The Killer II (5 page)

6

The Quality Check

Back once more in the
Sunbrite
, a little ahead of his allotted meeting time with Ryan McKee, he took the same seat as the previous night.
He was the sole customer and Tony stood behind the bar looking bored.
‘You serve coffee here?’ Liam asked him.

‘Yep, how do you take it?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Regular, large, hot, on ice, black, cream, sugar, what?’

‘You don’t just bring me a mug of coffee and a sugar bowl?’

‘If that’s what you want, you only have to ask,’ Tony said sullenly and walked off.

‘Jesus
Fuckin
’ Christ, what is it with all these questions?’ Liam mused.
‘Thank fuck I didn’t ask for tea.’

A few moments later a mug of black coffee and a plastic cup containing sugar and a teaspoon were plopped down in front of him.
‘It doesn’t come with milk?’ said Liam in surprise.

‘You didn’t ask for milk,’ Tony huffed.
‘You want milk?
I’ll get you fucking milk.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ thought Liam.

‘Jesus Christ,’ thought Tony.

Just as the order was finally sorted the door opened and a gang of tough looking, leather clad men walked in and headed
straight to a booth at the back of the room.
They cast a glance at Liam as they passed, but ignored him as he studiously concentrated on pouring milk into his coffee.
These
were
a different breed from last night’s leather brigade
.
There was no stitching on their jackets and the jukebox held no interest for them.
They looked as if they meant business and Liam was thankful he didn’t need a piss.
He wouldn’t have fancied taking them on in the gents and he watched as Tony scurried over to take their order.

‘Hey Paddy, how you
doin
’ today man?’

The voice over his shoulder startled him and he turned to see four smiling Druids.
He was thankful for the distraction.
‘Come in
yer
Thundercar
have you boys?’ he asked.

‘Thunderbird,’ Tommy corrected him.

‘Aye, that’d be the feller, a Thunderbird.’

The boys looked at each other.
‘You know, for someone who’s supposed to speak English, I don’t understand half what this guy says,’ Mono whispered to his friends as they perched themselves on bar stools.

‘That’s maybe as well with the
Westies
in,’ Link suggested.

‘
Westies
?’
Liam picked up the hushed word.
‘That the other gang then?’

‘Yeah man, and keep your voice down,’ Bobby said in a whisper. ‘This is their turf and their bar.
They’re all there, but I don’t see Mickey Featherstone.
Maybe he’s out collecting, or dumping another poor motherfucker in the East River.
But Jimmy
C’s there all right.
That guy with the hat, he’s the boss.
This crew are fucking
hardcore
, man.
They say that they work with the Mafia.
Nobody around here fucks with them.
Nobody.’

‘Not even that McKee guy you were talking to last night,’ Tommy interjected.
‘Fuck, Paddy, what do you want with a guy like him?
He’s bad news.’
He didn’t wait for an answer, instead, changing the subject in a loud voice, he added.
‘So, what’re you
doin
’ tonight man?’ he asked.

‘Got to see a man about a dog.’
Liam was saved the necessity of explaining that to four confused faces as “bad news McKee” entered right on time and walked straight over to him.

‘Hop it, lads,’ he said to the Druids, who immediately complied.
‘You ready Paddy?’

‘Aye, that I am
Mr.
McKee.’

‘Come on then,’ he instructed and headed straight back to the door.

Liam followed, leaving his coffee unfinished on the bar.
He had a feeling that would piss Tony off.

Outside the bar a long, black limo, complete with tinted windows, idled at the curb.
‘Get in,’ ordered McKee.
Liam did as he was told.
McKee followed and took the seat opposite as the car accelerated smoothly away.

‘We going somewhere?’ asked Liam

‘You wanted private, and this is how I do private,’ McKee informed him as he pressed a button to raise a dark glass shield between
them and the chauffeur, who was now left with no rear view and must have been pretty good with his wing mirrors.
‘We’ll just drive round a little bit.
Now, what’s the problem?
Make it quick, I don’t have much time.’

You don’t know how true that is mate, Liam considered before commencing with his recently conceived plan and praying that it would work.
‘The problem,’ he began, ‘is that a quarter of the last shipment you sent was junk.
One out of four of the weapons were scrap.
All the boys could do was use ‘
em
for
fuckin
’ parts.’

‘They were not scrap; they were all good.
None of them were junk,’ snapped McKee.

‘Well, if that’s the case, why the fuck did Belfast send me all the way over here to check the condition of the next shipment?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Look
Mr.
McKee, the boys in Belfast don’t want to risk blowing A&R transport by getting caught collecting scrap metal.
And they don’t want to raise any eyes in the port either.
Dublin’s a safe entry for the cause right now.
Collecting good arms is worth the risk.
Collecting scrap iron isn’t, simple as that.’

McKee stared at the Irishman.
He didn’t like what he was hearing, but at least he was hearing things that only an inside man could know.
He’d passed the whiskey test and, last night, a contact had confirmed that some of the boys were over there.
‘When did the last
shipment arrive in Dublin?’ he quizzed a little further.

‘First week of January I think.
It was collected a couple of days after it landed, why do you ask?’

