Beneath the Cracks (24 page)

"Detective, and I'd think you'd be concerned
about the men turning up dead in the neighborhood.  If we
can't identify them more and more cops are gonna be crawling all
over this neighborhood until we start getting straight
answers.  Can't imagine you'd like that."

His grin took a turn for salacious. 
"Depends on who's doin' the crawlin' sweetheart.  I'm pretty
sure I can speak for every red blooded American male that gets a
gander of you.  Watchin' you crawl would be…hot."

"Those are some interesting looking bikes
parked out front.  It would be a shame if I lost my balance in
these boots on my way out and say, tripped.  They'd go down
like dominoes, Mr.…"

He chuckled with the leer still intact in
his eyes.  "Just Nooky, Uncle if you like.  I don't know
if I could stand hearing you call me Uncle Nooky though. 
Conjures up all sorts of wicked thoughts." His shudder was perverse
and sent a wave of disgust rippling through me.

"What's your real name?" I lost all
semblance of patience.  "If you don't tell me here, we could
always go down to the division and get your prints.  I'd lay
odds that they're in the system under your real name
somewhere.  You did after all, attempt to assault a police
detective."

"Nick," he muttered.  "Nick
Jackson."

"Now, Mr. Jackson –"

"Could you ease up on the mister
thing?  At least come over to the bar and pretend to be
sociable.  I got my reputation to consider," Jackson said.

"Fine."  I followed him to the bar and
sat on an empty stool.  "I don't suppose you've got any Napa
merlot back there."

"I got whiskey and beer."

"Heineken."

"One Bud, comin' right up."

"Do you ever have any patrons from the Sixth
Avenue Shelter over here, Nooky?"  I sipped the beer from a
smudged mug.

His left eyebrow arched.  "Are you
serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be?  A lot of them
drink.  You serve alcohol.  Seems like a match made in
heaven to me."

"Except I expect my patrons, as you call
them, to pony up at the end of the night.  Them bums do good
to scrape up enough panhandlin' to buy the cheap shit at the corner
liquor store."

"So none of them have even tried to drink
here?"

Nooky shrugged.  "I ain't sayin' they
never tried, but like I said –"

"You expect the tab to be paid."

"Right."

"But you've seen them around, right?"

"Honey, those guys are invisible to the
whole world outside these neighborhoods.  Why the hell would
we notice more 'n where to step over the drunks in the gutter?"

Interest in my presence attracted a few
brave souls to the adjacent stools.  I was keenly aware of the
wall of muscled and tattooed flesh growing around me.

"So none of them stuck out in the
crowd?"

"One did," the man to my left spoke. 
"Called himself Preacher, and he was the only one you ever let
inside this bar, Nooky.  The guy raked in more money than
fifty of those bums with all that preachin' he did."

Nooky glared at the new participant to the
conversation while my skin tingled from the roots of my hair
downward.

"Preacher paid his bill," Nooky nodded
curtly, "Not that I need you speakin' for me, Batshit."

The man beside me flashed a grin and thrust
out a tattooed hand that read
aces
across the base of his
fingers.  My eyes were drawn to the left hand where
&88s
spanned the other digits.  I tilted the glass
to my lips and ignored the introduction.  "Nice ink."

"Prophetic," Nooky growled.

"I'm Batshit Crazy," he said. 

"My sympathies."

Nooky let out a belly laugh.  "That's
his name, detective.  Batshit Crazy."

"So shall I call you Mr. Batshit, or Mr.
Crazy?"

Nooky continued to chuckle while Batshit
Crazy explained his biker name.  "It ain't a real name, you
see.  It's just what the fellas call me.  If you want my
real name –"

"Batshit, can't you see the detective and I
are havin' a conversation?" Uncle Nooky interrupted.  "Go buzz
off."

"It's all right, Nooky."  I smiled at
my talkative friend.  "I don't mind having a word with Batshit
Crazy for a minute.  You met Preacher here?"

"Sure," Batshit added an enthusiastic
nod.  "He might've been crazier than me, but he wasn't a bad
guy.  He liked the rotgut Nooky serves better than the cheap
shit from the corner store if you know what I mean."

I didn't, but nodded solemnly. 

