It was the kind of thing that kept him up at night, torturing his mind. Between the cross bones carved into Mary’s flesh, and Totenkopf tattooed on Dan’s neck, the Nazi symbolism, the runic talisman, were connected and Cecil suspected the murder was a gang related hate crime; he was willing to bet Dan wasn’t the only one with the Totenkopf tattoo… and he began to look into some gang affiliation. If the death’s head tattoo was an identifying mark, that signified membership to a gang, then he should be able to find them.
Combat 18 used the deaths head insignia. Dan and Nigel may have been members of that gang, known for their threats of violence against immigrants, and other minorities, and for using leaderless resistance and “Lone Wolf” cells, although that seemed unlikely, since they were based in England. Or there was the Sadistic Souls, a motorcycle gang, with Nazi affiliations and symbology, including the deaths head, but they were located in the mid-west, mainly Illinois and Missouri.
Lan was digging around on the Internet and found something.
“An article,” he explained, “on the Junk Yard Dogs, a motorcycle gang, that believe in the perfect society, genetic engineering, a one world govt. federalists for a strong America. The Totenkopf tattoo is an identifying mark on all their necks and jackets.”
Stuart said, “The article went on to say the Totenkopf was the symbol for the Nazi SS division, formed from concentration guards. The gang members had the tattoo on their necks to show their allegiance to the Nazi cause of Aryan brotherhood.”
Cecil remembered what Dan said about going into the darkness and a chill went up his spine. Now an article on the Internet was highly suspect, but the lead detective decided to check it out anyway. “Were you able to ID any of these guys?” He was not. “Any idea where we can find them?”
Clicking on another page, Lan found a picture of the biker gang riding up the coast highway. The caption read, “The Junk Yard Dogs on highway one.”
In the bathroom, Carlos was checking all the toilet stalls and finding them empty, while Woodman was taking a leak.
“All clear, no one in here,” Carlos said. “Now we can talk.”
Woodman was sniffling. “You got a bump man, I need a bump.”
Carlos was gritting his teeth in agony. “I’m all out.”
“Those fucking A-holes from the A-team think they’re such hot shit. We got to lower their temperature!” Hard up for a snort of cocaine, Woodman was pissed, as he shook off his dick.
“We have bigger problems, man,” Carlos said.
“What?”
“Apparently, there was a shake up at the lab.”
“Shake up at the lab?” Woodman was washing his hands now, checking himself in the mirror.
“Remember we give a urine sample recently? Well, the lab guy, who usually makes the necessary changes in the results is retiring. He’s moving to Florida.”
“Shit, that son of a bitch, Cecil.” Woodman said, “He no doubt ordered the drug test for us. That’s why we got it at the same time.”
“We don’t know that, but even if it’s true, we still have to deal with this shit.”
Woodman turned to his partner, who had a plan. He always had a plan. “What do we do?”
Carlos looked at him and shrugged.
Without being specific, the article on the Junk Yard Dogs didn’t specify who wrote it, or where their secret hangout was, but there was a picture of them on their bikes riding the coast highway and Cecil thought he would start with that. While Lan and Stuart investigated possible gang affiliations with Combat 18 and the Sadistic Souls, Cecil and Moore made a number of frustrating phone calls asking many sheriffs stationed along the coast if they heard of the motorcycle gang. Finally, Cecil had an idea and he told Moore to grab his jacket, they were taking a ride over the hill to the ocean.
They went to a tattoo artist in Santa Cruz. It was a small shop with a dentist chair in the middle of the floor. Pictures covered the walls. The deaths head was among them. The owner of the shop was a woman with long frizzy hair, a hippy survivalist. She was working on a client, a real bad ass, with thick arms and legs and neck, dressed in black leather, a ring through his nose and earlobes.
The tattooist was unwilling to let Cecil have a look at her client list and said, “Unless you have a warrant… do you have a warrant? No, well then, good bye.” She didn’t like cops and she didn’t want them hanging around her shop, but as they were leaving, they noticed a couple of motorcycles making a loud noise, driving slowly down the street, and the riders were wearing leather jackets with Junk Yard Dogs in embossed lettering on the back, surrounding the Totenkopf.
They followed the motorcycle gang members to a cafe in the hills above Half Moon Bay, facing away from the main road. A long row of motorcycles were on the lot and classical music was playing inside. The had on black boots and sunglasses and yet, with all that, they still looked clean cut. Their hair was short, no mustaches or facial hair; they were sober and amped up on caffeine.
There were fewer women, but you wouldn’t call them hot babes. They were middle aged and sat separate from the men. In fact the whole atmosphere seemed to be a bunch of 50 something’s trying to live out some youthful pretense? And that would sum them up if Cecil didn’t suspect they were connected to a murder, or two in Palo Alto.
Cecil approached the biggest guy in the bunch, identified himself and his partner, Moore, then asked him if he wouldn’t mind answering a few questions.
The clean shaven biker with a buzz cut turned toward Cecil slowly and said nothing.
Reflecting on this for a moment, Cecil said, “Well, how about I ask you a few questions and you answer them, how’s that?” Cecil watched him and looked around. The other bikers were closing in on the two detectives.
