The Scarred Man (10 page)

    That was a wild ride down the mountain. We were all high on something, tripped out on speed or acid, or just bombing on the exhilaration of the mass onslaught. Most of the riders had been gulping pills all afternoon. Seconal, Amytal, Nembutal, Tuinal. The new gods of the American scene. The main thing, man, was to be
with
it. To make the scene. Let those mothers out there grok. We were going to shake them and move them and stir up the bullshit.

    I was halfway back in the pack and had a good view of the action. By that time we were out on the main road, bombing along at sixty to seventy miles an hour with no more than five to ten feet between us. One slip and a hundred of us would be squirming on the pavement. In the lead were the Banditos, a gang from upstate New York. I saw them close in and overtake a big black Imperial with Jersey tags. They flowed around the car like water around a stone. The driver swerved in toward them. It may have been intentional, or he may have panicked. The Bandito leader ran off onto the shoulder but somehow managed to keep his balance on the loose gravel. He skidded back and forth half a dozen times before regaining the road. Above the roar of the bikes, I heard his war whoop and saw him reach back with one hand to unsnap the chain around his waist. His action was duplicated by the rest. Chains whirling, they set out after the Imperial.

    The first swipe of a Bandito chain smashed the window on the driver's side. The Imperial was running for its life at what must have been eighty to ninety miles an hour with the pack in full cry. I saw the flash of sparks as chains whipped the car's hood. Bits of glass and chrome flew back at us like confetti. We all pressed on in pursuit, the Imperial weaving drunkenly down the highway with the outlaws beating it to death. At last they let it go, and the wreck disappeared around the curve.

    The Banditos rode on in a haze of victory, still whirling their chains and whooping like a Cheyenne war party. In a way, it was hard to blame the outlaw. A man on a bike at high speed is only inches from being ground into raw hamburger. While the danger gives him a heightened perception of life and may even serve as some sort of erotic stimulus, it also nourishes his contempt for laws and the law-abiding.

    I had been aware of somewhat the same feeling in myself when I had come back from Korea. Those of us who had killed, and been in danger of being killed, could not help but feel that we were a breed apart. We looked with cold eyes on the fat burghers who had stayed home while mortars were giving us hell around the snowbound Chosen reservoir. We had felt ourselves then, by virtue of the risks we had taken, to be something special. Since a bike rider at high speed is as vulnerable as a newly hatched chick, the outlaws had reason to feel the same now.

    But the rush slowed as we reached the outskirts of town. The sheriff was waiting for us with another road block, his smashed car parked across the main street. We slowed but did not stop. We flowed around him, mounting the sidewalks in flying leaps and scattering pedestrians like chickens. Kranski had drawn his weapon and again made the futile gesture of firing half a dozen shots into the air as we swept on by. Instead of slowing us down, the gunplay only galvanized us into more action. I saw one of the riders who had misjudged his moment of impact with the curb go headfirst through the plate glass window of the town's only drugstore. A shower of glass spread out around him like a spray of water, and his momentum was so great that he kept on going, gutting the whole store before fetching up at the back wall. None of us stopped to see what had happened to him. We didn't give a damn.

    The people watched gape-jawed as we thundered down on them. They leaped back into the doorways to let us go by. Another window caved in, leaving the rider pinned and bleeding.

    The loss of an occasional rider had little effect on the rest. The sight of a man smashed up in the wreckage of his machine hardly created a stir. We were as stirred up as Apaches on a rampage.

    Then the onslaught began to lose direction. We had reached the center of the town, and there did not seem to be any other place to go. The streets were now so packed as to be impassable. I left my bike on one of the side streets among a pack of hundreds of others and began to circulate on foot. Tiny came out of the pack and closed in on me. There were three others with him.

    "I want to talk to you, Shaw."

    "Okay," I said.

    "Not here."

    "What's wrong with here?"

    "Too noisy. Over here." He pointed toward a closed up filling station, a ghostly place of rusting pumps and greasy cement.

