The Tin Man

by Dale Brown

  “It is simple, Mr Reynolds,” Townsend said. “Major Reingruber’s men fought with courage and skill and were wounded in battle. As distasteful as it is to turn any of our men over to the enemy, civilian medical facilities are far superior to our field hospitals and it became necessary that they receive the care they deserve.

  “Mullins, on the other hand, disobeyed a direct order to stay out of establishments and areas designated off-limits by myself and the staff. He was especially ordered not to make contact with any Satan’s Brotherhood members or frequent any of their so-called clubhouses. He violated all of these directives. His capture could have jeopardized our entire operation. There was only one penalty suitable for his dereliction of duty and gross insubordination-death.”

  Well, that certainly followed the pattern of this organization, Bennie said to himself. Townsend and Reingruber were ruthless when it came time to discipline their men. Reingruber’s sergeants dispensed that discipline swiftly and painfully. Bennie had seen the German soldiers accept punishment like automatons, standing at attention while taking a blow to the stomach or a cattle-prod to the back. And if they failed to stay standing at attention or were a little slow recovering from their punishment, they got more of the same. Reingruber and sometimes Townsend himself presided over the discipline sessions, and always spelled out to the other soldiers the exact nature of the transgression for which the punishment was being administered. The converse was true too: If a soldier did well, even in a small way, they offered praise and congratulations almost to the point of effusiveness, Bennie hated to admit it, but it was challenging and rewarding to serve under these two. Their men were paid well, ate well, and trained and worked hard…

  … Too bad they were murderous bastards who would kill any or every one of them if they felt the need.

  Several minutes later, a lookout reported that pickup trucks were on the property. The announcements were followed by electronic warnings picked up by motion and seismic sensors-and woe to any sentry, Bennie knew, who didn’t report an approaching intruder to Townsend or Reingruber before the sensors went off.

  “Pickup trucks. Brotherhood,” a sergeant reported. “Five in all.” Townsend and Reingruber nodded. A few minutes later, five Satan’s Brotherhood members were admitted into the ranch house. They were thoroughly searched, manually as well as electronically, and a boxful’s worth of weapons taken away from three of them. Typical Brotherhood, thought Bennie. Either the bikers actually thought Townsend wouldn’t check them for weapons, or they thought that once he had found one or two, he’d stop looking.

  The leader of the Brotherhood, Donald Lancett, did not show. Bennie had warned Townsend he wouldn’t. In his place, Lancett had sent one of the local chapter heads, Rancho Cordova president Joey “Sandman” Harrison, to represent the Brotherhood. If there was a right choice for this meeting, Harrison was not it. Sandman had been ousted as the president of the Oakland chapter of another outlaw motorcycle club, kicked out because he was so mean, so murderous, and spent so much time in prison. He hated the role of representative, envoy, or message boy; he hated foreigners; and he hated anyone who even considered trying to move in on his very lucrative east Sacramento drug territory. Clearly, Lancett had chosen him for today’s meeting in order to get in Townsend’s face and stay there.

  Harrison’s beady eyes scanned the room. He noticed the big bottle of Jack Daniel’s sitting on a table in the corner, went over, opened it, and took a big swig. Townsend watched him with an ironic grin. “Help yourself to a drink, Mr Harrison,” he said. Harrison belched, walked over to Townsend, and sent his hand down to Townsend’s right hip. The holster he found hidden under the jacket was empty. “I requested no weapons, Mr Harrison,” said Townsend. “I kept my part of the bargain.”

  “Good thing you did,” Harrison grunted. He took another pull at the bottle. “So you’re Townsend, huh? You the one who had to pull Cazaux’s plug, right? You probably think you’re hot shit now.” He turned to look at Bruno Reingruber. “This the fucking German?”

  “Major Bruno Reingruber, my deputy commander and senior officer.” Reingruber stood at parade rest beside and slightly behind Townsend, his square jaw held high, his chest inflated. When he heard his name, he snapped to attention and gave a Nazi salute.

