Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle (12 page)

Jamie nodded.

Bouchard smiled. “Here it is—if anyone deals with us, they can not deal with the Lawbreakers,” he paused to make sure Jamie understood. “And if you don't deal with us, you will die.” Then he chuckled. “Pretty simple, eh?” he said. “You got it, eh? You' ll tell everyone, eh?”

Jamie nodded and smiled the best he could with the T-shirt in his mouth.

“Good, that'll save us so much unpleasantness,” Bouchard said. “Go ahead, Lou.”

Lou took a swing at Jamie's left pinkie, shattering it. He swung again, missing his fingers and hitting the table. Jamie was screaming through the T-shirt. Lou swung again, hitting Jamie's left thumb, but it was just a glancing blow.

Bouchard sighed. “I'll be waiting in the car; come down when you're done.”

According to her parents' strict standards, Kelli had been acting irresponsibly lately. They attributed her unprecedented lack of discipline to the fact that it was her senior year and that some of her friends were encouraging her to cut loose a little.

But they were having none of it. Augie Johnson had seen a documentary on a TV newsmagazine about “tough love”—a concept in which parents use strict, zero-tolerance punishments to put their kids back on the right track. It hadn't been getting the results he wanted, but he knew that if he stuck with it, it would.

Kelli wondered why her parents had totally turned on her just because she missed one school assignment and a couple of curfews. Augie had explained “tough love” to her, but it sounded more like tough luck. All she got out of her parents these days were orders, criticism, and recrimination. Home was like a boot camp. She found herself staying away from it more and more often.

She was reluctant to leave Lily's, but knew she'd be in big trouble if she stayed any longer. Her parents had confiscated her bike because they had seen her riding it without a helmet, so she had to walk home. About halfway there, it started to rain—just enough to be annoying. When she finally made it to the front door, she found it locked. She rang and rang the doorbell, but there was no response. She could see the light on in her parents' bedroom, so she knew they were home. She phoned them—no answer. She started pounding on the door and yelling.

Augie's plan was to make her freak out for about fifteen minutes, then let her in and give her a good talking to. He decided to intensify the experience a little by having his friend Harvey Giamatti—a drama teacher at another high school who sported a long beard and wild hair—hide in the hedges and approach her.

Harvey emerged just as it was dawning on Kelli that she was in all likelihood, going to have to find someplace to sleep that night. Doing his best imitation of a deranged homeless man, Harvey stepped very close to Kelli and said: “I don't think they're home, lady.” He was about to follow up by asking her for some spare change, when she let out a horrified scream and ran. She ran down the block without any particular destination. About two hundred yards from her house, she saw a familiar face.

It was Ned, getting into his car after stopping at the corner store to buy some snacks. Kelli rushed up to him, screaming: “I'm locked out of my house and there's a crazy man after me!”

“Hop in.”

After she calmed down a little, Kelli sighed. “I can't believe I'm asking you this,” she said. “But can I stay at your place tonight?”

Ned, trying to act nonchalant, said, “No problem.”

“Really? Your mom won't mind?”

“Mom? I have my own place.”

“Ooooh . . . maybe this isn't such a good idea.”

Ned laughed. “Look, I have an extra room, there's no bed in it, but I have a sleeping bag and lots of pillows—there's no lock, but you can prop up a chair or something.”

“That's okay, you won't try any funny stuff—I have a black belt in karate.”

Ned looked at her and started laughing. A moment later, she joined him. “You—a black belt in karate?” he chuckled. “A black belt in ballet, maybe . . .”

She playfully punched him in the right bicep and said: “You just watch yourself, Mister. We ballerinas can get pretty nasty.”

Ned's hand was actually shaking as he slid the key into the lock. He knew André often slept late, was somewhat paranoid, a heavy sleeper who went to bed every night with a handgun. Although the likelihood of getting shot wasn't great, Ned didn't like the idea of waking up his boss.

But he had to. That's why he had a key to his house. André's habit of sleeping in had made Ned and other employees late for deliveries before. To prevent this from happening again, André gave Ned a key. He gave it to Ned, he said, because he was the only one he didn't expect would rob him blind while his back was turned.

So when Jackson—one of the underage delivery boys—couldn't get André to answer, he called Ned. Jackson told him that he had to hit the downtown bars before they opened. Ned knew that the key to Jackson's continued success was stealth—he ran under the cops' radar—so he quickly agreed to come and open the door and wake André up.

Getting in was easy; waking André up and staying unharmed was another. As a heavy drug user, he tended to go into very deep sleeps at any time of the night or day and could often be angry, paranoid, and even violent when he was awakened. And, as a successful drug dealer, he tended to be heavily armed and desperate to protect his stashes of both product and cash.

