Shotgun Alley

by Andrew Klavan

  Then there was Cobra. Cobra was in this, too. Even as he was speechifying, he was watching the rest of it, taking it all in. He could see the murder brewing between Bishop and Mad Dog—anyone could see that. And he could see his girl, his Honey, stealing those cute little looks of hers at the handsome newcomer. It was a kind of a situation for him. Because he needed Mad Dog taken care of. And he needed to know he could trust Bishop. And he wanted Bishop with them for the next caper.

  But Honey—sometimes Cobra lay awake at night and just watched her sleep, she was so beautiful. And the way she kept stealing those glances over at Bishop…

  Smiling, Cobra leaned back in his chair. He tilted his chair back on its rear legs. He had this trick he did with a bayonet. He would produce it suddenly out of nowhere. It was scary shit to see. You couldn’t tell it was coming. You couldn’t figure out where he’d pulled it from. Without warning, it was just there. That’s how he killed that Arizona state trooper, so the legend went. That’s how he killed Joe Linden at the Bayshore.

  He pulled the bayonet now.

  It was a German model, circa World War II. Sleek and straight and blue-black with a blade nine inches and change. All the glancing and eyeballing around the table stopped the moment it appeared in Cobra’s hands. Everyone looked at the bayonet. They knew it was his killing instrument. Everyone looked at Cobra, tilted back in his chair, holding the bayonet up, contemplating that blue-black blade.

  “Take me, for example,” he went on without a pause. “Take me and, say, Honey here.” His gleaming emerald eyes shifted from the bayonet to her. “No more beautiful hardbelly lives on this planet, or so I do believe.”

  He lowered his chair to the floor. He knew they were all watching him. He knew Bishop was watching him. He reached over and combed his fingers gently through Honey’s hair.

  “Not a man at this table doesn’t want to fuck my Honey,” he said.

  Shorty and Charlie and Steve and Mad Dog all chuckled drunkenly. Honey didn’t like it. She made a face, pulled away from his touch.

  “Shit, Co,” she whined.

  “Just the truth, my darling,” Cobra said. “Just the simple truth. They all want to fuck you. They think about it every day. They dream about fucking you when they’re fucking their old ladies. When they’re pumping off in the shitcan, they’re thinking about fucking you.”

  “Stop it. It’s gross,” she said.

  But he wasn’t listening to her anymore. His focus was all on Bishop now. Bishop, who slouched in his chair with his left hand hooked in his belt and his right hand holding a beer mug steady on his thigh.

  Cobra leaned toward him. He balanced the point of the bayonet on the table. He placed his hands over the butt of the bayonet’s grip. He leaned his chin on the back of his hands. He gazed at Bishop sleepily.

  “How about you, Cowboy?” he said. “You want to fuck my Honey?”

  “Shit,” Bishop drawled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Cobra’s smile was almost dreamy. His eyebrows fluttered as if his mind were far away. “But you won’t, will you?” he said softly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. There’s only one reason in this world you’re not gonna fuck my girl. And that’s ’cause, if you do, I’ll kill you. You know I will.”

  Nobody laughed this time. Nobody else spoke. The whole table was quiet now. Bishop slouched in his chair and looked at Cobra. Cobra leaned his chin on his bayonet and looked back.

  “I wouldn’t have to kill you face-to-face,” he said. “I wouldn’t have to kill you myself at all. I wouldn’t have to kill you right away, either. I could make you wait, make you think about it. Make you dream about it every night.” He lifted the bayonet again. Waggled it at Bishop. Smiled and slipped it into his belt, easy to see. “But then I’d come,” he went on distantly. “No matter how long it took. No matter how far you ran. No matter how hard a man you thought you were. Even if you killed me, Cowboy. Even if I was dead. I would come back from hell to kill you. One night, you’d just wake up in the dark and you’d smell brimstone—and there I’d be.”

