by Kate Sheperd
“Huh?” I said, looking up at him.
“Do you have a drink order?” He frowned at me and broke down the statement in one syllable parts.
“Sorry, um, yes.” What the hell did he order?
“It is?”
“Scotch, neat, single malt,” I finally blurted out as my memory kicked in.
“Brand?”
“Best stuff we have?”
“We have lots of good single malts,” he replied. “Maybe you ought to go ask him?”
Oh shit, don’t make me go back and ask him. I scrambled through my brain to try to remember a brand of single malt, and then finally glanced up at the row of whiskeys and picked one out. I saw an Aberlour with a large number 18 on it. An eighteen-year-old single malt should be good. “Aberlour,” I said quickly.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure,” I replied. I hoped that I was sure. I damned sure wasn’t going to go ask him. I took several deep breaths and tried to regain my focus.
“So, how scary is he?” Annie asked, coming up to the bar to place an order for another table that she’d gone to tend to.
“Not too bad,” I replied. I was lying. He scared the hell out of me, but not in a way that Annie would understand.
Annie placed her order and then turned back to me, holding a whiskey tumbler with amber liquid in it and sitting on a serving tray. “Here’s your drink.”
“I wish it was my drink,” I said dryly. I hoped that my attempt at humor would help settle my nerves.
“Don’t we all,” Annie replied.
Taking a deep breath, I went back around the corner with the drink. He watched me with that crooked, devilish grin on his face, all of the way to his table. From that point forward, waiting on him didn’t become any easier. He was bold and very sure of himself, but he wasn’t overly rude. The entire combination had me in a state of turmoil inside, until that great moment of grace when he was finally finished, had paid his check and was ready to leave.
I had to endure one more moment with him, however, when he sought me out before going to the exit. “Hey, thanks,” he said as he pressed a hundred dollar bill into my hand. “Come by the Panhead and hang out some time.”
“Yeah, sure,” I smiled, looking down at the bill in my hand.
He turned and strolled out, sort of like a gunfighter leaving a saloon. I was finally able to breathe again and I’d already made enough money to pay more than half of my tuition.
Chapter 6: Sabre
The problem, and likely reason why Clap had been found with his throat cut was because there were several rival clubs all trying to do business in a small area. Though areas of influence were, for the most part, pretty well known, there were grey areas where they overlapped. In those areas, things were sort of like the Wild West: Whoever could take control and keep it had influence over it. It was as simple as that.
My problem was trying to figure out which of the grey areas that I was operating in was being contested. Because I had a tendency to be a little bit reckless when it came to respecting the boundaries to begin with, there were plenty of possibilities to sort through.
There were two major operators that divided the city in half: the Silent Brotherhood and the Lost Disciples. Roughly, their territories were split along a natural border, an interstate highway that extended, generally, from north to south. However, there were places where it made wide curves cutting into either SB or LD territory. Those curves created the grey areas between those two rivals, but also opened up an avenue for two more clubs known as the KOTR, or Knights of the Road, and an older, fading branch of the Highwaymen.
Ally clubs were granted permission to operate inside the territories of the bigger clubs and skimmed a little something off of their profits as a means of remaining allies instead of being eliminated. The smaller clubs tended to do more bickering among themselves than the two larger ones, who knew that for them to square off would touch off an all-out war. Thus, the two larger clubs tended to manipulate the smaller ones into working the grey areas or cutting into the profits of other small clubs that were allied with the rival larger club.
Though I couldn’t prove it, Clap’s murder smacked of a Silent Brotherhood operation. It was ballsy and professionally done, suggesting that someone had paid a great deal of money for it to happen. The fact that it wasn’t the first hit that had taken place, as Gentry had said, made me wonder, however, if it hadn’t been called out by an enforcer. If that was the case, then the Lost Disciples were being sent a message by someone higher up concerning how reckless I was regarding boundaries. The other possibility was that the thorn in my side, the KOTR, was beginning to make a move on my territory.
Since the KOTR had started to grow in the area, moving in from the coast, where they had a significant amount of influence, I had been feeling something of a pinch in all three areas of business. Prostitution had been pretty well under my control, given the fact that my part of the city lent itself more favorably to that sort of thing, though the Silent Brotherhood did control some high-end escort services. Drugs were equally favored by both rich and poor; the only difference was that the rich bought higher quality stuff at a higher price and the poor bought cheap stuff at a lower price, but in a higher volume. The third sector of my business was in black market automotive and motorcycle parts. That was the enterprise that took the LDs into the grey areas most often.
When Gentry left, I took a six-pack of beer from the refrigerator and headed out to the front porch. I was going to need some time to sort through what had just happened to Clap and try to figure out who was responsible and why.
“Who did this shit?” Gonzo fumed as he took a long drag on a Winston and then blew the smoke out through his nostrils.
I shrugged, sat down, popped the top off of a cold bottle, and then sighed and placed it in Gonzo’s outstretched hand before reaching for another.
“Pro?” Gonzo asked.
“That’s what I’m thinking?”
“What’s the ace of spades mean?”
“The SEALS in ‘Nam used to do that whenever they tapped some gook out of the game.”
