Still, I wonder if I could take Carlito in a fight. It might come down to how dirty I’m prepared to be.
“We’re all just trying to get by,” she says and her voice drifts away.
We must both doze off, because she’s leaning against my shoulder when I wake up and it feels nice. She awakens with a jolt a few minutes later, and the conversation winds back to her brother.
“Once they found he could cook it really well—meth, I mean—they wouldn’t leave him alone,” she says. “He learned how to do it from a guy he met in jail when he was nabbed for shoplifting.”
I hadn’t heard about Trent being in jail but it doesn’t really surprise me.
“They?”
“Club guys. Annihilators. Spartans. And the big club, the Popeyes. They all wanted a piece of him. They all wanted him to work more. Cook more. Teach some guys. But they all wanted to control him too.”
I want to ask questions but I keep quiet instead. Maybe she just needs a sounding board right now. Then she steers the conversation elsewhere again. “My mother lost it for a while after Dad died,” she says. “She just pulled away. Went cold. Never got right again. At least not for long. Trent took me away to live with some relatives in Sarnia, and ever since then, he hasn’t really wanted me living here with Mom. It was nice to be back in town, staying with him, until . . .”
I’m thinking of how Mom might react to losing Jamie as Brenda’s voice goes much softer. “Is it so bad to be in my family?” The words are quiet and slow and full of pain. “Are we just a bunch of quitters? Losers?”
I can’t help thinking that if it wasn’t suicide, it must have been murder. And if it was murder, where does Jamie fit in? I keep thinking about the black eye and bruises.
Brenda’s a great girl. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before, ever.
But Jamie’s still my brother.
Chapter
11
In the morning, it’s clear to me that I really have to talk with Jamie. I keep trying to convince myself that his argument with Trent wasn’t as bad as it looked, but the longer I go without hearing from him, the harder that gets. I’m hoping maybe he’ll emerge for Trent’s funeral tomorrow.
Bikers are suckers for spectacles, and nothing tops a funeral for one of their pack. A murdered drug dealer might somehow rate an honor guard in black armbands, as if he were a hero who nobly fell during some great crusade. Anything goes at a biker funeral. It’s considered totally appropriate to pour booze or toss nickel bags of weed on a coffin as “Born to Be Wild” blares from the speakers. I’ve even heard of bikers being buried on their Harleys, although I’m pretty sure it’s never happened around here. Seems like a waste of a perfectly good motorcycle.
The rest of the day passes in a blur of sleep, trying to catch up with Jamie, and worry—about Jamie and Brenda and Mom and me. I wonder if there will be Popeyes at Trent’s service. He wasn’t even a full member of the Annihilators, but he did party with the big club and they’ve been hanging around enough lately.
The next day, I head to the service early, hoping to see Jamie. Just the sight of him would calm me down. I can’t see him turning up if he’s responsible in any way for Trent’s death—Jamie’s tough but he’s not that cold.
When I get to the cemetery, there’s a canopy strung up over a freshly dug grave and a few people standing around it. None of them is Jamie. None of them are bikers. I turn toward the growl of a Harley and see Ripper riding in, alone and wearing his Annihilators vest. In Ripper’s worldview, wearing club colors to a funeral is a powerful show of respect. But the fact that he’s doing it alone is strange. It’s normal for bikers to ride in together in a pack.
They have all sorts of funny thoughts about funerals and death. Some of them call heaven the Forever Chapter. Up there (I’m assuming it’s up), they swig bottomless bottles of beer while giving gawkers a perpetual finger. Outlaw bikers often groan that they just want to be left alone, but that’s not really true. What’s a performer without an audience? In biker heaven, they need civilians to startle in order to make the picture complete.
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that bikers have a love-hate relationship with death, since they often speed up its arrival not just for themselves but for a lot of others too. In their minds, I guess their club status gives them a sort of immortality. They might be plumbers or muffler installers or couriers with ridiculous biker names like Badger, Bam Bam, and Lobo, but they live forever on club websites long after they’ve stopped bullets or became road pizza.
