by Neely Tucker
Sully flipped his visor up and told Alex to keep an eye peeled for Lanky Dreads.
“How would I recognize him?” she said.
“You don’t remember him from the other day?”
“He wasn’t pointing a gun at me so, no.”
They rolled at a slow idle through the trailers. The rows of them extended all the along the track’s straightaway to the finish line. The lights over the track were daylight bright, but the lights in the parking lot were almost all out, making the shadows between the trailers deep. It was useless, this sort of trolling, so he finally parked the bike in a narrow gap between two vans, close behind the bleachers.
“Been a while since I’ve ridden that long,” she said, smiling, shifting her backpack to hang off one shoulder. “That was fun. I’m liking this place. Atmosphere.”
“It’s a classy joint,” he said, getting a little of her vibe, glad again that she’d come. She lightened his mood. She was fun. She was good for him.
“So the idea,” she said, putting the backpack on the bike seat, unzipping it, already pulling out her gear, “is for you to find the guy with the dreads. Then what? You race him and lose your bike? This is good exactly how?”
“We find him,” he said, “and I get him to intro me to the Hall brothers. That’s who I need to talk to. I’d never get to them in the Bend. Out here, though, they’re in open air. I can just walk up on them. They’ll be tailgating outside one of those vans down there, one of those trailers.”
“How do you know which one?”
“I don’t. But Lanky’s a lieutenant in their outfit, the M Street Crew. He also races for pinks. That means that the crew rides, at least some of them. And you don’t have to ride to come out to this. It’s a social event. The guys from Southeast, from PG, who drag? They’ll all be down here. Weed, gambling, a cookout, babes in booty shorts. What’s not to love?”
“The ganja. Riding through those trailers down there? Wow.”
“It was a haze.”
“But why the Hall brothers? Why do you think they’ll talk to you?”
“Good looks and personality,” he said, “have always worked for me.”
• • •
She took the infield of the track, using her press card and a smile to get past the guard, and Sully took the bleachers. He went up the aluminum steps at the far end, away from the press box, one at a time, minimizing the limp. When he made the landing, he turned and scanned the seats. A scattered crowd, maybe two hundred people. Women sitting in clumps, dutifully watching their men go at it out there on the track. Kids running up and down the rows. Most of the crowd was back in the trailers, the parking lots.
He walked through the bettors against the fence, turning sideways to get through, moving sixty, seventy yards down, moving into the long shadows, now coming up on the long line of bikers waiting to race. They were lined up in a double row, side by side, each paired off against their competitor. The bikes were turned off, the guys astride them walking the bike a few feet forward each time the line moved up, leathers unzipped to the navel. There was some soft chatter, and a peal of laughter from up front, but mostly it was tense. Game faces. The man next to them was the man they had to beat.
And then Sully blinked and grinned. Sitting astride a lime-green Hayabusa, wearing black-and-silver leathers, his helmet strap looped around the left grip, sat Lanky Dreads. To Lanky’s right was a somber-faced black kid, close-cropped natural, glaring, sitting atop an iridescent blue Ninja.
Sully went to the back of the line, turned, and came up behind Lanky on his outside shoulder, started talking before Lanky could see him.
“Do I bet on you or do I bet on him?”
Lanky turned, lips together, surprised as Sully came to the fairing of his bike and stopped.
“You the one with the fucked-up face,” Lanky said. Then, taking in Sully’s leathers, his face lit up, like a kid going to the Popsicle stand. “You bring that Duc? You run for pinks? I’ll go you right after this one.”
The kid on the Ninja looked over at him, eyes flat, sizing him up, then turning away, unimpressed.
“I bet you would. No, I’m asking right now, are you going to outrun this man on your right?” He flicked his eyes that way. The kid over there cut his eyes at him, then cut them back, staying out of this, probably pegging Sully for a narc.
“Ain’t but a C-note we got on it,” Lanky said, “but yeah. Put your money up, right now. You’ll get it back. But what about me and you? What you gonna do?”
