Storm Prey Part 12

THE ANGELS were the main biker gang in the Cities. The Seed didn't have a clubhouse, but ran out of a bar called Cherries, south of the river, the reports said. The Seed had a working treaty with the Angels, and Angels members were welcome at Cherries. On the other hand, the report said, the Seed also had some alliances with the Outlaws in Illinois, and might then be a trusted communications link between the two bigger rival gangs.

Money for the gangs came from drug dealing, fencing, and miscellaneous small-time street crime, although most of the members also had jobs, and members.h.i.+p turnover, outside a core group, was heavy.

"The thing is, these guys are perfect for the hospital job," Shrake said. He had rap sheets for the two dead Seed members, Haines and Chapman. "They fit physically, the clothes are right. The Seed has gang contacts both west with the Angels and east with the Outlaws, and they've always moved drugs: they've got the retail connections. Haines and Chapman both have robbery convictions; Haines did time in Wisconsin, Chapman in California. Haines has a crim-s.e.x no-pros because the girl backed off, but he's in the database, one, two, three DUIs, small amounts of marijuana ... Chapman has three a.s.saults, one conviction, juvie record of a.s.sault, had a weapons charge that was dealt ... small amounts of dope. a.s.sholes. Completely likely to hold up a pharmacy."

"That no-pros is why they killed Haines. Somebody knew he was in the database, and that after we processed Peterson, we'd have him," Lucas said. "They were afraid he'd flip."

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LUCAS FOUND a reference to the owners of Cherries, Lyle and Joseph Mack, brothers, who'd been patched in the Seed in the early nineties; and another reference to their father, Ike Mack, who'd been a Seed member in the sixties. A surveillance photo of Lyle Mack showed him sitting on the steps of a bar, surrounded by beer bottles, taken after the autumn river-run of 2006.

"We need to talk to this guy--he'd know all the locals," Lucas said, pus.h.i.+ng the photo across the desk.

Shrake picked it up. "Short and chubby. He wasn't at the hospital."

"But he'd know Chapman and Haines, and I'll bet we get the DNA back on Haines."

He thumbed through the rap sheets, found sheets for both the Macks. "Huh. Criminal possession of stolen goods. Two different busts for each of them, they dealt on all of them. Maybe involved in some sports betting, small-time bookies. Joe Mack has three DUIs over ten years. Looks like they've run a couple bars, one up by Hayward, another in Wausau. Showed up here about eight years ago, bought Cherries. They get a few complaints every year, noise, parking problems. Have some hookers going through, but not regular. Used to have a p.o.r.no night ... More like dirtbags than hard guys. But they're merchants. They buy and sell. They seem to be close to the center of the Seed."

He pushed a copy of a mug shot of Joe Mack across the desk: six years old, it showed a big man with a ponytail, clean-shaven.

They continued reading, and a half hour on, Shrake said, "There are a hundred killers out at Stillwater who we could turn loose, and they'd never in their lives commit another crime. If we replaced them with a hundred of these guys, we'd have to find new jobs. You get these guys with ten offenses, mostly rats.h.i.+t stuff, they deal on it, they walk. You know they did ten times that many that never got reported or they never got caught on."

"Just having a good time, Sat.u.r.day night," Lucas said.

"Yeah. Murder, rape, robbery, a.s.sault, extortion, fighting, drugs, prost.i.tution, criminal s.e.xual a.s.sault, domestic a.s.sault, drunk driving, you name it," Shrake said. "Makes my teeth hurt."

"You've never had a problem with a fight," Lucas said.

"Pretty big difference between a fight during an arrest and an a.s.sault," Shrake said.

"You're sounding self-righteous."

"Got me on that," he said.

They read for another half hour, trading sheets back and forth, putting down names, and then Lucas looked at his watch.

"Getting to be prime time out at Cherries," he said.

CHERRIES LOOKED like a suburban split-level house, but larger, a frame building with a blacktopped parking lot out front and along the west side, and a loading dock with a dumpster in back. There were ten or twelve vehicles in the parking lot when they arrived, and only one was a sedan--the rest were SUVs, pickups, and Ford and Chevy commercial vans, every one with a trailer hitch. Snow was piled up on the perimeter of the lot, and Budweiser and Miller neons hung in the visible windows.

Lucas pulled the Lexus around so the lights played off the tags of the two vehicles parked in front of the loading dock. Shrake checked the tag numbers against a list and said, "Yup. That's them. Elvis is in the house."

