Messenger of Death (11 page)

“We have to
go,” Camilla said, looking at him with fond eyes. “My roommate may
come back any minute. Shelly and I agreed to not entertain
boyfriends here.”

“Fair enough,”
nodded Stanley. “I’ll find an apartment for you soon.”

“I can’t afford
an apartment of my own. In a few months, after graduation, I’ll get
a job, and then I’ll make enough money to pay for it.”

“You don’t have
to,” Stanley smiled. “I’ll foot the bill.”

“Why don’t we .
. . ”

“What?”

“Why don’t we
live together? It would be cheaper.”

“No, that
wouldn’t be as good as you think.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t
explain it right now. You’ll understand later.” He noticed her
disappointment. “I like you so much, Camilla. Truly. I’ll do
anything for you. You gave a new meaning to my life. Maybe I’ll
leave my club and do something else for a living. Trust me.”

Camilla kissed
him and smiled.

“By the way,
next Thursday we’re having a big party at our clubhouse. Would you
like to go with me?”

“I’d love to!”
She accepted the invitation quickly. “I’ve never been in a biker’s
club.”

“Good. Now,
let’s go to my house. I can’t think of spending the night without
you.”

“Me, neither!”
Camilla pulled his hair in passion. “Hold your breath, rascal. It’s
not gonna be an easy night for you!”

They went out
hand-in-hand, into the last glimmer of the day. The sun, a large
red disk dropping behind a jagged line of tall buildings, shone in
a futile attempt to fend off the encroaching dusk. Cars with lights
on passed them by.

“Here’s my
car.” He matter-of-factly pointed to a small Mercedes, parked near
a meter by the roadside.

“Ni-i-i-ice,”
Camilla sang, but Stanley stopped suddenly, holding her beside
him.

“Please, wait
here a minute.”

“Why?”

“Please.” He
looked around, as if trying to detect something suspicious, and
then went up to the car and pressed the unlock button on the remote
control. The car greeted him with flashing lights. He got in,
turned the engine on, and lowered the window on the passenger
side.

“Come on in,”
he invited, leaning back.

“What’s this
all about?” Camilla asked, opening the door and climbing into the
passenger seat.

“Habit. Nothing
else,” Stanley explained. His car moved forward, like a powerful,
obedient horse.

“Careful,”
Camilla laughed, as she was thrown against him during a sharp turn.
She locked her arms around his neck.

“Tell me more
about yourself, tough guy.” She kissed him. “I don’t know much
about you. Tell me about your parents.”

“Working-class
people. They live in Halifax. As far as I remember, they’ve always
been poor. I hated poverty. I finished high school, but that’s all
my education. I began making money when I was a student. Quite a
bit, I should say.”

“All in drugs?”
Camilla guessed.

“Not all. As I
said before, I have a muffler shop. It makes good money. I have
some other businesses, too.”

“Why do you
need the Iron Ghosts club then?”

“It’s
interrelated—hard to explain. You’ll understand later. Let’s talk
about something else. Tonight is just for us.”

IV

Camilla was
trembling with curiosity to see the biker’s club. She had read
plenty of newspaper articles lately about these almighty gangs,
fearing no one, intimidating all. Journalists had been talking a
lot about how their power and influence seemed to be increasing, as
well as how the police department seemed unable to cope with them.
Camilla had not, however, seen anything that frightening. With
Stanley, she felt very safe; who, after all, would threaten such a
powerful man? He seemed smart enough not to endanger his life, nor
to harm anyone without a specific reason.

When he came to
pick her up, she felt nothing but pleasant excitement. On the way
to the club, when the car stopped at traffic lights, they exchanged
smiles and occasional kisses.

“Please don’t
close your eyes when I kiss you,” she said.

They entered a
quiet street.

“Never mind,
we’re here,” Stanley said. His sleek Mercedes rolled up to a
sliding gate that was built into a fence, which ran from both sides
of a weird two-story building. There was no entrance door on its
front, but nothing else could be seen through the tall, brick
fence. The gate began its slow slide to the right, giving way to a
large parking lot. Only three cars were inside; the remaining space
was taken up by shiny Harley Davidsons. A man in a biker’s vest
waved Stanley to a vacant spot. Camilla noticed two Rottweilers
running along the inside of the fence. They were on leashes
attached to a cable by a metal ring, which limited their movement
to a narrow path along the fence.