When he got there, Jackson was sitting on the front step playing with a Nintendo DS. He complained about both André's sleeping and how long it took Ned to get there. But Ned didn't pay him any attention. Jackson was just a little punk kid, maybe even a fag. And he was much farther down the org chart, so Ned didn't have to listen to him and they both knew it. Ned made fun of Jackson's emo haircut—a long sweep of poorly-dyed black hair that covered his right eye, curving to a point near his jawline—and his “girl's pants.” Then he pretended he had forgotten the key. When Jackson started freaking out and began throwing a tantrum, he quickly found it and slowly, methodically, unlocked the door. He pushed it in hard so it would bang against the wall. Then he stomped in the hall as hard as he could, shouting “Dré! Dré! It's us—Ned and Jackson!”

There was no answer and the pair looked at each other. “No, no, no, I'm not going up,” protested Jackson. “I heard Dré once accidentally shot a guy right through his eyeball.”

“Okay, okay, ya little puss, I'll do it.”

As Ned approached the closed bedroom door, he could see light coming out from underneath. Clearly, Dré had fallen asleep with the lights on again. And as he inched even closer, Ned could hear what he identified as classical music coming softly from inside the room.

“Dré! Dré! It's Ned! I'm coming in!” He knocked loudly on the door.

Fed up with his own cowardice, Ned barged into André's bedroom, prepared for the worst.

What he saw knocked him to the floor.

André was still in bed, but the once pristine white sheets were drenched in thick, already browning blood. The back of his head was mostly obliterated. What remained was a mass of matted hair, sticky blood, and what Ned correctly took to be brain tissue.

Stunned, Ned stepped backwards until his back hit a wall, and he sank until he was sitting. He brought his hands up to his face, then dropped them to the ground. He looked at André again and threw up.

The violence of his retching drew him out of his stupor. He stood up and ran down the stairs. He grabbed Jackson, who was in a chair, by the shoulders and stood him up. “We gotta get outta here, right now,” he told him. “Dré's been shot.”

“Then call a fuckin' ambulance.”

“It's too late for that.”

After Jackson figured out what that meant, he looked at Ned—wild-eyed, sweating, covered in vomit—and ran.

Ned went after him, locked the door as nonchalantly as possible and hopped into the SSR. He started it normally and drove away observing all speed limits and road signs. He wondered if the police could identify people from the DNA in their puke.

Vince Tate, the editor in chief of the
Springfield Silhouette
, couldn't believe what he was hearing. John Delvecchio, his veteran crime reporter, wanted to be reassigned.

The two men had never gotten along. Tate was just thirty-eight and still full of ambition when he came to Springfield. As a deputy editor at the
Martinsville Daily News
, he had brought sweeping changes into the paper that had garnered it acclaim in the industry and praise from readers and advertisers. His reward was the editor-in-chief job at the
Silhouette
. The challenge, as he saw it, was to drag the rapidly declining paper into the twenty-first century—kicking and screaming, if necessary.

Delvecchio quickly became one of his primary obstacles. The thin, nervous crime reporter had never been promoted despite having spent more than thirty years in the position. They had never even bothered to create a senior reporter position for him. So, by the time Tate took over, reporters' meetings at the
Silhouette
would always feature about a dozen ambitious twenty-somethings and one cynical bald man approaching sixty.

Although they were all officially equals, Delvecchio was paid a lot more than the other reporters. The union saw to that. And it was the
Silhouette
's strong union that kept him employed.

A few weeks after he started at the
Silhouette
, Tate wanted to get rid of Delvecchio. It wasn't his writing, which seemed acceptable, but his attitude. More than anyone else in what seemed to Tate to be a building full of unimaginative, change-resistant drones, Delvecchio fought Tate's initiatives. If there was a new technology, Delvecchio refused to learn it. If there was a new protocol, Delvecchio refused to follow it. He continued doing things the way he had for the past sixteen or so years, making life hell for the copy editors and page designers who had to work with him. He openly criticized Tate's ideas and changes, often calling him a “politically correct fascist.” He frequently told co-workers that “once management woke up and fired Tate, everything would go back to normal.”

As annoying as it all was, Delvecchio's little protests were too petty for Tate to build an insubordination case against him. In fact, Delvecchio had been there so long and had built up so much union protection, Tate couldn't even take him off the crime beat. So when Delvecchio volunteered, Tate had to hide his delight. He knew that Delvecchio's second wife had just left him, but avoided the subject. “Why the sudden change of heart, John?”

Delvecchio fixed Tate with a strange look. “No reason,” he said. “Just looking for a change.”

“That's cool, John,” Tate said. “But where would I put you; where would you want to go?”

Delvecchio didn't hesitate for a second. “I understand the religion spot is still open.”

Tate didn't know the
Silhouette
even had a religion reporter. In fact, it didn't. About ten years before Tate was hired, Hugh McAllister, the
Silhouette
's religion reporter, retired. He'd never been replaced, so the job was technically open.

Tate thought about it. It seemed like a good deal. Not only did it allow him to sideline Delvecchio, but the whole thing made it look like Tate had done him a favor. He had no idea what had scared Delvecchio off the crime beat, but he didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, either.