No Angel (21 page)

“I got you and the grandmas some flowers.”

She didn’t look at them. “I’m going out. Jack’s in his room playing video games. Dale’s at Mel’s.”

“Who’s Mel?”

“A new friend. The number’s on the fridge.” She walked toward her car and repeated, “I’m going out.”

“This Mel, he a boy?”

“No, Jay.”

I’d been holding the flowers out to show her. As she moved to her car, I let my hand fall limply to my side. “Where’re you going?”

“Just out. I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”

She got in her car and left.

I went inside and took my cut off. I hung it on the coatrack. It looked out of place next to my family’s outerwear. I caught my image in the hall mirror: topless, tattooed, muscles bulging, arms and face dirty with the road. I was wrong.
I
looked out of place.

I moved around the house. It was a mess. Piles of dirty clothes on the bedroom floors, piles of unfolded clean ones on the beds. Unrinsed dishes in the kitchen. Little pools of water on the tops of the bathroom sinks. Gwen knew I had a compulsion for organization and cleanliness. The mess was probably unintentional—I knew she was overwhelmed with being everything to everyone while I was away—but I couldn’t help wondering if the state of the house meant that she didn’t care to make me comfortable whenever I happened to come home.

I took a shower. When I was done I put on a pair of swim trunks and went to see Jack in his room. Clothes lay on his bed, too, but they were folded. By the way they were folded I could tell he had done it himself. His TV was on. A frozen image from a Madden’s NFL 2001 game was on the screen. Jack was hunched over his desk, writing.

I said, “Hey, kiddo.”

He turned. He looked surprised and frustrated. He hadn’t heard me come in. When he realized it was me, his features softened. He was a good kid. Too good for me.

I asked him what he was doing.

“Well, homework right now. I was playing Madden’s, trying to learn all the offensive sets so I don’t have to think about it so much, you know?” I told him I did. I knew he had limits on how long he could play video games, but I was happy to hear he was trying to learn all the sets. I’d played the game with him in the past, and even I was shocked by the number of plays the computer had, and how hard they could be to execute or defend. Sad to say, but I looked at his playing of Madden’s as a kind of education, which I fully supported.

I asked, “Hey, you hungry?”

“Yep.”

“Why don’t you bring your homework to the dining room. I’ll make some lunch.”

He said OK and gathered his stuff up.

In the kitchen I got out a can of tuna, opened it, drained it, and put it in a bowl. I added mayo and pepper. I cut up a small onion and a sour pickle and put them in the bowl. I added dill. I got out four slices of bread and put them in the toaster. I mashed the fish mixture with a fork. I looked over at Jack. His shoulders were gathered around his ears, his tongue was out. He was trying really hard, striving to do his best. I was proud.

I put the bread on a big plate and divided the tuna salad onto two pieces of golden bread. I got out some lettuce and put it on the salad. I squirted yellow mustard on the other two slices of bread and folded them onto the lettuce. I pushed them into place and cut the sandwiches diagonally.

I watched Jack some more. He was erasing some of his letters. No—he was erasing a lot of them. I could see the side of his face. His concentration had crossed back into frustration. I grabbed the plate and walked over to the table.

He’d been erasing to the point where he was eating holes in his paper. I asked him if he was having trouble with an answer.

He said, “No. The answer’s right.”

“Then what’s the problem, kiddo?” I sat next to him, put down the plate, and grabbed a wedge of sandwich. I bit into it.

“It’s my handwriting. It’s all wrong. I can’t get it right. I hate it.”

He dropped his pencil and hung his head. The tuna tasted good but I felt sick. I knew immediately that I’d screwed up something in my son’s head.

I said, “It looks good to me. I can read it.”

“That’s not the point, Dad, it’s not
right
, you know? I can do better.”

“You’re nine years old, kiddo. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“But it’s not right.” I knew what he meant. I recognized them as a paraphrase of my own words, repeated to him and Dale who knew how many times, in all kinds of contexts: sports, schoolwork, chores. I’d drilled it into them: “Everything you do—
everything
—do it to the max. This is the key to success in life and personal satisfaction. Nothing short of everything you have is acceptable.
That
will make you a winner.” I felt like a worm. I should’ve been there to tell Jack that it was his effort that was important, not the result. But I wasn’t there. I mean, I was there in the sense that Jack was trying to make me happy, by getting his letters right—but I wasn’t there physically to tell him that no matter what, Jack always made me happy. He’d confused effort with result, just as I always had.