‘Oh nothing,’ smiled McKee, relaxing as this information further confirmed the man’s identity.
‘OK, wait a minute, I’ll set up a meet with the suppliers for you,’ he told Liam as he reached over to his car phone.
The call was short and ended quickly.
‘Two hours’ time, outside the bar, someone will collect you.
You can check everything in the next shipment for yourself before we take delivery of it.’

‘Fine, I’ll be there.’

McKee spoke to the driver on the car’s intercom and the limo made a smooth U-turn and returned to the bar to drop Liam off.
‘Tell Tony to call me when you’ve checked the stock and are happy with it - I’ll pick you up again,’ McKee informed him before the car drove silently away, leaving Liam standing alone outside the
Sunbrite
.

It looked like his plan might just work, but now he had two more hours to kill.
He didn’t want any alcohol to fuddle his brain, not even the witch piss, and he doubted Tony would take kindly to another coffee request.
He remembered his thought from earlier in the day about how friendly the Americans seemed to be.
There had to be an exception to every rule, he decided, and Tony was it.
So he headed off in search of some food and was back outside the bar two
hours later when a distant sound transported him back through the years to his late teens and the Belfast gang he had once been a part of.
The sound, like rolling thunder, grew until it arrived directly in front of him and he stared at the weird custom motorcycle and the leather and denim clad man astride the seat.

It had the unmistakable shape and sound of a classic British 360
°
650cc Triumph engine and the twin
Amal
carburettors, which were greedily sucking air through their open bell-mouths, told him the model too.
It was the engine from the world famous Triumph Bonneville, but the rest of the bike looked unlike any Triumph he’d seen before.
The engine was familiar, but almost everything else had been radically modified.
It seemed to him that every ounce of excess weight had been cut away and removed, every single component not essential to basic function had gone.
The bike had been chopped down so far that it looked incredibly fast, very mean, and virtually naked.

‘You the Irishman?’ the rider asked, breaking into his thoughts.

‘Aye.’

‘Animal,’ called out the rider.
‘Get on.’

Either this guy was called Animal or he had just been insulted.
He decided to assume the former and hopped on the back of the bike.
He was immediately presented with a helmet and the instruction to ‘Pull the goggles down and don’t lift ‘
em
or take ‘
em
off at any time or you
are
a fucking dead man.’

Doing as he was told Liam donned the helmet, securely fastening it under his chin.
Then as he slid the black tinted goggles over his eyes he found he was instantly blinded.
The lenses weren’t tinted, they had been painted black and he could see absolutely nothing.
He didn’t enjoy the sensation, but knew there was nothing he could do about it.
The vibrations swiftly increased as the exhaust rose to a vicious growl then, like a rocket, the rider accelerated away.

In no time the bike, now in high gear, was cruising effortlessly along the silky smooth highway.
Liam soon began hearing the sound of more and more motorcycles as they joined him to form a small convoy.
In total darkness he listened to the roar of several engines as his gut-wrenching feeling of claustrophobia returned.
He consoled himself with the thought that this might be the lesser of two evils.
For a while back in the
Sunbrite
he had wondered if he might have to deal with the
Westies
, and he really didn’t fancy that.
Since they were riding away from the bar that now seemed unlikely.
It was the one spot of light in his darkness.

They seemed to have been riding for a long time as he noticed the road surface steadily begin to deteriorate.
He could feel the gradual change from smooth tarmac to unmade road as the bike turned left and continued its journey down a long, twisting, bumpy lane.
They slowed and then the
engine stopped.
‘You can take off the helmet and goggles now,’ he was informed and he did so to find himself surrounded by around twenty large, powerful motorcycles.
The mixture of Triumphs, Harleys and
Nortons
were all different colours and styles, but each one had the same, impossibly high, handlebars.
Their riders were dressed in a similar fashion too.
To a man they wore jeans, heavy boots and denim jackets with the sleeves torn off over thick, black leathers.
On the back of the denim cut offs the words
Satan’s Soldiers
were embroidered alon
g the shoulders and
New Jersey
stitched along the bottom.
It was an intimidating sight and Liam knew he faced an unfriendly bunch
who
’d kill at the drop of a hat.
If they caught him in his lie, well that’s something he’d rather not think about.
‘Front it out Liam,’ he told himself.
‘If they sense any fear whatsoever you’re a fucking dead man.’

One of the riders, a large longhaired, mean and muscular man with arms and hands covered in tattoos, strolled casually over and held out his hand.
‘Chopper,’ he announced, ‘and you are Paddy I believe?’

Liam shook the proffered hand and nodded his head, all the time taking in the details around him.
He noted the patches on Chopper’s cut off
-
President, New Jersey, 1%
and
Filthy Few
.
This man was a top dog, the leader of an outlaw biker club and he had killed for that club too.

‘McKee tells me you had a problem with the last order,’ said Chopper in an unconcerned tone.

‘Not me mate, but the boys back in Belfast did.
Some of ‘
em
were
fucked.’

‘Look Paddy, you
gotta
understand one thing.
We buy in good faith, and we sell in good faith.
The club can’t be taking responsibility for the odd reject.
So there’ll be no returns - you got that?’