    It was a gamble. A big one. If I refused to go, they might rough me up. If I did go, they could easily kill me. Tiny had seen Pearly come over to talk to me. Was that a good enough reason for murder? If you were Tiny maybe it was. Yet Pearly had said that Tiny did not really care what she did or who with. He loved his chopper more than his mamma. Mammas were a dime a dozen. There had to be more to it than that. Tiny had been suspicious of me from the start. If Pearly had reported to him that I had been asking questions about Soldier…

    Trying to find one man out of ten thousand would call for time and luck. Probably I did not have much of either. But if the man I was hunting came looking for me…

    I shrugged and fell into step between them. Tiny was in front and the others a step or two behind. The procession was as grim as if we were on our way to the chair. When the attack came it was not entirely unexpected, but still it caught me by surprise. The blow hit me on the back of the neck. My feet slipped on the oil slick, and I went down on my haunches. I was in the position of a charging fullback, and I came up like one. My shoulder, backed by 200 pounds, took Tiny in the gut. He whoofed like a popped balloon.

    As he went down, I smashed my elbow into his face and felt something-bone or cartilage-give. Blood, geysered from his nose, covering both of us. Then the others were on top of me, clubbing, and since further resistance seemed pointless, I stuck my hands down between my legs to protect the groin and let them kick the hell out of me.

    When they'd had enough, they dumped me into a corner between two oil drums. I opened my eyes and saw one of them holding the .38 he had taken from my shoulder holster.

    "Well, you mother," Tiny said. "What are you? A nark or the fuzz?"

    I gave him a groan for an answer.

    "Get his ID," one of the others said.

    A hand pushed me over and reached into my hip pocket.

    "Shaw. William Shaw. One-seventy East Seventy-first Street, New York City."

    "What else?"

    "Nothin'. A couple credit cards in the same name is all."

    "No police card?"

    "Uh uh."

    Tiny gave me another kick in the ribs, not too hard this time, and said, "Come on, you fucker. Who are you and what are you after?"

    "My name is Shaw, and I'm just here riding a bike like the rest of you."

    "Bullshit. Pearly said you were askin' for a guy named Soldier."

    "So?"

    "What do you want with him?"

    "I don't give a damn about him. Somebody mentioned his name to me and said if I came here for the hill climb, he might be around and to look him up."

    "Who was it?" said the one with the gun. "Who told you to look up Soldier?"

    "A guy named Stud in Florida. He rides with the Beaks."

    "What's his last name?"

    "Brewer."

    The man who was questioning me gave me a long cool look. He was about my height but probably thirty pounds lighter. There was a taut, self-contained quality about him that set him apart from the others. Unlike most of the riders, who prided themselves on the grease and dirt ground into their levis, his clothes were freshly washed and he was clean-shaven. He reached up to pull off his helmet. He had thin fair hair. Although the light was bad, I thought I saw a thin scar on his upper lip. I felt a spurt of adrenalin through my veins. There were probably a hundred' men in town that night with fair hair and scarred faces and yet… I felt a flash of pure hatred that seemed to lift the short hairs on the back of my neck.

    Take it easy, I tried to tell myself. If this is in fact Soldier, you'll know it soon enough.

    "When did you ride with the Beaks?" he said. His voice had a Western twang.

    "I didn't really ride with them, but I got to know most of them pretty well."

    "How was that?"

    "They got into some trouble down in the Keys, and I gave them a hand."

    "Let's skip all this bullshit," Tiny said. "If you're not the fuzz or a nark, why do you carry a piece?"

    I shrugged. "A lot of guys carry a weapon of some kind, a gun or a knife or a chain. You never know when you might need it."

    "For what?"

    "For crazy bastards like you. You beat hell out of me just because I was trying to look up a guy and say hello to him. Or was it because of Pearly?"

    "What about her?"

    "Maybe you were sore because she came over to talk to me.

    Tiny only grunted. He was still bleeding heavily, and he kept daubing at his nose. "I think this mother broke my fuckin' nose."

