Helmet Head (5 page)
CHAPTER 10
Poor Service
Helmet Head paused in the door and looked around. The door frame cut off the top of his helmet. He stooped as he stepped inside and the door wheezed shut behind him. Water trickled off his leathers and helmet and fell from the helmet bag to the floor. He walked to the bar passing within three feet of Fagan but taking no notice. He set the helmet bag on the bar with a ponderous thump. Pinkish water leaked from the bag onto the bar top.
Fred backed himself up until he was leaning against the whiskey, eyes wide open, mouth stretched into a Dodge grill. The shotgun resided under the bar where the visitor couldn’t see it. Helmet Head leaned on the bar with his hands and stared at Fred.
Fagan thought about shooting the black rider in the head but he’d already tried that and look where it got him. Nor was he certain the Road Dogs wouldn’t turn on him afterward and testify against him. And then he saw the black leather sheath affixed to the rider’s back. A long, gently curving black scabbard. Fagan’s eyes returned to the helmet bag like a mesmerized deer.
Helmet Head extended one black-leathered hand toward the bar pointing at the bottle of Jack.
“We’re closed,” Fred croaked.
The featureless shield stared at him like an X-ray machine. Helmet Head straightened up and slowly took in the assembled starting with Wild Bill on his left, gaze pausing on each, serially and separately. His gaze particularly lingered on Macy who shrank back against a cabinet. Helmet Head spread both hands in an Italian gesture.
Whaaaa—?
“We’re closed,” Fred choked again. “These boys were just leaving.” He sounded like air escaping from a child’s balloon.
Helmet Head placed his right hand on the helmet bag and waggled his fingers as if pondering something. He jerked the helmet bag off the bar and headed toward the door. Just before he reached it he turned, pointing a finger at each of them in turn like counting passengers for a tour bus.
He left the bar as a curtain of rain washed over them, lashing the windows and playing a discordant tune on the shutters. The outside world blinked white followed by the crash of thunder. Wild Bill and Fagan returned to the front window and watched as Helmet Head attached the helmet bag to the back of his bike.
Macy ran out from behind the bar into Wild Bill’s arms. “Oh my God,” she sobbed.
“It’s all right, Mace,” the biker assured her. “Just a lotta show.”
“You see those punctures in his jacket?” Chainsaw said. “The pig speaketh truth.”
In back, Doc picked up another card.
“Oh yeah?” Fred said, grabbing his shotgun. “OH YEAH?!”
The little man hobbled out from behind the bar and stumped toward the front door.
“Fred, wait a minute,” Fagan said but the bartender was on a mission from God. He ran out the front door, down the steps, toward the black rider. Helmet Head turned to face him, hands at sides palms open.
Whaaaa—?
Fred went down on one knee. “Remember me, motherfucker?
Remember me?!
”
Two blasts struck Helmet Head in the chest further shredding his expensive black jacket. The black biker staggered back but stopped himself from falling when his butt hit the bike.
Fred got to his feet dazed as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just done. Helmet Head strode toward him drawing the katana from over one shoulder, passing it through Fred’s neck and returning it to his back in one perfect parabola.
For three long seconds Fred stood quivering. His head slid one way and his body the other. Helmet Head stooped, picked up Fred’s head with both hands like a basketball and Michael Jordaned it toward the roadhouse.
Fred’s head smacked through the window like a seven pound cannonball, striking the back wall and falling to the floor spewing blood. Glass flew.
Macy screamed.
“Motherfucker!” Wild Bill exclaimed, reaching into his vest and pulling out an Arsenal double-barreled .45. Chainsaw reached down to his leather gym bag and withdrew a long-barreled .357 magnum. Mad Dog pulled a nine from his backpack and the bikers surged toward the front door like the Three Stooges.
“Hold it!” Fagan yelled, drawing his own pistol.
The black bike roared to life. Three foot gouts of flame erupted from the pipes. Helmet Head pulled out of the rain-slick lot and motored down the road, the shrieking cacophony becoming fainter until it merged with the sound of the storm.
***
CHAPTER 11
The Freezer
Fagan went out on the porch. Chaos was chaos but this was getting out of hand. The wind had tumbled the cheap -plastic chairs and tables into the wall. “Can anyone fix the generator?” he called, his voice sounding unusually loud in the absence of thunder.
