McDonald went up to the bedroom, found a bottle of scotch he’d hidden in the closet, ripped off the top and took a long pull. "Jesus fuckin’ Christ," he bellowed. "What’s wrong with me? What the fuck is wrong?"
Audrey cowered in the doorway. "Are they right? Are they right, Wilson?" She’d been back to the lazy Susan, this time for a full glass of the vodka.
"That motherfucking Brandt, that traitor," McDonald screamed. He took another long pull at the bottle, two swallows, three, four. When he took the bottle down, he seemed stunned. "How could the fuckers do that?"
And suddenly he was blubbering, his face red as a stop sign, the bottle hanging by his side.
"Call your father," Audrey offered. "Maybe he-"
"Fuck that old asshole," McDonald screamed. "I’m dying. I’m fucking dying." He began pulling at his shirt and when it came off, threw it in a wad on the floor. Audrey retreated to the hall, saw him trot into the bathroom, heard the water start in the oversized tub. A moment later, his trousers flew out the door, followed by his shorts.
"Wilson, we really don’t have time for this. We’ve got to get ourselves together. Just because they said-"
"They were right, you stupid fuckin’ cow," McDonald screamed. And he ran out of the bathroom, nude now, his penis bobbing up and down like a crab apple on a windy day. "I’m gone. I’m out of it. I’m dead in the fuckin’ water…"
He spun around, looking for booze, found it in his hand. He was already drunk: he’d finished half a fifth downstairs before he ran up to get the new bottle. Audrey, desperate, tried to rein him in. O’Dell and Bone couldn’t be right. The job couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be out of it.
"Maybe O’Dell’s offer, the chairmanship…"
"I’d be out of there in a month," he shouted. "I’d be nothing…"
"Wilson, I think if we-"
"And you, you bitch." McDonald turned, his small eyes going flat as he moved toward her. "You sure as shit didn’t do anything to help. We’ve got some planning to do," he mimicked, quoting her from early in the evening. "We’ve got yellow pads to fill up… And then they waltz in and tell me I’m done."
"They’re wrong."
"Shut up," he bellowed, and he hit her, open-handed. The blow picked her up, smashed her head against the doorjamb, and she went down, dazed, tried to crawl away. "You fuckin’ come back here, you’re gonna answer for this." He kicked her in the buttock, and she went down on her stomach. He stopped, nearly fell, caught himself, grabbed one of her feet and dragged her toward the bedroom.
"Wilson," she screamed. She rolled and tried to hold on to the carpet, then the doorjamb. "Don’t, please don’t." Tried to distract him "Wilson, we’ve got to work."
"Shut up," he screamed again, and he dropped her foot and grabbed the front of her blouse. Made powerful by the booze, he picked her bodily off the floor and hurled her at a wall. She hit with a flat smack and went down again. "Crazy fuckin’ bitch…" he mumbled, and he took another pull at the bottle. "When I get fuckin’ finished with you, you won’t be able to fuckin’ crawl…"
TWELVE
Very early in the morning. Cold, damp, with the sense that frost was sparkling off exposed skin.
Loring wore a suit that was almost exactly lime green, with a yellow silk shirt and tan alligator shoes, and a beige ankle-length plains duster, worn open. On someone else, the outfit might have looked strange. On Loring, who was slightly larger than a Buick, it was frightening.
"Now just take it easy in there," Loring rasped. " Everything is cool with everybody."
They were in an alley on the south side, walking toward a clapboard garage with silvered windows. "Whose garage?" Lucas asked.
"A friend of Cotina’s. The guy’s straight, they rode together before Cotina got wild. He’s the only guy in Minneapolis that Cotina knew who’d loan them a spot to meet with the cops."
"Could’ve fuckin’ done it downtown," Lucas grumbled. Loring shook his head: "He’s got those warrants out and he’s paranoid. He says he’s gonna turn himself in."
"Right," Lucas said.
"But he’s got some shit to do first."
"Like peddling a ton of Ice to make bail and pay legal fees."
"Probably; but it ain’t like the warrants are any big deal. Assault and shit like that."
"All right," Lucas said. They walked up to the garage and Loring banged on an access door. A man opened it, peered out.
"Just the two of you?"
"Yeah, just the two," Loring said.
The man let them in: he was thin, wore a T-shirt with bare arms, despite the chilly weather. A leather jacket hung on a single chair that sat in the middle of the garage, while a jet-black Harley softtail squatted against the overhead door, ready to run.
Lucas looked around: "So where is he?"
"Be here in a minute," the man said.
"Who’re you?"
"Bob," the man said. He’d taken a cell phone out of the jacket pocket, punched in a number, waited a minute, and spoke: "Yeah, they’re here. Yeah. Okay." He punched off and said, "They’re just gonna cruise the neighborhood for a minute, then they’ll be here."
Lucas turned and looked out the windows-the silver film was one-way, so anyone inside could see out, but people outside would see only their own reflection-and after a few seconds of silence, Bob asked Loring, "You still ride?"
"Yeah, when I can. My old lady’s kind of gone off it, though."
"You been to Sturgis lately?"
"Went this year," Loring said. "Pretty decent."
"Not like the old days, though."
"No. Everybody gettin’ old."
"That’s the truth. Everybody’s got gray hair. We look like the Grateful Dead."
Loring nodded: "Half the people out there brought their bikes in vans, just rode in the last five miles."
"Were you there the year we burned the shitters?"
"Yeah, that was good," Loring said.
Lucas broke in: "This is them? Two red bikes?"
Bob leaned sideways to look out the window. Two bikers in jackets, sunglasses, and gloves were rolling slowly toward the garage. "That’s them," Bob said.
The bikers coasted to the side of the alley, killed the engines, climbed off, a little stiff, maybe a little wary. Lucas dropped his hand in his pocket around the stock of his.45, which he’d cocked before they went in. His thumb found the safety and nestled there. Loring’s hand drifted to his hip: Loring carried a Smith.40 in the small of his back. A second later, the door popped open, and Charlie Cotina slouched through the door, pulling off his gloves. He was dressed in a plain black leather jacket and jeans, with black chaps and boots. His escort wore Seed colors with a red bandana. Cotina looked quickly at Loring, nodded, then at Lucas, at Lucas’s hand, and then back to his face.
"Is that a gun?"
"Yeah."
"Bet you can get it out of there fast," he said.
"I took the jacket to a tailor, and had him fix the pockets," Lucas said.
Cotina nodded, looked at Loring: "This was supposed to be friendly."
"This is friendly, if you’ve got anything to say," Lucas said.
"I ain’t got much," Cotina said, looking back to Lucas. "Just this: We didn’t have nothin’ to do with that firebomb. Nobody in the Seed is looking for the cops. Whatever happened to LaChaise and his friends is their business. They was out of the group when they come after you. None of us have nothin’ against you, and we’re stayin’ away."
"Maybe you’ve got some crazy in the group," Lucas said.
But Cotina was shaking his head, again looking at Loring: "You know this bunch of fuckin’ hosers: if anybody threw a bomb through this broad’s window, it’d be all over town in fifteen minutes. Nobody’s said shit, which means to me that nobody we know did it. And I been askin’."
Lucas looked at him for ten seconds without speaking, and Cotina stared back, eyes small and black, like a ferdelance. Finally, Lucas nodded, put his free hand in his opposite coat pocket, pulled out a business card, and handed it to Cotina. "If you hear anything, call us. Might be worth something to you someday… if you ever go to court."