Cobra Clutch

by Devlin, A. J. ;

  “If you do this for me, then you’re also saving my old man’s life. I would die before ratting you out.” Grasby nodded, his jowls jiggling with trepidation.

  “One more thing,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I need a vehicle. Untraceable. Preferably a large pickup or SUV and it has to be at least a 1998 model or later.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “It’s better you don’t know. Can you make it happen or not?”

  “Okay,” he grumbled. Grasby whipped out his mobile phone and dialed a number, staring at me while he waited for it to ring. “You know, I think I liked you better when I just wanted you dead.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The roar of the Harley-Davidson Fat Boy’s engine was deafening. Lance Dennings cut a path through the haphazardly parked vehicles outside the Russian community centre with such ease that even Wyatt from Easy Rider would have been impressed.

  “There he is!” chirped Melvin’s voice excitedly through the Bluetooth headset in my ear.

  “Way to be on the ball, Melvin.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “What?”

  “He’s parking right in front of the main entrance,” he said, in a hushed whisper.

  “I see that,” I said, peeking out from behind the Honda CR-V that I was hiding behind.

  “What now?” asked Melvin.

  “Stick to the plan. Keep eyes on that door.” Slouched in his parked Dodge Viper over a hundred feet away, Melvin had his LCD digital camera binoculars trained on the entrance to the community centre.

  “I’m not going to be able to give you much of a warning when he comes back out,” said Melvin. “And you’re going to be exposed.”

  “Nothing we can do about that now.”

  The Harley’s rumbling sputtered then slowly died as Dennings turned off the bike’s ignition and used a big boot to extend the kickstand. He removed his black half-shell helmet, which was emblazoned with a pair of silver Viking wings. Dennings tucked his helmet under his arm and strode through the front doors of the home of XCCW with more authority than a prison warden.

  I made a break for it. With Melvin’s duffel bag slung over my shoulder, I crouch-ran and zigzagged between cars as I made the fifty-foot dash to the motorcycle. I knelt beside the bike’s back tire and unzipped the bag, using the Fat Boy’s large custom frame to shield myself as best as I could from the view from the front entrance doors. I activated the GPS tracker like Melvin had shown me, then peeled the plastic covers off of the adhesive strips on the back of the device.

  “It’s on,” I said into my Bluetooth headset.

  “Okay, sit tight,” replied Melvin. The seconds that ticked by felt like minutes.

  “Come on,” I said impatiently.

  “Five more seconds.” I glanced around and saw there was still no one around in the parking lot.

  “All right, we’re good to — Jed, the door!” I sprung to my feet like Usain Bolt out of the starting blocks and took three big strides before leaping over the hood of a nearby Toyota Corolla.

  “Shit!” I exclaimed in a hushed voice.

  “What?”

  “I forgot the bag.”

  I dropped into a low plank position and looked under the Corolla to see the community centre door slowly open. The duffel bag was on the ground next to the motorcycle, and its unzipped wide mouth revealed a treasure trove of surveillance equipment within. I silently cursed myself for beings so careless. How the hell was I going to track Dennings now? Following him by car was risky and it would be easy for him to shake us on his bike if he got wise. Even worse, there was no way he’d miss the duffel bag. Seeing the surveillance equipment on the ground next to his bike would make him awfully suspicious, and Dennings and Kendricks would likely assume I was up to something — which meant my old man was as good as dead. I closed my eyes tight and tried to think of a solution, but my thoughts were interrupted when I heard the clip-clop sound of high-heeled boots on pavement.

  “Nice,” cooed Melvin, in my ear.

  I stole a look through the Corolla’s windows and saw a muscular, broad-shouldered Amazon woman dressed in pink latex wrestling gear strut through the community centre’s front doors. Relief swept over me. Dennings was still inside.

  “What’s she doing?” asked Melvin.

  “Who cares,” I said, looking at the surveillance device still clutched in my hand. “Is the GPS working?”

  “Yep. Got your location right here on my laptop.”

  The woman strutted over to a nearby Nissan Sentra, leaned in the driver’s side and retrieved a makeup bag. “She’s going back in,” I said.

  “How the fuck do you know that?” snapped Melvin.

  “Because lady wrestlers tend to sweat off a lot of makeup during their matches and need to constantly reapply it.” The woman wrestler popped open a compact and added an abundance of lip liner and eye shadow while walking briskly past the motorcycle and the duffel bag without a second glance.

  “Look at the guns on her, Jed.”

  “Stay focused, bub.”

  “I am, man. But come on. Just think of the hand jobs she could give with arms like that.”

  “You really are a skeevy little douche, you know that?”

  “Yeah, well you’re just an axe and a flannel shirt away from being a real-life Paul Bunyan you overgrown son-of-a-bitch.” I silently promised myself that if I made it out of this mess alive I’d get a haircut and a shave.

  “All clear,” said Melvin.

  I hurried back to the Harley and proceeded to plant the GPS receiver underneath one of the saddlebags, in the narrow space between the bottom of the leather pouch and the bike’s twin chrome exhaust pipes. I zipped up the duffel bag, slung it back over my shoulder, and worked my way through the maze of parked cars until I reached Melvin’s Dodge Viper.

