Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle (26 page)

They sat in the bar and drank and talked. Steve had one of the prospects go out for Chinese food. Before it arrived, Ned did.

“Ned ‘Crash' Aiken, just the man I wanted to see,” Steve said. “My friend Dave here is new in town and will need to crash at your place until we get him a decent place to stay.”

Ned didn't like the idea, but agreed anyway. The three of them sat and ate the Chinese food and discussed sports, the weather, and everything but business. After about an hour and a half, Steve told the other two he had to go.

“But what about my idea?”

“What idea?”

“The dating site.”

“Yeah, sure, sounds great. I'll send Joel's pal over to your place tomorrow.”

“Great.”

Ned was not at all happy that he had to take this scruffy little dude home and let him sleep in the guestroom. But it was a direct order from Steve; there was no room for negotiation.

Lara was feeling a little envious. It's not like she wanted to see all the shootings, arsons, and bombings that had occurred in Martinsville happen in Springfield; she just wanted something interesting to report on. For the past few weeks, it had been nothing more than drunk driving, kids stealing each other's iPods, and one poor bastard who was caught on video stealing the donations box for a children's hospital off the counter of a convenience store. So she called biker expert Jake Levine to talk about what was happening in Martinsville.

“Looks like you have a war going on up there,” she said.

“Really? A few drug dealers die and a few bars happen to catch fire and that's a war?” he said, condescendingly. “Drug dealers die; that's an occupational hazard. Fires happen when people want insurance money.”

“But my sources say that all of the deaths were dealers associated with the Sons of Satan,” she persevered, “and all of the businesses targeted were also associated with the Sons.Don't you think that's just a bit too coincidental?”

“Not at all. The Sons run organized crime in this city,” he replied. “I think it would be hard to find a dealer or a bar that did not have some association with them.”

“But there must be other criminals out there,” Lara pressed on, “the Italians, the rest of the Lawbreakers, dealers who don't want to play ball with the Sons, bikers they rejected for membership or they kicked out. My sources tell me . . .”

“Your sources? You're the crime reporter in Springfield, and you're trying to tell me what's happening in Martinsville?” Levine spouted back. “I'm sure you are trying very hard, but Martinsville is a big city, much more complicated than Springfield . . .”

“So you're saying there's no crime organization fighting against the Sons of Satan in Martinsville?”

“Exactly, there just isn't anyone left to fight them . . . nobody who matters anyway.”

“Interesting,” she said. “One last thing, what can you tell me about Ivan Mehelnechuk?”

“Yeah, isn't he the little wee guy with the funny face?” he said. “From Springfield, I think.”

“Yeah.”

“Small-timer, has a lot of patches on his jacket, but never been arrested, never been seen with any of the big guys,” he answered. “It seems that whenever anything big goes down, he's never around.”

“Like Clark Kent.”

“Oh, I think your hometown pride is running away with you on that one; Mehelnechuk is little more than an errand boy who's managed to gain membership by keeping his mouth shut and staying out of trouble.”

“I see.”

After a few moments of awkward silence, Levine asked, “Whatever happened to Delvecchio? I liked him; he always asked me the right questions.”

“Oh, Johnny, he's moved up in the world,” she said cheerfully. “No more crime. He's our religion reporter now.”

Levine laughed. “That sounds about right for him.”

Ned didn't want to talk, but he could tell his passenger did. Carter was nervous, playing with every knob and switch in the SSR, adjusting the fan speed and temperature no fewer than two dozen times in the first mile. Assuming that conversation would help calm him down, Ned asked him what he was doing in Springfield.

“So you don't know who I am then?”

“Well, I know your name.”

“You don't know me.”

“Okay, I don't.”

“You should, I am the best at what I do.”

Ned chuckled. “Oh yeah, what's that?”

“I'm a killer.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Do you remember when the Sons were getting rid of the Lawbreakers in Martinsville?”

“You did that, did you?”

“Most of it.”

“You'll have to forgive me, but I just don't think you look like a killer.”

Carter laughed. “I get that a lot,” he said. “But I only have one talent and I gotta keep a roof over my head.”

“I see, survival of the fittest, is that it?”

Carter laughed and slapped his knee. “Survival of the fittest my ass!” he shouted. “Look at me, I'm tiny, I'm a drug addict, I'm old, I'm in awful shape; look, I have the arms of a nine-year-old girl. It is not survival of the fittest, my friend; but survival of the baddest, the meanest, the craziest,” he continued. “You don't need muscles to kill someone, just a reason . . . and one of these.”