  It was creeping up on midnight. The jukebox played a slow country tune. A fat Hell’s Angel and his black-rooted blonde, alone on the dance floor, moved in each other’s arms without rhythm. Another biker and another blonde were mashing their faces together in a booth. The rest of the outlaws and their old ladies were at the tables, murmuring sleepily. The smoke from their cigarettes drifted beneath the dim ceiling lights. The bar’s atmosphere felt tired and slow.

  In the Outriders’ corner, Cobra cast one last long look around the table. No one met his eyes. No one wanted to say a word, not with him in the mood he was in now. He grinned at their silence. He whipped his head to the side to clear a stray lock of hair off his forehead. “Amen,” he said quietly, lifting his beer. He drained the foam at the bottom. He set his mug down on the table, hard.

  “So!” he said brightly. “Who’s for a run up the Wildcat to HQ?”

  “Ehhh,” groaned Steve. “I’m too wasted, man.”

  Shorty had his nose in Meryl’s red hair. She raised her elfin face to his and fucked him with her eyes. “Yeah, not tonight, bro,” said Shorty hoarsely.

  “I’ll go,” said Charlie.

  Cobra smiled at Mad Dog. “You’re coming, aren’t you? You’re not gonna chickenshit out on me.”

  Mad Dog’s mouth was open in a smile as wide and half-toothless as a baby’s. His squirrelly eyes seemed to be spiraling up out of his drugged mosquito zone onto this planet here and down again.

  “Yeah,” he growled. He knocked back the last quarter of a beer. Slapped down the mug. “I’m ready to ride!”

  Cobra’s attention zoomed in on Bishop. “You ready?” was all he said.

  He looked at Bishop hard, and he knew that Bishop understood. The Wildcat was a winding narrow road through hard climbs by the edge of empty canyons. A man could die up there and not be found for days. This was it. Cobra needed to know he could trust Bishop. And he wanted Mad Dog gone.

  Cobra waited. Mad Dog grinned his grin. Bishop sat loose and easy in his chair. He pushed his mug away from him, still half full.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  There was a moment, as the others crowded out the door, when Cobra hung back and touched Bishop’s arm. Bishop paused, and they were alone together just inside the threshold.

  Cobra passed a gun into Bishop’s hand, an old snub-nosed .38 revolver.

  “Do him at the edge of the canyon by the point,” he said.

  Bishop slipped the gun under the back of his belt.

  Eighteen

  They peeled out of the parking lot one by one. Cobra was in the lead. His silver ride tilted nearly parallel to the earth as it swerved onto the two-lane and spat away. Charlie was right behind him. Then Bishop, rearing on his back wheel as he bounded out of the lot and hit the street. Mad Dog was last, battling those ape-hangers, wrestling the long front end of his Low Rider into line.

  In seconds, the bikes were roaring, doing eighty. A snaking chain of them along the highway, contracting, expanding. Waving, like a weed underwater, between shoulder and centerline. Leaving a trail of moonlit dust and guttural noise.

  Honey had gone on before them. She’d come to the bar alone in a rattrap pickup, and she’d headed off in the truck again while the others mounted up. Just as she’d stepped into the cab, she glanced back at Bishop. Zipping his leather, he met her eyes. He could almost hear her asking herself: Would Cobra kill her if she made a run for it? Could Bishop protect her from that bayonet of his, not to mention that rage?

  Bishop could feel the pistol under his belt at that moment, could feel it pressing into the small of his back. The thought flared and died in his mind like a spark in the night: If he took out Mad Dog on the Wildcat, she would see how dangerous he was, wouldn’t she? She would see he could defend her.

  Don’t cross the line. You know what I mean.

  Then she was in the truck, p
ulling back hard and turning. Then she was headed up the road before them and gone.

  The bikers followed after.

  It was a warm summer night. A gibbous moon was dodging in and out of the treetops. For the first few minutes of the run, the Harleys’ headlights seemed to dissipate into the ambient glow. Soft shadows merged and parted everywhere. The highway stretched visible to the indigo horizon.

  Then, in a single unified motion, the pack swung left off the straightaway and headed into the hills. The rising forest closed on them from either side, shutting out the moon. Their headlights picked out only inches of racing macadam now. The rest of the road ahead was all in darkness.

