Bonneville Effort 2007, Chapter 8
By Bandit |
Chain guards are still a mystery to me and there are some LSR (Land Speed Record) rules regarding their length and coverage. By the SCTA rules, the guard must be steel, not fiberglass or even carbon fiber. Plus it must extend beyond the rear of the sprocket. So I went to work building a guard from scratch.
I grabbed some lightweight stainless and had grandiose notions of shapes and spacing, until I spoke to Rick Krost from U.S. Choppers, a 5-Ball sponsor, and the man behind TIG welding our oil bag. He looked at my notion and picked up a used H-D chain guard and said, “How about this. Might save some time.”
Of course it would save time. I stole one from his stash of old parts and went to work. I needed to extend it so that I could run Teflon pads, since the Paughco frame was stretched 6 inches in the rear. An old racer cat told me not to run a chain tensioning wheel, “It eats horsepower,” he said.
So I re-shaped some 16-guage sheet metal, made a mounting tab and machined chunks of Teflon for the bottom and top. Recently Rodan, an SCTA official of the highest order, came to the Bikernet shop and inspected our beast. He told me to raise the bottom Teflon guide. “Mount it very close to the chain,” Rodan said. He also instructed me to extend my chain guard forward.
Next, I needed to mount our new 5-pound Nitrous bottle. I wanted to mount it as close to the oil bag as possible, buffeting the air out and around the front of the frame. Again I used 16-guage sheet metal straps, welded a bottom in place and grappled with the position. I wanted it close without banging on the oil bag. It’s always a guessing game.
Note from reader: Since you already spoke with Keith Turk he may have already told you about Guy Caputo. Guy runs a nitrous Busa at Maxton and has set all the fast nitrous records at Maxton, running a best over 228 MPH, so he knows his stuff when it comes to motorcycle nitrous systems. He owns Tiger Racing and can be reached through his web site at www.tigerracingproducts.com. Probably old news since you already talked with Keith Turk but I thought I would pass it along just in case.
–Pablo
Jeremiah came up with a plan for the top of the nitrous bottle strap. It was good, but involved some machining and welding. The good Dr. Hamster showed up at the shop and came up with a different notion. When the Doctor makes a suggestion, you follow it to the T. Not sure if we’re not going to tear it off and go back to Jeremiah’s thoughts. Anything we use to strap this Nitrous bottle in place, with the Doctor’s system, will tear the hell out of the paint. Not sure that will fly. The cool factor is only superceded by aerodynamics.
Next, we jumped into modifying the tank and making the initial dash. We drew several patterns, but first we moved the gas cap back about 4 inches and rewelded it in place.
Then we went to work figuring out the AIM Sports data system speedo placement. This puppy will not only monitor our progress on the salt but display, for Valerie, the speed, RPMs, oil pressure, exhaust temps and something else. Alongside this 3.5 by 5-inch module, will be two oil-filled pressure gauges, one for fuel and the other for nitrous.
I went to work with a shitty hole-saw and lots of tapping fluid assisting the procedure and failing miserably. Finally I cut all the holes and used a template to figure the dash placement, since the AIM staff kept giving me varied measurements. Wish I had one in hand.
I spent long hours grinding and trying to fit the dash, then lean it slightly. I initially tacked it in place thinking I was going to build the cowling around it and make the cowling removable.
Then I spoke to Gard Hollinger of LA ChopRods on the phone. He needed a hand spreading the word about his myriad of bitchin products including ISR controls and brakes, billet crown gas caps, builder’s helpers, Mooneyes oil bags and Hildebrand oil filters housings. We may run his ISR handlebar controls on the Assalt Weapan, and I may run a bunch of his stuff on my Mudflap Girl bobber next year.
We were shooting the shit about his shop move and getting the word out about his products, when he asked if I needed any help. Gard’s a master fabricator, who has designed two models for Saxon Motorcycles, the Black Crown and the new Mad Jack bobber. He’s good and knows what he’s doing. So, knowing how goddamn busy he was, I mentioned the cowling and he stepped up, dropped everything and turned my bullshit endeavor into a very cool dash and shapely cowling. We’ll get to that.
Moving right along, we discussed the switch mount, and I grabbed a chunk of thin 1.5-inch angle iron and went to work mounting it to the top motor mount. I’m ignoring cooling, for the most part and focusing on the aero factor to keep the wind moving past the bike without creating turbulence. It’s a wing and a prayer without years of wind tunnel testing, but there’s the Code of the West, the notion of the wind gods and green tea. It’ll work, I swear it.
I wanted to make the switch housing accessible for Valerie and a positive aero supporter. The angle iron will hold the NOS arming switch, the ignition toggle, a starter button and the infamous kill fuse. According to Rodan I need another Kill switch on the bars that kills everything and I need a horn button on the bars for the Nitrous explosion at top speed.
As usual there’s a thousand items to consider and the NOS solenoids popped up. The instructions call for mounting them close and above the carb. Plus I wanted an aero plate to conceal the switches, protect the spark plug wires and allow the air to slip on by. We plasma cut the 16 gage material, arched the angle Iron, drilled holes and prayed for surf.
I wrestled with the plate and where the solenoids would mount. We’re running a wet system, feeding the nitrous and additional fuel into the intake track at full speed. I mounted the plate high, but didn’t have the tank (it was at LA Chop Rods) and worried about the plate hitting the tank or obstructing the petcock.
Pablo Checks in: On the Nitrous. Did you have a chance to check out the websites I emailed you awhile back???
Are you putting the nitrous nozzels directly in the heads or just in the manifold? I wouldn't put them in front of the carb or like a bolt on Edlebrock system.
Keeping it simple on electrical part of the system is important. Mainly because of the salt air, etc. Also being able to troubleshoot and fix it out there is something to adapt in your system. I would try to seal it up somehow as much as you can. Bring extra parts!!
–Pablo
I drilled another set of holes and shortened the plate. With it and all the switches in place, I messed with the NOS solenoids. The instructions call for the solenoids to be close and above the carb. Then the answer hit me like a ball peen to the side to my right temple. I’m left handed. I cut the supplied NOS mounting plates and mounted them to fit the bolt that holds the top motormount together. Perfect.
Then we headed over to LA Chop Rods to work with Gard Hollinger on the tank dash Cowling. Chris Kallas, the official 5-Ball Racing artist, met us and they both suggested that the cowling become a permanent part of the tank and the dash removable. Gard went to work with 18-gage aluminum killed sheet metal. That stuff is exceedingly malleable and easy to cut even with tin snips.
“Progress is looking good,” Chris Kallas said. “I didn't realize you were still really going to do a belly pan oil tank, I like it.And I was concerned with 3 inches of clearance.I did notice that the body, on streamliners, tend to be very low at the middle bottom point of their cigar shapes.As you know, your going to drive the tech inspectors nuts with this stuff. It will be like Burt Monroe all over again.
”Not crazy about the colors of that go daddy bike. Looks like a Kawasaki jet ski. If you use any of those colors,I'd advise sparingly, like the pin-up's dress and pin stripes and lettering.”
Gard made a rough template out of thick paperboard, then used a table sheer to cut the basic shape. We had to also consider the routing of lines to the gauges and all the wiring out the AIM sport data acquisition system dash.
Gard remade our dash, cut it lower and more sleek. He has access to a computer water jet facility. They will cut the final dash. We needed to scrape together the $800 to order the data system, so we can mount the bastard and see if it fits.
We’re headed back to Gard’s shop shortly to take more shots of the cowling. I’ll take my camera. I spoke to Berry this morning about our Accurate Engineering 120-inch monster Panhead, and it should be completed next week…
It’s the 3rd of July and my goal was to be at paint at the end of June. I’m closing on a week behind schedule. We hope to take the parts to Powder before we make the Hollister, California Run. That’s looking iffy. Hang on for our next report.
Gard also pressure tested our tank for leaks and discovered several. “Mig welding causes more slag to build up, when you stop and start welding,” Gard said. “That often causes pin holes that are difficult to fix. I TIG weld all my tanks.”
I have torches, stick and MIG welders, but not TIG. Okay, I'm working on it.
Bonneville Effort 2007, Chapter 7
By Bandit |
We grappled and struggled with the oil bag system for months, going back and forth. I studied bags in dressers, the serpentine baffles and the notion that the pump would initially pull the oil up outta the bag like siphoning gas from mom’s sedan.
Additional thoughts from a reader regarding ground clearance:Depends on the track, spring set-up, suspension set-up, tire pressure, strategy, wedge and wheel jacking, blah, blah, blah. Might know you would ask your southern friend that question. If you are looking for ground clearance and ground effects and such go to: Yes, I know it's long. Whatever the ground clearance, make sure it can roll left and rIght (lean angle) without touching the ground. I'd say 1.750 inches ground clearance but if one of the tire goes down, we don't want the frame to get on the ground as it's going to be bad enough anyway. –Pablo
Berry Wardlaw of Accurate Engineering sent me detailed engineering drawings from the biker bar down the street, Slippery Shirley's Saloon. Seems he was road testing his performance dresser, when he ran past a cop at over 100 and kept going. He stopped at this saloon and started drinking Jack Daniels and drawing oil bag interior designs. With the bar napkin blueprints in hand he walked into the sun to board his hot rod bagger. He was met with the cop who clocked him earlier. It all went downhill from there.
I went from cutting an oxygen bottle in half to studying Jap bike bellies. We fitted our nitrous bottle, the Hamster air dam and measured twice. We shit-canned the air dam, the NASCAR theme and the earlier, smaller Nitrous bottle mount. We decided to make the bottle fit as close to the top of the oil bag as possible. Then we measured twice again and rolled to the Wilmington Iron Works shop down the street.
It’s a cool old building and we told them the width needed to be 8 inches and the depth 1¾ inches, and it needed to be 26 inches long. We carefully bent a chunk of brass rod as a guide. They cut the piece out of the 14-gauge material we provided, then their brake wouldn’t bend anything over 24 inches. They hauled it down the street and called me from the shop, “Is the angle or the width critical?”
That was a damn good question.
“The width is more critical,” I responded.
The next day, the bend was available. The width was critical. If the angle had been more severe, we would've been cool, ‘cause we had some ground clearance to play with. But they went the other way flattening out our slab of sheet metal until it wouldn’t hold a half-quart of oil.
More and more I attempt to look at blunders or obstacles as benefits. They give us more time to contemplate design, refine structure or detail construction. We reviewed our concept again and decided to run a wider oil tank to the center of the bottom frame tubes on either side. I bent another chunk of 1/8-inch brass rod and rolled over to San Pedro Sheet Metal. Art could handle the task and in a couple of days I was looking at the initial shape or our baby, except he bent it out of 18-guage. That haunted me.
Now came the difficult part. We had to devise the interior serpentine baffles without schooling or a map, placement for the fittings, an aerodynamic bow and stern, fill cap, drain plug and mounting. First, I contacted Darin at Bungking.com for fittings and rubber mounting brackets. They do a helluva job. One kit is designed specifically for oil tanks with a fill cap, and three 1/8-inch pipe bungs. Jeremiah stopped at an auto parts and scored a drain plug with an interior magnet and I made the drain bung with ½-20 threads.
The tough part was placement, but we started with the baffles to prevent all the oil from slogging forward or to the stern and out of reach of the feed inlet. Then I made a template of construction paper for the nose and cut out the sections with a plasma cutter.
I started with the nose and one baffle to ensure the shape of the 16-gauge sheet metal during construction. Heat can do strange things to metal. Next, I cut the rear of the oil bag to allow any low-flowing air to escape the undercarriage of the bike with ease. Hope I know what I’m doing. That’s an oxymoron!
With the stern “V” ground smooth I used the belly as a guide to scribe another panel of sheet metal to close in the stern.
I tested capacity, initially holding my hands over each end and Nyla poured pint measuring cups of water into the breach and we counted. We were confident that our crazed design would contain at least 2.5 quarts. We were cool. Then I added more capacity with the bow and less cutting the stern.
We positioned the bag so it would meet with the nitrous bottle. “Nitrous bottle is 17.64″ tall and 5.25″ in diameter,” Colonel Wardlaw informed me before the bottle arrived.
So the oil bag stuck out in front of the frame by about 4 inches. We rolled the dice on this design element several times. We questioned whether we should form a scoop or air dam to shove the nose down. That could become an immediate air resistor and slow the vehicle, so we went for the slippery notion. Get the air through and around the bike as comfortably as possible, and we’re hoping our design plus the shape of the nitrous bottle will accomplish just that.
Next, we wrestled with the fittings and I fucked up. There’s that adage: Measure twice cut once.
I found a perfect bung for the drain and the perfect spot. I started to weld the bung on the outside and then inspiration struck like a Corona bottle to the back of the head. I could make the overall shape even more air user-friendly by placing the bung on the inside. I did and welded it permanently, only to realize five minutes later that I was preventing all the oil from being able to drain with my ¼-inch lip on the inside. Done deal, move on.
That error was a quick reminder of the “measure twice” adage and I slowed my movements—always a good thing. Then I struggled with the feed, return and vent. I discovered that if I ran an external feed, I would be forced to run an oil line from the distant stern over the top or through my ¼-inch belly pan up around the transmission to the oil pump. Or I could run it up over the side of the oil bag on the outside, which seemed critically dangerous to have our feed line hanging out in the wind before it reached the oil pump.
Then it dawned on us that we had a very large surface on the top, free and clear of obstacles, directly below the oil pump and between the engine and the transmission. We had to make a steel tube extending from the BungKing bung to near the bottom of the oil tank for pickup. I fought with that notion, guessed and second-guessed my design. It’s like the major artery to the heart of the motorcycle. It had to be perfect. We made the steel tube extension then ground it several times and finally extended it some more. We were grappling with molding the line close to the bed but not against the sides or on the floor to pick up grit during a record breaking run on the salt.
Next, we decided to weld the return bung comfortably in front of the front motor mount just below the oil filter mount on the Accurate Engineering Panhead engine. Actually, all the mounts and bungs were perfectly accessible and convenient. Sometimes that’s a bad omen. We also mounted the fill cap right in the front, again extremely accessible—amazing. Many of these efforts were part guesswork since I didn't have my Accurate engine for oil fittings, oil pump or oil filter return line placement.
It was time to mount the beast under the frame, and again I needed four hands. I looked for possible mounting locations. Scary again. I didn’t want them too close to anything, extremely secure and so they wouldn’t interfere with the engine or tranny, terrifying. Jeremiah and I messed with this for hours. We encountered a couple of problems. The top wasn’t flat for some reason. We suspected warping and ignored it and kept moving forward. The more we worked, the more bothersome it became. Also, the frame tubes weren’t parallel, which fucked with our measurements.
Some of the distortion was caused by welding the bungs into the center of the top plate after drilling it. Then I stamped “IN” next to the feed bung so we wouldn’t fuck up the lines. That dented the top plate. There was our glitch. We removed all the tacks, detached the lid and hammered the bastard straight again—sort of against my bad, black dot code. We all try to do something right the first time and call it, done, right? Wrong.
I learned a valuable lesson from John Reed, the retired CCI master designer. He said something to me one day, while we were discussing Bonneville last year.
“I need lots of fasteners,” John said, “since I often install and remove a component hundreds of time.”
That hit me like a bolt of lightening. In other words, John tried any new component hundreds of times, before he called it finished. Now, instead of trying to plan, make and install something once or twice, I know to take long moments of reflection and do it over and over until I’m sure it’s right. Thanks, John.
This time, the top plate fit and it was flat. The bungs reached and were cool. We tacked them. The oil tank came together, and then we delivered it to Rick Krost from U.S. Choppers for final TIG welding.
In the meantime we needed Nyla back on the bike to work on the peg mounting. I needed to work on the drive chain guard and make sure Valerie’s feet would be completely clear of the chain. I used stock H-D rubber pegs and some two-inch tabs, supported by 45-degree chunks of steel I bagged from the metal fab shop next door.
I tacked the tabs then Jim Waggaman rolled into the Bikernet Headquarters to steal a ’53 Lincoln bench seat I’ve been trying to unload since our La Carrera race across Mexico. He carefully lined up both peg mounts perfectly, and then I welded them into place.
Hang on! Next, we need to make the chain guard and start to work on modifications to the gas tank. We’re burnin’ daylight!
Here’s the desired, determined schedule: We’re shooting for being ready to go to paint at the end of June, just two weeks away. I’ll be a nervous wreck until then. Then I’ll go find a white, soft sandy beach to lay on for a couple of weeks with a case of Coronas. Our goal is to be up and running by the end of July. That gives us August for tuning at Gene’s speed shop, and then we’re off to Bubs Motorcycle Speed Trials in Bonneville. Gulp!
The Set Up
By Bandit |
Nobody knew Buzzard’s real name. There was a reason for this; if you had aname like Horace Hieronymous Toozfetz, you probably wouldn’t go aroundadvertising it either. Some people might say that it’s a bit of anoverreaction to become an outlaw biker just because your parents gave you aname you didn’t like. Of course, the people who might say that hadn’t beencondemned to a youth of getting beaten up by the high school jocks everyday, year after year, with no hope whatsoever of ever getting laid. No, itwas too late for should haves or could haves; Buzzard was irrevocablyshaped by his upbringing, for good or ill.
Despite this, he was actually quite a good-natured fellow; a hard-assbrawler and a multiple felon, true, but nevertheless a quiet, dependablesort (as outlaws go), holding fewer grudges against the world at large thandoes, say, the average postal worker.
At the moment, Buzzard was cruising up Route 842 in rural Pennsylvania,feeling the sunshine on his shoulders and easing his ’53 Panhead choppercarefully around the hairpin turns. The telegram was a tiny, crumpled ballin his pocket. Buzzard had no idea how they had located him, and thetelegram offered no explanation. It said, simply, come home, stop, fatherdying, stop, Uncle Roy, stop.
The Reverend Wolfgang Amadeus Toozfetz was a hard and uncompromising man.He didn’t like many things, but he knew what he hated, and he had no doubtwhatsoever that God hated the same things. He was The Man in Charge ofStraightening Out The Universe (trumpets, please), and he bore hisGod-given burden upon his broad shoulders with unflagging tenacity.
How and why Horace’s mother had chosen the reverend for a husband hadalways been a mystery to Horace. She was a small, pretty, delicate woman,patient and quiet, honest and uncomplicated. The reverend’s bulldog actoverwhelmed her completely; he forbade her everything he could think of and berated her mercilessly for the smallest infractions, such as going tothe market without her luxurious, blond hair tied in the mandatory sexlessbun. He would inexplicably relent at random intervals, suddenly becomingpleasant and kind, but no sooner would she let down her guard than thereverend would revert to his former self, berating her in his mostterrible fire-and-brimstone voice about how God hated disobedient wives.Horace had always reviled himself for not protecting his mother, but he was only a small boy, and his courage wilted instantly before the reverend’s 6-foot, 4-inch frame.
The farmhouses and lush, green fields rolled lazily by. Cows and horsesmeandered around, occasionally pausing to munch on a green tuft of grass.Buzzard eased the long, lean bike to a halt at the stop sign, then turnedleft onto 82 north. Route 82 was a much straighter road, so he eased thethrottle open and accelerated to a leisurely 45 mph.
Horace’s mother had always shielded him from the reverend’s wrath by taking the heat upon herself. Horace mostly stayed out of his father’s way,performing his chores to the reverend’s exacting specifications and therebyavoiding attention. This continued until Horace was 16, when his mother took ill.
From the corner of his eye, Buzzard saw a German shepherd launch itselffrom the porch of a small, white house and bound across the lawn toward him. He slowed down a bit and whacked the shifter down into third. When the dog was about 10 feet away, he let out the clutch and rolled the throttle, throwing off the dog’s planned point of interception and rattling the window panes with a blast from his upswept fishtail drag pipes.
The doctors had been unable to find anything specifically wrong with Mrs.Toozfetz, but her condition continued to worsen daily. On a bitter fallday, under a steely gray sky, Horace’s mother finally died. The countycoroner had explained the cause of her death with the ambiguous phrase”natural causes,” but Horace knew that there was nothing natural about it;she had died of a broken heart. And he knew without a doubt who thereverend’s next target would be, now that he had been deprived of hisfavorite victim.
