Slain Cop, Murdered Biker: Evidence Points to a Connection

The body of the text tells the rest of the story; or what a reporter could scratch together from the bloody remains at the roadside. It delves into the background of the officer, a Sgt. Luke Winchester –did he report to a Capt. Smith and Chief Wesson?- and his “well known” connection to criminal rackets, including the heroin and prostitution in which the biker gangs of the Midwest “infamously” trafficked. Looks like the crack team at the Davenport Reporter’s crime desk wrapped this case up succinctly, with no further need to engage in the pesky detail of what an on-duty member of the Lincoln Police Department was doing forty miles to the east in Weston.

The hitchhiker reads on, briefly, about how the brutal murder –the local rag does a good job of detailing the effect ammonium nitrate-packed bullets have when fired at close range- was payback for the murder of motorcycle gang leader, Tommy “Tornado” Wilkinson, aka “Nado”, who was run off the road and killed earlier this morning . The inside column bears a photo of the grizzly leader, shadowed in profile as he raises some sort of braised meat to his mouth.

How the paper managed to draw such an elaborate story together in the six or seven hours since the murder transpired impresses the hitchhiker. Really, it makes him scoff at the eagerness of a small town rag such as this to seemingly solving two murders at once, simply by linking the one the other. The worse part is that the law-abiding citizens of Davenport and all of eastern Iowa will lap it up without the question. It has the woman sitting beside the hitchhiker tail-spinning into a tizzy.

“I tell ya, you can’t go outside anymore…”

For the hitchhiker, the newspaper’s clear-cut conclusions –even if they are window-dressed as mere insinuations- are cause for doubt over its journalistic integrity, and not alarm over a sudden alliance between bikers and rogue cops. As rich as it is with the gore and intrigue borrowed straight from crime novel fantasies, the driver is most incredulous over what the story fails to include. No room is left for either him or his accomplice, the driver. One would think that to be a positive note, as it leaves him –and the driver, but most importantly, him- free from the suspicion of straight cops and the retribution of dirty ones. Yet it leaves him crumpling under the same dead weight of loss that first befell him when he shot Paula. It hadn’t managed to return so heavily as long as he was with the driver. Now, he glances out the window and the combination of gray factories set against open, white fields makes his breath go short.

What were the words exactly? The bathroom door swung open and he had half his face to the wall, pleading with the receiver in his hand. What was it?

“….juss callin’ cos, ahm not sure if ya know, but Paula’s ah….you see Paula’s er…”

The hitchhiker hears the voice quiver as unsteadily as the bus’s windows rattle over every pothole. The hitchhiker knew at that point. He thinks of the showdown that followed after the driver hung up: two faces set in silent challenge, while at the same time searching for the slightest tic that would give the whole game away. He can’t remember the driver moving a single muscle, locked into a gaze that could find a fissure on the moon. The hitchhiker, on the other hand, knows his poker game to be deficient enough to warrant a “Plan B”, which has increasingly become his “Plan A” as he gives up as many chips as blank stares, and finds that he must reclaim the lost money somehow. So maybe he cracked at the diner. There was, after all, that tidy piece of blond tail brushing by, just at that moment…

“Oh, would you just look at this!”

The woman in the next seat pushes her way through the hitchhiker’s dewy recollections, just at the point where…

“It’s just animals out there these days. Animals.”

She’s pushing a creaseless copy of the Davenport Reporter his way. Usually, the doings of corn-peddlers doesn’t interest him in the least bit, but the front page photo rings an alarm, even if he hasn’t yet fully recognized the figure. The hitchhiker can be forgiven for being a little slow to place the face. After all, the man pictured before him didn’t manage to hang onto it for very long before it was splattered across the two lanes of Route 6, just outside Weston, Nebraska. Above it, the second bold-faced headline of the day:

La Salle, Illinois

The middle-aged woman sitting next to the hitchhiker seems friendly enough. She got on shortly after they crossed the river into Rock Island. Lucky for the de-commissioned office she replaced, too. Another second of that guy’s lip –“where the ball, Prince Charming?”- and he would have gotten it; and much worse than from those goose-stepping Kraut sons-of-bitches. No, the lady is a nice change of company. The hitchhiker might even call it a relief. He’s wondering how much to answer of her well-meaning enquiries.

