The Tin Man (20 page)

“Sounds good to me,” Masters said. “You know anything about the place?”

“Just enough to stay away from it,” Patrick replied. “Having a drink or shooting pool with the bikers at the Bobby John Club used to be the cool thing to do in high school, but I never went. They certainly were never any competition for the Sarge’s Place’s business.”

“Well, Chandler said it was a public bar,” Jon pointed out. “I suppose you have as much right as anyone to go in there. If there’s a million motorcycles parked out front, we’ll just go in another time.”

B
obby John’s had been around a long time in the Del Paso Heights neighborhood of Sacramento. Several big Harleys were parked out front. The wind had kicked up, and it felt raw and blustery, heightening the sudden sense of dread Patrick felt as he opened the door and stepped inside, four surveillance bugs tucked away and ready to go.

Although his family had run a bar for years, Patrick never liked going into them—especially strange bars, in lousy parts of town, at night, and alone. Even when it’s dark outside, there’s always a time after walking into a bar when your eyes aren’t adjusted to the gloom within. Patrick felt vulnerable: Everyone inside could see him, but he couldn’t see them—or danger coming. Tables and people were shadows. He felt on display, naked, a stranger invading unknown territory—it was like walking into a cave knowing there were bears lurking inside. He could run headlong into the guy he was looking for and never recognize him.

Patrick decided to withstand the heads turning toward him, the stares, and the muffled comments, and just wait in the doorway until his eyes adapted. If his target tried to leave, at least he’d have a chance to intercept him. Standing there, he realized that to the hostile watchers he must look like some kind of Wild West gunfighter, but there was no other solution.

As his eyes adjusted, the details of the place grew clearer. It was small and narrow. The bar stretched almost the entire length of the wall to the right. Two pool tables dominated the room to the left,
with a few tables and chairs scattered around. At the far side of the bar, a dark hallway led to the back of the building. Patrick could hear loud voices from back there—more patrons, he guessed. A biker was leaning against the hallway wall; he appeared to be guarding a private room. Patrick saw a shaft of light briefly illuminate the hallway and guessed there was a back door at the end leading to the alleyway in the rear.

The walls were covered with posters of naked biker women, motorcycles, and other typical barroom art, plus some not very typical stuff: a collection of Confederate States, Third Reich, neo-Nazi, White Power, and Ku Klux Klan flags and posters. Patrick even recognized several national flags, including Russia, the Afrikaner flag of South Africa, the flags of the old East Germany, the Ukraine, and Belarus. No doubt about the theme of this place.

Just plant the bugs and get the hell out, Patrick told himself. One at the bar—it should be able to pick up male voices for ten to twenty feet in all directions—one at a pool table, one in the bathroom, and one in the meeting room in back if he could get there.

There was no place open at the bar, so Patrick stood at the waitresses’ pickup station. The bartender ignored him. He could make out the faces in the bar now. Some glared at him with undisguised hostility. To his surprise, a few others seemed to be looking at him with fear, as if he might be a cop coming to arrest them or a leg-breaker coming to collect a debt. Most paid no attention. It was dim enough for no one to notice as he attached the first listening device under the edge of the counter.

But his luck didn’t last for long. The huge, fat, bearded biker on the stool nearest him looked up from his beer. “Hey, sweet cheeks, the faggot bar’s
down the street,” he growled drunkenly. Patrick ignored him, enraging the biker. He reached out and gave Patrick a shove hard enough to push him back a few feet. “I said, the faggot bar’s down the street, rump ranger. Hit the fucking road.” Patrick decided he’d better move to a table back behind the pool tables, but the biker looked as if he wasn’t going to let him go.

“Hey, Rod, knock it off,” the bartender ordered. He put another beer in front of the guy, who promptly forgot about McLanahan. The bartender scowled at Patrick. “This ain’t no tourist stop, sport,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Use your bathroom?”

“The john’s only for paying customers.”

“I’ll take a beer.”

“Five dollars.”

“Five?”

“You just bought Rod there a beer too.” Patrick put a five on the bar. “Where’s your bathroom?”

“Coffee shop two blocks down,” the bartender snapped. “Now get the fuck out.”

