The Replacements (31 page)

Clay Warfield sat amidst the people he lorded over, pretending to be just one of the guys. “Come back for some more, Deputy Johnson?” he asked.

I didn't answer. Clay saw my handcuffs. “That's right,
now
you have the right man. You don't have a thing on us.”

“Have you read the warrant to him?” I asked Dan.

Unlike in the movies, which take short cuts for dramatic effect, the warrant had to be read to the person in control of the premises before any search could be completed. Dan nodded to an agent in a blue windbreaker. The agent took out a folded piece of paper and a micro recorder. He read from the paper.

Clay smiled, unconcerned. He knew there wasn't anything in his clubhouse, so why should he worry? He smirked. “When you assholes get done with your little game of cops and robbers, I want
to press charges against Deputy Johnson for burglary and grand theft auto. He stole our plumbing truck. Roy Boy will also press charges for kidnap and attempted murder. What do you think about that, Deputy Johnson?”

I looked at Dan. “The gold's in Clay's office.”

Clay lost his smile. “There isn't any gold in my office.” He tried to struggle up off the couch. His zip-tied hands, and the other bikers packed hip-to-hip, made the move impossible. “You're not going to plant any evidence, not on me you won't. I'm going along. I'm going to watch.”

Dan nodded to the agent who'd read the warrant. The agent helped Clay up off the couch. We all walked down the hall through the trash, most of which by now had been flattened against the crusty carpet.

We entered the once-immaculate office still tossed from our last visit.

“Okay,” Dan said, “What gold, and how does it work as a predicate crime?”

I had taken a big chance believing Drago.

Clay yelled, “There isn't any gold in here. If there was, I'd know about it. Don't you think I would know about it?” His eyes blazed a hole right through me.

Dan asked again, “What gold? Where?”

“It's in the safe,” I said.

Clay's anger shifted away and he smiled. “Go ahead and look, there isn't any gold in the safe.”

“We don't need your permission to look,” said Dan.

Someone had closed the safe doors. The dials were still knocked off and the holes Drago had drilled still in the door. Dan moved quickly over to the safe and swung open the heavy doors. His head whipped around. “It's empty.”

Clay threw his head back and laughed. “Just like I told you. Is this the best you got?” He snapped back to anger. “Now untie my hands and get the hell out of my clubhouse. You'll be hearing from our attorneys. We're going to own the federal government.”

“Johnson?” asked Dan.

“It's underneath the safe,” I said.

Clay's eyes went wild. He didn't know what was under his own safe and didn't want to find out. “Hold it, stop what you're doing. I want my attorney here before you do anything else.”

Dan smiled, sensing victory. “You don't have that right. In fact, you don't even have the right to be in this room right now. You're here out of courtesy.”

While he spoke, I moved over to the safe. I had to see the four bolts Drago had described.

On the safe floor, inside, I counted four holes through the thick steel.
No bolts
. All the air left my body. I staggered back a couple of steps until my butt came up against the desk's edge.

Barbara Wicks took hold of my arm. I'd forgotten she was there. “What's the matter?”

Dan, too excited to notice with his longtime goal now in sight, yelled to his men, “A couple of you move that safe, slide it to the side.”

Two agents tried, but couldn't budge it.

“Get two more agents,” Dan said. “Find a fulcrum.” An agent ran from the room.

Clay calmed. “There's nothing under the safe. Deputy Johnson has been a bad boy. He's been yankin' you all's dick.”

Two big SWAT guys came in with the ram they'd used on the door and a pry bar they must have retrieved from their assault vehicle.

Barbara whispered to me, “What's the matter, Bruno?”

“I think I'm in deep shit.”

She socked me in the arm, just like Marie would have. The move brought Marie foremost in my thoughts and, with it, a terrible ache in the pit of my stomach.

The two SWAT guys put the ram down on the floor at the farthest end where the safe sat closest to the wall. They got on the pry bar intent on flipping the safe onto its side.

Clay laughed, not a nervous one but one with confidence. “The Feds are going to have to rename the Lincoln fucking
Memorial, call it The Clay Warfield Memorial, after I get done suing your asses.”

