“We’re not withholding evidence. This might not even be evidence.”
“That’s not for us to determine. It’s for them to determine. It’s their case.”
“Damn it, Otto, their detective isn’t even in town now. We can check it out. No harm done.”
“We could also keep them informed a what we’re doing, yet we haven’t set foot in their police station.”
“We will if and when the time comes, Otto.”
“This is what the feds used to do to us all the time,” Otto said. “They’d keep us in the dark and try to steal the glory.”
“I’m not doing it for glory, Otto.”
“I know, Sidney,” Otto said, looking out the window at the desert landscape sailing by in the headlight wash. “You’re doing it for money.”
“For the job. I want that job.”
“I’ll play along,” Otto said, “but if this case starts developing any further, I wanna go down to Palm Springs P.D. and tell them everything we’ve learned. I don’t have my pension in the bag yet. I wanna protect my job.”
“Fair enough, Otto,” Sidney Blackpool said. “I wouldn’t do it any other way.”
The asphalt road seemed darker, if that was possible. The moon looked smaller but there were more stars glittering. The moaning wind sometimes shrieked. They drove farther down the asphalt road and saw a large shape on a dirt road to the right. A van was parked in the darkness with its lights out. The van flashed its lights on and off when the detectives got close.
“Must be our ride,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“This is about as safe as the Khyber Pass,” Otto said. “Or a Mexican wedding.”
Sidney Blackpool turned onto the dirt road just past the fork, parked, and locked the Toyota. Otto took the flashlight from the glove box and they waited for the four-wheel-drive van to pull out from the trail where it waited. The van moved forward slowly with the high beam blinding the detectives. Satisfied, the driver dimmed the lights, pulled up to the two men, leaned across and unlocked the door.
“One a you jump in the back,” she said.
The driver was a young woman in her late twenties. Her hair could make a home for three chipmunks and a kangaroo rat. She wore a dirty tank top and a biker’s jacket with the Cobra colors across the back. She looked like a girl who could be working at any lunch counter in the Coachella Valley, and may have been, before being “adopted” by outlaw bikers. She was a pretty girl in a life where they grow old before they grow up, if they ever do.
“My name’s Gina,” she said. “I’ll take you guys to Billy’s.”
Gina didn’t talk during the five-minute ride up the hill. Not until the asphalt was gone and they were on a gravel road that forked left. They passed six houses on the way, every one with a noisy watchdog. The gravel road veered close to the edge of the canyon. There was a small stucco house perched too near the brink, especially for flash-flood country.
“That’s where Billy lives,” she said.
“You live with Billy?” Otto asked.
“I live over yonder, the other side a the canyon,” she said. “Men my old man.”
“He a Cobra?”
“Everybody’s a Cobra. Everybody in my life,” she said.
“Who does Billy live with?” Sidney Blackpool asked.
“Whoever’s around,” Gina said, carefully watching the gravel road, which was partially washed away where it looped into a turnabout in front of Billy Hightower’s hillside lair.
Billy Hightower opened the door when the van parked in front, nearly obliterating the backlight with his bulk. He’d removed his Cobra jacket and it was plain that his massive body was going to fat. But he still cut a very impressive figure.
Sidney Blackpool led, and Otto followed behind Gina. Billy Hightower showed his fractured teeth when the detectives entered the little house.
“This ain’t Hollywood neither,” he grinned, “but it’s all mine and paid for. Wanna drink? I got vodka and beer.”
“I’ll take a beer,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“Me too,” said Otto.
The detectives sat on a velveteen sofa that no doubt had had a color at one time. There were grease smudges everywhere. Outlaw bikers had left their tracks where they walked, sat, lay. The carpet was uniformly stained by engine grease.
Another thing stained by engine grease was the dirty yellow tank top worn by the girl. The cotton was stretched tight by her big arrogant breasts. She helped Billy get the beer and examined the two detectives in a curious friendly way.
Then she said, “Billy, I’m a mess. Mind if I take a shower? Ours ain’t been workin for a week now and Shamu won’t fix it.”
“Help yourself, babe,” Billy Hightower said, and seemed amused when Gina stripped off the tank top in front of the men.
“Way you can tell a biker momma is her tits’re dirty,” Gina said to the detectives. “From hangin against a guy’s back all day. Just look at my shirt!”
Of course she knew that the detectives weren’t looking at her shirt, which she pretended to be inspecting. They were looking at her breasts, especially the right one, which was decorated by a tattoo of a bearded biker on a Harley. Her right nipple was the bike’s headlight.
“You might get a fifty-grand endorsement from Harley Davidson if they got to see that,” Otto said.
The girl smiled saucily and winked.
“Speaking a fifty grand …” Billy Hightower began, then turned to the girl. “Go take a shower, momma. We gotta talk bidness.”
When they could hear the shower running, Billy Hightower chuckled and said, “She’s real proud a that tattoo. Jist gotta show everybody.”
“Her old man gonna mind her in your shower?” Otto asked, sipping the beer.
“We ain’t possessive out here,” Billy Hightower said. “We left all that back where we came from. Here we share and share alike.”
“After you left police work …” Sidney Blackpool began, but was interrupted by the biker.
“After they fired me.”
“After they fired you, what made you come out here?”
“I jist drifted with the wind.”
“But why a motorcycle club?”
“Because they wanted me,” said Billy Hightower.
“And you ended up president a your chapter.”
“Ain’t that some success story,” Billy Hightower said, draining his beer and thumping into the tiny kitchen to get another. When he returned he said, “They ain’t so bad, these redneck motherfuckers. Jist like most a the guys I was in Nam with. I showed em how to act with cops when they get in a stop and frisk. I taught em a few things about probable cause, and search and seizure. And also, I beat the fuck outta their baddest dudes till they came to love me. Everybody needs a daddy.”
“What about the rumor a you dealing to Palm Springs kids, Billy?” Sidney Blackpool asked.
“I wish it was true,” said Billy Hightower. “Only thing gets dealt outta these canyons is crystal, and it stays local. I ain’t sayin nothin everybody don’t already know. Nearly every shack up here’s a speed lab. Ain’t nobody gonna get rich manufacturin crank but it ain’t too bad a life.”
“How much is crystal going for out here?” Otto asked.
“Bout sixty-five hunnerd for half a pound a meth plus half a pound a cut. Trouble is, all these jackoff Cobras get hooked behind this shit. Better’n junk, they say. You don’t zombie out for three hours, they say. You kin change the engine on your bike, you kin paint the kitchen, you kin bone your old lady twice. But they never get that job finished when they’re cranked out.”
“You ever shoot speed?” Otto asked.
“Not like these rednecks around here. All these crankers’ll tell you they toot it. Bullshit. They mainline it. I think they oughtta make it legal, though. You wanna reduce taxes? This’d be better’n a state lottery. We buy the makins under the table from legit pharmaceutical houses. When I was a cop I wish I knew what I know now. I coulda retired to Acapulco.”