After the funeral, Horace had snuck out to his Uncle Roy’s barn, whereRoy’s son, Johnny, had secretly helped him restore an ancient 45 ciFlathead, which Horace had bought from an old widow for $150. (Uncle Royknew about the Flathead, but kept Horace’s secret. Being the reverend’syounger brother, Roy was aware of Horace’s harassed and abusive home lifeand took pity on him.) Horace had snuck out to work on the bike at everyopportunity, using the money that he?d earned by working at the hardwarestore after school. This had been a risky endeavor. Motorcycles were thework of the devil, and if the reverend had discovered it, he would havebeaten Horace to within an inch of his life.
Now that Horace’s mother was dead, there was nothing to keep him in SouthCarolina any longer. He hastily packed all of his belongings onto the bike — a duffel bag full of clothes, some extra ignition points and spark plugs, aworn and dirty tool roll and $122.47 in small bills. He straddled the bike,kicked it to life, then eased it out of the barn and onto the main road. Henever looked back. The road ahead beckoned with promises of adventure andinfinite possibilities; his new life as a scooter gypsy had begun.
By the time Buzzard reached Coatesville, he decided to respect Uncle Roy’srequest and go back home. This would not be a happy run; the reverend,being the town preacher, had been a revered and respected figure in thecommunity. In small towns, everybody knows everybody else’s business, andpeople have long memories. Not being privy to all of the facts, everybodywould assume that Buzzard was guilty of the foulest betrayal — deserting hisloving father in his hour of need, an outlaw biker who deserved nothingless than 12 hours on the rack. Nevertheless, Buzzard decided to go. Hehad lived for 34 years with the strange burden of his unresolvedrelationship with his father, and he was determined to seize this lastopportunity for closure.
Early the next morning, Buzzard was in his garage, strapping a large Armysurplus duffel bag to the chopper’s tall, dagger-shaped sissy bar, crisscrossing the bungee cords back and forth. Having decided to go, he was eager to get started as early as possible. He made a last-minute mechanical check of the bike, then began stuffing tools into the weather beaten leather fork bag.
In high school, Horace’s chief tormentor had been Bobby Plachette, starquarterback and captain of the football team. Horace had never been taughthow to fight, nor would it have mattered if he had been. Plachette wasthree years older than he was, and was significantly taller, stronger andfaster. No matter how discreetly Horace had tried to sneak home fromschool, at least twice per week he would hear, “Hey whore-ass, you can run,but you can’t hide!” coming from behind him. Then the inevitableass-whipping would begin. Horace lived in constant fear of it. It hadutterly destroyed his self-esteem, making it impossible for him to havefriends or date girls. It ruined his performance in school and made himyet more miserable at home. Horace dared not tell his father, though,because the reverend had a strict policy of non-violence (which heparadoxically enforced with a leather strap), and to let the reverend findout that he had been fighting would only have compounded Horace’s miseries.
Plachette had graduated just as Horace finished his freshman year.Although a star quarterback in his small-town high school, Plachette hadnot been quite good enough to win a college athletic scholarship. Becausethe teachers had breezed him through the system, Plachette’s poor academicperformance made it impossible for him to get into college on his ownmerit. At the ripe old age of 18, the erstwhile pampered star,beloved by all, had become just another penniless nobody, a washed-uphas been with no marketable skills and no future. He seemed poised tobecome either the town bully or the town drunk, (both positions for whichhe was eminently qualified), when something happened to change hislife. He became a cop.
Buzzard straddled the chopper and jumped hard on the starter pedal. Theperfectly tuned Panhead rumbled to life on the first kick. He backed thechoke off slightly and waited for a few minutes while the engine warmed up.
Horace was glad to have left town before having any serious run-ins withDeputy Plachette. A long series of lateral drifts had eventually led himto a small apartment in New Jersey and a reasonably steady job as alongshoreman at the port. He put plenty of miles on the Flathead, it beinghis only means of transportation, and the antique scoot soon began toattract the attention of the local motorcycle aficionados. Within a year,he was riding with the Jersey Renegades and had earned the name Buzzard,since by this time he was over 6 feet tall and lanky, with a prominent beak ofa nose protruding from underneath his long, ragged hair. It was through hisassociation with the Renegades that he eventually hooked up with his firstreal friend, an infamous young outlaw by the name of Ace Calhoun. Buzzardwould soon sell the Flathead to a local Harley dealership that wanted todisplay it out on the floor. He got enough money from the sale to buy anold Panhead, still a classic scoot, but a bike whose larger engine had morepossibilities than the already overworked 45.
When the engine’s cooling fins were warm to the touch, Buzzard eased thebike out of the driveway and onto the road. Interstate 95 was the straightest shot down to South Carolina. Although it was a crowded and unpleasant highway,this was a Monday and most of the lemmings were at work. He decided that itwould be OK as long as he stayed off of the road during rush hour. And withthat, he sped away.
Buzzard roared down the mostly empty interstate. The traffic petered outonce he got past the airport, and he screwed it on through Maryland andinto Virginia.
In Virginia, an ugly storm was massing. From the east, a crescent lineslashed the sky, a telltale parabolic border delimiting the boundarybetween cool and warm air, clear sky in front and dark clouds behind. Acold front was moving in. Buzzard twisted the wick, hoping to outrun thestorm, but to no avail. Soon the sky was bible-black, and threatened toregurgitate itself upon man and beast. A cold wind picked up and small bits of highway trash danced across the road, caught in tiny, invisible whirlwinds. The thunder began to rumble, drowning out even the blast of the chrome drag pipes. By the time Buzzard got to Richmond, the rain was pouring down. A million tiny needles pelted his soaking leathers and stung his face and neck. It was all his poor headlight could do to penetrate the gray murk and feebly illuminate a few square feet of rain-drenched pavement. Buzzard grimly pressed on, left hand wiping the rain from his wraparound glasses, determined to make North Carolina by nightfall. But cold fronts pass quickly; within a half hour the wind dieddown and the storm dissipated as suddenly as it had appeared. The sun cameout, for which Buzzard was eternally grateful, warming his cold and clammyflesh.
Buzzard crossed the border into North Carolina by dusk. He checked into asmall motel, hungrily devoured a burger and fries at the hamburger standacross the street, then retired to his room. It was a cheesy little motel. The paint job was piss yellow and the Art Deco furniture was straight outof the ?50s, but it was comfortable and dry, and that was all he wanted.He hung his leathers from a coat hanger in front of the window to dry, thenslept the exhausted sleep that awaits every rider at the end of a long,hard road.
The next day he awoke full of enthusiasm. The sun was out and the birdswere singing. It was the kind of day made by God especially for riding. The coldfront had brought with it a mass of cool, dry air, lowering the temperatureto a comfortable 70 degrees. The leathers were stiff and hard but dry, andBuzzard pulled them on quickly, eager to get started. He checked out at thefront desk, ate an omelet at a local diner and blasted off onto thehighway, heading south once again.
Markham, South Carolina, remained a one-horse town, for the most partuntouched by time. Old people sat on rocking chairs on porches, looking asthough they had sat there since the beginning of time and would continue tosit there until the sun grew cold. Main Street consisted of a generalstore, a gas station, a tiny bar and grill and a small church where, untilrecently, the Reverend Wolfgang A. Toozfetz had preached every Sunday. Thetown was small enough that everyone knew everyone else, and since Markhamdidn’t connect anywhere with anywhere, the appearance of any strange face(let alone Buzzard’s) was enough to cause a stir.
Buzzard rumbled over the horizon like a ragged and bearded messiah, a madprophet from the mountains covered in leather and tattoos, riding upon aterrible chrome steed that drank gasoline and belched flames from theblackened depths of its fiery asshole, a grim harbinger come to deliver TheWord. His appearance on the scene was as disruptive as Attila the Hunriding his horse into the middle of the New York Stock Exchange. Housewivesstopped and stared, children pointed excitedly, old people scowled indisapproval from their rockers. Buzzard ignored all of this, casuallyblasting down Main Street toward Uncle Roy’s house (assuming, of course,that Uncle Roy still lived there), rattling windows on either side of thestreet and setting off car alarms.
Buzzard hadn’t been sure that he would be able to remember the way, but now that he was there, everything came back to him in a rush. Within minutes,he was cruising down Uncle Roy’s tree-lined street, and damn if that wasn’told Roy himself out in the front yard! The little brick house with thegreen shutters was just as Buzzard remembered. Uncle Roy was older, ofcourse, and grayer, and he looked much smaller than Buzzard remembered, buthe was definitely Uncle Roy. Roy heard the chopper roaring up the streetand stiffened apprehensively as he turned around, then took two full stepsbackward when he saw the grim figure bearing down upon him. Buzzard waved,and Roy stared, nonplussed. Buzzard pulled into the driveway, flicked thekickstand down and killed the engine. He felt a lump rise suddenly in histhroat; here before him was the only man who had ever shown him anyaffection or kindness. All Buzzard managed to say, somewhat lamely, was,”Uncle Roy… I got your telegram… I came right away.”
Roy was stunned. That cute little boy, so fresh in his memory, had turnedinto this big hairy monster, some half-human werewolf in greasy leathersand muddy boots. But he was that boy, home at last. After a long pause, Roygasped, “Horace! Horace, my boy! I… I didn’t think you would come…”Buzzard dismounted and stepped squarely into a bear hug. “Horace, it’s beenso long, we have so much to catch up on. Come on in, your cousin John’sinside.”
That evening, Buzzard was sitting at a small, round table near the back ofthe Markham Road House Pub, drinking a beer and talking excitedly with hiscousin about all that had transpired in the past 18 years. John wasmarried with two kids and had settled down to a quiet life as a countrymechanic, the only one in Markham. The reverend had stoically borne hispublic humiliation after Buzzard ran away, and neither Roy nor John hadever mentioned the Flathead. There didn’t seem to be any point. Thereverend had continued preaching at the church until he was diagnosed withbone cancer at the age of 64. He had managed to live a fairly normal lifefor 18 months after that, but the treatments soon stopped working and hisincreasingly ill health forced him into early retirement. They had sent himhome from the hospital once it became apparent that there was nothing morethey could do, and the reverend, at present, was in his own home, under thecare of a nurse, slipping in and out of consciousness and awaiting theinevitable end. Roy had hired a private investigator to find Buzzard’saddress and had then sent the telegram that was still crumpled up inBuzzard’s pocket.
“Well,” said Buzzard, “I came this far, so I guess the only right thing tado is stick around a while and hope I get at least one chance ta set thingsstraight before he goes.”
John nodded in silent agreement and took a sip from his beer. “Of course,you can stay with me or my dad as long as you want.”
“Thanks cuz,” Buzzard replied, “that means a lot to me.”
Then, from over his left shoulder, Buzzard heard something that he thought he?d never hear again. “Hey whore-ass! You can run, but you can’t hide!”
Buzzard whirled around and stood up in one fluid motion, fists clenched and teeth bared. Standing before him was a pudgy, middle-aged man in a uniform, armed, swaggering and arrogant. He was older and out of shape, but he was definitely Bobby Plachette. And he had a gold, star-shaped badgepinned to the breast pocket of his uniform…
Holy creeping shit. Sheriff Plachette.
Buzzard stood a half-head taller than Plachette, and his hard, knottedmuscles were wrapped like bundles of steel cable around his lanky frame from years of working at the docks. Plachette, by contrast, had obviouslyspent those years sitting in his cruiser eating donuts. Buzzard could easily break him in half now.
And here was the final absurdity: In spite of all this, Buzzard could still feel that old fear knotting his stomach and rising in his throat. It was as if Plachette’s very voice had the power to yank him backward in time andturn him into Horace Toozfetz again, a scared little boy being stomped intothe dirt.
The sheriff stuck his thumbs into his gun belt and swaggered around. “Yessiree,” he said, “when one of my men saw that motor-sickle parked outsideRoy Toozfetz’ house, I went in there an’ I sez, ‘Roy, we don’t cotton tooutlaws an’ drifters ’round these parts. Whoever owns this hunka junk, I’mgonna lock ‘im up fer vagrancy.’ Then ol’ Roy sez, ‘You ain’t gotta dothat, sheriff. It belongs to my nephew Horace.’ That’s how I knowed you wuzback in town, an’ I figgered I’d find you here.”
All eyes were upon Buzzard and the sheriff. Buzzard looked around, thenback at the sheriff and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I’m hereto see my father, so why don’t you just fuck off?”
“Don’t get smart with me, boy, I’ll whip yer ass good. If ya wanted ta seeyer father, ya coulda seed him long before now. Like I sez, we don’t likedrifters around these parts. If you’re not outta here before the sun comesup tomorra morning, I’ll lock ya up fer vagrancy.”
Buzzard’s face twisted into a lethal snarl. The fact was, Plachette was armed and Buzzard wasn’t. “I ain’t goin’ noplace until I get ta talk to myfather,” Buzzard spat.
“Just remember, whore-ass,” Plachette replied, “sunrise tomorra.” Then heturned around and, chuckling to himself, swaggered out.
Buzzard deflated back into his seat and the other patrons went back totheir business. “How the hell did that asshole become sheriff?” Buzzard asked.
“Well,” said John, “you remember when he became a deputy?”Buzzard nodded.
Once in uniform, Plachette had discovered that he had a great affinity forthat line of work. All those years he’d been bullying people for free, andnow that he had a gun and a badge, he was getting paid to do it.
Not many years later, a small-time drug ring had moved its operation toMarkham to escape the heat that the new police chief of Charlotte wasbringing down in the city. The theory was this: Since drug problems weremore or less unheard of in small towns, the gangsters would have moreleeway to operate, free of the threat of a large, well-funded police force.This theory proved to be correct. Then-Sheriff Ed Channing was getting oninto his 60s and had little stomach for getting shot right before hewas due to retire.
Deputy Plachette and another deputy with the ironic name of Fred Manley had taken matters into their own hands, initiating a two-man crusade againstthe gang. They ticketed the gangsters’ cars from one end of the county tothe other, obtained search warrants on any pretense, and even sent thecounty building inspector to cite them for numerous trumped-upbuilding code violations. Within a year the gangsters decided thatthere was even more heat in Markham than there had been in Charlotte. Theirgoal, after all, was to make money, not to lock horns with redneck cops, sothey folded up shop one day and left Markham for good.
Plachette had once again become a town hero. Even those who disapproved ofhis methods had to admit that they were pleased with his results. Plachettewas elected sheriff by a landslide the following year, and Ed Channingquietly retired. Plachette, of course, was still a bully, and there werethose in town who called him a thug and worse, but in the end the people ofMarkham chose to cast their chips with a man who knew how to get thingsdone. He had been the sheriff ever since.
Buzzard had no respect for the badge as a symbol. Long years on the outlawcircuit had instilled in him that a cop’s authority, like that of any otherthug, is measured solely by his power to enforce it. Fortunately forBuzzard, Markham’s entire police force at present consisted of only twodeputies, plus the sheriff. Still not good odds, though, especially withall three of them armed. What Buzzard needed now was an equalizer, andthere was only one equalizer currently available…Ace Calhoun.
Buzzard was absolutely certain that Ace would come, that wasn’t whatworried him. He was in a quandary because it would be easier to call Acethan it would be to restrain him, and there was no way to predict what sortof savage hell might break loose once the genie was out of the bottle. Acewas a force of nature, inexorable and swift, and Buzzard was like a shamanwho knows that he can summon a storm but is not at all confident of hisability to control it once it arrives. Finally, however, desperation wonout over prudence. Buzzard excused himself and went to the pay phone at theback of the bar, dropped in several quarters and dialed a number.
“Hey, Ace? Buzzard… Yeah, I’m in Markham. Listen, I’m in a bind here. Ican’t stay on too long, but I’ll give you the story real quick…”
Potato, potato, potato.
It seemed to Buzzard that he had hardly closed his eyes when he wassuddenly awakened by that sound he knew so well. It was Ace, rumbling slowly up the street. Buzzard could tell that Ace was going easy on the throttle to keep his fiberglass-baffled pipes from barking and waking up the neighborhood. He?d probably eaten a fistful of cartwheels and then ridden like a maniac all night to get to Markham before the citizens (and cops) woke up. Buzzard swung his legs over the side of Roy’s couch and levered himself upright. He banged one shin against the wooden coffee table in the dark and whispered a stream of obscenities under his breath. Pausing momentarily to rub his injured leg, he stumbled hastily through the front door. Outside it was cool and dark, with the first red rays of dawn just beginning to streak the eastern sky. Buzzard waved to flag Ace down, and Ace coasted the last 20 feet, tires crunching softly on the gravel-covered driveway. He killed the engine and dismounted, staggering alittle. Even in the dark, he looked stiff and exhausted. Buzzard claspedhis friend’s shoulder warmly. “You OK, bro?”
“Yeah,” replied Ace. “I just need some sleep.”
“OK, let’s get yer bike outta sight and then you can crash inside.”
Buzzard swung open the door of the little red barn. He got behind Ace’sbike and together they pushed it inside next to Buzzard’s on the hay-strewndirt floor. Ace clicked a padlock into place on the bike’s triple tree,then followed Buzzard inside the house. Buzzard decided to take the floorand let Ace have the couch, and Ace collapsed like a marionette whosestrings have been cut. He would sleep like a dead man until at least noon.
Buzzard went back to sleep himself and was awakened again by the phone. Itstopped after two rings, meaning that Uncle Roy had probably answered it inthe bedroom. The clock on the wall said 10. Buzzard looked over at Ace,who was still sound asleep. Good, Buzzard thought, he was glad that thephone hadn’t disturbed Ace. He would need the rest.
A few minutes later, Roy came creaking down the old wooden steps. He wasabout to say something to Buzzard when he stopped, mouth open, surprised tosee that his living room now contained not one but two outlaws, as thoughnew ones had sprouted from the floor like mushrooms during the night.Buzzard put his finger to his lips, then motioned Roy into the kitchen where they could talk without waking Ace.
In a whisper, Buzzard hastily described his run-in with the sheriff andexplained that Ace was a friend who had come to help him get out of Markhamin one piece.
“You boys aren’t gonna do anything foolish, are you?” Roy asked worriedly.
“No, of course not. I didn’t come here lookin’ for trouble, you know that. But I’m a grown man now, and badge or no badge, I ain’t about ta take no crap from the likes of Bobby Plachette.”
“OK,” said Roy, “just be careful. Anyway, that was the nurse on the phone.She says your father’s awake and feels good enough to take visitors.”
This was the moment that Buzzard had simultaneously hoped for and dreadedmuch of his adult life. He took a deep breath and said, “Alright, let’sgo.”
“What about your friend?”
“He’s had a long night. Let him sleep it off.”
Buzzard followed Roy to his battered old pickup truck and slipped intothe passenger seat. He hoped they wouldn’t have the ill fortune to getpulled over by one of the sheriff’s men during the short ride to thereverend’s house. The sun was, after all, up, and Buzzard had missed hisdeadline. Roy didn’t look at all worried, which probably meant that thethought had not even occurred to him. Being a respectable tax-payingcitizen, Roy was not accustomed to worrying about things like being stalkedby cops, and Buzzard decided not to disturb his peace of mind by mentioningit. Roy threw the old rattletrap in gear and eased it gently onto theroad.
Within minutes they were at the reverend’s house. Buzzard knew the waywell; as a boy he had walked the short distance countless times to meetJohnny in the barn and work on the old Flathead. Roy parked the truck infront of the gray stone house, then walked up the short flagstone path tothe front door, with Buzzard following two steps behind. Roy pulled thestorm door open and knocked on the weathered oak door behind it. Buzzardwas vaguely surprised that everything looked so much smaller than heremembered. The door was eventually opened by a stocky, middle-aged womanin a nurse’s uniform. She seemed momentarily taken aback by Buzzard’suncivilized appearance, but she knew Roy, and so said nothing. The nurseled Roy and Buzzard down a short hallway that looked exactly the same asit had when Buzzard was a boy. The faded floral wallpaper had not beenchanged in 18 years, and pictures of all-but-forgotten relativeslined the walls. She led them up the stairs to the reverend’s bedroom andsaid through the door, “Reverend, your brother is here to see you.”