“Dee-troit, achsully. To visit m’family.”

“Yeah, I spose it is for the Christmas hol’day.”

“No, f’course I knew it was. Sept it’s more of a homecoming…”

“It’s been bout five years.”

The hitchhiker is getting better at this. It must have been the brief but persistent questioning of the driver that got his ‘story’ –at first, a jumble of off-the-cuff answers- finally rounded out into a coherent-enough whole. The woman is not as determined as the driver, though. The hitchhiker would be damned if he knows what got that guy –Paula’s hell-bent vigilante of a fiancé, it turns out, as things often do in such an accidental world- sniffing down his trail in the first place. If it had been physical recognition, the driver would have been onto him long before Las Vegas. Instead, something set him off around Cedar City, Utah, shortly after the wild night at that actress’s house.

The hitchhiker recalls the evening –the girl’s head flopping back as if all her tendons had melted, the blood spurting from her nose and how he’d never seen anything more beautifully ruby, and how the mansion emptied out to see him and the driver off into the desert night or early morning- and smile creeps into his face. The woman next to him thinks it’s in reaction to her incomprehensible story about her children, or her cats, or even her children’s cats. The hitchhiker has drifted off miles ago, but his eyes light with the look he first flashed the driver when he caught him on the phone at that truck stop in Utah.

“He’s bout, five six, five seven, light brown hair, brown eyes…” The driver is doing even worse, and he knows it.

From somewhere in the mess of drab, a voice croaks, “What? Some dreamboat of yours?” This crack is met with a chorus of laughs, all in the same frostbitten chortle. The driver wants to reach around and blow this collective lesion on humanity away, shot by shot, but he needs their help more than he needs their respect. Who are they, anyway? If he can keep his cool, he’ll gain vengeance soon enough; against them and all forms of lowlife who dare pose as human. An image flashes into his head: the hitchhiker darting across the street in Omaha, ridiculous in his trial whites. He had no other change of clothes left.

“He’s got a dress shirt, s’spenders, dark slacks.”

The group is no longer laughing. In fact, they’ve grown even more pallid, if that is possible. Another voice –or who can tell, maybe the same one- speaks up, again from deep within the collective grime.

“Yeah. He was practically thrown from a car just down the road. Some screaming match or something. Then he went into the depot.” A thumb rises up from nowhere and point behind them, through the double doors of the barely-lit bust station. They’re glass, but might as well be of wax paper. The place is so filthy that the homeless inside –presumably of a class looked down upon by the hitchhikers outside- don’t dare sit on the benches, even if they weren’t completely ripped apart. A river of putrid liquid –perhaps it was once water at some point long ago- pours through the middle with no identifiable source. If a blind man were to wander inside, the smell alone would tell him that he missed the bus station and somehow wandered into one of the circles of hell.

None of this registers with the driver. Without a word of thanks or even a nod to the group of idlers, he is through those slimy doors and searching the board above the ticket window. From the list of broken words –“Indianapolis”, “Kenosha”, “Deerfield”- he recognizes only one: “Chicago”. From there, the hitchhiker would be able to catch another bus to Detroit, with maybe a stop-off directly in Dearborn.

The driver doesn’t bother to pay for the gas before taking off. From somewhere out of the huddle across the street, a gloved hand rises to give him a ‘thumbs up’: a sign of solidarity and maybe a plea to be taken along as well.

Davenport

A peculiar collection of men catches the driver’s eye as he’s gassing up at “Lil Billy’s Gas n Go”. They’re huddled across the street, guarding the walkway leading up to the bus depot. It’s the type of gathering that one can tell is a permanent fixture to the otherwise desolate streetscape, even if none of its individual members stay for more than a few hours at most. They wear a nearly uniform drab. Everything is washed in the same colorless languor: coats, skin, hair, and the stench of despondency that comes from people desperate to get anywhere, but with no place to actually go.

