The Tin Man

picked up the jacket at the mall earlier in the day. He wasn’t wearing leather chaps or pants either, but some kind of dark gray coveralls. “You flying any colors, bro?”

“No.”

“Then use the phone at the Safeway back where you came from. Club’s closed.”

“Phone’s broke.”

“Ours is broke too. Hit the fucking road.”

The stranger turned as if he was going to leave, then stopped and turned back to the bouncer. “Okay,” he said, “my motorcycle didn’t break down. In fact, I don’t have a motorcycle. Never rode one in my life.”

“Like I give a shit. Beat it.”

“The actual truth is this,” the stranger said. “I’m going to ask you some questions about Joshua Mullins.” He saw the sudden tenseness in the bouncer’s face. “Good. You know who I’m talking about.”

“Fuck off, bozo.”

“Mullins was Brotherhood,” the stranger went on. “He was also part of a holdup gang that did the Sacramento Live! shootout…”

The bouncer could move fast for a guy his size. He shoved the stranger away from the door, then reached inside the doorway for a piece of galvanized steel pipe used to bar the rear entrance when it was shut. The stranger flew backward, landing hard on his back and side, though from his dazed expression it looked more as if he’d hit his head. “You’re trespassing, buster,” the bouncer yelled. “You get lost, or you get hurt.”

“That guy’s gotta be a 5150,” one of the officers in the police surveillance van said with a chuckle as they listened to the interchange. A 5150 was the radio code for a mental patient. Recent events around Sacramento had brought out a lot of weirdos who thought they could clean up the town all by themselves. “Or probably another stupid cop wanna-be.”

“He’s gonna get his head smashed in if he doesn’t run like hell,” his partner said. “Think we should call a Patrol unit before this guy gets hurt-or dead?”

“Yeah. Better get a black-and-white heading this way,” said the other cop. “We can always Code-ten him if the 5150 beats feet.” He got on his portable radio and called Central Dispatch, requesting that a Patrol unit swing by and shine its spotlight down the alley, “It’ll take a few minutes to get here,” the cop said. “That’ll be enough time to give the 5150 a good healthy scare-hopefully.”

“If the bouncer starts beating on him, we’ll have to do something.”

“Relax and wait for the Patrol unit.”

The other cop lowered his binoculars, his mind racing. “Intel did speculate that Mullins was one of the guys that did that robbery, right? He was the one they found dead a few days later, right?”

“I think so.”

“Did that ever come out in the papers?”

“About Mullins? Yeah. He was a security guard or watchman at Sacramento Live!, one of the missing guards.”

“Yeah, but did it ever come out that he was a Satan’s Brotherhood member, or that he might have been involved in the robbery?”

“Yeah, sure… at least I think so,” the other cop said, not much interested in the subject.

“I don’t think it did,” his partner said.

“So?”

“So if it didn’t come out in the papers, then how could this guy know that Mullins was Brotherhood and involved in the heist? Not many cops know about that, only guys in Intelligence or Gangs. How could a buff know?”

“How the hell should I know?” his partner said irritably. “Just take the pictures, okay? I got enough to think about.”

The stranger got himself up to a kneeling position, his chest heaving as if he was having difficulty breathing. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “You tell me everything I want to know about Mullins and I go away. If you don’t, I’ll break your head, and then I’ll go inside, break some more heads, and destroy the place.”

“Listen, shithead, you got one more chance,” the bouncer said. “Get up and get your fat ass outta here or I’ll bend this pipe around your fucking head.”

The stranger got up, retrieved his helmet, and took a couple paces right toward the bouncer. “Last chance for you,” he said. “Mullins was working for a guy called the Major. The word is that Mullins met the Major or one of his men here about a week before the robbery. Tell me about him. Who was he? Did he have a German accent? What did he look like?”

“Not as bad as you’re gonna look, asshole,” the bouncer said-and swung the pipe. He faked a head shot, brought the pipe back, and swung it at the side of the stranger’s left knee. The blow would’ve put a two-inch dent in the side of a car. He gaped as the pipe ricocheted off the guy’s leg as if he’d hit a concrete post.

“What did he say about Germans?” the second surveillance officer asked. “Did he say ‘the Major’ was a German?”

“Yeah-I heard about the Major but that never got in the papers either. And I never heard about no tie-in between him and any Germans. What makes him think the Major was… Ohhh, shit, he hit him, right in the fucking knees! Better get that Patrol unit over here fast. Looks like the bouncer just tried to break that turkey’s knees.”

“They’re on their…” Both cops stopped to watch. The guy was still standing after being clubbed in the knees. No set of biker leathers would protect him against a shot like that. “He must’ve missed, trying to scare him? …”

“He hit ‘im,” the first officer said, sounding unsure whether or not he saw what he saw. “That pipe didn’t faze him. He must be wearing full body armor, but it sure doesn’t look like it.”

His partner put down his light-intensifying binoculars. “I’m going over there and talk to this guy,” he said.

“You what? You’ll blow our surveillance, man…”

“The guy knew about the Major, and he knew about the meeting here between him and Mullins,” the second cop said, rolling open the sliding door of the van. “He knows a lot more than any civilian should know. If he’s a cop, then he’s trying to pull some kind of off-duty or vigilante shakedown thing, and we gotta stop him before he sets this city on fire. Besides, I want to figure out how he can take a hit from a steel pipe and keep on standing. Tell the black-and-white I’m 940.”

The second blow was sheer rage. It was hard, fast, and overhead, aimed right at the head. Patrick McLanahan deflected it with ease with his left arm, cracking the pipe. The surge of electricity from the arm to the rest of his body mixed with the surge of energy he had felt from the blow to his leg, and the two power waves seemed to meet right at his heart, sending an explosive stream of energy through the rest of his body.

Patrick screamed through a wicked-looking smile. They hadn’t fixed the problem with the energy surge through the suit but he didn’t care. In fact, he was glad. It was like a drug-and he was hooked on it.

It all happened as if in slow motion. The bouncer stared at Patrick as though he were a swamp monster, then grasped the pipe in both hands and tried a major-league home-run swing at his head. Patrick never let it happen. He simply stepped forward and drove his right fist into the bouncer’s chest.

The guy was wearing a bulletproof vest, which attenuated some of the impact and probably saved his life. His sternum and left rib cage shattered, collapsing his left lung. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose and he crumpled to the ground. Patrick was close enough to be showered with blood, but instead of sickening him, it further fueled his anger and thirst for…

… for what? Patrick wasn’t sure what he wanted: revenge, information? No, just to take out his frustration and bitterness on whoever was inside. To hurt someone. To make them afraid, the way he and his family were afraid. He was going to…

“Stop! Police!” Patrick turned. A plainclothes man with a badge on a chain around his neck was galloping across the alleyway from Anne Street. His right hand was behind his back, probably hiding a gun. He held up his gold detective’s badge. “Hold it right there! I want to talk to you.”