PAYBACK

A SHORT JOE BECK THRILLER

ALASTAIR BROWN

PAYBACK

A SHORT JOE BECK THRILLER

Third edition

Published by Ablaze Books

First edition: August, 2018

Second edition: January, 2020

Third edition: October, 2020

Copyright © Alastair Brown, 2020, 2018

Alastair Brown has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, actual business establishments, actual events, or actual locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission in writing of the publisher or author. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, brands, establishments, and institutions referenced in this work of fiction.

Find out more about Alastair Brown by visiting:

www.authoralastairbrown.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

READ ARMY OF ONE

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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ONE

Joe Beck met her over an empty lowball glass of five-dollar bourbon in a bar in Trinidad, Colorado. It was a small, smoky sort of place that occupied a red-brick and bare-concrete building situated on Main Street in the middle of town. Frequented by hardened time-tested regulars, it sold beers pretty cheaply but charged a bit extra for the spirits, wines and liquors. It wasn't busy or empty, just ticking over as it always did. A few men were sitting on high top stools drinking beers from brown glass bottles at the bar and another couple of guys were lounging back in the hard mahogany wooden booths by the right wall chatting and smoking.

Beck was one of the guys perched at the bar. He was wearing dark boots, black pants and a gun-gray v-neck t-shirt. It sucked tight to his skin and did nothing to cover his rock-like muscular physique underneath.

Killing some time between gigs, he was drinking bourbon from a lowball glass while casually looking at a story on the front of a discarded copy of The Chronicle News, a regional newspaper serving the area, that had been left there by whoever had occupied the seat before him.

The story was a cover feature about Colorado's rising drug problem, highlighting the case of a local twelve-year-old boy who accidentally overdosed on heroin, drugs they speculated came from a distribution network in the south of the state.

Beck pictured the boy lying face-down, dead, on his bedroom floor and took his last sip of bourbon as she appeared.

She stepped through from an open doorway that led to the back at approximately three minutes past six, presumably a few minutes late for the start of her shift. She was slim and petite. Tanned and brunette. Maybe twenty-nine or thirty and vixen-like. She was wearing a tight pair of black hot pants that sucked to her ass and hips, and a low cut tight black vest top that immediately pulled your eyes to her chest. A small crystal crucifix hung from a silver necklace around her neck and dazzled against the canyon-like cleavage between her breasts. Her hair was long and silky and straightened. It hung down over her shoulders and shone in the bar’s dull orange light. She had the looks, the assets, and the confidence. She was a complete bombshell who had it all, except one thing.

Her left eye was black. It was ringed by a deep purple bruise that no amount of makeup could cover. It looked swollen and sore-looking, and puffy and tender, like she had not long been on the receiving end of a hard right hook.

Stepping into the bar, a few of the men at the counter glanced up from their beers while a couple of other guys sitting in the booths saw her and whistled. She ignored them but for a sly smile, instead noticing Joe Beck, the dark-haired and ruggedly handsome big guy sitting across the counter, and his empty his glass. She smiled and moved over, leaned forward over the bar to flash her cleavage and fluttered her eyes. It was a technique that tended to work with most guys, one that was tried and trusted with the regulars and a sure-fire way to make a few extra bucks in tips.

"What can I get ya, honey?" she asked him.

Beck flicked his eyes from his glass to her chest and, then, up to her face and paused a beat.

"The name of the guy."

She pulled a face.

"What guy?"

He gestured his finger in a circular motion around his left eye. "The one who did that to you."

She tutted and pulled another face. "Oh, that doesn't matter. Now, tell me, what you drinking?"

"Nothing until you tell me his name."

A man who had been sitting in one of the booths came to the end of the bar. He was old and white-haired, dressed in camel pants and a white linen shirt that was undone at the first two buttons, and was wearing glasses over big green ogling eyes. He had a lecherous smile on his face. He was holding an empty pint glass in his right hand and a twenty-dollar bill in his left. “Can I get a refill?”

The brunette barmaid flicked her eyes up at him and smiled. “Sure,” she said and moved over to serve him.

As she stepped away, a young black male bartender who had originally served Beck his bourbon walked through to the bar from the back, having gone out with a couple of black bags of trash. He saw Beck's empty glass and gestured to get him another.

Beck nodded. He pulled his wallet from his pants and drew a ten from the bill slot and laid it down on the counter.

The guy took it along with Beck's empty glass. He rang the ten through the till and filled the glass with two shots of bourbon, this time from a different bottle than before. “We're out of Jack but try this,” he said and laid the glass down on the counter in front of Beck along with five bucks of change.

Beck pocketed his change and lifted his glass. “What is it?”

The guy shook his head. “Try it.”

The brunette barmaid finished serving the other guy his beer and leaned back against the counter on the other side of the bar and looked at the black guy.

He glanced down at his watch, a black Casio on his right wrist, frowned and shook his head.

She shrugged.

He sighed and looked at her. His eyes scanned her face and settled on her left eye. He shook his head for a second time, this time, though, for a different reason.

She frowned and looked away. It was a resigned face, a look that said she couldn't.

He pulled a face and walked off through the open doorway to the back.

Beck took a sip of the bourbon. It tasted deep and full and spicy. It was one he hadn't tried before but liked. It looked like it came from a russet-colored bottle, something called Bulleit, going by the label on the front. He smiled and raised his glass, looked at it and nodded his admiration and took another sip.

The brunette barmaid looked his way.

“Bulleit?”

“Yeah.”

"It's a good one, that."

Beck nodded and said, "Yeah," and took another sip. "It's the first I've tried it."

"Oh yeah? What do you usually drink?"

"Jack, Jim, and the occasional Scotch. But mostly Jack," he replied and took another sip.

She smiled. "Yeah. Well, now, you can add Bulleit to that list."

Beck smiled back and nodded his agreement.

“Always bourbon?”

He shook his head. “Sometimes beer.”

“Can I get you one?”

“You buying?”

She laughed. “Nice try.”

He nodded and took a sip. "What's your name?"

"Brandi. You?”

“Joe,” he answered and took another drink. “You from around here?"

She nodded. "Yeah. You?"

He shook his head and took another sip. "Nah. Just passing through."

She nodded, slowly.

He took another drink.

"What brings you to Southern Colorado?"

"On my way to Albuquerque. For work."

She flicked her eyes across his upper body. "What do you do for work?"

"Private eye."

"Oh right," she replied and looked him the question.

"I solve problems. Find people. Deal with tight situations, like the one you're obviously in."

She looked away, dismissive.

"Who is he?"

She didn't answer.

Beck took another sip of bourbon. "Brother, father, boyfriend, husband, lover?"

She looked at him.

He said nothing. He just held his drink and looked her in the eye and waited. It was intense few seconds, but there was nowhere else to look, nowhere to divert her gaze. The bar was clean and nobody else’s drink was anywhere near finished.

She sighed. "Ex-boyfriend."

Beck nodded slowly and took a sip. "What made him an ex?"

"I found somebody else. A real sweet guy who treats me right, who treats me like I deserve."

Beck nodded. "Good for you. He still with you?”

She shook her head. “It was too much. My ex got involved. He couldn’t handle it. He walked away.”

“Shame.”

"Yeah. Scotty still thinks I'm his. He can't accept that I'm not with him."

"Scotty?” Beck asked, rhetorically, sounding like he was pondering who the guy was. “He the ex?"

"It doesn't matter. I've said too much already."

Beck necked the rest of his bourbon. He sat his empty glass down and looked at her, a frankness in his eyes. "He always treat you like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like a walking punch bag."

She paused, then nodded, sadly. "Yeah. I guess. He’s done it a couple of times now."

Beck nodded, slowly.

She looked at his empty glass.

"Can I get you another?"

"Sure. Double bourbon. Neat. That Bulleit shit."

She turned around and grabbed the bottle of Bulleit from the shelf behind the bar and topped up his glass, filling it to the rim. It was more than a double measure, that’s for damn sure, easily a septuple or even an octuple.

He drew his wallet from his pocket and moved to pull some cash from the bill slot.

She shook her head and waved him off.

"Forget about it. This one's on the house."

“Oh, so, now you’re buying me one,” he said and smiled, realizing he was getting somewhere.

She smiled back, turned around and put the bottle back up on the shelf.

Beck and the rest of the men at the bar stole an admiring glance at her perfect ass.