Their faces, too, are ashen. The driver spies a few dirty cheeks and foreheads peering out of caps as the men battle, and fail, to cover every inch from the cold. The most remarkable thing is that they don’t seem to be of any particular race. The driver assumes they’re white, merely because the rest of the state –and entire middle of the country, outside of major cities, really- is as well. Yet there’s something about the way they can’t seem to stand up straight and only communicate –on the rare occasions they do- with grunts and nods that points to the future mongrelization that so many politicians fear will result from the mixing of America’s various races and ethnicities, including whites. The driver does not consider himself to be a racist -after all, who but the most extreme of racists proudly declares themselves as such? But there’s something about the group -really a single entity with a few variations on the same indistinct head, and pairs of insect-like limbs rubbing together to stay warm- that makes the driver want to lose every morsel he’s eaten in the past twenty-four hours. It could be the combination with the gasoline fumes too, though that’s a smell he usually relishes. It’s the way the bundled limbs occasionally break away from each other and stick out into the road, whenever the rare car sloshes by. Hitchhikers! The driver runs over with the nozzle still pumping into the car.

The group registers the stranger sprinting to their perimeter. They don’t budge, but merely flaunt their disregard with studied indifference. There’s more important things to tend to, like staying warm or flagging down a ride. The driver has a car –they’ve been watching him too- and that detail earns him at least a collective ear from the creature, aloof but carefully curious at the same time.

“I’m lookin for someone…” The driver realizes this is a horrible start, and whatever suspicions the group must have of him, they are by now warranted. “Shit!”, but he keeps going.

The minutes that follow, on the edge of that same scratchy chair, are unbearable. The driver recalls as much as he can of the phone call. There’s no doubt that the man on the line was Mr. Warshansky’s, though the voice wasn’t right. It seemed a lot more distant than the miles of telephone wire would have normally rendered it. That’s not to say it wasn’t clear. Every word spun itself from the man’s lips, into the receiver, through the myriad of cables and operator boards, and directly into the driver’s brain, where they now burn singularly, each like a glowing iron, throughout his entire body. Still, he can’t shake voice. Why did it sound like Mr. Warshansky doing his best imitation of the driver -“an you won’ call here no more”? Or was it the other way around?

The driver’s rage might stifle his recollection, but not his certainty. There’s no question the voice was describing the hitchhiker. Though to Mr. Warshansky, of course, it would only be a hazy memory of a man who disappeared from Paula’s life with as little fanfare as the day he first came over to pick up that well-developed sixteen year-old. To the driver, it was the directive to kill that he had been waiting for, though he was not sure from where it would come, if it came at all. Now, to ask him to hold off on that order –even if it’s a mere fifteen minutes extra in that waiting room/office while a last hose is tightened- seems unpardonable.

The driver is already a murderer, technically speaking. Only now, however, does he feel that status –can it be called a title?- swell to the crux of his fate: as certain as he is Paula’s fiancé and the proud carrier of a .44 Barringer ‘Night Hawk’, complete with dual-action hammer. His fingers curl –he can’t stop them- around imaginary triggers and squeeze all six rounds into the large desk opposite. Meanwhile, sweat collects around the metal of the real trigger, tucked into the back of his new denim jeans. The seven hundred miles to Dearborn close in until they are reduced and purified to the twenty-two feet separating the driver from his pickup in the next room. He wills the mechanic to yell out the ‘ok’ –he can hear his young, scratchy voice as clearly as if it was his own- until he finally does. The driver is in his pickup before the hood can be slammed and the three ten dollar bills thrown on the desk can uncrumple. If he didn’t have to stop for gas –the tank had less than a quarter remaining when the pickup broke down- he wouldn’t stop at all.

He lifts the receiver on the desk effortlessly, as if in a dream. In another instant, he’s on the phone once again to Mr. Warshansky.

“I won’ bother you an’more f’ya can tell me juss one thing.”

“Go ahead.”

“Wha’did Paula’s ex…you know the guy who….well, wha’did-ee look like?”

“Eh? Have you lost your mind?”

“Juss tell me.”

“An you won call here no more?”

