Easy Rider: A Jim Knighthorse Story (Short Story) Read online

  “I’m worried about you, Jim. These guys are killers.”

  “Some of them.”

  “And part of a gang.”

  “Would it help if I told you that I’m a big boy?”

  “No.”

  “How about a really big boy?”

  “Jim, this is serious.”

  “What if I asked you to trust me?”

  “I trust you,” said Cindy. “It’s the biker gang that I don’t trust. So, why did she leave the gang?”

  “She saw something she shouldn’t have seen.”

  “Oh, God. Please don’t tell me she saw someone get killed.”

  “She saw someone get killed. Or rather, heard it.”

  “Now, I really don’t like this.”

  We’d had this talk before. Not too long ago, Cindy had thought she couldn’t handle the stress of dating me. We had taken some time off to think about it. We came back to each other stronger than ever, but the worry was still there. I didn’t blame her. I would be worried for me, too, if I wasn’t me. Mostly, I worry for the other guys. And even then, I rarely do. Maybe I’m more like my father than I thought.

  “So, what kind of help does she need?”

  “For now, she needs a place to stay that’s safe. I happen to offer the safest place in town.”

  Cindy laughed, a rich sound coming through the phone. “You drive me crazy, Jim.”

  “But you love me.”

  “Dammit, I do. More than ever.”

  Although we were quiet, I knew her mind wasn’t. And while I listened to Jimmy Fallon coming from the living room TV, some homeless man’s yelling coming up from the street and my dog’s half snores, I knew her mind was racing a mile a minute.

  Finally, she said, “So how long will you protect her?”

  “Until she doesn’t need protecting.”

  “How will you know that?”

  “I’ll know.”

  “Oh, God. Please tell me you’re not planning on taking down a whole biker gang.”

  “Maybe not the whole gang,” I said.

  “Just tell me you’ll be careful.”

  “Careful is my middle name.”

  “It couldn’t be further from your middle name.”

  Chapter Six

  It was the next morning when I got the call.

  “I thought all bikers slept in until noon,” I said. I was in my office. So was Camry. She was on the couch, texting furiously, her thumbs a blur, the tip of her tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth. I rarely text, and when I do, it’s never furiously. It’s methodical and slow, since I tend to almost always hit the wrong key. Cell phones weren’t made for big men with gorilla fingers.

  “Only the slackers,” said Michael on the other end. “The rest of us are up early, kicking ass and drinking beer, and not necessarily in that order.”

  “You paint a beautiful picture,” I said. “What do you have?”

  Michael had come through. Turned out Steel Eye hadn’t killed J-Bird. Instead, the biker leader had royally kicked the shit out of J-Bird, and sent him packing. Word on the street was that J-Bird had a concussion and a mouth full of broken teeth and, more than likely, a broken jaw.

  “And the gunshot?” I asked.

  “Just to scare him.”

  “He wasn’t even shot?”

  “No.”

  “Just got the shit kicked out of him?” I said.

  “He messed around. Deserved what he got.”

  I nodded on my end. “So we’re not dealing with a homicide?”

  “Nope.”

  I glanced at Camry. She was still texting. I doubted she was listening.

  “One other thing, Knighthorse.”

  I waited.

  “He’s looking for Camry.”

  “I imagine he is.”

  “And from what I hear, he’s going to do a lot more than slap her around for running out on him.”

  “How much more?”

  “With Steel Eye, you never know. He’s unpredictable. It’s why I’m not affiliated with that charter anymore. I ride with a different band of brothers. But he’s going to hurt her, and bad.”

  “Remind her who’s boss and all that.”

  “Something like that. Look Knighthorse, this isn’t going to end well for her...or for you.”

  “What about for him?” I asked.

  “Someday it will end bad for him, too.”

  I thought about that as we hung up.

  Then I made some calls.

  Chapter Seven

  It didn’t take me long to find the Pit. I am, after all, an ace detective. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.