"So, tell me," she said. "What could you with a situation like mine?"

He took his first drink of his next glass of Bulleit. It was every bit as good as his first. "Make it disappear. Permanently."

"Permanently? What's that mean?"

"Whatever you want it to," he replied and took another drink.

She nodded slowly, like she was processing a thousand clashing thoughts in her mind. "As in..."

Beck looked her in the eye and shook his head, subtly. It was a gesture that told her not to finish what she was about to say.

She nodded, slowly. "Right."

He took another drink.

She looked back at him, cogs turning in her mind. "What does permanent usually cost?"

"It depends."

"On?"

The old guy beside Beck stood up from his barstool and walked toward the men’s room. Beck waited until he was out of listening range before answering.

"Who the target is. Who the client is. What they want done. How long it might take. How easy it might be. And whether or not I like you."

"And do you?"

He took a drink and smiled. "Yeah."

"So?"

He pulled a face and took another, bigger drink, finishing his second over-filled glass and his third drink of the evening. "For you, nothing."

"Nothing?" she asked, surprised.

Beck nodded. "Nothing. You look like you need some help and I ain't got much else going on tonight."

She nodded, slowly, then looked down and grimaced. It was as if the reality of what she was asking had just hit her. "Actually, you know, maybe it’s best not to...I don't know."

"What's not to know? Look in the mirror. Look at what the asshole did to you."

She did. She turned around and looked at her reflection on the glass behind the bottle shelves, brought her hand to her eye and winced in pain.

"I mean, you said it yourself, this isn't the first time. And it won’t be the last."

She nodded, sadly, still staring at her reflection.

"But we can make it the last.”

“How?” she asked, still looking at her beaten eye in the mirror.

“Leave that to me. You just pour me another glass of Bulleit, neat, and tell me his full name."

After a long pause, she nodded, slowly. Grabbed the bottle of Bulleit from the shelf and turned around and poured Beck his fourth drink. It was another free pour filling his glass to the rim.

He drew his wallet as a courtesy, knowing fine well this one would be on the house, too.

She waved him away and put the bottle back up on the shelf.

Beck stuffed his wallet back into his pants and took a drink, just about finishing his glass of bourbon in one.

She turned around and leaned in close over the bar, the side of her head near to his. He got a whiff of her spicy perfume and felt her silky smooth hair brushing on his skin. "It’s Riggs. Scotty Riggs," she whispered, then leaned back.

Beck looked her in the eye and nodded, slowly. It was a nod that confirmed this Scotty Riggs, whoever he was, was a marked man. He necked the rest of his bourbon and thanked her. Laid a twenty-dollar tip by his glass, stood up and left the bar.

TWO

Now Beck had the guy's name, he needed to find out what he looked like and where he lived. He made his way back to his car, a black Chevrolet Camaro sitting alone, parallel parked in a spot by the side of the road outside the bar. It was a vehicle he had rented through his South Dakota LLC. He climbed in and drew his cell phone from the pocket of his pants and did two things.

First, he turned to Facebook. He opened his app and went straight to the search bar. He didn't have many notifications anyway, given he only used social media for finding people. He keyed in the guy's name and 'Trinidad, CO' into the search field and hit the search icon.

The results were instant. There was only one. Scotty Riggs from Trinidad, Colorado.

The asshole who had beaten that bombshell from the bar, Beck thought, glancing up at the exterior of the bar through the windshield, and tapped the link.

Scotty Riggs’s profile loaded. The first place Beck looked was at his profile picture.

The guy looked like a lawless outlaw. He had an oval-shaped face with absent gray eyes and off-white teeth, probably stained by a lifetime of chugging black coffee and beer. His hair was jet black, shaven at the sides of his head and left longer at the top, styled in a faux hawk. He had a silver ring piercing through his lower lip and a devilish thick black soul patch below it above his chin. There was also a silver bull ring looped through the columella of his nose and his neck, and the lower right side of his face was covered in dark inked tribal tattoos.

I can see she picked him for his good looks, Beck thought and scrolled down and looked at the guy's details.

His profile listed him as being a mechanic and a member of the Colorado Crows Motorcycle Club. It also listed him as living in Trinidad, Colorado, and noted he had attended Coronado High School in Colorado Springs and was currently in a relationship with a woman named Brandi Burrows.

Asshole's obviously in denial, Beck thought and turned his attention to finding out where the guy lived. He opened the Whitepages website and did a people search. He typed in the guy's details, 'Scotty Riggs Trinidad Co', and hit the search button.

Again, the results were instant. And, again, there was only one record.

Scotty Riggs was listed as being in his thirties, from Trinidad, having previously lived in Colorado Springs, and was related to a Martha Riggs and an Alan Riggs. Probably his mother and father, Beck thought and tapped the link to view Scotty Riggs's address.

The details page loaded and gave him it - #406 500 State Street, Trinidad, Colorado, 81082.

Beck made a mental note and brought up his Google Maps app and keyed it in to find out how to get there. It was just around the corner. He scanned the route and fired up the Camaro's engine and set off to go get the asshole.

THREE

A short half-mile two-minute drive later, Beck pulled up outside Scotty Riggs's apartment block. It was one of three red-brick buildings sitting side by side in the shadow of the highway. But he wasn’t alone. In the parking lot outside, there was a long line of bikes, big black Harley Davidson power cruisers with a group of about ten men standing mounting them. They were dressed in full club gear, wearing boots, jeans, dark t-shirts, black leather cuts, bandanas and dark shades. Most of them were smoking cigarettes. And every single one of them looked big and strapping and dangerous.

Beck watched as Scotty Riggs came out of the first apartment block door. He was dressed just like the other men and looked exactly as he did in his Facebook picture - pretty much an ugly bastard. He walked around the side of the building with a grin on his face, gesturing to the guys and nodding, working the pack like a politician works a crowd. He walked past the line of bikers, high-fiving the first couple of guys and patting some of the others on the back, before mounting a black Harley that was parked up at the end of the line.

Beck watched the men flick their cigarettes to the ground and start their engines. He listened to the Harleys roar to life and watched them all set off from the lot, one by one, from right to left, eventually forming a formidable line across the length of the road, Scotty Riggs taking up position on the outside left. They headed north along State Street toward Colorado Avenue.

Beck let three other vehicles pass, two black sedans and a maroon SUV, and quickly decided to follow them. He slowly eased the Camaro away from the curb and followed three cars behind.

Heading along Country Road 69.6, Beck saw a Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser sitting parked up ahead by the side of the road against the desolate backdrop of trees and roughage. It was white with the words 'Trinidad Police' running along the side in navy-blue capitalized text. He watched the bikers slow to a halt adjacent to the cruiser, blocking the road and bringing the other three cars to a halt ahead of him. He watched as the guy on the bike in the middle of the pack leading the line, a rugged-looking bear of a man with red wrinkled skin, white crew-cut hair and a beard, the gang's president, made a gesture to the police car to follow behind, then led the line of bikers in speeding off down the road. The police cruiser, then, pulled away from the dirt onto the road and followed behind the bikers like it was providing some sort of escort.

Right there and then, Beck realized whoever was in that squad car was dirty as a bunch of mechanics up to their elbow in auto lube. He figured that something was about to go down. He could sense it. Not one to let dirty cops lie, not after his bullshit forgery conviction, he decided to stay on this Riggs guy, follow them and find out what they were all into. But, as ever, he kept a couple of car lengths behind and drove slowly, so as not to arouse suspicion.

Eventually, the bikers and the cops made a left at the next intersection, running the stop sign like a posse of outlaws, and followed the road round to the Trinidad Land Fill.

Beck could see it in the distance. It was a festering cesspool of discarded waste, piled high with mounds of plastic bags in varying colors. There were red ones, blue ones, white ones, cream ones and green ones, all in varying stages of decomposition. There were huge piles of crushed and compacted papers and cardboard, all crusted with green and black mold and mashed together. A couple of scavenging birds walked along the summits of the trash and a few dead birds, probably killed by the toxins in the putrid-smelling air, lay among the trash.

To avoid getting caught, he decided to carry on along the road and make a left at the intersection ahead and loop back around to the rear of the landfill and enter from that end. He continued north, having slowed to not much more than a crawl, watching the bikers and the cops through the window on the other side of the acre of roughage and discarded waste on his left.