“At’s right”

“Alright. Let’s see if I can remember, though I don’t particularly care to.”

“Please, Mr. Warshansky…”

“Ok, alright. Well, he wasn’t very tall, a little shorter than you, I suppose. Light brown hair, worn kinda long, in a mess. Blue eyes. And the sonnofabitch walked around like he was owed the world. There! Is that enough for you, ya crazy….”

The driver can’t hear the rest. A bolt of urgency snaps through his body and wakes him up. He has to get to that pickup and get back out on the road.

Peeking his head into the garage: “Hey, you gonna have my car ready any time soon?”

The sole mechanic, without removing his head from deep beneath the pickup’s raised hood, responds, “hold on, I’m working on it.”

The driver itches with the desire to take off with the man’s head still inside. He would press the petal down as far as it would go. The silos of the farmland and the towers of the cities alike would get blended into the same singular blur, whipping by the driver’s windows. Road signs would become meaningless –or even more meaningless- as they whisk by in a flash of green, no letters.

The driver can only tighten his fists in anticipation. The bulge of car keys in his front pocket burns his skin straight through the fabric.

“Fuckin’ hicks. How long’s it take ta fix a lousy car?”

Iowa City

The city is white with a recent snowfall. There’s not a lot of the stuff, just enough to lend the streets, sidewalks and buildings the gleam of freshly polished porcelain. The occasional whip of wind rouses a powdery mist off parked cars. It’s enough to keep all but a few buttoned up figures indoors. Inside the garage’s office cum waiting room, the driver can hear the faint whistle of winter gaining strength as it blows along open but empty storefronts and rattles windows. He’s glad to be there, slunk in a ratty green chair and warmed by an electric heater. It’s only when the wind climaxes at a squealing pitch that he feels the shiver deep within his marrow.

The garage owner appears before him, looking stern in a business-like tie, shirt and suspenders. He flops a file down on his desk and gives a grimace of stubbornly tolerated discomfort. This reminds the driver of a Hollywood detective, pained by the persistence of a seemingly insolvable case. It never occurs to the driver how much his experiences are filtered through the lens of popular movie tropes: the hard-boiled detective, the irresistible –and blond coiffed- femme fatal, the drifter with a troubled past, and so on. That’s why it’s odd he never sees himself as filling any similarly clichéd role. Maybe the driver, like everybody else, likes to think of himself as unique, laying just this side of a summary definition. He shoots the owner a quizzical look stolen straight from the actor’s handbook: palms up and open, resting on each knee.

“Good news is we can save your radiator. Some of the grating charred, but we can fix that.” He straightens himself up, standing behind his desk chair. His hands go from the chair to his waistband. He gives it a routine tug.

“Bad news, is it’s gonna be bout three hours. I’ve only got one man on today, an he’s swamped as is. You can stick around a little, can’t ya?” His expression goes from stern to jolly with a quick flap of the jowls. The driver really can’t afford to waste the rest of the afternoon, especially when he’s gotten this close to Michigan. He sinks further into the chair and the scratchy cushions absorb the weight of his tired body as the waves of heat coming off the electric coil threaten to send him into a cataleptic sleep. It’s comforting, luxuriant even, and he’s so exhausted that he doesn’t care to go anywhere else. He decides to merely ask after the cost, with eyelids sinking fast.

“It’s gonna be thirty dollars, with parts, labor, an tax.” The owner delivers the news with a matter-of-fact tap of his suspenders, as if they are the abacus used to compute such estimates.

“Parts? You juss said th’radiator could be saved.” The driver knows he’s going to get bilked no matter what, but this is the most resistance he can muster while fading into a warm pool of unconsciousness.

“The radiator, yes. But we’re gonna have ta scrap all the hoses and valves that got singed. Ya know, you’re really lucky in a way….” So comes the con’s assurance that it could have been a lot worse, and how the driver’s lucky he’s only being swindled for thirty: a small price to pay if it will get him the rest of the seven miles. He agrees with a curt “fine, juss get it done,” before nodding out completely. The last thing he feels is the worn-thin cloth of the chair against his neck; and he’s gone.