A raspy voice croaked, “Send him in, send him in.” The nurse stepped aside, and Roy led Buzzard into the room.
Buzzard couldn’t believe his eyes. The father he remembered had been ahuge, terrifying mountain of a man — tall, broad and built like a bull. Theman before him was an emaciated scarecrow, wrinkled and gray, old and sick.But that was nothing compared to the shock the reverend received whenRoy put his hand on the huge, hairy outlaw’s grimy shoulder and said,”Wolf, Horace is here to see you…your son. I’ll leave you two alone.”Then he turned and left the room.
The bedroom was as unchanged as the rest of the house. The bed with itswooden headboard was positioned between two antique wooden night tables,under a window that had been opened to admit the warm sun and a pleasantbreeze. Both night tables were strewn with all sorts of pills, and the roomhad the vaguely antiseptic odor of a hospital. “Horace?” the old mancroaked. He sounded as if there were loose nuts and bolts rattling aroundinside his shrunken chest. “How can you be Horace? Horace was a goodChristian boy.”
“No, it’s me, dad.”
“It’s really you?” The reverend paused, then scowled. “I suppose you’ve got a motor-sickle or some such damned contraption to go with those rags you’rewearing.”
“It’s parked at Uncle Roy’s house,” Buzzard replied.
“Well, I don’t know if you’re really Horace or not,” said the reverend,”but it doesn’t matter anyhow. You may be the son of the devil, but you’reno son of mine.”
“Nothing’s changed, then, in all this time?”
“I raised my son to be faithful and obedient. He would never have abandoned me to join some…some heathen homosexual leather cult.” The reverendlooked at Buzzard with the most profound loathing that Buzzard had everseen. “Go back to whatever hell hole you crawled out of…back to yourdope-smoking, fornicating friends. That’s where you belong, not here,worrying God-fearing folk. Don’t come back to darken my doorway any more.God hates disobedient sons most of all.”
Buzzard cursed silently at a life that he had long ago left behind. Hegrowled, “My mother was sweet and beautiful and kind. You killed her, youbastard, just as surely as if you’d stabbed her in the heart. You wouldhave done the same to me too, and we both know it. So now you’re going todie an old man, lonely and bitter, and no one will mourn you. Was it worthit? Is this the way you want to end your life? No, don’t bother answering.I hope whatever God you believe in has mercy on your soul.” Without waitingfor a reply, Buzzard turned his back on the reverend and walked out.
By mid-afternoon, Ace had revived. He ate a ravenous meal (which Roygraciously supplied), then went out to the barn to talk strategy withBuzzard. A confrontation with the sheriff seemed inevitable, since therewas only one road in and out of town. It was possible that they could sneakout under cover of darkness, but that would be difficult with Buzzard’sopen pipes, and would also expose them to the possibility of an ambush onsome back country road. Ace had packed a small arsenal, but it would stillbe three against two. Besides, Buzzard was not eager to get into ashoot out with the cops; it was just too risky. In addition, beating up a copis one thing, but shooting a cop is quite another. Even if Buzzard andAce won the shoot out, they would still lose in the long run. They wouldbecome cop killers, America’s most wanted, with their faces plastered onthe walls of every post office in the country.
No, it would be better to keep the guns out of it. The outlaws at least had the advantage of being able to stage the confrontation on their own terms,to choose the time and terrain. The best place would be somewhere withplenty of innocent bystanders. Then the cops wouldn’t be able to use theirguns, either. The odds would still be three to two against, but the outlawshad the element of surprise. The cops were looking for Buzzard, and theyhad never seen Ace.
So now Buzzard and Ace were back in the Road House, nervously sipping beerand waiting for the show to begin. Buzzard had parked his chopper outfront as bait. Ace had parked his out back, hidden between two largedelivery trucks. Initially the bartender had protested, but he saw thelight when Ace offered to rearrange his dental work for him. He decided tolet the law handle it, which was what was going to happen anyway as soon asthe sheriff saw the chopper parked out front. Buzzard sat at the bar whileAce hid in the shadows at a table in the corner. It was shortly after 5 and the after work crowd was starting to fill the small pub; store managersin starched shirts and ties, working men in jeans and boots. Soon the barwas bustling with activity. People were talking, smoking, laughing andeating, ordering mugs and pitchers of beer.
Buzzard suddenly saw the bartender crane his neck to look out the window at something, and he could see the red and blue lights reflecting off themirror behind the bar. Show time. The sheriff burst in, flanked by twoyoung-looking deputies, and shouted at Buzzard, “I thought I told you tagit outta town!” The room was suddenly deathly quiet.
“I don’t want no trouble sheriff,” Buzzard said. “I got what I came for.I’ll hit the road just as soon as I finish my beer, and you’ll never see mehere again.”
The sheriff smiled a shark-toothed smile. “Too late, whore-ass,” he said.”I told ya ta hit the road last night. Now yer gonna get what’s comin’ toya.”
Buzzard smiled. “OK, don’t say I didn’t give ya no chance.”
They never even saw Ace coming. He moved like lightning, melting out of the shadows like a lizard and swinging a small, shot-filled sap. He struck eachdeputy a precise blow on the base of the skull; just enough force to causeunconsciousness but not enough to do any permanent damage. They crumpled tothe floor like paper dolls. This threw the room into confusion. Somewanted to help the sheriff, others wanted to flee and a few just wanted towatch the show like gawkers at a traffic accident. Between them, there wastoo much chaos for anyone to do anything. The sheriff looked over hisshoulder, then back again, and fumbled for his gun. But the bar was packedwith patrons and there was no way to get a clear shot. Before he knew whatwas happening, he was hit simultaneously from the front and the rear, andhis gun and nightstick had both been wrestled away from him.
Ace took the weapons and stepped away, leaving Buzzard alone with thesheriff. Plachette realized with horror that he was not facing a frightenedboy named Horace. He was facing a huge, savage outlaw named Buzzard, andhis knees felt suddenly weak. Buzzard’s hairy lips parted, exposing sharp,white teeth, and he said, very quietly, “You can run but you can’t hide.”
There is a strange thing that sometimes happens to even the most savage ofmen when they see their nemesis brought low, and realize that he ispathetic and small. They are suddenly filled not with anger but with anawful, towering pity, and they realize that to sink to the level of theiradversary would be wrong, that the right thing to do is to be the biggerman. Unfortunately for the sheriff, none of these things happened toBuzzard.
Buzzard kicked his ass all the way out the door, then grabbed him by thehair and dragged him back inside. He kicked his ass up the bar, then kickedit back down the bar. He beat Plachette until he was exhausted fromswinging his arms. Then he let his adversary fall face down into thespilled beer, spit and cigarette butts that covered the sticky floor.
When he finally looked up from his work, he saw that Ace had been busyhandcuffing the deputies to the shiny brass bar rail and stuffing theirservice revolvers into the various pockets of his riding jacket, keepingone handy just to make sure that none of the patrons would decide to try tobe a hero. Buzzard handcuffed the unconscious sheriff to the bar railbeside his men, and Ace went to work severing the telephone line. This wasprobably unnecessary since all the law there was to summon was at presentlying unconscious on the floor, but better safe than sorry. The outlawsthen ran for the door and the crowd parted to make way. Once outside,Buzzard tapped Ace on the shoulder and said, “We better take the scenicroute. Bastards’ll be lookin’ for us.”
Ace nodded in agreement. Then he smiled and said, “Lead the way, Horace.”
Buzzard smiled back and replied, “You better not break my balls about that, Francis.”
Ace ran around the back of the building while Buzzard ran out front. Thegawkers in the bar were crowding around the windows to watch Buzzardstraddle his bike and kick it to life. Seconds later, he heard the sound ofAce’s Evo starting up. Buzzard pulled out of the parking lot, rear tirescreeching, and Ace blasted out right behind him. Together they roared away into the reddening dusk, under the cloudless sky, in the wind and glad to be free.
The Set Up
By Bandit |
Ace sat at a booth near the back of the bar and sipped his beer. The Midnite Club, a private club in the French quarter of New Orleans, was where he liked to go when he had to lay low. Right now, Ace was laying lower than a snake’s belly, at least until the heat died down. He?d had a terrible run-in with the sheriff of a small town in South Carolina that had resulted in a heinous whirlwind of felonies and violence. He had even stowed his beloved chopper in a garage at a self-storage facility. The damn thing was a cop magnet even when every cop in the country wasn’t looking for it.
The Midnite Club was swanky, upscale and very, very private. The highly coveted membership was by invitation only, and all new applicants had to be vouched for by a current member in good standing. It was, needless to say, very expensive.
The club’s patrons were the hippest of the hip; 24-year-old millionaires from Silicon Valley, Wall Street power brokers, East Coast mobsters and Hollywood stars, with the occasional outlaw type thrown into the mix to add just a touch of danger, completing the scene of wild and erotic mystery. The Midnite Club was a place where the well-heeled could relax, unwind and be entertained by everything from jazz bands to live sex shows.
The club was owned and run by the strange and mysterious Papa Senegal. Papa was, in fact, not from Senegal. He was Jamaican, but Ace supposed that “Papa Senegal” had a better ring to it than “Papa Jamaica,” and none of the patrons gave a damn anyway. Papa Senegal had a fine sense of drama and played the New Orleans voodoo thing to the hilt. The club was decorated in occult black, with plenty of candelabras, skulls, mirrors and stuffed ravens sprinkled about. He was always fashionably late; just late enough to make the club’s newer members wonder whether he was going to show up at all. Then he would suddenly appear, long dreadlocks flying from beneath a tall top hat, wearing a tuxedo with tails and no shirt or cummerbund underneath, washboard abs rippling, carrying an ebony walking stick topped by a small ivory skull, smiling, shaking hands and passing out samples of everything from Cuban cigars to premium cocaine.
Ace worked sporadically for Papa as a procurer of the various commodities that were necessary to keep the club running, and he had negotiated some of his pay in credit, which was the only way he could have afforded to be there at all. Now Ace was watching the band set up and waiting for Papa to make one of his classy appearances.
Suddenly, there he was in the middle of the room as though he’d appeared out of thin air, smiling, milling around and pouring shots of 100-year-old scotch. A murmur of satisfaction went up from the crowd and Papa was temporarily hidden from view again. Ace waited until the crowd died down a bit, then he got up and walked toward Papa. Papa squinted at Ace, who was moving toward him in the dark, before his face broke into a wide grin of recognition. “Ess, my friend!” (When Papa said “Ace,” it came out sounding like “Ess.”) “Eet’s been a long time!”
Ace clasped Papa’s hand warmly and agreed, “Too long, too long.”
“Ahh Esss!” Papa screamed, “thee wan and onlee in-dee-spen-sable Ess!” clapping him on the shoulder. “Eet’s always a pleasure to see you! Tomorrow we talk business, ah? But tonight, tonight we have a good time!” That was fine with Ace; a good time was just what his jangled nerves needed, and it was widely agreed that nobody in New Orleans knew how to have a better time than Papa did.
As if on cue, the stage lights flared to life and the band started up — a wild jazz act with a swinging beat. Mostly-naked waitresses circulated between the small round tables taking food and drink orders, $20 bills sticking out of their G-strings like the plumage of some strange and exotic bird. The tenor man, a tall, gangly white guy with a protruding Adam’s apple, was blowing his horn like his life depended on it, jumping up and down, writhing, twitching and sweating, and the crowd was rising to an almost erotic frenzy as the tenor man struggled to grasp the elusive it, because they knew. An old man in a blue suit sat in a chair by the stage, stomping his feet and yelling, “Blow, man, blow!” at the top of his lungs. Papa tapped Ace on the shoulder and placed a glass of amber liquid into his hand. Ace nodded and smiled, and Papa went off to mill around in the crowd. Ace took a small sip; after all, it’s not often that a man has the opportunity to drink 100-year-old scotch. It went down smoother than silk, with no harsh bite at all. In fact, oddly enough, Ace thought that it almost reminded him of butterscotch. He looked over at the bar and smiled at a pretty young blonde who appeared to be by herself. She looked over and smiled back.
In a garbage-strewn alley in another part of town, the air was crackling faintly as before a storm, even though the sky was perfectly clear. A faint breeze kicked up, stirring scraps of newspaper around in circles and making a rustling sound. Then suddenly there was a body in the alley where there had been none a moment before. If anyone had been there, they would have felt the dull, sub-sonic thud of a concussion wave radiating outward from the figure, whose instantaneous appearance had displaced an amount of air equal to its own volume. The demon gasped for its first breath, then began panting like a wolf. It slowly uncurled from its crouch, painfully and awkwardly, like an infant struggling to learn control of its new physical shell. It tensed, then sprang and took off down the alley, covering 8 feet at a shot with its awkward, loping strides.
Ace slowly cracked one eye open, exposing his throbbing brain to the bright daggers of daylight that were stabbing in through the window. For one terrifying moment he had no idea where the hell he was or how he had gotten there. Then he remembered?New Orleans… Papa Senegal… Business. The long smear in front of him slowly focused into the hourglass form of a woman. Of course, the blonde from the club. That was why the tips of his fingers were tingling; she was lying on his left arm. For a long moment he wondered whether he should wake her or simply chew his arm off like an animal caught in a trap. Then he had an idea. He rolled over and pushed the mattress down with his right hand, slipping his left arm out through the indentation. She stirred faintly but didn’t wake. Ace dressed hastily, then quietly slipped out of the apartment, clicking the door softly shut behind him.
Ace handed the cabbie a $5 bill and stepped out of the cab in front of the Midnite Club. Seeing the club in the light of day, without its neon pizzazz, reminded Ace of an old coat that had hung on a hook on the back of his bedroom door as a child. In the dark of night, the coat had always loomed huge and terrible, casting menacing shadows across the wall like a vampire, but every morning when he awoke it would again become an ordinary, lifeless coat. The Midnite Club seemed to acquire the same sort of drab lifelessness when the city awoke in the morning like a whore, hacking, coughing and blowing trash around in the streets.
Ace made his way through a narrow alley and around to the service entrance in the back. He rapped on a beat-up sheet metal door, which was opened a moment later by a gigantic white man in a tux. Ace smiled and said, “Hey, Tiny, long time no see! How’s it hangin?, big guy?”
Tiny smiled back. “Ahh, same shit, different day, you know how it is, Ace. Heh heh… Papa’s waiting for you in the office,? he said, pointing with a thumb that was more than an inch in diameter.
A narrow spiral staircase, made of welded sheet metal and painted black, led from the service entrance to an office on the upper floor. The stairway was dark and the walls were bare cinder block, as gray and forbidding as any prison. But once you stepped past the threshold of Papa’s office, you stepped into a different world. All of the woodwork was polished mahogany, and the carpet was the color of red wine, which shone like blood against the white walls. Expensive paintings lined the walls, each in an antique, hand-carved frame, and a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, such as one might expect to see in a ballroom. The door was open and Papa sat behind a gold table lamp, which threw a small circle of light onto a large mahogany desk, which was rather like a banker’s. This room was Papa’s concept of luxury, much more so than the club itself; not vulgar ostentation, but tasteful elegance. Papa looked up from his laptop computer when he heard Ace’s boot heels punishing the staircase with a dull clang, clang, clang that echoed around the stairwell. He stood up and smiled, stepping around the desk with his right hand extended. Papa was dressed casually (for Papa) in expensive gray slacks and white shirt sleeves… Come to think of it, Ace couldn’t remember ever having seen him wear jeans. Ace clasped Papa’s right hand warmly. He was genuinely glad to see the old bastard again.
They chatted for a while, a ritual to which Ace had grown accustomed. Papa thought it rude to open a conversation with business, as is the American habit. After a while he leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, making a steeple with his fingers, which Ace recognized as the sign that Papa was ready to come to the point.
“I have a small job for you, my friend,” said Papa. “I need you to go to a man across town and peeck up a small vial for me. Thee pay is wan-thousand dollars.”
“Wow,” Ace replied, “that must be one hell of an expensive drug. How ’bout a tiny sample for the courier? Like my grandma used to say, those who handle honey always lick their fingers.”
Papa shook his head. “Not thees time. Eet ees not a drug in the sense which you are theenking; eet ees a component for use in magick.” His eyes became very intense. “Eet’s powerful magick, eet geeve powerful visions! One must be equeeped to handle eet; a drop thee size of a match head would turn you into sometheeng out of a medeecal encyclopedia!”
Ace smiled. “All right, all right, I get the message. Jeez, I think you’re starting to take your own hype too seriously. Anyway, where is this guy?”
Papa handed Ace a slip of paper with a name and an address. Ace nodded, took the paper and started to go. Papa stopped him at the threshold and said, “Remember, no tasteeng!”
“Right,” Ace replied, “got it. No tasting.”
Ace had waited until after dark to get the chopper out of storage. It was probably a bad idea to be seen on it again so soon, but Ace had been taking buses and cabs everywhere for two entire weeks and he was dying to get his knees in the wind. He rationalized the decision by reasoning that he could stay on the back roads where it was dark and avoid attracting attention. His pipes were fiberglass-baffled and they weren’t obnoxiously loud if you were gentle with the throttle.
Ace putted slowly down the small commercial street, scanning the storefronts for Harry’s Occult Shop. The bottle, whatever it was, was already paid for; all Ace had to do was pick it up and take it back to the Midnite Club.
Presently, Ace spotted a small shop with skulls and jars of colored powder in the window. Bingo. Ace stopped in front of the store, killed the engine and leaned the bike over on its kickstand.
A small bell jingled on the door when Ace opened it. Harry’s Occult Shop was lit by dozens of candles that burned on candelabras throughout the store. Every wall was covered with shelves, which were crammed full of skulls, powders, candles, daggers and old leather-bound books covered in strange symbols. There was a gnarled old tree stump in the corner of the shop that made Ace jump when it moved and he realized that the stump was, in fact, a man.
“Uh, Harry, I presume?” asked Ace.
“Yeah,” the man replied. Hack, cough, wheeze. “What can I do for you, young man?”
“Papa sent me,” replied Ace. “I’m here for the pick up”.
Harry squinted at Ace for a moment, then said, “Yeah, yeah, hold on.” He shuffled into the back room, which was hidden behind a black velvet curtain. He emerged a moment later carrying a glass vial. He put the vial into a brown paper bag and handed it to Ace, who took it with a nod. “Interest you in some powdered bat wing?” asked Harry. “It’s on sale this week.”
“No thanks,” Ace replied, “I’m trying to cut down.” Harry chuckled in a most unpleasant way, and Ace was suddenly glad to be leaving. Harry made his skin crawl.
Once outside, Ace stood on the curb next to the chopper and peered into the bag. The vial was bulb-shaped, about the size of a baseball, with a long stem sealed by a cork stopper. He pulled the bottle out and held it up to the street light. The liquid inside was a faintly shimmering sapphire blue, which, from certain angles, appeared to be green. What the hell is it? Ace wondered. He had never seen or heard of anything like it before. Finally, curiosity got the best of him. Hell, there was no way Papa would be able to tell if he took just one little tiny taste. Remembering Papa’s warning about the dosage, Ace tore off a paper match and just barely touched the butt-end of it to the surface of the liquid. Then, with slight apprehension, he put the match in his mouth and waited for…
Nothing. It tasted faintly like almonds, but it didn’t do a damn thing. Ace replaced the stopper and put the bottle back in the bag. He wondered if he should tell Papa that he’d been ripped off, but then thought, better of it. Papa would find out soon enough anyway and there was no point in pissing him off by admitting to disobeying orders.
Ace straddled the chopper, thumbed the starter and the big engine roared to life. He eased the bike out of the parking space, whacked the shifter into first and headed for the highway. He was relatively sure that he wasn’t carrying anything illegal and he was eager to get back to the Midnite Club quickly in case the stuff had some kind of hellish delayed reaction.
The highway was mostly empty and Ace didn’t have far to go anyway. The cool night air was a welcome relief from the daytime heat and swamp-like humidity of Louisiana. The sky was clear, the stars twinkled brightly and the crescent sliver of the moon seemed to flash him a conspiratorial wink. Ace suddenly felt that this was the America that Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper had searched for in ?Easy Rider? but had been unable to find. This was the real America, land of endless skies and wide-open roads, not the other America, the one where they made you piss in a jar if you wanted a job and threw you in jail if you didn’t pay your taxes.
