CHOPPER

by Jessie Cooke

  For the next ten or fifteen minutes, she rode him like he was a stallion. He gripped her ass, digging his fingers into her, slapping it lightly every so often, kissing her, sucking her lips, sucking her tits, dangling on the edge of exploding the entire time, right up until she screamed out, “Oh, Justice! Fuck! Oh my god, I fucking love fucking you!” That was when he couldn’t hold back a second longer. They held onto each other tightly as each one of them reached their peak and rode the waves to the other side. Chopper held her in the warm water with the moonlight shining down on them both and wondered if life could get any more perfect. He closed his eyes and listened to the silence of the night and felt the rise and fall of her chest against his as she breathed, and wondered why he could hear the sound of a Harley in the background. Fuck! It was his Harley. Chelsea must have realized it at the same time. She jumped up off him and he jumped out of the jacuzzi. The condom fell off as he ran naked across the grass and toward the house. By the time he left a trail of water and other fluids across the highly polished wood floors and out onto the front porch, his bike was no more than a flash of a taillight in the distance. Motherfucker.

  9

  Chelsea pulled on her clothes and then picked up Chopper’s clothes and his phone and carried them out front. At first she didn’t see him, so she began walking up the cobblestone road toward the front gate. It took her almost a full five minutes before she was close enough to the wrought iron gates to see him standing there. He looked pitiful. He was naked and leaning into the open gate with his head pressed into it. She approached him gently, stopping about a foot away and saying, “Chopper?”

  He looked up at her and there was a look in his eyes that was almost comparable to what she’d seen in the eyes of people she’d known who had lost loved ones. She wondered if he didn’t have insurance. Surely he did. All of their stuff was still on the bike. Not that either of them had brought much. Maybe he had something on the bike that she didn’t know about? “He took my bike,” he said, sounding almost as if he was in shock.

  She held out his clothes and softly said, “I’m sorry. Maybe you should get dressed and we can call the police.” He took the clothes and like a zombie, he got dressed. He was still staring out past the gates the entire time, like he expected the guy to change his mind suddenly and turn around and come back. When he finished dressing, she handed him his phone. He looked at it for a second like he didn’t know what to do with it, and then at last he used his thumb to pull up a number and pressed it. He hadn’t had to look it up, so she knew he wasn’t calling the police even before he said:

  “Dax, someone stole my chopper.” Chelsea let him talk, but quietly reached out for his hand. He took hers and she led him slowly back up to the house while he told Dax what had happened. They were almost to the house when he told Dax he’d keep in touch, ended the call, and then used his thumb to find something else in the phone. He stopped at the steps that led up to the door and made another call. “Rusty, it’s Chopper. Hey, man, someone stole my bike. It was right in front of your door.” He was quiet for a second and then he said, “Fuck, no. Damn it! I’m so stupid. I just assumed it reset itself when it closed behind us.” He listened again and then said, “Dax told me to let you know I was going to call the cops so they can check with you to make sure I have permission to be here. Thanks, Rusty. I’m sorry for the trouble.” He ended the call and looked at Chelsea. “The gates closed behind us, but I should have gotten off the bike and reset the alarm. I’m so stupid. Fucker probably just climbed over the gate.”

  “No, you’re not stupid. Please don’t do that. This isn’t your fault. We’re in the middle of nowhere. Who would have thought that someone would steal anything out here, especially behind these iron gates? You want me to look up the number for the police?” He nodded, still looking numb, and handed her the phone. Chelsea looked up the number, entered it in the phone, and handed it back to him. Once he told them who he was, where he was, and what happened, he ended the call and they went inside to wait.

  It was half an hour later before the police got there and Chopper was growing restless. Chelsea sat on the couch and watched him pace back and forth. She wished that there was something she could do for him. He just looked so miserable. When the police rang the doorbell, she was going to get the door, just so she didn’t feel so helpless, but Chopper rushed toward it, not giving her a chance.

  “Mr. Crowley?”

  “Yes,” Chopper said. “I’m Justice Crowley.”

  “You called to report a stolen vehicle?”

  “Yes, come in please.” The two uniformed officers entered the house and when they got to the living room, Chelsea got up and said:

  “Can I offer you something to drink? I’m not sure what we have, but I can look.”

  “No thank you,” the older of the two told her. “Please have a seat, miss.” Chelsea sat back down, and the cop said, “Can you describe the vehicle?” Chelsea listened to Chopper tell the cop about his bike. She could hear the tremor in his voice as he talked about all the custom work he’d had done to it over the years. When he finished the officer asked, “So approximately how much would you say this bike is worth?”

  “Fifty or sixty grand,” Chopper said. The policemen looked at each other and the younger one said:

  “You’re from Massachusetts?”

  “Yes, Boston.”

  “What do you do down there?”

  Chelsea saw Chopper’s jaw clench before he said, “I work on bikes and cars.”

  “For who?”

  “Why are you interrogating me? You should be out there looking for my fucking chopper!” Chelsea reached over and put her hand on his arm. He covered it with his own, but she could feel how tense his muscles were.