It’s good that Ripper is here. He’s the Annihilators’ president and the closest thing they have to a wise old man. No one tells Ripper what to do or what not to do. Rumor has it he was plenty tough back in the day, and he apparently has a black belt in something. Lots of bikers tried to rip off his patch back when clubs used to offer a bounty (consisting of a case of beer) to anyone who could hunt down a biker from a rival club and forcibly remove his crest. Apparently, no one ever managed to tear off Ripper’s patch, but he ripped off plenty in his time. Is that how he got his nickname? Or maybe it’s because he used to rip around on his motorcycle or because RIP is the abbreviation for “rest in peace.” Maybe he’s called Ripper for all of those reasons. Maybe someday I’ll ask.
Ripper’s actually a grandfather, although no one has the nerve to call him “Gramps” or “Grandpa” or anything stupid like that. He’s a retired ironworker and proud of it. He once told me how cool it is to drive by a building and know you helped put it up. He must be at least sixty-five, and has a union pension and some sort of other pension from a short stint he did in the military.
“At least we have our privacy,” Ripper says to me now.
He’s being sarcastic, gesturing toward some of the cops surveilling the scene. It’s never a good sign in the biker world when police outnumber mourners at the funeral of someone connected to the club. There are at least a half dozen of them here.
I see Brenda on the other side of the grave, standing next to a very distraught-looking woman. That must be her mother. They’re both trying to comfort a pregnant young woman; Trent’s girlfriend, I’m guessing. She looks so stunned and lost. I wonder if she even notices the low turnout from the club.
Brenda’s wearing a plain black dress that’s nothing fancy, but she looks so beautiful—older and sophisticated. Her hair is pulled back tight in a way I’ve never seen it before. Checking out a girl at a funeral seems a little weird, but I can’t help myself; it’s hard to look away.
But the sound of a bike distracts me, and I turn to watch, hoping it will be Jamie. My stomach drops as Carlito pulls up on his Harley. He’s alone too but he’s not wearing his biker colors. He’s got on a black dress shirt and black jeans and he looks a bit like a waiter. He ignores me and Ripper and goes straight to Brenda and her family. It surprises me that he thinks it’s okay to snub Ripper like that. It wouldn’t kill him to be polite to me, either.
Carlito hugs Brenda’s mother, as if they know each other. Then he gives Brenda a hug too. It’s hard to see if she’s hugging him back. Carlito steps back from the grave; so he can’t be that close to Brenda’s family. Still, he makes no effort to walk over and join Ripper and me.
Brenda and her mother are both wearing shades, and I’m sure they’ve been crying. Brenda’s mother looks like an old biker chick. There’s something rough about her, and it’s not just the four or five earrings she has on one ear. Her skirt is tight across her hips and it’s more a style you’d put on for dancing than mourning. She’s wearing a black blouse that’s not buttoned up as high as you might expect.
She frowns in the direction of the police and doesn’t look away when some of them stare back. There’s something so raw about the pain in her face that it hurts to even look. Now isn’t the time to approach Brenda, I can tell.
Photographers huddle nearby, including one from the Sun-Sentinel who’s carrying a Nikon and
a long lens. He points it at Ripper; it would be rude to step away from him to get out of the shot, so I don’t. I’m sure the biker squad already has plenty of photos of Ripper. Some smart cop will notice Carlito and they’ll get some fresh ones of him as well. I guess my photo is about to go into some police file.
I can see from Ripper’s expression that he’s deep into one of his Zen moods and couldn’t care less about the news or police cameras. Ripper once insisted that I read this weird old book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. After I realized he wasn’t joking, I read a bit of it and it wasn’t bad; so far, though, I’m not sure if it’s profound or hippy-dippy gibberish. Today, I’m just grateful to have Ripper here so I have someone to stand beside.
