Nobody did.
Needless to say, the party was over. And the Smoking Hogs were no longer welcome at regional biker gatherings. They were never charged with the mass murder of the Raleigh Rampagers, but the truth became known. The chief of police of the Town of Pigeon Fudge, Incorporated, let Donald Deemeyer know what he knew. He brought it up several times. He brought it up again that afternoon right about lunchtime.
"Yeah, so arrest me."
"I don't want to arrest you, D.D.," the chief said, ordering himself a beer from Belle, owner and proprietor of the Watering Whole. It was the closest thing Pigeon Fudge had to an honest-to-god biker bar, although the truth was it was way too clean and well-maintained for a biker bar. The place had ferns. It had old-fashioned advertisements for bars of soap framed on the walls.
It had a kids' menu, for God's sake.
"So what the hell do you want?" Deemeyer demanded. "I want you to do a favor for a friend of a friend," the chief of police said.
"A favor."
"Yeah."
"Something illegal, I assume?"
"I don't know and I don't want to know. But I know you'll get paid for the job."
"You're trying to set me up, pig," Deemeyer growled. He tried to sound gruff but, to his humiliation, the wait staff had gathered around a nearby table, presenting the diners with a cupcake stuck with a burning sparkler.
The waiters and waitresses began clapping and singing. "Hap! Hap! Hap! Hap! Happy happy birthday! We! Hope! You! Have-A! Happy happy birthday!"
Everybody applauded the birthday girl. Even the chief clapped. Deemeyer was horrified to glimpse a few of his own Smoking Hogs in a back booth clapping, too.
Deemeyer tried to ignore it all and took a chug from his too-clean beer mug.
"I give you my word this ain't no setup, D.D.," the Chief added.
"Don't call me D.D. Makes me sound like a damn cheerleader."
"Watch your mouth!" snapped the owner as she strolled by with a tray full of her namesake Belle Burgers. "That ain't the kind of talk we tolerate in a family place. This is your last warning, Deemeyer. I hear you cussin' in my place one more time, and you're outta here. Got it?" Deemeyer glared into the beer.
"You wanna go back to drinkin' your beers at the Applebees?"
"I got it!" Deemeyer snapped.
"Don't you take that tone with me, biker boy. I know your momma!"
Belle stalked off. The chief was chuckling. "Life just ain't fair to a hard-ass like yerself sometimes, is it, D.D.?"
"Got that right."
"I think you need a little hell-raising. Get back to your roots."
"I don't need to get back to my roots."
"Then do it for the boys." The chief nodded at a back booth where several of the Smoking Hogs were using complimentary crayons on the placemats Belle had printed up for her twelve-and-under patrons. Cocker was coloring an elephant bright orange, his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Could that actually be the same Jake "Shit-Kicker" Cocker who had run his bike over the smoking skull of a North Carolina biker just to see the steaming brain porridge squirt out? Damn, those were the good old days.
"Okay." Deemeyer sighed. "I'll do it."
Even if the chief was setting them up, Deemeyer thought, some quality jail time could do the Smoking Hogs nothing but good.
Chapter 24
"It's a little something for your trouble," said the nervous woman in the ugly orange dress jacket.
"The agreement was for cash," Deemeyer said testily.
"Oh, yes, that is correct. The beer is just a, you know, a bonus." The woman laughed like a coyote. Deemeyer wanted to clap his hands over his ears. Better yet, over her ears. He forgot about that when she pulled out the envelope.
"Here you go."
Deemeyer snatched it, ripped it open and counted the contents.
"And here are your instructions." Timidly, the woman placed a small boom box on the floor of the garage.
"What the hell?"
"They're on the tape," she explained nervously. "Please listen to the entire first side."
Deemeyer shrugged. "Whatever."
The nervous woman practically ran to her little rental car and tore off.
"Man, this is weird," Blackeye Bierce complained.
"The cash is real," Deemeyer said, examining the bills. He counted off fifteen Smoking Hogs. Then he recounted the $4,500 in cash. That came out to, how much again? Was it two hundred each? No, wait...
"The beer's real, too," said Jake Cocker, downing most of his plastic cup in a few swallows.
They gathered around the kegger and listened to the tape. It was a man's voice, and he took a long time to come to the point. First he described in detail the tour bus that was on its way to them. They were not to enter the bus. No one inside the bus was to be harmed. The voice then described two men who would be riding atop the bus. "Did he say on top of the bus?" Cocker belched.
One man would be Caucasian. The other would be an elderly Asian.
"Why we supposed to beat up some old guy?"
"Why the hell would an old guy be riding on top of a bus?"
"This is too weird."
Deemeyer had been thinking the same thing. He poured another beer as he thought about it.
"You like this beer very much," said the man on the boom box. "It is the best beer you ever tasted."
"Weirder and weirder," said a Hog.
"He's right, though," Deemeyer grunted. "I never knew brew this good."
All the Smoking Hogs agreed it really was the best beer they had ever tasted-and they drank a lot of beer.
"You hate the two men riding on top of the tour bus." said the voice on the boom box.
"Yeah, what the hell is with those assholes!" Cocker exploded.
"You hate them! They are the ones to blame!" Deemeyer saw it all. Suddenly it was clear as crystal. All the ridicule. All the jokes. "He's right. It's those two guys on the bus!"
"They're pricks!"
"They're lower than slime! They're lower than the Raleigh Rampagers!"
Yeah, Deemeyer thought. They two guys on the bus had to know pain. They had to pay hugely. They had to suffer agony like the Rampagers never suffered.
The man on the tape said, "Those two men on top of the bus-those are really bad guys. You want to kill them. You want them annihilated. You'll do whatever it takes to wipe them out."
"Wipe them out," Blackeye Bierce said.
"Wipe them out," Shit-Kicker Cocker echoed.
"Yeah," Deemeyer said. "Wipe them out."
Chapter 25
Greg Grom snatched up the phone on the first beep. "Yeah?"
"It's Amelia, Mr. President," said his secretary. "I did what you said."
"You gave them the beer?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"And the money and the tape player?"
"Yes, sir, but I don't know if I feel good about this. They seemed like an unsavory bunch of characters."
"Never mind, Arnelia. I'll call you soon."
Grom made his way to the front of the bus and stood at the driver's shoulder, nervously scanning the hideous extravagance that was Pigeon Fudge, Tennessee. After dropping Amelia at the car-rental agency, he had kept the bus circling for a half hour without a complaint.
"Horrible-lookin' place, ain't it?" the driver said conversationally. "You know why they call it Pigeon Fudge, don't ya?"
"Not really," Grom answered, not really listening. "It ain't from all the fudge shops."
"You don't say."
"Used to be a certain kind of pigeon that stopped by here from Canada in the summertime. But the original settlers came in the fall and set up their village and didn't suspect a thing. Then come summertime, and they had near to six hundred thousand pigeons congregating in the trees overhead. Made a terrible mess of the place."
"I can imagine."
"Word spread that the entire village was covered in pigeon shit, but for purposes of politeness the euphemism started getting used more frequently. And that's a story you won't find in the brochures." The driver chuckled. "In the brochures they say the name comes from all the fudge shops."