Stealing Sturgis

by Matthew Iden

  “C’mon, Randy,” Lee said, tapping him on the arm.

  “What? I’m just asking this nice young lady if she’d feel like joining two young hunks on the ride of her life.”

  The woman’s eyes were now as pinched as her mouth. “I’ll thank you to observe the rules of this establishment while you’re here for your one night. I’ll call the management if I need to.”

  Randy stood and waved her away. “You’ve got no imagination. Don’t worry, mama. We’ll be good little boys and play by the rules. But if you change your mind, you know what room we’re in.”

  They walked to the truck and grabbed their bags. “Why did you have to do that?” Lee asked as they pulled their bags out of the back.

  “Do what?”

  “Antagonize that lady.”

  “Relax,” Randy said. “She’s probably some kind of nut, has nothing to do except grill the people who come to stay at the place.”

  “We don’t need any more attention, Randall.”

  “Hey, don’t call me that, okay? Makes me sound like some pencil-neck from school.”

  They jawed at each other as they put their bags in the room, moved the truck closer to their first-floor room, then headed over to the diner to grab a late dinner. They didn’t say much during the meal—tired, but also aware that they’d be closing in on Sturgis the next day. Finally, when a young family cleared out from the booth next to them, Lee huddled over the table and said, “You want to tell me what our plan is, besides just walking in and asking where all the movie stars are?”

  Randy cut his ham with the side of a fork and shoveled it in his mouth before replying. “What I think happens is, the Rally is a huge deal. There’s a ton of people, all these events, things going on. But even as big as it gets, people are still going to get all excited when they hear a movie star shows. And they’ll be there. They’ll want to party just like everyone else and it ain’t going to be like Hollywood where you can’t even get into a place without an engraved invitation. They’ll have to get in the beer line with the rest of us. It’s part of the attraction for them, acting like rednecks for a week.”

  “Okay, I’m with you.”

  “So, here’s those movie stars, mixing in with everyone else. Word spreads ‘Hey, Jason Ford and his girl, Becky Winters, are over at the Chuck Wagon’ or whatever. We keep our ears to the ground, head over with everyone else. We have a good time, don’t drink too much, and watch them. First night or so, we see who he’s with, see if there’s a big group of them traveling together. If so, even better.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Next night, or sometime later, we follow one of them back to where it is they’re staying. Check the place out, see when they’re coming and going, when they leave in the morning, that kind of thing.”

  They stopped as their waitress came over to fill their cups. Lee smiled his thanks and waited for her to leave. “Sounds kind of iffy. We’re counting on them going to a bar we can get to in time to tail them home.”

  Randy shrugged. “Maybe. I figured during the day we can just ask around, too, like some star-struck goof-offs. You know how people are, all too ready to tell you so-and-so stayed here, or this person loves to stay at this place when they’re at the Rally.”

  Lee looked uncomfortable. “Still sounds like a long shot.”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy, bud. It might be tough just to find them, yeah. We also got to hope they don’t have bodyguards or twenty-five assistants or a pack of groupies hanging outside their house. Hell, if we tried this in Los Angeles, we wouldn’t stand a chance.” Randy leaned forward. “But that’s why this idea is going to work. Being out of their element is the whole reason these clowns come to Sturgis in the first place. No bodyguards, no guys flashing cameras in their face. They’re tired of what’s passed for a normal day back in Hollywood. They want to act like normal people. And thank God, ’cause when they do, that’s our chance to nab them bikes.”

  Lee nodded, not looking entirely convinced.

  Randy pushed his plate away. “If nothing else, we got a week to find them. And if not them, someone else. I don’t want to go to plan B, but there’s probably a ton of Harley nuts that take their collector Hogs there to show ’em off. They’re probably worth something.”

  “I thought we were stealing off those rich movie stars because they were rich,” Lee said.

  “Anyone that can afford a thirty-thousand-dollar bike or three just to show them off at a rally ain’t that far off movie-star status themselves. Don’t worry about it, son. No man’s child is going to starve this Christmas just because we paid off your mortgage, know what I mean? All them bikes are insured anyway. Those SOBs will be back at the Harley dealer with a check in their hand before the month’s gone.”