“Trollop ‘ordered’ us not to come,” Ripper says.
He smirks for a second. The idea of a regular biker ordering the president to do anything is pretty much unheard of. That would never happen in a bigger club.
“So why’d you come?” I ask.
I know I’m not supposed to dig into club business. As soon as I ask I wonder if he’ll get angry.
Instead, he jokes: “I have my own brain. It’s creaks a bit when I try to use it but it’s all mine.”
I apparently don’t smile quickly enough at that, so he adds: “I’m more than a hat rack.”
Usually, Ripper’s more of a smiler than a talker. Today, he seems ready to actually have a conversation. I seize the opportunity.
“Why are you a biker?”
It’s such a big, big question, and I don’t even know why I asked it. Sometimes I just have trouble shutting up.
“Had to be something.”
Classic Ripper-speak. He isn’t being rude. I think I get his drift.
He decides to expand a little further. “A lot of it just happened. It wasn’t some great plan. We actually rode bikes back then in the sixties. Imagine that? Bikers who ride bikes. We wanted to talk bikes with people who understood what we were about. We wanted to be left alone by pretty well everyone else, except the hippy girls.”
Another big pause and then he continues: “No one says ‘Hey you’ when you’re wearing a patch. Drivers are scared to cut you off. When you got your patch, you went from being a nobody to being a rock star, and you didn’t have to learn to sing. People gawking at you instead of ignoring you.”
“You don’t seem to be too crazy about those guys from the Popeyes,” I say cautiously.
“Different world now. A patch is just a piece of cloth. It’s the man wearing that patch that counts. Just like wearing a black belt doesn’t automatically make you a tough fighter.” He’s smiling now, shifting into the Uncle Ripper role that I love. “It’s what you do to deserve your patch that really counts.”
“So you don’t want to be in the Popeyes or another big club?”
“It’s neither here nor there. Buddha is everywhere.”
Ripper has a way of screwing with you and being totally honest, all in the same sentence.
“Big clubs bring big police heat,” he continues. “Big police projects. Big police funding. More informants. More paid agents. There’s more money in being a police informant nowadays than there is in being a drug dealer, not that I’d recommend either line of work.”
His face loosens and he shrugs his shoulders. The ceremony is starting. Lesson over.
There are about twenty people at the funeral besides the ones who are obviously police, most of whom I presume to be Brenda’s family members or family friends. Brenda doesn’t appear to be very close to many of them.
After the service, she approaches me as dirt is shoveled onto her brother’s casket. I watch Carlito’s eyes following her.
I know I don’t have the right words. The perfect ones might come to me later, when life has already moved on, but for now all I can manage is: “Sorry.”
Brenda looks off into nowhere.
“Like I said, I know he did some sketchy things, but he was a good guy,” she says. “He tried.”
The word “tried” sounds particularly raw. She looks over at the not-so-undercover police and a press photographer and then sighs. I’m trying to keep the skepticism out of my expression, but Trent was a meth cook after all. She must sense this, because she continues, “He didn’t even want a patch. He deliberately didn’t buy a Harley because he wanted them to stop asking him to join. My brother used to say, ‘When you’re broke, you’re a joke.’ He didn’t want to be a joke. He didn’t want me to be one.”
I just look at her and she goes on talking. I love her sense of loyalty to her brother, but there’s something unreal about all of it.
“He saw I was getting messed up myself. Waking up next to guys like Carlito.”
I frown and she sees this, but she doesn’t stop. She has no time right now for my delicate little feelings. She’s crying again. Not loud. Not dramatic. Not trying for a response from me. Just crying. Really crying. Shaking.
Before I know it I’m touching both of her arms. It’s sort of a hug. And it’s the first time we’ve deliberately touched. She doesn’t flinch or even acknowledge it. Does she even feel it? As she speaks, her voice is robotic. Stunned.
“I need to know who killed him.”
Need.
