Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle (20 page)

Leo, blue-skinned and twitching, lunged at her. He wrestled the bag of coke out of her hands, spilling some, and ran upstairs with it. Realizing he was going to the bathroom to flush it, Patsy ran after him. When she caught up with him on the stairs, he turned around and kicked her. She broke her fall down the stairs and managed get back up and force her way into the bathroom just as he was hovering over the toilet with the bag.

“C'mon, baby, lover, you don't wanna do that,” she pleaded.

“Yeah, I know, I was just being nuts.” He handed her the bag.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she offered. “Why don't you just go to bed, smoke a joint . . . you know that always calms you down.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “You wanna grab me a joint and a light? I'll be in the bedroom.”

As she walked down the stairs, a disturbed-looking June asked her what was happening.

“Nothing, really, Leo's been under a lot of stress lately,” she answered, while getting Leo a beer and a joint. “And he's really ramped up the coke use. He'll get over it.”

Just as she turned around, Leo flew down the stairs. He pointed a gun at June's face and shouted: “I know what you fuckin' skank bitches are up to!”

Patsy screamed. June, too terrified to run, said, “I have no idea what you are talking about, Leo.”

Leo slapped her in the jaw and trained his gun on Patsy. “You and you and that fuckin' boyfriend of yours are trying to kill me. I know you are.”

June was sobbing too hard to speak; Patsy rushed to her aid. She shouted at Leo: “Put that gun away, you stupid asshole; nobody's trying to kill you.”

Leo punched her with his left hand, keeping the gun trained on her at the same time. “We'll see who's try to kill who . . . get in the fuckin' car.”

Patsy and Leo had one of those townhouses with a sunken garage under the living room. He marched the pair through the door and into Patsy's old Mazda. He sat in the rear seat with his gun barrel pressed against the back of Patsy's neck. It was covered from potential witnesses by the headrest. June sat motionless and expressionless in the passenger seat, a huge red mark on the right side of her face and running mascara the only indications from the outside that anything was wrong. There was very little traffic as the sun had only risen a half-hour earlier.

He told Patsy to drive. She asked where. He told her she knew.

She guessed that he meant to go to her ex-boyfriend's house—perhaps he wanted to confront him, maybe kill him. He'd probably let her go after he realized there was nothing going on between them—if things were allowed to get that far. In all likelihood, this trip would be suicidal for Leo. Jeff lived in a house with two other career criminals, including a gunrunner. All of them were bigger, stronger, and more aggressive than Leo. In fact, Patsy had left Jeff because of the beatings and routine humiliations he and his friends put her through. They were bad men, ones she never wanted to see again. And they were easily capable of taking care of a relative lightweight like Leo.

She was thinking of how she'd distract him, when June did it for her. As Patsy waited at a stoplight, June made a break for it. She unlocked and opened the door as stealthily as she could, and once the car came to a complete stop, she flung it open and leapt outside.

As she landed, her right high heel snapped and she went down hard. Leo rose in his seat and shot through the still-open door. The first two shots went through both of her thighs. The third shot—the one that killed her—went through the fingers of her left hand, then penetrated her left lung.

Patsy darted out her door and into traffic. Brakes screeched and horns blared as motorists tried not to hit her or each other as they slid on the wet pavement.

Leo screamed and went after her, firing as he ran. Over their four-block chase, he managed to hit her in the right shoulder and shoot off a tiny chunk of her left ear. She could tell he was gaining on her and became desperate for a place to hide. She ran to the closest house and began pounding on the door and screaming. An elderly man let her in and locked the door behind him. Leo, right behind her, began pounding on the door. Patsy collapsed from exhaustion and loss of blood once inside. The elderly man called 911, but dropped the phone and ran down to the basement when Leo started shooting through the door. He was trying to kick it down when a patrol car screeched to a halt at the curb.

Leo ran for it, but was exhausted and knew he couldn't keep running away from the bigger, healthier cop who took chase when he bolted. He also knew that his handgun would do little against a Kevlar vest. He was trying to think of an idea when he saw a mother crossing the street with a child. He turned and grabbed the kid. He stopped, put his arm around the boy's chest, and stuck the gun up to his temple.

The mother screamed. The cop stopped in his tracks.

“Unless you want this kid's fuckin' brains all over the fuckin' street, you're gonna put the gun down!”

The young cop, who had never seen anything like this before, froze.

“Just put down the gun; sir, we don't want anyone to get hurt.” He kept his pistol trained on Leo's head.

“I said, put the fuckin' gun down!”

“That's not going to happen, sir. Please drop the weapon and release the child. Nobody has to get hurt here.”

