Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle (3 page)

A chill went up Ned's spine. He was standing at the corner of Cannon and Wellington, one of the busiest intersections in the city during the day. Sure, the only people on the streets at this time of night were the homeless, and cars only went by every two minutes or so, but the cops could happen by at any second.

Gagliano snapped him out of it. “What . . . the . . . fuck . . . is the problem?” he shouted.

“The body is too heavy,” Ned said. “I can't lift it by myself.”

“Do you mind my saying that you are the biggest fucking pussy in the whole wide world?” Gagliano shouted. “It's not like he was Robert Earl Hughes!”

“Who?”

“Robert Earl Hughes.” Gagliano was pissed. “Fattest man who ever lived—fourteen hundred pounds. Look at
The Guinness Book of World Records
, you idiot. He was buried in a piano case. Everybody knows that, you stupid asshole.”

“Okay, fine, he's not Bob Hughes or whatever the fuck his name is,” Ned replied. “But he is too heavy for me to move, and if you want to get him out of the bar, you are gonna help me.”

Gagliano knew he had no choice. He sighed, turned the ignition off, and turned the hazard lights on. He started laughing. “You are a fuckin' mother fuckin' son of a cocksucking whore,” he said while opening the tailgate. “Throw that shit in there and I will help you, you fucking little girl you.”

Ned threw the bag into the back of the truck. He realized it was a human head and hands and, he also realized, he didn't give a damn anymore. “Just get your faggot ass in there, cocksucker.” Gagliano patted him on the back and laughed.

Inside, Gagliano grabbed Tyler's feet and Ned grabbed his shoulders. Gagliano admitted that he was kind of heavy after all.

As they went out the door, Ned asked his partner if he was scared of being caught. “Not really,” he answered while throwing the package into the back of the truck. “If the cops stop us, they have to ask if they can search and I can say no.”

“Really?”

“Yup, unless they have probable cause,” Gagliano said. “And unless you wrapped him all fucked up, with a foot or something sticking out, we have nothing to worry about.” He sat on the back bumper and passed Ned a joint he'd just fired up. “Besides, most of the cops around here know better than to fuck with Steve.”

Inside the car, Gagliano turned the radio back on. It was a commercial for discount furniture. “I know that fucker,” he said. “Gay as a French trombone. All I have to do is not tell his wife about his little boyfriend and I get $250 a month; fucker even gave me a nice dining-room table for Christmas.” He laughed. Ned joined in.

After about ten minutes in which they talked mostly about sports, Gagliano pulled up in a gravel parking lot near the lake. Ned remembered when he took Kelli to the very same spot to make out. He laughed when he remembered how freaked out she was by all the dead fish. “Uh, Dare, we can't get rid of him here; he'll just wash back up again tomorrow,” he said.

“You know what I like about you? No matter how fuckin' stupid I think you are, you can always say something that will amaze me,” he said. “The beach is on that side, the canal is on that side.”

Above all, Springfield is a port town. While most of the population knows “the point” as a wooded area with a beach, they rarely think of the other side of the peninsula. But that's the important part. Facing Springfield Harbor, the west side of the peninsula—what locals call “the canal”—drops off sixty feet straight down to allow the mooring of giant Great Lakes freighters. But since the steel business has been slow in Springfield for the last decade or so, the west side is now generally occupied by a few rusting tugs and thirty thousand or so gulls.

Again, Gagliano grabbed Tyler's feet and Ned took the other end. The walk through the woods took maybe three minutes. Gagliano clearly knew the way. Ned was surprised by the view from the west side of the point. The factories, massive and reaching upward, had a strange beauty. He marveled at the huge, purple and blue flames the steel plants spat out. When they finally got to the water's edge, Gagliano told him to put him down.

They sat, one on each side of Tyler. Gagliano lit another joint and leaned back on Tyler's body, using his chicken-wire-wrapped thighs as a makeshift pillow. “This is where Steve's genius comes in,” he said.