“Enforcer?”
“Gotta assume that until we know something different.”
“If it’s an enforcer, then what?”
Even I wasn’t stupid enough to go against an enforcer. An enforcer could call down hellfire and brimstone from all over the country on the Lost Disciples and essentially eliminate them completely. “We have to stay inbounds for a while.”
“What if it’s KOTR or SB?” Gonzo ventured.
“If I find that out,” I growled through clenched teeth, “then we’ll hit those motherfuckers and hit them hard.”
There was a long silence while Gonzo finished his cigarette, chugged the remaining half of his beer and leaned over to take another out of the six-pack between us. He popped the top and extended it toward me.
“No, I’m good.” I hadn’t drunk half of the contents of the first bottle in my hand.
“Why Clap?” Gonzo asked. “Why not you or me?”
“Hard to say,” I sighed. “That’s sort of the reason I think it’s an enforcer. Plus that cut was too damned neat for some KOTR or SB hack.”
“I think the SBs have got some pretty good cutters with them. Special forces fucks, you know, SEALS, Rangers and Recon. I think they even have some of those Air Force special ops weenies. What do they call them?”
“Who really gives a shit?” I growled. I leaned on Gonzo for a lot of things and having him sit next to me when I was working on a crisis was only natural, but Gonzo had a tendency to idolize the special forces guys, though he tried to sound like he didn’t. I was suddenly tired of talking about what had happened to Clap and why. “You gonna put those new taillights on your ride today?”
Gonzo had bought a new taillight bar and shield set for his bike earlier that week and had planned on mounting them over the weekend. “Jesus, I forgot about that.” His face suddenly turned ashen. “Clap was go
ing to help me with that.”
So much for trying to change the conversation. I decided to just remain silent. I tossed back the remainder of the half-warm beer in my bottle, made a face and reached for another one. No matter how hard I tried to push the image of Clap’s body lying in a pool of its own blood out of my mind, it kept coming back, as did the words of Gentry, who was pretty sure that he was dealing with an enforcer. Why was I being disciplined by the Godfather? I hadn’t been running that loose lately, had I? Another thought struck me, and it was the one that I decided to run with as far as an explanation for what happened. Clap had a tendency to be something of a loose cannon at times. Maybe he did something on his own and paid the ultimate price for it. Still, he didn’t deserve what he got.
“How about those two bitches you had last night, huh?” Gonzo nudged me in the bicep and then howled. “Just the image of those two in your shower this morning will stick with me for a lifetime.”
The subject was officially changed, even in my mind.
Chapter 7: Razor
I touched the speed dial on my phone for my daily checkin and waited. For about a week, I had gotten a hang-up when the call connected. That was my signal that the enforcer had no work for me to do. Whenever that happened, I would go to my shop in the back yard, where I had a setup for woodworking, something that had been passed down to me from my dad. I could have set up a shop and made decent money doing custom cabinetry for building contractors when I left the teams, but I had kept it as a hobby, seeing it as a means of escaping the rattrap instead of using it as the exercise wheel in the gerbil cage.
I was already thinking about a design that I planned to carve on a piece that I was working on for one of my SB brothers when the call connected and the voice said “three,” and then clicked dead. The message was clear to me. I was to go to drop site number three to pick up my next op orders. Pushing the wood carving thought out of my mind, I scooped up the keys to my bike and started out the door.
I punched the button on the garage door and watched the door rise all of the way to the top, scanned the driveway, street and surrounding houses from the darkest corner inside the garage and then turned my attention toward my bike. Owning a Harley and riding it on the open road had been a dream of mine for a very long time. As I straddled the bike, backed it out of the garage and turned it around before firing it up, I couldn’t help but remember the first bike I’d ever bought.
I had always been an admirer of motorcycles. I’d bought my first when I’d fallen in love with the action of motocross racing at age 11. From that time forward I had lived and breathed the mixed, two-cycle oil and gas, fuel of the motocross world. I’d eaten my share of rocks, dirt and sand before becoming the top rider of all motocross racers in California.
I’d been insatiable in pretty much every endeavor that I ever took to. It seemed that once I got started with something, I had to be the best of the best at it, even if it was playing a board game. I was never satisfyed with making a good showing or even doing my best. Those things were honorable, but honorable didn’t cut it for me. I always had to win.
I joined the Navy out of high school, buying into the promise of “seeing the world,” just as the recruitment literature advertised. The world consisted of Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Australia. I’d been rated in ordinance, which had sounded like a cool way to go, since I had always enjoyed blowing things up. Like with everything else, I had reached the top in that venture as well and began to look for a new challenge. The SEALs provided that.
Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training, or BUD/S, was an extremely trying challenge for me. It was for everybody. I watched a lot of guys, who I thought were sure to make it through, toss in their helmet liner and ring the bell. I’d gotten close a couple of times myself, but simply couldn’t bring myself to quit. When I made it through BUD/S, I knew that I was part of something very special. Neither Marine Recon nor Army Rangers cold boast having gone through the kind of rigorous training that separated the very best special forces team in the world from every other pretender. I had become a part of the most elite of the elite.
