Gregg Hurwitz: Troubleshooter

"We have last-knowns on any of the nomads?" Tim asked.

"They've been in the wind forever."

Jim was picking his ear, his eyes glassy. "Cynthia just had her sweet sixteen." He was talking too loud. Everyone tried not to look at him.

"You all right, Jim?" Tim asked.

Jim stared down at the tabletop. "Frankie's daughter." Of the four deputies injured in the escape, he was the only one who'd already returned to duty; he'd checked out of the hospital and come straight back to the office. He'd trashed his jacket, but his shirt was still marked with blood-thin lacings at the collar like ink. Palton had been his partner nearly eight years. Jim, the point man for lifting spirits on the Warrant Squad and ART, hadn't shown a glimmer of his irreverent humor.

"We'll get 'em," Bear said lamely. He mustered a smile and aimed it awkwardly at Jim, a small generosity that reminded Tim why Bear was the first person he and Dray called when they had good news or bad. And they'd had plenty of both in the past few years of their marriage.

Tim flipped through the file before him, refocusing. "Any angle into the mother chapter?"

"The Feebs-er, the Bureau-tried to nail Uncle Pete when Den and Kaner went down," Bear said. "They rousted him under Continuing Criminal Enterprise but got nowhere. You remember the subpoenaed-credit-card-records debacle?"

Tim and Dray-like most everyone else in the state-had followed the case closely. When on the stand, Uncle Pete, the droll three-hundred-pound Sinner national president, had made mincemeat out of the prosecutors over some innocuous credit-card charges they'd interpreted loosely to make their case. They'd had no better luck trying to untangle the knots in his drug-distribution network and his money-laundering operation.

Malane had sat quietly through the first part of the intel dump with an expression of reserved superiority that Tim had learned was the prevailing attribute of an FBI agent. Malane cleared his throat and spoke, not lifting his eyes from the Cross pen that he tapped on the blank pad before him. "Uncle Pete is careful to keep the mother chapter free and clear of anything incriminating."

"Why'd you hit dead ends on the drug charges?" Tim asked.

"Same reason we always run into trouble with bikers-their drug network is self-contained and resilient. They are the distribution network, so they control the scene from the stash houses to the wholesalers to the street-level pushers. They're set up in the liquor stores, the mom-and-pops, the gas stations, doing little hand-to-hand deals that collectively move big product. They have a lot of free labor, in their women and their pledges. The threads of the operation are buried. You make a bust, that's all you got. One bust. Minimal product. Plus, they've got a reliable and internal pipeline for flowing drugs to other chapters and cities-themselves. During run season especially, forget it. You got hundreds of bikers on the roads, you're not gonna get cleared to implement cavity searches to suss out the few mules." Malane's face had contracted as if he'd tasted something sour. He was angry, but also humbled; he and his agency had been well and publicly spanked.

"Why don't we haul Uncle Pete in for a close look?" Tim asked.

"He's got that hotshot TV lawyer," Bear said. "Dana Lake."

"I would advise," Malane said, "treading lightly on that front."

Tim leaned forward, rubbing his temples, mulling over what little evidence they'd managed to acquire. The break itself had left few clues. The precision of the strike indicated that the route survey run by the transport team Monday-the day after Nigger Steve's murder-had been carefully surveilled. The operation itself had been impeccably planned and executed. Minutes behind the advance car, the driver of a venerable yellow Volvo had locked up the brakes on the 10, slant-parking across two lanes and leaving a smoke grenade in the backseat. Wearing a helmet, the person had fled on foot, vaulting over the freeway barriers, hopping onto a waiting Harley, and racing off. The car left behind to block traffic had as yet yielded no leads.

The sheriff's lab had already determined that the saddlebag explosive was an ANFO special, initiated by a dynamic detonator. Ammonium nitrate fuel-oil bombs, composed of ingredients obtained at any hardware store or construction site, are easily home-cooked, leaving a generic forensic signature and no Taggants microtraces to be run through the system.

The break team had used high-grade weapons: AR-15s were a step up from the Uzi-style MAC-10 blow-back grease guns wielded by less sophisticated offenders. Civilian versions of M16s, the AR-15s had been converted to full-auto machine guns. The process takes all of twenty minutes with a seven-piece mail-order conversion kit; a basic home workshop stocks the tools to machine out an AR-15's lower receiver and make room for a drop-in autosear. The best investigative bet would be tracking the rounds, but even armor-piercing ammo could be bought for cash at gun shows these days. The armor on the Dodge transport van, like all bullet-resistant protection, was designed only to buy a little time. For all his experience, Hank Mancone hadn't gotten off the X when the bullets started pounding, and that had cost him and Palton their lives.

Tim stood and walked to the head of the table, the others regarding him with anticipation. "Listen, we got our cages rattled pretty good. Frankie was a close friend to everybody here. I didn't know Hank as well, but whenever one of ours goes down, we all feel it."

Malane was wearing a bored expression, and Tim hated him for it.

"But being hotheaded isn't going to get us the perpetrators. Sheriff's is working Frankie and Hank's murders, so that frees us to focus on what we do best-catch fugitives. That's how we'll honor the dead. Work your CIs. Former cellmates, known associates, hangouts-you know the drill. Talk to gas-station attendants along biker routes, let them know there's a reward. Get the word out to motor shops, wrecking yards, swap meets. Let's ask our locals to red-flag bike thefts in case they're stealing new rides to throw us off the trail."

"But don't bother with Jap Scrap," Guerrera said. "Or chasing VIN numbers on frames. Outlaws grind and restamp. That's the problem with choppers-they're almost impossible to trace. Every part can come from a different bike."

"Can you narrow it down more on the bikes?" Freed asked. "What we're tracing and what we should keep an eye out for when we're in the field?"

Guerrera frowned thoughtfully. He had the face of a teenager, still not hardened out despite the stubble on his cheeks. His long eyelashes and full lips looked more Italian than what people might think of as Cuban, but he was Little Havana through and through. "Outlaw bikes are lean and mean. It's a rough ride, beats your insides. Full-dressers come off an assembly line at seven hundred pounds, but outlaws'll strip 'em down to four-that's called a cutaway. Maybe they steal a garbage wagon from a weekend warrior. If they don't part it out, they'll dump the saddlebags, the fairing, the extra chrome, the springs on the forks, the rear shocks, the fender. They'll re-form the seats, downsize the headlights, install dual carburetors.

"Most outlaws'll swap out the thick stock tanks because they cover the top of the motor and hide the horses, but Sinners, especially nomads, leave them on in case they need more gas for cop chases. That's why they prefer swing-arm handlebars to ape hangers, too-easier to navigate on the run. They'll pull every trick in the book to make their bikes faster-cut down the flywheels on the left side for faster acceleration, throw in suicide clutches, and power-jump with hot cams, fat valves, and increased bore and stroke. You won't find Sinner nomads doing dumb shit like going sky-high on the front tire. They're more pragmatic that way-they'll sacrifice looks for speed. They have to outrun Johnny Law, and they're not gonna get tangled up because they raked out the front wheel four feet. That's something to remember with the Sinners-despite the noise, they're outlaws first, bikers second."