Biker (10 page)

Pratt was reluctant to ask after the War Bonnets because word would spread. He cursed himself for not taking time that morning to walk the camp when most of the bikers were sleeping off binges, inactive wasps in the cool of dawn. He stood on a rock and did a three-sixty, clenching his fists in frustration.

Double fuck.

He'd lost him.

But the night was young. Pratt decided to follow the road as it zigzagged back through the trees. A drunken biker pursued a laughing nude woman through the trees, tripped and fell on his face. A thousand boom boxes blasted from all sides, heavy on the blues 'n' boogie. Unmuffled engines shrieked until it seemed they would explode. Some exploded.

It was louder than Cheap Trick Live. A boiler factory didn't come close. An engine revved and revved, grinding on Pratt's nerves until he saw red and started looking for the source to punch him out.

And then, the most beautiful sound in the world—click-WHUMP as the engine tossed a valve and died. Like someone had removed a nail from between Pratt's eyes. He shook his head in relief and looked around. No War Bonnets. Ahead lay a mini-encampment of two of the biker motor homes with the garages in back, a cluster of bikers gathered around something, a bike or a gang bang. Their patches were so dirt-besmeared he couldn't read them.

He was level with the group when an incredible sound broke from the cluster and rose into the trees, raising the hair on the back of Pratt's neck. Only one engine in the world made that sound.

Desmosedici.

Pratt couldn't stop himself. He turned toward the cluster of men and elbowed his way to the front, where a greasy figure in leather and denim straddled the carmine red space age bullet working the throttle. The man looked up.

President Robles of the Aztec Skulls.

CHAPTER 17

Robles' mouth formed a perfect circle inside his parenthetical mustache. Pratt braced for flight or fight. Robles unexpectedly grinned. “
Praaaaatt
. Choo get chur dogs back?”

“Yeah, thanks. Sorry about ruining your evening.”

Robles turned the engine off, kicked out the stand and got off. Pratt steeled for a boot or brass knuckles. Instead Robles threw wide his arms and embraced Pratt. They slapped each other on the back.

“That's okay, ese. Least we didn't lose no dogs.”

“Where'dja get the Desmo?”

Robles grinned snarkily. “Aztec magic, what can I say? Want to buy it?”

They were hiding in plain sight. No one would think to look for a hot bike on the streets of Sturgis because you couldn't get anywhere faster than five miles per. Nor could the cops search every van and pick-up. The South Dakota Chamber of Commerce made sure of that.

“Maybe,” Pratt said.

Robles tilted his head back, a gold tooth reflecting light from a passing bike. “Choo serious? Choo know, fool me once, chame on you. Fool me twice.… Let me put it this way.” Robles threw an arm over Pratt's shoulder. “I can't say choo lied to us but you did attend that dogfight under false pretenses, choo know what I'm sayin'? On the other hand I like chour style. The way you took on three Mastodons, that ain't something choo see every day. When they started kicking choo on the ground, man, it looked like an army of fire ants on a dead coon.” Robles tilted his head back and brayed. His nostrils were wet and red-rimmed. Twin slicks ran through his mustache.

A crazy idea popped into Pratt's head. It was ten-thirty at night. If he returned to the main stage he might pick up the War Bonnet, he might not. In any case the War Bonnets would be back the next night and the next until they ran out of crank or the event ended. Eric had been missing for sixteen years. Another day wouldn't make much of a difference. There was no urgency.

No one had done more for him than Danny Bloom. Delivering one of the stolen Ducatis would be a nice feather in Bloom's cap.

“I want to take it for a ride,” Pratt said.

Robles stared and guffawed. “Choo know what that bike is worth, man?”

“Well how much do you want for it?”

“I can get fifty grand from some dudes I know. Choo got that kind of dough?”

“Not right now but I can get it.”

“Choo gots to be shittin' me, bro. Where's a butt-ugly private ass investigator get that kinda dough?”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Surprise me.”

Pratt pulled out his wallet attached to his belt with a chain, opened it, and took out ten hundred dollar bills. He held it up like a dog treat. “How 'bout you sit on this thou for me while I take it for a test ride? What am I gonna do? Steal it? I'm already in deep shit with you guys. This is my way of making it right. I put a ding in it, the thou's yours.”