“Now you know our names,” Cecil said with a smile, “perhaps you can tell us your names, the name of your motorcycle club?”
“We’re the Junk Yard Dogs.” The meanest biker in the bunch said with a snarl.
“Hello, what’s your name?” Cecil asked extending his hand in a friendly manner.
“John,” was all he would say, his arms akimbo, his look askance.
“May I ask where you’re from?”
“All over, everywhere man.” Someone else said. Cecil didn’t see who.
A little guy was staring at him relentlessly. Ignoring him, the detective addressed the whole group. “Do you know a Dan Murdock, or Nigel Mann?” He held up pictures of both men for all to see. The bikers shook his heads, no. Cecil was taken aback. Certainly, Mann was a member of this motorcycle gang.
Everyone looked genuinely dumb, as if they had no knowledge of anything. However, their reaction to a picture of Mary’s carved up remains was enough to make them wince, even for these hardened bikers. “We suspect these two guys may have hurt this woman.” Now he had their attention, “We have to find this guy [Nigel]. You say he is not in your gang, but he has the same exact tattoo on his neck, that you have on your necks, the Totenkopf, I believe you call it.”
A silence fell over the crowd.
“If you know either one of these guys, it would be in your interest to tell me now, because if I find out later, you’ve been withholding information in a murder investigation, then I’m going to come down twice as hard on you.”
Looking around, Cecil could see they weren’t going to back down and neither was he. “Have a nice day,” he said fictitiously.
Cecil talked with the manager in back of the biker hangout. Same response, he never saw Nigel, or Dan in his establishment before and Mary, although he was horrified to see her picture, he could still be of no help.
“You see these bikers? They have the Totenkopf tattoo?” Then Cecil noticed a picture on his side wall of an elite American military unit stationed in Viet Nam. He recognized the motorcyclist he was talking to earlier in the picture and he was standing in close proximity to the manager, in his younger days, when he was in uniform. “You served in Viet Nam?”
The balding man said, “Yeah, I did my duty.”
Cecil was cautious, “If I may ask, the Totenkopf tattoo… on your neck?”
“What about it?”
“Are you a Junk Yard Dog?”
“What do you think?”
Cecil took that as a yes. “Would you consider yourselves an Aryan biker gang?”
“All I know is, we’re all Americans here, first and foremost.”
“To what extent does your Nazi affiliation go?”
The manager remained sternly quiet.
Cecil asked, “Are all you guys in the US military?”
The manager chuckled and said, “You can ask them. Some of them served with me in Viet Nam. One or two served in Desert Storm.”
The bikers took off on their hogs and Cecil said, “Come on,” to Moore and they followed the Junk Yard Dogs down the road a ways, until they went onto some private property up in the hills, on a dirt road behind a wooden gate. They closed it behind them and Cecil went up to that gate. It was about waist high, with wide planks and on the top most plank, Cecil found a hand carving that was well done and obviously took a lot of time to complete: the Totenkopf.
On the way back over the hill to Palo Alto, Cecil noticed Moore was staring out the window, deep in thought, no doubt worrying about the IA investigation into what? They didn’t know and he hasn’t had a chance to speak with Elaine about it yet. It was more than enough to concentrate on the case, without having to deal with any of this extraneous bullshit.
“Hey,” he said and Moore turned and Cecil smiled and asked, “did those guys seem like a normal motorcycle gang to you? Clean shaven, or short cropped hair, a few bald men, no long hairs: no studs through their nostrils or ear rings. None of that, and the Totenkopf tattoo. These guys were not your typical biker gang.” He looked over at his partner, who was not responding. “And what about this,” Cecil said, “ever hear of a biker gang that hangs out at a coffee shop, sipping tea?”
“A lot of bikers,” Moore said, “hang out in the Santa Cruz hills, up on Skyline, where the presence of law enforcement is questionable at best. There’s a bar up here,” he was pointing out the window, “on 84, Woodside Road and Skyline, now that’s a real biker hangout.”
“Whoever heard of a motorcycle gang in Half Moon Bay?” Cecil was incredulous.
Moore was thinking of having a drink.
While Cecil was working on one side of the law, his step son, Jake was working the other side, breaking the law. He was experiencing a new found freedom, living under his father’s roof, where he allowed his son to do as he pleased and go where he liked, so long as he was back by a reasonable hour: unspecified. Pete, a handsome man, in his mid thirties, was starting to loose his good looks, a little over weight, but not by much. An infectious warm smile and an ingratiating charm, he had a liberal attitude toward raising a child.
Jake got up feeling groggy from the night before and slogged on some clothes, went into the kitchen and stuffed some cereal in his mouth and dropped the dirty bowl in the sink. It was Saturday. He went into the master bedroom. His father was still asleep, so he went through his pants pockets, and pulled out a few crumpled up bills and split. He went to the park to hang out with his friends: Charlie, a simple dummy, thin and small, Jake like to call him Little Man and his buddy O’henry, they called him after the candy bar, which he liked to eat a lot of, as his pock marked face showed. O’henry heard someone talking about where they could get some dope.
