Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle (39 page)

Although
Outlaw Biker
is a work of fiction, it would be incorrect to think of it as a one-person effort. I'd like to thank all of my sources who told me stories about life in the places the book talks about, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want me to mention their names here. I would also like to thank my wife's friend Gulnara for introducing me to many different cultures from the former Soviet Union; my wife and kids for their patience; the team at Wiley, especially super editor Don Loney; and, of course, Leta Potter, without whom nothing gets done.

It was a surprisingly desolate place considering it was in the middle of a big city. Ned knew that Detroit had fallen on some really hard times, but he was shocked at the utter emptiness of this part of the city, just outside the downtown core. He watched for any sign of human activity. It was as though some kind of epidemic or radiation had devastated the place. He kept the windows rolled up and the doors locked.

There were, of course, lots of reminders that this had once been a very busy place—the empty factories with their broken windows, abandoned cars, piles of trash and boarded-up houses gave mute testimony to that—but there were no people. He thought he saw a stray dog—maybe a coyote—hunting what were probably rats in a pile of trash.

He wondered exactly why his new friends from work—Chuck and Bob—had sent him to this almost post-apocalyptic zone. His instructions were to deliver a package, which he guessed contained cash, to an address the GPS that they had supplied him with said was now less than a quarter-mile away. But he couldn't figure out why anyone would want to be out here and he began to get nervous about the kind of people who would be waiting for him.

He had managed to avoid thinking about it in any kind of depth for the whole trip. But ever since he had left Wilmington almost ten hours ago, he had been nagged by the feeling that he might be in the middle of a setup. How well did he know Chuck and Bob anyway? He had quickly spotted that they were operators. Ned could tell from their cars, clothes and behavior that they were obviously guys with something going on. They were small-time to be sure, but they could easily have some big connections.

And Ned woke up and went to sleep every day knowing that there were more than a few people—maybe those very connections who supplied Chuck and Bob—who very badly wanted to see him dead. Ned's testimony had put a lot of bikers—his former brothers in the Sons of Satan—away, some for a very long time. The FBI was hiding him behind a new identity, but he knew the Sons of Satan and their allies were everywhere, and Ned also knew that moving him from the Midwest to the east coast was no guarantee that someone wouldn't hunt him down.

The FBI guys were pretty smart about it, though. Delaware didn't have any Sons of Satan chapters. In fact, none of the major biker clubs had a clubhouse in the state. But that didn't mean bikers only went there for a bit of R&R.

Traditionally, all of Delaware's organized crime was run by the Philadelphia Mafia. But after the successive failures of Little Nicky Scarfo, Johnny Stanfa and Ralph Natale to keep their men in line and out of prison, their power was waning, especially on the fringes of their empire. By the late 1990s, a sizeable chunk of the drug trade in the tiny state was controlled from a distance by bikers: Pagans from Maryland or Hells Angels from Virginia. There was no love lost between the two clubs, but both had been known to ally with the Sons of Satan depending on which way the winds were prevailing.

Chuck and Bob, the two guys Ned worked with in the mailroom of a credit-assessment agency, could very easily have been paid to deliver him to the Sons of Satan. They had, after all, sent him on a trip here, to the Midwest. Detroit, Ned knew, was traditionally the heart of Outlaws territory, but he also knew that the Sons of Satan were never very far away.

Sweating, he stopped the car. He didn't pull over; he just threw the car into park. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Ned realized that there was a very strong possibility that he was being sent to his death. He thought about it. Who the hell were Chuck and Bob anyway? He didn't even know their real names. Why should he trust them? All he wanted to do was make a quick buck and break up the boredom of his job. And when these two Serbian guys who worked with him recognized his biker tattoos and offered him a pile of money to deliver a small package, he thought it might be fun.

But then he thought about the odds. If Chuck and Bob knew that the Sons of Satan wanted him dead, they would certainly have made a move by now. And they didn't seem smart or sophisticated enough to pull something like this off. If they wanted to kill him, they wouldn't put him in a car with a GPS and a thick manila envelope and send him so far across the country; they'd just whack him in the head with a crowbar. He actually couldn't help laughing to himself as he pictured it—Chuck laying on the beating and Bob going through his pockets.

Ned wanted to get the hell out of the neighborhood. Even the plan he'd made to legitimize the trip wasn't relieving his anxiety. If he couldn't trust Chuck and Bob, then he sure as hell couldn't trust the people at the other end. But a life of drudgery was no life. Live free or die.

He quickly looked around. The street was deserted. He picked up the envelope and tore off a strip. Cash. Lots of it. Ned threw the transmission into “drive.” A couple of blocks later, he saw exactly where he was headed. The building looked a lot like all the others in the area—low and broad with that bit of ornate flair you don't see in buildings made after a certain era. Unlike the others, it had all of its doors and windows intact. But that's not what made it stand out. While its neighbors were surrounded by trash, piles of tires or abandoned vehicles, the area around this building was cleaned up. The parking lot sported a number of luxury cars and SUVs, all of them modified to some degree and some of them painted in outrageous colors.