Lucas pulled up tight in front of the two vehicles and parked. Shrake took a pistol out of his belt holster and put it in his side coat pocket. "Joe and Lyle," he said.

"Watch your back," Lucas said.

They got out, crunched around the bar to the front door. The air smelled of barbeque and auto exhaust from the highway, and they could hear the thump of a country song. Cold; lots of stars, but cold. Shrake said, "'Bubba Shot the Jukebox."'

"Huh?"

"That song. Mark Chesnutt." He pulled the door open and held it, and Lucas led the way in.

Just a run-down bar-type bar; fifteen booths and a dozen tables, a bar with a few stools, a jukebox, the odor of snowmelt and wet wool and beer and barbeque beef and tacos, a whiff of illegal cigarette smoke. Two waitresses, both with push-up bras under T-s.h.i.+rts--one of Barack Obama's face done up as the Joker in the Batman movie, the other with the slogan "Ride It Like You Stole It"--were working the booths. A redheaded female bartender in a frilly white blouse was talking to a big man hunched over the bar.

Lucas and Shrake didn't look like the rest of the clientele. They had no facial hair, and they were wearing white-collar-worker winter coats, unb.u.t.toned; like, unb.u.t.toned so they could get at a gun. Every other male had some kind of hair on his face, and a parka hanging off a hook at the end of his booth. Talk dwindled as Lucas led the way to the bar, Shrake a couple of steps behind.

"We're with the state police," Lucas said to the bartender. "We need to talk to the Mack brothers."

The bartender looked at the clock, then shook her head. "You missed them. They left here half an hour ago."

"I wonder why they left their cars in the parking lot?" Lucas asked. He leaned across the bar. "Go get them. And mention that we've blocked their cars in. And if we don't talk to them now, we'll talk to them downtown. This is just a friendly visit, but it could get pretty f.u.c.kin' unfriendly if they want it that way."

She looked at Lucas for a minute, then at Shrake, said, "a.s.shole," dropped her wet bar towel on Lucas's hand, turned and walked through a door into the back.

Lucas wiped his hand on his pant leg and said to a waitress, "Nice place."

She ignored him.

The big man whom the bartender had been talking to asked, "What's up?"

"You know Mikey Haines or Shooter Chapman?" Lucas asked.

"Maybe. I remember the names. Sort of. What'd they do?"

"They got themselves shot in the head with a shotgun," Lucas said. "Found the bodies this morning."

The big man's face pulled together. "Are you s.h.i.+ttin' me?"

"Do I look like I'm s.h.i.+ttin' you?"

"Didn't see anything on TV," he said.

"Didn't make the evening news, but it'll be on at ten," Lucas said. He looked at a television set in the corner, which was showing a hockey game. "Took a while to identify them."

The big man finished his beer in one gulp, wiped his mouth on his sweats.h.i.+rt sleeve, and said, "I gotta get out of here."

"Why?"

"Look, I don't know nothin' about nothin'," he said. "I really don't. But if somebody's startin' a war, I don't want to be sittin' here suckin' on a Budweiser."

Two more guys got out of a booth, pulling their coats on as they headed for the door. Shrake put out a hand. "Friends of Haines and Chapman?"

"Never heard of them," one said, and they were gone.

A SHORT MAN, whom Lucas recognized as Lyle Mack, followed the bartender out of the back, an aggrieved look on his face. "Now what?"

"We're investigating the murders of Shooter Chapman and Mikey Haines," Lucas said.

Mack registered what looked everything in the world like shock. The bartender, eyes wide, put both hands to the sides of her face, her mouth open. Her lips working, no words coming out. If they were faking it, Lucas thought, they deserved Oscars.

"What?" Mack got the first response out.

"Is your brother around?" Lucas asked.

"He's in the can ... Uh, s.h.i.+t, come on back. We can talk in the office."

He turned and went through the door, heading into the back. Lucas and Shrake walked around the end of the bar past the bartender, who asked, "How were they killed? Are you sure they were murdered?"

"They were shot with a shotgun and put in garbage bags and thrown under a bridge," Shrake said. "If it wasn't murder, it was a really weird accident."

They went through the door behind the bar, heard Lyle Mack yelling at his brother, up a set of stairs. "The cops are here--they say Shooter and Mikey been killed. Come on out of there."

And he turned back and said, "Come on to the office."

