Troubleshooter (2005)

by Gregg - Rackley 03 Hurwitz

  "Okay," Tim said. "This is our best shot to capture their faces. Get as many close-ups as you can. Focus on mother chapter members and deeds. With the women make sure you get their property jackets, too."

  As several Sinners hoisted the coffin and marched it into the grassy flats, the van filled with the click of high-tech cameras and the hum of autoadjusting lenses. No cemetery workers were on hand; no one threw dirt on a Sinner but a Sinner.

  Toe-Tag, Whelp, and Diamond Dog stayed together, keeping close proximity to Uncle Pete, who seemed to be relishing his master-of-ceremonies role. A skinny biker with an eye patch hung at Pete's side, his posture indicating more-than-usual obeisance. Rather than originals, he wore an armband, Third Reich style, exhibiting the Sinners logo. A stone glinted on his pinkie ring. A woman with a masculine build stayed on his arm, seeming to negotiate his brief introductions to satellite-chapter members.

  Tim clicked on again: "What's with Himmler at your nine o'clock?"

  "The armband shows he's a striker," Guerrera said. "Means he's graduated from being a prospect, but he's not an official Sinner yet."

  Bear's voice: "How'd he graduate?"

  "He rolled bones."

  "You gotta kill someone?"

  "From their preselected list of club enemies. Proves you're not a cop."

  "Yeah," Bear said. "That'd pretty much do it."

  Tim caught a glimpse of an attractive brunette swaggering through the crowd. A few of the Sinners cleared out of her way, their deference drawing Tim's attention. Trying to keep her in sight, he came up off the stool until his head pressed against the roof of the van. Her bottom rocker--PROPERTY OF DEN--flashed into view before she disappeared behind a stand of trees.

  He keyed the radio. "Bear. You spot Den's deed? Far side of the trees?"

  "We have a worse angle than you. How 'bout you, Guerrera?"

  "We lost our view to a moving van."

  Tim grabbed a camera and slid out of the vehicle, easing the door closed. He jogged in a crouch a few feet along the wrought-iron fence and fell to a flat-bellied sniper's position. The brunette stepped back into the scope of his lens and he fired off a series of shots. The whir of his advancing film seemed to echo back at him. He pivoted with the camera, tracking the sound.

  A short biker sat on an Indian about twenty yards upslope, a camera raised to his helmet. For a frozen instant, he and Tim regarded each other through their lenses. The biker flipped down his wind visor and took off up a cross street. Tim was on his feet, sprinting for the van, the information coalescing--Chief, the Sinners' intel officer, taking pictures of Tim taking pictures.

  Tim leapt into the driver's seat and peeled away from the curb, the ESU guys going ass-up in the back. Barking for backup into the radio, he careened around the turn in time to see the bike cut down another street ahead. By the time the cul-de-sac flew into view, Chief was heading back directly at them, a game of chicken he was sure to lose. About twenty yards from a collision, he turned sharply, motoring up a walkway toward a house. He hopped the three steps onto the wide porch, a fusion of man and machine, and screeched left, leaving a wake of fire. The bike took flight off the porch and landed in a flower bed, throwing off a shower of dirt and petals. Chief reared up, his front wheel smashing down a rickety gate, and disappeared into the backyard.

  Tim skidded to a halt, Frisk rolling to strike the cushioned front seats, and reversed hard. He raced around the block in time to see the bike drop down a sloped median--a ten-foot fall ending in concrete--and race off, heading the wrong way, cars and trucks honking and veering as Chief split the road down the middle.

  A glance in the other direction showed Bear's van and Guerrera's G-ride boxed in by a cluster of strategically repositioned Harleys.

  Suffused with frustration and no small measure of admiration, Tim had no choice but to turn and watch Chief disappear.

  The Cholos rolled along, a river of flying colors. Aside from the war wagon twenty yards ahead, El Viejo led alone--no road captain to detract from his eminence. His face and bearing were classics, torn from pulp-western covers and second-rate cowboy etchings that tour-group participants hung in bathrooms. The narrow highway stretched flat and unforgiving through Antelope Valley, where the high Mojave grudgingly gives way to dusty civilization. The occasional car flashed by on the sole opposite lane, an anxious pale face or two pressed to a window.