  They were riding without helmets. Honey had them all in her truck. That was Cobra’s idea. “I’m gonna let my head hit the pavement tonight,” he’d said, “and see which of the two of us gets fucked up first.” They’d all followed suit, of course. Charlie had tossed his jacket into the pickup’s bed as well, baring his bouldery biceps, showing the black T-shirt pulled tight against his flaring pecs, his rippling gut. Mad Dog’s bristling horse-haunch arms also showed bare from his cutoff denim. His long filthy hair streamed out behind him in the wind.

  Mad Dog hung a few feet behind Bishop’s rear tire. Bishop was aware of the crazy bastard every second. He was aware of him and he was aware of his .44. He couldn’t help but feel that Mad Dog was staring at his back and that his back made a nice big target. But they were going eighty on a winding road. It was a tough shot. Plus, there were houses down here, lights visible in the trees and at the base of the climb. Even drugged out and nutso as he was, Mad Dog would probably wait to make his play on a straight in the high forest above the canyon. Bishop hoped so, anyway. All the same, he was aware of the guy. He could sense his smile and feel the pressure of his spirally eyes.

  But Bishop did not know what he was going to do. He had no plan. He was all motion, racing inside. A hundred percent afraid; a hundred percent alive. He was full of the bellowing engines, full of the speed. Throbbing with the throb of his machine.

  He squinted hard into the oncoming twilight. The wind whipped by his temples. Thoughts whipped by him like wind. The thought of Honey naked under the leather jacket. The thought of Cobra passing the .38 into his hand. The thought of Weiss: Don’t cross the line. The memory of that wild feeling that overtook him in the bar, that wild desire. You wanna be a piece of shit your whole life? He let all the thoughts blow by.

  His vision blurred with the speed and the wash of air. The darkness blurred. He felt the road switching right, switching left underneath him. He made out Charlie’s red taillight vanishing and reappearing just ahead. The Harley under him, never slowing, wound round and back in an endless sweet careen, chasing the racing inches of pavement into the mountain, with the forest a black rush on either side.

  They went higher. There were no houses now. Now, in the breaks between the trees, Bishop could make out the moonlit canyon. A downward slope of conifers fell steeply away from the pavement’s edge.

  The road switched left, switched right. Bishop looked over his shoulder and saw the shape of Mad Dog pulling round the bend behind him. He couldn’t make out his face. He could imagine his eyes.

  A short straightaway. Mad Dog hit the throttle. His Low Rider started to draw abreast of Bishop. Bishop tried to pull out, to force Mad Dog to take the shoulder, to ride the margin where the ground fell away. But Mad Dog came on fast, got outside him. Bishop cursed behind his teeth. Suddenly they were wheel to wheel, with Bishop balanced at the edge of the road, engulfed in speed and double thunder.

  They climbed like that, man by man. Leaning right into the sharp turns, then leaning left together. With its long forks and high bars, Mad Dog’s Rider was nowhere near as stable as Bishop’s solid Fat Boy. But he pressed Bishop close—and then closer—to the brink, leaving him little room to maneuver on the bends. Bishop felt the dropoff to the right of him rocketing past, felt the frantic swiftness of his tires under him, felt his own precarious grip on the solid surface of the world. The fear was like fire in him. But he didn’t care. He forced down every inner consideration, poured himself into his senses; rode.

  Another curve. An open stretch. The moon broke out above the trees. Bishop looked away from the pavement only long enough to see Mad Dog next to him, Mad Dog staring at him, grinning at him before they both faced front again to take the next turn and the next. They came out onto the straight and Mad Dog muscled closer. Bishop knew he was running out of room. He throttled up, sped forward, tried to get clear of the Low Rider.

  It was a mistake.

  Hard, sharp, a fresh bend rushed at them. Bishop could see he was going too fast to take it.

  Mad Dog saw it, too. He tried to drop behind Bishop, to block him off, force him into the curve. It didn’t work. The next second, Mad Dog had to swing out into the other lane to take the turn himself. Bishop braked, slowing just enough to bring the Fat Boy round the bend. At the same moment, a pair of headlights—a car speeding down the mountain—came at them as if from nowhere. Both men were nearly swept off the mountain like dust.