The exit appeared like a specter, materializing out of the inky darkness. Ace slid the bike around the off-ramp and stopped behind a short line of cars waiting for the tolls.
It began faintly at first, quickly growing louder, a shrill scream like the rending of metal, accompanied by a loud, sibilant hiss, which nearly made Ace jump straight off of his seat. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw a tractor-trailer slowing down, pumping its air brakes as it approached the tolls. The trailer was a cattle car made of gray metal slats, and Ace could smell the faint but rising odor of shit. The brakes screeched and squealed as the truck approached. The din rose to a deafening roar and the brakes gave one long, last hiss as the truck stopped right next to Ace.
The goddamn smell was nauseating. Ace imagined that this was what it must be like to drown in an ocean of shit. He tried to breathe shallow breaths to avoid puking all over his bike. Then, a soft, wet sound emerged from the bowels of the truck. A sludge of greenish-brown shit oozed from between two of the slats, then poured sickeningly to the pavement, splat, splat, splat. The shit was coming in torrents now, splattering all over the ground and spraying drops of filth everywhere. Ace was gagging. Fuck the tolls, he thought, I’m getting out of here.
Then he saw two red points of light winking in the darkness inside the truck like a pair of burning eyes, right above the source of the shit. Cow eyes don’t glow like that, he thought, and even if they did, cows don’t have eyes in their assholes. Ace was transfixed by horror and nausea, like a gawker at a traffic accident, unable to look away. Then the eyes flared up and he could almost see inside the truck; the source of the shit was not an asshole, but a mouth, like a frog’s, but bigger than a basketball hoop, with small, pointed teeth. The demon belched one last torrent of shit onto the pavement, then wiped its befouled lips with a long, thin arm. It turned its baleful gaze slowly upon Ace and laughed, hrf, hrf, hrf.
His mind fused by panic, Ace whacked the bike into gear and twisted the throttle, squeezing through the space between a small hatchback car and the side of the booth, then he roared away into the night. In the rear view mirror, two tiny points of light followed his movements as he sped away.
Ace awoke the next morning not at all rested, having spent most of the night thrashing and sweating through nightmares about giant frogs and shit. He had washed the bike, laundered his clothes and taken no less than three showers before going to bed, an attempt to erase the indelible stink from his skin and hair. Even after all that scrubbing he imagined that he could still smell it, even though he knew that it was all in his head. Fucking hallucinogens, he thought; I’m getting too old for this. Indeed, and there was no time for it either. Papa was waiting for his delivery with $1,000 burning a hole in his pocket.
Ace pulled his jeans on and grabbed his shoplifted wraparound Ray-Bans. He suddenly had new doubts about the legality of whatever the hell was in that bottle, and it simply would not do to be seen by the cops, staggering around the streets of New Orleans with pale skin and bloodshot eyes, cringing from the light of the sun like a sick mole.
Right. Keep a low profile, he thought; get in a cab, give Papa his bottle of Satan-juice, get your thousand bucks, and then we’ll find out if there’s enough whiskey in New Orleans to drown out the memory of that goddamn horror show in the truck…
The short cab ride to the Midnite Club gave Ace the opportunity to somewhat regain his composure. The bright sunshine of a brand new day already made that horror in the truck seem silly and distant, no more than a cobweb to be casually swept away by the omnipotent hand of Good Old Reality. Papa had not yet arrived at the club when Ace knocked on the service door, but Tiny was there to take the bottle, and he had been authorized to pay Ace what he was owed.
So now Ace was walking down the street with $1,000 worth of bounce in his step, feeling the warm sunshine and whistling a little tune. He was, in fact, so preoccupied with the thoughts of how he would spend the money that when he turned the corner, he nearly ran straight into the angel.
It stood nearly 6 feet tall with long raven-black hair, eyes with no pupils at all and pale white skin like a corpse. The feathers in its wings shone like metal, all sharp points and lethal razor edges. It was an automaton, as lifeless as any killing machine. Behind its eyes lurked a terrible intellect that knew neither anger nor pity, a ruthless logic that always calculated the shortest distance between two points, and woe betide the man or beast foolish enough to stand between the angel and its goal. A maelstrom of energy swirled and crackled around the figure. Every primal instinct inside Ace’s skull screamed ?run,? but his limbs somehow refused to obey, and for one terrible moment, he was certain that he would be charred to a cinder, immolated right there on the sidewalk, leaving nothing behind but a pair of smoldering boot prints melted into the pavement like an obscene mockery of an Arthur Murray dance diagram. The angel turned its withering gaze upon Ace. Its dusty lips cracked open and a hot desert wind blasted forth. It spoke with a voice that made no impression upon Ace’s ears, but seemed instead to implant itself directly into his mind. Nonetheless, the voice was terrible to hear; it sounded like the dry grating of metal-on-metal.
A demon is loose in the city, said the angel. Thou hast been chosen to drive it out.
Not me, Ace protested in his mind. I’m a thief and a drunk, I haven’t been to church since I was 12 years old, I’m not any kind of a prophet.
The angel’s eyes flared to life, smoldering like two coals. “Do not give me that ‘I’m not worthy’ crap”, it shouted with a harsh new timbre in its voice, like bags of nails being dumped onto sheet metal. “Have thee any idea how many times I have had to listen to that rotten old swill?”
Sorry, Ace replied. But still, it’s a valid question. Of all the sinners in New Orleans, why me? You’re the freakin angel, why don’t you do it?
I cannot risk provoking a war, the angel replied. Therefore I have obtained permission to choose a man to act in my stead. Thou art the only one in the city who can see the demon for what it is; by tasting the sacrament, thou hast put thyself upon the threshold of their world. A chosen one is not always a saint, Ace. Sometimes, when something must be done, one is chosen simply because no other is able do it.
“I don’t believe it!” Ace shouted. “You’re not real! You’re just another goddamn hallucination!” He was dimly aware on some level that it made no sense to scream at a hallucination.
I haven’t the time to argue, the angel replied. With a lightning-fast motion, it whirled around and struck Ace in the middle of his chest with its open palm. The force of the blow swept Ace off of his feet and smashed him into the brick wall of the alley, knocking the breath out of him and pinning him against the wall. Its palm felt like ice, but Ace could smell a smoldering odor like the smell of burning chicken, and he knew that he was smelling his own flesh.
A few seconds later, the angel released him and Ace slumped to the pavement like a rag doll. His vision began to grow dark and the silhouette of the angel, towering above him, was beginning to dissolve like smoke. Fear not, it said. Thy hand shall be made strong by the hand of the Lord. Then Ace blacked out as the figure vanished, but he wasn’t really sure which happened first.
Newspaper. Big newspaper, filling his entire field of vision. Smell of newsprint. As Ace’s vision swam groggily into focus, he realized that he was lying on his back in an alley with sheets of newspaper covering his face. What the hell am I doing here? Right, the angel. Just another bad trip; don’t sweat it, you’ve seen worse on acid. Just get up, before anyone notices you and calls the cops; dammit, get up.
Ace swept the newspapers from his face and struggled to his feet. His whole body felt sore and there was a sunburn-like pain in the center of his chest… Oh, no. With trembling hands, Ace lifted his shirt. In the center of his chest was a red, hand-shaped welt, except that there were four fingers instead of five, and at the end of each fingertip was a small laceration right where the angel’s talons would have been. Holy creeping shit, he thought, I have to talk to Papa.
Papa examined the welt on Ace’s chest with great interest and a grave expression on his face. “What the hell is happening to me?” Ace asked.
“I have already told you,” Papa replied, “that thee drug is not really a drug in thee ordinary sense of thee word. Eet ees a holy sacrament; an instrument of magick which opens thee door between thee seen and unseen worlds. Many sorcerers would geeve everytheeng they own for that bottle.”
“Yeah, well, I would give everything I own never to see it again. OK, so the door’s been opened. How do I shut it?”
“You don’t,” Papa replied. “Thees ees not like returning a pair of pants. Eet cannot simply be undone. You have been chosen. Now you must see eet through.”
“Great, so now I’m an exorcist, too. I think I’ll put that on my card: Ace Calhoun – Obtainer of Rare Commodities and Banisher of the Undead – no job too small, no zombie too ugly. Call for special introductory offer.?
“Bee serious!” Papa snapped. “Thees ees no laughing matter!”
“OK,” Ace replied. “Fine. How do I get rid of a demon then? Crosses? Garlic? A silver bullet in the heart?”
“You have been watching too many Bela Lugosi films. Demons are powerful, but they are bound by certain rules. They are obligated to abide by their own contracts. They are clever but greedy, and their greed makes them careless. Eef you are patient and astute, the demon may be treecked”.
“Trick it? I don’t even know where to find it!”
Papa leaned forward on his elbows and smiled in a very unpleasant way. “Do not worry,” he said, “eet will find you.”
Although certainly no scientist, Ace did consider himself a rational man. As such, he had always lived his life comfortably sure of certain facts — the earth is round, there is no Santa Claus and demons don’t run around New Orleans like baboons that escaped from the Bronx zoo. Now he was experiencing the same kind of mental inversion that bedeviled the medieval Catholic clergy when Galileo informed them that the earth revolves around the sun; his basic a priori presumptions of the world were being turned inside out. However, Ace was a man who was well accustomed to rolling with life’s punches, so he chose neither to believe nor disbelieve the evidence of his senses, but instead to simply ride this strange torpedo to its conclusion. At some point, maybe he would wake up. Or maybe not.
At any rate, he now sat in a back storeroom in the Midnite club, munching a salami sandwich and reading intensely. He had read more in the past four hours than he had in the previous four years. He was, in fact, reading as though his life depended on it, which it very likely did. Tiny had set up a small table for him amid the shelves and boxes, and the table was piled shoulder high with books from Papa’s library; books like ?The Necronomicon,? ?Malleus Malificarum? and dozens of tomes that defied description, except to say that they were bound in cracked, dusty leather and they were very, very old. Ace had never been aware that there was so much to say about demons, but what the hell, live and learn.
Ace leaned back in his chair, swirling the ice around in his drink and trying to relax. It was nearly midnight, which meant that the Midnite Club was in full swing, band and all. This band was a mellower affair than the previous one had been; four elderly black gentlemen smartly dressed in suits and ties, playing cool jazz with an easy virtuosity that came with many decades of experience. All around the club, crowds of people were eating, drinking and smoking, with an occasional card game here and there at the tables near the back. Ace impatiently scanned the milling crowd for a sign of anything unusual. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for, but Papa had assured him that he would know it when he saw it. At any rate, he had been orbiting around the crowd once every 20 minutes for the past three hours or so, and he was relatively sure that he hadn’t seen it yet. It was an effort of will not to pace the club like a caged animal. He was actually getting impatient for something to happen, even though he knew that he probably wouldn’t like it when it did.
Ace got up and elbowed his way through the crowd. He moved slowly, like a sleepwalker, peering into peoples’ eyes as he passed. He was aware that he was making people nervous, but he felt fairly certain that the demon would betray its presence through its eyes, which are, they say, the windows to the soul.
Ace was near the back of the club now, where the gamblers were playing cards and smoking cigars at little round tables, each with a lava lamp in the center which threw a circle of sickly yellow radiance around the players. One table was filled with Southern gentlemen who looked like Texas oil tycoons with white suits and 10-gallon hats. Another table was occupied by Mafioso. And another…
Ace’s heart stopped. The third table was populated by two geeky-looking fellows who were probably software tycoons, (one of whom looked remarkably like a fatter version of Bill Gates), and a biker type with long brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. The biker was facing Ace, and his skin seemed to pulsate and wriggle as though it were alive. As he got closer, Ace saw that what looked like skin was actually a mass of crawling maggots. In fact, it looked to Ace like there was really no head there at all, just a pulsing horror of little white worms, pushed together by some unseen force into the shape of a human head. If you were to hit it with a baseball bat, the bat would encounter no bone, no blood, just a pile of insects that would splatter everywhere like a watermelon being shot with a .300 Weatherby magnum.
The demon looked up at Ace and smiled, its eyes flashing red. Its skin looked normal now as it said, “Gentlemen, I believe we have another player. Deal you in?”
It took considerable self-control for Ace to hold his voice steady and reply, “What are you playing?”
“Five card draw, fifty dollar ante, jokers wild,” the demon replied as it shuffled the deck with a card-shark flourish.
“Fine. I’m in.”
Ace flagged down one of the g-stringed waitresses and tried to look nonchalant as he bought $1,000 worth of chips. He sat down at the table facing the demon, with one programmer on either side. Each player threw a $50 chip into the pot, and the demon deftly dealt each player five cards with a snapping flick of its wrist.
Ace examined his hand with a stony poker face that had been carefully perfected in more taverns than he cared to count. He had a 3, 4, 5 and 6, all spades, plus a jack of diamonds. Four parts toward a straight flush and open ended to boot. That gave him about one chance in four of completing the hand as either a straight or a flush, pretty good odds but still a risky proposition. If it didn’t pan out, he would be left holding nothing.
The programmer to the demon’s left sneered in a disgusted way, then tossed his hand face down on the table to indicate that he was holding nothing and would not open the betting. Ace opened by throwing a $100 chip into the pot. ‘Bill Gates,’ who was sitting to Ace’s left, eyeballed his hand, then tossed it on the table with a grunt. That left only the demon, who smiled and raised Ace by tossing in two $100 chips.
Ace was not rattled because Providence was on his side. After all, hadn’t the angel said that his hand would be made strong by the hand of the Lord? He smiled cockily and did something an experienced player never does, he threw in $700 worth of chips. Hmmph, that oughta make the ugly bastard back down.
The demon looked at Ace and chuckled, then it tossed in a fistful of chips, seeing Ace’s $600. It paused, locked eyes with Ace and hissed, very quietly, “It’s not the money I want.” The software tycoons looked at each other nervously. “Are you a religious man, Ace?”
“Never have been.”
The demon flashed a predatory grin and rasped, “Then I’m sure you wouldn’t mind betting me your soul.”
OK, thought Ace, this is it, the showdown, High Noon. “You’re on,” he replied. “You win, you get my soul. I win, you go back to wherever the hell you came from.”
“It’s a deal,” the demon replied. Ace wondered whether he ought to shake the demon’s hand to make it official, but the thought of touching that pulsating white skin filled Ace with unspeakable revulsion. The demon smiled, licked its lips and said, “Draw!”
Ace discarded the jack, flicking it face down onto the table. The demon also discarded one card, which meant that it was either trying to fill a flush or a straight, or else it was holding a pair or three-of-a-kind and was trying to make its hand look stronger than it really was. The demon dealt two cards, one to itself and one to Ace, deftly flicking Ace’s card across the length of the table. Ace reached over confidently, scooping up his card, then felt his heart sink into his boots when he picked it up and looked at it — 10 of hearts. He was holding a big, fat bust. Shit! Shit! Shit! Trying desperately to stave off internal panic, Ace threw his last $50 into the pot, delaying the inevitable for a few more seconds. Think, dammit, think! The demon smiled as it scrutinized Ace’s poker face, which Ace sincerely hoped was really as good as he thought. The demon called Ace’s bet and paused, savoring the moment. “Do you know what hell is like, Ace?” the demon whispered. It leaned in closer and Ace could see orange flames smoldering behind the empty facade of its eyes. “I’m going to tie you down to a bed of razor blades with a roll of barbed wire. Then I’m going to use a pair of rusty pliers to pull out all the bones in your feet.”
Ace leaned back in his chair, flashing his biggest, cockiest grin, and replied, “You’re pretty damn sure of your hand. What about your wrist?”
“What?”
“You got a bike?” The demon nodded affirmative. “I’ll race you for the whole enchilada, from here to the court house, winner takes all.”
The demon sized Ace up for a moment, then shouted “You’re on!” It threw its cards face-up on the table and laughed triumphantly. “Pair of threes! Ha! I bluffed you out!”
Ace smiled back. He showed his own worthless hand and replied with a bad Crocodile Dundee accent, “That’s not a bluff, mate. This is a bluff!” The demon cursed and sputtered, incoherent with rage. Ace flagged the waitress down again and said, “Hey, darlin’, would you mind watching my winnings for me? I’ll be back for ’em soon.” Ignoring the flabbergasted expressions on the faces of the waitress and the software tycoons, Ace stomped out of the Midnite Club with the demon hot on his heels.
On the curb outside the club, parked right next to Ace’s chopper, was a gleaming yellow sport bike, a hot-rodded Buell. It was obviously built with the singular purpose of speed in mind, and there was no doubt that the demon would have the advantage in the turns. However, Ace had picked the courthouse for a reason; a good bit of the ride would be comprised of straight-aways. The chopper, with its raked front end, couldn’t corner worth a damn, but in a straightaway its huge engine and long wheelbase made it a speeding missile. As Ace saddled up, it occurred to him that if the cops caught him racing, he would really be screwed, but the thought failed to land with any impact. It was a thought from another lifetime, a thought that seemed pale and insignificant when hell itself was breathing down his neck.
Ace straddled the chopper, pulled the enrichener knob all the way out and fired it up. The rich mixture forced the engine into the high rpm range, which made a staccato machine-gun sound that ricocheted off the stone face of the Midnite Club and echoed down the empty streets. He pushed the knob a quarter of the way in and the machine-gun tempo slowed to a loping potato potato potato, like a drummer playing paradiddles. Ace found the sound soothing. The demon fired up its bike as well, and the two of them sat there until both bikes were completely off choke. Ace pointed to the closest traffic light, which had just turned red, and shouted over the roar of the cycles, “When it turns green, we go!” The demon nodded affirmative and did a burnout to heat the rear tire, blackening the pavement and filling the street with acrid smoke. Ace didn’t bother; he knew that the demon would beat him off the line anyway. The speed of Ace’s takeoff would be limited by the fact that he couldn’t risk a power-wheelie; if the front wheel came off the ground, the impact when it landed again would bend the 12-inch-over forks, and that would be the end of the race. Ace wasn’t worried about it, though. He was betting that the chopper’s 50-to-100 time was far shorter than the Buell’s. The race was long enough that giving up a few seconds off the line wouldn’t ultimately matter.
The light that was aimed at the opposing traffic turned yellow, then red, and the demon gunned the Buell’s engine mercilessly. When the light turned green the demon popped the clutch and took off, lifting the front wheel 24 inches off the ground and instantly gaining a three-second lead.
Ace took off smoothly, quickly up-shifting into fifth. There were lines of tar across the pavement where some road crew had covered the thermal expansion joints in the concrete. As Ace accelerated, the sound of the tires rolling over the bumps sped up from a slow gadump… gadump… gadump to a loping wumpwumpwumpwump and finally to a singular sort of braaaap, all within about three seconds. At 3000 rpm, the high-lift cam turned on hard, and the chopper responded to the throttle like a bucking horse to a whip. Ace leaned his body forward and clutched the handlebars fiercely to prevent his ass from sliding off the seat and onto the rear fender. The wind scream in his ears rose to a deafening pitch, and tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. The demon also had its throttle pegged, but the Buell wasn’t designed to be a drag bike. Ace shot forward like a rocket, quickly closing the gap.
Traffic lights and street lamps sped by in a luminous blur as the racers blew every red light in their path at speeds in excess of 100 mph. If a car happened to pull out in front of them, there would be no time to stop. Both bikes would strike the car broadside, erupting in a volcanic ball of fire, showering the street with bright orange sparks and spraying bits of hot metal everywhere. There would be no need for body bags; there would be nothing left for the fire department to clean up except for a big red smear on the pavement and the occasional ear or finger hanging in the bushes or splattered against the curb. Ace desperately hoped that the highway on-ramp would appear soon.
After what seemed like the longest 60 seconds of his life, the big, green sign for the on-ramp appeared. The demon hit the clover-leaf interchange at 100 mph, leaning way over into the turn and dragging its leather-padded right knee on the ground. Ace maintained his speed until the last possible second, then braked hard and slowed to 50. Even so, the chopper’s low-slung frame only had about 4 inches of ground clearance. The right foot peg touched down when Ace hit the ramp, spraying a shower of white sparks behind him and costing him even more time.