Zigzagging her
way between motorcycles, Camilla noticed the entrance to the
building. It faced the parking lot, where a back door was supposed
to be. Stanley led her inside, through a small lobby and into a
spacious hall with a long bar along the opposite wall. The crowd
around it sent up a roaring cheer when Stanley appeared at the
entrance. A man in his middle forties, with a neatly groomed beard
and short hair, blocked their way. His well-fitting blue shirt and
pants emphasized his athletic shape.

“This is our
president, Willy,” Stanley said, and then, turning to Willy, he
added, “This is Camilla.”

“So, here she
is,” Willy nodded. “I’ve heard about you.”

He shook
Camilla’s hand with a rather strange look on his face: His lips
stretched in an inviting smile, but they contrasted with frozen,
suspicious, piercing blue eyes. A moment later, the wrinkles on his
forehead smoothed out when his eyes took a quick rollercoaster ride
on the feminine curves of her body.

“Have fun,” he
said to her, waving his hand toward the bar. “We have plenty of
everything.” He gave Stanley a brief hug and winked at him in
recognition of his choice of girlfriend. Stanley led Camilla
through a short corridor to another spacious hall. This one held
plenty of cozy chairs and coffee tables, mostly arranged along its
walls. All of them had been taken, but one was vacated as soon as
Stanley stopped by.

“It’s a weird
place,” Camilla said.

“Why?”

“All windows
face the parking lot; none look out on the street.”

“There is
another set of rooms, whose windows face the street,” Stanley said.
“You have to go through that door to get there. But the door is
locked.”

“Why?”

“Just a
precaution.”

“Precaution
against what?”

“Never mind.
What would you like to drink?”

“What do you
have?”

“Everything.”

“Baileys,
then.”

“Just a sec. I
will be right back.” When Stanley left for the drinks, she listened
to the crowd. Splashes of laughter and agitated shouts soared from
time to time above the murmur of many conversations. She decided to
sit down and look around.

A few guys had
the unpleasant look of hoodlums, but the majority appeared to be
quite normal people. She wouldn’t have singled any one of them out
as a suspicious or unwelcome guest at one of her medical school
parties. Four men wore formal biker vests, with patches on the back
showing all the insignia of their club. Women hustled about,
drinking and smiling, talking with men nearby, excited by the very
fact that they were there. Some of them seemed very young, eighteen
or even less, and wore vulgar, tasteless, makeup and clothes; they
appeared to belong to a lower social class. On the street, Camilla
would have taken them for whores.

A huge man
stopped momentarily near her table, holding a bottle of beer in his
hand. He wore a vest with biker gang patches. His arms, bare to his
shoulders and thick with bulging muscles, had been densely
decorated with bluish tattoos, which filled up all the available
space. Long, untidy hair fell onto his shoulders; a beard hid his
throat. He was smiling, but his unfriendly eyes made him look like
a “typical” biker from a movie. He made his way toward a petite
woman; the length of her miniskirt was not enough to hide her
bikini underwear.

“Harry,” he
introduced himself. The woman giggled.

“I’d love to be
taken for a ride,” she said, wiggling her hips.

“I’ll take
you,” promised the biker and put his huge hand on her buttocks to
finalize their deal.

“Oh, Gary, you
always cheat me,” the woman said, her backside swaying in the hand
of a man she was meeting for the first time in her life. She was
already drunk; her lips moved slowly, as if frozen by anaesthetic
at a dentist’s office.

“Harry. My name
is Harry,” corrected the biker, kneading her behind like a piece of
dough.

“Right. That’s
what I thought.”

Harry produced
a pack of Marlboros and pulled out a cigarette.

“D’yah mind if
I give yah something in yah mouth?” he asked, pushing the cigarette
filter between her thickly painted lips.

“M-m-m-m.” The
woman chuckled. Her lips parted, opening for the cigarette. “Ha,
ha. You’re funny, Terry.”