The posse eased their Harleys and the police Ford to a halt and came face to face with another group of bikers who were ready and waiting for them. They were dressed in jeans and black leather cuts, just like the Colorado Crows, and were standing mounting their own big power cruisers. Beck made out what looked like a black Ford Windstar parked up behind them. It was obviously some sort of meet.

He cruised on and made a left onto Indiana Avenue and then a right onto a road that wasn’t that much more than a track barely wide enough for two cars on the dirt. He followed the track past a couple of rusted corrugated steel farmhouse-like buildings and parked up on the dirt somewhere off around the back of the landfill. He killed the Camaro’s engine and got out of the car, closing the door softly so it wouldn't bang and alert anybody to his presence.

Seeing no signs of any men on lookout, he made his way across the terrain toward the bikers who were now standing in two lines, face to face, a few hundred yards away. The ground underfoot was a grayish brown. Hard and rocky. It was lined with pigweed and thorny green thistles, made even more dangerous by the occasional spiny cactus and covered in brittle dry bones that remained from long-dead animal carcasses. They crunched and turned to powder under Beck's feet as he made his way past.

A couple of eagles soared high in the sky like big black silhouettes overhead. It was cloudy and fiery, a mix of orange and pink and red, as the sun began to set in the distance. The southwest was enjoying a heatwave and air was hotter than it ought to have been for some time around seven o’clock at night in September. The heat simmered and seethed and hung heavy over the landscape like great big elephant in a room.

Beck made his way across the sun-hardened ground to a huge mound of discarded waste, black trash bags crammed full of stuff, and watched through the piles of garbage on either side as the two biker gangs conducted a meet and greet followed by an exchange, while the two Colorado cops stood on lookout outside their cruiser behind them.

They were dressed in full uniform, black boots, black pants and black cotton shirts with police department badges on the shoulder pads and brass police badges pinned to the left of their chests. Black radios, silver handcuffs, black nightsticks and handguns hung from belts around their waists. Dark shades covered their eyes and stern expressions occupied their faces. They looked like they meant business.

The two biker gang presidents shook hands and exchanged some words, then the leader of the gang who had been waiting in the landfill signaled to one of his guys.

A big, heavy-set-looking guy with slicked-back brown hair walked forward and handed his president a plastic-wrapped bag that looked a lot like a brick of heroin. He took it from his member’s hand and offered it to the guy in charge of the Colorado Crows.

Beck watched him draw a knife from the inside pocket of his cut and make a small incision through the plastic and, with his fingertip, taste a sample of the drug on the tip of his tongue. The guy nodded his approval and made some sort of macho grunt and grinned. He signaled for his members to make the trade.

The two cops popped the trunk of their Ford and a few members of the Colorado Crows, Scotty Riggs being one of them, walked around back and lifted some heavy-looking black bags from inside. They carried them back to the line of men and dumped them on the dirt.

Beck watched the other gang president nod his approval and make a comment, then signal for his men to come and get them. He decided to drew his cell phone and document it all on camera.

The first picture he snapped was of a few men from the other biker gang lifting the black bags and carrying them to the Ford Windstar. Then, he got them opening the door and slinging them inside. After that, he captured shots of all the bikers waiting in the line and the two cops in the background, while the unknown gang's bikers lifted something out of the back of the minivan.

It was more bricks of heroin. Lots of them, each sandy colored and tightly wrapped in see-through plastic. They had them stuffed into cardboard boxes, the kind that can be found in greengrocers to display fruits, apples, bananas and oranges for sale.

Beck made sure to get pictures of the drugs, the boxes and the men as they carried them over to their Colorado Crows counterparts. Just like those guys had done, the men dropped them on the dirt and left them for the Colorado Crows guys to lift and take back to their car.

They did. Scotty Riggs stepped forward along with a pack of six guys and, together, they lifted the cardboard crates of drugs and carried them to the back of the police cruiser.

Beck snapped more pictures of the men carrying the product and dumping it into the back of the Ford. He made sure to get clear, zoomed-in head shots of everyone involved, especially the two dirty cops, and even a partial view of the police cruiser's license plate, to make sure what had just gone down was beyond any realm of deniability, to make sure when he turned it over all those involved were sure to be scooped up.

But things didn't go as planned.

After snapping one more picture, capturing one of the dirty Trinidad cops closing the cruiser's trunk, he suddenly felt the cold hard muzzle of a gun being pressed against the back of his neck.

FOUR

"The cell phone, drop it," a male voice said right behind him. The words were slow and the voice was deep.

Beck swallowed hard and did as he asked. He dropped his cell phone to the ground. It bounced off the hardened dirt and landed flat on its back, its screen looking unscathed.

"Turn around," the voice commanded. "Slowly."

Again, gun against the back of his neck, Beck did as he asked. He turned around to face the guy.

He was a big, bad outlaw biker. Bigger than Joe Beck. Easily seven feet tall and just about as wide, he was like a great big redwood. Absolutely huge. He had long red hair tied back in a ponytail and a chin that was covered in a thick red beard. There was a navy-blue-and-white patterned bandana wrapped around his forehead and his skin was pale. His arms were thick and flabby and sunburned, and his shoulders were heavily tattooed in black and dark-blue ink. He was wearing a pair of dirty brown boots and a faded pair of blue jeans, a plain black t-shirt and a leather biker's cut. The cut looked the same as the one the members of the other biker gang were wearing. It had a white reaper scythe stitched onto its left breast and small red patch above it, offering the club’s name - Raton Reapers.

He was chewing a thick wad of tobacco in the right side of his mouth, his jaw moving down to the right and, then, back up again, and he was holding a black Sig Sauer P320 in his right hand, a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol made in Exeter, New Hampshire, and capable of being picked up on the black market for about five-hundred bucks. He pressed the muzzle of the gun up into the soft tissue beneath Beck's jaw and looked him in the eye and asked, "Who the hell are you?"

His breath smelled as bad as the garbage on either side that was erupting from the torn bags. Beck swallowed and tried not to breath. He didn't answer. He knew the guy was a watcher and, somehow, he hadn't seen him. He knew he had been rumbled. He also knew that if the guy called the others, he would be a dead man. That was for damn sure. He thought about drawing his gun from the gap between the waist of his pants and the small of his back. It was a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson 5906, a gun he had picked up from a dealer in South Dakota who had sold it to him unlicensed, its serial number filed off, for a few hundred bucks. But he quickly realized it was out of reach.

The guy was too close. And his finger was already on the trigger, his knuckle a ghoulish shade of white. He would have noticed him reaching for something and would’ve shot him in a heartbeat. And if the gunshot didn't kill him, the rest of the men would because they would have heard the bang and come running to see what was going on.

The guy spat some liquefied tobacco down out onto the dirt by Beck's feet. "What do you think you’re doing out here?" he asked.

Beck said nothing. There was nothing to say. As far as the guy was concerned, he had no plausible explanation to give him. And he knew it.

The guy shook his head. "Taking pictures," he sneered and prodded Beck's jaw with the gun, still slowly chewing away. "You some kind of cop? You here trying to make a RICO case?"

A long, tense moment flashed past, then eventually Beck spoke.

"If I was still a cop, right now, you would be getting off like you’ve won the lottery."

The biker pulled a face. "What? That a threat?" he asked and flicked his eyes down to the gun and back up to Beck. It was a look that said he was the one holding the gun.

Beck shook his head, slowly. "No. It's a fact."

The biker shook his head, just once, and slowly, left to right. "Doesn't matter what it is, or who you are," he replied and stepped a few paces back and spat the rest of the tobacco onto the ground, not once moving the muzzle of the gun from pointing toward Beck's head. "Just that you're here with your camera taking photographs when you got no business to be."

Beck said nothing. The tension was escalating. Something was about to happen. He could sense it. He could feel it.

The biker tilted his ugly head. "Now, let me show you how we handle guys like you," he said and pulled a playing card from the inside pocket of his cut and flicked it at Beck's feet. It was poker-sized, three and a half inches long by two and a half inches wide, and black with a white border. In the middle of the black inner box was a sketch of a headless man wearing a hooded black robe, with white bony hands clutching a wooden scythe that had a curved silver blade. The card bounced off the dirt and landed reaper-up, and the biker quickly pulled the trigger.

The pull fed the round from the magazine into the path of the slide. The slide chambered the round, sending it inside the chamber and locking against the breech end of the barrel, and the firing pin engaged. But, instead of a deadly thunderous bang, the gunshot was nothing more than a toothless, muted click. The firing pin jammed and the gun didn't fire.