I’d excelled at every training challenge and every op that had followed, egged on by Burn, who was nearly as hardheaded as I was, though a lot less outspoken about it. I had always been the type who would walk up, spit in the devil’s eye and call him a pussy. More than once, it had gotten me and Burn into some tough shit, but on every occasion, we’d been able to fight our way out of it and lived to laugh about it.
We weren’t just cocky, we were as well disciplined and precise at carrying out an operation as any other pair on the team, and we were typically called to take on the most difficult challenges. Whenever we weren’t, we either volunteered for them or wiggled our way into taking them away from whoever had. Neither of us wanted to be in the background.
“And that’s what got you killed,” I muttered aloud as I turned onto the street that led to the drop site and tried to force the rising memory out of my mind.
The drop site was a newspaper tube at an abandoned house that was burned out years before and had never been cleared away. No one paid much attention to it, making it a perfect drop site. It was one of dozens that had been set up for the purpose of communicating the enforcer’s next “project.”
When I had left the SEALs, I had hunted for a place to land, not wanting to be anywhere near the typical places that military men hung out. Staying along the California coast would have made that pretty hard to do, so I went further inland and found a place that suited me in a quiet suburban neighborhood. I’d lost my dad and, shortly after that, my mom while I was still in the teams. I’d put the stuff that I’d wanted to save in a storage unit and put the house up for sale. I didn’t see any point in torturing myself by trying to hold onto it and being haunted by the memories. When I found my new place, I’d transferred those things, mostly the woodworking equipment, from the storage unit to my new house and settled in.
Sitting still hadn’t appealed to me much, so I fulfilled one of my lifelong dreams and bought the Harley. It had led me out onto the open road and into the company of those who also road the bikes. Out on the road, I’d made friends and rode along with a guy who had been a part of the Army Rangers. He, in turn, introduced me to the Silent Brotherhood Motorcycle Club, a bunch of guys who had spit in the eye of the devil, lived to tell about it and loved riding Harleys.
At the Sturgis Rally later that year, I’d been approached by someone who had a special proposition for me. That was the only time that I had ever met the man who was referred to simply as “the Godfather.” No names were used and no details were given about what I was being asked to do. I was simply asked if I would be interested in doing for the Godfather what I had done for Uncle Sam. A per-op sum was given, and it was sizeable. The offer was followed by a very direct question. “Are you in?”
I hadn’t even hesitated. The money was great and I would be doing something at which I had gotten very good. I said yes.
“Someone will contact you when you get home,” I was told.
Someone did contact me when I got home from Sturgis. In fact, that someone came to my house, sat in my living room, drank a couple of beers with me and explained the checkins, the signals and the drops. We rode to each of the drops so that there would be no confusion. Then we shook hands and the man rode away. He never gave me a name. I never saw him again and didn’t expect that I ever would.
After my first job, the agreed-upon sum was direct deposited in my account and I decided that I was really going to like my new job.
The “op orders,” as I liked to call them, were waiting in the paper tube of the burned-out house. I rode up, pulled them out, stuffed them inside my leather jacket and continued down the street as though nothing had happened. Though it was impossible not to be curious about what was contained in the envelope that I’d put inside my jacket, I refused to even glance at the contents until I was back home where I could memorize the information and then bu
rn them in the fireplace. It wouldn’t do for anyone to know anything about what I did.
Chapter 8: Razor
The fact that the call was for an out-of-town op was no surprise to me. Nearly all of my jobs were out of town, in fact. The last one had been pretty rare. The enforcer that I worked for evidently had sort of a region or area to work, most of it in the West Coast. I’d memorized all of the intel that had been provided and then burned the order, but I’d learned long ago that someone else’s intel was never as good as your own. To date, I’d had no reason to doubt what was passed onto me, but I believed in the “trust, but verify” philosophy.
It hadn’t been a bad ride. I’d even made sort of a loop around so that I could come in along the coast. The combination of reds, oranges, yellows and violets against the backdrop of the changing sky and the slow movement of the sun as it sank below the horizon was always a little more impressive when viewed over the ocean. The sun’s setting over the Pacific even worked its magic on my typically cold heart. I pulled off the side of the road to take it in.
My heart hadn’t always been so cold. When I was younger and eager, it had been warmer. I’d been a gung-ho, God-and-country type when I’d joined the Navy. I’d become even more so after I’d made it into the teams. Kicking ass and taking names in the advancement of freedom had been what drove Burn and me to be so eager to lead the pack. Afghanistan changed that for me. I was beginning to question what the hell we were doing over there even before Burn died. After he died, it began to really hit home.
The Russians hadn’t been able to do anything over there in the 80s, so why the hell did we think we could? What I was starting to realize was that it was all about the money. All of that political bullshit that leaders spewed from the podium about pushing back Al Qaeda and terrorist cells and whatnot was just so they could keep lining their silk pockets. The fact that Burn had his brain splattered against the wall because some stupid bastard wanted some imam in Gitmo soured my whole attitude. The only salvation for me was the fact that I had been a short-timer and was due to rotate out of the teams or re-up within 30 days. I rotated out.