Troubleshooter

MY BIKE.

"Oh," Bear said. "I get it now."

A coffin in front of the couch served as a coffee table. To the left, a bike painted with distinctive skull patterns dripped oil onto the worn carpet. A lollipop dental mirror poked out from the handlebars as the rearview-letter-of-the-law compliance.

Guerrera gestured at the bike. "Beautiful spray job."

Diamond Dog scratched his crotch, disrupting the tough-guy aesthetics. "That's Danny the Wand's work, hijo. Twelve coats of paint on the gas tank alone. You don't even deserve to look at it."

"Danny the Wand?" Bear said. "The guy's a John Holmes or something?"

Diamond Dog laughed with his cohorts, showing off a missing front tooth. "Yeah, that's it. Danny's big dick."

A few Sinners gathered in the doorway to the accompanying room. Prosthetic limbs, do-rags, missing earlobes-they looked like a gathering of well-fed carnies. "Hey, Annie." An older biker curled his finger at her. The end of a bare mattress was barely in view beyond the door-jamb.

As Annie handed off the baby, Tim noticed shiny scars running down her legs like seams. Den's sartorial experiment?

She headed into the other room. Noting Bear's expression of disgust, Diamond Dog smirked and tilted his head at Annie. "You want a piece?"

"I wouldn't fuck her with your dick and him pushing."

"I ain't screwin' no cop," Annie called back over her shoulder.

"Right," Bear said. "Wouldn't want to lower your standards."

She disappeared into the fold of men. The older guy grasped her shoulders, and they stepped back onto the mattress, disappearing from view. The others waited, thumbing their belt loops and grinning.

"Why don't you lend a hand?" Bear said, gesturing to the other room. "I think they need someone to run anchor."

One of the other bikers laughed. "Dog picked himself up a good case of the Mexican crabs."

The skin on Guerrera's face was taut. "They're different across the border?"

"Yeah." He launched into a not-bad accent. "They doan gah no car insurance."

Laughter and high fives.

Guerrera said, "Now I get why you're missing that front tooth."

The sounds from the other room grew louder. Someone called, "Hey, Toe-Tag. Whelp. You waiting for a written invite?"

"Cool names," Bear said. "You guys have a tree fort out back, too?"

The two shuffled off to take their place in the train, clearing Tim's view of the far wall, where leather jackets were strung like game fish, crude placards affixed to them. Most of them featured Cholo originals, stripped from ass-kicked members. Outlaws who lost their colors-but survived-had to reclaim them to return to their clubs or, in some cases, to keep their lives; the bold display was a virtual advertisement to their rivals for a clubhouse raid. Tim thought of Chooch Millan's jacket, stripped from his dead body only hours ago, and figured that the Sinners destroyed stolen colors that doubled as evidence. Only two Sinner originals were in the mix, Nigger Steve's barely visible through the gloom.

Tim pointed to the other jacket featuring the Sinner flaming skull. "Did Lash get killed, too?"

"Nah, good ol' Lash couldn't behave himself. He had his patch taken back."

Tim looked over, catching Bear's eye. A guy who got kicked out of the club was a guy who might talk.

"For what?"

"Nosy fucker, aren't you?"

Bear put his feet up on the coffin, and Diamond Dog shoved them off with a boot. "Don't you got no respect?"

Bear drew himself to his full height, a head above Diamond Dog. Whelp jogged over, and a moment later Toe-Tag followed, buttoning his pants. Guerrera stood quickly, then Tim, and then eight or ten outlaws pulled behind the other bikers as if magnetically. Annie was in the doorway, cloaking her body with a jacket, breathing hard.

Bear's eyes stayed locked on Diamond Dog's as if the others didn't exist.

A knocking of boots on stairs, and then a woman with feathered brown hair and a leather jacket appeared. "Uncle Pete'll see you now."

The bikers' posture loosened a bit, and Tim, Bear, and Guerrera backed away from the standoff. They followed the woman, her PROPERTY OF UNCLE bottom rocker tilting back and forth as she made her way upstairs. The pinkie on her left hand was missing.

They threaded their way through dark halls on the second floor. A teenage girl popped into view, startling Tim. Her head was down, her arms tightly crossed above her breasts to hold together a ripped shirt. She flashed past, almost colliding with their nine-fingered escort, mumbling to herself. Her tangled blond hair clung to her moist cheeks, and one eye was swollen.

The woman in the leather jacket pointed at the double doors through which the crying girl had emerged. "In there."

The three men stepped through the door into a large room-the original master suite?-where an enormous figure sat on a bowed king-size bed. A standard poodle lying at the foot of the mattress bared his teeth silently at them, black skin showing beneath the white hair where it was shaved close. The windows were shuttered; it took a moment for Tim's vision to adjust.