Patrick tried to keep his voice steady. He had dealt with a few badasses at the Shamrock Pub, mostly college kids after a few too many or lowlifes trying to pick a fight with a cop. He’d thought he could handle this one. Nevertheless, he was already starting to feel events spinning out of control, and he had been here only a few moments. “I’ll take that beer and then hit the road,” Patrick said.

The bartender reached down to the cooler behind the bar, pulled out a bottle of beer, and put it on the bar. But before Patrick could take it, a gloved hand reached past him and picked it up. Patrick turned and saw a guy not much taller than he was, with long brown hair, a beard, a leather jacket, and dark,
dead-looking eyes, standing right beside him. Another biker, this one with a shaved head and a goatee, had crossed behind the guy and was standing to Patrick’s right.

“Who are you, asshole?” the first guy asked, taking a swig of beer.

“I’m nobody,” Patrick replied. “Just came in to get a beer and take a piss.”

As the guy nodded, Patrick’s world exploded right in his face. A boot kicked the side of his left knee, sending him crashing against the bar in pain and buckling him halfway to the floor. He heard the sound of shattering glass, and a second later felt the jagged edge of a broken beer bottle against his throat, drawing blood. A hand with the grip of a steel vise clamped around the back of his neck, hauling him up tightly against the bar. Several more bikers had come over, surrounding them.

“You know, you’re one stupid motherfucker coming in here like this,” the guy with the beer bottle said. “You think you can just march in here and feed us a line of crap? Who the fuck are you, pretty boy?”

“I’m nobody,” Patrick repeated. “I came in for a lousy beer!”

“Fucking liar!” the biker shouted. By now, Patrick was looking for the first opportunity to make a run for the door, but the hand squeezing his neck tightened still more, and he cried out in pain. “Talk!”

“I’m the brother of one of the cops that got shot downtown,” Patrick said through the sheet of pain slicing through his head.

“What in hell do you want?” Patrick kept his mouth shut. The grip tightened even more, and he thought he was going to pass out. “You better talk, candy-ass, or I’ll snap your neck in two!”

“Mullins,” Patrick murmured against the pain and terror. “Mullins set up that robbery. I want him.”

The grip on his neck didn’t subside, but Patrick was relieved to hear some laughter behind him. “What do you want to do with him?” asked a different voice.

“I want to question him about the Major, about who staged that robbery,” Patrick gasped out, trying to struggle free. “And then I want to kick his fucking ass.”

There was another round of laughter. “Hey, pretty boy, that’s good,” the guy with the broken beer bottle said. “But today’s not your lucky day. Because Mullins’s got hold of your neck right now, and in a minute he’s going to take you in back. If you’re lucky, he might just fuck your white-bread ass and carve his initials in your face. But if he takes what you just said personally, you’re going to end up in a garbage truck on your way to the dump.”

Patrick strained to see over his shoulder. The guy holding his neck was the biker with the shaved head and the goatee. He didn’t look like the police intelligence description at all. Even his eyebrows were different; he had colored them with mascara, like the goatee. “Hey, cop-killer,” Patrick said. “You and me, motherfucker. Let’s see how tough you are without your army.”

Mullins laughed in his face, then shoved his head, down onto the bar. Patrick turned his head just in time to avoid a smashed nose. “Killing those cops was business, asshole,” Mullins said. “But fucking you up is going to be personal.”

“The cops have this place under surveillance,” Patrick said through clenched teeth, his voice shaking. He couldn’t believe how scared he felt right now. “They’ve photographed everyone coming in
and out of this place. If I turn up dead, all of you’ll be murder suspects.”

“Maybe so, asswipe,” said the guy with the bottle. Patrick felt hands going through his pockets. They took his wallet and some cash, but thankfully missed the tiny quarter-sized listening devices. “But you’ll still be fuckin’ dead. Now you’re going to tell me how you found out about Mullins and the Major, and you’d better talk or I’ll—”

“Hey! Look at this!” A different biker ripped something from Patrick’s clenched right hand. He held up a tiny object—what looked like a short, thick cylinder, white, with a round rubber tip. Patrick’s arms were twisted behind his back, and his head was jerked upward.

“What is this, asswipe?” the guy with the beer bottle yelled, holding the object up to Patrick’s face. “This looks like a rubber bullet, or some kind of shotgun shell. You better tell me, asshole, or Mullins there will twist your fucking head off!”