“I can fix anything runs on gas,” Mad Dog said turning back toward the club. He brushed by Fagan, deliberately giving him the shoulder as he went into the club and behind the bar. Fagan still felt weak and sore from his crash and that kick to the ribs didn’t help.
Fagan followed him in. “Is there a freezer back there, something that will hold the body?”
“If it’ll fit,” the kid said and disappeared through the door.
Doc and Curtis remained at their back table playing cards.
“One of you guys help me carry the body in?”
“What for?” Doc said without looking up.
“Might be awhile before we can get an ambulance out here,” Fagan said.
Curtis pushed himself back from the table. “I will.”
He was a wiry black man with close-cropped steel-gray hair and beard wearing tinted round glasses. He had a diamond stud through his left ear and his brown eyes were devoid of the rage Fagan saw in the others.
Together they went outside. Wild Bill and Chainsaw were arguing, oblivious to Fred’s body. Blood had poured from Fred’s neck to mix with the rainwater.
Curtis stooped and grabbed the headless body beneath the arms. “Looks like he’s pretty much exsanguinated.”
Fagan took the bartender’s boots, stitch lancing across his ribs where he’d been kicked. “You have medical experience, Mr…?”
“Curtis. I’m an RN.”
Fagan led, going up the three steps to the deck. “That’s a new one on me. A black RN outlaw biker.”
Curtis followed Fagan into the bar. “Yeah well we don’t get too many Jewish cops around here.”
Fagan opened the bar door with his elbow and Curtis followed.
A thrum rose from the rear of the building. The lights flickered and went back on. Mad Dog came out of the back door grinning and slapping his hands together in an exaggerated manner.
“Told ya.”
“Good on ya, Mad Dog,” Curtis said as they squeezed by him into the storeroom.
Mad Dog flattened out against the wall as Fred’s corpse passed.
There were two doors behind the bar at right angles. One led to the storeroom. The other led to Fred’s private quarters.
Inside the store room the door shut automatically behind them. The big, concrete-floored space was lit by two sixty watt bulbs hanging from the ceiling—a fire marshal’s nightmare. Stacks of Cutty Sark, Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker, Four Roses and a dozen other brands formed sentinels against one wall. A deep horizontal freezer sat against the opposite wall next to two old uprights.
“What makes you think I’m Jewish?” Fagan said, as they gently laid Fred on the floor next to the freezer.
“Knew a cat in Nam named Fagan. Tom Fagan. Told me it was a Jewish name. Plus you got that nappy hair. Plus you ain’t from around here.”
Curtis chuckled.
Fagan carefully went through Fred’s pockets: a folding knife, three quarters and a penny, a moist blue bandanna and an old Zippo lighter with a Harley logo. He placed these items in an empty cardboard box, stood and opened the freezer. It was half full of pub food including pre-pressed burgers, frozen French fries and drink mixes. There were two upright refrigerators to one side. Fagan stuffed as much of the perishables as he could into the uprights’ freezers leaving plenty of room for Fred’s body.
They carefully laid it inside. It just fit without the head.
“I’ve seen a cut like that,” Curtis said. “When some North Viet big shot wanted to make a point he’d decapitate a prisoner.”
“You were a POW?”
“Three months. Then the bombers came. They fly so high you don’t know they’re there until the ground explodes. Seen men lose their heads to a flying tin roof.”
The freezer remained open. Mad Dog bounced through the door holding Fred’s head in both hands and tried to sink it from ten feet. Curtis’ thin body snapped like a whip as he intercepted the pitch, hauling the head into his belly with both hands.
“You’d best get out of my sight,” he said softly.
Mad Dog shimmied in mock fear and slouched out. Curtis reverently laid the head in the freezer and lowered the lid.
“There’s plywood in the shed out back. Figure we should patch that window before it starts to rain again.”
Fagan followed Curtis out the back door to a cinderblock supply shack. The battered red door faced the rear of the bar and was partially open. A big green dumpster crowded one side, an old Ford pick-up the other.
Curtis pushed the door open, noticed Fagan wincing. “Crack a rib?”
Fagan grimaced and nodded.
“See if I can tape it up. Might have some Vicodin.” He rummaged through his denim vest, found a bottle of ibuprofen. “Try these.”
“Thanks.” Fagan gratefully unscrewed the bottle, bounced four into his hand and swallowed them with a swig from a can of Royal Crown Cola.
“I’ll be all right.”
“Ahuh.”
“You know as soon as the power comes back on this place will be crawling with cops.”
“What makes you think the power gonna come back on?”