By the time Ace had merged onto the highway proper, the Buell had gained a lot of ground, but the highway was where the chopper was at home. Ace nailed the throttle and braced for the acceleration. The chopper responded like a guided missile, with a massive surge of power. The needle of the speedometer quickly rose to 140 mph, and the gap began to close once again.
The road was long and straight, which was perfect for Ace, since the Buell topped out around 145, while the chopper still had plenty of top end left. The Buell’s taillight grew quickly from a tiny red point of light in the distance, until the demon was clearly visible again. The wind blast was nearly unbearable. Ace put his feet back on the passenger pegs and leaned forward with his chest on the tank, trying to escape the vicious slipstream. Gradually, the chopper pulled ahead of the Buell; Ace was finally in the lead.
Everything screamed by in a blur. Insects sand blasted Ace’s face and neck, stinging like hell and plastering his face and glasses with guts. The speedometer was vibrating so badly that it was barely readable, but the needle seemed to be shaking somewhere around 155. The exit for the courthouse was coming up too quickly. Ace had hoped to put more distance between himself and the demon, but there wasn’t going to be enough time. He began to slow the chopper down. It would be suicide to try to take the off-ramp any faster than 50 mph.
As Ace eased the chopper around the clover-leaf, the demon roared up from behind and slipped around him, once again seizing the lead with one knee dragging. The off-ramp let out onto a city street, straight and full of traffic lights. The courthouse was visible in the distance, no more than four or five blocks away.
As Ace wrapped the throttle around, he realized that he wasn’t going to make it. The demon had once again gained about three seconds worth of lead, and there wasn’t enough distance left to make it up. There was only one option left. Ace flipped the switch that armed the nitrous oxide. The last time he had used the nitrous, the force of the exploding gas had caused the front connecting rod to snap the Evo’s skimpy crank pin. The rod had then piled down through the crankcase, destroying the motor’s bottom end and dumping oil out all over the road. Of all of the bad ideas Ace had tried out on the chopper over the years, the goddamn nitrous was definitely the worst, but if he didn’t use it, this race was lost. The courthouse was two blocks away now. He silently prayed that the bottom end would hold, then he hit the button.
The acceleration was comparable to the Batman ride at Great Adventure. The G-force pulled the flesh of Ace’s face back, turning it into a grotesque, grimacing mask. Ace could feel his internal organs being pressed against the back of his rib cage, and it took all of the strength left in his exhausted arms to cling to the handlebars and not fly off the back of the bike. The chopper blew by the Buell like it was standing still, flying into the courthouse’s huge, empty parking lot, beating the Buell by about 20 feet. Ace hit the brakes, rode in a big loop around the lot and came back around to face the demon.
The Buell had stopped dead, frozen in time, as though it had hit an invisible brick wall. The bike stood up, flexing its limbs, and Ace suddenly realized that it was not really a bike at all. How could he have ever mistaken that abomination for a bike? The steed writhed and thrashed, spitting and gnashing its long yellow fangs before dissolving into a cloud of yellow smoke. The demon, meanwhile, was raging and screaming in some language that Ace couldn’t understand. It wanted nothing more than to tear Ace to shreds, to mash him into a pile of bloody hamburger and bone splinters, but it had lost the race, and a deal is, after all, a deal. The life force that had held the demon’s body together was being drained out, and the body was losing the cohesion that had held it together. It was, in fact, turning into a pile of little white worms that fell in heaps upon the ground and crawled away. Within minutes, the Buell and its rider were no more.
In the days and weeks that followed, Ace spent a great deal of time mulling over the recent events, trying to decide if they were real, wondering for the first time in his life, what is reality? But Ace was a man who had always survived by rolling with life’s punches, and sometimes the wisest course of action was not to think. Sometimes, it was better to just ride.
The Set Up
By Bandit |
In the back woods of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, there is a small, winding road that does not appear on any map, and which few have ever traveled. It winds around over the tops of the hills, through lush groves scented by pine trees, where white-tailed deer leap gracefully over fallen logs and squirrels make crunching sounds on the thick mat of dried pine needles. On nights of the full moon, when spring is in her glory, stars sparkle brightly in the inky black sky, and millions of fireflies wink in the clean, crisp air, signaling each other with secret tribal semaphores that are not taught to outsiders.
Into this idyllic scene rumbles a man who, in another life, was known as Dan Winslow, but is now called, simply, Brother Daniel. He is a strange figure to see out here in the forest, so his appearance warrants the effort of description. He is riding an ancient BSA Lightning Rocket, which in itself is unusual. But wait, there’s more. His head is shaved clean like a Tibetan monk’s, and he has a long, stringy Oriental-style goatee that flaps in the wind over his left shoulder. He is wearing a hooded cloak made of brown burlap that also flaps straight out behind him as he rides. He is in his 40s, tall and lean, and in his clear blue eyes, abundant peace resides.
Brother Daniel never decides where to go. In fact, he doesn’t even know where he is going; at least not in the logical and intellectual sense with which most of us use the word “know.” He knows where to go the same way the fish know where to swim; he doesn’t have to think about it or rationalize it, he just knows. So now he heads south, and he knows that Buzzard will be there, because that’s what is supposed to happen at that particular time and place. Brother Daniel is plugged into the consciousness of the universe in a way few modern men can comprehend, and as such, his intuition is never wrong.
Dan Winslow had hated his life. It was to be expected, since he was living out the American dream. He had one wife, two kids, eight credit cards (each with a staggering debt), two $50,000 cars, a $500,000 house, complete with a breathtaking mortgage, and, of course, the old Beezer, which he hadn’t ridden in years. He was post-modern, fast-paced, career-oriented, upwardly mobile, highly fashionable and completely burned out. At the age of 39, he was gaining weight, losing hair and beginning to have creeping doubts about the relative value of things like foyers with cathedral ceilings and 7-foot-high chandeliers that are visible from the street. But, like the song says, there were planes to catch and bills to pay, and Dan wasn’t a man who was overly given to thoughtful introspection. Had he been such a man, he might have given some serious thought to the subject of omens. But Dan Winslow had no time for omens because they were neither big nor shiny nor even terribly expensive (or so he thought), and therefore would, in all probability, not impress the neighbors. Which was a pity, really, because at that very moment, one mother of an omen was teetering, like the sword of Damocles, right above his head. Had he been taught to see such things, it might, in fact, have saved him quite a lot of trouble.This particular omen took the innocuous form of a letter-sized manila envelope. Its upper left corner was emblazoned with the crest of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Just below the crest was the Harrisburg return address of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Dan tore open the envelope with that vague sense of dread that is sadly familiar to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of official correspondence from the state. Inside was a letter informing him that he, Daniel P. Winslow, had 0 traffic tickets outstanding, and that he faced the imminent loss of his driver’s license unless he immediately remitted the sum of 00 dollars and 00 cents. For a moment he couldn’t quite believe it; he just stood there, staring incredulously at the Kafkaesque letter, mouth open like a dying fish. After spending an infuriating hour lost in the bureau’s labyrinthine automated phone system, he was put in touch with a clerk at the Montgomery County Court House in Norristown. The clerk assured him that the computer error that had generated the fantastically absurd letter would be corrected at once, and Dan gave the matter no further thought. An official had assured him; why would he doubt it?
But the executives had an understanding with the cops in the city, as most were heavy contributors to the FOP. Dan’s shiny new Mercedes was like a signal flare; it hinted at secret connections to sources of money and power that no smart cop should ever cross. So Dan wasn’t overly concerned when he saw the flashing red and blue lights in his rear view mirror; hell, he didn’t even think that they were directed toward him. He figured that the cop just wanted him to get out of the way so that he could go get the real bad guys. It wasn’t until the cop ran right up on his rear bumper that his befuddled mind formed the thought that there was nobody else, he was the only thing on this goddamn evil road.
The gray steel guardrail looked surreal, almost like a video game, as Dan carefully eased his way onto the shoulder. A minor misunderstanding, he thought. I’ll just have a little talk with the good officer and straighten this whole thing out. Dan turned his dome light on, hit the button that rolled the driver-side window down and waited for the cop to approach. He didn’t have to wait long. The cop looked apprehensive at first, but his face relaxed once he had sized up his adversary and decided that Dan was probably not dangerous.
“License and registration, please.”
“Just a minute, officer, I think there’s been a little misunderstanding. A little- heh heh- yes, what I mean to say is…”
“Sir, I need to see your license and registration now.” Dirty Harry voice, heavy sheriff-at-sundown overtones.
Dan couldn’t quite believe it. He, Daniel P. Winslow III, was being ordered around like a common criminal, by this kid, who looked to be all of 21…fresh out of the academy, with his hairless cheeks and his I-am-the-law swagger. “Young man,” he said, “do you know who I am? Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with? Just who the hell do you think you are?”
“Sir, please step out of the car.”
“No, wait, this is all a simple misunderstanding. Let me just…”
“Sir, I need you to step out of the car right now!”
Dan sat silently in the passenger seat of his wife’s car, looking out the window and not saying anything. He looked like a man who has spent the last 48 hours in the bowels of Philadelphia’s justice system; unshaven, messed-up hair, black eye and dried blood on the front of his Pierre Cardin shirt. His “suspended license,” which the courthouse was supposed to have corrected, had of course come up on the police computers, so he was now out on bail, pending a trial for driving under the influence, driving with a suspended license and resisting arrest. Without a license, his wife had had to come to the jail to pick him up, and she drove now in utter silence, lips drawn tight into a narrow slash of fury. The drive home was taking forever. Dan wished to God that she would say something, anything, or at least turn the goddamn radio on.
Dan sat uncomfortably at his boss Bob’s desk, waiting for him to finish shuffling through a small pile of papers. Every now and then Bob would look up, and Dan could see his gaze involuntarily flicking over to the black eye. All morning, Dan’s colleagues had been nodding curt hellos or turning away when they saw him coming, which, of course, meant that the rumor-mill had been working overtime, and that the news was all over the office by now. Bob, evidently deciding that he couldn’t stall any longer, tapped the papers on the desk to square them and then set them aside.
“I heard about your little, ah, incident there,” said Bob, pointing with a pencil at Dan’s eye. He waited for a moment, but Dan didn’t say anything. “We’re a tight-knit little community in this business, Dan. Word gets around pretty fast, you know.”
Dan exhaled deeply. “Look Bob, I know what you’re thinking and…”
“Daaaaan, Danny-Boy, why didn’t you come to us? You should have told us if you were having a problem. We could have helped you, there are programs…”
“I’m not ‘having a problem’, Bob. I made a little mistake, that’s all. I’m taking care of it, and I assure you it will never happen again.”
“That’s not the point, Dan,” Bob replied. “Everybody knows now! Your co-workers, your clients, everybody! Reputation is everything in this business, you know that.”
“So what are you saying, Bob?” Bob looked down at his desk. His silence said it all. “Jesus, Bob! How long have you and I known each other? Ten years? Fifteen? How much money have I made for this company?”
“I’m sorry, Danny-Boy, I really am… But I don’t make the rules of the game, I just have to play by ’em. You know how much I respect you, but this isn’t personal- it’s business.”
Dan ransacked the house looking for the $4,000 custom-made golf clubs his wife had given him for his 35th birthday. Right now, he didn’t want to think about his arrest, his termination or his impending trial. All he wanted was to play a few holes to soothe his jangled nerves, just keep his eye on the little white ball and not think about anything else. He distinctly remembered having put them away in the bedroom closet, but now they seemed to have disappeared. He rummaged through the closet and under the bed, a vague unease in the back of his mind making his motions increasingly jagged and frantic. Suddenly he froze, like a cartoon character doing a double take after running off the edge of a cliff. He slowly turned his gaze back toward the bed. There was a sheet of paper lying neatly in the center of it. It was like finding a shark in your swimming pool or a dildo in your oatmeal; an ordinary enough object made extraordinary by being somewhere it had no business to be. Hand trembling faintly, he picked it up. Written on it in blue ballpoint pen were the following words:
Dear Dan,
By the time you read this, I will be gone. Our marriage hasn’t been working for a long time now, and this drinking problem of yours is the final straw. I can’t help feeling that there just has to be more to life than this, so I have decided to go to Bora Bora with my dear friend Philippe, the French sculptor, to find myself. I’m not sure what I want anymore, but it’s pretty clear that this isn’t it. Someday, when all this is over, maybe we can be friends again. But until then, I’m afraid this is goodbye.
-Annette
Of course. That explained the missing clubs. The feeling slowly drained out of Dan’s left leg as he started sliding into some preternatural kind of shock. He lurched against the wall and began sliding down toward the floor. Then his left arm went numb. Then the left side of his face.
Death. He was sure of it. He would die of some unexplained neurological malfunction, a fatal lockup of the medulla, resulting in complete loss of respiratory control. They would find his body here in the bedroom, blue and stiff, clutching this damned letter in his right hand while halfway across the globe some evil bastard of a Frenchman was fucking his wife and swinging his nine wood.
Dan stood on the ledge outside a top-floor window in the university’s main downtown building and looked down at the tiny ant-world below. He pressed his back against the cold stone and his fingers sought out chinks in the rock to stabilize himself against the whipping of the wind, a useless instinct, considering what he had come here to do. Looking down again, the ground seemed suddenly to drop out. All of the lines that made up the giant glass-and-steel skyscrapers around him now disappeared into a single vanishing point far below. He imagined himself swan diving off the ledge, accelerating at 32 feet per second squared, quickly reaching terminal velocity. He saw himself rocketing past the window of a boardroom full of professors, the shock and horror on their faces as they looked at each other, then back at the window, not quite sure that they really saw what they think they saw. Then the explosive impact as his body violently smashes through the hood of a car belonging to some pin-striped stockbroker type who is on his way to work. In his mind’s eye, Dan could see his own skull caving in the windshield; safety glass, brains, viscera and shards of bone spraying everywhere, blood and bits of meat dripping down the fronts of store windows and stop signs. A sudden sense of vertigo seized him now, accompanied by elevator sensations in the pit of his stomach. He averted his gaze from the lethal asphalt below and instead concentrated on the ledge, the texture of its weather-beaten stones spattered with pigeon shit, the intricacy of the scrollwork sculpted into the ledge, the fangs and bat wings of the gargoyle protruding from the corner.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said the gargoyle.
“What the hell do you know about being me?” Dan snarled, dimly aware that he must be going mad.
“Much more than you suspect.”
“Yeah? Well fuck you, it’s my life.”
“Soooo, he thinks his life belongs to him, yes?” said the gargoyle significantly, turning to address another gargoyle that had shambled over to hear the conversation. “If he destroys himself, can he create another man to replace the one which he has destroyed? Ha! He thinks that the vandal who smashes a vase is more exalted than the potter who created it!” Dan felt a palpable jolt of power as the gargoyle turned its gaze toward him. It glowed with an inner light that radiated out through its eyes. It was like being caught in a police searchlight. “You seek answers, yes?”
“What are you, my guardian angel? My spirit guide?”
“Spirit guide!” the gargoyle exclaimed. “I haven’t heard that one in a long time… Some people have called me those things. There is an unseen world that coexists with this one, yes? It lies just below the surface of your perception. If you could see it, you would see that even now the air before you swarms with beings you can’t even imagine.” (This was not an agreeable thought.) “When necessary, I take on whatever form is most convenient.” A pause. “You are searching for something, yes? And you want it so badly that you will follow it right over that ledge. What do you seek, Daniel? What is it you want?”
Suddenly, the pressure that had been building up for years finally exploded and he cried out: “I want to be an idiot dancing in the sagebrush! I want to be like a small child! I want to be as innocent as the lamb!” A pause. Then, very quietly: “I want to be without sin.”
“Very well, then,” replied the angel, “make it so.” Puzzlement. No reply. “Years ago, when a circus would buy a baby elephant to train, the elephant was held captive by means of a manacle that was chained to a stake in the ground. Once the elephant accepted the idea of the stake, for the rest of its life, the tiniest toothpick was sufficient to keep it captive. Why? Because, even when the elephant was full-grown, it did not believe that it was strong enough to pull the stake out. It was held captive, not by the stake, but rather by the idea of the stake.” A pause to let this sink in. “God forgives you, Daniel. Get down off this ledge and go in peace.”
Enlightenment is a strange term. The divine spirit certainly has an aspect of light about it, but really, immolation or even incineration would be far more accurate. Enlightenment is like a blast furnace, a giant cutting torch that burns away the dross until only pure billet remains. To the ego and other false selves, enlightenment feels like death, which for them, it is. But after the purification has run its course, the true self remains, a hollowed-out shell filled with the song of the universe.
Buzzard had a bit of a problem. For the past week, Gino’s Bar & Grill had been frequented- every night on the dot of 8- by a sweet little thing who was finally, absolutely and completely the most beautiful girl Buzzard had ever seen. In fact, it might have been more than a week. Buzzard had no way of knowing how long it had taken him to notice her. (Although, he thought, the man who failed to notice this lovely creature probably needed his head- or other parts of his anatomy- examined.) Now, this is not the sort of thing that most people generally consider a problem. The problem was that Buzzard- the very same Buzzard who fearlessly faced down cops and outlaws alike and never backed down- was extremely shy when it came to women. She sat at the bar, dejectedly twirling a glass of white wine by the stem, long blond hair cascading over her face, lost in her troubles and oblivious to the world. Buzzard was a sucker for pretty and sad. There was just no getting around it. He strapped on his imaginary pair of big brass balls, took a mighty swig of beer for courage and walked over to the bar.
“Uh, hello,” Buzzard said in his most congenial tone. The girl turned her head slowly and found herself looking at a lanky but muscular torso. Then she looked up and seemed momentarily taken aback. But then again, this tall fellow with the long brown hair and neatly trimmed beard was pretty typical of what one would find in a place like Gino’s, wasn’t he?
“Hi,” she replied, a little abruptly.
Buzzard noticed that her glass was nearly empty. “Buy you a drink?” She nodded and Buzzard called out, “Hey Dave! Another Guinness for me and a wine for the lady.” Then, to the girl, “My name’s Horace, but everybody calls me Buzzard. What’s your name?”
The girl’s lip curled ever so slightly, no doubt at the incongruity of this wolf man who stood before her having a name like Horace. She sized him up with her piercing blue eyes, like a gambler weighing the odds before placing a bet. Then she said wryly, “Kira, but everybody calls me Kira.”
“I’ve never seen you here before.”
She looked down at the floor in the most dejected way that Buzzard had ever seen and replied, “I never had a reason to be here before.”
“Is there anything I can do?” Buzzard asked. Kira looked up from the floor. It had been a long time since anyone had taken any interest in her or her troubles.
Officer Willie van Dycke paced his apartment in a state of acute agitation. It wasn’t merely because he ran a risky but lucrative side business selling cocaine he’d taken from crime scenes, although that was certainly a part of it. It was because, for the past month, he’d been hiding his stash in his wife Kira’s car, and she had recently started coming home at later and later hours. Van Dycke did not relish the thought of being caught with a kilo of coke in his closet, and he was anxious to transfer it to the car as quickly as possible.
He paced around the apartment in a mean funk, eyes glazed, popping his knuckles, fidgeting with his cop mustache and flexing his big biceps. He nervously checked his watch. It was only 15 minutes since the last time he’d checked it. Finally he picked up the phone, brutally jabbing at it with his beefy index finger as if he meant to punch holes in it.
“Hello?”
“Hey Jimmy, it’s Willie.”
“Ay, Willie, what’s up?”
“Listen, Jimmy, can you do me a big favor?”
“Sure… Watcha need?”
“It’s about my wife.” He paused. It was damned embarrassing to have to admit this to someone. “She’s, uh, been coming home later and later every night and I wanna know what she’s up to. Do you think you could use one of the unmarked cars to tail her when she gets out of work tomorrow?”
There was a brief pause on the other end, which meant that van Dycke’s suspicions were obvious. Jimmy replied, “Sure thing, Willie. No problem,” in an overly cheerful way that indicated that he had no intention of probing at what he knew must be a very sore spot.
“Thanks a lot, pal. I owe you one, big time. And Jimmy? Just keep this between you and me, OK? I don’t want word gettin’ around.”
“You got it, pal.”
