coffee?”
He had to go back and get his car, so we agreed to rendezvous at a nearby diner. He ordered an open-faced roast beef sandwich and mashed potatoes, smothered in gravy. With coffee. I got a BLT with extra mayo.
“So,” Lawrence said, “you keeping out of trouble?”
How could you not laugh?
I gave him the quickest possible summary. Trixie missing. Body in basement. Me handcuffed next to it. The Flint investigation. Possibly a couple of stun gun-selling bikers on Trixie’s tail. It appeared that she had a daughter she’d never told us about. Me suspended from the paper. Sarah demoted. Wasn’t sure she still wanted me around the house. Paul fired from his job. Nasty Russian ladies putting people’s fingers into deep fryers.
“Other than that,” I said, “things are pretty good.”
Lawrence’s expression never changed the whole time. He kept eating his roast beef and mashed potatoes. Finally he put down his fork, picked up his napkin, and daintily dabbed at the corners of his mouth.
“Aren’t you going to ask how I’m doing?” he asked.
I waited a moment. “How are things with you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Pretty good. Kent and I are still off and on.” Kent, who owned a restaurant in the city, and Lawrence had been seeing each other for a couple of years. “Work is good. Fairly steady. Like I said, I’ve got some corporate stuff. They throw money around like nobody else.” He waved the waitress over for a coffee refill.
He sipped some, ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, and said, “You are seriously fucked up.”
“Yes.”
Lawrence shook his head back and forth sadly. “Even by your standards, you are seriously fucked up.”
“Yes,” I said again. “I can see why you’re a topnotch investigator. You size things up right away.”
Lawrence put another forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. “You need any help?”
“I don’t want to impose,” I said.
Lawrence grinned. “Really, if you run into some trouble, give me a shout.” The grin faded. “I’ve told you this before, so I won’t get all mushy on you. But every day I’m around, since that night, I owe to you. You’re annoying, kind of a pain in the ass, but if you need me to cover your back, I’m there.”
I allowed the corner of my mouth to go up a notch. “You’re not going to hug me, are you?” I asked.
Lawrence shoveled in some roast beef.
“Ewww,” he said.
Canborough first came into view as I came over the hill on Highway 17, a couple of church spires, a water tower poking up through the trees. It was a small city, and there had been attempts of late to revive and trendy up the downtown, which had taken a hit after the local auto parts factory shut down a few years back. But Canborough still had other, lesser, industries to keep it going, plus a college on the north side of town, and there were some year-round tourist dollars it could count on. The river that ran through the center connected with a few nearby lakes that were crowded with cottages and, in the winter, there was skiing.
I’d been up here a few times, not just for that disastrous book signing for one of my SF novels. (When you’ve had the sort of book signings I’ve had, you start to feel that the modifier “disastrous” is implied.) A few years ago, Sarah and I had been invited for a weekend at another couple’s cottage, and we’d driven into Canborough to shop and wander around.
I drove straight into the downtown, and decided not to look for a place to stay right away. First of all, I didn’t know for sure that I’d learn enough to keep me from continuing on to Groverton, and second, some of the places where I hoped to get information might be closed in another hour or two.
The public library was my first stop.
I’d been able to find a story or two in the Metropolitan’s database about the biker massacre, but I figured the local paper would have more about what happened before, and after, that incident.
The library, an old brick building flanked by modern glass additions, sat across from a wooded park. I found a place on a side street to leave my car, walked back to the library, and approached the information desk. A wiry young woman told me the library had the Canborough Times on computer going back six years, and if I knew what I was looking for, it could be found pretty quickly.
She set me up at a terminal, showed me how to operate their system, and set me loose. “If you need anything, just ask,” she said sweetly.
I conducted a number of searches using a variety of keywords, in particular “Gary Merker” and “Leonard Edgars.” Also “Kickstart,” the hotel where the three bikers had been shot to death. And “Slots,” the name of the gang Merker and Edgars supposedly belonged to.
And of course, “Trixie Snelling.”
That last one brought up absolutely nothing.
But the other entries produced a wealth of stories.
Going back six or seven years, there were at least two gangs known to local police. Neither on the scale of Hell’s Angels or Satan’s Choice or any number of other major biker gangs, although they were believed to have some loose affiliations with the larger organizations. One, which was run by Gary Merker, current stun gun merchandiser, was known as “the Slots.” The other group went by “the Comets,” which had a very fifties ring to it.
The Slots had maybe half a dozen to a dozen real members, and maybe another dozen hangers-on. Not a lot of people, but enough to bring in drugs from the big city and across the border and market them to the locals. Merker, also known as Pick, and his crew made enough money from illegal activities to acquire a controlling interest in a local bar, Paddy’s, which they renamed the Kickstart. They made some changes. The entertainment, which up to then included not much more than darts and a wall-mounted television to watch games, now included strippers. The small stage, which had occasionally featured a local country-and-western or blues singer, now featured a pole. Some of the girls who wrapped themselves around it were not opposed to providing more- personal performances in the rooms upstairs.
The Comets had similar business interests, although not an actual establishment like the Kickstart. They owned a large house on the city’s outskirts, which they’d fortified with concrete blocks to discourage drive-by shooters. They’d had a few, presumably members of the Slots who didn’t approve of attempts by the Comets to muscle in on the drug and prostitution trade. The Comets offered drugs, and had a small stable of hookers they could send to clients’ houses, or put into rooms in the city’s seedier hotels. But the Slots had a distinct advantage by running the Kickstart. As a semi-respectable business, they were able to attract large numbers of the public and, once they had a pitcher of beer in front of them, spread the word that other services were available, for a price.
Some notable events:
June 18, 2001: One of the Comets, Grant Delmonico, was sitting in his old Dodge Super Bee at a country railroad crossing, the kind where there are only flashing lights, no gates. He was alone, according to police. Delmonico was on a long list of suspects after a Molotov cocktail was pitched through the window of the Kickstart the previous week, a little message to the Slots to back off on the drug trade, leave some business for them. The fire was contained quickly, and the bar was only out of business for ten days.
The Slots had put out the word that they weren’t going to take this shit, even though the police told them they would look into it.
What police figure happened was this: A truck came up behind Delmonico, a four-wheel-drive job, with plenty of traction, and shoved his Dodge right into the side of a fast-moving westbound freight. There were skid marks on the pavement, indicating Delmonico had stomped on the brakes, tried to hold his classic car in place, but the vehicle was no match for the four-by-four. Once his bumper was caught by the fast-rolling trucks of a tanker car, the Dodge was yanked off the road and dragged down the track, twisting and ripping apart along the way.
Delmonico was dead at the scene.
July 23, 2001: Sebastian Loone, loosely associated with the Slots, is found beaten to death out back of a Canborough butcher shop. This is assumed to be payback for the murder of Delmonico.
July 31, 2001: The Slots suffer another loss. This time, it’s the gang’s reputed second-in-command, Eldon