Fagan tried his hand-held. Nothing.
Inside the shack was a complete workbench with tools and a circular saw, big rectangles of plywood stacked against one wall. Fred’s Fat Boy sat against the back wall covered with dust. Curtis grabbed a tape measure, a hammer and a box of nails and headed back to the club.
“You know what day it is?”
“Thursday,” Fagan replied hitching to keep up.
“June 22. My momma wouldn’t let me out the house on this day. Said this the night the haunts all roam. Ain’t Halloween. No sir. June 22.”
Back in the bar Macy sat weeping in a chair.
Wild Bill was in Doc’s face. “I say we go.”
“I say we wait until morning. He ain’t going anywhere. You heard Fred. He lives in Milton’s Hollow.”
Wild Bill leaned in and sprayed spittle. “You lily-livered piece of shit. My old man should have left you in Nam.”
Doc stayed calm but Fagan could tell he was ready to explode. Wild Bill abruptly turned. “How ‘bout it, Curtis? You comin’?”
Curtis used the tape measure on the front window. “What about the Aces of Spade my man Terrell?”
***
CHAPTER 12
The Book of Death
Wild Bill snarled, “That motherfucker killed Larry and took the ice! He killed Fred. Likely killed Terrell and took our twenty grand. He’s got our ice, our cash, and he’s killed two of our friends.”
Creases radiated from the bridge of Curtis’s nose. “Terrell should have been here by now. Terrell is one punctual cat.”
Mad Dog stared at Fagan. “Maybe the pig took the ice, you ever think of that?”
Wild Bill snorted. “You’ve got to be shittin’ me. Look at him! Do you think he’d drag his sorry ass in here holding our ice? Well here’s your chance, pig. Ride with us—help us get that Fred killer.”
Macy looked up with red eyes.
Fagan measured his words carefully. “Guys, that’s tornado weather outside. I advise you to stay inside until the power comes back on and we get an all-clear from the state highway patrol.”
“Yeah, right,” Wild Bill sneered.
“Pussyyyyyyyy,” Mad Dog hissed. He laid lines out on the table top. “I told you not to trust no jigs.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dog,” Wild Bill said, bending to the table and hoovering a line. He looked up energized. “How about you, Macy. Want a bump?”
“No thanks.”
“Come on. Maybe it might uncrank your ass.”
“No, thank you.”
“Jesus, Macy. You used to be fun.”
Macy got up and went behind the bar where she drew a glass of water and sat on a stool. Curtis set down his tape measure and followed her. The rest of the Dogs could care less except for Doc who watched warily.
Fagan leaned on the bar. Curtis knelt next to Macy and said just loud enough for Fagan to hear, “Does Wild Bill know?”
Macy shook her head. “And don’t tell him.”
“How long have you known?”
“A week.”
“You need something for cramps or nausea?”
Macy looked up. “What have you got?”
Went unsaid were,
do you plan to tell Bill, and what do you plan to do with the baby?
“Please don’t make a fuss, Curtis. I don’t want anyone to know.”
Curtis turned his soulful eyes on Fagan. Macy looked up.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” she said.
“I won’t.”
Wild Bill snorked and bellowed, “Saddle up, boys!”
“Not before we get that window sealed,” Curtis said. “You ain’t gonna leave your woman open to the elements, are ya?”
Wild Bill looked from Curtis to Macy with little pig eyes.
“Go a lot quicker if you guys chip in,” Curtis said.
Chainsaw sprang to his feet. “I’ll help you measure those plywood sheets. How we gonna cut ’em?”
“Fred’s got a table saw in the shed.”
Curtis called off measurements. Chainsaw wrote them down. He, Curtis and Mad Dog returned to the shed. Soon Fagan could hear the shriek of the table saw. Even Wild Bill helped mount and seal the window. Chainsaw’s measurements and cuts were spot on. The replacement sheet was exactly the size of the plate glass window. Mad Dog found a tube of window putty in the shed and squeezed the whole thing out around the frame so the wind couldn’t get through.
He stood back, hands on hips, proud of his handiwork. “Got any spray paint?”
“All right?” Wild Bill said. “Everybody happy?”
“That’ll do ’er,” Curtis said.
“Lock and load, boys.”
Mad Dog pulled out his nine, Chainsaw the magnum, Wild Bill the double .45, Doc a Taurus Judge five-shot revolver chambered for .410 shotgun shells.
