Falcon
Five Years Ago
I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw the door to the pawnshop propped open. My gut sank before I even walked in on the scene. City Pawning was supposed to be neutral ground. No one was supposed to know Alan had been supplying Rogue Demons with firearms through the store. Then again, it had occurred to me that he was probably supplying weapons to several local organizations, which was why he didn’t advertise any allegiances on the street.
Sometimes it was obvious what was about to happen moments before it happened, despite what the plan was. In this case, the plan was to meet with Leo and come to an agreement that would benefit both of us. I should have known when he chose this spot specifically that he knew about Alan’s connection to us. Something told me he hadn’t really called me here for a meeting. The meeting was just a setup.
The windows along the front of the shop had thick iron bars over them that were built into the face of the building. They weren’t installed later over the windows. These were part of the original brick construction. The metal and glass door also had bars over it, but it was propped open by a set of shelves that had been knocked over during whatever had unfolded inside the store.
I pushed the door open a little farther so I could get in. It seemed heavier that night than it had before, as if it carried its own kind of dead weight. I stepped over a rack that had fallen over and started to walk down the middle aisle towards the sales counter.
Alan had several rows of display cases showing off the items he had for sale. He carried electronics from TVs and car stereos to video game consoles and computers. He sold jewelry, musical instruments, and anything else people would bring in that he could get a little bit of money for. The sales counter was where he did most of his high-end business, though.
The sales counter was another glass display case full of his most valuable jewelry. People were always pawning off jewelry. And on the wall behind it, he kept a display rack of guns. Of course, as part of his front for what he really did in the backroom, he kept meticulous records of everything he bought and sold through the pawnshop. Anything that ran through the back was untraceable. His suppliers were mysterious, nameless shadows of speculation, and his customers were anonymous figures who might as well not have existed.
Glass crunched under my feet as I walked past the smashed display cases in the front of the store. Their contents were spilled out all over the floor. DVD players and old VCRs, every video game console imaginable, car stereos, laptops, and so many things I couldn’t name were strewn across the store. He’d had a few large hunting knives on display in the front, as well, but I didn’t see those right away.
I pulled my gun out of the waistband of my jeans. By the time the night was over, I would wish I hadn’t brought my piece with me.
I didn’t speak as I crept around the empty, smashed sales counter. I knew if anyone had been waiting for me, they would have heard my footsteps on the glass out front, but my voice would have drowned out any sounds they made as they adZeked on me, so I refrained from calling out for Alan. Something told me he wasn’t going to be able to answer anyway. If the front of the shop was in this condition, I could only imagine what condition he was in.
I felt like such a fool for trusting Leo to act like he could have some respect for a fellow boss. The scene in the pawnshop made it very clear that this town wasn’t big enough for the both of us. Once I surveyed the damage and got back to HQ, the new plan was going to be to bring him down and make him pay for disrespecting Rogue Demons. He was also going to pay for what he did to our weapons supplier.
I looked around at the front counter. There were no signs of any jewelry left from the raid. The back wall was empty, which was no surprise. Anyone would have taken the guns. I wouldn’t have imagined that a single firearm would be left in the building, regardless of who had conducted the robbery.
I stepped through the dark doorway into the stockroom, where Alan kept anything that wasn’t going on the floor yet. I flipped the light switch to my right, and the room was filled with fluorescent light. It was empty. Leo had raided all of the boxes and bins he had kept full.
I kept my cool and remained quiet. I didn’t even breathe heavily. If it had been Rogue Demons doing this to Leo, we would have had someone waiting to ambush him. So far, I hadn’t seen any signs of anyone waiting for me, but I knew that only counted for so much.
I closed my eyes as I reached the door to the backroom. I imagined stepping in to find Leo and a few of his men holding Alan in a chair at the table as they waited for me to show up. I tested my grip on my trusty Glock 9mm. I didn’t know what waited for me on the other side of that door.
The light was already on when I spun around in the doorway with my arms extended, pointing the gun into the room. Leo and his men were not waiting for me. In fact, they’d left me a little present instead.
Alan sat in the chair across the little wooden table from me, slumped over with his head resting on the table. Except I knew he wasn’t just resting. I stepped around the table and saw the gunshot wound in his head.
“Dammit, Alan,” I said to the body in front of me. “I’m sorry, man. I never should have agreed to meet Leo here.”
I would have put money on the type of gun Leo and his men used to do Alan in. And I would have been right, because I was holding the same type of gun in my hand. My gut turned to ice in that moment. It was another of those moments when I knew what was coming before it came.