  “Heil fucking Hitler,” Harrison said, his voice filled with disgust. “You guys are pretty, real fuckin’ pretty. You must all be pretty stupid dumb-asses too.” Then Harrison’s eyes rested on Reynolds. “Hey Bennie, you tell your friends that if I ever catch your ass out on my streets again, you’re dead.”

  “I advise you to listen to these guys, Sandman,” Bennie said. “They mean business.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they do,” Harrison said, talking to Bennie but facing Townsend. “I’m sure the Angels, the Riders, the wetbacks, and the slopes meant business too. But they’re not in control around here either. The Brotherhood is in control of this state.” He shook his head. “You’re a piece of work, limey. First you kill two of our brothers and steal our chemist, then you off one of our recruits, then you set up meetings and want to be the big boss. We don’t need no foreigners trying to muscle in on our operation.”

  “You are going to produce more methamphetamine in one month than you previously could in a year, Mr Harrison,” Townsend said. “Easy, safe, and guaranteed to make us all rich in a very short period of time.”

  “And this deal includes hosing off a couple of cops, Townsend?” Harrison asked angrily. “You cost us plenty with that holdup of yours.”

  “I see Mr Mullins felt free to talk about our operation with you,” Townsend said, his confident smile dimmer. “It seems our decision to terminate Mr Mullins’s miserable life was a sound one.”

  “Mullins was a Brotherhood recruit, asshole,” Harrison said. “He was one of ours, and you knew it. He gave us plenty of access to businesses, warehouses, and events. Killing him was like attacking all of Satan’s Brotherhood. You owe us.”

  “Mullins was a weasel who would sell his mother to make a dollar,” Townsend said angrily. “He did the Sacramento Live! job for five thousand lousy dollars. How much was he supposed to pay you out of that?”

  At Harrison’s blank face, Townsend added, “Or perhaps you didn’t even know he was doing this inside job? The latter, I suspect. So Mullins was cutting the Brotherhood out of your share of his action. He was a lying, cheating bastard. You should have had him killed long ago.”

  “Maybe so, Townsend. But I got one message for you shitheads: Get out of town now, and stay out, or we’ll fuck you over real bad. Capish?”

  “Aren’t you even interested in my proposal?” Townsend asked.

  “Does it involve you making or selling meth?”

  “Fortunately, no,” Townsend said dryly. “Manufacturing drugs, especially methamphetamine, seems to be a very hazardous undertaking, best left to you and the Mexicans.”

  “If I find out you doin’ any deals with the fuckin’ Mexicans, asshole,” Harrison said, “I’ll kill every last one of you myself. Your hard-ass German friends won’t be able to help you one fucking bit.”

  “Major Reingruber would like nothing better than to go to war with you, the Mexican cartels, the police, and anyone else who opposes us,” Townsend said sternly, affixing his one good eye squarely on Harrison. “But I prefer cooperation to war. Since we have somewhat similar political and cultural views, shall we say, we prefer to work with you.”

  “But you got Bennie the Chef,” Harrison argued. “That means you’re cooking. You cook crank in Brotherhood territory, you die.”

  “Mr Reynolds is serving as my technical expert and adviser to streamline methamphetamine production,” Townsend said. “We have devised a means to manufacture meth in vast quantities with safety, security, and profitability in mind-but we do not wish to do it ourselves. We will leave that up to you. Care to see what we have in mind?”

  By this time, Harrison’s curiosity had taken over. He nodded his assent. Townsend led the w
ay into the barn behind the house, which was guarded by four heavily armed soldiers. There, lined up like barrels in a brewery, were twenty black steel drums, mounted on small trailers. “What the hell’s this, Townsend?” Harrison asked. “This your idea of a joke?”

  “This is the core of my new operation, Mr Harrison,” Townsend replied. “These are meth hydrogenators.”

  “Say what?”