Police sirens were getting louder and louder.

Leo began to freak out, screaming unintelligibly with saliva flying out of his mouth. The little boy cried and struggled. The mother screamed and screamed. And the cop kept his gun pointed at Leo's head.

Finally, Leo screamed out “Fuck this! Fuck you all!” and pulled the trigger. Shocked by the sound of the hammer banging inside an empty chamber, Leo pulled the trigger again and again. Nothing. After the fourth try, he threw the gun at the cop and ran.

Immediately, the cop chased him. Before the end of the block, the young cop had Leo down and immobilized.

Seconds later, the rest of the cops showed up—some in full armor and with semi-automatic weapons—surrounded them, and took care of the mother and child.

Leo was still babbling incoherently when they put him in the back of the police car.

Ned didn't want to answer his cellphone, but he knew he had to when he saw it was Steve who was calling.

“Leo's gone nuts and wasted a couple of whores out in the suburbs,” he told him. “You have my permission to get out of town and lay low.”

“What? Leo? Is he alright?”

“Listen, I told our brothers in Martinsville to be expecting you. You can live in their clubhouse for as long as necessary.”

“What? How will I . . .”

“Just go.”

Ned went to the garage and drove to the townhouse he once shared with Leo. He still had a key, but the garage door was still open. He drove the SSR inside and closed the garage door behind him. He ran into Leo's house and went immediately for his caches of drugs and cash. Convinced he had found them all, he threw everything into the SSR's bed. Back inside, he searched his closets and drawers for anything that could connect Leo to Ned or to the Death Dealers. He took his jacket, some bullets, some greeting cards, some hand-drawn maps and notes, two collections of photographs, a PC, and a cellphone. He tossed them all into the bed of the SSR and drove to a self-storage unit out by the airport. He dumped all the incriminating stuff in the locker and drove to Martinsville.

Lara arrived just in time to see Patsy's ambulance leave. Immediately, she sought out Clegg. He explained what he'd been told had happened.

“Who are the victims?”

“Kids just an ordinary kid in the wrong place at the wrong time—mom and he were headed to a bus stop so they could catch an early train to grandma's.”

“And . . .?” she asked expectantly.

“Well, the fatality . . .”

“Fatality?”

“Yeah, it hasn't been declared yet, but she's a goner. Didn't get a name but the guys said she was a stripper.”

“And the other?”

“One. I knew her, Patsy Wiggan, a tough mama who used to run with the Lawbreakers . . . hadn't seen her in a while, looks like she'll pull through.”

“And the killer?”

“Don't know him at all, total skel . . . this is obviously the work of drug-induced paranoia.”

“Which drug?”

“A stimulant, seems to be a little too organized for meth and looking at this scumbag, I don't think he gets his hands on coke too often, so I'd have to go with crack—but you never know until the tests return.”

“This is your brain on drugs.”

“Yeah, a human brain can only take so much stimulation before it pops. This guy is gone for good.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Looney tunes.”

“How about the cop?”

“Oh yeah, Bartholomew.”

“Something of a hero, isn't he?”

“I'm sure that's what your readers will want to hear . . .”

“You don't think so?”

“Well, I'd have punched that piece of shit's ticket before he laid a hand on the kid.”

Marissa Banting had only been rowing with the Hill Park high school team for two weeks. Actually, she wasn't rowing, but she was part of the team. She was the coxswain, the person who shouts out “row! row! row!” to keep the rowers in rhythm. She was picked because, at 102 pounds, she put very little weight on the shell and, because she was so good looking, it kept the boys focused. She was loving her role as center of attention until, on a Thursday practice, the shell hit something in the water. She assumed it was a log or a plank from one of the rotting old docks. That's what she was thinking as the collision threw her into the bay.

She grabbed the floating object to stay afloat. She was smiling at the guys in the shell when she saw the horrified looks on their faces. Instinctively, she looked at the object she was hanging onto. After she saw the face, she had to be rescued by three members of the team. The body was later identified at that of Charlie “Stinky” Schaefer.

On the following day, two garbagemen emptying the dumpsters behind the Highpoint Mall noticed something out of the ordinary. It was a human hand. As they combed through the bin, they found a thigh, a torso, and eventually a head. The remains were later identified as those of Brandon “Shithead” Ingram.

“La Grange.” The ZZ Top song praising a rural whorehouse. The song seeped into Ned's brain long before he realized it was the ringer on his cellphone. He leapt from the cot he was sleeping in and felt around in his jeans for the phone. By the time he'd found it, he'd missed the call. But he knew who it was without checking. So he called Steve.

“Good morning.”