I backed out of the little back office where Alan handled his real business into the stockroom again. I slid my gun back into my waistband and started toward the front of the store. I knew some shit was about to go down, so I fished my phone out of my pocket to warn the guys Leo wasn’t coming for us. The law was.
As soon as I stepped out of the doorway to the stockroom and back into the front room, I saw the lights and heard the voices yelling at me as a couple of uniforms walked in with their guns drawn and aimed directly at me.
“Police!”
“Stop right there!”
“Hands where I can see ’em!”
“Put the phone down!”
“Get down on your knees, punk!”
I did as I was told. There was no use in fighting at that point. If there had been just one cop, I might have been able to make it out of there to find a way to put it all back on Leo, but there were at least four of them entering the room. I didn’t stand a chance.
My knees crunched the glass on the floor as several pieces dug into me through my jeans. I winced, but I knew better than to complain. These guys were walking in a busted up store with the leader of a known motorcycle club walking out of the backroom in front of them. Any excuse at all would have been enough for them to ice me right there, no questions asked. I kept my mouth shut.
“Hands behind your head!”
Again, I did as I was told. I wasn’t admitting defeat, I was just biding my time. There was no shame in admitting that Leo had pulled one over on me. In fact, he deserved a medal for being the first local boss to do it, and I was fine with letting him have his moment. He’d earned it. But even as I knelt there on broken glass while more cops poured in through the door to survey the scene, I was already beginning to formulate my plan for revenge. Once all of this blew over, his ass was mine.
An officer grabbed my wrists and pulled my hands down behind my back. I didn’t resist. I went along with him as he cuffed me.
“Any weapons or anything I should know about?” he asked in his hard law enforcement voice.
“Under my vest, sticking out of the back of jeans,” I told him, cooperating.
“Any knives or anything else, like in your boots or anything?” he asked.
“No.” I laughed. “I’ve only got the Glock. And before you ask, no drugs or paraphernalia on me either,” I added.
“Good deal,” he said in an appreciative tone.
Most of the time, guys like me tried to fight back or smart off, like it would do any good. It just made things worse. I had nothing to worry about from these cops. There was nothing they could do that was any worse than what Leo had already done to me or the MC by cutting out our supplier and friend.
He stood me up and started walking me out of the store.
“Care to tell me what happened here?” he asked.
“What does it look like? Someone broke in, smashed all the display cases, stole some stuff, and iced the owner in the backroom,” I told him.
“Who was that?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I had no way of putting it off on Leo because it had been done in a way to put it off on Rogue Demons. The investigation was going to draw all the conclusions that had been planned, and the prosecution was going to find me guilty. I knew how this worked. Luckily, we had no ties that could be proven. The only person who might have told them that Alan was anything but neutral was Leo, and he might have even believed that, too, though I doubted he would have gone after Alan if he didn’t think Alan was supplying us with weapons or something else.
“I didn’t think I’d get an answer from you. Sit tight,” my officer said as he stuffed me in the back of his car and closed the door.
I sat and watched the front of the store, waiting for them to come out and radio someone to come see about the body in the back. Meanwhile, the lights danced on the store fronts along the street. Alan had been in a quiet section of downtown, where the buildings were still separate, and most of them were one story. There wasn’t a lot of foot traffic down this street. Most of the time, people parked at the curb in front of the store they were visiting, went in and out quickly, and hit the road. The bars on Alan’s windows told the story of this area’s reputation.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone other than the police was watching me. I looked around, up and down the street, but I couldn’t see anybody. Someone had to be there to let Leo know the police had taken me, unless the police themselves were letting him know. I narrowed my eyes back at the front of the pawnshop. Leo probably did have someone on the force on his payroll, making my silence even more valuable to my defense.
After they found the body, I was formally arrested and taken in to be booked. The rest proceeded pretty quickly. They held me without bail until my case went to trial. I used MC money to pay for a lawyer. I knew we couldn’t get me off and put it back on Leo because he was behind the robbery itself, the investigation, and the prosecution, so we just focused on minimizing the charges and the sentence.
Luckily, the judge wasn’t on his payroll. Leo wasn’t that strong. As they closed the cell doors on me my first day in the pen, I vowed that he would never get the chance to get that strong. I vowed to take him down the first chance I got, whether I found a way to do it from the inside or if I had to wait until I got back on the street.
Leo Richards was going to pay.