I turned back to Mack. “Does Intel have a count on how many are left?
“Two prospects, that’s all.” Mack smiled.
“Excellent, let’s get this done.”
CHAPTER FORTY
On the way to the sheriff’s headquarters, we stopped off at Little Mountain Foreign Auto Repair. Drago knew the owner, Martin Hyde, and we picked up tools he needed to break into the safe. Odd, how the garage had specialty tools to crack a safe. The tools had been left out back by a dumpster, packed in two heavy canvas duffels. Drago had been planning this a long time, and had his prior contacts like Hyde all lined up.
With Drago in the backseat, and all the tools in the trunk, the Crown Vic sank dangerously low over the back tires, and made the front end rise higher than normal.
Mack pulled over to the curb. “Tell me one more time why we have to crack the safe if the gold is sitting underneath it?”
“Hey, we don’t have time, we have to keep moving,” I said.
Mack gave a look that said he was taking control of the caper, and that he needed all the information before we stuck his neck way out on the chopping block. Least that was the way I read him.
I turned to Drago. “Tell him, but the Reader’s Digest version.”
Drago used both hands to talk. “Look, it’s simple. In theory, if you don’t anchor a safe, the street urchins could simply come in and haul the whole thing off. Then they could open it at their leisure somewhere safe and where they’d have more time. So, when I helped put the safe in, we put four, three-quarter-inch bolts, preset in concrete where the safe was going to sit. We drilled four holes in the bottom of the safe so that these bolts could come up through the floor of the safe. Then we screwed them down with nuts.”
“Okay, now I can visualize it,” said Mack.
Drago went on anyway. “I told the old president that there was a gap under the safe that a thief with small hands could reach under and hacksaw the bolts.”
Mack snapped his fingers. “So you told him you needed a washer to cover the bolts, hence the gold doughnut painted to look like lead.”
“Give the dumbshit a prize,” said Drago. “Now he’s got it.”
“Hey, take it easy, big man. When Bruno described it, he didn’t go into details.”
Mack pulled away from the curb and headed down the street.
“Now children, play nice,” I said.
In too little time we made the last right turn onto the street to the clubhouse, still fifty yards down on the north side. For five decades the clubhouse had been a gathering place for the socially inept, the socially outcast, the brutal who practiced mayhem, and human corruption of the first order. Ironically, located just two blocks from a hospital.
For the tenth time, I tugged and pulled and adjusted the LA Dodgers cap down low over my eyes and checked the rearview mirror to see how the disguise fared. The hat and the sunglasses covered the distinguishable parts of my face. Maybe Mack was right, this was going to work. I had the Glock in a pancake holster out in plain view like an FBI agent would, and wore the navy blue windbreaker with “FBI” across the back. I was as ready as I would ever be.
Mack wore the tactical vest with the FBI letters. He again pulled over to the curb in front of a house. At the rate we were going, we were never going to get there.
“Put the cuffs on him,” Mack said. “We have to make this look real.”
Drago put his catcher’s mitts up on the top edge of the backseat. I tried to put the cuffs on, but his wrists were too thick for the cuffs to ratchet closed. “Hold them like this, so it looks like you’re cuffed,” I said.
“It’s better this way,” he said. “I don’t wanna be cuffed, not now, not while walking into this greasy snake pit full of those back-stabbing assholes. Hey, gimme a gun, would ya?”
“Are you outta your mind,” asked Mack. “Because we aren’t outta ours. You forget, we’re the sane ones.”
“You might want to rethink that position,” I said. “With what we’re about to do, I’m no longer entirely sure that’s true.”
While I spoke, I slipped Drago the dirk I’d taken off Jonas. He nodded just enough for me to notice. The razor-sharp, doubled-edged knife disappeared, hidden somewhere in his bulk. I had the derringer I’d taken from him shoved down in my crotch. Physically uncomfortable, but it created a modicum of solace, no matter how meager. The discomfort was a constant reminder. Whenever I made the slightest move, the vest gun snagged and pinched delicate skin.
Mack grunted at me and took his foot off the brake. “Here we go.” He drove the last few yards to our destination. “Look at it this way, we get into trouble, all we have to do is get out to the front yard and wave to the cops. They’ll send in backup.”
He’d read my mind. “Yeah, and then what?” I asked. “It’ll take them five, ten minutes to get here. It only takes a second to pull a trigger, and about two minutes to beat a man to death.”
“Nice talk,” Mack said. “Don’t jinx us.”
“Hey, look, the gate’s open,” Drago said. “Those prospects’ll get their asses kicked up between their shoulders, Clay finds out.”
Mack pulled through an eight-foot, wrought-iron fence with spear-shaped, pointed tops, and right into the Sons of Satan clubhouse yard. The bikers didn’t need a fence of any sort. No crook in his right mind would even think about pulling a burglary where he might end up in prison with a bunch of SSs already doing time for murder. Loyal and dedicated SSs with nothing else to lose.
The clubhouse was exactly that, a large single-story house built at least fifty years ago, with painted gray stucco and a tar composition roof. All the wooden window frames were neatly painted with a contrasting white, and the glass panes covered in foil on the inside. The front exterior was immaculate and could have passed as a parking lot for a popular urban dentist. The shrubs were trimmed and the small patch of green grass was mowed to perfection. The SS kept a flagpole with a Sons of Satan flag on top and the American flag underneath, a violation of flag protocol, a subtle statement of biker values. To the side of the front door hung a huge Sons of Satan winged ‘death head’ plaque carved in hardwood with a high-gloss varnish. The death head, a perfect omen.
Mack pulled right up to the front of the clubhouse and parked. We got out. I expected something more, anything really, than the vacant parking lot. No one rushed out brandishing weapons to tell us to get the hell off the property. Mack turned and looked across the parking lot, through the bars of the eight-foot fence, and down the street as he tried to pick out the utility pole camera to let the sheriff’s Intel boys see him, let them know we had arrived.
Drago, bold and without shame, walked toward the front door as if he belonged there. Maybe he did. The door swung open. Two shaved-head white males with fresh enflamed tattoos on exposed arms stood ready to repel any and all comers. The tattoos in black and red and white ink depicted Harley Davidson motorcycles and the Grim Reaper, various handguns and shotguns, and women with large naked breasts. This was more what I had expected. Both wore denim vests and black Dickie pants, a kind of uniform. Both looked close to the same age, about twenty-eight or thirty, their domes tatted. They displayed no emotion.
Mack caught up to Drago and whispered, “Stay with us asshole, you’re not the leader here. You’ll blow this whole deal.”
I caught up and passed Drago and Mack on the front walk to the door. “FBI, we have a search warrant for the premises and we demand entry.”
The two prospects looked at each other and then back at us. They didn’t move and continued to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking the door’s entrance. The taller one with a smaller head said, “No one’s comin’ in here. I don’t give a shit if you got CIA, the Secret Service, and the whole fucking army behind you. Which you don’t. So you’re not comin’ in. So you can turn your ugly asses around and get the hell outta here.”