  The ride was windless and serene. Just the purr of the bikes, the flutter of synthetic rubber over blacktop, the whistle of air through helmets.

  The front and rear war wagons exploded simultaneously, lifting off the ground and sending out a burst of heat and orange flame.

  The Cholos went down in waves, only those in the middle of the convoy managing to stay upright. The trapped bikers wheeled and revved, wild horses corralled.

  Two Harleys peeled out from behind an embankment shoring up a hillside ahead, Den and Kaner in the driver positions. Goat and Tom-Tom rode sidesaddle behind them, AR-15s at low-ready. They shot through the orb of fire engulfing the front war wagon, racing along the side of the convoy, AR-15s blazing. The Cholos absorbed the fusillade in tangles of metal and flesh, engines revving, tires biting through cloth and skin.

  The Sinners screeched to a halt at the end of the run, guns smoking. The procession had been decimated. A few weak groans and coughs. Limbs rustling among the bodies and machinery. The smell of burned flesh.

  The four Sinners dismounted, pulling handguns from their waist-bands. They walked calmly among the fallen, kids at a tidal pool, shooting the wounded in the head.

  In the front El Viejo lay broken-limbed ten yards from his steaming bike, an ideal chalk-outline model. His headdress lay behind him, ablaze. The heat from the fiery van had baked his rich bronze skin auburn. His cheek was stuck to the asphalt.

  Den strolled over and stared down at him, blotting out the midday sun. "Look at me."

  With great effort El Viejo pulled his cheek free of the road. He met Den's eyes defiantly, his wrinkled face hardened into a grimace.

  A single report.

  Goat pulled a bike over, and Den slung himself onto the back. As they took off after Kaner and Tom-Tom, the heat ate deeper into the war wagons, setting off a crackling of ammo.

  Chapter 10

  Tim crouched among the bodies, some charred from the bonfire blazes, taking in the quarter-mile death scene. The smoldering shells of the war wagons remained, exhaling black smoke. An upended bike framed his view, its tire spinning lazily like a pinwheel in a faint breeze. Tim closed his eyes, trying to drown out the pervasive buzz of black flies, and images pressed in on him with the smell--Black-hawks circling, desert sand swirling, dossiers smudged with camo-face-paint thumb marks. His combat memories underscored what he'd already gathered: This wasn't macho bikers squaring off over wayward glances at club mamas but a tactical hit, expertly planned and executed.

  A sheriff's deputy chuckled and pointed to the quarter-size holes that the cooked ammo had punched in the war wagon's metal. "Looks like they got their twenty-one-gun salute."

  Tim said, "This is funny to you?"

  "They cut irony outta the federal budget, too?" The guy casually went back to scribbling in the crime-scene attendance log.

  Tim rose and walked over to a cluster of criminalists by the CSI van. Before the hit TV show, they'd called the division Crime Lab, but a number-one ratings winner can be a strong impetus for change. Guerrera stood a few feet off from the group, finger in his ear, phone pressed to his head. He gave Tim a quick nod.

  Aaronson was squinting at a slug he held up before his face on tweezers. He was a slight man, prone to wearing crisply ironed, tissue-thin button-ups that showed off the lines of his undershirt. His crime-scene reports were filled out in a hand that looked like typewriting.

  "Explosives look to match?" Tim asked.

  "Those used on the transport convoy? Oh, yeah."

  "AR-15s again?"

  "Yup. They don't call 'em street sweepers for nothin
g."

  Bear jogged over, high-stepping through the wreckage, and beckoned Tim and Guerrera. By the time they reached him, he was holding a handkerchief against his mouth and nose.

  "So get this. I found out where Uncle Pete was after the funeral." Bear undercut his dramatic pause with a sneeze. "In church. He and the whole chapter rolled into First Baptist, scared the hell out of all the blue-hairs. Not the pastor, though. He thought he made the score of a lifetime."

  "The times line up?" Tim asked.

  "Perfectly. Before that the entire mother chapter was mourning peacefully under our surveillance. No way they had time in between to get out here. It was a nomad job, all right."

  "They got solid intel for this. They knew the route, which vehicles to rig."

  "Maybe they had someone on the inside."