  “Hydrogenators,” Townsend repeated. “Thirty gallons each, with built-in agitators, pressure monitoring, leak detection, air filtration, and product-purification apparatus. The trailer contains a power unit and vacuum-pressurization equipment.”

  Harrison still looked confused, so Bennie clarified it for him. “Big bucks, Sandman. We’re talking two, three hundred thousand dollars a day from each one of ‘em. Fully portable, fully self-contained-you can practically set one of these things up in your backyard next to your barbecue grill and no one would know you’re cooking. It’s as easy to use as a Suzy fuckin’ Homemaker oven.”

  That kind of information Harrison understood. He walked over to one of the units and ran his hand over the dull black steel surface. “Cool. I’ll take ‘em. How much?”

  “They’re not for sale, Mr Harrison,” Townsend said. “But you can have them. All of them, if you like.”

  Bennie looked thunderstruck. Harrison’s bearded face broke into a wide grin. “Wrap ‘em up, limey.”

  “All I ask is that you pay my organization a modest sum of one thousand dollars a pound for every pound you produce,” Townsend said. Harrison’s grin vanished as he tried to do the math in his head, so Townsend did it for him: “That’s twenty percent of the wholesale price but only eight percent of the retail price per pound. You can buy the chemicals and catalysts from us if you wish, or you can supply your own. We even provide the security for each unit, courtesy of the Aryan Brigade.”

  “But I get the cookers for free?” Harrison asked incredulously.

  “Absolutely free,” Townsend said. “Each unit reports every time a hydrogenation cycle is completed.”

  “Does this asshole ever speak plain English, Bennie?” Harrison complained.

  “What he means, Sandman, is that the unit can tell us when somebody cooks up a batch,” Bennie said, falling back into his prerehearsed script even though he was still in a state of shock. “The colonel gets paid by the pound you cook up. Just so everyone stays on the up-and-up, the unit tells us how much you cook.”

  “Precisely,” Townsend replied. “The unit can tell us how much was made, and when. Each cycle can produce up to thirty pounds of product. You pay us thirty thousand dollars every time you make a full batch, and whatever else you earn is yours to keep. We even provide maintenance for the units-if they ever break down, we will fix them without charge. We will become the Microsoft of the methamphetamine trade.”

  “The what?” Harrison grunted, still running his hands lovingly across the surface of the hydrogenator.

  “Never mind,” Townsend said. “Is it a deal, then?”

  Harrison was clearly impressed. “I’ll take this deal to the chief,” he said. “I think he’ll like it.”

  “Good,” Townsend said. “Then you’ll be off.” Again Harrison looked at Townsend as if he were speaking a foreign language, but when Townsend headed for the door, he understood the tour was over.

  Bennie Reynolds was absolutely speechless. When the five Brotherhood bikers had left, he turned on Townsend and asked, “What the hell are you doing? You’re going to give away thirty hydrogenator units? We just spent a quarter of a million dollars building these things! They’re worth millions of dollars a month!”

  Townsend shrugged off the protests. “It’s a good deal for us as well as the Brotherhood,” he said. “Of course, we’ll give a few to the Mexican gangs and a few of the other biker gangs as well. After all, Satan’s Brotherhood isn’t the only gang in the West.”

  “You’re going to do this deal with other gangs? That’s suicide! If the Brotherhood finds out, they’ll go to war.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be a war, Bennie,” Townsend said with a confident smile. “There’s too much money to be made. We have another ten hydrogenators to build, and then we can start scheduling training sessions for each chapter that will get one. My plan is to distribute and train all of the Brotherhood and Mexican-gang chapters in one night, all throughout California, Nevada, and Oregon. Let’s get started, shall we?”

  Marriott-Intercontinental Marina,

  San Diego, California

  Saturday, 14 February 1998, 1915 PT

  Helen Kaddiri glanced briefly at the good-looking guy who opened the hotel door for her before she walked out toward the docks. She had been born and raised in San Diego, but she hadn’t been down to the waterfront in years. It was much more crowded than she remembered, but still just as beautiful. The weather was perfect, dry and mild, with just enough of a breeze to bring in the salt air but not enough to require a coat.

