The Replacements

by David Putnam

  “Prime directive?” Drago said. “You two hard-ons don’t even know what that means, do ya? Clay tell ya what I look like?”

  Neither answered.

  Drago lifted his football jersey, exposing the tattoo Aryan Brotherhood Forever, with the battle axe dripping blood underneath. He rolled his belly fat. The axe made a small chopping motion. Both their mouths dropped open.

  “And now watch this,” said Drago. He shucked off the handcuffs and dropped them to the ground. Drago acted, pushing the edge he’d created, and took one giant step. He moved right up on them, took a throat in each hand, lifted, and walked into the clubhouse. The two biker prospects gasped and choked.

  We’d made it inside easy enough. Now the trick would be getting what we came for and getting the hell out.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The two prospects clutched at Drago’s wrists as their toes left the ground.

  Mack closed the door behind us. Drago heaved and the boys tumbled to the floor and scrambled about, trying to recover.

  “That’s good, boys,” said Drago. “Just do what Uncle Meat tells you, and you might be able to keep your balls where they grew and not shoved down your throats.”

  The immaculate outside of the club, the false front for public consumption, did not match the inside. The place smelled of urine and beer, body odor, and thick, solidified cooking grease. Beer bottles littered the large open room that held five couches, facing each other like wagons circled to fight off Indians. There was nothing stylish about it.

  Just like Drago’s motel room, take-out from many different restaurants cluttered the floor, and had been waded through, stomped, and kicked about willy-nilly. A huge plasma screen television filled nearly one entire wall. One corner hung cocked lower and had been smashed in from a thrown bottle or a head rammed into it. It still worked. A show about an outlaw motorcycle gang, Sons of Anarchy, played silently, except where a cone of darkness from the damaged corner gradually shifted into color, moving upward where the show appeared around damage.

  The boys tried to stand. Drago kicked at them. “Stay down there.”

  They stopped squirming. Drago pointed to the TV. “You punks getting in a little training film, are ya?” He kicked one in the side. “What’s your name, punk?”

  The prospect didn’t act intimidated. He was probably used to this sort of treatment. “They call me Slim Jim.”

  “What about your butt-buddy?”

  The other one said, “My name is—”

  Drago kicked at him, “I’m not talking to you, asshole.” Drago looked at Slim Jim. “Well?”

  “Roy Boy, they call him Roy Boy.”

  “Roy Boy, you go with this man,” said Drago. He pointed to me. “Help him bring in some tools from the car. Don’t do anything stupid, you understand?”

  Roy Boy nodded as he got up.

  I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of Drago calling the shots, but, for the moment, I’d go along. He was getting things moving and we really needed things moving.

  I spun Roy Boy around and patted him down. Clean, nothing on him.

  “Huh,” said Drago. “You, stand up.” Drago searched Slim Jim. The same, nothing. “What? You boys haven’t made your bones yet, so you can’t pack, is that it?”

  Neither spoke. Roy Boy looked at Slim Jim, but Slim Jim didn’t look back at him.

  I nudged Roy Boy and we went outside. Mack stood at the front door and hit the trunk release from the key fob. I let Roy Boy carry the two heavy canvas bags, a burden he could barely handle alone. I followed, scooped up Drago’s cuffs, and closed the front door behind us. Oddly, I felt safer inside the lair than outside under the eyes of the cops who had the ability to put me in a concrete block for the rest of my life.

  The false sense of security gave me pause. I thought about Marie and Eddie, who would just be crossing the border. In another hour she’d be in Ensenada.

  I put one cuff on Slim Jim and the other on Roy Boy. While we were outside, Drago had found the fridge and had already guzzled half a 40-ounce Olde English beer. He picked up the canvas bags with one hand without relinquishing his hold on the forty. He kicked Slim Jim in the ass. The momentum jerked them both. “Let’s go.”

  Slim Jim scowled. “Where to?”

  “You know where, asshole. The president’s office, where else?”