Ned asked him what he meant. “Remember when we were at war with the Chain Masters?” he said. “Well, Marcus O'Brien—the old boss, before Steve—had four of them put down. He told his men to get rid of them, so they put each one in a sleeping bag—you know, like for camping—weighted them down with bricks and threw them in the harbor.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, a few weeks later they started floating to the surface—the fuckin' sleeping bags disintegrated in the filthy polluted water,” he continued. “The bodies were black and bloated, but were all easily identifiable—six friends of ours are in jail, went to prison, and Marcus ran away to Thailand or some other fuckin' place.”

He took a long drag on the joint and offered it to Ned. Ned was grateful and took the hit. “But Steve learned from that,” Gagliano told him. “He wraps them in chicken wire—the fuckin' stuff not only weighs them down, but allows the catfish and suckers and other fuckin' bottom feeders to eat them piece by piece. A week later, there's nothin' but bones surrounded by rusty wire.” He laughed. “They're like piranhas, those fuckers—got a taste for human flesh.” He flicked the butt of his joint into the water as though he saw a particularly fearsome catfish just beneath the surface.

With that, he stood up and Ned understood he meant to throw Tyler into the water. When they had each grabbed an end, Ned asked: “On three?” Gagliano agreed.

Ned threw on three; Gagliano was a beat late. Tyler's body bounced off the concrete ledge but eventually disappeared under the black water with a cascade of bubbles. Gagliano wiped his hands together triumphantly and said, “That's that.”

“What about the knapsack and the garbage bag?” Ned asked.

“Aw fuck,” Gagliano replied. “I fuckin' forgot. Good thing you were here. C'mon, follow me.”

They went back to the car, and Gagliano drove Ned home. “Don't forget your package,” Gagliano said, holding up the knapsack.

“What the fuck? I thought you were going to take care of it.”

“Uh uh, it's yours; I'll throw the garbage bag in a dumpster, but the knapsack is all yours,” he laughed. “We'll take care of it tomorrow—right now, I'm going to sleep; see you in the morning.”

Ned didn't have a lot of choice; he grabbed the knapsack and carried it into the house. It was close to four a.m., and he was dead tired. Kelli wasn't there, but that didn't really surprise him. Whenever they argued, she would stay over at her friend Mallory's.

He went downstairs and opened up the freezer. Kelli's uncle had given them his old freezer when he got a new one. But Ned wasn't really into buying great quantities of frozen meat, so it was usually empty or close to it. He opened the door and threw the knapsack in. He turned to go upstairs, but changed his mind and lay down on an old couch next to the freezer. It was too short for him—he was six-foot-one—and it had a broken spring. But it beat the floor, and he wasn't leaving the basement as long as the knapsack was still there.

As tired as he was, Ned just couldn't sleep. The cops had never come to his house before, but he couldn't stop thinking that he had been seen. Gagliano was so calm, so sure of himself that he seemed sure they'd never get caught. Maybe, Ned thought to himself, Gagliano was more sloppy and foolish than confident. Ned knew that he'd been to jail at least a couple of times before, so he couldn't be all that smart. And, if he was so confident he wasn't going to be caught, why did he make him take the knapsack?

All those thoughts and more kept tumbling around in Ned's head all night and well into the morning. Although he never really fell completely asleep, he was about halfway there most of the time. He rose twice to check on the knapsack. Although he was relieved to see it was there both times, he also wished it wasn't there, that it had all never happened. The third time he woke up, he didn't even get close to sleep again.

From about 9:10 until 10:15, he did nothing but stare at the freezer. The doorbell knocked him out of his trance. He raced to the basement's front window and looked outside. He could see Gagliano's car and boots.

Ned ran up the stairs and to the front door. He looked out the window to see if Gagliano was alone. He was. He saw Ned and waved goofily. Ned opened the door and Gagliano walked in. “Nice place here, a little feminine, but not too bad,” he said. Ned ignored him. Gagliano waited. “So, no coffee? No eggs? Not even a hello?” he complained. Then he sat on Ned's couch and looked him up and down. “You look like a huge pile of shit—rough night?”