Robles tucked the thou into his vest. “How 'bout the thou's mine already? Okay. I let choo take it for a ride but to make chure you don't suddenly go off the reservation, ahmina have my man Taco ride along with choo, okay? And don't try to lose Taco, he's been racing dirt bikes since he was seven.”

Taco appeared at Robles' side glaring at Pratt with raw hatred, pinpoint pupils screaming mean little thoughts.

“Taco, dude, I feel we got off on the wrong foot,” Pratt said, stepping forward and offering his hand.

Taco stared. Robles nudged him. “Do it, bro.”

As Taco reluctantly put his hand out, Pratt grinned and brushed back his hair. “Just joshin', dude! Get it? I'm Josh! It's what I do! It's okay to hate me, bro! We all need someone we can cream on.”

Sensing ridicule, Taco worked his jaw and deposited a wad of phlegm that narrowly missed Josh's boot.

Minutes later the Aztec Skulls had unloaded a modified Hayabusa. Taco put on a black leather jacket, gloves and aviator goggles. Pratt straddled the Desmo, hunched over like a Doberman humping a poodle, and hit the starter. He had a bandanna tied around his head and wore ski goggles courtesy of Robles.

The Aztec prez made an “after you, Alphonse” gesture. Pratt clicked the Italian V-4 into gear and let out the clutch. The machine lurched forward. Fussy clutch. Taco followed. It took them twenty minutes to traverse the half mile to the front gate, stopping for every dog, Dick and Harry that crossed their path.

They got fresh stamps at the gate. Pratt turned west toward the Hills. Revelers wandered Sturgis in packs clutching plastic beer cups and souvenir tees. Traffic had thinned to a reasonable rate and soon they were riding through Sturgis, circling Main Street via a series of detours until they came out the other side facing Deadwood Canyon. As soon as the road opened up Pratt scouted for heat and goosed it, hoiking the compact bike into a fifty-yard wheelie before setting down the front tire with a squeak. The more Pratt twisted the throttle the faster the Desmo went until the rush of wind obliterated all sound, leaving only a sensation of speed, of rushing endlessly forward with eyeball-flattening thrust, canyon walls streaming by like man-sized carbon paper.

He glanced at the digital speedo: 150. So was his pulse. He had one of those head-smacking moments.
Was he insane?

The road curved and Pratt squeezed the brakes, feeling the pulse of the ceramic brake disc through the levers. Taco was on his ass in an instant, sticking with him through the twisties like a draft racer, daring Pratt to make a mistake so they could both go down in a heap of twisted metal. Pratt came up on the rear bumper of a Wayfarer land yacht, bicycles bungeed to the rear, trailer hitch pulling a Jeep. Even at eleven, traffic was dense throughout the hills as tourists sought to circumvent or flee Bike Week, joined by burnt-out bikers who'd had enough.

Pratt juked left, sticking his nose into oncoming traffic. SUV coming a hundred yards down the road. No prob. He yanked the throttle and rocketed into the opposite lane of traffic, passing the land yacht in a blur and pulling in tight. The SUV was almost on him. The angry driver flashed his high-beams and honked. Taco was forced to jerk back into lane behind the land yacht.

The road twisted through the canyon like a sidewinder, just enough traffic to make passing impossible. Rounding another hairpin Pratt pulled way to the right to avoid a semi pulling two segments, its bigfoot encroaching into his lane. The Desmo's horns resonated in the narrow canyon as Pratt flipped the startled driver the bird.

Pratt came up fast on the bumper of a Porsche Cayman. The driver grinned and downshifted. A quarter mile opened up before them. Pratt downshifted and twisted the throttle, momentarily lifting the front tire and accelerating past the Cayman as if it were parked, seeing a white Suburban coming way too fast, standing on the brakes and cutting in front of the Porsche with mere feet to spare.

Taco, bug-eyed with fury, waited until the Suburban passed before shooting into the opposite lane in a desperate attempt to keep Pratt in sight. They approached a decreasing radius turn around a piece of rock that looked like Gibraltar. Pratt saw the pick-up first—the automotive equivalent of a linebacker. The massive pick-up was ten miles over the limit. Taco was about twenty miles over the limit. The distance between them closed faster than a Chrysler dealership.

Pratt glanced once in his rearview.

SPLANG! A nanosecond of flesh and metal in a Cuisinart.