"I ain't seen him in a couple a weeks
though.  Heard he took up with that dairy farm crew. 
Probably still out there shovelin' manure.  Lotta guys go for
that when it starts gettin' cold.  They get three squares, a
roof over their heads and a guaranteed job outta the weather."

"Never thought about it that way."  I
winked at Nooky, pretending an inside joke that belied my interest
in what Batshit Crazy had to say.  "I don't suppose you've
ever worked at the farm, have you Batshit?"

"Me?" he chuckled.  "Hell no. 
Though it ain't for lack of that recruiter guy tryin'.  He
came in here a couple a times 'fore Nooky tossed him out and told
him never to come back.  Ain't that right, Nooky?"

I glanced at Jackson.  The muscle in
his jaw clenched and relaxed rhythmically.  "Yeah, I guess
that's right."  Lips barely moved in accompaniment to the
snarled reply.

"What was that dude's name?"  Batshit
twisted the long growth of hair at the tip of his chin. 
"Dupree?  No, that ain't right.  That's the name of the
farm.  Somethin' like that.  What the hell was that guy's
name, Uncle Nooky?  Denton!  That's what it was, Tommy
Denton."

The shiny bald patron on the other side of
me grunted.  The man ain't got brains enough to know when he
ain't wanted someplace.  That's why he showed up here in the
first place."  He punctuated the statement with a hard direct
stare.  "We don't take to strangers so much around here, do we
Nooky?  We really don't take to people who haven't got the
sense to know when to shut the fuck up."

Threat understood.

"As fascinating as this has been, I'm not
interested in Preacher.  I'm more concerned about getting the
names of the men who died in Downey."

"Well," Nooky started polishing the top of
his bar with a filthy dishcloth, "like I said, detective. 
Their kind weren't welcome here, so we can't help you with their
names.  Still, in the interests of bein' sociable, feel free
to come back any time and shoot the shit with us.  Just don't
come with the badge and gun.  I ain't gonna stand for cops
comin' in my bar and trickin' people too dumb for their own good
into flappin' their jaws."

"Even you must realize that at some point,
we'd have to come in here and ask you fine gentlemen for your
cooperation," I said through a false smile.  "After all, this
is your neighborhood too, and the sooner we get some answers, the
sooner we're likely to…go away."

"He just told you, you got all the answers
you're gonna get, lady.  Why don't you just push off now, and
leave us to our business?"

I turned to the surly man on my right. 
A small tattoo marked the soft tissue under his left ear.  The
black ink had faded to something grayer, a crude circle with a
large A slashed over the center.  Nice.  The universal
symbol for anarchy.  It reminded me a bit in quality of
Charles Manson's infamous swastika on the forehead.  "And what
business might that be, sir?"

His index finger bravely stabbed my
chest.  "That would be
none of yours
."

"You gentlemen have a lovely evening." 
I peeled off a ten dollar bill from a wad in my pocket and dropped
it on the counter.  "Thanks for the Heineken, Uncle
Nooky.  See you around."

On my way down the block, I couldn't resist
the temptation to give the last bike in the row a little nudge from
my boot.  The symphony of metal meeting the road sang through
the dense fog.

Chapter 21

I scrubbed the stench of stale smoke and
biker body odor off me for a good half hour back at Downey
Division.  Chuckling the whole time.  I couldn't help
it.  I would've paid to see the looks on their faces after I
followed through with my threat to their beloved Uncle Nooky. 
Who the hell did they think they were, threatening a cop like
that?  For all they knew, I could've had a swat team outside
the building waiting for my signal to storm the place.

All's well that ends well.  Batshit
Crazy had proven most helpful.  Tom Denton was indeed the man
recruiting homeless men to work at Dupree Farm in Downey too, not
that I doubted it for a second.  The reluctance of Uncle Nooky
and his customers to cooperate at all came as no surprise. 
Law enforcement had a storied history with that particular cultural
subset.  I still wasn't sure that they knew anything more than
what they'd told me, though.  Probably the same conclusion
that Jake Cox had drawn, which was why he refocused on Dupree
Farm.