  The locals all knew of it, although few were forthcoming about its location. Luckily, I have a winning smile and a way with words. Not to mention, you get the locals drunk enough, they’ll spill their guts. So, after a drinking binge with two wannabe bikers in a city called Cathedral City, which sounded more attractive than it was, I was on my way.

  After a few trial and errors, I eventually found myself on an unmarked road in the middle of nowhere. The sun was setting in my rearview mirror, and a dust cloud billowed behind my van. Yes, I drive a van. Or, as some have been known to call it, the Mystery Machine. And by some, I meant me.

  I heard the music before I saw them. Then I saw the glow highlighting a circular rock formation. Kind of like Stonehenge for stoners. Shadows moved around the rocks. Then again, maybe I stumbled upon a secret initiation into the Illuminati.

  Or not, I thought, when I saw all the Harleys lined up. Just a bunch of bikers breaking the rules and doing what they do best...party and piss.

  I parked behind a boulder, between two fatboys that were dusty and shining all at once. Dichotomy at its best. Now I heard them. Talking loudly. Arguing. Laughing. Snoring. Beer cans cracked open. Beer bottles being broken. The sound of fucking in the nearby bushes. Or lovemaking. Yes, I’m ever the romantic.

  I knew what Steel Eye looked like, thanks to Camry, and I knew where he usually sat, also thanks to Camry.

  So I took out my Walther and stepped out into the evening air that was suffused with campfire smoke, weed, tobacco, exhaust, weed, grease, desert sage, dust, weed, and Ralph Lauren.

  The Ralph Lauren might have been me, a birthday gift from Cindy. I figure if you’re going to kick some ass, might as well smell good doing it.

  I paused briefly just outside the firelight. I took a deep breath and said a silent prayer, then stepped around a boulder and held out my gun.

  Chapter Eight

  There were about twenty of them. And only one of me.

  I liked my odds.

  Actually, I didn’t. But I also liked to maintain a sense of positive expectation, even now, even while a half dozen faces turned simultaneously toward me, squinting through the smoke.

  One of them stood, rising straight up from a log. I briefly wondered where they had gotten a log in the desert when I stiff-armed the guy, sending him spinning and stumbling back over the same log that may or may not have been indigenous to the region.

  Although all eyes were on me, I still hadn’t attracted the attention of the man I wanted most, a man who was sitting in a wicker chair near the big fire and talking quietly to a young female, herself sitting on a flat piece of wood that could have been driftwood. Misplaced logs and driftwood? I suspected someone in this group was a closet beachcomber.

  She spotted me first, eyes widening. I didn’t fault her. My eyes would widen too if I saw me coming.

  Now I heard the whispery sound of guns being withdrawn, hammers snapped back and shotguns pumped. I also heard the whispery snap of switchblades.

  I stepped around the fire. Someone stood quickly from a plastic chair. That someone got kicked back into said plastic chair, to tumble ass backwards into the sand. Now people were moving toward me, but I had a bead on the man in the wicker chair.

  A man who finally looked at me.

  I could have been wrong—and the evening light was murky at
best—but I was fairly certain his left eye was washed out, like a broken egg yolk in a sunny side up that got away from the chef. According to Camry, he was blind in the washed-out eye. I might have felt sad for him, accept that I caught sight of the girl next to him, a girl who was sporting fresh bruises along her arms and upper thighs.

  Steel Eye was faster than I expected. He was up and moving, reaching behind his back and withdrawing a pearl-handled revolver.

  Or, rather, trying to.

  Turns out I’m pretty fast too, especially now that my leg had been healed by God. Funny story.

  I took two long strides and, just as Steel Eye was bringing his weapon up, I drove my fist straight into his mouth and heard a sound that I knew to be teeth breaking.

  The punch was delivered with a lot of momentum, too. Not to mention I had put all of my weight in it. The result was pure mayhem. If Steel Eye wasn’t such a big son of a bitch himself, I might have broken his neck. As it was, his head snapped back and he staggered backwards. He would have fallen if I had hadn’t grabbed his collar and spun him around. I brought up my own gun and pressed it against his temple and faced the others. A half dozen guns of varying shapes and sizes were pointed at us.