    No one offered him any consolation. My experience with the Beaks had convinced me that physical violence meant nothing to them. They were as accustomed to it as boxers or pro football players. That was what made them so murderous in barroom brawl. They had been slugged, smashed, and generally brutalized so many times that one more blow or knife wound made no difference.

    "So you know Stud?" the thin man asked.

    "Yes."

    "Who else?"

    "All of them. Bubba, Magoo, Zorro, Skip-the whole crew."

    He chuckled. "A great bunch of heads."

    "Are you Soldier?"

    "What if I am?"

    "Nothing. Like I said, they told me to look you up."

    "Okay, so you did. And I know now who you are."

    "Yes?"

    "It was in the papers here about them hitting that kid in Islamorada and you getting them off, right?"

    I nodded.

    "This guy is on the level then?" growled Tiny.

    "Yeah, man. It's like I told you. This is the cat that got the Beaks off. Old Stud would still have his ass in jail if it wasn't for him. Right, Shaw?"

    I nodded. Soldier was not what I might have expected.

    There was a taut, self-contained, catlike quality about him that I found formidable. And he had been too easily convinced. He gave me the impression of a natural loner-a man who depended only on himself and who would probably have regarded his own mother with suspicion.

    "So I got a busted nose for nothin'?" Tiny growled.

    Soldier laughed. "Hell, he did you a favor. Any change at all in that beak of yours would be an improvement."

    "Oh yeah? Well maybe I ought to improve yours too while we're at it."

    Soldier settled back on his heels, thumbs hooked in his wide belt. He was still smiling, but his eyes had gone very cold. His special quality of tautness had become more pronounced. "You could try," he said.

    Tiny hesitated. Despite his size he was not anxious to tangle with Soldier. From the street came the roar of motors and the crash of glass. "Sheet!" said Tiny. "Let's get where the action is!"

    Soldier still held my .38.

    "What about my gun?" I said.

    "What about it?"

    "I'd like it back."

    "You won't need it here, Shaw. You're among friends. You carry a piece you're only liable to get hurt." He placed the revolver on the concrete floor and with a sudden movement brought the iron pry bar down on the chamber.

    "Are you nuts?" said Tiny. "You busted up a perfectly good piece."

    Soldier retrieved the ruined revolver and handed it back to me. "Like I said, you're among friends here. Anybody leans on you, Shaw, you just tell them you're ridin' with me."

    

    

    We stepped out into the street. Kildare was coming apart at the seams. Someone had busted the window of the liquor store, and bottles were being passed from hand to hand. Tiny, nose forgotten, let out a whoop and made a dive for a fifth. When I looked for Soldier he was gone, swept away in the crowd.

    So now I had to find him again. And then what? Kill him with my bare hands? Not bloody likely. He looked tough, that Soldier. Mean and competent as a snake. Even Tiny backed off when it came to Soldier.

    But whatever I did would have to be done soon. Soldier was smart. He had not bought my cover story. Even before he smashed the revolver, I knew he had not bought it. Where had he sensed the hole? The fact that when I had aided the Beaks I had done something for nothing? Soldier was the product of a hard school. He knew damned well that no one does anything for nothing. So I must be getting mine one way or the other. It would be worth a phone call to Stud to find out. But Stud wasn't answering any phones, down there in the dark canal. So where was Stud? Gang leaders don't just split. He went to take a ride with that guy Shaw and hasn't been seen since. And now Shaw shows up in Kildare asking for Soldier…

    A naked arm stole around my neck. Friend Pearly, she of the lovely boobs bare under the fishnet shirt.

    "Gotcha, Shaw. Where you been? Hey, what's that on your shirt? Blood?"

    "Tiny's."

    "That mother. Did he beat up on you?"

    "He and a few friends."

    "Who?"

    "Soldier, for one."

    She hugged herself and shivered. "He scares me."

    "Why?"

    "Don't know. Just does. He's like a chunk of ice. They say he killed a man in Texas. When he touches me…"