. “There’s nothing wrong with the food, is there?”
“No, no, no, no, food is fine,” laughed Chuck. “The owner is good friend of mine, lets me use restaurant as meeting place when is necessary.”
“Won’t he lose business?”
“Entire neighborhood is nothing but Mexicans and other new immigrants—the thought of Italian sandwiches confuses them, they don’t eat here,” Chuck said. “Besides, I pay him.” Then he shouted something in Serbian and the guy behind the counter nodded with what appeared to be a great deal of resignation. “Back home, I used to work for him,” Chuck said, pointing over his shoulder at the dark and haggardly older man. “He was a mean boss—what you call asshole here, but we have worse name back home—now he works for me, and he finds I am maybe even meaner boss.” He shouted something at the man who was hurriedly making sandwiches. Ned wasn’t sure what the man said back, but he appeared to be trying to get Chuck to calm down or at least get off his back. He brought the three of them sandwiches and retreated behind the counter where he sat in a chair and read a newspaper. No matter what Chuck said about paying him, Ned could tell this guy was some pissed off at missing his dinner rush.
“Can we talk in front of him?” Ned pointed at the old man.
Chuck laughed. “Oh yeah, his English is not too good and I own him anyway.” Bob laughed too. The old guy looked up then went back to his reading.
Bob spoke first. “They like you, man. They want you to work for them.”
“I told you, it’s not gonna happen.”
“I forgot, you love the mailroom too much.”
“No, there was a cop there; he arrested me, he warned me, he knows my face.”
“A city cop? You are worried about this?” Chuck muttered something in Serbian to Bob. They both laughed. “I heard bikers were pussies, but now I know.” They laughed again. “A city cop we can take care of. It’s not like it’s the FBI.”
Ned hoped they didn’t see the minute flinch he succumbed to when they mentioned the FBI. “Wait, why am I so important that they’d hit a cop for me?”
“Don’t worry, they won’t hurt your boyfriend,” Bob laughed. “But they do want you.”
“Well, the real problem for me isn’t the cop, it’s the location. Detroit is crawling with bikers.”
“Suppose the business they wanted you to get involved with is not in Detroit or even Midwest?”
Ned was intrigued. “What is it?”
“That will become clear in time.”
“Okay, so why me?”
“That should be obvious; you do not look like a criminal, you look like young businessman—at least if we clean you up. You can go places, do things without arousing suspicion. It’s almost like police can’t see you, you are invisible to them.”
“But why me? Why not some other white guy?”
“Because you are a criminal, you have tasted the life and want some more . . . or maybe you want forty more years in the mailroom.”
Ned contemplated for a
moment. “Okay, there are complications . . .”
“There always are,” said Chuck, who was appeared to be in charge of the pair. “What do you want?”
“I’ll need a whole pack of ID, good stuff, enough to get past a cop or over the border.”
“Is not a problem. What name?”
“My real name—Jared Macnair.”
Chapter Four
The guy beside Ned stank. Not just a little, but a real, hardcore days-and-days-of-sweat-and-urine stink. That didn’t bother him as much as the incessant scratching. But he didn’t have much choice. Ned couldn’t afford his own computer, let alone an internet account, so he used the public computers at the local library at least once a week. He avoided the computers in the children’s department, dominated by screaming kids playing online games of the shoot-to-kill variety.
He used his free twenty-minute session to catch up on news of the Sons of Satan trial. His testimony had gone into the record long ago, but it was a complicated set of trials and the sheer number of defendants demanded that the process took a long time. And the savvier defense attorneys did their best to prolong it so that witnesses began to question their own memories or grow more reluctant to testify for other reasons.
Ned knew that his testimony was going to send Bouchard and Mehelnechuk—the leaders of the Sons of Satan—away for a long time. But he was surprised just how many members of the gang were already set free—or about to be—through shrewd plea bargaining or due to missing or incomplete evidence. In fact, most of the gang was out of custody and, he knew, likely to be re-forming even as he was reading about them.
Normally, he just looked at the names and faces and put them in a mental database—more, he convinced himself, for nostalgia than out of fear that the Sons of Satan would attempt to hunt him down and kill him. But then he saw a name that evoked in him an emotion he had not felt about the trial until that moment.
The name was Dario Gagliano. Dario had been the closest thing Ned had to a real friend in the Sons of Satan, but he was also the reason he turned informant. Ned still vividly recalled the altercation in which he unintentionally killed an innocent man, and Dario had helped him get rid of the body. After they were all arrested in a massive police operation, Ned realized that everyone who knew he had killed someone were all either dead or had more to lose by talking than he did. Except for Dario. Ned had run into him—drug-addled and looking like he was about to crack—when the police were interrogating them all. And he panicked. Ned knew that he could plea bargain his way into a short, tolerable prison stay if all they had on him was trafficking and conspiracy, but if Dario had sold him out or even let slip that he’d killed someone, dismembered and hidden the corpse, Ned knew he was looking at twenty years or even more. So he made a quick decision: Turn state’s evidence, and sell everyone else out for a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 26