Van Dycke hung up the phone and poured himself a double scotch on the rocks. Apparently, slapping Kira around wasn’t good enough; she wasn’t getting the message. She better not be fucking somebody, he thought. If that dirty bitch is fucking somebody, I swear to God I’ll skin them both alive.
Jesus Moreno sat at the lunch counter of the ?50s retro-style Mill Creek Diner, known affectionately in the neighborhood as the Choke n’ Puke. The Choke n’ Puke had a black-and-white checkered floor, more chrome than a parking lot full of Harleys and walls covered with pictures of classic cars and Elvis memorabilia. The lights were too bright. The overpowered stereo system assaulted the customers with a steady stream of syrupy sweet doo-wop music. But Jesus hadn’t come for the ambience. He had chosen this spot specifically so that he could watch the apartment building across the street through the diner’s big plate glass window. Word on the street was that Officer van Dycke was getting a little too zealous about confiscating cocaine. He rarely made any arrests, but he always took the coke, so it didn’t take brain surgery to figure out that the officer probably had a little side business going. A stash like that would be worth a lot of money, maybe even enough for Jesus to bootstrap himself into The Big Time.
He had been positively elated the first time he’d seen van Dycke rummaging around in that green Ford Probe. He’d realized then that the stash was probably in the car. This was good. Moreno was a pretty good car thief, but he’d never tried his hand at burglary, and he wasn’t eager to cut his teeth on a cop’s apartment.
Jesus looked at his watch. Recently the Probe had begun arriving at the apartment later and later each night. He finished the last gritty dregs of his coffee and slipped a couple of bucks under the empty cup. He decided to follow the Probe tomorrow and see where it went. It would probably be safer to take it there, wherever “there” was, than to do it right in front of the apartment, where van Dycke could come out at any moment, guns blazing.
Special Agent Cox awoke with a start when he heard the big reel-to-reel tape recorder start up. Shit, he thought, musta dozed off again. There was nothing on the face of God’s green earth more boring than stakeout duty. He heaved his lean body upright, ran his fingers through his thinning hair and rubbed the stubble on his narrow jaw. As his eyes swam into focus, he saw the squat, bulldozer form of Special Agent Wacker, coffee in hand, peering through the telescope. Agent Cox turned up the volume of the tape recorder to an audible level. Tinny-sounding telephone audio squawked out of the speakers.
“Sure, Willie. Watcha need?”
“It’s about my wife.” (Embarrassed pause) “She’s, uh, been coming home later and later every night and I wanna know what she’s up to. Do you think you could use one of the unmarked cars to tail her when she gets out of work tomorrow?”
Cox turned down the sound again. “Shit,” he said. “I think the bastard’s using his wife’s car as a stash.”
“Yup,” replied Wacker without turning around.
“What should we do? Try to catch him making a sale?”
“Not unless he does it within the next couple days,” replied Wacker. “Waiting around with our thumbs up our asses is too risky. We don’t wanna blow this. Let’s give him a couple more days and if nothing happens, we’ll just take him the next time he goes for the stash.”
Cox frowned. “It’s his wife’s car. It’ll be damn hard to prove the stuff’s his.”
“Then we’ll take the wife,” Wacker replied, “and force him to fess up.”
“What if he lets her take the fall?”
Wacker turned around and shrugged nonchalantly. “If he lets her go down, it’s not our fault. There’s nothing we can do about it; we’ll just have to take her down.”
Kira and Buzzard were at Gino’s again the following night at the usual time. Kira, who had spent years building a wall of solitude around herself, now found someone knocking on that wall for the first time, trying to gain admittance. He was a mysterious stranger who was a porcupine on the outside but a marshmallow on the inside, and Kira found herself pecking at the wall like a chick trying to break through its shell. Kira and Buzzard were thus locked in conversation when he heard the sound.
Buzzard’s ears were finely tuned instruments that could detect, sort and catalog literally hundreds of different exhaust notes, and this was one he hadn’t heard in a long time, an old BSA. Kira saw Buzzard’s quizzical expression, ear cocked toward the door, lips pursed in the faint precursor to a question. Then his face broke into a wide grin and he said, to nobody in particular, “I can’t believe it! It can’t be!”
Then the door creaked open and a tall figure glided silently in, head shaved, long beard, dressed in brown burlap, a strange-looking priest of some mysterious religion. Buzzard looked at the figure, then back at Kira and said, “It’s Brother Daniel!” in a voice that was all joy and boiling excitement. He sprang up to meet Daniel, gave him a bear hug and clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Brother Daniel!” he shouted. “Gawd-damn it’s been a long time! Come here, sit down, you look dog-tired. Hey Dave,” he shouted at the bartender, “some red wine and another Guinness!” But in the back of Buzzard’s mind, a vague foreboding was forming, like the gathering clouds of a storm front. Brother Daniel had an odd habit of appearing at the exact moment when his presence was needed, and Buzzard couldn’t help but wonder what sort of mischief the Fates had in store.
Jesus grimaced and flexed his legs as far as space would allow. For the past two hours he’d been hiding behind the big green Dumpster at the far end of Gino’s parking lot. He had gotten his cousin to tail the Probe and drop him off here, at this seedy bar in a run-down section of town.
Jesus crept over to the building and peered in through the window. The cop’s wife looked preoccupied with a big wolf man and some reject from a bad kung fu movie. It seemed as good a time as any to get started.
He crept back to the car, unrolled a small tool-roll full of lock picking instruments and quickly went to work on the lock.
Officer Jimmy Rafferty sat in an unmarked car across the street from Gino’s. He was dressed in black, slouching low in the seat to avoid being seen, and peering into the window of the bar with a high-powered pair of binoculars. Some Puerto Rican guy was breaking into Kira’s car, but Jimmy wasn’t overly excited about that. He could afford to wait until the thief actually began taking the ignition lock apart, then he could get the guy for grand theft auto. Besides, Jimmy had more important things to worry about at the moment.
He put the binoculars down, whipped out a small cell phone and punched in a number. “Hello?” said a voice on the other end.
“Hey Willie, it’s Jimmy. I found Kira.”
“Great! Where is she?”
“She’s at this little dive called Gino’s. It’s on Gregg Street, near the warehouses.”
“Yeah, I know where it is. Made a couple of busts there once. What the hell is she doing there?”
“Looks like she’s with some big hairy guy…”
“Big hairy guy? What big hairy guy?”
“I dunno… Lanky guy, maybe 6-3, 6-4…long hair, beard; you can’t miss ‘im.”
“Thanks,” growled van Dycke as he slammed down the phone.
“Willie, wait!” shouted Jimmy, but he was shouting into a dead phone.
Agent Cox was rummaging through a brown paper bag full of stale snacks. Agent Wacker was peering through the telescope as usual.
“Our man’s on the move,” said Wacker. “Looks like he’s in a hurry, too.”
“Wanna follow him?” asked Cox.
“You bet,” replied Wacker. “Let’s roll.”
Kira was both intrigued and amused by the unusual cast of characters that had chosen to converge at, of all places, this seedy little biker bar. This latest character moved like a cat and spoke like a Zen monk. There was something about his presence that made her keenly aware of everything around her, as if her own psychic energies were being somehow buoyed by his immense and powerful aura. She reached down to get a cigarette from her purse, but her purse was not hanging from the chair. “Damn,” she said.
“What?” replied Buzzard.
“My cigarettes… I must have left my purse in the car.”
“I’ll get it for you. Which car is it?”
“Green Ford Probe,” she replied as she dug the keys out of her pocket and handed them to Buzzard.
“Be right back,” he said, drawing his long body upright.
Buzzard started to open the door but stopped short. Through the crack, he could see the Probe, as well as the little skinny guy who was working away at the lock. In one fluid motion, Buzzard reached his long arm around the bar to where he knew Big Dave kept the shotgun. Dave did a take, then a doubletake and shouted “Hey!” but by then Buzzard was already out the door.
“You better get the fuck away from that car!” Buzzard shouted as he strode toward the Probe. Jesus whirled around, a long, wicked-looking blade appearing suddenly in his hand, but then he heard the ch-chak as Buzzard cocked the shotgun and he knew he was fucked.
Jesus and Buzzard were both taken by surprise when they saw the cop cruiser screech into the parking lot, practically on two wheels. Jesus was still holding the knife, but in his panic, he seemed to have forgotten about it. A big, muscular cop with a square jaw and a cop mustache leapt out of the cruiser, revolver drawn. Buzzard put the shotgun down, pointed at Jesus and yelled, “He’s trying to steal that car!”
Incredibly, though, the cop was pointing his revolver at Buzzard, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Buzzard’s guts clenched into a knot as he suddenly realized that something was very, very wrong. “You hairy freak!” the cop screeched. “I’ll teach you to fuck around with my wife!” The tip of the revolver was jittering in the cop’s shaking grip.
“Wife?” Buzzard yelled. “What wife? Who the hell are you?”
A black sedan screeched to a halt behind the cop cruiser and two men in black suits and black ties jumped out. One was tall and lean, the other short and built like a bulldozer. Both had auto pistols drawn. They ran toward Buzzard and van Dycke, guns pointed at the latter. The squat one was shouting, “Put it down, van Dycke! The jig is up!”
“This sonofabitch is fucking my wife!”
“Fuck you! I’ve never seen your wife!”
And suddenly, there was another gun-wielding man adding to the bedlam, shouting, “Willie! Don’t do it! He’s unarmed! It’s not worth it!”
Nobody even saw Brother Daniel move. But suddenly he was standing there, holding a katana in a two-fisted kenjutsu stance, its blade spattered with dark red gore. Van Dycke looked down; where before there had been a hand and a gun, now there was nothing but a stump. He opened his mouth as if to scream, and a fountain of red began to gush from the end of his ruined arm. Van Dycke sank to his knees, his nervous system locked up with shock. For a long moment nobody moved. Then Jimmy started yelling, “Ambulance! Somebody get an ambulance!”
The magic words “officer down” had brought the ambulance quickly. Jimmy had been able to prevent van Dycke from bleeding to death in the interim by using his belt as a tourniquet. Jesus Moreno and Brother Daniel had both been taken into custody at the scene. Daniel had simply shrugged, handed his sword to Agent Cox and stepped into the car without complaint or protest.
Brother Daniel was released two days later. Moreno had cut a deal for leniency in exchange for his agreement to testify against van Dycke, so Kira was off the hot seat. Officer van Dycke was at the county hospital in critical but stable condition, awaiting indictment on attempted murder and assorted drug trafficking charges.
Now Buzzard and Brother Daniel were back in Gino’s, Buzzard with his ever-present Guinness, Daniel with his red wine. “They took me down to the station for questioning,” said Brother Daniel, “but they had to let me go after they took the other witnesses’ statements. That cop was going to shoot you, everybody saw it. They even gave me my sword back.”
“What didja do,” asked Buzzard, grinning, “use The Force on ’em?”
Brother Daniel returned the grin. “Something like that,” he said.
“Where are you going now?” asked Buzzard.
“I don’t know,” replied Daniel with a shrug. “I guess I’ll just keep listening to the wind.”
The End
Quest for Sturgis
By Bandit |
I had ceased to trust El Cid after the knife incident in New Mexico. I had stress fractures forming in my brittle psyche. I could feel the paranoia drifting in through every pore that wasn’t already blocked with bug guts, salt, or 60-weight bike oil. Every access point-the nostrils, the ears, the parched tear ducts, the busted and seat-polished asshole-it seeped in everywhere, slow, gray, like gutter bile. Paranoia defies the laws of permeability and non-permeability. As with nickel cigar smoke or a dirty New Orleans B chord, the gamy bitch beds where she damned well pleases, and the best defense is arrogant allegiance. Ride it, ride the sick mother like an adopted twerp, whipping and screaming, beating the juices out of it with a crop of tightly woven doom, into the rubber wall of relativity in hopes of being hurled all the way back to contemporary reality, social acceptance, and perceived salvation.
Quest for Sturgis
By Bandit |
I had ceased to trust El Cid after the knife incident in New Mexico. I had stress fractures forming in my brittle psyche. I could feel the paranoia drifting in through every pore that wasn’t already blocked with bug guts, salt, or 60-weight bike oil. Every access point-the nostrils, the ears, the parched tear ducts, the busted and seat-polished asshole-it seeped in everywhere, slow, gray, like gutter bile. Paranoia defies the laws of permeability and non-permeability. As with nickel cigar smoke or a dirty New Orleans B chord, the gamy bitch beds where she damned well pleases, and the best defense is arrogant allegiance. Ride it, ride the sick mother like an adopted twerp, whipping and screaming, beating the juices out of it with a crop of tightly woven doom, into the rubber wall of relativity in hopes of being hurled all the way back to contemporary reality, social acceptance, and perceived salvation.
My partner, El Cid, and I were in Bandit’s hideout located at the peak of the Malibu hills, overlooking the Pacific. This was where the wanted rogue and his legion of hoodlums generated the motorcycle world’s most twisted yellow rag. A far reaching table of brushed aluminum, surrounded by barstool-style motorcycle seats, bearing a billet fruit bowl filled with chromed human skulls ran along one wall. Bandit lounged heavily in a broad, high-backed leather chair made from old motorcycle jackets, with zippers running in all directions like an interchange of county highways. He leaned far over the vintage Panhead springer frame and engine, which acted as the legs to the eight-foot slab of crystal that formed his desk.
“When you ride up to Sturgis, you really feel your bike. That’s the true Old West up there. You may never come back…” Bandit said calmly, smoothing the pages of his white tiger-skinned atlas with his Harley-bedecked hands. He gazed for a moment at a black shield that hung above his door. Upon the simple, almost crude fixture were burn-engraved the words, “To my good friend,Bandit. Only those elements time cannot wear were made before me, and beyond time I stand. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
“I’ve plotted a route I want you to take. I think it’s the mostbeautiful and interesting way to get to Sturgis … back roads, out-of-the-way places. You’ll meet characters there you can’t meet anywhere else,” the outlaw told me, smiling warmly.
Bandit handed me a piece of his 5-Ball-embossed stationary (five wives), and for an instant I had a pointed burning sensation in my hand, similar to the feeling one gets when a bootleg Cubano smoke rolls off a poker table in Miami. Without thinking you involuntarily grab the coal end, snatching it from its ruinous descent. On it was written, in Old English, a detailed route originating in L.A. and ending in Sturgis, South Dakota. He hadn’t bothered to draft a return route.
I’d written for Bandit before and figured his route would be as good as any. Our assignment: Cover the greatest motorcycle rally in the history of man-Sturgis. Fifteen countries in five languages awaited our account on the biggest thug orgy in the world, based on a cherry route hand-picked by one of the most overpaid outlaws to ever bend a footpeg. And despite his numerous social handicaps, dammit, I liked the guy. He was on our side.
El Cid and I saddled up and put the spurs to our twins at the witch’s hour. We were to ride deep into the desert, travel at night (safer that way-less chance of burning up a scoot in the 120-degree heat), snort a few June bugs, and knock the cobwebs out of the tail pipes before setting in for the big pull north. El Cid, in typical Spaniard bravado, tossed his tattooed prick onto my beaten road map and proclaimed that with an inch equaling 100 miles, a man can judge his riding ability by the distance he spans in a day. By his measurements he predicted we would ride somewhere deep into the broiling litter box known as Death Valley.
At around 4 a.m. we shut down in a nameless, paintless hotel on the hot side of Hades on Cinder Street for two hours sleep. Six a.m. came quicker than usual, but there were no complaints. There’d been a chill in the air when El Cid had marked our coordinates thenight before, so we had only ridden 500 miles. Big Lucy, my’93 Wide Glide, had a dead battery-the first sign. We push started her and headed east. Fifteen minutes later, she blew her tail pipes off and I became a pedestrian in an area on the map near the Nevada border called “The Devil’s Playground.” I sent El Cid on to find help. He roared off east toward Vegas, his red cape cracking in the wind, burning like fire under the dry-scald sun of the desert, which God made just to prove he was God.
I’d been down in these conditions before, so I moved quickly. Unpacking my saddlebags, I pulled out anything white-bandannas,T-shirts, underwear-and covered all exposed skin to prevent horrendous burns and retain fluids. The blacktop was partially liquidized with heat and I shifted from one boot to the next to prevent scorching the soles of my feet. I scanned the map. The nearest water was in Furnace Creek, 30 kilometers over a 3,000-foot rock range. Then I noticed in parenthesis the word “Dry.”
The thing a person notices in the desert, is the silence. Heat waves make no sound and in this area they are the only thing that moves. I could hear my own breathing, each dry puff, every gravely movement on the radiating pavement, the grind of the sand beneath my ass as I sat, staring out into the shimmering oblivion. Mysounds traveled to infinity, finding no competition. I could hear thejoints on the hard outer shells of the scorpions creaking as theyslowly, laboriously inhaled and exhaled the brittle, spiny air. Billions of expired plants protected themselves with thousands ofhomegrown swords against marauding beasts who would never come. The entire desert is a vast exercise in misery and irony where humor falls on its face and dies in the sand to lie uneaten by sweating ants.
Two more hours passed. I watched as a big rattler tried to race across the interstate, only to flop and writhe on the ribbon of impassable ebony death until it became a knotted rope of scrambled eggs where it sat, softly smoking.
At last the Red Dog appeared on the rippling horizon, coming on hard. El Cid had brought not only a gallon of water, but also Las Vegas Harley-Davidson’s search and rescue unit, the 121st Flying Angels.
Ten minutes after our arrival in Vegas the 121st had Big Lucy on a freshly evacuated trike hospital rack and had tracked the problem.
“Got a smoked stator,” Hiro told me. “Gonna have to tear it out, put in a new one.”
“How long?” I asked, pulling a pair of cotton underwear off my head.
“Three hours, door to door,” Hiro hollered over his air impact wrench. He knew the importance of our mission and worked accordingly.
El Cid and I walked across the street to the Poker Face and ordered lunch.
“We’re gut shot,” El Cid said bluntly, slugging back a tequila andorange juice.
“How do you figure?” I asked, chipping the salt off my bottom lip with a flathead screwdriver.
The waitress, a busted soul with do-it-yourself fingernails, skidded two plates loaded with cheeseburgers and rust-proofed french fries onto the blackjack table where we were seated.
“We got to be back in L.A. in three days. We’re already a day behind.”
“We could blow it straight through,” I said.
“To Sturgis?”
“Yep.”
“That’s 40 hours north … fucking crazy gringo bastard,” El Cid trailed off, chopping angrily at his fries with a long K-bar knife.
“Right.”
El Cid looked up at me from under thick, ebony eyebrows.
We blew out of Vegas at 6 p.m., dark spirits moving quickly over the landscape, riding the left lane hard, faces rippling in the hurricane of wind, and stifling heat.
At Mesquite, Nevada, we stopped for breakfast at the Casablanca Hotel with the sun burning up over the rise.
A wizened strumpet wearing a deco blue, DOT-approved hairdo hurled sterile eggs and cold potatoes geared up with hotrod Cajun ketchup that burned a man’s mouth. She returned a few minutes later with a plate bearing a leather tortilla covered with red 30-weight synthetic engine oil.
“Here’s your pancakes,” she snapped, releasing the plate four inches above the table.
At the next table was piled a bulbous, white-meat college boy trying to talk a chunk out of a 45-year-old divorced Olympian who had moved out west in order to legally change her name to Cheyenne. She was glad to tease him long enough to get a free breakfast and enough money to pull on the slots. But it was clear he was never going to be allowed to stand up in her guts.
I’d dabbed some urine-colored medicine in a small bottle, which the hotel clerk had given me, on my mouth to deaden a split in the side of my lip where a tooth had punched into it during a misunderstanding in the alley behind a bar a few days back. At once my lip went dead. Then the left side of my face. Then my left arm.
“Sweet mother, I’m done for,” I croaked as I felt the feeling draining out of my left leg.
El Cid snatched up the bottle and read the label, “For relief oftemporary oral discomfort caused by oral irritation. Caution, in caseof accidental ingestion, seek professional assistance or contact thePoison Control Center immediately. Well shit, you’re not even supposed to put the stuff directly into your mouth,” he mumbled and took a slug.