  “What?” I asked, grinning perhaps a little too big. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

  Chapter Nine

  My punch had been a little harder than I had intended. Blame it on adrenalin. And having a dozen or so weapons pointed at your back.

  The result was that Steel Eye was mostly limp in my hands and I was doing all the work of keeping the son-of-a-bitch on his feet. He stood maybe an inch or two shorter than me and had shoulders nearly as wide as me. Both of which made keeping him up on his feet while I held a gun to his head all the more difficult. Luckily, I thrive in difficult situations. Or so I tell myself.

  “Who the fuck are you?” asked the girl who was standing now. She had a tasteful skull tattooed on her stomach, the teeth of which were biting down on her bellybutton.

  “I might have made a wrong turn somewhere,” I said, holding Steel Eye mostly up on his feet. “Does anyone know where the IHOP is?”

  A handful of bikers took a step forward. Those handfuls had enough facial hair to carpet a small dining room. Shag, of course.

  “What the fuck?” one of them said. Hard to tell who said what, since there were a lot of them and the firelight only reached so far.

  “That’s what I said,” I said. Steel Eye was coming back to the land of the living, grunting and shaking his head. I held him even tighter, digging the Walther into his temple. He was in for a rude awakening, literally. “Here I am looking for an IHOP. The guy at the gas station said to make a right at the dirt road to nowhere.” I nodded. “Come to think of it, I made a left at the dirt road to nowhere.”

  “Let him go,” said a big black guy who was, yes, even bigger than me.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “Steel Pecker and I are going down in a blaze of glory. Okay, that might have been more suggestive than I’d intended.”

  “Get him,” said the big black guy.

  “Take another step toward me, and I blow your intrepid leader’s brains out.”

  The intrepid leader was putting two-and-two together. He was also now fully awake. He struggled in my arms, but I was stronger than he was. I knew this because I was stronger than most people. He fought me briefly, then gave up, especially when I dug my gun harder into his temple. Steel Eye might have grunted. Then again, that might have been me.

  The two guys on either side of me stopped moving toward me. They looked uncertain. Steel Eye waved them away. Then he tried to speak, but gave that up quickly enough. My forearm, I was certain, was crushing his larynx.

  “You shoot him,” said the black guy. “And we shoot you.”

  Steel Eye didn’t like this logic. He gestured toward his men to back the fuck off; that is, if I correctly interpreted his frantic waving. The two guys to my right and left did just that, backing into the shadows. Meanwhile, Steel Eye and I backed up against the boulder behind us, removing the possibility of someone getting a potshot behind me. I suppose someone could always drop from above. But that was a big boulder, and these guys were drunk.

  “You’re a dead man,” said the black guy who, come to think of it, might have been the official spokesperson for the Devil’s Triangle.

  “There’s a very good chance that a lot of us might die tonight,” I said. “Steel Eye would be the first.” I gave the black guy the hard stare. “And you would be the second. What happens after that, I leave to the fates. Or to divine providence.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “It means God will decide who lives and dies. But not you, my friend. I kill you next.”

  The black guy blinked. I don’t think he liked me. “Well fuck you, asshole.”

  Yup, definitely didn’t like me. I said, “That’s the spirit.”

  “He can’t breathe,” said another guy.

  “He’s not supposed to breathe,” I said. “He’s supposed to listen.”

  Still, I loosened my grip a little. Truth was, I heard him fighting for breath, too.

  “Fine, motherfucker,” said a young guy, holding his gun out toward me. “What the fuck do you want?”

  “What I want,” I said, and then tightened my grip on their esteemed leader a little more, “is for all of you to throw your weapons aside.”

  “Fuck that and fuck you.” He held the gun out, pointed at my face. A clean shot would get me. He was too drunk for a clean shot.