  Lee made a face, unsatisfied.

  Randy cracked his neck, moved his head from one shoulder to the other, then slid out of the booth. “Let’s cross those bridges when we come to them. Right now, I’m about asleep on my feet.”

  Lee paid the bill and waved to the waitress as they left. The Laundromat had closed while they’d eaten and most of the light on the street was coming from the neon lights of the convenience store, where the kids were still hanging out. As Lee and Randy passed by, one of them called out, “Hey, mister, you got any cigarettes?”

  Without turning his head, Randy said, “Fuck, no,” and kept walking. Lee kept his own head down, but heard the kids bitching them out as they headed back to their room. Lee checked to make sure the truck was locked before they went into their room. The place smelled vaguely of bleach and mothballs. The prints on the curtains and the bedspreads were identical. Randy pulled back the blankets, crawled into bed, and went straight to sleep. Lee washed his face, brushed his teeth, and fell into bed, asleep within minutes.

  The next thing he knew, Randy was shaking him awake and whispering, “Lee, Lee.”

  Lee sat bolt-upright in bed, heart pounding. “What? What is it?” he said, hardly even awake. The room was pitch black.

  Randy had left his bedside and, hunkered down in a squat by the window, was peering outside. The light from the streetlamps lit his face in stripes. He watched something intently for about thirty seconds then, just as Lee was about to start in on him, came back over in a half crouch. “There’s some dudes out there, working on your bike,” he whispered. “I can hear them trying to get the chains off.”

  “What the hell?” Lee threw the sheets back. He was reaching for the phone when Randy’s hand clamped down on his.

  “No need for that, son,” Randy said. “We call the cops, they might remember us later, see what I’m saying?”

  “What, then?”

  Randy smiled in the dark. “Let’s just take care of this ourselves. Get your pants and shoes on.”

  They dressed quickly and Randy quietly unlocked the dead bolt. When he opened the door, Lee could hear the chains on his truck, not twenty feet away, clink softly. Someone whispered “Shit!” and somebody else shushed him. Randy motioned for him to circle around the left side, a few cars down. Lee nodded and moved off in a crouch, feeling like a commando. Randy moved off to the right.

  Lee slipped between a minivan and an SUV. He held on to the SUV’s bumper and peered around the taillights. There were three of them—two on the trailer, one standing on the ground at the back. The two on the trailer had caps on, and the third was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood raised. They’d gotten the tarp and bungees off, but were stuck trying to get the chains off quietly. Lee guessed they were planning to walk the bike back off the trailer, though how they thought they were going to get the ramp down without making any noise, he didn’t know.

  He looked past them, trying to spy Randy, but there was a spotlight on the roof of the motel that blinded him when he tried to look past the tow truck. As he held up his hand to block the light, he saw Randy—who must’ve circled wider than Lee had—run towards the third guy. Without making a sound, Randy cocked his fist and slammed it into the b
ack of the man’s head, all the force of his sprint behind the blow.

  The guy dropped like a sack of rocks and Randy, hardly breaking stride, jumped onto the trailer and began to beat the one trying to unlock the chains. Lee, frozen for a second at how fast everything had happened, ran towards the truck. Neither of them heard Lee coming, and as the second guy tried to maneuver around the bike, Lee wrapped his hands around the guy’s ankles and pulled as hard as he could. The guy went down, yelping as his face raked across the tailpipe of the Harley. Heart pounding, Lee yanked the guy off the trailer onto the ground. He was about to start pummeling him when he got a better look at the bloodied face. It was a teen, a young kid, really. As Lee hesitated, the kid scrambled to his feet and took off running. The first kid that Randy had punched had already stumbled off. Lee turned to see if Randy needed help.