  "With this rivalry? Doubt it."

  "They could've put the squeeze on one of the Cholos."

  "Can't interrogate them now." Tim surveyed the steaming landscape, the wooden box of the coffin resting untarnished amid the destruction. A mournful club mama sitting out the ride with a broken leg had turned over the restricted Cholo mother chapter's roster; a preliminary check matched a body to every name.

  "That's why they shot Chooch Millan," Guerrera said suddenly. He looked at them expectantly, then seemed to realize they were waiting for him to connect the dots. "What's the only thing that gets a whole club together in one place?"

  Tim bobbed his head--of course. "A funeral ride."

  "Right. Shoot someone in the rank and file, within a few days you'll have the entire club assembled right before your sights."

  Bear surveyed the scene with watering eyes. "Hell of a revenge for Nigger Steve."

  "This isn't revenge," Tim said. "This is extermination." He took in the baked tableau. "They're paving the way to something bigger."

  Bear made a muffled noise in his throat, and Tim started back to his car. Before driving off, he sat for a few minutes, staring at the wheel. He headed toward downtown in silence, stopping off at Forest Lawn.

  His phone chirped as he climbed out of the car.

  "Hey, babe. Jesus, huh?"

  "Yeah."

  He heard Mac shout something in the background, and then Dray said, "Shoot, I have to peel out. You think you'll be home?"

  He chuckled.

  "Right. Okay, the captain needs someone to pick up a few overtime parole hours--this case is stretching us thin on man-hours, too. I'll take 'em if it'll be a late one for you."

  "It will."

  "See you whenever. If it's before dawn, bring Yakitoriya."

  "Yakitoriya?"

  "Don't ask. I'm craving chicken neck." More distant voices. "Okay. Gotta run. Be safe."

  Tim folded the phone and got out, strolling among the gravestones. It wasn't hard to locate Palton's fresh carpet of sod. A blanket of lilies cascaded over a table laden with candles and bouquets. Frankie's decade-old credential photo from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center had been blown up and placed in a gold frame, like a signed former-celebrity eight-by-ten at a dry cleaner. His pose, stalwart and uptight, didn't reflect his humor. He wore a suit and no smile, twenty-four years of tough with a shaving nick at his Adam's apple. He and Janice, high-school sweethearts, would have been six years into their marriage when the photo was taken. And now he lay six feet under, collateral damage in a biker gang war.

  Tim's mind pulled to the civilian killed in the explosion, the illegal guy in the Pontiac, but he couldn't produce a name. He thought about Dray's cautionary words as he'd sat perusing the field files at the kitchen table. Though he was three years older than his wife, she still had him hands down on wisdom.

  He walked up and down the rows of graves, looking for Hank Mancone's plot. Hank was old, divorced, no kids, on the eve of retirement for five years now. Tim's impressions of Mancone were culled strictly from elevator nods and hallway passings, and he recalled only that the deputy was cranky, pouch-faced, and smelled of stale coffee. In the post-break hysteria, Hank hadn't played as well to the news cameras and weepy public; he was Shoshana Johnson to Palton's Jessica Lynch. Staring at the rows of gray headstones, searching for a cushion of color like that surrounding Frankie's grave, Tim flashed on the photos of Hank's corpse seat-belted into the transport van. Was the crime against Frankie any worse? Did the pretty wife, the two kids, the square jaw, the specialized credentials make it any more a tragedy?

  Tim stepped between two high headstones, coming upon an older woman on her knees. A few bouquets dotted the fresh-turned soil. Tim followed her gaze to the chiseled name.

  "I'm one of Hank's colleagues," he said gently. "Are you his ex-wife?"

  "His sister." She raised her eyes. They were tired and sad, though Tim would have bet they looked that way outside of cemeteries as well as in. "Were you a friend?"

  "A colleague," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I didn't know him well."

  "Nobody did."

  Tim let that one expire in the graveyard silence.

  "Hank was supposed to retire last year. And the year before that. Just wouldn't. He always said he had nothing else to do." She wiped her nose. "You reap what you sow, I guess. You stay closed off, you get less flowers at your grave. And you know what? Hank wouldn't have minded that one bit. He wouldn't have complained. He just wanted to drive his van and be around."