  “So what now?” he asked.

  I grabbed the extra pair of LCD digital camera binoculars from the backseat and collimated them on the entrance.

  “We wait.”

  “What do you think this Grasby cat is telling him?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s working.”

  Three minutes later the door swung violently open and Lance Dennings stormed out of the community centre. His barrel chest was heaving and he looked out of breath.

  “Why’s he sucking wind so bad?” asked Melvin.

  Dennings was clutching his motorcycle helmet in his right hand. I looked through the binoculars and grimaced when I saw the stains on the Viking wings.

  “Probably for the same reason that his helmet is covered in blood.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  I raced through the halls of the community centre until I reached the arts and crafts room. The place looked like a tornado had ripped through it. Dennings had left a path of destruction littered with overturned desks, crushed paper-mache masks and broken and bloodied bodies on the floor.

  I found Dylan first. He was unconscious and looked like he had taken a hit from the motorcycle helmet square in the face. His clear plastic face shield had split in two, and the impact had re-broken his nose and turned it into a bloody and pulpy mess. I took the mask off of the kid and made sure that he was breathing through his mouth before moving onto the others.

  Both of Grasby’s muscle head enforcers were writhing on the ground. The bigger meathead had his right arm bent at an unnatural angle while his partner was rocking back and forth in the fetal position clutching his ribs. They were both conscious and there wasn’t much I could do for them, so I kept searching the room until I found Bert Grasby underneath a rolling chalkboard that had been cracked and overturned.

  “Grasby,” I said, pulling the chalkboard off of him. “You okay?” Grasby spit out some blood. A tooth came with it.

  �
�Do I fucking look okay?”

  “What happened?” I helped Grasby to his feet and he steadied himself against a wall.

  “The guy fucking snapped.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I told him exactly what you said to. He asked me if I had any idea where you were headed and I told him no. Then he just flew into a fucking psycho rage and started kicking the shit out of all of us.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? Look at me. Look at my boys. Fuck you, Ounstead. You can take your apology and shove it up your goddamn ass.”

  “The plan worked, Grasby. I was able to plant a tracer on his bike. Now I can track Dennings back to the rest of the Steel Gods and my father.”

  Grasby glared at me, his eyes still burning with anger. “I want to amend our agreement,” he hissed.

  “How?”

  “First, promise me you’ll kill each and every one of those motherfuckers.”

  “They’ll get what’s coming to them.”

  “Second, I want to renegotiate the specific terms we set.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Grasby told me what he wanted. I didn’t like it. Not one bit. However, the guy had kept his part of the bargain and taken a brutal and undeserved beating for it.

  “Deal,” I said finally. “Now what about that vehicle?”

  FORTY

  I called Melvin on my way to the impound lot. He left the Russian community centre a couple of minutes after Lance Dennings had, with instructions to follow the Harley-Davidson motorcycle from an out-of-sight distance using only the GPS tracker.

  “What happened back there?” asked Melvin.

  “Dennings went postal. Beat the hell out of Grasby and his entourage.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess I’ve really gotten under their skin.”

  “I can relate.”

  “Where is Dennings now?”

  “Looks like he’s headed to North Van.”

  That gave me pause. The city of North Vancouver was an upscale and urban waterfront municipality. Not exactly the kind of place I had in mind when I considered possible locations the Steel Gods were keeping my old man captive. Then again, maybe Dennings wasn’t rendezvousing with the rest of his crew just yet. I felt a stab of fear in my chest as I considered the possibility that Dennings might not lead me to the rest of the Steel Gods and my father at all, but it was fleeting. Dennings was not only Kendricks’ right-hand man, he was also the one who killed Johnny and would be facing a lifetime jail sentence if the cops got their hands on the murder weapon. There was no way he would miss the meet.

  “Stay on him, but remain out-of-sight,” I said. “If and when he enters a building, see if you can get close enough to pick something up with one of those parabolic microphones.”

  “That’s one of the gadgets I don’t know how to work yet,” whined Melvin.

  “Then it’s a good thing you packed the instructions, isn’t it?”

  I hung up and exited the Burrard Street Bridge. I followed Pacific Boulevard as it wrapped around False Creek, the short inlet that separated downtown from the rest of the city. I drove past the colossal geodesic dome that was home to Science World, and the structure’s evening lights enveloped the silver sphere in a golden spider-webbed pattern. The illuminated downtown skyline shimmered in the distance, and I could see the city’s brilliant colours dancing across the dark waterway until I turned onto Industrial Avenue and followed the road to the impound lot.

  Buster’s Towing had been an institution around Vancouver for over fifty years. The company had long been contracted by the city, and was so efficient that I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t had to pay a visit to their impound lot after parking illegally. I drove past the lot, and although I knew it was open twenty-four hours, it looked as if it had closed up shop for the night.

