I looked over at my investigator. I completely trusted him but wasn’t seeing the logic in Dahl’s putting the two goons on me. We’d had the dispute over movie control and money, but how would busting my ribs and twisting my nuts help him in that regard? At the time of the attack, I had just found out he had made the deal with McReynolds. I got mugged before I could even register a protest.
“You better run this down for me, Cisco.”
“I can’t really do that yet. That’s why we’re in the car.”
“Then talk to me. What’s going on? I’m in the middle of trial here.”
“Okay, you told me you didn’t trust Dahl and that I should check him out. I did. I also had a couple of my guys start to keep an eye on him.”
“By your guys you mean Saints?”
“That’s right.”
Once upon a time, long before he married Lorna, Cisco was with the Road Saints, a motorcycle club that was somewhere on the spectrum between the Hell’s Angels and the Shriners’ clowns on wheels. He managed to retire from membership without a criminal record and now maintained an association with the club. For a long time I did, too, serving as house counsel and handling various traffic, brawling and drug offenses that distracted the membership. That was how I had first met Cisco. He was running security investigations for the club and I started using him on the criminal cases that came up. The rest was history.
On more than one occasion over the years Cisco had enlisted the Saints on my behalf. I even credit them with saving my family from potential harm when I was involved in the Louis Roulet case. So it was not a surprise to me that he had called on them again, except that he hadn’t bothered to clue me in.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I didn’t want to complicate things for you. You had the case to worry about. I was handling the two dirtbags who messed you up.”
By messed up he meant more than physically. He was keeping me out of things because he knew that sometimes the psychological beating you take is worse than the physical. He didn’t want me distracted or looking over my shoulder.
“Okay, I get it,” I said.
Cisco reached inside his black-leather riding vest and pulled out a folded photograph. He handed it to me and I waited until I stopped at the light at Roscoe before I looked. I unfolded it and saw a picture of Herb Dahl getting into a car with the two black-gloved assailants who had so expertly put me down on the floor of the parking garage by the Victory Building.
“Recognize them?” Cisco asked.
“Yeah, it’s them,” I said, anger rising in my throat. “Fucking Dahl, I’m going to kick his fucking ass.”
“Maybe. Turn left here. We’re going to the compound.”
I looked over my shoulder and squeezed the car into the turning lane just as the light changed and I got the signal. We headed west and I had to flip down the visor against the dropping sun. By compound I knew he meant the Saints’ clubhouse, which was near the brewery on the other side of the 405 Freeway. It had been a while since I had been there.
“When was that photo taken?” I asked.
“While you were in the hospital. They didn’t-”
“You’ve been sitting on this since then?”
“Relax. I wasn’t checking with my guys every day, okay? They also didn’t know about your ass getting kicked. So they saw Dahl with these guys, took a couple of pictures and never showed them to me because they didn’t print them out for more than a month. It was a fuckup, I know, but these guys aren’t pros. They’re lazy. I take responsibility for it. So if you need to blame someone, blame me. I saw the photo for the first time last night. The other thing is my guys told me they didn’t get it with the camera but they also saw Dahl give both of these assholes a roll of cash. So I think it’s pretty clear. He hired them to kick your ass, Mick.”
“Son of a bitch.”
I was seized with the same sense of helplessness I had felt when one of the assailants had pinned my arms and held me while the other one hit me with his gloved fists. I felt sweat popping on my scalp. And sympathetic pain throbbed in my ribs and testicles.
“If I ever get a chance to-”
I stopped and looked across the seat at Cisco. He had a slight smile playing on his face.
“Is that what this is? You have these two guys at the clubhouse?”
He didn’t answer but he kept the smile.
“Cisco, I’m in the middle of a trial and now you’re telling me the guy who has his fingers in my client’s pie is the one who set me up for that… that assault? I don’t have time for this, man. I have too much-”
“They want to talk.”
That shut my protest down quick.
“Did you interview them?”
“Nope. Waiting for you. Thought you should get first crack at them.”
I drove in silence the rest of the way, pondering what lay ahead. Soon we pulled to a stop in front of a compound on the east side of the brewery. Cisco got out to open the gate and the car immediately became infected with the sour smell of the brewery.
The compound was surrounded by a chain-link fence with a twist of razor wire running along top. The concrete-block clubhouse, which sat in the middle of the hardscrabble lot, looked unimpressive in comparison to the gleaming row of machines parked out front. Harleys and Triumphs only. No rice rockets for this crew.
We entered the clubhouse, took a moment to let our eyes adjust and then I saw Cisco walk up to a serve-yourself bar where two other men in leather vests sat on stools.
“Ready to do this?” he said.
The two men spun off their stools and stood up. Both of them went an easy six foot four and three hundred pounds. They were enforcers. Cisco introduced them to me as Tommy Guns and Bam Bam.
“They’re back here,” said Tommy Guns.
The two men led us down a hallway behind the bar. They were so big they had to walk in single file. There were doors on either side. Bam Bam opened a door midway down the right side and we entered a windowless room with the walls and ceiling painted black and a single bulb hanging from above. In the dim light I could see sketches painted on the walls. Men with beards and long hair. I realized this was like a dark chapel where the fallen Saints were memorialized. My first thought as I looked about was Pulp Fiction. My second was that I didn’t want to be here. Two men were lying on the floor hog-tied, with their arms and feet up behind their backs. They had black bags over their heads.
Bam Bam leaned down and started to pull the bags off. This started a chorus of groans and fearful sounds from the two men.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Cisco, I can’t be here. You’re bringing me into-”
“Is it them?” Cisco said, not waiting for me to finish my protest. “Look closely. You don’t want to make a mistake.”
“Me? It’s not my mistake! I didn’t ask you to do this!”
“Calm down. You’re here, so just look. Is it them?”
“Jesus Christ!”
Both men were gagged with duct tape wrapped completely around their heads. Their faces were distorted further by the swelling and bruising already forming around their eyes. They had been beaten. The features didn’t match with what I remembered from the Victory Building garage or even the photograph Cisco had showed me earlier. I bent down to look closer. Both men looked up at me, complete fear in their eyes.
“I can’t tell,” I said.
“It’s a yes-or-no question, Mick.”
“Yeah, but they weren’t scared shitless when they beat the crap out of me and they weren’t gagged.”
“Take off the tape,” Cisco ordered.
Bam Bam moved in, springing a switchblade open and roughly cutting through the tape on the first man. He then tore it off, taking chunks of neck hair with it. The man yelped in pain.
“Shut the fuck up!” Tommy Guns yelled.
The second man learned from his friend’s example. He took the harsh tape-removal process without making a sound. Bam Bam threw the gag to the side of the room and then moved behind the men. He grabbed the nexus of the rope that tied the arms and legs together and knocked each man onto his side so I could see his face better.