Uncle Pete held a spotted rag poised over his flabby arm. He returned to dabbing blood from a meaty biceps, applying himself to the undertaking with the silent contentment of a retired general painting model tanks. Three deep streaks, the kind left by fingernails. A hank of long blond hair lay on the carpet at his feet. The sheets were mussed.

"Frisky cunt. I like 'em that way." Uncle Pete folded the rag and reapplied it, his flat eyes never leaving his task. A rubber-banded thatch of beard poked out from his chin like a stiff rope. "You the ones behind all the sudden interest from the heat? We're catching a lot of static on the streets."

"Yup," Tim said. "That'd be us."

Uncle Pete shook his head. "Some mornings, it just ain't worth chewin' through the four-point restraints." He raised his head, and his eyes sharpened. "Get that Mexican outta here."

Guerrera's voice came out a little tighter than usual. "I'm Cuban."

"Oh. Well, then…" Pete laughed, his chest rippling beneath the undershirt. "Don't want no spics of any kind in here. Just born-and-bred Americans."

"Okay, Pocahontas."

Uncle Pete stared at Tim, figuring him for the front man. "Get that spic out of here or no conversation."

Guerrera started for the biker, sharply, but Tim stepped in front of him, cutting off his advance while keeping his eyes on Pete. Guerrera stayed pressed against Tim's back but didn't move to brush past him.

Pete seemed invigorated by Guerrera's reaction. "Get the spic out of my clubhouse."

"You want him out, you get him out," Tim said. Bear ostentatiously took up position beside Guerrera.

Uncle Pete squinted through the dim light, no doubt debating an escalation, but then he smiled. "I recognize you. Vigilante guy, right? You're the one who croaked all those motherfuckers back when. You need a nickname."

"Use my real name, thanks."

"Sorry, pal, everyone gets a nickname." Uncle Pete rolled his head back on his neck, appraising Tim. The rag disappeared in the swirled sheets, Pete's thick hand in the pouf of hair at the dog's hindquarters. "I'm gonna call you Troubleshooter."

"Original," Bear said. "You might want to take out a trademark."

"Right. I thought I heard it somewhere. Fox News, maybe."

"You know why we're here?" Tim asked.

"Does a crack baby shake?"

"Den's your go-to guy, your hard charger. He and Kaner don't get sprung without word from the top."

"Den don't take no orders. And there is no top. Us Sinners, we're grass-roots all the way."

"What do you need him out for?"

"I don't have to talk to you."

"What am I gonna say?"

"Huh?"

"You're a bright guy, Uncle Pete. What am I gonna say?"

The furrow between Pete's eyebrows disappeared. He didn't smile, but his expression held amusement, almost delight. "You'll get a warrant and you'll make my life hell."

"Right. So."

Uncle Pete lifted his obese frame from the mattress; even Bear looked narrow by comparison. Pete rooted in a drawer, pulled out a digital recorder, and set it on top of the bureau beside a Z-shaped piece of metal. The bed groaned under his weight when he settled back onto it. He lit up a cigarette, inhaled with obvious satisfaction, and beckoned for the next question.

"Where are they?"

"I have no idea. That's why they're nomads, ya see. No-mads. Look it up."

"How about Goat, Tom-Tom, and Chief? We want to chat with them, too. Know where they are?"

"Sure. Follow the asphalt to the PCH turn by Point Dume. The twenty-foot skid mark? That's Goat's face." Pete's booming laugh ended in a coughing fit. "You're welcome to see if it'll talk back." He tugged at his protuberance of a beard, his smile fading. "You citizens don't got no sense of humor. That's what I hate about you. You and the whole citizens' world. I am so far lost from what this fuckin' nation represents. I read the papers, watch the TV. It disgusts me. It don't reflect me. So I say, fuck it. I won't reflect it." He was winding up, a man used to being listened to. "This country's all about what you can't do. Can't speed, can't buy a whore, can't smoke a joint. We can't even ride our hogs without helmets now. We got a funeral tomorrow for Nigger Steve-we can't see him off like warriors."

"Warriors don't wear helmets?"

"Not our brand."

"Most real warriors understand that their head's worth more than their hairdo."

"Think of it as a show of respect for the fallen."

"We've got a couple of funerals of our own tomorrow." Tim bobbed his head, wearing an appropriately thoughtful expression. "I'll tell you what-I'll let you guys do your funeral run without helmets."

"I want it in writing. I don't want a boatload of bullshit when we pull out of here."

"I'll get you a municipal permission."

