Biker (4 page)

Pratt laughed. That was never in the picture.

“No girlfriends?”

“Nope.”

“No significant others? Pets? Dogs? Cats? Boa constrictors?”

“Nope.”

Cass pulled a pack of Marlboros from a drawer in the table and lit it with a Zippo. She blew a smoke ring at Pratt. “I had a bad experience with dogs once.”

Pratt didn't know what to say. She wanted something. He wasn't clear what. He wanted something too but hadn't a clue how to get it. He hadn't slept in twenty-two hours and was seeing spots at the rim of his vision.

“You seem like an interesting guy.”

Pratt shrugged. “I don't know about that.”

“Do you like me, do you like what you see?” Cass said.

Pratt nodded.

Cass stood, arching her back and taking a long draw on the cig. “No place going anywhere tonight. Come on upstairs with me.”

“I could sleep on the sofa.”

She looked down her chin at him. “Do I have to spell it out for you?”

CHAPTER 6

“Son,” Duane once told him. “Every now and then you're going to come across a setup that seems too good to be true. Take it. Women really are crazy.”

If there's one thing Duane knew it was how to talk women into bed. He had no idea how to keep them or forge a relationship based on love and respect, and he duly passed that void onto his son. Duane lived by two mottoes: any woman could be had, and he who strikes first wins.

Pratt followed Cass up the Mayan stair, a mule following a carrot. She led him to a bedroom beneath the eaves with two windows looking out on the front yard. A faux Tiffany lamp on a night table cast a warm glow. The room had a hardwood floor with a couple of scatter rugs. A framed Monet print hung on the wall next to a black and white photograph of a group of bikers, men and women, in front of Devil's Tower.

Cass stopped just inside the door and turned around, pressing herself into Pratt. His hands automatically cupped her ass and they swayed into a deep soul kiss that left him gasping like a gaffed fish. She put her hand between his legs and flashed a wicked grin. “What's this?”

Pratt blushed crimson. “A cup.”

Cass appraised him with a hint of respect. “Give me a minute.”

Pratt couldn't believe his luck. He'd never been good with women. His longest relationship had lasted three months. She'd left him because he was a “thug loser.”

Thank you, Jesus
, he thought. Was that appropriate?

Pratt took off his shoes and socks. The door to the bathroom opened. Cass walked toward him nude. She turned around displaying a Harley tramp stamp on her ass: a unicorn. A garland of tattooed roses circled her left breast. Another rose on her neck.

“Take 'em off,” she commanded, yanking off his jeans like a magician pulling the tablecloth out from under a place setting. His ribs strobed white hot. She peeled off his cup and supporter and tossed it in the corner.

Cass leaned over him and shut off the lamp. The glow from the yard lights was more than sufficient to illuminate her perfectly toned body and satin skin that tasted of cloves.

“Just lie there,” she growled, straddling him. “Let me do all the work.” He grasped her hips. Her high, small breasts brushed his gold crucifix. As she lowered herself onto him pain intensified his pleasure, like a single drop of black in a bucket of white paint. Cass pinned his wrists with her hands and moaned while she stared into his eyes. She reached behind her to cup his balls in one hand.

Afterwards they lay side by side staring at the ceiling fan. Cass lit a cigarette and blew rings into the downdraft, where they whipped to mist. Pratt wondered what he'd got himself into. He didn't believe in love at first sight. He wasn't sure he believed in love at all, except for God's, and that had come only lately.

Pratt dozed off for a couple hours, popped out of it at the crack of dawn.

Still tired, there was no way Pratt could sleep. Too much too quickly. Too many things to digest. Were the Mastodons coming after him? How soon should he phone Lowry? Was this the beginning of a relationship or two ships passing in the night? Did he want a relationship? He was used to being alone.

Cass' hand drifted across his stomach. “That's a wild tat. Who did it?”

“Kasamura Oda. Twenty-eight hours non-stop and two bottles of Scotch.”

“I'm too wired to sleep.”

“Me too.”

“Let's go get some breakfast and then we'll drop your dogs off.”