  Mack remained by the window the entire time, watching the front through a crack in the curtains and a wedge he’d scraped out of the foil.

  “You got this?” I asked Mack. He pulled a San Bernardino sheriff’s radio he had clipped to his back pocket and set it on the window sill. I hadn’t seen him with it before, and I too should’ve thought of the tactic to monitor the surveillance activity. He kept his eyes on the window and tossed a wave over his shoulder. He realized that if a threat came, it would come from the front: a biker rolling in, a patrol car responding to a call; he’d see it first from where he stood.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He took his eyes off the crack in the curtain.

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He smiled. “Me too. Why don’t you get in there in case your fat buddy goes psycho and kills one or both of those prospects! We don’t need a murder rap during the course of a robbery.”

  I nodded and followed down the hall. Murder during the course of a felony made the suspect eligible for the death penalty. I had forgotten that Mack still thought differently than I did. I didn’t want Drago to kill anyone, and would fight him to the death to keep it from happening, but I had already made my peace with the possible consequences. I had to, or I couldn’t operate otherwise, at least not in a cogent, effective manner.

  I found the two bikers in the large room that didn’t match the living room area. This one contained a nice maple desk and an expensive Asian area rug. A Remington bronze of a cowboy riding a bronc sat on the desk. Overhead, a Tiffany lamp hung from the ceiling. The room had been professionally decorated with a generous budget, money obtained through tyranny, extortion, pain, and blood. Tongue-and-groove knotty pine panels covered the walls, where pictures hung depicting Clay Warfield with public figures at dinners, charity events, and political rallies. The face, the figurehead, the leader of the SS International organization.

  We were kicking a sleeping giant.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  I have little or no knowledge about safes. This one took up one corner of the room. A real monster, olive green with a double door. Older looking, with twin dials. A beautiful mural on the front depicted a stagecoach with a team of black horses at a full run fleeing masked gunmen on wild-eyed steeds.

  Drago set both bags down by the safe.

  “Is it the same safe?” I asked. “Is it in the same position as you remember?”

  He looked at me as if he had not thought of that, took a step back, and reexamined the safe. He scratched his dome. He walked back to the door where we entered, turned, raised his hands, spread them wide, looking through them gauging the space, the same as a director of a movie. He carefully paced off the distance back to the safe. “Shit. I can’t tell for sure if it’s in the same place or not, but it is for damn sure the same safe. I’m absolutely sure of that.”

  “You can’t tell for sure if it’s in the same location? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Well, you asked me. I’m here to tell ya, I’m not sure. And come on, man, it was a long time ago. It does seem to me that the safe’s in the right place. But maybe…I don’t know, maybe it should be another two or three feet farther that way. That wall seems closer for some reason. But man, that can’t be right.” He scratched his head. “Since I got out, I’ve been goin’ a little crazy. I notice things from before, that in my head I remember different from this time around. I was in a small concrete cell for twenty-five years and everything to me feels bigger now, huge even. That concrete box really fucked with my perspective, man.”

  Drago came back and shoved the solid maple desk out of the way as if it were constructed of balsa
wood. His mood changed back to all business. “You watch these two assholes close, I’m serious.” He looked at the safe, appraising it, then down at the bags we’d brought in. “I’m not gonna need all these tools like I thought. This isn’t the model I thought it was. They call this one the butter model, cuts like butter.”

  He opened the bag, took out a sledgehammer, raised it high and came down on the first dial. The dial broke off and skittered away.

  Slim Jim said, “You’re insane—that’s Clay’s safe. You just committed suicide assh—”

  Drago spun around, the hammer of Thor raised high overhead, ready to strike.

  I stepped in front of the two idiot prospects to keep their mouths from killing them.

  Drago’s eyes cooled. “Sit them down over there and tell ’em to keep their mouths shut, or I’ll cave in their little pea brains.” He did not bluster. I had no doubt he’d do it.