The line moved forward then, a groaning and rumbling of bikes, the track getting closer, the PA announcer hollering like a pig in shit, engines whining up ahead at earsplitting decibels.
“I’ll run you, but not for pinks,” Sully said. “I got a deal. A prop bet.”
“Shit.”
“No, listen. I’ll put up three hundred, but I run solo. I break thirteen, I keep my money and you walk me back to the Hall brothers. They out here somewhere.”
Lanky blinked three or five times in a row, like he’d done at the park. He leaned over the tank of the bike, looking at him like he was stupid. Which, Sully conceded, he might be. “Why’d I do that?”
“Because you don’t think I can break thirteen. Do you?”
“On what? The Duc?”
“Yep. Street legal.”
“And what if—you—you don’t?”
“I pay you three hundred.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nope.”
“Show it to me.”
Sully reached inside the top of his leathers, his fingers finding the zippered interior pocket, and pulled out five one-hundred-dollar bills, fanning them quickly, then putting them back. That got another look from the dude sitting on the Ninja, interest perking up now.
Lanky gave him a derisive, low whistle, the bikes moving up again, now on the edge of the track.
“Three hundred or you show me the Hall brothers,” Sully said. “Put up or shut up.”
Lanky held his gaze now, not saying anything, thinking.
“What, you sweating?” Sully said, leaning in closer, so no one else could hear over the noise. “Look at me. You think the skinny white geek with the fucked-up face can’t ride, right? Right? Because the question ain’t the bike, is it? The Duc can break twelve. You know it, I know it. So it’s the dude on top of it, that’s the bet. And you think I ain’t shit.”
“You got a mouth.”
“Not that I can’t back up.”
“Then put down all five.”
Sully considered. “All right. Five. Or the intro to the Halls.”
Lanky Dreads looked at him hard, flat. “What you want with Tony and Carlos?”
“My business. All you got to do is point me.”
“And you pop me five C-notes, you don’t break thirteen?”
“Just like that. No hard feelings. Me, I grew up in Louisiana? I’m a Saints man. Paying off when I lose ain’t nothing I ain’t done a million times before. Who’s holding? I give him my money right now.” Rat now.
• • •
The bike was all but bouncing under him, the throttle wide fucking open. He couldn’t hear, smoke was billowing off the back tire, he was leaning so hard over the tank that the zipper in his suit was cutting into his chest. The light walked down from red to twin yellows and then flashed GREEN and he let go of the clutch, all at once, just popped it and let the throttle take it all at once. The vibration shot from his feet, which came off the ground, up his spine, and ricocheted off his skull. The grips yanked forward, his fingers clenching on by a knuckle, his body flat on the bike but pulling backward, slammed back by the detonation under him. He couldn’t see shit, just blurred colors and darkness. The rear tire tried to slide to the right but caught and he was screaming into the helmet, the world coming into focus.
His feet found t
he pegs and he shifted shifted shifted, the wind a hurricane trying to rip off his helmet. The lights blinked and there was the emergency wall of tires and hay bales looming and he downshifted so hard it nearly threw him over the grips.
He circled back around, coming up to the outside of the booth, where the attendant was leaning out, bored, a gimme cap pushed back on his head, a ticket held out in his right hand. Sully took it from him without stopping, idling forward, looking down at the tiny numbers in the dim light.
12:95 seconds.
He patted the bike. You angel, you.
SIXTEEN
“THEY THE ONES in the white-and-black tent,” Lanky Dreads was saying, sullen, pissed off but doing it anyway, his leathers half-unzipped and him stomping as much as walking. Bets were bets and if there was one rule at the track that trumped race, gender, and economics, it was the law of the bet. Losers paid. Period. That didn’t mean it didn’t suck, and Sully thought the dude was taking it pretty well, all things considered. “They back behind that trailer.”
The parking lot ran parallel to the straightaway, and he and Sully were edging their way through tents, three hundred yards from the grandstand, the noise from the track still deafening when the bikes came by. The smell of hot dogs, of burgers, of ganja, of hundred-proof gasoline.