  “We’re just getting some background, sir. Is this your home?”

  “No. It belongs to Rusty Daniels. He said you can call him if you need confirmation of our right to be here. I’m a Southside Skull. I’m sure that’s what all your questions are about, right?” Before the cop could answer that, Chopper said, “I’ve been working since I was thirteen years old, putting almost every penny I made into that bike. It’s been my passion. I’m good at it, and I love my bike. Meanwhile, yes, I am a Skull. But I’m twenty-six years old and you’re welcome to check this with Boston PD. I haven’t been arrested since I was a juvenile and then it was for petty shit like racing and underage drinking. The same shit other teenagers do. I’m not the fucking criminal here. I’m the victim and I’d appreciate it if you treated me as such.”

  Chelsea was trying to keep a straight face. She was proud of him for standing up for himself, and the cop looked like he was re-evaluating what he was going to say next. When he finally spoke he said, “Did you see the person who took your bike?”

  “I saw his back. He had on a leather jacket, brown. His hair was dark. He was probably close to my size…maybe a little shorter.”

  “Do you know how he got on the property?”

  “He must have climbed the gates. I didn’t reset the alarm after we came in. Can you fingerprint the gates?” He seemed excited about that, but the cops didn’t look enthusiastic. In their defense, unless they knew exactly where he climbed over, that would take a hell of a lot of time. Rusty’s property wasn’t small and the gate and fence went all the way around it. The cop was smart enough not to touch that one yet. Instead he said:

  “So, he climbed in, but wouldn’t he still need a code to get out?”

  “I watched him leave,” Chopper said. “The gate must be on a sensor on this side because when he was about five feet away, it slid open. He barely made it through without damaging the bike. Fuck…If he wrecks it, I’ll…” Chopper caught himself before he spoke the rest of that sentence. He took his hand from Chelsea and ran it through his hair. The police stayed for another twenty minutes or so, asking the same questions only phrasing them differently, it seemed to Chelsea. When they were finally gone, she put her arms around him and they just sat there on the couch li
ke that for a long time. When Chopper finally spoke he said, “I know you probably think I’m ridiculous, but that chopper means the world to me. It’s like…if you had a pet for a really long time and you put all this care and love into it and someone just came along and took it…but it was your fault because you left the gate open…”

  “Stop beating yourself up, please,” she said. “Ithaca is not that big geographically, right? Maybe they’ll find him before the night is over.”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he believed it himself. “Or maybe he’ll just disappear into New York City and I’ll never see it again. The fucker better hope I never see him.”

  Chelsea shivered. She’d been able to kind of block out the fact that she was traveling cross-country with a member of a motorcycle gang the whole time. But, the look on Chopper’s face at that moment reminded her. She knew he had a right to be angry, but there was murder in his eyes at that moment. Almost the same look he had when the guy tried to mow her down outside of the Waffle House… “Oh shit!”

  “What?”

  “You said brown leather jacket…”

  Chopper jumped up to his feet. “Motherfucker. It’s the same guy! The one that’s been following you.” Suddenly Chelsea wished they could go back just a few minutes to when losing his chopper was his own fault, and not hers. She felt like shit.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He was pacing, but at the sound of her apology, he stopped and looked down at her. Pulling his brows together he said, “Sorry?” He reached for her hand and pulled her up to her feet. With his arms around her waist he said, “You don’t have anything to be sorry for, but that son of a bitch just put one more nail in his coffin for making you think that you do. He’s stalking you. He tried to hurt you. Fuck! He’s probably been following us and watching us since we left Boston. None of that is your fault, Chelsea. But I promise you that I’m going to find out who this fucker is. He picked the wrong people to mess with.”

  She wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t her fault, but she melded into him and his arms felt so good around her that she let it go. It wasn’t long before they made their way up the winding staircase to the huge master bedroom and called it a night. They didn’t have sex. Chopper just held her, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she actually slept peacefully through the night and woke up feeling refreshed. She was lying in that big bed next to him, staring up through the skylight in the ceiling with a smile on her face, when she heard the sounds of motorcycles…a lot of them. She looked over at Chopper, who had pulled open his eyes. He heard them too. The cavalry had arrived.

  10

  Two hours ago, she was waking up in a mansion, a dream home where even a girl like her could pretend that she was the lady of the house, and “normal” for just a little while. Now suddenly she was surrounded by Harleys and men in jeans and leather. A lot of Harleys and a lot of men. Dax and about five of the Skulls had shown up at the mansion. He and Chopper had spoken aside from everyone else for a few moments and then she had followed Chopper into a customized black van with the shiniest wheels she’d ever seen, and they were being driven to Schenectady, to an MC club that housed a crew who called themselves the Demonios. It meant “demon” in Spanish, that much Chelsea understood. What she wasn’t sure about was why they were there, because not even Chopper was talking to her.