  By the way Drago talked and acted, he didn’t like bikers much. I hoped that’s what was causing his overreaction to the situation, and not that he realized the safe might have been moved. Had the safe been moved even two or three feet, the doughnut, in all likelihood, would not have been used in the reinstallation, as it had not been needed in the first one to begin with.

  Drago swung the big sledge in one fluid movement and knocked off the other dial. He went back into the duffel and came out with a unique device, an aluminum rack or frame attached to a huge drill. He looked back to check on me. “Hey, I’m tellin’ ya, don’t watch me, watch those two assholes. They’ll go on you, you give ’em half a chance. They have to. Like I said, they get their asses kicked now by us, or by the gang when they catch up to them. It’ll happen as soon as those two ass-wipes grow a pair of balls.”

  Of course, he was right. I understood the primitive and archaic mentality. I just had difficulty comprehending anyone still employing it. I sat on the edge of the desk, facing the two biker wannabes who sat on the floor with their backs to the wall. They kept their eyes on me as the drill’s rpms whined and the bit cut into steel.

  Their eyes filled with anger and, in some small way, smothered any hope I had for humanity.

  Time did not play fair. It slowed to a pace akin to soldiers, exhausted, slogging along in two feet of sludge, mired in endless miles of mud.

  The pitch of the drill changed as the bit broke through. The whine stopped. The lack of noise filled the room with an eerie silent echo. I fought the urge to watch what move Drago did next and asked, “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My head jerked around all on its own. “What do you mean you don’t know? Haven’t you done this before?”

  He smiled. “Hell, no, I’m a stickup guy, not some crotchety old yegg or cheesy little sneak thief who prowls the night afraid of his own shadow. I hate sneak thieves, hate ’em with a vengeance.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you never broke into a safe?”

  “Cracking a safe. They call it cracking a safe, or peeling a safe, depending on which method you use.”

  “How do you—”

  “Chill, man. I had twenty-five years to study up on it. Enough time to earn eight college degrees in the subject. I got this. You’d better pay attention to your shit.”

  I turned back just as Slim Jim and Roy Boy shot up from the floor in a unified attack. I buried my head in my arms and elbows. Their two cuffed hands grabbed my shoulders beside my neck. They’d been going for my throat and missed as I reacted. With their free hands, they pummeled me on both sides with rock-hard fists of youth. The blows rained down on my forehead and ears and neck with a burst of pain and bright lights. I expected a lion’s roar as Drago counterattacked. Surely, any second, Drago would dispatch them with his hammer. Smash and crush their bodies. Fling them up against the wall like so much human garbage.

  But the counterattack didn’t come. The whine of drill started again. He’d warned me, and now I had to take care of my own error. Another biker mantra, “Take care of your own shit.”

  The blows continued to fall. I turned numb.

  While on the street as a deputy working South Central Los Angeles, I had been jumped twice, once by four suspects and another by five. Four and five were better than two to fight any day. With more in the mix, they got in the way of themselves and even struck one another. Back then I had covered up and picked my shots, making them count, meting out all takedown shots. When two of their cohorts went down hard, the momentum of the gang broke and they had fled.

  Now in Clay’s office there were only two, who were younger and more motivated. I had to make a sacrifice. I opened up my right side in order to take a shot with my best stroke, a right uppercut. I made my move. Roy Boy came in with knuckles to my temple on the weak side that shook me to my heels and made the lights in the room flicker. My uppercut was already on the way, a short violent stroke that I put in everything I had left. My fist connected with the bottom of Slim Jim’s jaw. His head snapped back. His broken jawbone radiated through my wrist and up my arm. He went down as though I’d switched off a light. His cuffed hand pulled Roy Boy off balance just enough. I came around with a left hook, the diversion, and followed it up with the heat, a right roundhouse that caught him flat on the nose. He went down on top of Slim Jim.

  Mack heard the ruckus and burst into the room just as it ended. He came over and propped me up. My knees wouldn’t cooperate, not entirely, and I had to sit on the edge of the desk. Mack asked Drago, “Hey, asshole, how come you didn’t help out over here?”