When the biker realized what had happened, his eyes quickly widened. A look of fright came over his face. He gulped and tried again, pulling the trigger for a second time.

Same result. A tame, muted click.

The guy's face changed again. He opened his mouth, aghast, like he realized the gun he was holding was suddenly about as much use as a used condom, and like he knew fine well what was coming.

Beck's face changed, too. He grinned. The gun out of commission, it was down to a one-on-one, man-on-man fight, and up against a big outlaw biker or not, he fancied his chances. "Pays to take better care of your gun," he said and charged forward and put the guy down with a football tackle reminiscent of his linebacker days with the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

The biker caved backward and the gun fell from his grip as they both crashed hard against the dirt, the biker first and Beck on top of him, his arms wrapped around the biker's torso. A puff of brown dirt swirled upward into the air.

Underneath it all, Beck wrapped his huge hands around the guy’s neck and squeezed as hard as he could. It was like trying to crush the trunk of a tree with his bare hands.

The guy felt the pressure shoot up his head and his face began to turn red. Instinctively, he knew he had to break free and went for Beck's eyes. He wrapped his hands around the sides of Beck’s head and pressed his thumbs hard into his eye sockets.

The pressure was immense. Beck groaned in pain and let go of the guy’s throat and fell sideward. The guy wriggled out, coughing, and climbed on top of him. He grabbed Beck's face and pressed his thumbs into his eyes some more.

The pressure and the pain were incredible.

Beck twisted and writhed and groaned. He knew he had to act. Quickly. He knew he had to do something drastic to break free, otherwise his eyeballs would cave into his head. Without thinking, he reached up under the guy’s left armpit and went for his ear. He cupped his right hand around it and squeezed as hard as he could, then ripped it from the side of his head.

The biker felt the tear and gasped. He let go of Beck's eyes and brought his right hand up against the side of his head. It felt empty and warm and sticky and moist where his ear had been. He began to pant and sob as he realized what had happened and the wound began to sting.

Beck dropped the severed ear onto the dirt and pushed the guy off of him before he got any blood onto his shirt. Then, he rolled to his left and rose up onto all fours and winced and blinked, trying to relieve the pressure in his eyes and bring his vision back from a blur as the biker began rolling around groaning with one hand held over the left of his head and the other held in front of his face, holding his severed ear between his fingertips with blood dripping down his wrist.

Just then, Beck heard the bikes' engines thunder to life. It was a loud collective vroom. He glanced up beyond the trash and saw them straddling the pads of their power cruisers, ready to move off. He saw the cops sitting inside their police cruiser with the lights flicked on and also the members of the Raton Reapers atop their bikes, ready to move off but not before one of them killed his engine and looked Beck’s way.

He had obviously heard some of the biker’s distressed groans in the distance and wondered what was going on. Beck knew he had to silence him otherwise the guy would come to take a look, the rest of the biker gang probably coming with him. But he knew he couldn't shoot him. The gunshot would be too loud. It would attract their full attention. His first thought was to draw the six-inch Smith & Wesson HRT boot knife he kept holstered by the crus of his right leg and use it to cut his throat, then he saw a cholla cactus lurking behind a great big black bag of trash a few feet beyond the guy's left shoulder.

The cactus was easily three feet tall. It was thick like a boa constrictor and green with about thirty joints. The trunk and joints were white with a fur-like layer of compacted spines, each as sharp as razor blades and at least an inch or so long. It was perfect for what Beck wanted to do.

He quickly rose to his feet and dusted the dirt from his pants, stepped toward the guy and grabbed him by his long red ponytail. He yanked his head upward from the ground and dragged his ass across the dirt to the base of the cactus. "This is going to hurt," he said and kicked the bag of trash out of the way, then pressed the guy's face, nose, eyes and mouth against the cactus's trunk before the guy could even think of a response.

About a hundred spines punctured the guy’s skin all the way through to the bone, digging in like a buzzard's talons into its prey. Blood spurted from the holes and trickled down the guy’s face. He squirmed and groaned and cried, his sounds muffled by nature while felt the sharp spines tearing at his flesh and eyes and scraping against his skull. It was messy but effective, a bit like taking a sharp needle to a gum abscess.

The guy tried to wriggle free, painfully, but Beck held his head tight and pushed him against the cactus, hard, and held him in position for exactly three minutes, while listening to the power cruisers roar as the other bikers moved off. It was probably a little longer than he needed to, but he was making sure the job was done.

At first, the guy's thrashing grew more and more frantic as the air evaded his lungs and the cactus spines penetrated deeper into his flesh, sending more and more blood spurting from the pricks. Then, he began hyperventilating, sucking in what little blood-filled breath he could before, eventually, falling limp. Suffocated to an excruciating death, his face looking like a pincushion, reduced to a bloodied crimson mass and covered in seeping holes.

Beck let go of his head and let out a relieved sigh. Holding a man in position like that was a job of work, especially a giant of a man like him. He stepped backward, breathing heavily, leaving the guy lifelessly lying slumped against the base of the blood-stained cholla behind him.

Beck turned around and scooped up the dead biker's gun, thinking his sweat was on its muzzle and not wanting to leave obvious traces around, and his cell phone from the dirt. He checked the screen. It was still intact. He unlocked the device and confirmed it was working just fine and that its gallery was still filled with the pictures he took.

He smiled, knowing, with that, he had them all dead to rights, especially the dirty cops. He looked around and lifted the playing card the biker had tossed at his feet, thinking it would come in handy. He stuffed it into the pocket of his pants, then went and rummaged through the dead biker's pockets. He found some cigarettes, a stainless-steel Zippo lighter, a wallet with about a hundred bucks of cash inside it and another one of the reaper playing cards in the same pocket as the guy had drawn the other one from. He took the cash and the other playing card and walked back to his car, got in and fired up the engine and headed back to town.

FIVE

Back in Trinidad, Beck made his way to a UPS store on Independence Road on the north end of town. It was a typical mail fulfillment house - glass fronted with yellow walls inside and piled high with cardboard boxes and big expensive-looking printing machines. It offered patrons complimentary self-serve coffee from a stainless-steel airpot in brown paper cups and a plate of sticky-looking sugar ring donuts.

He helped himself to a free coffee, coloring it with some cream, but skipped on the donuts and approached the counter. He handed his cell phone to a young black woman who was standing behind it. She was dressed in a brown UPS uniform and branded ball cap. He asked if she could print some copies of his pictures and mail them to Denver.

"There's about fifteen or twenty pictures on there. I need printouts of all of them. And I need them mailed to Denver."

The woman took his cell phone and hooked it up to a computer and selected the pictures to print.

"You want them in color or black and white?"

"Color."

She clicked the mouse and the pictures began to print from a light-gray Xerox behind the counter.

"OK. For eighteen prints, I can only do them as flyers. For those, you're looking at fifty bucks."

"That's fine," he said and drank some coffee. It was lukewarm, having sat out in the pot for most of the evening, but still caffeinated.

"Where did you say you wanted to send them?"

"A place at eight-thousand, East Thirty-six Avenue. Zip code, eight-zero-two-three-eight."

She flicked her eyes down to the computer screen and clicked the mouse a few more times, keyed in the address Beck gave her, then pulled a face and looked up at him.

"That's an FBI office."

Beck nodded. "I know," he said and took another drink.

"And that's right?" she asked, sceptical.

Beck nodded again, and took another sip. "Yeah. That's where they've to go."

"OK, then. Standard shipping will be fifteen dollars. Would you like them signed for? Guarantee that they get there?"

"Yeah."

"OK. That'll be an extra seven dollars. Makes twenty-two for the shipping."

"That's fine," Beck replied, figuring the dead biker was paying for it anyway.

"Can I take your name for the records?"

Beck thought about it for a beat. He wasn't about to give his real name, not after leaving that guy dead out by the back of the landfill. He quickly went through about a hundred names in his mind, mostly B-list actors who nobody recognizes by name but vaguely remembers their face when they see them pop up in something. Then, a particular name shot to the front of his mind.

"Scotty Riggs."

The woman nodded and keyed it into the computer.

"OK, Mr. Riggs. And your address? For the return mail option."

Beck gave Scotty Riggs's address.

"Apartment number four-zero-six, five-hundred State Street, Trinidad. And zip code is eight-one-zero-eight-two."

