“Now as to trafficking in drugs, the story is a little different. There are the club officers, with what the law calls no visible means of support. The officers are the link between the troops and the drug importers and distributors, the money washers, the mafia accountants. Now say we take some group leader captain, call him Mother Machree, and he gets hold of one of the troops, Tom Baloney, and he tells Tom that when he gets off work at the body shop he is to go to the corner of First and Main and sit idling his engine and somebody will hand him a package, and he’s to run it up to such and such a corner in Hialeah, weaving around through the back streets, shaking any tail, and get there at seven on the nose and hand it to the woman in the red dress who asks him how many miles he gets to the gallon in that thing he’s riding.”
“What’s the payoff to Baloney?”
“That’s one of the points I want to make. He gets the knowledge that he has been full of brotherhood and loyalty, and he knows that Mother Machree will toss five hundred bucks into the pot for the next beer bust. But the troops are getting restless. They know that maybe Mother got six thou for setting up that foolproof run, and there’s the feeling around that maybe the officers are getting too far into the business. Some of them have taken to wearing the corporation garments, blow-dry hairstyles, limos with Cuban drivers. Too much separation between the officers and the troops. That is the kind of bitching I hear. They are being used, and they know it.”
“Do any of the troops do any retailing on their own?
“It could happen, but I don’t think it would be a big thing. It really wouldn’t go with the image they try to project. It would have to be a situation where there was a heavy cash-flow problem; a man out of work. Or maybe a favor for a friend.”
“Suppose a man in Lauderdale got a call that somebody would meet him at such and such a time way up the line, over a hundred miles away. And when he went up there to buy, the man who called him wasted him, and though there were no witnesses, maybe the machine the biker was using was identified as to make.”
“Recently or way back?”
“Two years in July.”
“That’s very heavy action, Sergeant McGee. What kind of machine?”
I dug the piece of paper out of my shirt pocket. “The man who saw the track says it was the rear K-One-twelve of a set of ContiTwins, deep enough to indicate a quarter-ton machine, so he guessed a BMW Nine-seventy-two.”
“Pretty reasonable guess. But it could have been an HD, or a Gold Wing Honda, or a Kawasaki KZ series, or a big Laverda or Moto Guzzi, or a GS series Suzuki, or an XS series Yamaha. All burly machines. Big fast bastards. But sweet and smooth. You almost can’t stress them. And they could all wear ContiTwins. Where did it happen?”
“Up near Citrus City, on the turnpike: A man named Esterland who was dying of cancer.”
“I think I remember news an the tube about that. Sure. But there wasn’t any mention of drugs or bikes.”
“Not enough to go on, so it didn’t get in.”
“Where do you come in, Trav?”
“A little favor for the guy’s son. Ron Esterland. By the way, he’s an artist too. Had a big sellout show in London.”
“Hey I know the name. Didn’t make the connection. Saw some color plates of his work in Art International. Pretty much okay”
“So what should I do next?”
“I don’t understand why the buy should have been set up so far out in the boonies. But I can tell you that any one of those kinds of horses I named would be owned by somebody known to the brotherhood. Up by Citrus City and from there on up, it’s a different turf. Up there you’ve got the Corsairs. But there’s a lot of interclub contact, when bikers from both clubs go to out-of-state rallies and rendezvous. I think that maybe, if it was nearly two years ago, it’s become part of the legend.”
“How so?”
“Trav, these people go back to a kind of tribal society. Myths and legends. Whoever was involved would keep his mouth shut and make his woman keep her mouth shut. But after a long time there’s not much heat involved. Maybe his woman has switched riders. With lots of beer and grass and encampments in the night, the word gets out. A little here and a little there, and it gets built up into something a lot wilder and more romantic than it was. Do you understand?”
“Sure. I think so.”
“If you can find a legend that seems to fit and then unravel it all the way back to the way things really were, you can maybe-just maybe-come up with a name. And even that won’t mean much. It’ll be a biker name: Skootch or Grunge or BugBoy. And there’s turnover among the troops. Some get into heavy action and get put away. Some of them, when the fox gets pregnant, decide to pack up and get out.”
“Can you find out if there’s a legend about Esterland?”
“I can listen. I can poke around a little but not much, because it makes these people nervous. I get along fine because I carry good merchandise, and my people do good work, and the prices are right, and the law has never learned a thing out here. And if you learn anything from me about that little party…”
“You don’t need to say it. Now, something else. A couple of biker movies a few years ago. Chopper Heaven. Bike Park Ramble.”
“Saw them when they came on the cable. What do you want? Some kind of critique?”
“Whatever.”
“The outlaw bikers came off meaner and nastier than they are as far as tearing up civilians is concerned. And they came off a little more clean and pure than they are the way they act within the group. Enough stimulation, and they get into gangbang situations. And if anybody finks to the law, man or woman, they can be a long slow time dying in the piney woods. Technically there were very few mistakes. A lot less than usual. I understand they used outlaw bikers as technical advisers. The sound track was too loud. And those pack leaders were just a little bit too evil to be real. They came out close together, those two movies, at least five years ago. Probably seven years ago. The straight clubs are still bitching about those movies because they think the civilians can’t tell the difference between outlaw and straight. I see they still run them on syndication, late at night. Why do you ask?”
“Ted, I’m just rummaging around in this thing, kicking stones, shaking the bushes. The fellow who wrote and produced and directed those two movies stood to maybe get hold of a lot of money due to the killing of Esterland.”
“How could that be, for God’s sake?”
“Esterland’s daughter was dying, in a coma. No chance of recovery. If Esterland survived her, most of the money would go to a foundation. If he died first, the daughter would get it; and then it went to the mother, who was still legally married to Esterland, on the death of her daughter a couple of weeks later. And that movie person, Peter Kesner, is or was close to Mrs. Esterland.”
“Way way out there on the end of a long stick, pal.”
“For two and a half mil, net, you can think up some very strange things. People will take a lot of pains over that kind of money.”
“Did Kesner need money that bad?”
“I’ll probably go out there and see what’s going on. I haven’t really decided. I’m on expenses, but I don’t want to waste my friend’s money.”
“I heard over the grapevine you’d tapped out, Trav.”
“In what way?”
“The quiet life. The straight life. Peddling boats or some damn thing. Heard you got scuffed up and turned into a nine-to-five person. When I heard it, I said there was no way. I said you were too used to conning the world, knocking heads, saving maidens. I said that you could lose an arm and a foot and an ear, but when they rang the bell, you’d still slide down the pole and hop onto the truck.”
“Meyer said the same thing, but in a slightly different way.”