“By the Suburban?” Sully yelled.
“Fuck no. The Expedition. The Eddie Bauer package. The Redskins tent? One past that.”
“Now I got it.”
Lanky turned and then came back, grabbing Sully’s leathers to turn him around.
“Keep me the fuck out of it,” he said.
“Yeah yeah. Don’t get your panties wet about it.”
Lanky Dreads gave him a half shove and left, getting as far away from him as fast as possible. Sully was fine with that. A smile on his face, a hot dog in one hand and a Miller in the other. Gotdamn. A hot dog and cold beer on race day.
Feeling his oats, he called Alex from his cell, putting the hot dog between two fingers on top of the can of beer in his left hand, the phone in his right, walking between the dozens upon dozens of tents, trailers, pickups with ramps down the back to unload the bikes.
“You mean you won?” she yelled.
“You don’t have to act so surprised,” he yelled back.
“I’m not surprised,” she said. “I’m fucking shocked.”
“I ain’t nothin’ but a winner, woman,” he shouted back, telling her where he was going and to meet him at the bike in ten minutes.
He clicked off, chomping the rest of the hot dog, happy as a clam. The deeper he went into the lot, away from the stands, the darker it got. It had gotten chilly now that it was full dark. Women sat with blankets wrapped about them, the tight jeans covered up, the stiletto heels poking out at the bottom.
In a spot by the back edge of the parking lot, set among dozens of other trailers, he walked up on the Redskins tailgating tent—open air, no sides, just the overhead plastic. Half a dozen men sat around a small blaze in a fire ring, six or seven bikes on racks behind them.
He walked past that and there, set off a few yards from the rest, was a tailgating tent, half-black and half-white (it actually looked silver, making Sully think it was maybe a Raiders thing). They had a fire blazing in a copper fire pit, too, no steel mesh over it, sparks flitting up in the air, lost and wandering until they flamed out, about head high. He counted seven men sitting, two standing. The bikes were in a trailer behind them, a light on in there, somebody working over a Ninja with the panels taken off.
When he got within five yards of the tent, walking in a narrow passage between trailers, a man slipped into his vision, standing right in front of him, hand out, like a point guard spotting him up, fingers touching his chest.
“Whoa,” Sully said, pulling up, spilling beer out of his can at the abrupt stop. He held his own hand up, motioning toward his mouth, still chewing the hot dog. He spoke louder than necessary. “Just wanted to talk to Mr. Hall.”
The man—hell, it was a kid, maybe nineteen, could be twenty—who had his hand on his chest eyed him up. Then he turned and looked at the men by the fire, who had stopped talking and were looking at Sully.
“Which one?” said the kid, looking back at him.
“Either,” Sully said. “Tony or Carlos. It’s about Dee. You know. The late Dee Dee.”
“What about him?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask them.”
The kid turned around again and said something low. The Halls, seated between the two other men around the fire ring, leaned back in their camp chairs, scarcely looking at him. Then the one on the right, the one in the black leather jacket, looked up and held Sully’s gaze, then nodded. Sully figured this had to be Tony, the man in charge.
The kid pulled his hand from Sully’s chest and stepped to the right, allowing him to pass, but stepping in behind him and closing the distance by a step. Sully looked around the men, making eye contact with each, being sure he didn’t disrespect anyone, a longer gaze with Carlos, his eyes settling on Tony.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” he said, not coming too close, just standing where he was, finishing off the hot dog now, sucking a dab of mustard off his left thumb, the half-filled can of beer in his right.
“Hey now. Was out running the bike. Saw you guys over here, thought I might mix in a little business on Grudge Night.” He took a sip of beer, keeping it light, keeping it easy, taking his time. “I’m Sully Carter. I work at the paper. I’m working on a story about the Bend, about Dee Dee and that gay boy what got killed down there the other night.”
This was greeted with crickets.
“You was out to the Bend the other day,” Tony said, finally. He was looking at the fire, not at him. “You got told to fuck right on off.”