The office was a small plywood room attached to the loading dock; one chair behind a desk and two chairs in front of it, two filing cabinets, an old computer, and a new mult.i.task print-fax-copy-scan machine.

Mack took the desk seat and Lucas sat down while Shrake leaned in the doorway. "You know them?" Lucas asked.

"Sure. They're members of the club," Mack said. "I bet the f.u.c.kin' Mongols had something to do with this. We're okay with everybody else."

"You know any Mongols? They're pretty thin around here," Shrake said.

"Well, who else ... ?"

"Lyle, don't give us any s.h.i.+t. I've had some dealings with the Seed in the past, and people got killed, and I've got very little patience with you guys," Lucas said. "You push dope and you used to do a little strong-arm robbery and you ran a couple ma.s.sage parlors and I know all that s.h.i.+t. So what I want to know is, were Haines and Chapman hustling meth or c.o.ke? Who were they selling it to? Did they owe somebody? Were they scared?"

Shrake stepped back and let another man through the doorway, Joe Mack, who had a lean, pale-white face and lantern jaw, with a black do-rag on his close-cropped head. If he'd had a gold hoop earring, Lucas thought, he could have played Long John Silver.

"They're dead?" Joe Mack asked. His eyelids were half-closed, and he smelled of alcohol.

Lyle nodded at Lucas and said, "This guy is giving me a lot of s.h.i.+t. He thinks they were dealing dope."

Joe Mack registered astonishment so profound that Lucas almost laughed, and Shrake did. He said, "Dope?" as though it were inconceivable.

"Let me 'splain something to you guys," Shrake said. "This is a double murder, at least, and maybe a triple. We think they were the guys who knocked over the pharmacy at University Hospitals three days ago, and kicked the pharmacist to death."

Lyle Mack: "No . . ."

"And you're bulls.h.i.+tting us, right now, is what you're doing," Shrake continued. "That's accessory after the fact on three murder-ones, which is just as good as doing it yourselves. We'll shake it all out, and you'll go to prison ... if you keep bulls.h.i.+tting us."

Lyle Mack shook his head: "All right. Shooter and Mikey could be a.s.sholes. We know that. But we don't know anybody who'd kill them for it."

"The Mongols would," Joe Mack said to his brother.

"Aw, for Christ's sakes, forget the Mongols," Lucas said. "We're gonna prove Haines did the pharmacy, by tomorrow. Then we're gonna come back here with a flamethrower, if we don't get some cooperation. This is their club. This is where they hung out, where their friends were. So: Who were they running with? They hang out with any hospital people? What?"

Lyle Mack said, "Listen . . . we're bar owners. We make money at it. These guys are customers, but they're not good friends or nothing. They always come in together, they hang together. And you know, they bulls.h.i.+t with the guys, but they were partners. They hung with each other."

"They gay?" Shrake asked.

Joe Mack snorted. "I don't think so. They were Seed. Seed don't take gays."

"No gays, no s.e.x perverts of any kind," Lyle Mack said.

"When was the last time they were in?"

The two brothers looked at each other, and then Lyle Mack said, "Could have been Sat.u.r.day. I'm pretty sure they were here on Sat.u.r.day night."

"Did they seem nervous, or worried, or scared?" Lucas asked. "Were they hanging with anyone new?"

Lyle Mack exhaled, looked at his brother, back at Lucas, and said, "Listen, if we, you know ... if we talk to you, this gets out, we're done. The place gets wrecked, we get the s.h.i.+t beat out of us, or killed."

"We don't talk," Lucas said.

"If the information is good," Shrake added. "If it's not good, we might talk."

Lyle Mack said, "Sat.u.r.day night, they were hanging with Anthony Melicek and Ron Howard. Drank a few beers. They were on the Deer Hunter for a couple hours."

"The Deer Hunter?" Shrake asked "Game machine," Joe Mack said.

"Where do we find these guys?" Lucas asked. He was writing their names in his notebook.

"I don't know," Lyle Mack said. "You've probably got their addresses. Or Ron's, anyway. He's on probation, some kind of thing with his old lady."

"You mean, he beat her up," Lucas said.

"No, no. I mean he and his old lady are on probation," Lyle Mack said. "I'm not sure exactly what they did, but they might have been selling stuff."

"Stolen stuff."

"Maybe. If you tell anybody we told you this ..."

"Who else did they hang with?"

"Man, they hung with each other . . ."