  I parked a block away on a nearby side street. I grabbed a pair of thin leather gloves and the Ziplock bag containing the knife Dennings used to kill Johnny out of the glove box and hoofed it back to the lot. I let myself in through the front gate, which had been left unchained. The SUV was waiting for me by the portable office, just like Grasby said it would be. I didn’t know who he had contacted or why I was picking it up from an impound lot, but Grasby assured me that the vehicle couldn’t be traced back to either of us and that was good enough for me. I slipped on the gloves and approached my new ride. The vehicle’s bulky frame and rusted, dark green paint showed its age, and I made the Jeep Grand Cherokee for mid-aughts, as per my request. The keys were on the right front tire and when I started it up the rumbling of the old-school engine reverberated through the quiet lot like a subwoofer blasting a rap song in church.

  I pulled into traffic and checked my watch. 12:47 AM. I had to move fast. I drove back the way I came then turned onto Pacific Boulevard and followed it straight into Yaletown. The stylish street in front of Declan’s condo was teeming with nightlife, and I had to give the Cherokee’s horn several blasts and receive even more flipped middle fingers before I was able to get close enough to the building to park. I left the Jeep in a handicapped spot and hurried inside, tearing through the residence until I found the canvas bag of munitions that Declan had brought to my house after the drive-by shooting.

  I sorted through the bag until I found what I was looking for: a Smith & Wesson .22 caliber J-frame handgun with ankle holster, a Ruger .44 Magnum Super Redhawk Alaskan double-action revolver with a fluted cylinder, and an all black 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun with a synthetic stock. I didn’t pick these guns by coincidence — they were the ones Declan had shown me how to use over the years on camping trips. Unlike my old man, my cousin was not a fan of gun ranges, especially since most of his weapons were unregistered and had not exactly been procured in a legal manner. I knew for certain that the three guns I had selected were clean pieces that could not be traced back to Declan in any way. I cinched my leather gloves on my hands, then took the small bottle of firearms lubricant and the clean cloth that were in the bottom of the bag and proceeded to spray and wipe down all three guns, removing any oil and fingerprints that may have been on them.

  My phone chimed. I had one new text. My heart pounded in my chest. They were early. I wasn’t ready yet. I needed more time. I held my breath as I checked the message. I exhaled forcefully when I saw it was from Melvin. The text message read:

  “He drove to remote residence on Burrard Inlet in N. Van. House with HUGE detached garage. Very isolated. Driveway filled with motorcycles. No visual on Frank. Will keep you posted. Don’t call. Can’t talk cuz I’m in bushes. Again! Asshole.”

  I texted back “Roger” and stopped for a moment to think. Dennings had to have regrouped with the Steel Gods. And the conspicuously large detached garage sounded exactly like the type of building that could house a metal-art workshop. Which meant my father had to be somewhere at that location.

  A wave of doubt suddenly swept over me. Was I doing the right thing by excluding the cops? I didn’t have a choice at first — I simply couldn’t risk calling Kendricks’ bluff in case he actually had sources inside the department. But that was before I knew exactly where to find the man who killed Johnny Mamba and had a probable location of my father’s whereabouts.

  I brought up the redial list on my phone. My thumb hovered over Rya’s number. And hovered. And hovered some more. I couldn’t do it. Although it seemed likely, I was not one-hundred percent sure that my pop was being held at that location. If the VPD ERT team burst in there and took down only some of the Steel Gods and found no hostage, then my old man was history. Besides, I had a plan. And I still thought it could work.

  I took the remaining guns, ammunition, knives, and Kevlar vests out of the canvas bag and placed them on Declan’s coffee table. I took off my jacket and strapped on a Kevlar vest, then covered it with one of the black windbreakers that
Declan had left in the bag. I quickly inspected and then loaded the .22, the .44 Magnum, and Mossberg shotgun. Satisfied, I double-checked that the safeties on each of the guns were on, then strapped the holstered .22 to my ankle and placed the Magnum and shotgun back in the canvas bag. I wrapped the Ziplocked-bagged murder weapon that had killed Johnny in the gun cleaning cloth and put it inside the bag as well. Finally, I tossed extra ammo and a ten-inch hunting knife with a sheathed blade inside, marvelling at the miniature arsenal, and realizing there was a hell of a lot about my cousin I still didn’t know. I decided that if I got through this nightmare he was going to start sharing some IRA stories whether he wanted to or not.

  I slung the bag over my shoulder and ran back to the Jeep. I ignored some drunken yuppies across the street yelling at me for parking in a handicapped spot, loaded my gear into the truck, then slid behind the wheel of the Jeep Cherokee, and peeled out down the road. I crisscrossed through the downtown streets, making my way toward the North Vancouver location where the GPS had tracked Lance Dennings. My phone rang. I tapped the Bluetooth headset in my ear. It was Melvin.

  “They’re on the move,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “South.”

  “Toward the city?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Near their clubhouse. I just made it back to my car. I’m still tracking them.”

  “Did you see my pop?”

  “Yes! They loaded him into a black van and took off.”

  He was still alive. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to revel in the good news. “How did he look?”

  “Roughed up. But that didn’t stop him from kicking one of those bikers in the balls while they were moving him from the house. He took a pretty good beating for it.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “Approaching the Lions Gate Bridge.”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m right by Stanley Park,” I said, as I left the distant silhouettes of treetops and totem poles behind me in the thousand-acre park that bordered the city.