Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle (28 page)

Ned didn't really like Sharpe all that much. On the drive to Hamner, he wouldn't shut up. Mostly, he aired his opinions on whatever subject he liked, and Ned found it annoying that he'd talk at length about one tiny aspect of a subject without any context. He took about ten minutes to explain how he could never drive a hatchback or SUV for fear that if it was rear-ended, the stuff in his trunk would fly up and hit him in the back of the head. Ned tried to explain that things don't really work that way, and that cargo covers and headrests wouldn't really let it happen anyway, but Sharpe answered everything he said with a smug “You'll see.”

Once that subject was laid to rest, the twenty-seven-year-old Sharpe launched into a lengthy soliloquy about his fifty-one-year-old wife and their unlikely sex life. Ned couldn't wait for the drive to end.

When it did, the two men walked into Buster's together—Ned annoyed and frustrated, Sharpe jubilant that he had made a new friend. It was an old building, much more tasteful than the slab-sided Strip. The windows of the nineteenth-century building had been blacked out and were covered over with posters of barely dressed women to give passersby an idea of what went on inside. Above the main entrance, there was a sign that read, “Liquor in the front, poker in the rear.” Ned smiled, realizing Steve had hung it there; it was typical of his sense of humor.

The bar wasn't open for business yet, so Sharpe banged on the door. A cleaning woman let them in. Inside were two women talking to each other in a foreign language. The older of them was dressed in jeans and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, while the younger one appeared to be wearing a rather stylized form of underwear. As the younger one was chattering away, the older one nodded from time to time, and gave occasional single-syllable responses. Ned could see that she was busy with some paperwork, but couldn't tell exactly what it was.

“Hi, I'm Ned Aiken,” Ned addressed the older one. “Steve sent me to run this place.”

The older one sighed, stood up, and shook his hand. “I am Daniela Eminescu.”

Ned liked Daniela's face. He could see her native intelligence. She had high cheekbones, a big nose, and green eyes. Although the light in Buster's was poor, he could tell she was almost beautiful. She looked kind of like the models in magazines that had pictures of women with their clothes on. “I guess you actually run this place,” he laughed.

She smiled and nodded. “Last managers Steve sends know nothing about business, just want to drink and fight; so I learn how to run the bar,” she said. “And now we are making lots of money.”

“Looks like the best thing I could do would be to stay out of your way,” he said.

Sharpe cleared his throat.

“Oh, yeah,” Ned said. “This is Mike Sharpe; he's here to help me.”

“Hello, Mike,” Daniela said as she went back to her work. She motioned at the younger girl. “This, boys, is Liliya.”

Liliya rose from her chair and greeted Ned. She was strange looking. No more than five feet tall, she was very thin with enormous breasts. She wore a ton of makeup on her long, thin face and had dyed her hair a very pale pink. Ned was wondering if it was a wig when she asked him: “You vant ploe chob?”

“What?”

Daniela looked at Ned like he was an idiot, and told him with obvious frustration: “She wants to know if you want a blow job.”

Ned was flustered. “Uh, uh, no—uh, thank you—not right now.”

Liliya shrugged and turned to Sharpe, who was grinning. “Don't mind my friend,” he told her. “He's just feeling a little queer since he left jail.”

“I
know
zis vun vants ploe chob,” Liliya said, as she grabbed Sharpe by the hand and led him into a back room.

After they left, Ned felt very self-conscious. “Friendly little thing, isn't she?” he said.

“It 's all she knows,” Daniela replied. “I hate to admit it, but I'm actually glad to get a few minutes peace from her constant talk-talk-talk.”

“Yeah, I could tell. What was that you guys were speaking, anyway, Russian?”

Daniela sighed again. “No, we are from a country you have never heard of.”

“Try me.”

“Moldova.”

“You made that up.”

Daniela laughed. “No, is real; Moldova is tiny country squished between Romania and Ukraine,” she told him. “You would like it; it has beaches, mountains, lots of pretty girls, and everyone sounds like Dracula, even babies.”

“If it's so nice, what are you doing here?”

“There is no money in Moldova and men there—especially army and police—can be very cruel,” she said. “Many Moldavan women leave for better life; every once in a while a man in fancy car comes through town and tells all the girls they can get jobs as models and actresses in America, or Canada, or Australia. The younger ones believe them; the older ones go anyway.”

“Maybe that's why Moldovan men are cruel, all the decent-looking women have left.”

“Don't flirt with me, is bad for business.”

Ned laughed. “So tell me about the business.”

“Okay, men pay five bucks to come in after seven (before that is free), they buy cheap beer for high prices, also have terrible food for much money,” she said. “This is accomplished by naked girls dancing on stage and in back room.”

“Sounds simple.”

“But there are complications. Entry to VIP room costs bottle of cheap champagne we charge $100 for.”

“What happens in the VIP room?”

“Usually nothing, it depends on the girl—most of them are what you people call ‘escorts,' you know?” She stuck her tongue in her left cheek and moved her right hand in a pantomime of oral sex.

“Like Liliya?”

Daniela sighed again. “Yes, poor Liliya. She has been doing nothing else since she was thirteen, no high school, no nothing.”

“Boy, things sure must be tough in Moldova.”

“In Moldova?” Daniela gave him a sharp look. “In Moldova, she was good girl, but her parents gave her to a man who took her to Montreal to teach her how be stripper and prostitute.”

“At thirteen?”

“Yes, such papers are very easy to obtain there—Montreal is like Bangkok, they say—and once she is legal in Canada, that makes her legal here, in U.S.A.—it has long been this way.”