As he looked over to see Carter's rather cheap and workmanlike gun, he noticed he had a “Dirty Dog” patch on his jacket. The Sons of Satan and affiliated clubs only give those to members who have killed for the club. Steve halfheartedly offered one to Ned after the Tyler incident, but Ned refused it on the grounds that it was an accident and it hadn't helped the club at all.

“Yeah,” Ned said. “I'd be lost without mine.”

Carter snickered. “You're no killer,” he said.

Bouchard was having a few beers with Vandersloot at a Martinsville strip joint they operated when Lawrence “Picasso” Parisi came running in. He was excited and out of breath. Bouchard and Vandersloot took him into the office and sat him down.

“Big news,” he began as soon as he could. “Two
girls
—Denton and Watson—were seen with Spangler downtown.” Spangler, he had no need to remind them, was a former Sons of Satan prospect who was a good earner, but was kicked out for stealing from the club. He later formed his own gang, the Lone Wolves, with a couple of high school buddies, but they disbanded after one of them ran into some Lawbreakers at a bar and had his jaw broken.

“They were all wearing jackets with the name ‘High Rollers' on the back,” Parisi reported.

“Excellent work, my friend,” Bouchard said. “Please give this man $500, Toots. Where did you see them?”

“Coming out of the Wentworth,” he said. That made perfect sense to Bouchard. Mario DeVolo had operated Martinsville's Italian mafia out of the Wentworth for years. He'd been a major drug supplier for the Sons for as long as Bouchard could remember and he had also hired the club's members and prospects to pressure debtors and intimidate witnesses. One of Bouchard's first jobs—breaking the knees of a recalcitrant gambler who owed one of DeVolo's sons twelve thousand bucks—was conducted in a back room at the Wentworth.

But in recent years, starting at about the time Mehelnechuk had taken over and instituted his new rules, DeVolo had been growing increasingly prone to complaints. He didn't like the stranglehold the Sons had on what appeared to be every market. He didn't like how much they charged when he compared it to what they paid. And he definitely didn't like their willingness to go elsewhere for drugs if the price was right.

Bouchard agreed with Mehelnechuk's suspicion that DeVolo was at the head of—or at least involved with—these High Rollers, and that they were made up of Lawbreakers, non-affiliated bikers, and rejects like Spangler—basically every criminal in Martinsville who wasn't wearing Sons of Satan colors.

“Where did they go?”

“I lost them, they were on Harleys and I was in my pickup. They went through an alley. I couldn't keep up.”

“Too bad, you could have made another $500,” Bouchard laughed. “But good job anyway. Why don't you go out front and tell the ladies to show you a good time. Toots, take him outside.”

Parisi grinned as Vandersloot escorted him out. Bouchard called Mehelnechuk on a cellphone he'd bought that day (he'd discard it in a couple of weeks to avoid having his calls intercepted by the cops—a trick the bikers had learned from Al-Qaeda).

“Well, I know who the problem is,” he reported. “It's DeVolo and all the
girls
in town, probably some from out of town as well.”

“Makes sense,” Mehelnechuk concurred. “Our garlic-eating friend probably wants to have an alternative market for his products so that he can play us off one another, allowing him to dictate the rules—I'm surprised it took him this long to put a team together.”

“We can't take him out at the Wentworth or at home, but he's pretty vulnerable when he goes to his horse farm.”

“We're not taking him out at all; we're not fighting the Italians.”

“Why not?”

“We'd lose.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, you want some crazy-ass godfathers and Guidos coming from New York and New Jersey? I've seen what they're capable of—and they are everywhere—they would all kill a hundred of ours to avenge the death of just one of their own. Besides, he's our top supplier. Where do you think we'd get product?”

“Scott Kreig?”

Mehelnechuk laughed. “Scott's a good guy and everything, but he can't get us a tenth of what the Italians can.”

“So what do we do, just let him get away with killing our guys?”

“No, we kill his guys,” Mehelnechuk said. “We make it so difficult, so costly for him to do business with anyone other than us, that he'll give up—but you leave him, his family, and his own men alone. Spread the word: anyone so much as looks like a High Roller or whatever they call themselves is a dead man. Any dealer who refuses to do business with us is dead.”

“You're not against me bringing in some reinforcements, are you?”

“Not as such, what did you have in mind?”

“Just gonna grab some of the more psychotic elements from some chapters and puppets.”

“Fine, just leave Carter in Springfield; he's got a job to do there.”

Ned really wanted Carter out of his house. Not only was he filthy, but he stayed up all night trying to talk. And when Ned didn't want to talk, Carter would wander around and talk with himself. It disturbed Ned to have a self-proclaimed serial killer walking around his house at night, even if they were officially on the same side. So he was relieved to hear that Steve had called both of them in for a meeting at the Strip.