  The drill whine went on for another long minute, or maybe it was two, as we both waited for his answer. A thudding pain bleated in my eyesight.

  Drago shut off the drill and pulled down his goggles. “I warned him twice about these turds. I don’t have the time to do both his job and mine.”

  My injuries settled down to a constant throb. My head rang with several bell tones, and I tasted a metallic wetness in my mouth. “He’s right,” I said, “this was all on me.”

  “Oh no, it’s not,” said Mack. “We’re a team here.”

  Drago scowled, turned back, went into his bag, and came out with a small flashlight he put in his mouth and a long thin piece of metal. He leaned over the holes he’d drilled and probed with the thin shiv, first in one hole, then in the other. “This was much easier than I thought it would be.”

  Mack patted my back. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. I just had my bell rung, that’s all. I’m too old for this shit.”

  “Yes,” said Drago. He dropped his tools and took hold of the two handles. He hesitated and then turned them. The handles moved. A loud clack sounded as the doors swung open.

  The large safe was empty. Absolutely and conspicuously empty.

  “Shit, we’ve been had,” Drago said.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mack.

  “Son of a bitch, who’s watching the front?” Drago ran for the office door as he yelled, “That safe should be filled with guns and ledgers and computer disks.” He made it out the door into the hall with Mack and me close on his heels. Drago said over his shoulder, “They cleared it out for a reason. And there’s only one reason it can be.”

  In the big open room, the front door burst open. Three Sons of Satan came right at us with M16 rifles leveled at our bellies. They yelled, “Get on the ground. Get on the ground now.”

  I eased to the ground amongst all the debris, trying to take it all in, trying to understand how we had screwed up, how we could possibly get out of this mess.

  The fat bikers with guns jumped in close and kicked us. I was slammed down against the crusty rug. Pain radiated up and down my leg from a kick to my hip.

  Out the front door, a van had backed up right to the house entrance. The double doors to the van stood open. Two more men stepped down out of the van and into the house. I recognized one from the photos I’d seen. Clay Warfield, the president of the Sons of Satan International. He’d aged and his shoulders had slumped slightly, but he was eas
y to recognize. He still possessed that crazed look in his eyes, a fire that wouldn’t extinguish until someone cut off his head and buried it ten feet from his body.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Drago held his fists up chest high, ready to take on the M16s with muscle, bare knuckles, and pure, insane stupidity. Two bikers covered Mack and me on the floor with their guns, as the third moved in closer. “Get on the floor, fat man, or I’ll open you up like a tomato soup can.”

  “Come on, Drago, do what he says,” I said. “They got us cold.”

  “Do it, fat man. Do it right now.”

  “Drago,” I said, “come on, what good’s it gonna to do if you get yourself shot.” My words didn’t penetrate his anger. I could see that at any second he’d pull his internal trigger and go on them, take his best and final shot.

  “Hey, Meat, do what he says, get on the floor,” said Clay Warfield. “We’re just going to talk here.”

  “Let ’em shoot, the cops’ll come runnin’,” Drago said. “The cops are watchin’ the clubhouse. You want the cops all up in your shit, Clay? I don’t think so.”

  Clay broke into a smile. “Looks like we’re in what you’d call a white trash stand-off.” The smile intensified the crazy in his eyes. “What’d you do with Roy Boy and Slim Jim? You put ’em down?” He said it casually, as if their deaths had been expected and the prospects meant nothing to him.

  Clay turned to a quiet biker dressed in chinos and a long-sleeve blue shirt. “Sandman, check it out.”

  The Sandman walked by us and down the hall to the office. He stuck his head in and came back. “They’ve been spanked but they’re still breathin’. The safe’s open. Dipshit here ruined it, just like you thought he would. I liked that safe. A damn fine antique, and he drilled two huge holes in it.”

  I got up and brushed off my hands. “You want to talk, let’s talk.” One biker jabbed the barrel of his rifle into my gut, a fool’s move. I could’ve taken it from him. But then we all would have died. He yelled, “Get back down.”