  In the stark, yellowish light of the spotlight, Lee could see Randy had the first guy pinned. Now that Lee had a better look, it was clear he was also just a teenager. In fact, it was the same kid that had asked them for cigarettes earlier. He was trapped against the bike, his hands cradling his head while Randy rained punches on his head, face, and gut.

  “Hold on, hold on,” Lee shouted. The look on Randy’s face had him scared: he was grinning, his lips pulled back from his teeth and the breath coming in raspy heaves. Sweat was running off his face and neck, but he kept pounding away. “Randy, will you stop? It’s just a kid. It’s over.”

  Lee grabbed Randy by the belt and dragged him off the kid, who slumped down next to the bike, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. Randy kicked him one last time, then shook Lee off as he was dragged off the trailer. Chest heaving, he started to laugh.

  “You son of a bitch,” he yelled at the kid as he paced back and forth in the parking lot. “Take our bike? You asshole—we’ll break you in half.”

  Lee grabbed Randy as he tried to go after the kid again, then shoved him towards the room. “Go on, get in there. We scared ’em off. Get back in the room before you kill someone.”

  Randy shot him a look, but went in anyway. Lee turned to the kid, who was holding his face with both hands and groaning. What now? Lee thought, standing next to the truck, nauseous from the adrenaline rush trickling away. Call the cops anyway? What if they were just a couple of local kids fooling around and he and Randy had just beaten them half to death? He bent over slightly to take a look at the kid’s face and blinked at the amount of blood he saw.

  “Wait here,” he said to the kid and went back into the room. Randy had turned a light on and was shaking a cigarette out of the pack, still breathing heavily. Lee didn’t say anything as he grabbed a towel from the bathroom and went back outside. The kid had managed to crawl off the truck and was holding himself upright with one hand propped against the trailer.

  Lee said, “Here,” and handed him the towel. The kid took it without a word and limped off, moving across the parking lot in the same direction as the other two. Lee watched him go, checked the chains, then threw the tarp back over the bike. His hands shook as he tried to get the bungees tied.

  Randy raised his head, grinning at Lee as he came back in the room. He was flexing and shaking his right hand. “How about that, huh? Those assholes think they can just swipe your bike from us like we’re a bunch of dumb hicks. Man, I dropped that one punk.”

  Lee sat down on his bed, still sick to his stomach. The kid’s face had been a mess. “Randy, they were just those kids from the store. Probably not even sixteen.”

  “Screw them, Lee. They were trying to steal your bike. I got no sympathy for them. You learn quick when you try to take another man’s stuff.”

  Lee shook his head. “Yeah, but that one kid you beat on… Lord, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “Lee, what’s wrong with you? Those punks would’ve beat the hell out of you if we hadn’t taken them by surprise. How’d you like it if they’d gotten them chains undone and started wailing on you? You rather that than us teaching them a lesson?”

  “No,” Lee said. “Just wish they’d never tried.”

  Randy gave a short barking laugh. “I bet they’re wishing the same thing.”

  Lee scrubbed his face with his hands, then went into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face and neck. He felt shaky. Randy stubbed out his cigarette, exhaled the smoke through his nose, and lay back down on the bed, arms behind his head. “Man, that was a great shot I gave that guy.”

  After a minute, Randy turned out his light. Lee dried off, got into his bed, and turned towards the wall. He tried to go back to sleep, but kept seeing Randy’s face, lit like a demon’s, as he pummeled the kid, his fists falling like rain, rising and falling over and over again.

  Lee had just fallen asleep for the second time when there came an authoritative knock on the door. As loud as it was, it still took a minute for Lee to wake completely and whoever it was rapped twice more before he could put on his jeans. He opened the door and froze. Standing in front of him was a Wisconsin state trooper, one hand holding a Maglite, the other hand on his belt, ready. A squad car was parked at an angle in the parking lot, blue-and-white lights flashing, but no siren.

  “Are you Leroy Baylor?” the trooper asked. He looked past Lee’s shoulder, flicking his eyes to Lee’s every few seconds.

  “Yes, sir,” Lee said, feeling idiotic standing there in jeans and no shirt.