Curtis looked at Doc. “What the fuck, Doc?”
“Curtis, we took an oath. You saw what he did to Fred.”
Wild Bill stood. “Let’s roll.” He looked pointedly at Fagan. “You coming?”
Fagan backed away with his hands up, palms forward as if to say, “I don’t have a thing to do with this.”
“Don’t be here when we get back. Macy darling, make yourself beautiful for me.”
The quintet trooped out of the bar shaking the floor. Fagan remained standing at the bar, Macy seated at a table with her face in her hands. Seconds later the Road Dogs’ bikes exploded into five kinds of thunder, revved, gassed, goosed and shredded down the road.
For a moment there was silence. The room was much darker with the plywood in place. Macy looked at Fagan with red-rimmed eyes. “Fred kept a book.”
“What book?”
“About the killings.” She pushed the chair back with a screech, got up and went behind the bar. She went into Fred’s private quarters and returned a moment later with a big vinyl scrap book covered with dust, the cover plastered with a peeling Grateful Dead logo and a Harley decal. She stood behind the bar and smacked the bar top with it causing a mini dust storm that rolled over an ant. Macy flicked the ant off the bar top with a finger, flipped the book open to the first page and turned it toward Fagan, a yellowed newspaper article clipped from the
Carbondale Courier
dated June 20, 1999.
CYCLIST BEHEADED BY GUY WIRE
State and local officials have declared the death of Chicago native Robert MacGruder to be the result of a first-degree homicide. They believe the 48-year old motorcyclist was beheaded by guy wire stretched between trees in the Shawnee National Forest.
Sheriff Jonah Brach of Sharon County said the killing bore similarities to a five-year-old homicide, the unsolved death of motorcyclist Wayne Cappucio. “We may be dealing with a serial killer,” Sheriff Brach stated, asking that anyone with any knowledge of either case to please contact his department.
Fagan’s throat dried up. “Could I have a glass of water please?” he rasped.
Macy filled a bar glass with water and handed it to him. He drank it all, handed it back. She refilled it.
“How is it possible nobody knows about this?” he said. “Why isn’t this a big deal?”
“Nobody gives a shit about outlaw bikers.”
Fagan wondered if Sheriff Fullerton were incompetent or merely ignorant. From the way he talked, Fagan always assumed Fullerton was from around these parts. How could he not mention this?
How could he not know?
Fagan had interviewed for the job three months ago. It had taken them that long to make up their minds.
He turned the page. A story from the
Harrisburg Gazette
about a biker found with his head lopped off only this time the killer left the head. Some grad student riding cross country. Dartagnan Broddus was a history major and Civil War buff. Police were looking for “an historical re-enactor, possibly with a Confederate cavalry sword.”
Someone with deep-seated racial prejudice.
Broddus’ family offered a five thousand dollar reward for information leading to an arrest. Fagan had a feeling there had been no arrest. Coming from a medium-sized city Fagan understood the politics of unsolved cases. After awhile they became an embarrassment which the higher-ups simply wanted to go away. Maybe the killings had stopped for awhile. Fagan flipped ahead—there were only two more entries, the last from 2008. Four killings in all. Not exactly an epidemic.
Unless there were others that had gone unnoticed.
Macy had a point. No one cared about a bunch of hoodlum bikers whose life expectancy was equivalent to that of some Third World country.
“Are you really a cop?” Macy said.
Fagan showed her his badge and ID card.
Macy picked up the ID card, her face twisting in consternation. “It’s your fourth day on the job?!”
“Ma’am, this looks like a criminal conspiracy to distribute meth.”
Macy’s mouth dropped open in a half guffaw. “Are you for real? Don’t you think we have other stuff to worry about?”
“Sooner or later power will be restored and so will the rule of law. Do you have any outstanding warrants?”
“Who, me? No.”
“Do you know if any of the others do?”
“I’m no snitch.”
“Does he often lay hands on you like that? I should have arrested him for assault. I would be happy to do that.”
“Yeah right. And get the shit beat out of you.”
“I’m looking at a criminal conspiracy. Sooner or later they’re going to restore power in Ptolemy and I’ll be able to get through on my radio.”
“You want to know about me and Bill?”
The wind picked up. Thunder rumbled. The lights flickered.
Macy buried her head in her hands and sobbed. Before he knew it Fagan found himself on the other side of the bar with his arm around her shoulder. She stood and let him embrace her.
“Bad, huh?”
***