“Rough night? You try . . . ” Ned realized what he was saying was ridiculous. He could tell from Gagliano's face, demeanor, and conversation that sleeping next to a severed head and hands was not a huge deal for him—or anything new. Ned forced out a laugh. “I didn't get a ton of sleep; fuckin' couch down the basement.”

“She sent you down the basement?”

Ned wondered how to answer that. A number of bikers had shown disgust at how pussy-whipped they thought he was. He knew Gagliano had done some research on him and didn't want to reinforce any negative opinions.

“No, I just wanted to make sure the package was safe.”

“Don't be such a fuckin' dork all the time; it wasn't going to walk away by itself .”

“I know, I know, but it makes me nervous—can we get moving?”

“Yeah, sure, but Vladimir doesn't leave for work until twelve-thirty, so we should probably get a bite to eat first—bring your new friend along.”

“No fuckin' way!” Ned protested. “What if we get caught? What if it starts to smell?”

“We won't get caught; didn't you wrap it in plastic? I know you did. I saw you do it.” Gagliano shrugged in exasperation. “Where is it now?”

“In the freezer . . . downstairs.”

“In a fuckin' freezer all night and you think it'll smell—like what, hamburger? You are such a fuckin' chickenshit. Grab the bag, grow a pair, get in the car, and take me to Smitty's; I'm starving.”

Ned laughed, hit his friend on the arm, and headed downstairs. Gagliano shouted after him: “And bring money, lots of money—you've got some people to pay.”

When he returned, Gagliano laughed at him. “So you keep your cash in the bedroom? Bad idea, first place I'd look.”

They drove about five minutes to a family-style restaurant. Gagliano knew the waitress. She was a heavyset woman in her middle forties, although she looked somewhat older. She was ordinary in just about every way, although an ace of spades tattoo on her left wrist betrayed some wayward history.

“What's good today, baby?” Gagliano asked. “Besides you?”

“How about the usual?” she said. “And what will your friend have?”

“Nothing, just coffee,” Ned muttered.

“Bullshit!” Gagliano shouted, disturbing a nearby table of elderly ladies. “Get him two eggs over easy, bacon, home fries, white toast, coffee, and orange juice—I have to order for him, sweet pea; I'm still teaching him to be a man.”

The waitress looked at Ned. He returned her gaze sheepishly and said, “Yeah, yeah, that's fine, but could you make it grapefruit juice instead?”

After the waitress left, Gagliano started scolding Ned much the way Steve had. “You act like this has all been thrust upon you when you actually did it all yourself and we are just helping you out,” he said. “We know what we're doing. You have to trust us; it's your only safe way out of a situation you created—so suck it up, grow some fuckin' nuts, and do what the fuck I say.”

“You're right; I know you're right,” Ned said. “I just wish it never happened.”

“Wish in one hand and shit in the other—see which fills up first.”

“Yeah, you're right.”

“Damn right I am.”

“So what happens next, I mean . . . ” he cut himself off when the waitress returned with their drinks.

“Thanks darling,” Gagliano said, unconcerned by what else she may have heard. “Well, we take your package over to Vladimir's and he gets rid of it; then you show your gratitude to some of the people who helped you out last night.”

“And that's it?”

“That's it.”

Gagliano then shot Ned a look that made him feel even worse. “What's the deal on you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You show up, you're a big earner like the next day,” he said. “No offense or nothing—but the rest of us had to come up through the pipe.”

“The pipe?”

“Yeah, the fuckin' pipe,” Gagliano was clearly getting angry. “I started hanging out with these guys when I was thirteen; I wasn't even in high school and I got a guy to weld an extra couple of forks onto my bike to make it into a chopper.”

He paused. “Yeah, I wanted to be a biker even back then—hell, younger'n that, maybe even—nine, ten.” He was really getting into it now. “I wore a fake leather vest and used to give myself tattoos with a ballpoint pen.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, I worked my way up, first as a lookout, then a messenger boy, then a delivery boy—just like everyone else,” he said. “And here you are, just showed up one day and you're dealing big right out of the box.”

“Hey, I had to earn it.”