Set the Night on Fire (10 page)

She rinsed the glass, letting warm water spill over her hands and swirl down the drain. Her father was gone; now it was up to her. She would have to protect herself—from the man on the motorcycle, from stalkers, even from the knowledge that her parents were not the people she thought they were.

But first she would check the locks one more time.

I
t took Dar several days to find Benny Spivak, a fellow inmate at Stateville. Benny had served a twenty-year stretch for dealing meth. A man had been killed during a deal—an accident, Benny argued; manslaughter, said the state. Benny was paroled three years before Dar, and, according to a postcard he sent Dar afterwards, was now running an engine repair shop near Rockford.

Using the Internet and the phone book, Dar narrowed down the possibilities. Once he was sure, he set out before sunrise in Cece’s black Honda and headed west on I-90. The dark mantle of sky behind him became tinged with pink. It would be a clear day, but cold.

Periodically he checked the rearview mirror for a tail. He couldn’t spot one, but they’d gotten more subtle over the years. Back in the Sixties you’d see two figures in a car, both of them wearing cheap suits, white shirts, narrow ties, or, in winter, a bulky raincoat. They’d be driving a Chevy or Ford, maybe a Plymouth. They’d stay precisely two car lengths behind, no more, no less. These days, though, there were so many cameras and tracking systems on the road that actual physical surveillance was becoming obsolete. Given the right equipment you could tail someone from the comfort of home. Or so he’d heard.

He reached Loves Park, a working-class town twenty minutes from Rockford, before eight. He checked the directions he’d printed out and drove to Prime Motor and Body. It sat in a commercial area off Harlem, near Range, not a backwoods road but not a major highway, either.

He did a slow drive by. The shop wasn’t much more than a shack with a corrugated metal roof. The door was locked, and the front window was so grimy the only thing you could see was that it was dark inside. A plastic clock on the door indicated the shop’s hours were 10:00 to 6:00.

He turned the corner and parked in front of Sherry’s Café. When he went in and ordered coffee—black—Sherry, or whoever was behind the counter, looked disappointed he wasn’t springing for a fancy drink. He hesitated. Coffee used to be a staple, one step up from water. Now people made obscene profits dressing it up. He wondered who harvested the coffee beans. He’d read that, in Africa, children were forced to pick cocoa beans under slave labor conditions.

On the other hand, Loves Park was a working-class town. The owner of Sherry’s Café didn’t give a shit about international coffee cartels. For all he knew, a fancy coffee with its premium price was what helped Sherry feed her family. Who was he to deny a hard-working person her due? He changed his order to a cappuccino. The woman behind the counter beamed.

He took the drink to the car and drove back to Benny’s. He wasn’t sure how Benny would receive him. Ex-cons were a weird bunch. Those who went straight often didn’t want anything to do with their past; those who didn’t were often on the lookout for rip-offs, especially from other ex-cons.

He nursed his cappuccino for an hour. Around 9:30, a dark red Toyota pick-up pulled up to the shop. A man bundled up in a wool hat, quilted parka, and thick boots climbed out. Compact but solid like a wrestler, he strolled to the door, his gait a bit bow-legged. Benny.

Dar waited until the inside lights flicked on and the “Closed” sign flipped to “Open.” He crumpled his coffee cup, tossed it on the floor, and got out of the Honda.

A metallic smell hit him when he went through the shop door. The residue from oil, gasoline, and glue? Or the dregs of a meth lab? Dar peered over a battered counter with a chipped surface. At the end of a short hall was a closed door. But his entrance had set off some kind of buzzer. A moment later, the door opened, and Benny came out.

He had gray hair, cropped so close to his skull he looked almost bald. He was wearing a faded green sweatshirt and jeans, and he’d put on weight since Stateville. Dar remembered a predatory look on Benny’s face, a look that said violence wasn’t far from his mind. He didn’t see it now.

Benny tilted his head and squinted at Dar. A wide grin split his face. He came around the counter, grabbed Dar’s hand, and pumped. “Hey man! When did you get your 12:01?”