"Thank you," the woman said and clicked the mouse a few more times and a postage label printed out from behind the counter. "Your total is seventy-two dollars plus tax. Brings you to seventy-eight dollars and five cents."

Beck drew his wallet from his pants and peeled four twenties from the bill slot. It was eighty bucks he had only picked up a short time ago. He handed it over.

The UPS worker ran it through the register and handed him his change - one dollar bill, three quarters and two dimes. Then, she had him sign a piece of paper confirming he knew what he was sending, who he was sending it to and that there was nothing inside that was on their dangerous, not-to-be-mailed items list.

Beck dated it and signed it as Scotty Riggs, careful not to touch it with anything other than the pen, then smiled and handed the pen back to her.

The UPS worker took the signed document and slipped it into a plastic wallet, then filed the wallet into the drawer. After taking care of that, she drew a thick brown manilla envelope from another drawer and collected his photo prints from the Xerox. She slipped them inside and sealed the end, pealed the white postage label from the printout and slapped it onto the front.

"OK. That's you. It should get there by Friday, sometime between four and seven o'clock. You can track it with the item number on our website," she said and handed him a postage receipt with the item code quoted along the top.

Beck took it from her and nodded. He stuffed it into his pants and necked the rest of his lukewarm coffee, threw his empty paper cup in the trash and left the store.

SIX

Dirty cops and both biker gangs rumbled with the photographs on route to the FBI, Beck's next order of business was to deal with the Colorado Crows MC's existing drug store. But, to do that, he would have to find out where they would keep it. He turned to the internet.

With a quick Google search of 'Colorado Crows Trinidad,' he found a motorcycle club website. It was as expected, a black background with hard-to-read white text and decorated with big prominent biker club symbols - black crows and bikes and alcohol.

He navigated to the chapter locations listings page. Trinidad was listed on there, near the bottom below other more populous places like Denver, Aurora, Fort Collins, and Castle Rock.

He tapped the link.

It opened a page with some Trinidad chapter information. It reaffirmed the club's name and outlined its purpose as well as featuring some pictures of members wearing full leather cut, Scotty Riggs being one of them, and mounting bikes. The same big black Harleys Beck had seen them riding on to the landfill. But other than that, it wasn't much use. The only contact information it offered was an online email box and physical P.O. box located on Trinidad Main Street. Nothing that gave Beck any indication as to their base of operation.

He turned back to Google and did a few searches but found nothing else to go on. He thought about Brandi from the bar and figured, if she had been dating Riggs for any considerable length of time, chances were, she would likely know something about the club he was a part of. He fired up the Camaro's engine and gunned it back into town and made his way to the bar.

By the time he got there, it was eight o’clock, around two hours after he had left. The place was still exactly the same. The lights were dim and the bar was musty. The same few guys were in the booths or sitting perched at the bar drinking their beers and spirits. They just seemed a little more drunk. Brandi was there too. She was standing behind the counter, uncapping a bottle of Coors Light for an older guy who was holding a folded-up ten-dollar bill in his right hand.

She looked up and saw Beck as he came in the door. Her face changed. She became apprehensive.

He nodded, once, and flicked his eyes over to an empty booth on his right. It was the first one inside, right by the door. He gestured toward it.

She glanced at it and nodded back and mouthed him something like, ‘two minutes.’

He took a seat, his back to the bar, his face toward the exit. It was just as he always sat, with his eyes on the door, a clear view of the main breach point.

Brandi came over about a minute or so later. He heard the heels of her boots clip-clopping on the hard wooden floor and caught a whiff of her spicy perfume. It was as strong as it had been earlier when she leaned over the bar and whispered Scotty Riggs's name. She sat down opposite him, angst on her face and questions in her eyes.

He shook his head.

She pulled a face.

"Not yet," he said and glanced around, making sure nobody was listening. "I went over there, but I got caught up with the MC."

"What do you mean you got caught up?"

He shook his head, again. "Never mind. Thing is, I saw them buying a whole bunch of drugs."

"So?"

He leaned forward over the table. "There were two cops with them. Dirty ass cops. They came with black holdall bags, bags I bet were stuffed with cash, and they took the drugs away in the trunk of their squad car."

Brandi pulled another face. "OK. So, what's that got to do with me? Why are you telling me this?"

"Something's going on here. And it's a whole lot bigger than just your Scotty Riggs situation."

She said nothing. Just looked at him.

"And I need your help to put an end to it."

"No way," she said and shook her head, then moved to stand up.

Beck raised his right hand, gesturing her to hold up. "Why not?"

"Because I don't want involved in Crows bullshit. That's why."

"Maybe so, but don't you want to make a difference? Don't you want to put an end to their drug running, to the corruption that’s slithered its way into the local police force?"

She shook her head and stood up from the booth.

"Brandi," Beck said, louder than he had to, to keep her attention.

She looked back at him.

"Sit down."

She pulled a face for the third time, this time her eyebrows narrowing over the bridge of her nose. "Why?"

"Because what I’m about to say will affect you."

"What will? How?" she asked.

"Take a seat," he replied and gestured to the empty seat opposite him.

She stared at him.

He said nothing. He just gestured her to sit back down.

She did.

"Well?" she asked.

"You asked how I got caught up with the MC? Well, when I went to his place, the gang was there. Riggs came out and jumped on his bike and they all rode off. I followed them. They met up with the cops on their way to the landfill, where they met with another biker gang. Some faction by the name of Raton Reapers. That's where they got the drugs. And that’s how I saw it all. That’s how I know what they’re up to."

"Right. And?"

Beck pulled out his cell phone and held it up for her to see. "While I was there, I took their pictures. Then, I had them printed."

She nodded, slowly, a focused look in her eye, her mouth slightly open, thoughts on her mind.

"They're currently in a brown envelope on their way to the FBI office up in Denver."

She pulled an annoyed face and shook her head. "Right, so how does that affect me?"

"I said my name was Scotty Riggs and put his address on the return mail slip."

"OK..."

"Well, suppose I go take him out of the equation for you. What do you think happens next?"

She shook her head.

"I'll tell you what," Beck answered. "Once the FBI gets those photos, all hell will break loose. The dirty cops and most of the MC's members will get scooped up. But, guaranteed, somebody will slip the net. Somebody will get away. And if they do, they'll figure it out, eventually. They'll put two and two together and work out that it was you. They'll say you were involved. They'll say you were behind it because you wanted to get back at him.”

Her eyes widened.

Beck nodded.

"So, the rest of the MC members do know about your break up?"

She swallowed hard but said nothing.

He nodded and continued. "Then, suppose they figure you're involved, what do you think happens?"

She knew fine well. She took a breath and shook her head and ran her fingers through her long dark hair. "Jesus."

He nodded again. "Exactly."

"So, now what?"

"I'm going to take care of the MC and make that problem disappear."

"How?” she asked him. “How the hell are you going to do that?"

He shook his head. "That doesn't matter. You don't need to know."

She looked him the question.

"Plausible deniability."

She sighed, unamused.

“But I need something from you.”

“What?”

"The MC's location."

She paused, a worried look in her eye.

Beck looked her dead in the eye and shook his head. "Trust me. It won't come back on you."

"You're sure?"

"Certain."

"OK, then. But what do you mean by their location?"

"The most likely place you can think of where they would operate from, where they would store a haul of drugs."

She shook her head, incredulous, and pulled a face. "How would I?"

Beck interrupted her before she could finish. "Because you dated a member. He must have said something. You must know where he used to go. Was it a warehouse? A storage lock-up? A clubhouse?"

She took a deep breath and thought about it. Her face changed.

“You know,” Beck said and nodded. “It’s OK. You can tell me.”

She looked around and swallowed a few times. "It’s a clubhouse. They’ve got a clubhouse."

Beck leaned forward, anticipation howling through his body. “Where?”

She took a deep breath and moved to tell him, then stopped. "Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Giving a shit.”

"Because," Beck began and nodded his head back toward the bar. "When I was sitting up there earlier, I noticed a copy of the local newspaper. There was a feature on the front. It was about the death of a local little twelve-year-old boy. You know what happened to him?"

She shook her head. "What?"

"He found some drugs in his home, heroin, and he took them."

Brandi's eyes widened. She brought her hand up over her mouth. “My God,” she said and paused, thinking of her own little three-year-old son, pondering the harrowing prospect of something like that happening to him, taking away his chance to live long enough to see his teens.