“Oh shit.” Pratt swung his legs off the bed and pulled on his skivvies and trousers. He moved as fast as the bandages and pain allowed. Crabbed down the stairs, banged out the front door and stiff-walked to where he'd left the two schnauzers in their cages. One was up and looking at him with a piteous expression, big brown eyes pleading,
Where's my breakfast? Where are my people?
The other was asleep. Stacking the cages, Pratt took them into the barn and released them in a horse stall.

“Hang on, fellas.”

He found a metal pail, filled it from a ground faucet and put it in with the dogs, which drank head to head like magnetic Scotties.

Going back to the house was harder than leaving. It was all uphill. Pratt hung onto the plumbing tube railing, then the wood banisters on the porch. He climbed the steep stairway hanging onto the rope banister like an ancient penitent approaching a mountain monastery. Pratt showered. Thinking about the night gave him a hard-on. He wasn't about to let this one slip away, not if he could help it. He had no clue how to proceed.

All his life he'd believed there was a secret book outlining proper behavior under any and all circumstances and everybody had a copy but him.

Should I go for another round? What if she's not in the mood? Will I make a fool of myself, lower myself in her eyes? Where's my lifeline? Somebody give me a clue
.

Cass was downstairs cleaning up in the kitchen when Pratt came down the stairs hanging on to the rope banister. She wore those same damned jeans, a Sturgis T-shirt over no bra, her auburn hair tied in a ponytail sprouting from the back of her Brewers' hat. She carried a fat black leather Harley wallet with a chain around her belt.

The shotgun was nowhere in sight. Cass led the way out the door, down the steps, down the path, down three more steps to the barnyard where Pratt's bike remained as he had left it.

Thank you Jesus no one fucked up my bike
.

Cass went to a separate two-car garage, backed out a black Dodge Ram right up to the stone retaining wall surrounding the house. She opened the gate, pulled out a slab of plywood and laid it between truck and lawn.

“You can ride your bike around back and load it into the truck here.”

Pratt did as she said. Pain prevented him from exerting the necessary pressure to bungee the bike in place. All he could do was sit on the bike and use his weight while Cass yanked on the nylon belts, cinching them tight.

They put George and Gracie in the back of the truck and drove to a Cracker Barrel on the Interstate. They sat opposite each other in a booth and ordered Denver omelets. Pratt downed three Tylenols.

“How are the ribs?” Cass asked over a cup of coffee.

“I've had worse.”

“Okay, Tarzan.”

“I used to ride with the Bedouins.”

“What happened?”

“I got busted. Did four years at Waupun. I came to Jesus while I was in prison and straightened out my life. I have a good lawyer who got my record expunged and helped me get an investigator's license.” Pratt left out Judge Harvey Bannister, a Bloom crony and the subject of an ethics investigation.

“Are you one of those Jesus freaks?” A wrinkle of concern climbed Cass' forehead.

“What do you think?”

Cass smiled slowly. “If you are, you're the craziest Jesus freak I ever met. Wasn't Jesus supposed to be a pacifist?”

“No, that was Ghandi. Jesus kicked ass when he had to.”

The waitress brought their breakfast. It was eight by the time they finished, late enough to call Lowry.

The fund raiser answered on the first ring. “Dave Lowry.”

“Dave, this is your neighbor, Josh Pratt. I found your dogs.”

“You what? That's great, Josh! Great! Honey! Josh found the dogs!”

Shrieks and jubilation. Pratt promised to be there in an hour. He grabbed the check when it came and paid it with his MasterCard. As they headed to Madison, George and Gracie with their snouts in the wind, Pratt's cell phone rang. He looked at the little window.

“Hello, Danny,” he said, greeting his friend and mentor. “What's up?”

“Got a job for you. Can you stop by this morning?”

“How about eleven?”

“See you then.” The lawyer hung up.

They rode in silence. Cass turned the radio on to a blues station out of Chicago.

“There's something I should tell you,” she said.

Uh-oh. Here it comes
.

“This guy who stole Ginger's son, the boy's father. Moon's a killer.”

“How do you know?”

“I knew him. If you go back sixteen years and look at the papers you'll find a couple of unsolved murders. One in Beloit. Another I know about. Guys who cheated Moon or pissed him off. We used to hang with the War Bonnets, Ginger and me.”

“That's a bad bunch. But it's been sixteen years. This Moon may not even be alive. The boy may not be alive. I might not be able to find him. Sixteen years is a long time.”