I slumped against the side of the booth. A waitress wandered up as El Cid turned off my recorder.
“Uh oh,” she muttered, seeing the recorder. She rotated on one of her white spiked heels and clattered off to the kitchen.
“That’s where they butcher the children,” I whispered hoarsely, drool dangling from my slack face. I saw myself in the mirrors, a stroke victim, piled up against the greasy wood.
“Who gave you this shit?” El Cid asked, referring to the bottle of vile buzzard poison? It’s not bad.”
“The bellhop,” I whispered, throwing my left arm onto the table with my right hand.
“The bastard dosed you,” El Cid said. “I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“This is all Bandit’s doing. I’ll eat that honkey’s liver.”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re playing White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane in the middle of the desert where they butcher children after a stator just happens to fall out! What does that tell you, idiot?” El Cid hissed. He was beginning to slump in the vinyl booth.
“I can’t feel my legs. How can I ride with no legs?”
El Cid was clearly awaiting a response.
“El Cid, I was kidding about the butchering children bit. This isAmerica. We only butcher the children of other countries. It’sillegal to do it here. I’m sure the events taking place behind thoseinexplicable one-way glass walls are perfectly legitimate. The one-way glass is probably just used to cut down the glare from the sun.”
“No you weren’t,” El Cid replied.
“No I weren’t what?” I slurred.
“No you weren’t kidding.”
“I wasn’t?”
“No. You were quite serious,” El Cid assured me.
“Oh. Well, in that case, we should ride,” I said, feeling horriblyparanoid.
The place represented where America’s trek in search of bliss and prosperity had taken us. We were sitting on a giant cyst formed by the idealistic breakdown of America-a boil that could never burst, swelling up to a shiny dome in the blazing daytime heat and then shrinking back down to a heavy, wrinkled pod of cold, viscous jelly at night.
A silken flit adorned with gnashing colors sallied past us and uttered something with chilling detachment.
“What’d he say?” El Cid asked me, looking through the steam off his tequila-spiked coffee.
“I think he said, ‘Reno’,” I replied, puzzled, trying to flick thedrool from my lip by tossing my head.
“We aren’t scheduled to go through Reno,” El Cid said, pointing with a ketchup-stained hunting knife at the red line Bandit had drawn.
The flit floated by again, this time making eye contact.
“Keno?” the flit asked, then dashed off.
“Keno?” I asked.
“Who the fuck is Keno?” El Cid asked, now wholly on guard.
We looked about, but the flit had vanished in a cloud of knockoff perfumes and double crosses.
“Do you know anyone named Keno?” I asked. El Cid pondered this for a moment.
“No, do you?” he asked me with venomous suspicion.
I kept a close eye on the bastard’s knife. We were tired, we were a long way from friendly territory, and things were starting to get weird.
“I don’t know any Kenos,” I assured the jumpy alien.
“Didn’t you say you had a cousin named, Keno?” El Cid asked, running his oil-stained finger along the edge of the blade.
“I never said I had a cousin at all, you goosey commie. This is no time to get spooked. He must be a connection. Something’s wrong. Bandit is trying to get a message to us,” I said.
“I think we should track Cheyenne, see where she goes,” El Cid said. “Just look at how that pretty-boy prick talks to her. I could take you to the moon, my sweet Cheyenne.”
El Cid looked around, then slid some eggs into his vest pocket. “That no good mother Bandit is behind this shit, I know it,” El Cid snarled, suddenly leaning in close. “I will drive him from Sturgis the same way my great, great, great, great grandfather drove the Moors from Spain!” El Cid slammed his knife into the tabletop, causing several patrons to immediately evacuate their tables.
It was time to go. Get El Cid on the road. Blow a little air through his radiator fins, cool him down before he went nuts with the blade and started carving the college boy up. The constant ring of the gambling machines, the tones, the bells, the whistles, the shrieks, the screams of the dead, it was all too much for a couple of burned-out freaks with a sluice of drowned gnats in the bottom of each eye and years of run-ins with the straights. I had enough feeling in my right leg to make it to the door.
In the parking lot I spotted El Cid eating a handful of something.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded.
“Melatonin,” he snapped, “helps me relax. You know, when I getnervous.”
He stood there, his molars slowly grinding a dozen or more of the pills, crumbs and chunks falling from between his parched, cracked lips, small whiffs of pill dust floating out of his nose like Indian smoke signals telling of bad times to come.
“Let me see those,” I said, grabbing the bottle of small, gray pills with my good arm. “You evil wretch! This is not melatonin!”
“How do you know?” El Cid asked defiantly.
“Because that’s a prescription drug and these have a picture of a clown’s face on them!”
“That’s to help get kids to eat them without a fuss,” El Cid snorted in disgust.
“They don’t give melatonin to kids, you sorry geek. What the hell are you taking?”
Suddenly El Cid began to leap about, clawing frantically at the air.
“Get them off! Can’t you see them? They’re all over me! Get ’em off me!”
I gimped for Big Lucy at top speed. If this bastard wanted to tour the inbred justice machine in the middle of an area self-proclaimed as “Death Valley,” fine. But I wanted nothing to do with it.
“You can stay here all day if you want, I’m going to Sturgis,” Iyelled, hoping to motivate the Spaniard to follow.
“That’s just what Bandit wants us to do, charge into the trap! Fuck you! You’re probably working for him!”
“OK,” I said, pulling up alongside him. “But you won’t have me here to help when they come.”
“Who?” El Cid asked with alarm.
“You’ll find out soon enough,” I said, roaring off. In minutes I could see El Cid in my mirrors, coming on strong, his red cape standing straight out behind him. It was time to get some miles between us and the hotel and find Keno to see what the hell was going on. For all I knew, Bandit had been captured. Perhaps Bandit was Keno. We roared past a bride sitting on the side of the road, weeping. El Cid tried to spit on her, but the wind blew the spit back into his face, causing him to curse violently.
Some time later, in southern Utah, I realized I’d lost El Cid. I stopped on the side of the road. The last I remembered having seen him was as we were fighting our way through buffeting canyon winds that had tossed us easily from lane to lane. A leaden wind swept across the mountains. Lightening cracked and exploded in a large ring around me, which seemed to be closing in. Purple curtains of rain, coming in at 45-degree angles encircled me. I’d been on the road now nonstop since Vegas.
Most of the feeling had returned to my left leg and I was able to see out of my left eye again. I searched for the map to find out where I was. It was gone. I knew it. El Cid, that turncoat swine had stolen the map and abandoned me in the middle of Mormon country. I was sure to be lynched by men without zippers or ball bearings. I was on a high hill, with enough ammunition for the H&K .45 in my saddlebags to hold out for a few days, that was all. Where the hell was Keno? 
Perhaps I should burn Big Lucy … slide her into the ditch, light the tanks. Make it look like I was all but consumed in the fire. Take out a molar with a filling in it with the pliers and toss it into theflames to cook, make it look legit. Then I saw a headlight ragingthrough Bryce Canyon.
“What happened?” I asked El Cid, when he slid up.
“No time to talk!” he yelled. “They’re right behind me!”
“Who?” I asked in horror.
“Hercules and Zeus! Who the hell do you think?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you see all that lightening?” El Cid screamed over the groaning wind.
“Yeah!” I yelled.
“They’re right behind me!”
“Who is behind you?” I bellowed over the wolf winds.
“Hercules and Zeus! They’re working for Bandit! They’re trying to-”
A crack of lightening split a fence post in the ditch next to us,drowning out El Cid’s words and illuminating his face in a brilliantwhite light.
“Ride! Ride! Ride!” El Cid shrieked as he roared off into the flying dust and leaping tumbleweeds.
I swung aboard Big Lucy and rocketed up out of the ditch. El Cid was very religious and would often stop and pray in the ditch, building makeshift shrines out of beer cans, road kill, weeds, and superstition.
But this was different. Billion volt spears of electricity stood inthe ground all around us, bouncing the pavement under Big Lucy’s tires, blinding us, melting the asphalt, electrifying the barbed wire.
We rode back down through Arizona on 9, then on 89 to 160 where we fled back north into Utah. Our plan was to lose the gods by heading south, when they thought we would continue north, toward Sturgis. Then we’d run back north up 191 to the I70 where we’d make a fast run across the Rockies at Vail Pass.
After a few hours it looked like our plan had worked. We rodesmoothly, and the weather cleared. We stopped in Arizona.
“What the hell did you do?” I yelled.
“It wasn’t me, Bandit sent them. All I did was try to strike a deal with them. Didn’t work. He must be paying them a fortune.”
I decided to run with the lunacy, let it play out, and try to discover what we could do to rid ourselves of the bad luck that was plaguing us.
“But by definition, if they are truly gods, shouldn’t they be able to find us anywhere?” I asked, electrical taping a bottle of 60-weight oil to each hand grip.
“Apparently not,” El Cid quipped cheerfully. “It only proves that Bandit sent them. That’s why they’re looking for us further up the trail. Bandit’s trail,” El Cid added with great and sudden savagery.
I ran a rubber line from each bottle into a second line which ran directly into the oil reservoir. Lucy had developed a quart per fill-up oil habit which I didn’t have the time or tools to address. The IV would give us the kind of range we needed at the molecule-shearing speeds we were traveling at to make Sturgis on time to meet with the man.
“Where’s the route take us next?” I asked as we fired up.
“Monument Valley,” El Cid growled. “But we’re asking for trouble if we stay on it.”
He had lobbied to turn off Bandit’s route and continue on an alternate route in order to surprise the outlaw and kill him, but I had refused. I was damned if I was going to fall victim to his paranoid Catholic superstitions.
I was riding in a daze through Monument Valley when the first boulder hit. Billion-year-old dust and rock split and splintered, daggers of fragmented fossil shit ripping the air to tatters. Hercules flung the second meteor from atop one of the monuments. It came on at a dazzling speed, whistling sweetly as it passed over Big Lucy’s front fender. I dumped the throttle and gave her the gas. On the opposing side Zeus leapt upon another pillar of stone and began slinging lightening javelins. The sky was at once purple, then orange as the air traded electricity for stone and dust explosions.
The bastards had me in a crossfire. I had ridden right into their trap, half asleep, delirious, off guard. But how could this be, I thought as a boulder and a lightening bolt collided only a few meters over my head. Hercules and Zeus were myth, legend, figments of a band of idle philosophical perverts. There was no reality whatsoever to theirexistence. A boulder nicked my helmet. It was too late to turn back,so I made a run for it. Winding Lucy up into the triple digits, I laiddown on the tank and gave her hell. When I shot out of the other side I realized El Cid was nowhere to be seen. Egad, I thought, had the grim swine slain him? Or worse, had he been captured? He would talk for sure. I was doomed. I torqued up atop a large overlook andscouted the road. No sign of the red cape, but Hercules and Zeus wereflinging round after round at a dust cloud which was streaking acrossno man’s land at well over a hundred miles an hour. Bolt after bolt,stone after stone, they threw, but the dust cloud kept coming. El Cidwas making a run for it.
“Ride you cockeyed, ill-bred, result of an Aztec rape!” I hollered, knowing if they caught the adulterate, his first notion would be to sell me out to save his own DNA-stained hide.
A lightening bolt shot straight into the cloud of dust and there was a fierce explosion. Hercules pissed on us from the mountain, turning the road to slick mud.
“Shit!” I bawled. “He had the maps! You unlearned monkey!” I yelled.
A rocket of red cape, fire, and fury blew out of the cloud of dust.
“Viva, El Cid!” I cheered. “Ride you illegitimate bastard, ride!”
El Cid shot out of the corridor and headed off across the plains,obviously desperate to catch up with me, beating violently at theflames which snapped and popped from his rear fender.
“Curses!” I barked, as I leapt aboard Big Lucy. “Stop you fool!”
Three hours later, I caught up with El Cid at the foot of the Rockies. He told me that Zeus had managed to hit one of his spare fuel canisters and when it had blown it cost him his left saddlebag, which contained his “medicine.”
“You look healthy to me.”
“That’s because I’ve been taking my medicine! I expect massivecellular and psychological deterioration to begin any time,” El Cidsnapped savagely, the right side of his face already beginning totwitch.
“What do you mean by psychological deterioration?” I asked with blooming suspicion.
“Well, nothing really, I mean, nothing more than theusual … withdrawal.”
“Oh you worthless mutant!” I roared. “I knew that was some homegrown bathtub aspirin you were eating! You get the hell away from me! I don’t want to be anywhere near you when you start thinking I’m a desert tarantula!”
“Now really, you should calm down,” El Cid said with a twisted gleam in his eye. “This is a very tough time, we need to stick together, amigo…”
I ran for Big Lucy as El Cid went for his knife. El Cid got a bath of gravel, which did nothing more than send him running for his bike, his south of the border problem solver clenched between his gleaming teeth.
The murderous Spaniard chased me for over four hours into the night as we climbed higher and higher into the Rockies heading for Vail Pass, first through rain, then sleet and finally, as we passed 11,000 feet, snow. Twice the loco inbred Indian got close enough to actually take a swipe at me with the hunting knife. At last I saw him in my rearview mirrors look around at the towering rock cliffs in a puzzled manner, sheath the knife, and wave to me in a most friendly and bewildered way.
“What’s the rush?” El Cid asked as I walked stiffly back to him, the 20-degree temperature having frozen the life out of my lower body.
“You were trying to kill me with your knife,” I said, my teethclattering.
“I was? How embarrassing,” El Cid replied apologetically.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Let’s see the map.”
We were somewhere near the peak. The snow had stopped, but it was becoming even more windy and the pitch black night made the dangling cliffs even more dangerous.
“Better get the hell out of here,” I said, trying to swing a frozen leg over the iced saddle. “Get caught all the way up here in a big blow and we’ll be bear shit.”
We coasted the last five miles to a fuel station, having reached the summit just prior to running both bikes out of fuel. The woodsman pumping the gas said we had 12 hours to get to Cheyenne. The good news was, he told us Sturgis was only two hours beyond Cheyenne.
“We’ll eat breakfast in Cheyenne,” I told El Cid. “It’ll be light bythe time we hit Denver.”
By Denver the temperature had reached a balmy 50 and the wind chill had risen to a tropical zero degrees.
Northern Colorado was a seamless blur of pain that started from the second joint in each finger and continued in a building symphony of skeletal torment where it crescendoed somewhere at the tip of my coccyx.
Then we rode into a river of chrome. Rolling rubber, sound, cracking leather, raging hair, taillights, headlights, boots, beer, blood,tattoo ink, and body sweat stretched into oblivion-hell’s salmon run. Every on-ramp spewed more iron into the main artery, crowding, gunning, gassing, braking, jockeying, fighting for position to be allowed into the flow. Red blood cells from the bad side of town rammed and brawled for passage through the narrow capillaries on their way to the aorta.
We rolled in a stream of fresh bikers, filled up with coffee,sleep, and gusto. But we were just trying to get through, to make itwithout falling off and becoming pink stripes with helmets at the end. Sleep was smothering me. It was the only thing I thought about when I was able to think at all. I could crash now, I thought, it wouldn’t be so bad. I probably wouldn’t even notice it. Just drift off and let her slide. Sleep right through it. Maybe I’d be lucky and get a nice, warm hospital bed. Or better yet, a quiet, padded, silky coffin that I could have all to myself. I could close the lid and drift off tosleep…
In Cheyenne we parked in front of a small cafe. El Cid and I sat on our bikes, staring across the street at an abandoned post office. My ears are ringing, I thought. It’s so quiet now and my ears areringing so loudly. I wonder how they could make so much racket on their own? Aren’t ears supposed to be hearing instruments? So what are they doing making so much noise? It’s not so cold now. That post office sure looks lonesome. I wonder what the best love letter that ever went through there read like?
I don’t know how long El Cid and I sat there. I vaguely remember other bikers walking out and watching us closely as they wandered past, their conversations drifting off into silence as they observed the blank, penniless, straight ahead gazes we bore, sitting atop our bikes, exhaustion drunk.
It was the clicking of Lucy’s chrome which broke me from the trance. Thank God for shrinking chrome. I had tried several times to leave the trance on my own, but like a dream one can’t wake up from, I did not posses the power to break the spell.
“Sturgis?” the waitress asked as she sat down the food El Cid and I ordered. “That’s six hours north of here.”
“Six hours?” I said in horror. “You must be mistaken. We were told back at Vail Pass it was only two from here.”
“Well, two, plus four. That’s probably what they meant, honey,” the woman said with a look of concern.
“Six hours…” El Cid echoed in a tone of clean defeat.
“Best bet is to take 85 north. That’s the way most of the boys ride. If you leave now you’ll be there by nightfall,” the waitress added.
El Cid applied a fixed look of despair to my face.
“We can’t make it,” he croaked hoarsely. “We have to be back in L.A. in 48 hours.”
Cypher’s Cycle
By Bandit |
Razor Ray opened a bloodshot eye and groaned. It wasn’t bad enough thathis three day-speed binge and Jack Black hangover made his head feel asif the points of a million stilettos were tapping on the inside of hisbrain pan. It wasn’t bad enough that the insides of his eyelids felt as ifthey were being eaten alive by leeches and his mouth tasted like a usedentrenching tool. No, the nightmare had been worse than all that. Ray likedto think of himself as being beyond such petty human emotions as guilt,yet the dream had jerked him about like a marionette with two brokenstrings.
In the dream he was riding off in the sunset on a blood-red Panhead, moneyin his pocket and a raven-haired bitch on the p-pad behind him. He roareddown a flaming highway toward his ol’ lady and laughed at her tears,laughed at her loyalty to him, laughed at her pathetic love for an outlawas he gunned the engine and rode over her whimpering bones. “Fuck!” hewheezed, and slowly swung his legs over the side of the bed. It hurt toturn his head but he did it anyway and stared at Vickie’s sweet form onlyhalf covered by the thin sheet. Why was he getting an attack of guilt now?He was fully aware that at one time or another in his illustrious careerhe had burned every bridge and shot every opportunity ever given to him.Yet he always seemed to come out smelling like the proverbial rose.
Ray had run the gamut of low-life betrayal during his 36 years. Just offthe top of his head, he had sold out solid brothers, stole dope, stole abro’s ol’ lady and then cheated on her. He once stabbed a dude in the gutsand took his bike just because he didn’t like the fucker’s looks. He hadspent half his adult life in one pen or another for bullshit petty crimes,feeling lucky that he skated on all the heavy beefs. He missed his mom’sfuneral while in the pen at Chino, and even once kicked a dog to death. Rayhad spent his life getting away with murder, so why was his consciencerearing a wagging finger now?
Vickie moaned seductively in her sleep. Ray shook his long mane of wavyblack hair, heading into the pisser. “Just take the bitch’s money and getthe fuck out,” he said to himself. “So what if the supposed loan she’sgiving me is every penny she had in her spaced-out little world?” By thetime the last drops of Jack Black-smelling urine hit the bowl, thoughts ofthe dream faded to nothing, like a vampire at dawn. Still, there wassomething that lingered in the back of his throbbing mind. Why was hefucking over another innocent? He stared vacantly at the prison tattoo onhis forearm baring the words “Ladies Love Outlaws.” Something was going tohappen, something bad; Razor felt it in every cell of his being. The echoof distant screams somewhere behind his eyes receded to purple shadows inthe back of his brain and a voice within him muttered…”lost souls.”
As quickly as the phantom thoughts entered Ray’s domain, they flew off againand he found himself searching the crevices of his morning mug in themirror. “Good morning you handsome devil,” he purred. Razor liked to thinkthat whatever dark forces were at work in his life had a bigger purposefor him. He was being saved for something really nasty.
Ray stood up tall and examined his muscular six-foot-five physique. Therewas pride in his sculpted features and dense black beard that called backto his family lineage in Russia’s Ukraine. It was a family tree thatstretched back to none other than Rasputin the Mad Monk. Razor grinned andstared at the hole where his front tooth used to be.
He was even proud of that since it was sacrificed during a brawl defending his club colors.
Picking up the partial plate from the sink, Ray admired the silverlightning bolts inset in his false tooth before putting it in his mouth.