Ned parked in an open spot between a bright purple Cadillac SUV and a snow-white Corvette. He got out of the car and noticed that he wasn't alone. A young man who looked big with a shaven head and a mustache sat in a small, late-model BMW with an aftermarket spoiler on the trunk. Ned nodded at him. The man did not acknowledge him; instead, he pulled out a cell phone and started to make a call.

Ned approached the door, which was solid steel, black and windowless. Ned noticed one of those cheap, white, boxy video cameras mounted about ten feet up. It was pointed directly at the space in front of the door. He looked directly at it, smiled and resisted the urge to wave. There was an intercom system beside the door. Ned pressed the “speak” button and said, “Delivery.”

Ned heard a long buzz and the lock mechanism activated. He pulled the door open and walked in. Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness inside, someone threw a cloth sack over his head and pulled him to the ground. He was rolled on his stomach and his hands cuffed behind his back. A hand grabbed the collar of his sweatshirt and Ned was pulled roughly to his feet. Orders were barked in a language Ned didn't know and the sack was secured around his neck. One of the men grabbed him by his left bicep and guided him deeper into the building. The men began talking to each other and one kept giggling. Ned identified at least four distinct voices. He heard a door open. The man leading him stepped down. “Careful,” a heavily accented voice said to Ned. “Stairs.”

Although he knew he was going down the steps, it was hard to negotiate them while blindfolded. Ned took each step cautiously and tenuously, but stumbled twice. Every time he slipped, the laughing guy giggled.

Down the stairs, Ned was guided a few more steps and then roughly pushed down into an armchair. He heard some talking back and forth, then he felt the sack being loosened. As soon as the sack was removed, Ned was momentarily blinded by a light.

When his eyes finally adjusted, he could see he was in a windowless basement. The only source of light was a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling no more than eighteen inches from his face. The cement walls were full of cracks and had black marks and patches of mold or lichen. It smelled dank.

Ned was in a smelly old armchair. Directly in front of him was a massively fat man in an expensive suit. He had a wide face with a downturned, toad-like mouth. He had combed and shellacked his thinning black hair over the top of his bald head and had a wide scar on his right cheek. His smile revealed two gold teeth. As Ned continued to look at him, he saw more and more gold. Rings on just about every finger, bracelets as thick as a man's thumb on each wrist, big cufflinks and at least four thick chains were visible before his shirt closed.

One each side of him were two very big, very hairy men in garishly colored nylon track suits. One had a wife beater on underneath and the other was shirtless. Every square inch of them except for their heads, necks and hands looked to be covered in ornate tattoos. They both had shaved heads and goatees. Similarly dressed thugs were standing on each side of Ned's chair. Off a few steps was a young, thinner guy who could barely contain his excitement. Ned identified him as the giggler. He turned his head around and saw another man sitting in a chair. Unlike the others, this guy had neither a beer belly nor manufactured muscles. He was small and slim and was wearing a conventional tailored suit. He was the only one who was not awash in gold and emblazoned with tattoos. When Ned caught his eye, the man in the chair nodded emotionlessly. The nod drew attention to the fact that he was holding a rather large handgun.

Ned looked at the smiling fat man in front of him. “Who are you?” the man asked in heavily accented English.

“I'm delivering a package from Chuck and Bob.”

“I did not ask you that.” The tone was flat and menacing.

Ned could feel the bile rising in his throat. His heart was pounding insistently. If they were more interested in him than the package, it was not a good sign. Realizing that too long a pause would make him look like he was hiding something, he blurted out, “I'm Eric Steadman.” It was the name the FBI had given him when he entered the witness protection program.

“Eric Steadman. Eric Steadman from the mailroom,” the fat man said, as though considering the name deeply. “Steadman? That is a German name, no?”

“No,” said Ned. “It's English, my ancestors came from England I guess . . .”

“Maybe,” said the fat man, who was now pacing and not looking at him.

“He looks Scottish to me,” he heard a calm, lessaccented voice from the back say. “Maybe Norwegian.” That assessment chilled Ned, who was in fact mostly of Scottish origin. Could they know Steadman was not his real name? If they did, it was also likely they knew who he was. Since they spoke in English, he knew he was meant to hear them.

The fat man said something in what Ned now took to be Russian, and one of the thugs beside him went over and lifted Ned to his feet. “Empty your pockets. Everything.”

Ned handed over his wallet, keys, cell phone and loose change. The thug passed his wallet to the fat man, who opened it, removed a few cards and dropped the rest on the floor. He examined Ned's driver's license in minute detail. Then his Social Security card. After about two minutes, he smiled and shook his head. Then he said something to his men, who all laughed. “I'm something of an expert in these matters,” the fat man said to Ned. “And I have never seen such exquisite forgeries in all my life. They look so close to real that they could have fooled me in other circumstances. Tell me, Mr. Steadman, where did you get these?”