The others around the fire leaned back now, enjoying this, tipping their chairs back on two legs. Tony looked up at him, giving him the time, folding his arms across his chest.
“I believe,” Sully said, “I was asked not to reappear at the Bend, which I haven’t. And when I came by out there? I didn’t know there were two guys who’d gotten shot. I was only asking about one body, the most recent, which I have come to find out was this gay boy, Billy Ellison. Now, tonight, I’m out here racing my motherfucking bike, I stopped by to ask you about Dee Dee. Demetrius Byrd.”
“You spouted some shit about the floater being a sailor.” Tony, still looking at the fire.
“Actually, I think I said—”
“I know what you said,” said Tony, still not looking up, “and I don’t give a fuck, cracker.”
Two of the men laughed, now sipping their beer, the fun just starting. One of them said, “Whoo,” and blew out the smoke from his joint. Sully didn’t move and the air tensed, Tony not playing with him.
Sully smiling, rolling with it. “Crackers, slim, they ain’t from Louisiana.”
“That right?”
“Yeah. It is. It seriously fucking is. ‘Cajuns,’ that’s what you’re looking to say. ‘Cajuns.’ Not ‘crackers.’ Starts with same letter, so I can see how it fucked you up, but it’s actually, like, a whole different word.”
“Hunh.”
“Crackers, they from south Georgia, north Florida, like that. Cajuns, they from Louisiana. It’s, like, a whole ’nother state, a couple hundred miles off. Like here, I’d call you a Jersey boy. That’s how bad off you are, geography-wise.”
Tony looked at him full on now, glaring.
“So I’m just a Cajun in the big city, right—the fuck do I know? Sophisticates like you. I ain’t even asked nothing over there in the Bend about Dee Dee. Me, I was asking about Billy.”
“Nobody said that faggot got shot in the Bend,” Tony said. “He was swimming out in the channel, what I heard.”
Sully sipped his beer, trying to keep this going.
“That’s rig
ht,” he said, nodding. “Absolutely. But, and maybe I didn’t say this already, I ain’t asking about Billy. I’m asking about Dee Dee.” They all looked at him. “Demetrius Byrd. Part of your crew.”
Tony looked at him, then at the others, then at the fire. Carlos stared him down.
“I do believe,” Tony said, “the white boy can’t hear.”
There was whoop-whooping now, the others getting into it, the smell of fresh meat.
“Me, can’t hear? Lemme try this again,” Sully said. He’d never taken his eyes off Tony the entire time, if nothing else learning who was in charge here and who wasn’t. “Billy Ellison, you don’t seem to hear. Dee Dee Byrd, you don’t want to acknowledge. So let’s try another name. Sly Hastings. When I say ‘Sly Hastings,’ you hear that?”
The whooping stopped like the name of Satan had been incanted. The rest of the crew looked down into the fire, or off into the night. Carlos had not blinked, as near as Sully could tell. Tony looked at him, hard eye contact right back.
“Sly Hastings,” Tony said.
“Yeah,” Sully said, nodding. “Now look at this, now you can hear. Sly.”
“What about him?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. You’re running your turf down in Southwest, fine, great, people get popped. Whoop-fucking-ti. Means nothing to me. Then Dee Dee gets popped. Then the Ellison kid gets popped. And then, what do you know, Sly Hastings is on top of it, asking what’s up, what’s going on, why can’t those tampon-douche Hall brothers handle their business without all—”
The middle of his back exploded, a deep whump like a blow to a punching bag, dulled only by the thick leather of the cycle suit. His head whipsawed back and his torso shot forward, his knees buckling, the beer flying. He flopped forward, getting his right foot halfway out in front to brace the fall, him now on one knee. The baseball bat came down again on his back, whump, knocking the other knee from under him, sending him chest-down onto the pavement.
He got his hands above his head and rolled toward where he thought the blow had come from, gasping. Above him was some guy he’d never seen before, walking around in front of him now, rolling the bat one handed, like he was warming up, batting practice.