Camilla shook
her head and glanced at a newspaper that was spread across the
table. Large, bold letters in the headline were meant to draw the
reader’s attention: “Biker’s War Escalates.” A picture in the
center of the page resembled a modern painting of a disaster—a
biker bar in the aftermath of an assault. She looked more intently
at the article. The assault, it said, had been conducted by masked
hoodlums, who used baseball bats to break everything inside. The
bar, according to the writer, was patronized by members of the Iron
Ghosts and was a haven for drug sales. According to speculation,
the rival Devil’s Knights gang had sent one of their “baseball
teams”—the author demonstrated familiarity with biker jargon—to
make a mess of the place. They broke in and ordered everyone not to
move. One hoodlum used his heavy bat to take care of everything
behind the bar. Shards of glass flew around the room from broken
bottles. Others took to beating the drug dealers. One of the
clients, too drunk to understand what was happening, had tried to
protest. A masked hoodlum hit his legs with a bat, sending the man
unconscious to the floor. The article said that police were still
looking for any traces of evidence that might lead them to identity
the criminals. From there, the piece gave a short history of biker
gangs in Quebec. But Camilla did not go much further because two
glasses had been placed on the newspaper, making reading
impossible. One glass had the whitish, brownish color of Baileys in
it.

“Interesting
article?’ Stanley asked, taking the chair beside her. The other was
half full of a golden brown liquid that smelled like cognac.
“Someone must have forgotten the newspaper here. I’ll tell the guy
on duty to watch for these things.”

“Is it a
secret?”

“No. But it
might give the wrong impression to someone that we’re defenceless.
We’ll respond, that’s for sure.” He leaned back and took a sip from
the glass. His lean face relaxed as he looked around, leisurely
observing the party. Camilla watched him with a warm glow in her
eyes.

Suddenly, the
whole building shook like a dollhouse kicked by a monster. The
sound of a rough, terrifying clap of thunder accompanied the jolt,
but it was more deafening than even the strongest bolt of lightning
could produce. Bits of plaster and dust jumped off the walls and
fell from the ceiling, sprinkling everyone and everything. A
chandelier hanging from the ceiling on a short chain began swaying
and dancing. Everyone rushed to exit the room, the rowdy,
commanding voices of men mingling with the piercing shrieks of
women. Camilla flew off her chair toward the door but was stopped
abruptly by a strong grip. She turned around, trying to free her
arm. It was Stanley who held her.

“It’s over,” he
said. “Don’t rush. It’s over.”

“What was it?”
Camilla asked, her voice shaking. “Hell, what was it?”

The exit was
cleared quickly and Stanley ran out, pulling Camilla after him.

“Take my car
and get out of here,” he commanded, handing her the keys. “I don’t
want the police to see you here. Go, go! I’ll come to your place
later.”

In the car,
Camilla threw one last glance at Stanley. He and Willy were giving
directions and orders to other members of the club.

“Take the dogs
inside,” Stanley shouted. “Open the gate. Go, go, but do not rush.
There is nothing to worry about. You, stupid ass, back up. Don’t
block the way. Hold on, hold on.”

Camilla’s first
sickening moment of fear had passed, its last remnants escaping
through her trembling fingers and lips. She drove through the open
gate and then hit the gas pedal of the powerful Mercedes. At the
closest major intersection, traffic had been halted by incoming
police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks, all with their sirens
screaming and lights flashing. After they passed, Camilla sped
toward the green light. She was out of the law’s reach.

Half an hour
later, she cautiously unlocked the door to her apartment. Shelly
was waiting for her. After numerous failed attempts at marriage,
Shelly had sworn to remain single and devote the rest of her life
to her vocation. Now, pale and visibly upset, she followed Camilla
into her room and began complaining about the injustice done to her
on her last exam. Her agitated words were pouring over Camilla like
an endless stream of water. One timid attempt to interrupt her
failed. Camilla tried again.

“But—”

Shelly raised
her voice to continue.

“Why,” she
asked like an offended child fighting the injustices of humanity,
“why does mediocrity always win in the battle against genuine
talent? They understand nothing in art, Camilla, I assure you.
Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”