“I understand.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Better than I know you. I was his old lady for about a month, until he met Ginger. I was just a stupid teen.”

“Tell me about him.”

“I'd rather you heard it from Ginger.”

“Fair enough.”

Traffic was light and they made Madison in plenty of time. Pratt directed Cass clockwise around the Beltline to the far West Side, where they took County Trunk MB to Ptarmigan Road, a meandering blacktop that wandered southwest to northeast through forest, much of it reclaimed for million-dollar homes.

Pratt had bought his place eight years ago for $210,000 cash, money he'd received in a settlement resulting from a motorcycle accident. An old woman in a Buick had T-boned him at an intersection. Fortunately she was driving very slowly.

When Pratt moved in he had no neighbors. Since then a developer had bought up broad swaths and terra-formed the land into Whispering Oaks. They passed several bodacious mansions under construction.

Pratt pointed to a pale yellow ranch style set back from the road behind a scruffy lawn, the dry-mounted Camaro, double attached garage and satellite dish. “That's my place. But turn into Dave's place. It's right across the street.”

Across the street, the Lowry residence gleamed atop its perfectly manicured lawn, square columns framing the arched zebrawood double front door. Vertical windows gazed down the lawn at the road and the eyesore across the street. Cass turned in and drove up the velvet blacktop. George and Gracie stood in the bed with their little white paws on the gunwales, barking and wagging their stumpy tails. Each bark was a pitchfork behind Pratt's eyes.

Dave and Louise Lowry poured from the front door down the broad flagstone steps to the pick-up, where each hoisted a schnauzer and cradled it to their bosoms. Gracie was so excited she pissed down the front of George's shirt. He didn't notice.

“Josh, that was outstanding work. Outstanding. Would you like to come inside?”

“No thank you, sir. I've got to get going. This is Cass, by the way.”

Holding the dog against his chest Dave wiped his hand on his pants and shook Cass' hand. Cass introduced herself to Louise.

“Well let me pay you at least.”

“Don't worry about it,” Pratt said. “I'll bill you later.”

“No. I insist. Please. Both of you step inside a minute.”

Shrugging, Pratt and Cass followed the Lowrys into their foyer, fifteen feet to the exposed beams from which descended a wagon wheel chandelier. The décor was New England roadhouse with exposed wood, wood floors, a stone fireplace glimpsed through an archway, expensive modern art rugs, leather books with gold-lettered spines. Old Masters in gilt frames.

Lowry set the dog down and walked into a little office off the kitchen. He sat at an antique roll-up desk, wrote out a check in a big green checkbook, put it in an envelope and handed it to Pratt.

“By the way. we're having a little party next Friday. Hope you can make it. I'll send you an invite.”

“Thank you, sir,” Pratt said, sticking the envelope in his hip pocket.

It wasn't until they got in the truck that Pratt looked at the check. Five thousand dollars. Not bad for a night's work.

CHAPTER 7

They drove downtown.

Cass waited in the truck while Pratt sprinted up the stairs to Danny Bloom's office in the Kipgard Building on King Street just off the Capitol Square. The building was a two-story 1950s office block with two suites on each floor. Danny's suite faced the parking lot and an old residential neighborhood just off the isthmus.

Perry Winkham had been Dan's receptionist since Dan helped him win acquittal in a prostitution case. Unfortunately, two days after the acquittal while Perry was celebrating with some pals at the old Rod's Club, he wandered into traffic plastered, got hit by Two Guys and a Truck and ended up in a wheelchair.

“Nick Danger, everybody!” Perry sang as Pratt entered the foyer. “Nick Danger! Go right in, Nick. He's waiting for you.”

It was unprofessional but Perry kept his job. Pratt figured Bloom had a weak spot for losers.
Just look at me
.

Pratt passed a disconsolate gangly black teen in a letter jacket and Air Jordans sitting next to his mother, a plump matron in a tired green dress. Bloom specialized in drug cases. Pratt walked down the short hall, conference room on one side, bathroom on the other, and entered Bloom's office without knocking. Bloom had his Skechers up on the desk, his pear-shaped body tilted back in a mesh office chair, speaking to the air.