Our destination was a ramshackle house on Camp Street. A large window had been removed from its frame and heavy planks ran from the sill down to the patchy grass in the back yard. My guides rode up the planks and through the window. I took the more conventional approach through the back door.
Soto was a big man, rawboned and mean-looking. He sat with his feet up on a metal desk smoking a cheroot and reading a tabloid bearing the headline “Confederate Flag Spotted on Belly of UFO!” He threw the paper aside as I came in.
“Stubblefield. It’s been awhile.”
“Awhile,” I said. Soto stubbed out the cigar.
“I hear you’re a private detective now.” I nodded. “You know the cops are turning up the heat on us?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh yeah. Got us under the microscope. The other clubs, too.” He lit another cheroot. The room was beginning to smell like a dump fire. “Seems that someone on a chopper tried to croak some guy last week, guy that yaps on the radio.” He blew out some smoke and eyed me carefully. “I hear you’ve been hired to cover the guy.”
“Now where did you hear that?”
Soto waved his hand dismissively. “All this heat’s bad for us. We’re businessmen, if you know what I mean.” I knew. The Berserkers, like some of the other clubs, had found it profitable to traffic in drugs. “Hard to conduct business when everybody’s looking over your shoulder.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“Papers say that the shooter’s looking to clip this radio dude because he thinks he’s a commie stooge or something.”
“So?”
“So it happens that I know this guy, name of Cadillac Jack. Biker, but not rolled tight. He hangs around, has a nice hog, tries hard to participate, but he’s off the wall. I can’t afford to have somebody that loose in the business.”
“How off the wall?”
“Oh, man, bad temper. Flies off real easy. And he’s a gun nut, all the time rapping about guns and carrying pieces to impress. Just what I need, some bozo with a bad temper and a weapons Jones. But here’s what you’ll like. He’s a real patriot, stays true to the red, white, and blue, rides a Harley because it’s an American bike and screw the Japs. And he’s big on nuking the pinkos and the Russians.”
“Where can I find him?”
“He doesn’t come around here any more,” said Soto with a thin smile. “I had a couple of brothers — discourage him from dropping in. But he’s called Cadillac Jack because he works in a Cadillac dealership. Mechanic.” He shook his head. “I got him all riled up last time I saw him.”
“How did you do that?”
“Told him that starting next year, Cadillacs were all going to be made in Japan.”
I left Soto grinning through the industrial smog of cigar smoke and found a phone book. There were only three Cadillac dealers on the Cape. I scored at the second one, Sergeant Cadillac Motors.
“We had a mechanic here named John Rugg, but he failed to show up for work about a month ago and he hasn’t been back since. We checked at his rooming house, but the landlady said he left without so much as a goodbye. Too bad. He was a little odd, but a crackerjack mechanic.”
“Odd?”
“He was rather touchy, couldn’t take a joke. He never became friendly with the other men. They kidded him because he always tuned in those talk shows. God knows why. They drive me crazy.”
“Did he ride a motorcycle?”
Sergeant thought for a minute. “Not that I recall.” He shook his head. “A strange one, he was. When he left, he said something should be done, that it was a crime.”
“What was?”
“Cadillacs, being made in Japan.”
It was four thirty when I got back to the office. Olivera was waiting in an unmarked car. He motioned for me to get in. “Your boy is really hazing them today.” Chandler’s voice was on the car radio. “He’s been flogging the right-wingers. Hell, I guess that’s me. I think we should have flattened Russia in 1945, saved everyone a whole lot of grief.”
“What’s up, lieutenant?”
“You tell me, Stubblefield. You were probably just on the way up to your office where you were going to call me up, like any good citizen, and tell me what’s on Soto’s mind. Right?”
“Soto.”
“We’re a small department, but we aren’t feeble, yet. Talk to me, Charles.” I told him about Rugg and what I’d learned from Sergeant.
“Makes sense. He gives us Rugg, takes the heat off him and his greasebag gang.”
“Rugg sounds right.”
“I agree. His name is depressingly familiar. Among other things, he had a fling a couple of years ago with a local white supremacist group. He didn’t stay, though I don’t know why. He fit right in with those maggots.”
“You get to know the nicest people in your line of work,” I said. He gave me a weary look.
“People like Soto and Rugg lead me to believe that cowboys do, in fact, have congress with sheep.”
The next few days were uneventful. I was beginning to think that Rugg was going to draw back and play a waiting game. That would cause some complications on my end. Chandler was chafing at the restrictions on his daily life. I’d let him relocate to a guest house that was easier on the eyes. I’d probably have gone around the bend myself after a few days in the Jolly Fisherman.
After the show on Thursday, I drove him to his house. He needed more clothes and a number of books and articles that he hadn’t gotten before. The neighborhood was quiet. Outside of a kid being dragged around by an Irish setter, no one was on the street.
It was highly unlikely that Rugg was in Chandler’s house, but I went in first.
“Wait here,” I said, clicking on the lights. I made a quick check of the back door and the porch. All clear.
“Go ahead and do what you have to do on this floor,” I said. “I’ll take a look upstairs.” He nodded and headed across the living room for the den.
I was halfway up when a shot rang out. I got down the stairs in two strides. Chandler was curled on the floor by the den, moaning and writhing in pain. The door to the den was open about a foot. I was so intent on listening for an assailant that I didn’t see it at first. Then I noticed it, a thin wisp of smoke curling up from the door handle. The handle itself was blown apart. Chandler had triggered a booby trap.
I called the rescue squad and tried to stanch Chandler’s bleeding with a towel. He had taken the blast in his lower right side and it was messy.
As the adrenaline receded anger took over. I’d assumed that Rugg was a gun-crazy moron. He was crazy, all right, but he also possessed a considerable amount of animal cunning. I had underestimated him, and Chandler was paying the price for my carelessness. After the medics took him away, I called the cops and sat down to wait.
“Damn clever,” said Olivera. A team of men was going over every door and window in the house. “He got into the house somehow, removed the guts from the door handle assembly, and replaced them with a spring, a firing pin, and a .410 gauge shotgun shell. When Chandler turned the knob, he broke a sheer pin, which released the spring and the striker. Blammo.” He shook his head. “The son of a bitch. What if it had been the wife or the kid?” He saw the look on my face. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Charles. Who could have figured something like this?”
“I should have. That’s what I’m paid for.”
“Yeah? Well, last I knew, you were just like the rest of us — a mite less than infallible. So ease up. They just told me that Chandler’s going to pull through. Thank God he wasn’t standing directly in front of the handle.” He shrugged on his coat. “And, Charles, don’t do anything foolish. We’ll get the little creep.”