Ned stomped on the accelerator. He sped down the deeply rutted road, leaving a huge cloud of dust behind him until it hit a stone that had been exposed after a recent storm. The right front wheel of the Corolla leapt into the air and the car rolled over, sliding to a stop no more than a football field away from the reservation.
Ned's head hit the car's doorframe as it slid, but he managed to regain his senses and crawl through the shattered window. He could hear the cops screaming at him, telling him to stop or they would shoot. But he could see Willie's house. He got up and kept running until he was tackled from behind. Flat on his stomach, his face in the gravel, a cop's knee in his back, he was cuffed, then hauled to his feet.
Chapter 18
The first six hours were pretty easy. Ned called his lawyer three times, but didn't get anything but an answering machine. It was pretty obvious to him that the lawyer was busy with bigger fish. He regretted not taking Mehelnechuk's advice about getting his own lawyer instead of relying on Steve's.
But he was already on his third shift of interrogators and hadn't given up a thing. All three sets tried the same tack.
“What if we told you we knew you were a drug dealer?”
“I'd say you were wrong.”
“How do you know Steve Schultz?”
“He was a friend of my aunt's boyfriend. I met him once.”
“How long have you been a Death Dealer?”
“What's a Death Dealer?”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I run a bar.”
“Why did you flee when the police attempted to apprehend you?”
“I was once assaulted by a police officer and have since developed trust issues.”
Ned stuck by his plan: defer, delay, and deny. It was something Mehelnechuk had taught him, and it was working. He could see the frustration on the cops' faces and hear it in their voices. They had hundreds of guys to question, Ned figured. The dumb guys, the weak guys, the addicted guysâthat's who'd crack. All he had to do was stay strong, keep it together, and he'd be fine.
They offered him coffee. He said no. Something about the idea of a stimulant made him nervous. Instead he drank water. They gave him a vending machine sandwich for dinner. He ate it and later wished he hadn't.
The latest set of copsâan angry and stupid bald guy named Mayer and a fat guy named Chungâgave him another round of questions. The questions were the same, but he could tell these guys were much less familiar with the goings-on of organized crime in the area than the previous set of cops. Mayer played the tough guy, and Chung pretended to be his friend. Half of the time, Ned had to work hard not to laugh. It was especially amusing when they came to the part about the deal.
All three sets of cops assured him that if he cooperated with their investigation, they would go easy on him. But they didn't have much. So far, he had only been charged with resisting arrest and traffic violations. Since he'd gotten off the meth rap, he wouldn't be looking at any serious jail time. So what did he have to lose? They assured him that they knew he was trafficking for the Sons through Buster's. They told him they had informants.
“How can someone tell on me when I have done nothing wrong?”
“Listen, smart guy,” said Mayer. “You know that we know who you are, and what you do. Make it easy on yourself and cooperate.”
“You don't understand; I am cooperating. Gee, officer, I'd love to help you catch the bad guys, but I just haven't seen any.”
“Laugh now, funny man,” said Mayer. “But you will slip up, or one of your so-called brothers will deliver us your ass to save themselves.”
Ned didn't believe it. Anyone higher up the food chain couldn't make a deal by giving him up, and anyone lower than him didn't really have anything that could stick to him. Besides, he hadn't really done much the cops could get him for. He had overseen plenty of operations, but his name was nowhere, he'd never signed anything and had never dealt with anyone who wasn't just as guilty as he was. Even if they got him for trafficking, he'd be out in a couple of years. Besides, he'd have plenty of friends in prison. It wouldn't be ideal, but it wouldn't be hell on Earth either if it didn't last too long.
And it certainly beat the alternative. He'd seen what happened to informants. It didn't take long for Ned to decide he'd rather spend a few years behind bars than get a bullet in the back of his head. He actually snickered to himself when he realized the decision was a “nobrainer.”
He asked to call his lawyer again. Voicemail. Ned was even more determined not to talk until he could have a lawyer present.