Her mother gives her a look that’s almost like a warning. It’s time to go.
“Later,” I say.
She nods.
On her way over to her mother, she nods at Carlito too. I feel a flash of resentment even though I know I have no right to feel that way. But I have to wonder: What does she get from him? It’s like she has a separate need for each of us.
As I get into the Cruze, I try to figure out why the turnout was so embarrassingly low. It was a deliberate snub. There’s no other way to look at it.
Maybe the Annihilators have concluded—rightly or wrongly—that Trent committed suicide. That’s the least frightening explanation. Suicides are considered a coward’s way out of my brother’s world. Die from shooting too much heroin into your veins or driving your bike too fast without a helmet or being too slow on the trigger in a drug rip-off and you’re worthy of eternal hero status. Step off a chair with a rope around your neck and they won’t acknowledge that you ever walked the face of the earth.
There is a second possible explanation for the snub. In my mind, it’s worse than the suicide theory and almost too troubling to consider.
Have the bikers decided that Trent was a rat? If so, it’s a safe bet that he was murdered. Anyone of the Annihilators, and even bikers from outside our little backwater town, would have felt justified in killing him. Some of them might have even felt obligated to do it.
Including Jamie.
Chapter
12
A big photo of Trent’s funeral appears on the Sun-Sentinel’s homepage just hours after I leave the cemetery. Ripper and I are clearly identifiable behind the casket. Ripper is wearing his full Annihilators colors and he looks like a classic biker from head to toe. If it wasn’t so unsettling to see myself in the shot, I might have found it pretty cool. I half hoped to see Brenda too. It could have been our first photo together.
The caption identifies Ripper by his real name, Paul Matheson, which isn’t really that surprising since he’s a local sort-of-celebrity; I’m not identified at all, and I’m grateful for that.
When I rush into the newsroom at the start of my night shift, the city editor looks up at me but keeps his distance. Within twenty minutes I’m settled in, feeling like I’m babysitting the city from the fifth floor with TweetDeck and emergency scanners.
Bill sticks his head into the radio room to say hello. I’m sure he noticed me in the funeral photo. Might he be able to help me figure out what’s going on?
“Can I ask you something?” I say. “How do police know when something’s a murder and not a suicide?”
“Depends. How di
d the person die?”
“Found hanging in his home. His garage.”
Does my voice crack a little? Can he see something in my eyes?
Bill’s a nice guy. He likely already knows what I’m talking about. This is a small enough city and he has plenty of sources besides his cop daughter. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots here.
“Depends on a bunch of things. Was the person depressed?”
“Don’t think so. Stressed, but not actually depressed.”
“Had the person attempted suicide before?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Who bought the rope?”
“Don’t know. Why does that matter?”
“Generally, suicide victims don’t bother to hide things like that. Why would they? It would be more mysterious if there was no record of the purchase. Was a note left at the scene?”
He has a little rhythm going as he moves through his mental checklist.
“Don’t think there was a note.”
“Had he been threatened?”
“Not sure. Maybe. He definitely had some bad enemies.”
He is looking at my face now, studying my expression.
He has to know what case I’m talking about. This is St. Thomas. There aren’t a lot of unsolved homicides.
“Were there injuries to the body?”
“He had a black eye. A big one.”
“How do you know?”
“I do.”
I’m not about to reveal that Brenda told me, and he doesn’t press the issue.
“He had bruises too,” I add.
“His family should try to get the autopsy report.”
“Wouldn’t it be obvious if it was a murder?”
“Not necessarily. It’s quite possible to hang someone and make it look like suicide. There are things that the coroner might notice, though. If the neck is broken, you should be really suspicious, because that could have happened before the body was hanged. It’s not so hard to do, if you’re big or strong enough or there are enough of you. It’s the way some pros kill people.” He pauses for a beat and then adds, “Some guys in the Popeyes have done it that way. Sometimes . . .”
The Biker's Brother Page 6