“Let me go!” Patrick shouted. The tiny shell was his last hope, Patrick thought grimly, his only chance to escape. He had hesitated to use it and he was going to pay for it now. “I’ll get out of here. I won’t come near this place again. Just let me go.”

The guy with the beer bottle gave Patrick a backhanded swat across the face, drawing blood from a cut lip. “I guess I’m just going to have to beat it out of you, sport …”

“It’s a nerve-gas grenade!” someone said in a loud voice. They turned to see a figure standing in the doorway in front of the rear hallway. Jon Masters was holding up
an
object like the one taken from Patrick. “Just like this one. Twenty-five-millimeter cartridge, filled with a half a milliliter of Novichok, a V-class anticholinesterase agent that will paralyze you in about eight seconds. It uses a nitrogen propellant
so it will spray the gas through the entire room and easily disable just about everyone here. Here—catch!” And he threw the grenade as hard as he could across the bar and against the wall.

The grenade burst with a loud
pop!
and exploded into a thick white cloud of gas that spread throughout the entire room with astonishing speed. It looked like an instant fog. It tasted of acidity, like sulfur, burning the eyes and throat.

The bikers scattered. Patrick dropped to the floor—but not because of the gas. It burned and it tasted funny, but it wasn’t disabling. He was free! “Jon!”

“Here, Muck, he—!”

As Patrick looked up, the biker with the beard ran headlong into Masters coming toward him and grabbed him. The broken beer bottle flashed in the foggy air. “Jon!” Patrick screamed. He struggled to his feet, trying to catch the biker’s arm as it lashed out, but he was far too late. “Jon!” he screamed again.

Masters’s jacket was ripped open across the chest, and Patrick saw blood spilling out of the wound. Jon’s hands clutched at it ineffectually, blood seeping through his fingers. “Patrick?” he said weakly.

“C’mon, Jon, let’s get out of here!” But he was frozen in place. Patrick grabbed him around the waist and half-pulled, half-dragged him outside. He felt someone clutch at him from behind, and in a fit of rage he swung back with his right hand. He connected with thin bone and tissue, and they heard the assailant yelp as he let go.

With Patrick half-carrying Jon, the two men made their way down Del Paso Boulevard to a Safeway supermarket parking lot, where a rented Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicle was waiting for
them. “Okay, we can slow down now,” Patrick said, pulling Jon back.

They turned around. Half a dozen motorcycles were roaring down Del Paso Boulevard, and they saw men running down the street. “We gotta get out of here now, Patrick!”

“Calm down,” Patrick said, wiping blood from Jon’s jacket front. “Running will only attract attention now. Try to stay upright, Jon. Just a few more steps. Hang in there, brother.”

“I … I need help here, Patrick …”

“C’mon, let’s keep going. You’ll be okay.” They forced themselves to walk casually toward the car. Patrick was out of breath by now, gasping from the effort of supporting Jon and the aftereffects of the adrenaline pumping through his veins. When police cars zoomed past, the two of them stopped to watch, just like normally curious onlookers.

Patrick helped Jon into the passenger seat and examined his wound under the dome light. It was a deep cut, but it was not bubbling or pumping, which meant that it had not pierced a lung or a major blood vessel. He eased off Jon’s jacket, pressed it against his chest, used the seat-belt shoulder harness to anchor it tightly in place, then got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. They pulled out onto the street. More police cars were, racing in toward Bobby John’s, and fire trucks too, but there was no sign of pursuit. They drove away from the scene, careful not to speed. They got on the Interstate 5 freeway through the downtown area, then merged onto the Highway 50 freeway heading east, away from the city.

Neither man spoke for a long time. The enormity of what happened had silenced them. Finally, Patrick said, “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“You’re welcome, Muck,” Jon answered. “But it’s
your contingency plan that did it—those wireless mikes so I could listen in and carrying those practice bomblet target markers.” Patrick pressed Jon’s hand against his chest to staunch the bleeding further. This was one contingency he hadn’t planned on.

“Man, that was a close call,” he said shakily. “Jesus, was I scared. I thought I was going to die. All I could think about was Wendy, and Bradley, and how we would die in the middle of a filthy beer-soaked barroom floor. God, Jon, I’m so sorry …”