The Replacements (24 page)

She came in and saw John. She smiled and jumped in his arms. He hugged her. “Hey, kid, how's it going?”

She took a step back to get a better look at him. “You look great. Wait just a minute. Your smile, the way you're standing all comfortable in your skin—you have a girlfriend, don't you?”

Both of our mouths dropped open. Mack looked to me. “You told her, didn't you?”

“I haven't had the time.”

“That's kinda scary,” said Mack.

I nodded. “You're tellin' me. I have to live with her.” She laughed and gave me a playful sock.

“Who is she, and how long have you been going out?” asked Marie.

“About nine months or so now. Great gal.” I had never seen Mack smile so hugely.

“I should've seen it coming,” I said. “It's Barbara Wicks.”

Marie laughed and hugged him again. “That's great, you deserve a good woman.” Her expression turned solemn. “I'm glad
you're here to help, but I'm worried you're going to get all caught up in this thing, especially if it goes bad.”

John turned sheepish. “Naw, not with Bruno runnin' the op. And even if it does, I always wanted to see Costa Rica.”

Marie gave a weakly motivated smile and then turned serious as she went into a flurry, grabbing things and shoving them into a cheap, rolling travel bag. I caught a glimpse of tears filling her eyes, and it hurt in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to tear off Jonas Mabry's head for putting us in this situation. All of us watched her, not knowing what to do. We were all men, and men couldn't comprehend or say the right things in moments like these.

She sniffled, wiped at her eyes. “Come on, Eddie, you ready to go on a trip?” He nodded. She took him by the hand and, with her other, grasped the handle to the roller bag.

“Let me put that in the car,” said Mack. He grabbed the bag and went out.

Drago took the same cue and said, “I need to use the can.” He went in the bathroom and closed the door.

I took Marie in my arms, buried my face in her neck, and said, “You be careful now, you hear?”

“Me? Bruno, I'm scared to death for you and what you're going to try and do.”

“There's no trying about it, babe, I'm going to do it and be back home in twenty-four hours. You wait and see.” I was trying for cocksure gangster, but it came out shaky and weak.

“You be careful.”

“This is a piece of cake compared to those train heists I did for Jumbo.” I spoke before thinking. Bad move with a hot-blooded Puerto Rican woman.

She pulled away from me. “Yeah, and if you'd told me what you were doing at the time, I'd have kicked your ass then.”

I nodded to her and Eddie, who stood close, his hand still in hers.

“Sorry, Eddie, I promise to watch the language and to do better.”

When she looked back at me, I kissed her again, long and deep. She broke our clinch with a sob. She pulled away and fled through the door. I couldn't watch her leave. The car started and pulled away from the motel.

Criminal Intelligence worked from a mobile trailer parked at the back of HQ, and I dropped Mack off at the gate. He walked the rest of the way in.

Drago and I waited in the maroon Crown Victoria on Third Street, just down from San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Headquarters, waiting for Mack to return. I sat behind the wheel, Drago in the backseat, taking up the entire backseat sitting crossways, his back to the door, his feet touching the other. The car listed to one side.

My foot tapped incessantly with nervous energy from being so close to a hive of law enforcement officers, all of whom would be eager to take me down. Ugly thoughts wouldn't go away. The potential consequences for what we were about to do swirled in my head. This didn't feel like any other plan from my past life, first as a cop on the Violent Crimes Team, and then as a criminal committing thefts and taking children from abusive, toxic homes as I prepared to flee the country. This caper created a stronger feeling of foreboding and, strange as it sounded, left a metallic taste in my mouth.

All of a sudden I figured out what was missing. How simple. I lacked self-confidence, the most important element in any successful plan. Apparently, what I really needed was a porch, a rocking chair, and an afghan to cover my legs. The thought made me smile. Robby Wicks used to say, “Stay on the porch if you can't run with the big dogs.” I should be fine, because I had the biggest dog I could find sitting in the backseat.
Only I didn't have a choke chain to control him. Drago was truly the wild card in this operation.

“Hey, Dog,” said Drago, “turn the radio to 620 AM, they're owned by the SS, and they're covering the Toys for Tots Run live.”

I didn't need the noise and aggravation but tuned in anyway. Knowing what your opponent was doing was always a good thing. The announcer said, “A group of two hundred and fifty Sons of Satan are revving up their bikes as the long procession starts out the gate of Glen Helen Regional Park en route to the Los Angeles Convention Center. These humanitarians on two wheels will collect and secure plenty of toys today to ensure a happy Christmas for thousands of kids.”

Down the street, Mack popped out of the gate at the back of the sheriff's headquarters and loped toward us. His running could draw undue attention. I looked around to see if anyone saw him. He made it to the car, came to the driver's door, and opened it. He waited for me to move over. I did and he got in. “Okay, we're live. Everything's set.”

“Any activity at the clubhouse?” I asked.

“Nothing. Two hours ago at six thirty, the president, Clay Warfield, and the sergeant at arms, Sandman Colson, mounted up with a hundred and twelve other assholes and took off on their Harleys.”

“The Sandman's out of prison?” asked Drago.

For the first time since I'd met Karl Drago, I detected a hint of fear in his tone. Faint, but there.

Mack looked in the rearview at Drago. “Yeah, why?”

“That guy's a stone-cold angel of death. He'll kill ya, cut your liver out, and grill it on the barbeque while he swills a beer. He'll do it like it was an everyday thing, casual like.”

“You talk as if you've seen him do it,” Mack said.

Drago shuddered. “Ruined me on beef liver, and I used to love liver with onions. My moms really knew how to cook it.” We both stared at him.

“Then I guess it's a good thing old Sandman's out shagging toys for the tots,” I said. Drago glared at me.

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.”

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.