The enormous impact smacked Pratt like a slap to the back of the head. He swooped around the bend grinding his teeth, leaving chaos spread across two lanes of traffic. The highway would be closed for hours. Angry cell phone calls would reverberate through the night.
Sic transit gloria, Taco
.

My God, what have I done?

Regret blossomed in his gut like one of Cass' Roman candles. Had he deliberately led Taco to his death? Was that who he was? He hadn't let that thought coalesce while he was leading the Skull in near suicidal fashion but it had always been in the back of his mind. What kind of game had they been playing? Before prison he wouldn't have given Taco's death a second though.

He's fucking dead, Josh
.

Pratt knew nothing about Taco. What if he had a wife and kids? What if he had a mutt he'd adopted that waited for him every day?

Was it the wind through his goggles that caused his eyes to tear? He could barely see. Pratt slowed down and noted that the Cayman was at least a quarter mile back, chastened by what had happened.

Pratt found a runaway truck ramp and pulled off. He shook so bad he nearly dumped the bike. He got a kickstand down, semaphored his right leg and collapsed by the side of the road on a discarded piece of plywood. His heart went
thub-a-duh
,
thub-a-duh
.
He'd just killed a man
.

God forgive me
.

It wasn't until an SDHP cruiser and an ambulance shrieked by with all lights blazing that he got on his bike and headed west, scrupulously obeying the speed limit.

CHAPTER 18

The sun was rising as a weary Pratt turned into a strip mall on the outskirts of Rapid City. The mall contained a Walgreens, a veterinarian, a karate school and a Trans-Continental office. Pratt parked the bike in front of the insurance office, locked the fork, and went across the highway to McDonald's for coffee and an Egg McMuffin.

The familiar smell hit him like a wall of warm fat. This McDonald's was done Western style, with faux-aged wood booths and prints of Boot Hill. Pratt took his coffee and McMuffin to a booth in the back and settled in with a groan. It was five-thirty. Too early to call Bloom. He was the only patron. He swallowed two ibuprofens and read the
Sioux Falls Argus Leader
, the
Rapid City Shopper
and the
Rapid Daily News
. The rally dominated the headlines, as it did every year at this time.

Newspaper editors liked perennials. They trotted out the old observations and homilies and breathed easy until a real story occurred and they had to work.

STURGIS OFF TO ROARING START

ESTIMATE 550,000 AT RALLY

STATE POLICE CLOSE I-90

FATAL ACCIDENT CLOSES NEEDLES HIGHWAY

The Entertainment section: Edgar Winter at the Chip, Gretchen Wilson at the Full Throttle.

Sports: Duane Newsom of Mt. Vernon, WI, Dominates Hill Climb.

Lifestyle: “Dear Abby: I am a biker widow. Every year my husband and his friends take off for ten days and leave me and the kids by ourselves …”

Police blotter: “A man became enraged when a tattoo artist mistakenly gave him a Honda tattoo instead of the Harley he had requested, and assaulted the tattoo artist with a chair and the tattoo needle. Ralph T. Bromley of Belleville, CO, has been charged with Atrocious Assault, Public Indecency and resisting arrest …”

Total Sturgis-related deaths since rally began: four.

By the time he'd had a refill and polished off the papers it was seven-thirty. He called Bloom.

Bloom answered on the second ring. “Why so early, Josh?”

“I recovered one of your Desmos.”

“What?”

“I recovered one of your Desmos. I'm leaving it with the local Trans-Continental office in Rapid City. He'll open in a half hour and I'll call you from there.”

“Just one?”

“You're welcome. I'm not working the case. It fell into my lap.”

“Well thanks. One is better than nothing. How'd you do it?”

“Aztec Skulls pulled the heist. They were selling hot bikes. I took one for a test ride. You owe me a thou for expenses and whatever you think it's worth. Unfortunately, there was a fatality involved. The Skull following me ran into traffic.”

“Are you in any trouble?”

“The Skulls could be a mite ticked off. I'm not going to let them stop me.”

“How's your case coming?”

“I have a lead. With any luck I can wrap this up quickly and devote myself full-time to your Desmos.”

“There's no rush on that. I've got Hank Meyer on it.”

“Hank Meyer couldn't find his feet in his socks.”

“Well all the more reason for you to wrap up whatever you're doing and get back on it. Let me know if you need anything.”