  This club wasn’t like the ranch the Skulls lived on. Chelsea had never been on the “compound” or seen the clubhouse, but she’d heard a lot about it. It was surrounded by gates and those gates were monitored with cameras and armed men. This one simply sat behind an auto shop and a bar inside a nondescript concrete building. Chelsea held tightly to Chopper’s hand as they stood behind Dax and a few of the other guys at the door of the clubhouse. There was a huge man at the door. He was Hispanic, bald, and tattooed with his affiliation across his round skull and down the side of his neck. He didn’t have a gun in his hand, but something told Chelsea there was one on him…somewhere.

  “Weapons,” he growled at Dax. Chelsea watched the Skulls president’s face. Dax didn’t even blink as he said:

  “Go fuck yourself.” She automatically looked at Chopper. He didn’t flinch either, but he did let go of her hand. It was the first time she wondered whether or not he was carrying a weapon. Of course he was. He was a biker, and she’d just been living in fantasyland for the past two days. Somehow, even sober and trying to walk the line, she always seemed to end up in a place like this…scared and confused.

  Chelsea was surprised and relieved when the big guy at the door threw his head back and laughed. “Same old fucking arrogant cracker.”

  “Once again, Hector, go fuck yourself. Jesus is expecting us.” Hector stepped out of the way, but he and Dax kept their eyes on each other until Dax was inside. The big guy stared the rest of them down, and Chopper once again took Chelsea’s hand and held it tightly. She wasn’t sure, but she thought there might have been some dissension among the group of Skulls who showed up at the house that morning, about her going along. Chopper got pretty heated, explaining to them that he believed the man who took his chopper was intent on hurting her, and he wasn’t leaving her alone. Apparently, the rest of the women, the “old ladies,” were still at whatever base the guys had been at in Ohio when Chopper called them. The guys had left them there and driven all night to get back to New York. Now that they were surrounded by what seemed to be a fairly hostile group of bikers, she wondered if staying behind might have been the smarter thing to do. Alcohol and drugs weren’t the only thing that gave her PTSD. Sometimes men did it as well.

  Dax had stopped again, and the guys seemed to automatically fan out behind him when he did. He was facing a much smaller man now. This one was very dark-skinned with black hair that was slicked back from his forehead with what looked like heavy oil. He had an ugly, jagged scar puckering one side of his face, and he was holding a gun. Dax kept his eyes on the guy’s face, but Chelsea looked at Chopper and saw that his, and the rest of the crew’s eyes, were on the gun.

  “Jesus says let you in,” the man said in a heavily accented voice. “The rest of them wait out here.”

  “No.” That was the man standing to Dax’s right. His kutte said “Cody,” and he hadn’t spoken more than a few words all day. He was big, with short blond hair and really intense eyes that he had focused on the shorter man’s face now.

  The Hispanic man kept his eyes on Dax as he said, “Your boys talk for you?”

  “This is one of my sergeants at arms, Cody Miller,” Dax said. “His job is to protect me and the rest of this club. I respect his instincts and opinions. If he says I’m not leaving them out here, then that’s the way it is.”

  The little man smiled. “You Skulls, always so fucking arrogant. I’ll pass your message to Jesus. Have a drink while you wait, on us. But don’t jump on the furniture or run in the house,” he said, laughing at his own joke as he walked away. He was the only one. None of the guys moved until Dax did. When he walked over to one of the tables, the guys followed. Everyone sat down including Chopper and Chelsea, except Cody, who stood like a sentry at the edge of the table. He had his hand on the front of his vest the entire time. Chelsea wondered if that was where his gun was, or if maybe she was just letting her imagination get away from her. She was still looking at Cody’s hand when she heard Dax say:

  “So, you know absolutely nothing about this guy who has been chasing you?” It took her a second to process that he was talking to her. When she did, she looked at his face, directly looking him in the eyes for the first time. Growing up where she did, she had heard a lot about Dax Marshall. She’d even caught a glimpse or two of him riding by, or standing outside one of the businesses in town. But now that his incredibly serious, intense blue gaze was on her face, she felt like she could almost see the legendary power in them that people on the Southside whispered about.

  “No,” she said, trying to control the quiver in her voice. “Night before last down by
the harbor was the first time I’d ever seen him. At least that I remember seeing him. He was creepy, and he knew my name…”

  “Could you describe him to someone well enough for them to draw a picture?” he asked her.

  “I can draw one if you get me a pencil and paper,” she said. She felt Chopper’s eyes on her and she looked at him and said, “I’m an artist. I sold your tattoo guy most of the designs on his walls, the ones you guys pick from when you go in to see him.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Chopper said. It wasn’t like a curse, but more just an expression of surprise. Dax looked up at Cody, who walked over to the bar and seconds later was back with a pencil and a roll of cash register tape. He handed it to Chelsea and then went back to the bar and got a pitcher of beer and glasses. Chelsea didn’t look up while the beer was being poured and passed around, and even though she heard Chopper say something to Cody, she was too focused on what she was doing to process it. When she finished her drawing and looked up, the first thing she saw was the mug of ice water in front of her. She looked at Chopper and smiled, squeezing his leg under the table, and then with a shaky hand she gave the drawing to Dax.