  Tim felt an urge to give her something, to share with her his own loss, but he recognized the impulse as self-serving. His cell phone vibrated at his belt. "I'm sorry." He started to add something in closing, but she waved him off. Her voice was more regretful than sad. "I know. I know. Me, too."

  When Tim reached the edge of the cemetery, Bear still rattling off updates in his ear, he looked back. Mancone's nameless sister was in the same position on her knees before the gravestone, hands folded calmly in her lap.

  Chapter 11

  Photos of Sinners and deeds, taken at the afternoon funeral, already plastered the command post's walls. Every few minutes a deputy would get up from a computer monitor and tack another paper name tag beneath a picture. Everyone worked diligently except for Jeff Malane, who stood in the corner speaking furtively into his cell phone as if conferring with a bookie.

  The clear shots Tim had captured of Den's deed were clustered on the bulletin board at the head of the table. From his fleeting glimpses at the cemetery, Tim hadn't recognized how beautiful she was. Lush brown hair, center-parted and flipped back from a face that was paradoxically tough and delicate. Angry cheekbones, pulled even higher by a squint. An elegant bridge of a nose that banked into a surprising pug. Shiny irises, almost cobalt. She could've been the eye candy in a rock-ballad video.

  Most of the other deeds and all the slags had been identified already and matched to addresses and jobs. Wristwatch Annie's given name was Tracy White. She'd been busted a few times on prostitution beefs, free-lancing for Sinner-owned massage parlors, but she'd graduated to clubhouse den mother. Some rumors had her as a pro on the side, but by most accounts she was merely a slut.

  The striker and his mystery date remained unidentified. Guerrera hung enlarged details from his photos--armband and pinkie ring--beside his full depiction.

  Tim finished scanning the updates and stood. "Gimme your attention for a minute here." The tapping on keyboards stopped. Phone receivers pressed against chests. "Sheriff's has the case, but that doesn't mean that the Palmdale massacre isn't our responsibility. Thirty-seven men were murdered." He didn't like the set of some of the faces looking back at him. "I don't care if they were one-percenters. They were murdered, and they were murdered by fugitives. And that means it happened on our watch. So I don't care if the victims are outlaw bikers or a slaughtered convent of nuns"--at this, Guerrera stiffened--"we do our jobs here, and we do them well." Tim pointed at the photos. "Let's carve up the names, shake some cages, and see what falls out."

  His colleagues rustled back to work, the command post cranking into motion like an elaborate windup toy. Tim huddled wi
th Guerrera and Bear at the end of the conference table.

  "Media attention's through the roof," Bear said. "This is the second-biggest mass murder in California history."

  "What's number one?"

  "Jedediah Lane's attack on the Census Bureau. Heard of it?"

  "Vague recollection." Tim blew out a breath. "We've got a major gang-war blowout. That, the public will see, hear, and feel. Tannino and the mayor are in press-conference hell right now. We've gotta stay focused on the case, keep fielding the grounders." He turned to Guerrera. "You find anything on Lash yet?"

  "The Sinner who got his colors taken back?" Guerrera waited on Tim's nod. "We put it out on the street, but nothing so far."

  "I want you to run Danny the Wand through the moniker database, too. The guy's clearly got close ties to the club."

  Bear, contending with a burrito leak, took a moment to respond. "Already did. Got nothing. Thomas and Freed are working it, checking out bike paint stores, all that shit."

  Tim turned to Guerrera. "Can we expect big-league retaliation from the Cholos?"

  "This afternoon seems like the club's final coffin nail. Palmdale was the mother chapter, by far the biggest. Cholo ranks are already thinned from the war. I'd be surprised if they muster any real retaliation. The Sinners are too powerful. Especially now."

  "What's the motive to wipe out an entire club?"

  "Odio."

  "Just hate?"

  "There's no 'just' about hate, socio. Not among bikers."

  Tim was about to express his skepticism when Thomas racked a phone and hopped up from his computer. "Our mystery deed just rang the cherries over at the Fillmore Station. Babe Donovan." He spun the monitor to show off the JPEG of her mug shot. "She got popped for possession six months ago, squirmed off with a little help from Dana Lake. And--get this--she works for the DMV."

  "ID heaven," Freed said.