  Steel Eye motioned frantically and, slowly, one by one, they all tossed aside their weapons, Most landed in some nearby bushes that, I suspected, doubled as urinals.

  “The knives, too,” I said. “Anyone knows that any biker worth his salt has a knife or two. Go on.”

  They did so. A half dozen blades flashed through the night air, to disappear out of the firelight and into the surrounding shrubs.

  “Now,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Fuck you,” said one of them.

  “That’s one way to start,” I said. “But here’s another: I was hired by a very frightened, albeit somewhat belligerent, young lady named Camry to protect her.”

  This got some nods, frowns, an inhalation or two. Steel Eye, still trapped in my stranglehold, didn’t move or make a sound.

  “I happen to take my job seriously, as you can see. Some might say too seriously.”

  This elicited a grunt or two. I heard some whisperings under some breaths. Those whisperings might have suggested that I was a dead man. I laugh in the face of such whisperings.

  I went on, “I’m here for one reason and one reason only: Your abusive leader, Steel Something-or-other—”

  “Steel Eye, asshole,” came a chorus of grunts, along with a “dipweed” and a “dumb ass” or two. What was a dipweed?

  “Right, of course,” I said. “Steel Eye. How could I forget? Anyway, Steel Eye had every right to be upset. Hey, another man fucked with his girl. I get it. But I’m not here to talk about that man. I’m here to talk about Camry.”

  They all stared at me, faces blank but alive in the fire light. A stiff wind made its way through the Pit. A dozen or so beards lifted and fell in unison. Two bikers were still wearing sunglasses, despite the fact the sun had set minutes ago. I admired their dedication.

  I continued, “Camry has decided to end her relationship with Steel Eye. Apparently, she did so in grand fashion, by messing with another guy and then splitting in the night. A helluva way to make an exit, but that’s beside the point.”

  “What the fuck is he talking about?” I heard one of them say to another. Hard to say who spoke, since most of their lips were buried deep within wiry facial hair.

  I powered on. “That’s where I come in. Somehow, some way, she ended up in my office, drinking my coffee, and looking for help. I happen to have a soft spot for damsels in distress...or anyone in distress for that matter. Call it
a weakness. Call it mildly heroic. Call it stupid. But here I am.”

  “We’ll call you a dead man soon,” said someone nearby.

  I ignored the comment, although I did spot the speaker this time. I logged him away for future reference. He seemed the type to carry out the threat. Then again, most of them did.

  “So, here is my proposition: Camry moves on with her life. In fact, I am going to help her move on, with a new name, a new identity, new everything. I doubt any of you will find her, but here’s the catch: If I so much as catch a whiff that one of you is looking for her, I will be back.”

  “Yeah, fuck you.”

  “I thought you might say that. But wait, there’s more. If I so much as see a biker sniffing around my place, my shop, my girl, within a hundred square feet of me, I will be back.”

  This got some chuckles. These guys weren’t used to being threatened. They, perhaps, had never been threatened in all their lives. Being threatened was new to them. Hell, they were the ones used to doing the threatening.

  “Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I won’t be back alone,” I said.

  And with that, I raised my gun and fired into the air.

  Nearly a dozen figures stepped out of the darkness, each holding weapons of their own, and each looking more amused than the other, except for one, of course. Spinoza, I was certain, had forgotten how to crack a smile. Then again, knowing his past, I didn’t blame him.

  “I will be coming back with them,” I said.

  Chapter Eleven

  There were ten of them.

  I wouldn’t have expected anything less. Mixed with the ten were two cops who didn’t have to be here, two cops who were risking their careers and livelihoods—and lives—to be here with me now. As the men stepped into the firelight, weapons raised nonchalantly, I smiled and nodded at my good friends, Sanchez and Sherbet, homicide detectives with LAPD and Fullerton Police Departments, respectively. Sherbet was sweating a little. He was a bigger guy and the evening was warm. He nodded at me and turned his attention back to the group of ruffians before him.