“So how old is she now?”

“She says seventeen; her papers say twenty-three,” Daniela paused as Sharpe and Liliya came back into the room. “But what is really important is that I get bookkeeping done.” And she went back to her work.

Sharpe grabbed himself a beer and sat down at the bar. “You ever dance, Daniela?”

“You could not afford it, big boy.”

Lara arrived at the Eggs O'Lent diner and was stopped by a pair of big cops. Clegg waved her through, but the cops made her photographer stay outside.

The bodies had been removed, but Clegg had Lara wait in the doorway so that they wouldn't contaminate any evidence. “They told me a biker had been shot,” she said.

“One full-patch Lawbreaker and two hangarounds,” he said. “And another victim: all dead.”

“Wow! Who was the other guy?”

“Mario Espinosa, runs a sporting goods shop in the Dover Mall,” he told her. “Don't put this in that paper, but he had a severe gambling problem.”

“Is that why he's dead?”

“Quite the opposite. Nobody ever kills a debtor: you might break his legs, but you don't kill him. If you do, how do you get your money?”

“Makes sense.”

“Besides, you see that briefcase there? It has what I estimate to be about fifteen thousand in cash in it.”

“So, Espinosa was paying his debt.”

“It would appear that he was paying it or part of it, yes.”

“So the killer didn't want that to happen.”

“Not so fast . . . maybe the killer didn't know it was happening. Your sharp reporter's mind noticed that the money is still here, right?”

“Right, so someone just wanted to kill some Lawbreakers—and this guy just happened to be with them.”

Clegg didn't say anything, but touched his right index finger to his nose. Then he took her outside, away from the other cops. “One other thing you may be interested in knowing—y'know the bottom rocker?”

“The patch on the jacket that says which chapter the biker is from?”

“Yeah, this guy's didn't say Springfield.”

“So he was from out of town?”

“There you go jumping to conclusions again, I didn't say that.”

“So what did it say?”

“High Rollers.”

“What are the High Rollers?”

“Everybody's got a theory, Mason—our organized crime guy—says the Italians are recruiting Lawbreakers and other miscreants to fight the Sons and their puppet gangs.”

“So who's the killer? One of the Death Dealers?”

“You tell me.”

Lara was about to ask another question when Monica Grillo, the reporter from the local TV station showed up. Clegg greeted her and told Lara: “Think about what I said, and I'll have my press person e-mail you all the details about names and ages of the victims and all that.”

“Any witnesses I can talk to?”

“All the material witnesses have been taken to the shop to be debriefed. The only one left is that guy; he didn't see the shooting, but he did see the alleged killer exit the building—you can have him, we're done with him.” Clegg put his index finger to his right temple and pulled an imaginary trigger.

Lara rushed up to the short, bald man who was chattering to the two cops who were trying to keep onlookers back. She introduced herself as the crime reporter from the
Silhouette
, and he stopped bothering the cops and started talking non-stop to her. He began talking about all kinds of things, not much of it related to the shootings. Finally, she stopped him and asked if he could describe the man he saw leave the restaurant.

“Oh yeah, oh yeah, no problem,” he said. “As soon as I heard the shots—they went pop, pop, pop, like firecrackers—I ran over, and I saw the guy come out just as plain as day and walk around the corner.”

“Did you follow him?”

“No, I started to look inside the diner and, to tell you the truth, I couldn't move. I was just too stunned.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, somebody must have called 9-1-1, because the cops got here first, then the ambulance guys—I told them the same thing I told you.”

“So you saw the man who left; could you describe him?”

“He was a white guy, maybe forty, skinny, short with short, dark hair.”

“What was he wearing?

“Jeans, one of those hooded sweatshirts the kids all wear—dark blue or black—but there were no pictures or writing on it, just plain.”

“The victims were associated with a local motorcycle gang . . .”

“Oh, no, no, no, this guy was no biker, he was real small—like five-foot-four and skinny—and he had short hair, no beard, no moustache, no leather jacket.”

“Okay, okay, can you tell me anything else about him?”

“Yeah, yeah, he just kinda looked . . . looked like a nobody.”

Feeney looked at the man he'd just had sex with and sighed. He knew how handsome he was. And with his money, he was pretty sure he could have any gay man and most of the straight women in Springfield. But Ronnie was a big, hairy blob. He had bad teeth, and sometimes he even smelled bad. Feeney wasn't the smartest guy in the world, but even he was surprised at how stupid, how unworldly, how happy not to pursue knowledge Ronnie was. But he couldn't help but be totally attracted to the big man. There was something indefinable about him. Feeney left it at that. A more intellectually curious man may have delved deeper into the cause of the attraction, but Feeney didn't want to know. Instead, he looked at the rolls of fat on his stomach, his sweaty, sagging bitch tits and listened to his loud, arrhythmic open-mouth snoring and wanted to have sex with him again.

They met through
letsgettogether.com
, the dating website Steve set up for Feeney to help launder his drug money. When Joel's friend Paul showed up to set up the site, Feeney made sure he set up a gay page on the site because “that's where the money is.”

And that's how he met Ronnie. The first person to reply to Feeney's own ad, Ronnie possessed a number of liabilities when it came to starting a relationship. Not only was he obese, but he was also a part-time criminal who lived with his mother. Ronnie worked nights as a motel concierge, and he was leafing through a lot of gay porn on the motel's PC until he came across an ad for
letsgettogether.com
. Two days later, he was rolling around in bed with Feeney.