But they went on for another hour, trying to coax him into talking, the cops asking him the same old questions, hoping he'd crack. Ned giving the same old answers, barely awake, but still in control of what he was saying.
Frustrated, the cops gave up on him. The two of them stood Ned up and brought him to the uniforms who would take him back to his cell. Chung assured Ned that he would be there for him if anything changed.
On his way back to his cell, Ned looked at the other men that he'd been grouped with. They were all lowlifes, nobody important. Just a bunch of junkies and small-timers. It actually made him feel good. Although these guys were the most likely to want to cut a deal with the cops, they were also the least likely to have any decent information. If the cops had lumped him in with them, it really did mean they didn't have shit on him.
Ned smiled, yawned, and stretched. All he wanted now was to get back to his cell and get some sleep. As he passed by the next set of waste cases waiting to be interviewed, he thought about how desperate they must beânot just in fear for their freedom, but being held away from their addiction. You could easily get weed in prison if you're a somebody, but meth and cokeâthat's a different story. It was harder to find, cost a ton, and supplies were never guaranteed. And half the time, he'd heard, you were paying your last dollar for powdered baby formula or ground-up laxatives.
There'd be no Feeney inside to help these losers, so they were going to the toughest rehab in the world. Ned knew what addicts were like first hand. It wasn't just Leo. He'd seen them come and go. He'd seen dozens of guys who'd sell out their mother for just one more hit. And he knew any of these guys would sell his ass for just one more day out of jail.
It was at that moment that Ned was overcome with the shock of recognition. It was slight at first, and then adrenaline coursed coldly through his body like a drug. One of the losers sitting there was an old friend. He was barely recognizableâmaybe forty pounds lighter, heavily lined, covered in scabs and baldingâbut it was him: Dario Gagliano. He had been Steve's right-hand man, but seemed to have fallen off the map. Ned had assumed he'd been killed or maimed in the war, or had been given an out-of-town assignment. Now here he was: rounded up like everyone else and waiting to be interviewed.
It was sad, really. Despite his brutishness, Dario had something about him that Ned genuinely liked. He remembered when he first met Dario, how he showed him the ropes, how he . . .
Ned swallowed, then said, “Hey, Dare.”
Dario looked up at him. Little registered in his sunken, bloodshot eyes at first, but then he focused and his face softened into a broad, toothless grin. “Hey,” was all he said.
Ned rubbed his face with his hand and got the cops' attention. “I gotta go back in there,” he whispered. “There's something I forgot to say.”
The cops led him back into the interrogation room. Mayer looked at him. “Whaddaya want?” he asked.
“I want to know what you'll do for me if I give them all up?”
Chapter 19
“Eric! Eric, you lazy fuck!”
Ned had dozed off. And when he woke up, it took a moment to register that he was actually Eric.
It was Neil, his boss and a total bastard. One of those short little overachievers Ned had grown to hate, Neil was bald before he was thirty and seemed to have a need to take out all his frustrations on the rest of the world. He had the perfect position for itâhe was office manager for a credit records keeping company. That gave him plenty of low-level employees to boss around.
And one of them was Ned, whom Neil knew as Eric Steadman. It was all part of the witness relocation program deal Ned had made with the FBI. They gave him a new name, a new job, and a little house by the highway just outside a medium-size East Coast city about twelve hundred miles away from Springfield. The FBI owned the house, and he was required to pay rent. The deal was that he'd get a new identity and lifelong FBI protection in exchange for his testimony against the top dogs in the Sons of Satan on the condition that he admitted and acknowledged every crime he had committed up to that point. They also gave him ten thousand dollars to get him on his feet. If anything came out after that meeting, he would be liable to prosecution and could go to prison with the very men he had told on.
So he spilled. Even he was surprised at how many laws he had broken when he was done telling the story. The FBI agents were surprised when he admitted the murder and disposal of Tyler Heath's corpse, but it fell under the letter deal they had signed, so they had to excuse it.