  She allowed herself to enjoy the weather and the scenery for a moment before her mind returned to the situation at hand: Namely, what in hell did Jon Masters want? His phone call the day before yesterday was the first she had heard from him since the BERP demonstration up in Sacramento. The rest of the board of directors and every one of the senior officers and managers had either spoken or met with her, pleading for her to return-everyone but Jon Masters. Pig-headed as usual.

  She had tossed a grenade on their picnic by having her attorney draw up a proposed three-million-dollar settlement agreement. The deal included cashing in some of her preferred-class stock, converting the rest into common stock, and transferring ownership of some of the patents and other technologies still in development that rightfully belonged to her. She wasn’t looking to gut the company, although she certainly could if she wanted.

  “Helen?” She turned. To her astonishment, she realized that the young, nicely dressed man who had held the door open for her was Jon Masters. It was practically the first time she had ever seen him in anything but jeans and tennis shoes. His hair was neatly trimmed and combed in place, and-this was almost too much to believe-he was wearing a necktie! She never imagined he would even own one, much less wear one!

  “I… I’m sorry, Jon,” she said, completely taken off guard. “I didn’t recognize you. You look so… so…”

  “Normal?”

  Helen smiled. “Something like that, yes.” That was unusual too-Jon never made fun of himself. Just the opposite, in fact-he thought he was God’s gift to the Western world. Helen looked down at her slacks, casual blouse, and plain jacket. “I feel underdressed standing next to you, Jon, and that’s certainly something I never thought I’d say. It feels weird.”

  “I’m very glad you’re here, Helen,” Jon said. He held out a bouquet of red roses. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, looking into her eyes.

  A puff of wind could have knocked Helen Kaddiri over. She accepted the flowers with a stunned expression. The most he had ever given her in the past was a hard time. “Thank you,” she said in a tiny voice. “I’m flattered. Now tell me: Who are you, and what have you done with the real Dr Jonathan Colin Masters?”

  “No, it’s me, all right,” Jon said. “We’re this way.” He motioned toward the marina.

  “We’re not meeting in the hotel?” said Helen. “I’ve asked my attorney to join us. He’ll be here in a few minutes.” Jon looked confused. “I assumed this was in response to my settlement agreement, Jon.”

  “No. I hadn’t planned on bringing any lawyers,” Jon said. “You can bring him if you want, but it might spoil…”

  “Spoil what?”

  “Spoil… the mood,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “The mood?” Helen retorted. She had been intrigued at first, even titillated by what Jon was doing; now she was getting angry. This sounded like yet another Masters prank. But it wasn’t the fact that he was pulling another prank that made her angry-it was her sense that this wasn’t a prank, and then r
ealizing that she had deluded herself. “Jon, what is this? What’s going on? If this is some kind of gag, so help me, I’ll brain you!”

  “It’s not a joke, Helen,” Jon said. “Follow me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise,” Jon said. He led her down the steps to the hotel marina. A man in a white waiter’s outfit smiled, bowed, and opened the wharf security gate for them. “I’d ask you to close your eyes,” Jon said, “but the thought of you closing your eyes on this dock makes me dizzy.”

  “Jon, where are we going?” Helen asked irritably. “This is crazy. If we can’t discuss our differences like rational human beings, we should just…”

  “Here we are,” Jon said. He had stopped beside the most beautiful yacht Helen had ever seen. It had to be sixty-five feet in length-it looked as big as a house. A waiter in crisp white was standing in the aft cockpit, ready to help them board, and opposite him was a violin player. Up a short ladder was the covered aft deck, on which Helen could see a table laid with a gleaming white tablecloth and place settings for two. The yacht’s engines were running, and dock crews were holding the lines, ready to get under way.