  “Anyone else in that room with you, sir?” the trooper asked. He was about fifty, with a hard-edged, angular face. His forearms were thick and the hands large-knuckled.

  “Yes, sir,” Lee said, turning in place. “Randy! Wake up!”

  When he heard Randy groan, he turned back to the trooper. “Is there a problem, Officer?”

  The trooper didn’t answer, instead shining the Maglite into the room, spotlighting Randy, who had swung his feet over the side of the bed and was rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. He squinted into the light. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Sir, would you mind stepping out here?” the trooper said. He wasn’t asking.

  “You mind if I put some pants on?” Randy said.

  “Randy, don’t argue with the man,” Lee said, his voice tight. “Get out here.”

  “Go ahead. Keep your hands where I can see them.” He kept the light trained on Randy until he saw him stand and get dressed. He followed Randy with the light until he was next to Lee. “Move out here, please.”

  They shuffled outside. It was still dark, though the sky was beginning to show the first glimmer of dawn. It was chilly and their breath steamed slightly. The trooper kept his distance, about four or five feet from them at all times.

  “You mind telling us what this is about?” Randy asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Is this your truck?” the trooper asked Randy.

  “It’s mine,” Lee said. “The bike and trailer, too.”

  The trooper looked at Lee, his eyes like blue mirrors. “We got a call from the night clerk, saying there was some kind of problem here about half an hour ago. Were you involved in that?”

  Lee glanced at Randy, who shrugged. Lee said, “There were a couple of kids, must’ve seen us pull in. We were tired and hit the sack early. Randy heard them trying to steal the bike—”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They had the cover off and were undoing the chains,” Randy said, his voice sarcastic. “What the hell else would they be doing?”

  “Randy,” Lee said, turning on him, then he looked back to the trooper. “It was pretty obvious, sir. They’d done what Randy said, standing on the trailer and working to get the bike free. They might’ve gotten it off if they could’ve figured the chains out.”

  The trooper nodded, listening to Lee, but with his eyes on Randy. “Then what happened?”

  “Uh, well, we wanted to scare them off. We thought by the time we called the police or the motel they might’ve walked off with the bike or vandalized it. So we, well, we snuck up on them and managed to scare them off.”
>
  “Just like that?” the trooper said, glancing back to Lee.

  “We had to hit one of them, but they scattered after that.”

  “So the pool of blood by the trailer isn’t yours?”

  Lee’s face colored. “No, sir.”

  The trooper turned to Randy. “Let’s see your hands.”

  Randy raised both hands, palms up. The trooper said, “Turn them over.” The knuckles were raw and oozing blood. Both hands were swollen; the right was bruising and had an ugly yellow-green cast to it.

  “You have your license on you?” the trooper asked Lee.

  “Yes, sir,” Lee said, patting his back pants pocket, fishing for his wallet. He pulled out his license and handed it to the officer who said, “Stay here,” and went back to his squad car.

  He returned a few minutes later and handed the license back to Lee. “All right, looks like nothing’s out of the ordinary.”

  “Out of the ordinary?” Randy said. “We’re the ones who almost got robbed and you’re running our plates?”

  “Just following procedure,” the trooper said, glancing at him, then back to Lee. “You want to report this officially?”

  Lee said, “No, sir. We don’t even know who it was. And they didn’t get anything, anyway.”

  “Where are you heading?”

  “Sturgis,” Lee said, happy to be talking about something else. “For the Rally.”

  The trooper nodded, as if expecting the answer, then looked at Randy. “Where’d you do your time?”

  Randy shook his head in mock despair. “You guys can always tell, huh? Richmond City Jail, down in Virginia. That obvious?”

  “We know a shitbird when we see one,” the trooper said, looking at him. He paused for a second, then said, “Sorry for the trouble you’ve had in our state, gentlemen. You know, one way you can make sure it doesn’t happen again is if you make sure you’re out of Wisconsin. Say, by the end of the day. Noon would be better.”

  Lee said, in all sincerity, “We were planning on it, Officer.”