The weight of the safe thwarted the agents' best efforts. Not that it mattered; I already knew the outcome.

“You two,” said Dan, “get over there and put your backs into it.” Two agents with blue windbreakers moved over to help. One of the agents started to wiggle between the safe and the perpendicular wall on the side.

Clay jumped forward. “You assholes are in enough trouble. You damage or break something, and I'll have your jobs. You hear me?”

The two SWAT guys and the two windbreakers got on the lever, as the guy in between the safe and the wall pushed at the top of the safe. The safe slowly started to rise. The agent in between the wall and the safe, his face turning red and bloated with exertion, pushed harder. The drywall behind him caved in with a loud crack. The safe's top started to yield and lean. Dan yelled, “That's it. That's it. Push. You got it.”

The safe fell over. The agents jumped clear. The dead weight thudded to the concrete floor. The entire clubhouse gave a little shudder.

Underneath, where the safe had sat, revealed nothing but smooth concrete. No bolts rose out of the concrete floor. No gold doughnut painted gray and inset as a gasket. Drago had been so believable. How had I fallen for his lie? But why had he lied? There could only be one reason. Drago was batshit crazy to make up a juvenile tale of a pirate's gold with safes and SS. His lack of sanity did not bode well for my family's future.

Dan rushed over to me, his face right up in mine. “Is this how you return my trust?” He pointed to the overturned safe. “This was a big joke all along, wasn't it?”

I couldn't speak, and shook my head “no.”

Dan put a finger up by my eyes. “Now, you are going to rue the day you crossed me. I am going to file every possible charge. You'll never get out of prison.”

Clay laughed loud and hard, most of it forced to help rub it in.

Dan pointed at me, “Get him out of here.”

The two agents wearing the blue windbreakers moved in. One came away from the corner, away from the damaged drywall, that was now visible. Right above the smooth concrete where the doughnut should have been.

My mind locked on to the obvious solution, I physically struggled. “Wait.”

The agents on each of my arms kept dragging me along.

“Chulack, wait. Wait.”

The two agents hesitated and looked to him for direction.

Dan pointed his finger to the door. “I said, get him out of here.”

The two agents resumed their tug-of-war in earnest. I violently swung my shoulders one way, then the other, and broke free. I ran to the overturned safe, the agents close behind, and picked up the ram on the floor. They were all over me.

Dan was almost to the door and turned toward the disturbance.

Clay's eyes went wild. “Get that asshole away from there.”

“Wait, look,” I said. “Look at Warfield. He knows I've figured out his game.”

Clay yelled, “I'll sue you assholes, I swear to God, I'll sue you until you don't have a penny left to your name.”

Dan took a couple of steps back from the doorway. “Bruno?”

“You asked me to trust you. Now
you
need to trust me on this.”

Dan nodded. The two agents let me go. I took a deep breath, pivoted my hips, and slammed the ram into the wall. Clay yelled and leaped at me.

“Restrain him,” said Dan.

The two agents jumped Clay with relish and took him to the ground harder than he needed. Dan came over and looked me in the eyes.

In a low tone, I said, “They moved the wall.”

Clay continued to yell.

“Shut him up.”

The two agents sat on him. Clay grunted. Now he could only focus on breathing.

Dan nodded, took hold of the ram with me, and we swung it, throwing our backs into it. We hit a two-by-four stringer supporting the drywall and caved it inward. We swung again and again until we were out of breath and we had a large enough hole. We dropped the ram. Drywall dust hung in the air and stuck to the sweat on our faces. Dan took a small, powerful flashlight from his belt. He carefully stuck in his arm with the flashlight. He looked back at me one last time and then stuck his head in the hole.

He moved his feet and tried to force more of himself inside. I held my breath. From inside came a muffled “Holy shit.”

In the short time I'd known Special Agent Dan Chulack, he'd never used unprofessional language.