  But the car, screeching, drew hard to the left of them. The bikers slowed, drew hard to the right. They wobbled so close together their shoulders nearly touched. In another instant, the car was gone.

  Bishop and Mad Dog poured on the gas again. With Charlie and Cobra just ahead of them, they roared in tandem up the next straight climb.

  They had nearly reached the top of the mountain now. The forest grew sparser here with wider gaps between the evergreens and oaks. There was a thick tangle of brush at the verge of the pavement, but beyond that, on the drop into the canyon, there was plenty of room to fall.

  Bishop knew he had to get clear of the Low Rider or be forced over the edge. He thought he had the juice to race ahead, but he needed a longer straightaway to make his move. The two bikers took another switchback, left, then right.

  And there it was: the last long stretch to the point at the top of the run. Bishop got ready to roll his throttle wide.

  Then Mad Dog pulled the .44.

  Bishop caught the movement in the moonlight, caught it from the corner of his eye. Obviously Mad Dog had been waiting for the straight, too, waiting till he could free his hand long enough to sweep the gun out from under his enormous belly and bring the barrel to bear on the rider beside him. Bishop knew if he throttled up and pulled ahead, he might take a bullet in the back. On the other hand, if he stayed like this, this close, abreast of the weapon, Mad Dog might just take out his tire or his gas tank or even manage to blow his head clean off.

  For a split second as they raced through the wind, the two men looked at one another over the length of the gun barrel.

  Mad Dog bellowed. Bishop couldn’t hear the words. He knew what he was saying, though:

  “My fucking chair!”

  Then Bishop braked and Mad Dog fired. Bishop thought he could feel the bullet go slicing past his nose. The huge gun’s recoil knocked Mad Dog sidelong, and the Harley went into a skid. Bishop, keeping a steady pressure on the lever, dropped back behind him. As Mad Dog fought to get his gun hand back on the bike, to bring the bike under control, he lost speed. Bishop saw the opening. He firewalled, shot out and forward along the centerline, forcing Mad Dog over toward the edge.

  Mad Dog, stoned and crazy, had no chance to recover. The extended bike was too unstable—and he wouldn’t let go of the damn gun. As Bishop forced him to the side, the Low Rider jackknifed. The rear tire skidded out from under it. The bike and Mad Dog both went spinning wildly off the road.

  There was a tremendous crunching crash as the fat man and his motorcycle burst through the thicket. There was a brief, high-pitched scream as they dropped to earth and spilled down the slope into the canyon below.

  For Bishop, another hard curve sprang up just ahead. He hit the foot brake now, too. His bike skidded sideways, sending up smoke and the smell of burning rubber. He brought the machine to a stop at the pavement’s very edge.
<
br />   Breathless, he looked down into the darkness. He saw nothing—then there was a dull thud and he saw a blossoming burst of orange flame against the night as the Low Rider’s gas tank blew.

  The fire lit the woods. It lit the tortuous web of vines and branches. It lit the tree trunks rising ghostly and the wreckage of the motorcycle lying twisted at one tree trunk’s base.

  It lit Mad Dog’s body where it sprawled spread eagle under the pines. Bishop saw the outlaw’s dead face gaping slack-jawed at the moon.

  Bishop dismounted. He stood at the side of the road. The other two bikers had kept riding, apparently unaware of what had happened behind them. As the noise of their engines faded away, Bishop became conscious of the quiet settling over the forest. He could hear crickets chirping, the chatter of cicadas. He could hear little fires snickering here and there where the burning fuel had caught some wood or some dry leaves.

  The flames hung draped on the branches of an oak. They fidgeted over patches of the earth like nervous hands. Slowly they died to embers, to ash. The silver-blue dark wafted back down over the forest.

  Bishop stood and watched as Mad Dog’s body sank into silhouette, as it melded with the shapes of the wreckage and the wood and finally seemed to disappear altogether among the surrounding shadows.

  Nineteen