Thoughts of the bike filled his mind as he made a quick breakfast offrosted flakes mixed with milk and a dollop of JD. Ray couldn’t wait tostart the Panhead up and hear the blast of its fishtails. It had takenhim nearly a month to sell Vickie on the idea of letting him “borrow” thedough he needed to buy THE bike, the ultimate fuckin’ chopper! Hecarefully counted the wad of hundreds one more time, chuckling to himselfat how easy it had been to give the girl the puppy dog eyes treatment.”Five thousand smackers,” Razor grinned and the silver bolts on his toothglinted in the morning light. Pulling on his cutoff, he peeled off fiveone-hundred-dollar bills and hid them in a secret pocket before placing therest of the money in his chain wallet. Then Ray took the two whitepearl-handled straight razors from a bed table and slipped them into thecustom pockets on either side of his leather vest designed for quick andlethal access. Vickie was still sleeping off the night of speed, booze,and lurid sex as Razor slammed the screen door. He smelled his finger,recalling where it had been and grinned big. Today was HIS day! Fuck baddreams and fuck guilt! He had the bitch’s money and his new ride awaitedhim.
Cypher’s Cycle squatted in the dense heat of the San Fernando Valley likea dog seeking shade. It had existed as long as any of the localsremembered and long before the current crop of border brothers moved inand declared turf. Its metal roof shimmered in the summer sun with a kindof defiance. Now blending in with the gang-torn surroundings of LosAngeles, the shop sat on a graffiti-strewn street marked with swelteringpalms that looked like giant baked weeds with drooping shoulders. In thegrimy shop’s window, the bike of Razor’s dreams patiently waited, a 1962Panhead chop job with a righteous rigid frame, gleaming chrome springerfront end, apehangers to the stars, and fishtail pipes that reached toglory. Ray walked toward the shop slowly, his black cowboy boots sizzlingon the frying-pan asphalt, savoring every second. He recalled the dayweeks earlier when he first set eyes on this two-wheeled wonder.
The shop had been full of flies that day. Actually, as Ray remembered it,he didn’t actually see any flies but rather heard their incessant buzzing.Cypher’s Cycle was piled high with the remains of motorcycles; theskeletons of a few riceburners hung from meat hooks as the carcass of amilitary WLA stared from socketless headlights. This was a slaughterhouseof deceased bikes and the shop’s overweight owner was its lord and master.Razor strolled by a stack of weathered Easyriders magazines from the’70s, picked up a rusty Bendix carburetor, and stroked a flamedMustang tank on his way to feast his eyes on THE bike. The Panhead dancedin the glare of the mid-day sun coming through dust-encrusted windows, bars ofshadow cast across it from the burglar bars outside.
The paint was dazzling dark red with a shimmering ripple effect that made you feel as though you were drowning.
The shop’s troll-like owner held court from a destroyed desk near the backof the ragtag display room, looked up from a skin rag called ShavedNurses, and took a flaccid stogie from his mouth with inhumanly longfingers. He eyed Razor in much the same way that a bird of prey sizes upits next victim. Ray stood respectfully in front of the Panhead and letevery glorious curve of its perfect metalwork burn into his brain. Thewicked red beast looked like it had just rolled out of some maniaccustomizer’s dream world. A suicide shifter was topped by a gleamingchrome skull, its eyes glinting red rubies. Upon closer inspection, theshimmering dark red paint of the tank, frame, and rear fender was more thecolor of dried blood and the rippling wave effect was actually an illusioncaused by meticulously intricate airbrush work beneath countless layers ofclear. Ray’s eyes focused deep beneath the outer layer of paint,down … down past the layers of pearl red to see the unholy visage ofhundreds, no thousands, of human faces, each captured in the twistingtorment of impossible torture beyond words … beyond description. “Lostsouls” he whispered in a sinister tone, as the mouths seemed to work soundlessly,screaming eternally, screaming relentlessly, screaming for a release thatwould never come.
“I can see you on this bike.” The shop owner’s words pulled Razor fromwithin the depths of the paint.
“Wha…what did you say, man?” Ray felt like he was stoned out of his minduntil the man shook his hand. He suddenly felt as though he had a handfulof dead dog and let go of the stranger’s hand. The shop’s owner justgrinned and Razor thought he saw the tips of needle-sharp teeth peek fromthe recesses of the his mouth.
“Name’s Lou,” the shop owner said. “You interested in the Pan? They suredon’t make ’em like that anymore, son, and I can tell you’d appreciate abike like that. Could say you were born to be on that bike.”
Razor just blinked for a timeless instant and finally found his tongue.”You got that right. How much you askin’?”
Lou rubbed his salt and pepper goatee, sizing Ray up one more time. “Fivegrand and she’s all yours.”
Ray smiled and saw Lou notice the twin bolts on his front tooth. The shopowner’s eyes narrowed with a look of appreciation. “Five grand. So tell meLou,” Ray drawled, “how do you stay in business sellin’ drop-dead gorgeousrides like this for five grand?”
The shop owner picked at his teeth with a very long and sharp fingernail.”Simple my friend,” the troll hissed. “I sell in volume.”
Cypher’s Cycle
By Bandit |
Razor snapped back to the reality of the moment. He looked up at thecracked orange paint and the flaming letters, which proclaimed CYPHER’SCYCLES.
The Panhead was still in the window whispering it’s unholy promises to whoever happened by. Ray took a deep breath and walked in.
The shop seemed to slump under its own weight. Damp boxes in the backseemed carefully designed to breed rats, cobwebs held mummified insectremains in an eternal embrace, and the air smelled of bad gas and urine.The shop’s owner stepped into the front room from whatever hellishcatacombs exist at the back of the building and smiled a shark’s grin.”Knew you’d be back,” he hissed. “I can always tell.”
Cypher licked his lips as Ray pulled out the wad of bills. A Cheshire catsmile washed across Ray’s face, “Go ahead and count it if you like.” Theshop owner counted the first two grand before Razor interrupted him onpurpose. “I’d like to see the paperwork now, if you don’t mind.”
Cypher tucked the bills in his back pocket as Ray knew he would and madehis troll-like way to the shop’s grimy office, “Be right back, makeyourself to home.”
Not only did Razor make himself to home; he reached around a dusty displaycase a nabbed a key ring adorned with a silver skull to go with his newbike. He patted the hidden pocket inside his vest, smiling at the fivehundred dead presidents he had just stiffed Cypher out of.
Rolling the chopper out into the sunlight caused a million tiny rainbowsto reflect in the metalflake paint and explode in Razor’s mind. Each onespoke to him saying, “I’ll be good to you Ray, we’re going to be greattogether.” Touching the bike’s tank was like running your hand over awoman’s ass. Ray couldn’t help but gasp as his body became aroused as ifthe scoot was a hot bitch. His hand touched the silver skull shifter andfrom his point of view he didn’t notice the ruby eyes glowing in response.He glanced at the odometer on the tiny chromed speedo between the apes.She only had 13 miles on her clock. Razor opened the tank to discover afull tank of gas before priming the bike. Flicking the ignition switch toon, Ray turned out the petal and came down with one smooth kick. Shecoughed and then…nothing.
Razor looked up to notice Cypher staring at him from the window of theshop. Suddenly behind Ray, the bike coughed again and then thunder eruptedfrom the fishtails and echoed off industrial buildings. Down the street, ajunkyard dog ran off with it’s tail between it’s legs. Ray turned aroundand stared at the bike, his mouth agape with wonder. It sat idlingsweetly, it’s steady loping rhythm saying, “let’s go, let’s go!” Razorlooked back at Cypher but the troll had disappeared from the window. Raysat down in the perfectly sculpted saddle. He felt invincible. As heclicked the bike into first with a solid “thunk” and blasted off towardsthe freeway, Louis Cypher placed a weathered CLOSED sign on his door andlocked it.
Much has been written about the love affair of man and machine and muchhas been speculated on about the strange feeling that overcomes a bikerwhen piloting his sled. It is as if a heart is beating within the bike’smetal breast and the machine is somehow alive; a vibrant beast chained toyour will, doing your bidding. Some liken the experience to that of beinga modern Minotaur , half-man, half-machine, and all the way alive! Youhave but to think your intent and the bike makes the move for you,incredibly fast, agile, and monstrous. All Razor knew was that he hadnever in all his 36 years of life on this planet felt more awake. Not evena double dose of his bro Buzzard’s best crank could beat this stone coldrush.
The Panhead became a blur in the afternoon traffic, slicing and splittinglanes like a meat ax through intestines. With every new mile on the bike’sodometer, Ray felt stronger and more awake; a screaming demon on thedevil’s own ride. He took the off ramp onto San Fernando Road in Burbankand headed to one of his favorite watering holes. He knew a few of hisbrothers would be hangin’ out, shooting pool, and eyein’ tail. The Panheadslowed in front of the Whisky Bend and Ray turned off the ignition. Thechromed jiffy stand seemed to spring out on its own in anticipation of itsmaster’s wishes. Razor grinned and leaned the bike over. He adjusted hisnarrow shades and listened to the hot motor tick, knowing that any bikerin the joint would be walking out any minute at the sound of the bikepulling up.
Sure enough, Red stepped to the door first, a pool cue in one hand and abeer in the other. Kane was right behind him. Both men’s faces went slackat the sight of the long chop. Puzzled wonder turned to warm smiles as thebros scampered out of the tavern and attacked Ray in a pirate sandwichbear hug.
“Holy shit, brother!” Kane laughed, “If this ain’t one fine piece ofiron!” The big man walked slowly around the bike admiring every custom inchof craftsmanship.
Red still had a hold of Ray’s cutoff. “Well, you said it was a righteousride. Guess you’ll want to lead the friggin’ pack now.” Pride bubbled upinside Ray like the nectar of the gods. He clicked a disc lock on thefront PM rotor and sauntered into the bar feeling bigger than life. Asmall voice tugged at the back of Razor’s mind. “Don’t be long,” it said.
Four hours later, a dozen more bikes lined the sidewalk in front of thetavern. Inside, Ray was rattling off the punch line of his favorite joke,”So the snake says to the poor dyin’ prospector, ‘you knew I was a snakewhen you brought me in here!'” Red laughed out loud in his best imitationof a drunk Viking. Kane sat a few stools down, shaking his head. He hadheard the story a few times too many.
“I say that new scoot of yours needs a shake down cruise, bro,” Kanerasped before downing another shot.
Red tried to focus on Razor with only partial success.”Abso-fuckin’-lutely!” he slurred. “But don’t you still have to staywithin the county lines to honor your parole?”
Ray took a long pull from his brew and gave the brothers his best dazzlingsmile. “The way I figure it, I’ve been a model parolee for ten gawd-damnedmonths. I wanna go for a ride and my P.O. can eat me!” Ray stood up fromhis stool and it fell over behind him. “In fact, I feel like a nice longride right now!”
The bar erupted in ragged approval as Ray sauntered out into the nightfeeling powerful and, well…evil. The Panhead sat like a faithful steed,ever patient and awaiting his pleasure. Razor was fumbling with the lock onthe front brake rotor when the bike’s headlight came on… all by itself.”What the…” he stammered, jumping into a drunken fighting stance. “Whothe fuck is fuckin’ with my bike?” he hollered. No one answered Ray backfrom the darkness. The only sound was raucous laughter from inside the barmixed with a George Jones tune on the juke box and the smack of pool ballshitting together. Ray stared hard at the bike. “Fuck it, let’s ride!” heyelled, not noticing in his intoxicated state that the bike starteditself.
The night was a wild black beast and Ray was its lord and master. He feltmore invincible than ever aboard the ruby Panhead. The pulse of the enginebecame his pulse, the thump of the pistons, the beating of his heart. Raytwisted the grip and the bike shot into the night, blasting down thesparse midnight freeway. The steady drone of the engine lured Razor into ahalf-waking, half-dreaming state. He imagined himself and the bike as onenocturnal predator, hunting some pathetic creature. A pathetic rabbit likeVickie to sink his fangs in. Razor imagined ripping out her throat anddrinking her hot blood. He imagined gutting her and howling at the fullmoon. He imagined dark red blood like the color of his Panhead, smeared onher lily white ass. “Vickie IS a rabbit”, he thought. “A pathetic littlebunny and I’m the big bad wolf!” Ray laughed above the roar of the pipes.”Little pig, little pig….let me in!” he screamed with laughter. “Or I’llhuff…and I’ll PUFF…” Suddenly a blur of white flew in front of Raylike a ghost in the night. His eyes focused on a dull white, rumpled ChevyNova that had wandered into his lane of traffic.
Rather than panic, Ray’s grin broadened into a vicious snarl, “Ahh, asheep!” he hissed.
The Panhead reacted before Ray could, dodging the car and gliding up nextto the driver’s side window.
Razor smiled sweetly at the young blonde woman inside. She lookedtragically hip with her too trendy haircut, her pathetic nose ring andshaved eyebrows. A cigarette dangled from her pouting mouth completing theeffect of total brain death. The girl looked over at Ray with stonedblandness, her features morphing into something like half interest beforesettling into mild annoyance. Ray could see her mouth the words, “Fuckoff!”, offering a wimpy up-raised middle finger to the biker.
At once the bike twisted under Razor’s hands without his command andslammed into the driver’s door. Sparks shot up from the crimson paint butthe bike seemed completely undamaged. The car’s door, on the other hand,looked like crumpled paper. “What the hell?” Ray managed as the bikeprepared for another lunge. He was able to pull his right leg out of theway half a second before the Pan smashed into the door again. “Shit!” hescreamed, “What is this?” The bike veered off again preparing to ram thecar once more.
The little lamb in the Nova tried to hold the wheel but the attack hadcome so suddenly that she had dropped her cigarette into her steamy littlecrotch. The burning sensation caused one hand to flail at her twat whilethe other fought for the wheel. The Panhead seemed to take advantage ofthe opening and lunged again as the ruby eyes on the chrome skull shifter glowed bright and the bike smashed into the car with rabid fury! Moresparks lit up the night and metal groaned! Still the Panhead came awaymiraculously impervious to the assault.
Cypher’s Cycle
By Bandit |
There was the squealing of tires that Ray though must sound much the way apig might squeal at the moment of slaughter. The white car veered out ofcontrol, slicing across the next vacant lane and directly into the path ofa road hazard sign. The Nova lived up to its namesake becoming a fireballof twisting metal. A glance backward confirmed that the smug teenager wasindeed in the process of becoming roasted lamb. Razor blinked severaltimes, trying to clear his head. What had just happened? He was dullyaware that he had just taken part in a rather serious crime. “But I didn’tdo it….” His thoughts raced. “It was the bike. It was this fuckin’weird…. amazing….glorious bike!” Madness returned to Razor’s eyes andhe howled in the night as the possessed Panhead closed it’s dark cloakaround him. At once he knew why he had been saved all his life, and whathe had been saved for. He felt the bike’s power filling him and smiled,knowing that his true purpose was dark indeed.
Vicky awoke to the feel of rough hands on her and the smell of stalewhisky and beer. As she struggled to the surface of the twisted dreamknown as reality, she was shockingly aware that crude fingers wereinvading her most sensitive and private of areas. A voice spoke justinches from her ear. It was a voice she knew well, but it sounded strange,as if a demon were using it. “Little pig, little pig,” it said. “Let meIN!” Vickie screamed the first in an endless strand of screams that wouldfall through the night like pearls into the abyss of hell.
The sun rose with fiery splendor…cleansing, purifying, lighting theworld and vanquishing the darkness. Razor was already blasting down thetarmac, heading out on the 5 Freeway to hit Highway 15 into the desert.His leathers were warming to the sun and Ray found himself singing a BobSeger tune, “Headed out to my big two-wheeler, I was tired of my ownvoice.” He hummed for a few seconds, having forgotten some of the wordsbefore shouting, “and I rolled that power ON!” At the same time he gavethe grip a twist and the bike leaped forward like a spring-loaded panther.
Ray laughed out loud, giddy and completely insane. He knew that the bikehad somehow taken over his mind but he really didn’t care.
He and the Panhead were one, “as it should be”, he thought. Together theywere more than they could ever dream possible. They were unstoppable andthey were on a mission. It didn’t even bother Razor that he didn’t knowwhat the mission was yet. He just giggled like a helpless child in itsmother’s arms and let the bike roll him away into the desert.
Judith Craymore adjusted her pert polyester collar as she walked stifflyup the steps to Vickie’s house. She pulled one of the Scripture tractsfrom her bulging purse and tapped firmly on the screen door. A Gospel tunefilled her mind with the Lord’s delicious warmth. It was as if choirs ofangels were singing in perfect harmony in her aging mind belting out,”Shall we gather by the ri-ver!” There was no movement in the little houseand she glanced at her watch; 11:11am. The bible-thumper had beendelivering God’s holy word since nine that morning and felt the need for aglass of cool water. Perhaps she could ask the resident within to….
The blood red “X” on the screen door stood out boldly against theweathered green paint. Lost in the sick color, several flys buzzed,lighting on the sticky stuff. Judith immediately looked at her whitegloves and saw that she had rap, rap, rapped right on the bloody “X”. Hermouth worked soundlessly for a full three seconds before she let out awithered gasp. Adrenaline pumped through her 68-year-old body making hershake uncontrollably. Somehow she managed to force her will on her handand she watched as it slowly opened the creaking door. Judith was dimlyaware that watching her bloodied glove open the door was much likewatching a movie. Then the smell hit her. Someone has been sick, shethought. Without realizing what she was doing, Judith squared herself andraised the bible she always carried before her like a shield. She steppedinside managing a meager, “Hello?”
Something wet was on the wood floor, “footprints”, the pink-suited womanrealized. She moved forward, watching her inner movie of someone glidinginto the dim-lit house, through the living room, toward what had to be abedroom. A sound began to swell in Judith’s already loaded senses. Whatwas it…so familiar, like electric current. Suddenly, the sound became awall of mindless buzzing. Judith turned towards the sound and saw moreblood on the bedroom wall. The blood formed words and even in this oddfilm she was watching, she knew the words before even reading them. Theywere part of Revelations and spoke of the coming of a pale horseman; asymbol of the apocalypse. Something moved on the bed and groaned weakly. Ayoung woman was strapped belly down on the bed. Blood smeared everywhere.Before Judith could register more than that, the source of the buzzingbecame clear. The words on the wall were undulating… and moving. The oldwoman opened her mouth to scream but the flies were too fast, clogging hermouth and eyes by the thousands.
By early afternoon Ray was exactly where we wanted to be, so far out inthe desert that he could be truly alone with his machine. After hours inthe saddle his butt was burning and he pulled off the two-lane black toponto a dirt road. The road ended in a makeshift rifle range and Razorreached down to pick up a flat rock to place under the bike’s jiffy stand.He shut the Panhead down and listened to the glorious sound of the bike’sengine ticking and the desert wind whistling through the sage brush andJoshua trees.
Razor felt like a rattlesnake; lean, mean, and serene. He crawled up tothe top of a rock formation and looked out at the endless expanse ofdesert.
He felt like a god and laughed as he took a piss off the top of the rock.His eyes narrowed at something glinting far in the distance along theribbon of blacktop. A small building that he recognized from a party withhis bro’s long ago. It was a skanky hole-in-the-wall called The Place.”What the hell,” he thought. “I could use a beer and a burger.” Ray lookeddown on his glorious ruby red Panhead and felt something beyond pride. Heknew that he finally belonged to something that he really cared about andcalled down to the bike, “The world is ours!”
Three fourth grade boys on their way home from school sat on theirbicycles in front of Vickie’s house watching the police put up that weirdyellow plastic tape all across the front of the property. A somber dude ina suit that was too small for him was talking to an old woman that wasslumped in the back of an un-marked cop car. The plumpest of the threeboys spat, “That’s where that biker guy wouldn’t give us any candy onHalloween, remember?” The other boys nodded, recalling that Ray hadoffered them a bong hit and then chased them off the porch when theyrefused. A cop told the kids to move on but not before they saw the lookon Vickie’s face as she was loaded into an ambulance by paramedics.”Whoa!” the plump kid hollered, “What happened to her?”
The young woman was as white as the sheet that was pulled up to her chinand she looked to the boys like the victim of a vampire or one of thoseun-dead zombies like in Night of the Living Dead. The boys looked at eachother and in a chorus said, “Cool!”