Bear shot Tim an unveiled look of angry incredulity.

"Yeah, well, I'll believe it when I see it." Uncle Pete studied Tim, then Bear's quite genuine reaction, and the distrust faded gradually from his face. "Maybe you got some class after all, Trouble. We're not bad guys. We're just tired of all the bullshit. We never get anything but the rules-nothin' like a little raping and pillaging to stir things up."

Still burned by Tim's concession, Bear said, "Like the hitchhiker you gang-raped through August? And September? And October?"

"Shit fool, that ain't gang rape. That's training. The boys downstairs are havin' a group splash with Wristwatch Annie. You don't hear her complaining."

"That's because her mouth's full," Tim said.

Uncle Pete laughed. "See, there it is. A little humor never hurt no one. Plus, if we gang-raped that broad, where's the charges? Well? Shit, we did her a favor. Opened her up some. Know what I think? I think you citizens are jealous. Drivin' around in your cages, you never get the gurgle in your groin, the wind off your face. And you cops? Shit, you get paid to watch us have fun. I got my slags here all day long. And when I get home, I still knock a few out with my main deed."

"Christ," Bear said. "Don't you have a TV?"

Uncle Pete cocked his head, deciding whether to laugh. "We have our own world, we make our own rules, and we live and die by them. Just like you. Except you live and die by other people's rules."

"And your rules involve pissing on each other's jackets and collecting wing patches for going down on dead women," Bear said. "Where do I sign up?"

"Yeah, we do that shit now and then, just to freak the citizens. P fuckin' R. Don't underestimate the power of intimidation." Pete ruffled the poodle's topknot. "But we stopped making pledges get fucked by Hound Dog here, though."

"Well, that's an institutional advance," Tim said.

"We make the pledges do useful shit now."

Tim thought of Guerrera's claim that Sinners had to kill someone to join the club and wondered if that was the "useful shit" Uncle Pete was referring to.

"The name of the game now is class. I got a house on the hill. I only bike on runs and funerals anymore. Got me a blue onyx pearl Lexus coupe with cruise control, Paris rims, ivory interior-hell, it's even got a sat-nav system. Thing practically drives for me. We don't hang up in the small time. Fuck the white-power shit. We're color-blind. All we see is green." He offered Guerrera an accommodating grin. "That's how we cut in on the other outlaw gangs. We're younger and meaner. We don't believe in shit but the backs of our jackets and cold, hard cash."

"That how you cut in on the Cholos?"

"The Cholos, shit, they're not a blip on our radar. Those motherfuckers are all show and no go."

"Chooch Millan, too? I heard he's no show and no go now."

The poodle came up on all fours, and Uncle Pete scratched his belly until he hunched and phantom-scratched with a hind leg. "We're done now. You want more, you go get that warrant and I call my lawyer and we do the dance."

Tim walked over and turned off the digital recorder on the bureau. He picked up the Z-shaped piece of metal and approached Uncle Pete. Bear and Guerrera looked tense, unsure. The poodle bared its teeth at Tim, but-standard or not-it was still a poodle.

"We both know that the weapon used on the prison break and to kill Chooch Millan was an AR-15. We both know that this"-Tim flipped the piece of metal and caught it-"is an illegal drop-in autosear that converts the gun to full auto. We also know that our lab can't link this sear to those bullets. Probably wasn't even this sear that was used. But we could haul you in, give you major static, as you say." Tim leaned closer. "You spew your own brand of propaganda, but to us you're an ordinary murderer. I'm not interested in a two-bits weapon charge. I want your ass."

He pressed the autosear into Uncle Pete's fleshy chest and let it fall into his lap.

Uncle Pete returned Tim's glare, but then a smile crept across his wide face, making his rope beard bob. He started clapping. "Good stuff, Trouble. I like your delivery."

Tim headed out, with Guerrera after and Bear bringing up the rear.

Uncle Pete called after them, "I'm gonna hold you to that no-helmet deal for the funeral ride. I got your word?"

"You have my word."

"All right, Trouble. Get it to my lawyer by the A.M. We're riding at noon."

The woman awaited them in the hall and led them downstairs. Tim peeled off at the front door despite her protests. A few of the bikers muscled up to him, but he ignored them, finding the girl with the swollen eye on the couch. A tattoo on her skinny arm read SINNER PROPERTY. NO TRESPASSING. She, too, had four fingers on the left hand, the knuckle wound still bearing stitches.

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"You all right?"

"I'm fine, Heat. Get the fuck out of my face."

"Okay." Tim rose from his crouch. "Best of luck with your budding romance."

He joined Bear and Guerrera at the door, and they stepped out, blinking into the light.