Ransom X

  Chapter 44 The Gang

  The Gang of Five had owned the flophouse for over forty years, a farmhouse surrounded by waving fields of brown grass and covered with the remnants of failed farming rusted past recognition, waiting to infect the careless trespasser with tetanus. There were over thirty members in the biker gang making the name a questionable choice, but it must have been appropriate at one time. The leader Big Dog, an impossibly ugly man, always joked that nobody in the group could count so it hardly mattered.

  Bikes stood at all angles at the bottom of a long wooden staircase that led to the stretched porch area. A keen eye would notice that bikes progressed in value walking up the path until the nicest bike, Big Dog’s, practically sat on top of the rotting, angled first step. It was the way Big Dog liked it. He didn’t have to swing his leg over the saddle; he just eased off the step onto his ride.

  The Gang of Five was a bit of an ugly operation, working outside of the bounds of even the lax rules of biker society. It’s hard to imagine what kind of fraternity would be scowled upon within the community of bikers that accepted nearly every shade and nuance of brutality and vice within its shelter, until someone heard their job description.

  They stole bikes.

  Big Dog sidestepped a passed out comrade on his way to the phone, then kicked him as an afterthought.

  “Get the fuck off the floor.” The biker stirred “I’ve got a business call or I’d stomp your balls, if I could find them.”

  This was the snitch call he’d been waiting for. There was a group of Canadian bikers, the pussies, or at least that was the name Big Dog gave them in his head, they were rolling through Chugwater, on their way to Sheridan, and they were all businessmen riding new custom bikes. This was their vacation, and Big Dog was going to show them some “hospitality”, he was going to be their native guide and lead them to a bus terminal where they could buy their ticket home. Twelve custom bikes would fetch about a hundred grand, and that was if the fence cheated them blind, an expectation that was usually met. Big Dog was violent and imposing to regular folk, but other core riders knew they could take advantage of him. He wasn’t someone to be feared. He owed people debts, not the other way around. He’d put the tip of a knife to the pupil of a rival, but he’d never pushed it in.

  He picked up the phone and found himself speaking with someone who had.

  “Hello Big Dog.” Blades’ attempt at warmth was more sinister than most people could conjure on a meth binge. “Wasn’t hard to find you.”

  “I wasn’t running.” Sweat broke out across his body, and he looked out the window like reckoning wasn’t far behind. Big Dog was practically panting. “Where are you?”

  “Want to invite me over?”

  “Sure.”

  “Really?” His voice sounded like a creaky door.

  “We’re still friends, right?” He knew they weren’t friends. One of his rookies had made the mistake of pulling some chrome off of Blade’s bike about three years back. He remembered his name because Blade had made him repeat it for two hours on a video recording. Blade made him repeat over and over “I’m Keith Logger, and I’m going to die.” He’d tortured him after each time he said it, like he was completing the meaning of the phrase and if he didn’t say it he’d cut off a finger at the first available joint. There are four discreet joints in the finger and by the time the offender died, he had less than three fingers left. He’d sent the recording to Big Dog with a promise to repeat the process on him.

  Big Dog offered everything he had to get the bounty off his head, then had sent two paid assassins after him. Blade sent back the killers with a thank you note. He hadn’t harmed them at all. Big Dog had asked the men why and gotten back the response, “He didn’t seem to think that trying to kill him was personal.”

  Big Dog knew that his debt was personal, and the bribe had been rebuffed over a pay phone in Oklahoma. Big Dog remembered it like the dying words of his mother, which were “You’d never run over your own mother.”

  Blade had said, “That’s not the way I want you to pay.”

  Big Dog asked, “Is there anything I can do?”

  Blade had answered, “Nothing.”

  The echoes of that conversation still rang in Big Dog’s head as he moved through the house filling his pockets with secret stashes of money and weapons. A cache of cocaine hidden behind a wall socket spent like pure green. He pulled up the carpet tack strips in the corner of his room and picked out a pistol from a water-damaged hollow. All the time he kept up a distracted half-conversation.

  “So, how have you been, there was a rumor that someone finally caught up with you – and well – you know.”

  “There’s something I want from you.” Big Dog froze. Was this a real offer? Or was this a trick? “You’re going to need all of the weapons that you’ve been grunting around collecting.”

  “You got me wrong, I’m on the can.” He dropped his handgun.

  “Your shit sounds like a semi-automatic hitting the floor.”

  “You got it all wrong - “

  “I’ll make you eat that shit if you don’t shut up and listen.”

  “And then –”

  “You do this and you’re free.”

  Blade explained the task. Big Dog was going on a killing spree. Blade described a specific method of death for each of the targets. He made Big Dog write them out in such detail, that Big Dog thought that Blade must really want to do the job himself, and that delegation was only possible if it were done exactly as specified.

  “Flip the main breaker when you’re done. That’s important.”

  “Why?”

  “That’ll tell me you’ve finished the job.”

  Big Dog wanted to ask how but the snarl in Blade’s voice quieted him.

  Blade saved the names and address for the end. It was the icing on a sadistic cake that shocked the Big Dog to the point of interruption.

  “Are you shitting me? This is who you want – dead?”

  Blade let the silence crackle in between them. Rural Wyoming phone lines were still primarily underground copper lines from the turn of the century and the effect was a background static that presented itself as almost a message. “Don’t ask questions, or I might show up personally to answer them.”

  Big Dog understood, but at the same time he couldn’t believe who he was being asked, rightly told, to slaughter. This was the kind of hit that would cement Blade’s already legendary brutality. It was impossible that he or anyone would give this kind of order. It was inhuman. Big Dog spat tobacco juice down onto his belly, a self-respecting hyena wouldn’t pick over these bones, he thought.

  “When do we go -”?

  “You roll now.”