As he turned onto the westbound ramp of interstate 40, the pager vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out. The little window read “Tilly’s 10.” Cam was surprised. Tilly’s was a biker bar at the edge of the truck warehouse district on the outskirts of Triboro. It had a rough reputation and had been the scene of many public disturbance calls and even a few knifings and shootings. The only reason the sheriff let it stay open was that it was a great place to pick up parole violators. Bobby Lee’s theory was to give the pond scum a place to congregate, and then the cops would know where they were. But Tilly’s was no place for a discreet meeting, as the sheriff was known there on sight, and Cam himself would be spotted pretty quickly. On the other hand, it was not a place that cops hung around unless they went in force looking for a specific bad guy. So, Tilly’s?
He was tempted to call in and suggest someplace else, but the sheriff had been specific about no phones and no e-mail. Okay, he’d go down there tonight and then try to talk Bobby Lee into going somewhere else. In the meantime, he’d spend the day packing up for his trip to western Carolina.
At 9:45, Cam drove past the biker dive. It was an ugly windowless steel building with a single red neon sign announcing the name of the owner. Tilly Hogg weighed 285 and sported a greasy black ponytail and beard, a massive paunch, and forearms like tattooed hams. He’d adopted the name Tilly because it provoked insults and then fights, and he liked to fight. His real name was Raymond, and he’d fight over that, too. There was a dirt parking lot on three sides of the building and a Dumpster row out back. The lot was treeless and surrounded by ten-foot-high chain-link fencing with angled-out barbed wire on top. The only way in or out was through two chain-link gates manned by a couple of shavedhead mammoths decked out in the obligatory studs, chains, and black leather. There was a herd of Harley hogs parked nose-out around the building, while the rest of the lot contained some muscle cars, pickup trucks, and even two heavily chromed semitractors. White spotlights shone out from the roof over the parking lot, making it almost impossible to see much of anything in the compound from the street. A forceful stream of bar smoke rose out of single ventilator cowl up on the roof, and Cam could hear the thump of a heavy-metal bass as he drove past. The two gate goons didn’t even look in his direction. To them, he looked like any other truck driver headed down into the warehouse area to pick up his next over-the-road gig.
When the local cops wanted to sift through the garbage at Tilly’s, they’d bring a SWAT team or two, surround the compound, roust the gate guards, and put chains through all the Harleys’ wheels. Then one team would loose a pack of K-9 shepherds through the back door, while another would mace whatever came spilling out the front door. Cam had brought Frick along for his meeting tonight, and she sat attentively in the backseat, looking hard at the bar as they drove past. He’d put her spiked collar on, mostly for effect. Frack had gone ballistic when he realized he was getting left behind. Cam had had to crate him up just to get out of the house, but when it came down to it, Frick was the fighter.
Cam was wearing jeans, his steel-tipped SWAT boots, and a sweatshirt under an unzipped windbreaker. The Peacemaker hung down from a left-hand shoulder holster with six in the holes instead of the usual five. He had a double-barreled over and under. 38-caliber Derringer in his right sock and a twelve-inch-long shiny black canister of pepper spray canister sitting on the seat by his right thigh. From five feet away, it looked like a Maglite.
The Sheriff normally drove one of those half pickup truck, half SUV hybrids. Cam had tried to spot one of these in the parking lot, but the floodlights effectively blinded him. He drove down two blocks and then began a surveillance circle of the area, looking for stakeout vehicles or any other indication that other cops might be in the vicinity. He looked at his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. He doused his headlights and drove back up the street until he was half a block from the gate into Tilly’s. He pulled over and left his vehicle running, waiting to see who or what might show up. He checked the pager in his pocket to make sure it was on and that he hadn’t missed a message, but it was blank.
After ten minutes, a lone Dodge muscle car came rumbling down the street from the opposite direction and nosed up to the gates. One goon lifted the latch and stepped out to talk to the driver, while the other one came out and went around to the other side of the car, his right hand held inside his jacket pocket. Cam could just make out a white face on the driver’s side, and then there was a mass of bleach-blond hair sticking out the window as a female lifted her head from the driver’s lap. There was much guffawing at the gate and then the first goon waved at the other one to open the gate. The Dodge burned rubber as it leapt forward into the lot. The gate muscle closed the gate again, both of the goons still laughing.
Cam looked at his watch again: 10:00 P.M. There was no way Bobby Lee Baggett could have gotten through that gate by himself, and Cam wasn’t willing to try it without substantial backup. “Tilly’s 10” had been the message. Tilly’s at ten o’clock. Clear as a bell. He decided to wait and watch for another thirty minutes and then get the hell out of there before he attracted some unwanted attention. The patrons of this particular bar would be popping crystal and chasing it with whiskey. They wouldn’t think twice about beating a cop to death, putting his body in one of those Dumpsters, and then setting fire to the Dumpster.
Thirty minutes came and went. He’d watched as a brace of obnoxiously loud Harleys had been admitted, each one sporting a pair of protohumans of uncertain gender. But there was no sign of Bobby Lee or any of his troops anywhere on the street. He checked the pager again, but it remained blank. He checked his cell phone to see if there were messages but found none. At that moment, a fight broke through the front door of the bar, with two bruisers beating on each other with what looked like pieces of furniture. The gate guards watched as more bikers spilled out into the parking lot. Cam saw his opportunity and ordered the dog to lie down. Then he started up his truck and swung it out into the street in a lazy U-turn away from Tilly’s. He left the lights off until he was pointed away from the commotion behind him, then drove down the block and made a right toward the trucking warehouses. He had to wait at a stop sign at the next corner for three big rigs to cross, which is when he became aware that there was now a vehicle behind him. From the height of the headlights, he thought it might be a semi, but the shape was wrong.
As the last truck cleared the intersection, Cam drove straight across, going deeper into the warehouse complex. The headlights followed without so much as a pretense of halting at the stop sign. He gave Frick another down command, not wanting whoever was behind him to see her distinctive head in the backseat of his truck. He turned left at the next corner and drove down the full length of a warehouse that had two dozen trucks backed up to articulating ramps. He could see forklifts working the freight at one end as he drove by. The vehicle stayed with him, and now he thought he recognized the shape of a Suburban in his mirror when it turned to follow him.
Okay, so who is this? he wondered. No signals were being made, and the pager in his pocket should have been buzzing if Bobby Lee was back there. The Sheriff’s Office had some Suburbans, although they tended to favor Ford products. The feds liked Suburbans, he remembered as he made another turn-to the right this time-and sped up to drive down along the back of the warehouse. To his left was a line of trees, and beyond that was the stagnant ditch that had once been Cross Creek. The Suburban stayed with him, going right through the stop sign, just as Cam had done. He knew that the main drag out of this complex would take him back past Tilly’s, and that was a direction he didn’t want to go. He wondered if there was a way to page the sheriff, but he didn’t know any of the numbers. Now that he thought of it, that was odd-the Sheriff had said he wanted the pagers to be a two-way channel. So maybe this page had come from someone else.