With my
fed aura
freshly restored, I
slipped back into another all-business black suit and stowed my
disguise in the duffle bag.  The temptation to burn the
evidence was strong.  Instead, I slung the bag over one
shoulder and decided to make my phone calls from the desk upstairs
in the squad room.

To my horror, I slammed into the brick wall
of Tony Briscoe's chest the second I stepped out of the locker
room.  "Tony!  My God, you scared the life –"

"What the
hell
were you
thinking?"  His oft lazy drawl evaporated in the heat of true
rage shooting from his eyes.  "Did you honestly believe we
wouldn't find out where you went tonight?  Jesus,
Eriksson!  You could've been killed!"

His fingers bit into my upper arms, and he
shook me so hard my teeth rattled.

"I'll say this one time, Briscoe. 
Consider it your warning.  Get your hands off me right
now."

"Or what?  You'll pull the same stunt
with me you did on Uncle Nooky?  Oh yeah, Helen.  The
cops are good enough for that bunch when somebody vandalizes their
motorcycles.  I doubt you were down the street yet when we got
the call that some
tall-assed crazy detective
came in,
assaulted poor li'l defenseless Uncle Nooky and then trashed their
hogs
on her way out of the place."

"I got what I needed to know!"

"At what price?  Do you have the first
goddamn clue in hell what Johnny's gonna say about this?"  He
smacked one hand to his forehead and turned away for only a
moment.  "You sat there and flat out lied about what you were
doin' tonight."

"Would you have let me go talk to Uncle
Nooky otherwise?"

"Not on your life."

"Well, there you have it.  You cannot
coddle me and hold me back, Briscoe.  I won't stand for
it.  And every time you try, I'll find a way to outsmart
you.  It's what I do."

"Outsmart the people who have your
back?  Oh, well pardon me, Helen, but for such a smart person,
you sure are dumb.  Do you have the first clue in hell how
many of those guys are packin' weapons?  Guns, knives, hell,
we'd probably find a grenade or two if we got real ambitious about
searchin' 'em."

Outrage receded into general fear and
genuine concern.  I patted his chest with one hand.  "But
nothing happened to me, Tony.  See?  I'm fine.  All
in one piece, not a scratch on me."

He snorted.  "Yeah, you just got a gang
of men with four-score and seven brain cells among the bunch out
for blood. 
Your
blood."

"I'll send a check to pay for the damages to
their bikes."

"And that ain't gonna smooth over their
wounded pride.  Those hunks-o'-junk on wheels weren't worth
the price of the bill to tow 'em away, Helen.  In the
meantime, you could have sixty brand new motorcycles delivered with
big red bows and it wouldn't be enough for that crew."

"They don't have the guts to come after me,
Tony.  I've rubbed elbows with bikers that make these guys
look like choir boys.  And why aren't you the least bit
interested to find out what I learned?"

"I'm more interested in hidin' you before
Orion gets here," he muttered.

I froze.  "You called Johnny?"

"I didn't."

"Crevan," I hissed.  "That meddling
–"

"Scared shitless is more like it," Tony
shook his head.  "Crevan ain't exactly made of the sternest
stuff, Helen.  But he still sees himself as tougher than
women.  He about had a fit of apoplexy when Uncle Nooky
described the perp we oughtta be lookin' for."

"How much time have I got?"

"The way Orion drives?  Hell, he'll
probably be upstairs before you can get to the door."

I took off at a dead run for the back lot at
Downey.  "Working from home for the rest of the night," I
yelled over my shoulder.  I paused long enough at the door to
throw a grin back at Briscoe.  "Thanks for the heads up."

There was no time to waste.  The sooner
I got home, behind the safety of the solid walls and gate, the
better.  It would buy time for Johnny to cool off before the
inevitable confrontation took place.  My cell phone rang
twenty times before I got sick of it and shut it off.  I made
sure no one followed me through the gate before it rolled shut,
parked in the garage and made sure the doors were dead-bolted
before I felt air rushing into my lungs at full capacity.

My heart hammered wildly.  Johnny was
going to be livid, no matter how much time passed between the
initial insult of my lies and when I could avoid him no more. 
Even though I shut off the cell phone ringer before I got to Beach
Cliffs, it hadn't stopped the incessant calls.  The light on
the answering machine in the kitchen blinked an electronic version
of epilepsy.