“How much?” Jake asked.
“Forty dollars, but it’s supposed to be really good.”
They pooled all the money they had together and it still only came to 15 dollars. “How do we get the rest?” Little man asked.
“I know,” O’henry said, “we still have some of that cheap Mexican brown left. Why don’t we sell that off first? We could roll it into joints and sell it for 2 dollars a piece. I bet we could make ten or more joints out of what we have left.”
They rolled up 12 joints and sold them all. With some loose change, they were just able to make forty dollars. They gave the money to the guy O’henry knew and they were handed the dope: green bud. One joint got them stoned, and they walked around downtown, standing in front of the liquor store and Jake propositioned chicks walking by, asking a girl, “Hey babe, you want a ride on the pogo express?” and he made some suggestive hand gesture.
She walked by them and Jake yelled after her, “Yeah, well, you suck dick, bitch,” and him and his buddies laughed.
At home for lunch with his friends, Jake made a big mess in the kitchen and when his father’s girlfriend, or “the bitch,” as he called her, when she was not around, started screaming at him to clean up the mess he left behind on the counters and sink, he yelled back, “Clean it up yourself!”
Walking out of the house with his posse, laughing, Jake and his friends went to the local liquor store, and he grabbed some beer out of the chiller, when the cashier spotted him in the ceiling mirror, stuffing a six pack down his pants, one bottle at a time.
“Hey you!”
They all looked.
One of his friends grabbed a bag of chips off the rack and they all ran for the exit. The cashier grabbed the baseball bat from behind the counter and chased them down the block. They got away, but he called the police.
Jake and his gang of ruffians, doubled back to the store and watched from across the street, behind the Dunkin' Doughnuts shop. They climbed the outside ladder along the back side of the building to the roof. When the police arrived, they bombarded them with small rocks, they found loose on a layer of tar paper.
The cops took cover and drew their weapons, trying to catch a glimpse of their target.
Laughing, the boys crouched down behind the 3 foot facade. They threw their last stones and climbed down the back ladder and ran.
The uniforms chased them in their cars, zooming around the neighborhood, until early evening.
Jake’s friend, O’henry had a fort, he built in his backyard, on top of his fence, where he could look out over his neighbors yards, through a little window he cut into the side board, a place wherein he drank beer and laughed about almost getting laid.
“I did to…”
“You did not!” Little Man said. He knew O’henry too well.
“Light up a joint.” Jake said.
O’henry had a cigarette. “I met a guy,” he said, “who can get us this low grade shit, but a real quantity, like a whole pound, we could sell for 16 hundred. All we have to do… is come up with is 100.00 dollars.”
They talked about that, then Jake went home for diner, but nothing was prepared. The kitchen was still a mess from this afternoon.
Now it was dark and colored lights were swirling around in the living room and Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed was playing on the stereo. Jake’s father, Pete was sitting on the near end of the couch, and on the other side of him was his woman, “The bitch,” Carla, the mother of two boys from a broken marriage and she refused to even acknowledge the teenager’s presence in the room.
Pete did acknowledge his son’s presence however and said in a pleasant voice, “Hey Jake, what’s you up to?” He had a weird other worldly grin of his face, the psychedelic sounds, whirling around their ears, the odor of marijuana smoke lingering in the air.
“Just wondering about diner?” Jake asked, a little perplexed by the abnormality of the situation. Usually, diner was on the table and they all sat down to eat before getting high and listening to music.
“Yeah,” he said, looking disappointed, “We made other plans.” His father smiled demurely, “Here’s twenty. Go out and get yourself something.”
Now Jake was the one who was smiling. “How about a movie?” He asked with his hand out and his father laid another ten on him, with a look like he was getting fleeced, but in a fun way.
The next morning, Cecil finally found a chance to speak with his boss, Elaine, about Detective Moore. She was alone in her office, sitting at her desk, her rotund figure filling out the seat. Knocking politely on her door, he stuck his head in her office and she waved him in, had him take a seat, then finished reading her report. When she was done, she said. “I’m glad you came in. How is the Donovan case coming along?”
“Fine,” Cecil said, “but there is another matter I need to talk about.”
“Shoot,” Elaine said jokingly, “not literally.”
He wasn’t laughing. “Apparently there is an investigation into Moore’s activities for some reason?”
It took her a moment to think this through, then she chuckled and nodded, “That man brings a lot of trouble on himself with his shenanigans.”
Cecil smiled politely, agreeing with her. “So you know what’s going on.”
Elaine fidgeted and said. “That’s all I’m going to s-”
“Come on Elaine, it’s me. Haven’t I always been forthright and honest with you, even when it didn’t serve my own interests? Moore has to face a disciplinary board tomorrow and he’s doing it alone and he has no idea what it’s about. Can you at least tell me that much? No names, just a subject line.”
She mauled it over for a moment and said, “I think, if he thinks it over, he’ll know what it’s about. If he truly has no idea, then all I can say is: he is really out of touch with reality.” She looked at Cecil like maybe it was time for him to go.
Copyright 2016 William Leslie
No comments:
Post a Comment