A worm. A worm split in two. I writhed, but I wouldn’t let him see it.

I said, “Hey, kiddo, I know I’ve said otherwise, but what really matters is that you try your best. You give a good effort—your best effort—and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be satisfied with what you get. Got it? That’s what’s important. Try hard. Effort is its own reward.”

He said OK, but I didn’t believe him. Why should I? I barely believed myself. Results were all that mattered to me, all that had mattered to me for years. I handed him a sandwich wedge. We ate and talked about Little League and the Arizona Cardinals. I promised I’d take him to a game. He said, “Really?”

I said, “Really.”

GWEN CAME BACK
later. She’d gone shopping at Old Navy and had an early dinner with some friends she hadn’t seen in a while. Jack was already off to bed, and Dale, who’d had dinner at Mel’s, was in her room reading.

Gwen wasn’t happy. We went to our room and argued. She told me she didn’t want me showing up at home looking the way I did. She said it was hard enough for the kids my not being there, that I didn’t have to confuse them by looking like a damn biker in my own home. I said Jack didn’t see me decked out. She said he just as easily could have. She was right; I said I wouldn’t wear my UC clothes home ever again. She said that wasn’t the point. She said she was getting worn down. I asked her if she thought I wasn’t. I asked her if she knew the kind of shit I dealt with every day. She asked me the same question. Neither of us knew what the other was dealing with, and we both felt underappreciated, but neither of us was going to concede that the other was more correct. I asked her why she’d had to go out so quickly, why we couldn’t have had some time at home together, with the kids and all. She yelled my full name—Jay Anthony Dobyns! I said, “Hey, I’m not a detective.”

She said, “No, you’re an undercover.” She changed gears, said, “I know you have a woman on the case, I just know it.”

This shocked me. I hadn’t told her anything about JJ, who had yet to work even a full day. Woman’s intuition, I guess. She asked if I thought it was fair that she had to stay home all the time with the family while I did whatever the hell it was I did with whomever the hell I did it with. I didn’t like the implication. I hadn’t slept with another woman and I wasn’t planning to. I told her that was my job, and that, by the way, when I’m working I’m running with thugs in Bullhead, not sipping mai tais on Kauai. She said that when I came home, whenever that happened to be, I could expect her to take off for a while. She said she needed a break too. I agreed. She said it may be my job to do whatever, whenever, with whomever, but it was her job to look after our family. She put a particular emphasis on that word,
our
, as if I’d forgotten a fact. Maybe I had. No—I’d definitely begun to forget by then. Once again, I felt like a worm. But, more than that, I felt angry for being made to feel like a worm. I was just doing my job, and I was good at my job, and I wasn’t going to stop doing my job.

I had to cool down. I went out to the pool and listened to the desert. There were crickets and coyotes. There was no moon. The stars were bright. Jack’s light was out. Dale’s and Gwen’s were on. I lit a cigarette and smoked it. I lit another and smoked it. I lit another, and smoked it.

NOVEMBER 2, AND
I was back on. I left the house wearing a tank top. Jack had given me two more rocks as I got ready to leave—both were gray—one looked like a fist, the other like a fish. I stuffed them into my pocket. As Gwen had requested, I did not wear my cut. I waited until I got a safe distance from my house, pulled over, unstrapped it from the backseat, and put it on. I tied on my bandanna. I got out my Glocks.

I was Bird.

I hooked up with Pops and went over to Doug Dam’s to buy more guns.

We hung out with Doug, his girlfriend, and a prospect named Hank Watkins. Hank had been a Tucson Red Devil who’d been requested to patch over. He was in his late forties, more of an old-school guy than an up-and-comer. He’d had some preliminary dealings with Rudy, but since his Angels prospecting phase had begun, he’d been ordered to cool it: Prospects are not allowed to conduct any illegal activity without the express consent of their Angels superiors. Doug was his sponsor, and since they were together, nothing stopped them from selling us some iron.

They had two choice pieces. An Intratec AB-10 9 mm Luger semiauto pistol and a Heckler & Koch blue steel semiauto 9 mm pistol. They wanted $1,600 for both. It was more than I thought they were worth, but I agreed to the price. The H&K was a very nice gun. I went to the bank to get some extra cash and paid them.