“A couple of months ago.” Dar let Benny keep pumping. Then, as if he’d just realized he was too familiar, Benny dropped it and rubbed a finger below his nose, like he was stroking an invisible mustache. It was a habit he’d had inside, Dar recalled. Sometimes he rubbed with his finger, sometimes with his knuckle, sometimes his fingernail.

“How’d you find me, man?” Benny asked.

“I made some educated guesses.”

“Still the geek.”

“Actually, I called here a few days ago asking for you.” At Benny’s surprised look, he added, “A woman answered the phone.”

“Reba,” Benny said.

“You weren’t around, but she said you would be back. She sounded nice,” he added as an afterthought.

“Met her about a month after I got out. Don’t know why she’s hangin’ around me, but . . . ” He shrugged and grinned at the same time, looking pleased with himself.

Dar tried to look pleased, too, but his face must have shown something different, because Benny’s grin faded. “Hey, what’s goin’ down, man?”

Dar swallowed.

Benny tilted his head. “You know never to con a con. Qué pasa?”

Dar slipped his hands out of his pea coat. “Things aren’t going so well.”

“You in trouble?”

Dar nodded. “Someone’s after me. But not for anything I’ve done.” He crossed his arms. “God’s honest truth.”

“Fuck it, you don’t gotta convince me. I owe you.” Dar had helped Benny compose a letter to the parole board. Benny claimed the letter was what got him out. “What cha’ need?”

Dar shrugged out of his coat. “You know motorcycles, right?”

“Is the pope Catholic? Probably ain’t a bike on the road I don’t know somethin’ about.”

“I want to describe a bike. See if you know what it is. It was . . . well, unusual.”

“How?”

Dar leaned on the counter. “It was higher off the ground than you’d expect. Almost like it was on stilts.”

Benny nodded. “Off-road, probably.”

Dar went on. “And when you see it straight on, one of the parts near the bottom stuck out at a right angle.”

Benny’s brow wrinkled.

“And a long, sleek piece extended out in front. Something similar was on the back. A fender of some sort, maybe. With lots of polished blue and gray.”

Benny looked thoughtful. “Come on back,” he said, leading Dar down the hall to the back room. The chemical smell was stronger here, mixed with stale smoke, but Dar saw no evidence of a meth lab. Shelves loaded with cans of paint, brushes, and other equipment lined two walls. Boxes filled with magazines were stacked against the other two. A bare bulb was screwed into a ceiling fixture. In the center of the room was a rickety card table with three folding chairs. An open pack of cigarettes and an ashtray lay on the table. Benny waved him into a chair, then went to the magazines.

“Lemme see here.”  He squatted and sorted through the box. “Right angle, you say? A lot of blue and gray?”

“Right.”

Benny pulled out two magazines and started flipping through one. “I know I saw an article not too long ago . . . ” He dropped the first magazine and started in on the second. A moment later, he stopped at a picture and smoothed out the page. “There you go.” He passed it to Dar.

Dar took the magazine, a recent issue of
Motorcycle News
. It was open to a two-page spread of lush photos that made the featured bike look positively sensual. One shot was plastered across both pages, but smaller insets showing different parts of the bike bordered it. Dar studied the photos. He could clearly see some blue and gray materials on the front and back. “That’s it!”

Benny snatched the magazine back and studied it. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Benny whistled.

“So, what is it?”

“It’s a BMW. The H2 Enduro. A dirt bike, but very high end. Loaded with high-tech garbage. Lightweight but made for off-road racin’. ’Course, you can throw street tires on it.”

“The tires I saw were narrow but . . . knobbly.”

“Off-road,” Benny said. “You remember seeing a logo on the bike? You know, the black circle—supposed to be an airplane propeller—with the blue and white diamonds?”

Dar shook his head. “It was dark. I was lucky to see as much as I did.” He leaned forward. “So what kind of person has an Enduro?”

Benny gazed at the picture again. “A guy who knows his off-road machines. And has money to burn—it costs as much as a car.”

“How much?”

“Over twenty grand. And in this weather, all the salt on the roads is gonna ruin the frame. Not to mention the finish and tires. But if the guy’s loaded, he probably doesn’t give a shit.”