"Heroin that the journalist believes to be coming from a southern supply chain here in the state," Beck added. "That was most likely trafficked in from New Mexico and bought by that biker gang your ex-boyfriend Scotty Riggs is involved with. That's why I’m doing this. That’s why I’m the one who’s giving a shit."

Brandi nodded her understanding. "OK," she said and leaned forward over the table. Her breasts pressed together and against the table’s surface.

Beck glanced down at them, imagining them out of the confines of her top, hanging loose and free. Naked. He imagined cupping his shovel-like hands around them and squeezing them hard. He grinned, briefly.

"I can tell you where the clubhouse is," she said. "But if I do, I need a guarantee. I need to know you'll back me up if it all goes to shit."

Beck flicked his eyes back up to hers and nodded. "Of course," he replied and drew his wallet from his pants.

"What are you doing?"

He opened his wallet and drew a small white paper business card from one of the card slots and laid it down on the table. "Giving you my guarantee," he answered and slipped it across the table to her.

She scooped it up and flicked her eyes across it.

It was small and white, three and a half inches long by two inches wide, and was printed on thick cardstock paper that gave it a sturdy sort of feel. His name was in the middle along the top in navy-blue capital letters with the words ‘Private Detective’ below it in similar navy-blue capitalized font, although smaller in size than his name. Below the job title was a thin black dividing line, and below that were his contact details - a web address, an email address and a phone number, both in dark-red text. The phone number began with 917 - the area code for New York City.

"You need me, you call the number on that card,” he said. “It doesn't matter the time of day and it doesn't matter what it’s for. You need me, you call that number. I can promise you, I’ll pick up.”

She smiled then shook her head, slightly confused. “But you’re from New York?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m from everywhere. That’s a virtual number. It forwards to my cell phone. Rest assured, you call it, I’ll answer. You tell me you need me, I’ll be right behind you. A hundred percent.”

She cupped the business card in her hand and nodded, assured. "OK, then. The clubhouse, it's inside a car garage over on Commercial Street. North end."

Beck made a mental note and thanked her.

Brandi smiled and stood up and slipped Beck's contact card into the tight pocket of her hot pants. "So, what now?"

"Keep your eye out for the next edition of the local newspaper," Beck said to her and left the bar.

SEVEN

Beck got into his car and drove northeast along Main Street, stopping at a Shell gas station on the corner of Main Street and Linden Avenue. He parked in a spot outside the kiosk, next to a Red Bull truck and an old navy-blue station wagon with wooden side panels. He got out and went inside. He grabbed a reloadable Visa gift card from the rack and loaded it with twenty bucks, then used it to buy a matchbook, some tacky beige-and-blue tea towels, a four-pack of glass bottles of orange soda, a red five-liter jerrycan and five dollars of gas for pump two before stepping out the door.

He put the four-pack of soda into the trunk of the Camaro along with the tea towels and the matchbook, and walked over and filled the jerrycan with the gas. By the time it was full, the pump meter was at $3.13, just under a couple of bucks left. He decided to leave it for somebody to get lucky and walked back over to his car, where he popped the trunk and put the jerrycan inside with the rest of the stuff before getting into the driving seat.

Knowing what he was planning on doing would be best done underneath the clandestine cover of darkness, he glanced at his watch. It was almost eight forty-five. The sky had already turned a nightly shade of gray and navy blue but was yet to darken to its fullest effect.

Beck knew it wouldn't be long until complete darkness covered the streets, maybe another hour or so. He had time to kill and he was hungry. He decided to loop back into town, where he stopped off at a casual dining BBQ restaurant and devoured a big-ass, hickory-smoked turkey leg and a large side of skin-on fries.

After sitting for a couple of hours and drinking about fourteen refills of soda, everything from Coke Zero to Diet Dr. Pepper, as he went over the plan in his mind, he paid the twenty-four-dollar bill, left a six-buck tip on the table and left the restaurant.

With the sky now somewhere between midnight and onyx black, streaked with clouds and peppered with a few twinkling stars, he got into his Camaro and drove off north along Commercial Street toward the Colorado Crows' Trinidad clubhouse under the eerie glow of the full moon illuminating the night. He switched his Camaro's headlights off as he passed underneath the highway and cruised along the street in darkness, the car practically appearing then disappearing as he moved between the buzzing dull orange street lights.

Less than a hundred yards of empty road later, he eased the Camaro to a halt up by the curb, a few car lengths down from the garage, outside a long-abandoned Italian takeaway. Its windows and doors were covered with sheets of plywood, themselves sprayed with time-faded graffiti, and although the sign above the door was practically gone, the building's red-brick facade was besmirched with the outline of the establishment's name. Marco's. Only the C from the sign remained in place.

Although he was more of a steak or brisket of beef sort of guy, Beck thought about all the creamy penne carbonara and the golden-brown crispy calzone it must've once served as he killed the Camaro's engine and sat in silence casing the garage up ahead on the right.

It was a corrugated-steel structure comprised of three adjoining buildings surrounded by a gray concrete yard and ringed by a ten-foot-high black wrought-iron fence. Each of the buildings were different sized. The farthest away one was relatively small and square, the middle was one bigger than the farthest one and the nearest one was longer than the middle one and rectangular-shaped. They each had dark-gray apex roofs, and the nearest one, the rectangular-shaped one, had six garages with gun-gray steel shutters. There were no windows at the front of any of the buildings, just a gray steel fire door in the center of the middle building that joined the other two. A PVC sign above the door bolted to the steel wall said, 'Trinidad Auto Shop.'

It was locked up for the night with a blind drawn behind the wrought-iron-barred window of the fire door and all of the garage doors down, fully closed. There was also a heavy steel chain padlocked to the front black steel gate, and the yard was in complete darkness.

Beck could practically taste the imaginary pan-fried bacon lardons and feel the crispy dough of the calzone flake against his tongue as he scanned the eves of the building for cameras. Seeing none, he stepped out of the car to the hot night air and glanced around. Satisfied there was nobody around, he popped the trunk and drew a pair of heavy steel bolt cutters from inside. They were the color of rusted metal. He used them to snip the steel chain from the garage's front gate.

It buckled under the bolt cutters’ jaws and fell to the ground with a metallic clank.

He kicked it aside and pushed the gate open, then stepped into the yard, holding the bolt cutters in his right hand like they were a light wooden baseball bat or a heavy blunt object fit for utilizing in a fight. The first thing he did was try the main door.

It was locked.

The next thing he did was mess with the garage doors. He pushed and pressed them and inspected their frames but failed to find a way in. Like the door, they were all heavy-duty and locked completely shut.

He moved around the back of the building, looking for a window or accessible ventilation shaft that was big enough to enter in through. But any ventilation system must've been on the roof because he didn't find any vented shafts around the sides or the back. Although, he did find windows. Three of them. All around the back. Two of them were covered with thick black wrought-iron bars of the kind that are used to reinforce the windows of jail cells, similar to the bars over the window in the fire door at the front. The other window wasn't covered with anything.

He walked toward it and pushed his face in close, his nose only about a millimeter away from the glass, and looked inside.

The blind was drawn across it. It was black but thin. It didn't do much to cover the room. It looked like a meeting room. He saw a great big heavy oak table in the middle of the floor. It was surrounded by leather swivel chairs and engraved with the Colorado Crows name and symbol - a giant angry-looking black crow. It looked like the place where all club decisions were taken, from getting into dealing heroin down to who to buy it from and who to sell it to.

Beck's eyes scanned the room, and, eventually, he saw it. The heroin haul. It was in the same cardboard boxes as he had seen at the landfill, all piled up underneath the big oak table. They had been careless, leaving it in an unsecured room, and he was about to take full advantage of it.

He grinned, then thought of the innocent little boy who had died after unwittingly ingesting the very thing in the boxes as he raised the metal bolt cutters from his side. Like a Yankees batter at the top of his game and going for the hit that would secure the World Series, he swung the bolt cutters back around the right of his body and whipped them forward with all the might he had.

The heavy metal jaws smashed against the glass like a thirty-ton anchor slapping the surface of a dark placid ocean. The window had no chance. It shattered immediately, glass flying everywhere into the room.

Beck sucked a breath and steadied himself, then relaxed a little and waited.

There was no alarm.

