Went to his house with a street gun, and when the guy answered the doorbell, shot him in the heart and ran away in the night, the guy's girlfriend screaming from the kitchen.
Nobody figured that one out. But he was riding as an indie, and anybody might try to ride over an indie. He did the reasonable thing and got himself the Judge.
People who pissed him off tended to disappear, and bikers got careful when they were around him. Nobody knew, but they knew. He encountered Shooter Chapman, a fellow Minnesotan, in a friendship ride for cancer or heart health or kidneys or some shit like that, where the old guys all had flags on the backs of their trikes. BY THE TIME he was old enough to be invited into a gang, he no longer wanted it: the brotherhood, the drinking, the ranking, the rules. He likedbeing alone. He could trust being alone. He dumped the Harley after he'd killed the man for his BMW, and the new long-distance ride, with the German name, set him further apart from the gangs.
Then one day he glanced at himself in a Burger King mirror, saw a piece of yellow cheese stuck to his lip ring.
He was a fuckin' joke, he thought, staring into the mirror. He needed to hone his act, he needed to get down to what he was.
He traded the high-end leathers for a fifties jacket that he found in Hollywood, black leather so old and sand-worn and sweat-soaked that it had turned brown. Got rid of the earring and the lip ring. Shaved his head. Threw away his do-rags. Bought a pair of Vietnam-era military goggles with round lenses and olive-drab canvas straps that made him look like a frog. Liked the look.
He got it so stripped down, so plain, so wicked, so weathered that when he walked into a biker place, everybody stopped talking to look at him. They knew he was out there, the place they talked about going, but never really did. He liked that, too.
Like the day a bunch of Angels rode into LA from San Bernardino, then hooked north up the PCH toward Santa Barbara, riding like a bunch of old women on their Harleys, graybeards with old fat chicks, Arrive Alive, Drive 55, and he'd blown their doors off, riding one-handed through the pack like a fuckin' guided missile at 110. He'd replayed that scene in his mind any number of hundreds of times…
When the roofing business went in the tank with the rest of the economy, and some bones turned up in the Mojave and got written about in the newspapers, Cappy moved back to Minnesota, looked up Shooter.
Shooter introduced him to the gang at Cherries, and got him a job throwing boxes at UPS. The good thing about UPS was, you worked all night, had a full twelve hours to drink and ride, catch four hours of sleep, and then, with a little help from your friend methamphetamine, the next shift.
With all that, Cappy…
Had never been laid. HE KNEW how it was done; he'd even seen it done, live and in color, on a table in the Dome Bar in Bakersfield, among the bottles of Heinz catsup and 57 sauce and the clatter of silverware. It hadn't been pretty, but it held his attention. BARAKAT TOOK HIM to a bar called Trouble on the west side of Minneapolis, out on Highway 55, Cappy filled with cocaine and trepidation. Barakat drifted through a crowd unnaturally large for the crappy kind of bar it was, black light and brass poles, and hooked them up with three women named Star, Michellay, and Jamilayah. There was talk of money, but Barakat flashed the Ziploc and they were out of there, across the street to the Shangri-La Motel, where the three women lived in adjoining rooms.
Star and Jamilayah, one white, one black, were all over Barakat, and Michellay, a thin blonde with a knife-edge nose and narrow lips, hung on Cappy's arm, which made him feel thick in the chest.
Like this was it.
And this was it, and it didn't take long, listening to Britney on the Wave CD, doing lines off the dresser top, playing grabass through the three rooms, and then they were on the beds, Barakat with his two, and Cappy with Michellay, who slipped him out of his pants like an eel out of its skin,
And heck,
Everything went Pretty Damn Well. BARAKAT, walking through the rooms, waving his erection around, laughing, "Look at this, you bitches, look at this one," and Cappy drinking out of a tap, bent over the sink, and Jammy goosing him, and him almost going through the mirror, then chasing her down, the black woman screaming, Cappy rolling on top of her and bang.
It went Pretty Damn Well again. LIKE RIDING out of Bakersfield, up into the hills and down the other side and out into the Mojave, screaming through the night with the wind in his face…
And they left at four o'clock in the morning, and Cappy leaned his head against the dashboard and said, "I think I just fucked a spook."
"About six times, my man," Barakat crowed, slapping him on the back. "You were wondrous."
"She was like… pink inside," Cappy said. They headed back into town, and Cappy felt a surge of gratitude toward Barakat. He hadn't known if it would ever happen, because women, generally, didn't care for him. He'd accepted that: there was something in him that cut them.
Now, he knew, you just had to find the right women. SHAHEEN WAS a more intricate situation, and Barakat more sober about it: "I have known him for a long time. He is nothing, but still, I have known him. I would like to do this quietly. No guns. We have to come and go, leave him behind…"
As an emergency room physician, Barakat had seen all kinds of trauma. After considering it, he decided that the best solution would be a blow to the head with something heavy. "When he is down, then we can finish him. The main thing, we attract no attention. With what the woman saw, Karkinnen, we don't want somebody describing me."
Shaheen lived in an anonymous tan-stucco apartment building in south Minneapolis. Barakat and Cappy left the van on the street and walked back to it, in the night, and Barakat said, "His light's on."
"He have a girlfriend?"
"Shaheen? No. There's a girl back home that he's supposed to marry, fixed by his father. But he's told me he doesn't care for her."
"Don't care about that-I just wondered if he had one, if she's up there."
"What are your ideas for this?" Barakat asked. "To be quiet about it."
"Got no ideas," Cappy said. "Just be simple and do it." THE APARTMENT building had an interior door that was supposed to be locked, but Barakat pulled on it, hard, and the lock popped and they went through.
"How'd you know about that?" Cappy asked.
"Lock has been broken for two years," Barakat said. "Nobody uses their key anymore." SHAHEEN PEEKED around the door to see who it was, then let them in. "Now what? Has something happened?"
"We came to tell you that nothing has happened, everything is okay," Barakat said. "The police have found the people who did it, and they were killed."
"The police killed them? I didn't hear…"
And they got into it, talking in circles about the people who'd robbed the hospital. Cappy had come lounging in the door behind Barakat. Shaheen glanced at him and then turned to his talk with Barakat, glancing sideways at Cappy from time to time, but not asking who he was, or what he was doing with Barakat.
Shaheen's apartment was furnished in Poor Student, with ramshackle bookcases holding dozens of texts, piles of medical papers. A couch faced two old easy chairs, with a glass-topped coffee table between them, and, to one side, a wooden desk with a computer, printer, and more piles of paper. A bar separated a kitchenette from the living room. There were two interior doors, both open, one leading to a bathroom, the other to a bedroom. They could see the toilet stool in one and the end of a bed in the other.
Shaheen smoked. A large glass ashtray sat on the dining bar; as they talked, they moved past it, toward the circle of the couch and chairs. Cappy picked up the ashtray. Shaheen's back was to him and he lifted it in one hand, a question. Barakat gave him a tiny nod, and Cappy stepped toward Shaheen, who started to turn, and slammed it into his head, an inch behind his ear.