He pulled out completely, with a huge smile. “Call for backup. I want every one of those swinging dicks in there booked on RICO, conspiracy to commit murder, robbery, and kidnap.”
He pointed to the two SWAT guys. “You two. Take this ram, and I want you to take down this wall right here, but don't go any farther than right here.” He indicated another place on the wall.

Before the SWAT guys moved, I stepped in close and held out my cuffed hands. Dan smiled and handed me his flashlight. I stuck my arms in the hole and then my head. I couldn't get in nearly as far with my hands cuffed, but far enough.

Clay had needed a place to run his organization. He knew there would be search warrant after search warrant served on the clubhouse, and he had to have a way to keep evidence out of the hands of law enforcement. He built another wall in his office to partition off a four-foot-wide room. There had to be a secret lever that accessed a hidden door. We didn't need the lever or the door; we had the ram.

An odor of gun oil and sweat came at me hard. The flashlight lit up the narrow space.

Inside, on one wall hung all the tools of the trade, sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, pistols—including the two H&K P9s with silencers—one of which Clay had used to shoot Drago in the foot. That's what he'd done when he left us in the living room with Roy Boy, Slim Jim, Sandman, and the other cronies. He'd gone into his office, activated the lever, entered the room, and gotten to the H&Ks. I thought that I had heard the desk being moved when it had been the secret door.

I marveled at all the guns and weapons as the light panned down the length of the wall. At the end, on the floor sat a smaller safe, shorter, the one that would contain the books, the records tracking all the ill-gotten gain for the SS International. I moved the flashlight above the safe. My breath caught. I whispered to no one, “What a damn fool.” On the narrow four-foot-wide wall at the end and above the safe, Clay had thwarted so many search warrants in the past that he'd grown arrogant and invincible, enough to pin up old Polaroid photos and trophies from his past. Dead enemies of the SS. Witnesses, bikers from opposing gangs, and all those who failed to fall into line under their tyranny.

I started to pull back and remembered Drago. I pointed the flashlight straight down. On the floor just on the other side of the new wall, Clay had done a poor job with instant concrete mix. He'd tried to cover the hole where the safe used to sit. The shadow outline of the golden doughnut, still painted lead-gray, rose a quarter inch from the concrete, hardly visible at all unless you knew what to look for, a true Bluebeard's treasure. The doughnut would not draw any attention from the FBI forensic people coming to document and seize the evidence.

I pulled back out, stunned. Barbara stood close. I handed her the flashlight. She went up on tiptoes to look in the hole.

Dan moved in close and immediately put the key into my handcuffs. “What do you need? You name it. You can have all the manpower you want. I'll even pull in all the officers from the Joint Terrorist Task Force.”

“I don't have any time left for that. I find my wife and the kids in the next hour or it's not going to matter.” I walked out, down the hall, and out to the front yard. The sun colored everything orange and yellow as it went down ending the day. I leaned against the closest Harley and closed my eyes. Now that I had freedom, the pressure of not going to prison, clearing Mack and Drago, I could think straight.

I was barely aware that Barbara stood close by. In my mind, I deliberately went over everything that had happened since Barbara Wicks came back into my life, step-by-step, scene-by-scene, from the time she walked up from the beach. I replayed the dialogue from each conversation.

The common denominator was the city of Montclair. Montclair continued to come up in all the information. Jonas rented a car and used the Montclair address. He used an underground doctor at a Montclair address. He used a Montclair address as a dead drop, a vacant house—

I opened my eyes.

“What?” asked Barbara.

I looked at her. “We have to go. We have to go right now.”

Her expression turned professional. One of the many FBI agents came out of the house, escorting a biker. She said, “I need your car keys, give them to me.”

He shook his head. “Not a chance in hell.”

Dan came out right behind him. Dan took hold of the biker the agent was escorting and said, “Go with them, do exactly what that man, Bruno Johnson, tells you to do. Do you understand?”

The agent nodded.

We ran for his car.

I had to slow down to let the agent guide us to the right car. He beelined to one of the many navy-blue Chevy Suburbans parked on the street just outside the wrought-iron gate. I went to the front with him and said, “Give me the keys, I'm driving.”