He nodded slowly and turned around and quickly made his way back to the car, where he tossed the bolt cutters into the trunk and lifted out two of the glass bottles of soda. He uncapped the bottles using the keychain of his car keys and tipped the soda out onto the ground. Next, he unscrewed the jerrycan and used it to fill the glass bottles with gasoline. Then, finally, he pulled the tea towels from the pack and tore one of them into two rags. He scrunched the rags up and stuffed them into the necks of the gasoline-filled bottles.

He lifted his two newly-home-made Molotov cocktails from the back and grabbed the matchbook and closed the Camaro's trunk, softly, then made his way back down the street, careful not to be seen, and ducked in the open gate. A few long strides later, he was back around the back of the building, standing looking in the window he had just broken minutes before.

He laid the two bottles on the ground and drew a match from the matchbook. He struck struck the match head on the striker to sparked a glowing orange fireball that eased back to a flickering orange flame. Cupping the match in his hand, his palm glowing orange, he brought it down to the first of the tea-towel-stuffed soda bottles and held it against the cloth.

The flame singed the cloth's end and the fire spread like a plague of locusts, the tea towel catching ablaze at the top of the bottle.

Beck, then, did the same with the second bottle, holding the burning match against the towel for a few seconds for it to catch fire.

Two bottles burning at their necks and sending a flickering orange glow up the side of the building, Beck blew out the match and stuffed it into his pocket, then he lifted the burning bottles of gasoline from the ground and, one-by-one, lobbed them in through the broken window.

The first bottle landed below the table by the boxes of drugs and burst into flames on the floor, engulfing one of the leather chairs. The second bottle was a direct hit. It landed on top of the drugs and exploded into a bright orange fireball underneath the table, setting them alight.

Beck smiled and stood for a moment watching the fire catch and spread inside. The drugs engulfed first, then the table and, then, the remaining chairs, before the fire spread across the floor and up the walls and, then, through the door on the left of the room. The heat was immense and the flames lit his face with a burning orange glow.

Knowing he couldn't hang around, he drew the Raton Reapers playing card from his pocket, dusted his fingerprints from it with his t-shirt and flicked it to the ground in the yard, then hurried back to his car and climbed in.

He fired up the engine and pulled the car away from the curb before anybody noticed him sitting idling down the street from the bikers' burning clubhouse. He continued along Commercial Street before turning onto Colorado Avenue and looping around onto State Street to go pay Scotty Riggs a visit.

EIGHT

Beck pulled up outside Scotty Riggs's apartment block for the second time. This time, though, under a blanket of darkness. He scanned the outside of the building and looked at the windows. The three windows, four high on the right corner, which he figured aligned up with Scotty Riggs's bedroom, bathroom and lounge, were in darkness, curtains drawn across them. The only unit in the block with a light on being the apartment one level below and two along.

Beck nodded, grimly, and got out of the car. He made his way toward the door and pressed the buzzer for apartment 304.

It crackled and a woman answered.

"Hello?"

"Pizza delivery for three-zero-one."

"You got the wrong the home," she barked.

"Sorry," Beck replied.

"It's fine. I'll let you in this time," the woman said.

There was a loud buzz and the door clicked open.

Beck stepped inside.

On the other side of the door was a rather small, windowless and sparsely-lit foyer. There were doors on either side, leading to the front ground floor apartments. A square spiral stairwell and corridor was straight ahead. The stairs were vinyl, cream and speckled with small stony flashes of dark gray, and nosed with black anti-slip coverings with stainless-steel edging. At the bottom of the stairs was a parlor palm tree in a navy-blue china pot. The soil around the tree was light brown and hard-looking, lined with deep crevices and cracks. The tree bark was warped and green. Decaying. It hung to its left. And the tree's leaves were brown and droopy, withering at the ends. It was rather sad looking, like the residents never even bothered their asses with it. They probably figured it was a communal thing, making it somebody else's problem.

Beck walked past it, going straight for the stairs. He climbed his way to the fourth floor, where he walked down a narrow white corridor and made his way to apartment 406.

Standing outside Scotty Riggs's apartment door, Beck glanced around and made sure the coast was clear. Then, satisfied it was, he drew the plastic reloadable Visa card from his wallet and slipped it into the vertical gap between the door and the frame.

He slid it down the gap to be adjacent to the handle and pushed it in as far as it would go. His hand shook from the force. Next, he tilted the card toward the door handle, bending it sideward until it was almost touching the brass. This allowed him to push it in another centimeter or so in toward the lock.

He did. Then, he bent it back the other way, toward the wooden door frame. The edge of the card slipped under the angled end of the slanted latch bolt and forced it back into the door.

Beck bent the door handle downward and leaned on the door. Applying as much pressure as he could to the door and the handle and the latch, he wiggled the plastic Visa card back and forth and back and forth, and eventually, the lock popped back and the door slipped open.

Beck quickly stuffed the mangled plastic Visa card into the pocket of his pants and stepped into the apartment, gently closing the door behind him.

Inside, it was dark. The lights were off and everything was on stand-by for the night. He entered into an open hallway with a dining area on the left and a kitchen on the right. He saw the red lights from the clock on the microwave and the oven and the blue digital display of the refrigerator shining in the night. Ahead was a lounge. It had two cream fabric sofas sitting around a glass coffee table opposite a large flat-screen television that was sitting on a glass television stand. On the table were five empty beer bottles, four standing upright and one lying on its side beside an ashtray thick with white powdery ash and stubbed out cigarette butts.

Beck padded across the brown Berber carpet through lounge toward the doors at the back of the apartment. There were three of them. All white and wooden. One of them led to a white, nonchalant bathroom with a damp white bath towel lying in a heap on the tiled floor, the other two led to the bedrooms.

Beck looked in the first of the two. It was basic. Just a bed with a white duvet, two bedside cabinets and the same brown Berber carpet. He saw nobody inside. Which left the last one. He heard a sudden light snoring sound coming from behind the final door. A sure-fire sign that somebody was in there. Asleep, unassuming, vulnerable. And given whose apartment it was, Beck was willing to bank on it being Scotty Riggs, himself.

Beck stood facing the door and sucked a deep breath, then reached for the handle and opened the door.

He was right. Scotty Riggs was there, all alone and fast asleep, drooling and curled up in a ball on a queen-sized bed underneath a similar white duvet as was in the other bedroom. His jet-black faux hawk was fanned out on his plump white pillow.

Beck stepped in and padded across the Berber carpet around the side of his bed. "Get your ass up," he roared and hauled him from his bed by the scruff of his black pajama top. He pulled him up out of the bed covers and flung him across the room.

Riggs hit the wall with a hard thud before he could even comprehend what was happening and fell to the carpet in a disorientated, crumpled heap. As he steadied himself on the carpet and pushed his back against the wall, the look on his face conveyed a mixture of terror, shock and surprise, like he knew something bad was happening, but he wasn't awake enough to fathom exactly what.

Beck helped him with that. He darted over and blasted his ribs with a hard size-fourteen punt kick.

Riggs yelped in pain and bounced off the wall.

Beck kicked him again, in the exact same spot.

His reaction was the same.

"Not so tough now, are you?" Beck snarled and picked him up by the scruff of his top.

Riggs didn't reply. There were tears in his eyes and fear on his face.

Beck pinned him back against the wall with his left hand around his throat and balled his right hand into a football-sized fist. "Those two were payback for the little boy who died after ingesting your gang's heroin. But this one, this is payback for hitting a woman, this one's for Brandi," he said and smashed the left side of his face with a savage right hook.

Riggs yelped in agony and flopped sideward in Beck's grip, his cheek and jaw broken and slung out of place, and his eyebrow cut. It began to bruise and swell immediately.

Beck hauled him back up and hit him again. The force of the blow was the same, but this one felt even more painful. Beck's rock-like knuckles hammered his broken, swollen face like a hammer blasting the back of a nail to force it deep into a plank of wood.

Riggs wailed and flopped sideward, unconscious.

Beck threw him to the floor.

He fell onto a small black cardboard storage box that was sitting against the wall by the side of a white wooden chest of drawers. It exploded under his weight and its contents spilled out onto the carpet.

It contained the photographs of three women. Head shots in full color and printed on white A4 paper. The first two, Beck didn't know. They were both attractive and somewhere in their thirties with tanned skin and long dark hair. In the photographs, each woman looked to be lying down on a dark earthy carpet, eyes lifelessly closed, her face bruised and blackened from what anybody would've guessed would've been caused by a hard pummeling. A clear press-and-seal plastic bag was clipped onto the top-right corner of each photograph with a black paper clip, and inside each bag was a thick lock of dark hair.