“You can ride it in the winter?”

“Absolutely. You get a lot of traction on those tires. And BMW makes sure it handles like a kitten. But only a crazy man would freeze his nuts off in this weather.” Benny rubbed his finger across his face again. “Now, pardner, you tell me. Why you wanna know about this bike?  My guess is you ain’t shoppin’.”

From habit Dar looked around, checking for eavesdroppers. Then he told Benny about the incident with Casey’s daughter.

Benny shook a cigarette from the pack on the table. He took his time lighting up, then inhaled deeply. “The asshole took a shot at you?”

“Two. Missed both times.”

“And he wasn’t wearin’ no gloves?”

Dar nodded.

“That’s probably why he missed.” Benny took another deep drag, blew it out. “Goddamn hands were frozen.” He shook his head. “Not that it helps you figure out who the asshole is. Got any ideas?”

“Maybe.”

Benny started to say something but was interrupted by the buzzer. The front door opened and boots scuffed on the linoleum floor. Dar turned to see a woman come into the back room. She was short and round, and when she took off her wool cap, she shook out a mane of long blond hair. She was wearing a quilted parka, mittens, and jeans, and her skin was so white it looked opaque.

“Hey, babe.” Benny stubbed out the cigarette and got up.

“Back at you,” she replied. She stepped around Dar to plant one on Benny.

“This here is Reba,” Benny said proudly.

She had cool blue eyes and the lightest eyelashes he’d ever seen. Dar shook her hand.

Benny picked up the conversation. “Well, whoever it is, sounds like you’re gonna need some protection. Let me fix you up.”

“No,” Dar answered quickly.

“Listen. I know you want to keep your nose clean. You think I don’t remember all your time you spent in that shitty library? But this is the world we’re talkin’ about. You gotta be a Boy Scout.”

“It isn’t worth the risk.”

Benny grimaced and made a show of sighing. “Well, at least tell me you remember the shit we picked up inside.”

Reba unzipped her jacket. “What shit?”

“There was this guy, Johnny V. One of the best street fighters around. He used to talk. You know, in the yard, when the guards let us out for more than ten seconds.”

“The one who claimed to be a security contractor?”  Dar asked.

“That’s him.”

“I thought it was mostly first-aid. How to stop a bleeder if you’re cut, how . . . ”

Benny cut him off. “That was only part of it.” He turned to Reba. “It was self-defense too. He showed us how to make the heel of your hand like a weapon.” He made a chopping action with his hand. “And how to do a few holds. Like the sleeper hold.” He went to Reba. “Here, I’ll show you.”

Reba straightened her arms in front of her. “That’s okay, lover boy. I’ll pass.”

Benny stopped and slid his hands into his jeans. Reba had him well trained, Dar thought.

Benny turned back to Dar. “Whatever. You sure I can’t fix you up with somethin’?”

Dar doubted a time would ever come when he needed a gun, much less a sleeper hold. But then something occurred to him. He threw a glance at Reba.

She caught it. “What is it, darlin’?”

“What if a woman needs to be prepared to fight? Or defend herself? Would you recommend she learn karate? Or judo? That kind of thing?”

Reba and Benny exchanged looks. Reba laughed. “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

Dar felt embarrassed. “Uh, no.”

“You ever hear them martial arts centers called ‘McDojo’s’?”

Dar shook his head.

“All that shit might sound good on paper, but when you get out on the street, it’s worthless.”

“It doesn’t work?”

“Not in my world. See, it don’t matter if I’m a black belt. If my enemy is tall and weighs three hundred pounds, there ain’t no way I’m gonna end up on top. I guarantee it.” She crossed her arms. “And if he has a gun or a knife? I’m gonna need a shitload more than a karate kick.”

“So what do you use? Pepper spray? Mace?”

“Nope.” Her eyes with the almost invisible lashes lit up. She dug into her bag and fished out something that looked like a razor blade with a ringed handle. She slid the ring onto her index and middle fingers and slashed it through the air. “I use this.”