Pops and I hit the road. We rode hard through the Valley once more, 90, 95 mph. Towers of red rock watched over us. Near Picacho an ostrich farm stretched out to the west. The bike felt good between my legs. She was humming along. I’d gotten some ape-hanger bars at the Motorcycle Shop in Kingman, and they were really comfortable to ride with.

I thought about the case, about Bird, about being in role. I thought about what was coming later that day.

Other than Jack’s rocks, I didn’t think about home much at all. The plain truth was that in those days I didn’t reflect much on my family. I knew they were there, at home, and that was enough. I knew I wasn’t there, but I believed in my reasons. Still, I couldn’t help thinking of Jack’s handwriting and how it frustrated him. I was frustrated too. I knew I had to do a better job on the Angels—not for ATF, not for Slats, not for Gwen—but for me. I knew I had to work harder. I knew I had to hang my ass out even more. I also knew I had lied to Jack when I told him that it was only his effort that mattered.

But I didn’t dwell on it.

We went to the Patch. We dropped Hank and Doug’s guns in the evidence vault. I filled out a voucher. Pops drank a Coke and fiddled with his fuel-intake valve, which had been giving him trouble. Slats told me that the Phoenix UC house was ready to go. He said I could spend the night there. He said it was over in Vattoland, South Central Phoenix. There were good taco stands out that way.

Timmy showed up at the Patch with his female partner. They were in role. Timmy had been teaching me some martial-arts basics and we sparred lightly. This was a big part of his cover—a martial-arts instructor offering private lessons. He twisted me up, threw me on the ground, and choked me out. Fun stuff—for him. When the time came to leave, we all tied black bandannas around our biceps.

We were off to a funeral.

I DIDN’T KNOW
the guy, but Rudy did. Some dude he rode with back when they were in a minor club called the Loners. Most recently the guy had been a Spartan Rider. He’d been hit by a semi while blowing a red light—all kinds of nasty things in the grille. Rudy had come to us for support, said we needed to go as a club, to show our respects to a fallen brother. We agreed, but not for his reasons. All we wanted was to draw Rudy out into the sunshine.

The funeral was at the Church of the Sun in Cave Creek. There were Loners, Spartans, Lost Dutchmen, Bonded Slaves, and Limeys in attendance. There were three Hells Angels flying Phoenix tabs—none of whom we’d met.

The ceremony was brief and unceremonious. Words on death quickly passed the lips of these men. There were the usual platitudes of a life lived the right way, of a loyal brother, of a man who might not have been a good son but who was a righteous outlaw. Eulogy was not their strong point. They grunted, they nodded, they hung their heads. They prayed—to what god one can only guess. They saluted. They all wore their cuts. They were good Americans, good friends. They believed in the soul. They believed in redemption, in ultimate relief from a world of judgment and harassment and incarceration. They prayed that he find a bike in the afterlife.

We left in a single-file column. We roared our engines, sending his spirit to wherever it was destined to go with a final flourish, with an announcement.

Maybe it was pathetic, maybe it was profound, maybe it was nothing. I watched it all, but didn’t much care. I had other things on my mind.

Rudy looked like shit. He’d completed his journey home to Methopotamia, the cradle of crystallization. I’d told Bad Bob that his nose was deep in the bag. From the look of his eyes, that wasn’t all. He’d put his whole head and body into the shit.

We went to the Spartan Riders’ clubhouse on East Van Buren in Central Phoenix. More of the same, this time with beer and smoke.

We Solos left close to 7:00 p.m. We rode down Van Buren and turned onto Seventh Street, headed toward I-10 and the Bank One Ballpark, where the Diamondbacks play. We were in standard formation, Rudy and I up front, Timmy and Pops directly behind us.

Two marked units pulled nose-to-nose onto Seventh Street in front of us. Rudy slowed to a stop, and I followed his lead. A helicopter came in from the west, dipping low fast, a million-candlepower “night sun” spot illuminating the scene. The marked units’ doors opened. Rudy was backing up in a three-point turn, telling me to follow him. I said, “Today ain’t my day to die, Rude. These dudes don’t look to be fucking around.” I glanced over my shoulder. Three more marked units blocked our rear. We were trapped in the middle of the block.