Beck gasped looking at it, then looked at the third photograph in the pile. It was a picture of another attractive brunette. A woman with long dark silky hair and a tanned complexion, just like the other two. This one, though, was different. In this photograph, the woman wasn't lying in a beaten lifeless pulp. Instead, she was very much alive, standing by a big black Harley Davidson, wearing tight jeans and a tight black top, posing with her hand up in the air and an alluring smile on her beautiful face. She had the look of a woman he felt like he knew. A pair of eyes looking back at him from the paper which he felt he had looked into in person before.

Beck studied her figure for another brief second. Around her neck, he noticed a silver necklace dangling over her top, a small crystal crucifix hanging against the bump of her breasts from beneath the t-shirt's soft cotton fibers. Suddenly, his heart skipped a beat. He realized who the woman in the picture was. He realized he had met her before. Sat across from her in a bar, even. He realized it was Brandi Burrows - the bombshell whose eye had recently been blackened by the hand of the man whose bedroom he was now standing in.

To the right of the three pictures, Beck noticed a carbon steel knife. It was stashed inside another clear press-and-seal plastic bag that was lying on the carpet, inconspicuous, almost tucked out of sight from one of the broken sides of the box. Through the plastic, it looked like the knife was easily five inches long and, as far as Beck could see, with a blade that was sharp and smooth and coated in a crusted carmine substance that looked like it had been there for a while. Some of the substance had flaked off and was sitting nestled by the underside of the blade at the bottom of the plastic bag.

Beck stared down at it, incredulous, and sucked in a sobering breath, quickly realizing what it all was and what the knife had likely been used for. He glanced back toward Scott Riggs, who was grunting in a crumpled heap while he lay on the bedroom floor, the stark realization on his mind that the guy he was looking at had likely dated, beaten and killed the two of the three women in the photographs, with Brandi Burrows likely to be victim number three of three.

Beck swallowed hard, then shook his head. Not her, not on my watch, he thought and took the other Raton Reapers calling card from his pocket. He wiped his fingerprints and DNA off it with his t-shirt and dropped it onto Scotty Riggs's bed. Then, he drew his Smith & Wesson from the small of his back and looped his right forefinger through the trigger guard, lifted Scotty Riggs up and put the gun in his mouth. Beck looked him in his fearful eyes and said, "This one's payback for being a sick fuck," and pulled the trigger.

Bang.

NINE

Trinidad police investigated the car garage fire and the killing of Scotty Riggs. Finding the calling cards of the Raton Reapers left at both scenes but an absence of DNA evidence, they pinned them on the Reapers biker gang and declared them as crimes conducted in the exertion of criminal enterprise.

When the members of the Trinidad chapter of the Colorado Crows MC heard their clubhouse and stash of heroin had gone up in smoke and found out Scotty Riggs had been killed in his bedroom with the Reapers' cards left behind, they reacted like any bona-fide bad-ass biker gang would have and started a full-on gang war.

First, they bolstered their ranks by finding a couple of extra hands in the nomads who roamed southern Colorado's open plains. Then, about twelve-or-thirteen-men strong, they all mounted their big roaring Harleys and rode on down I-25 to Raton.

As soon as they arrived, they rode through the city to the Reapers' clubhouse, where they busted down the front door, guns in hand, handguns, shotguns, and even an assault rifle, and massacred everyone inside. It was a bloodbath.

Happy that nobody was left alive, they did a body count and went about tracking down the remaining Reapers club members they knew about but hadn’t killed yet. There were only two of them who hadn't been at the clubhouse at the time. The Crows hit squad went to each of their homes and did the same there, shooting up everyone in the houses. Men, women, children, the lot.

The envelope packed with Joe Beck's photographs of the two biker gangs' drug trade made its way to the FBI's Denver field office. It landed right on time, the following Friday, between four and seven o'clock in the evening. It was signed for on receipt and opened up after going through the proper security protocols, involving X-ray scanners and swab tests.

The pictures were fully scrutinized by the special agent in charge of the Denver division, a sandy-haired man somewhere in his late forties who dressed in camel suits and crisp white shirts. He set up a task force to bring the two gangs and the dirty Trinidad cops down, assigning their best agents to the case and tasking them with bringing it home.

The did. All of the Trinidad chapter Colorado Crows members seen in the photographs, except for Scotty Riggs, were arrested and charged with drug trafficking, suspected money laundering and also the killing of the Reapers biker gang in Raton. The two shady cops seen in Joe Beck’s photographs were also brought into custody on corruption and drug trafficking charges.

Their employment with the Trinidad Police Department was terminated and they were each sentenced to life in prison. They, later, died in jail after word spread about them being former law enforcement and a couple of bitter inmates, who felt they had scores to settle, avenged them with grisly results, stabbing them to death with home-made metal shivs in the showers.

Following their incarceration, the Trinidad chapter of the Colorado Crows MC was broken up. Its members were given similar, life sentences, with most of them being sentenced to death. They were all sent off to United States Penitentiary Florence, a supermax prison in Fremont County, Colorado, to serve their life sentence or sit on death row and await execution.

It turned out that Brandi Burrows didn't have a three-year-old son to one guy, date then break up with Scotty Riggs only to go off and find another guy for a reason of fate or luck. It turned out she was a catalyst, a promiscuous catalyst. On reading the local Chronicle News coverage of the MC's garage fire and the slaying of Riggs, she thought of Joe Beck, the tall, dark-haired and strappingly-handsome guy who had taken care of her problem. Late one evening, she turned to the contact card he had given her and drew out her cell phone and called his number.

Just as he had promised, he answered her call.

Initially, she said she was only calling to thank him but one word led to another and another word led to the next and, eventually, she invited him to her place.

He came a few days later, after working a case down in Albuquerque, and knocked on her door, a fresh bottle of Bulleit bourbon in hand.

After greeting him at the doorway, Brandi invited him in and the rest became history. They spent the next two days inside her house, knocking back shots of whiskey and clocking up a whole lot of mileage between the bedsheets.

Two days later, after showing Brandi the time of her life, Joe Beck's cell phone rang with a call from a woman who needed his help. He accepted the job and finished up with Brandi, packed up his things and kissed her goodbye. He jumped into his car and headed north to investigate a case of a stolen luxury vehicle that turned out to have an unanticipated twist nobody would have foreseen.

THE END

READ ARMY OF ONE

It’s the first book in the Joe Beck thriller series, introducing Joe Beck

Unlicensed outlaw private eye Joe Beck is in McAllen, Texas, for the funeral of an old friend who, he heard, took his own life. While in town, he soon bumps into a beautiful escort named Sapphire, who mistakes him for somebody else. They make plans to spend the night together but soon wind up being taken hostage at gunpoint by a sinister group of men they've never seen before. A group of men who drive them out to the barren Texan desert where a harrowing fate awaits.

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READ EASY MONEY

It’s the third book in the Joe Beck thriller series

Unlicensed outlaw private eye Joe Beck is in snowy Detroit, Michigan, hot on the trail of a murderous drug dealer wanted by the U.S. Marshals.

He witnesses an unrelated murder on a deserted main street and deals with it in the way he does best.

But his actions don’t go unnoticed.

A woman witnesses what he does. With a pressing problem weighing heavily on her mind, she sees him as her only viable solution. She approaches him on the street and makes him an offer he can’t refuse.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alastair Brown is an Amazon Top 10 Best-selling Author who writes the book series featuring Joe Beck - the unlicensed outlaw private eye who drifts around America righting wrongs and reaping riches whilst serving up his own brand of vigilante justice to those who deserve it most.

With a character very much based on himself, Alastair finds inspiration from reading crime reports, watching true crime documentaries, and consuming other works of crime fiction. Everything he writes is designed to captivate and entertain, and finds no better compliment than seeing his readers comment that once they've started reading his books, they just can't put them down.

When he’s not writing, he's usually pushing himself to his limits at the gym or reading the occasional crime report while drinking copious amounts of coffee as he plots the next Joe Beck thriller and conjures up the horrors he'll be thrown up against. He also likes to listen to classic rock music and he appreciates some down time, preferably spent kicking back with a beer while basking under the burning rays of the scorching sun.

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Table of Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

READ ARMY OF ONE

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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