And it was just in time too. As Ned had anticipated, Dario also told the authorities everything he knew. Because of their testimony and that of the other eight bikers who turned State's witness, Steve got thirty to life. Mehelnechuck, Bouchard, and Vandersloot got twenty-five years apiece. Rose was one of the many who got only two years, which many others interpreted as evidence of his cooperation with police either before or after the raids. Of the two-hundred-and twelve arrested, forty-one were released right away due to lack of evidence or irregularities with their arrests. Through plea bargains, another sixty-two were back on the streets within eighteen months.
Although the top of the Sons of Satan hierarchy had been cut off, the body remained alive as many of the systems Mehelnechuk had put in place didn't require all that much brain power or finesse to manage. There were lots of people out there who still wanted drugs, steroids, and prostitutes, and there wasn't really anyone else who could supply them in any real numbers. So the freed Sons of Satan reformed, recruited new members, and did their best to reclaim their territories.
Ned was trying to reclaim something too. He guessed that being the guy who pushed a little cart around in a giant office delivering mail to morose people who spent their days staring at numbers on computer screens and never acknowledged him was better than being in prison. It was certainly better, much better, than a bullet in the back of the head.
Ned usually ate lunch alone because most of the mailroom guys didn't speak that much English. But one dayâabout three weeks after he started working at the credit records companyâa couple of dark-haired guys from the loading dock came to sit with him. One on either side.
They introduced themselves as Bob and Chuck and talked about work. They were pleasant enough, and Ned noticed that their accents were kind of like Daniela's, but not exactly. He asked if they were from Moldova.
“Moldova?” asked Bob, the older one. “No. We are from Serbia.”
“ âBob' and âChuck' from Serbia?”
“You could not pronounce our real names. It would hurt our ears if you tried.”
“I know Serbia,” replied Ned. “Didn't we bomb your asses for having death squads and all that?”
“Yeah, yeah. Clinton is too afraid to face us, so he bombs our women and children,” said Bob. “And what for? We are only fighting Muslims who knock down your trade towers and Croats who are on Nazi side in World War IIâAmerica is stupid sometimes at recognizing who friends and enemies really are.”
Ned laughed. “I guess you have a point there.”
“We were hoping you could help us,” said Chuck, the younger one. “We have business proposition.”
“No thanks. I don't do that sort of thing,” Ned replied.
“Of course you don't!” Bob smiled. “But we ask ourselves, why is this man named Eric doing a job too boring even for Mexicans?”
Ned laughed.
“. . . and why does this Eric have Texas biker tattoo?”
Ned stopped laughing.
“It 's okay, Eric,” Bob said. “I have been in American prison. I know what all tattoos meanâand you are, I think, a very bad manâor perhaps a good man who has done some bad things.”
“Okay, okay, you got me,” he said. “I did used to run with a bad crowd, but now I'm getting my life back together.”
“And you mentioned Moldova,” Bob continued, his eyes burrowing into Ned's. “That means you have handled strippers or whores.”
Ned stayed quiet.
“Our assumption is that someone wants to kill you, and that you are not wanting to be seen, hoping they will not catch you,” Bob said.
Ned figured out these guys were not hired by the Sons of Satan. If they were, he would have been dead. And he surmised they didn't know he was being protected by the FBI. Otherwise, they would not have given him so much information. So he nodded.
“It's okay; we can help you,” Bob put his arm around him.
“Yeah?”
“We are looking for someone like youâwhite American with no accentâto work for us,” he said. “Just have to take package every once in a while from here to friends in Detroitâwe will even buy you a car.”
Ned thought about it. He could probably get to Detroit and back in a weekend. He only had to report to his FBI contact once a month, and that was on a weekday. He smiled at Bob. “Sure.”
Copyright
Biker : Inside the Notorious World of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang
Copyright © 2009 by Jerry Langton
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Originally published by John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd. in both print and EPub editions: 2009
First published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this EPub edition: 2013
First HarperCollins Publishers Ltd EPub Edition JULY 2013 ISBN: 9781443427593
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