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CHAPTER 21

It was Thursday afternoon.

“Are you ready?” Mordechai shot his shirt cuffs from his sleeves and adjusted his coat.

“I suppose so,” Ariel replied. He was in a black suit with a collarless dark charcoal shirt. “You sure we need to do this in the afternoon?”

“Yes. We need the extra time, and you need to get some experience moving around in the daylight. Do you have your sunglasses?”

Ariel pulled them from his left inside breast pocket and put them on. “Right here.”

“Right. Let’s go, then.”

A few minutes later they were in the car and headed toward their destination, a slightly rundown bar called Hannigan’s on the west side of Santa Carla just east of the river. According to many of their sources, this was the main local hangout for the local chapter of The Devil’s Legions. And according to Mordechai’s special sources, the man they wanted to contact was usually there in the late afternoon every day. Hence their timing.

Santa Carla’s afternoon traffic was relatively thick on the streets, but the GPS system gave them good instructions, and it didn’t take all that long to arrive. Mordechai pulled into the small parking lot, and found an empty parking spot near the end of the building. There were half a dozen motorcycles, mostly Harley-Davidsons, parked directly in front of the bar.

Mordechai didn’t say anything; just beckoned with his head. They exited the car and headed for the bar’s entrance.

Inside, the ambient lighting was dimmer than outside, but neither of them removed their sunglasses. They stood for a moment, taking in the environment of the bar. It was a fairly standard layout, Ariel decided: bar with stools, tables with chairs, and a couple each of pool tables and pinball machines in the back of the main room, all of which were in action with several long-haired and bearded guys with either leather or denim jackets on—all of whom were now looking their direction.

Mordechai headed for the bar. Ariel was two steps behind him, keeping one eye on the bartender and the other on the guys around the pool tables.

“What can I get for ya?” The bartender’s voice had a hint of an Irish accent, which fit the name of the place. Whether it was real or not was anybody’s guess.

“I’m actually looking for Mr. James McLeod,” Mordechai said, resting one hand on the bar. “I was told he’s often here about this time of day.”

The bartender made a point of looking all around the room before returning his gaze to Mordechai. “He’s not here right now. Did you make an appointment? Do you want to leave a message?”

“No and no.” Mordechai shook his head. “But I’m very certain he’s going to want to talk to us.”

The bartender looked back at the bikers, and after a moment one of them gave a slow nod.

“He’s most likely next door at the gym,” the bartender said.

“Thank you,” Mordechai responded with a nod. “We’ll go there directly.” He turned and headed for the door. Ariel lingered for a moment, looking at everyone in the room. The bikers were all uniformly hard-faced, and they stared back at him. He made sure he remembered what they looked like. Once he had that, he followed Mordechai.

Back out in the parking lot, Ariel felt the tingle of the sun on his face even through his sunscreen. He suspected it would become somewhat unpleasant in short order, and he was very glad for the dark glasses shrouding his eyes. He joined Mordechai in gazing up at a green sign that proclaimed Murray’s Fight Club. Looking through the plate glass windows, it looked more like a regular workout gym, with the standard machines in the center of the room, bracketed by large setups of free weights on each side. There was an area of mats at each end of the room, and a couple of guys were desultorily sparring on one of them, so that kind of supported the name.

Mordechai looked over at him. “Shall we?”

“That’s why we’re here.”

Mordechai’s mouth quirked, and he led the way into the gym. Ariel remained a couple of steps behind him, keeping an eye on everyone else in the place. It wasn’t crowded, but then he didn’t expect it to be since it wasn’t the kind of place suburban soccer moms would normally visit during the afternoons, and most of the rest of its patrons probably had day jobs.

They were met inside the door by a muscular man not much older than Ariel wearing a green T-shirt with the gym’s name and logo on it. “Can I help you gentlemen with anything?”

“I’m told that James McLeod is here today.”

The young man looked over his shoulder. “Jake! Couple of gentlemen here to see you.” There was a slight emphasis on the word “gentlemen.”

There was a momentary pause, then a raspy voice said from the middle of the workout machines, “Send ’em on back.”

They threaded their way through the machines until they found themselves facing a middle-aged man wearing gray sweats and a dingy black sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. He was doing leg presses. His hair and beard were shorter than in the pictures Ariel had seen, and there was definitely more gray in the hair, but the face was recognizably that of one James McLeod, putative leader of the local chapter of The Devil’s Legions.

“…thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” McLeod was counting slowly as he did his presses, “sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.” He let the weights down slowly, and sighed as he sat up and pivoted to put his feet on the floor before he wiped his face with a towel, which he then wrapped around his neck. “Whew.”

McLeod looked up at them. “I laid my bike down in some rain a few months ago and messed my knee up. They did a good job of putting it back together, but don’t let anyone tell you therapy ain’t a bitch, especially past forty-five.” He reached out and grabbed a cane propped against the next machine over, and pushed to his feet.

McLeod tilted his head as he looked at them. “Don’t believe I know y’all. You cops?” Mordechai pursed his lips and shook his head, and McLeod said, “No, you’re not local, or I’d already know you. You’re not CBI or FBI—you dress too good for either of them. You’re not the type for DEA, and ICE doesn’t bother with us. CIA? NSA, maybe?”

Mordechai shook his head again. “No, Mr. McLeod, we’re not with any police organization, although from time to time I have been known to assist one or more groups like that.”

“Freelancers, huh?”

“After a fashion.”

McLeod’s rasp got stronger as he said, “So what’s your name?”

Mordechai gave his razor-thin smile, and said, “Richard Wolf, and my associate is Joseph Green.”

“You got some ID you can show me?”

“Not with me.”

“Well, Mr. Wolf”—McLeod’s voice got a little harder—“I don’t much like talking to strangers when I can’t see their eyes, so why don’t you and your friend there take off those fancy shades?”

“As you wish.” Mordechai took off his sunglasses and put them in an interior coat pocket. Ariel followed suit. At that same moment, the door behind him opened, and he looked around to see the biker that had nodded to the bartender enter the gym. Ariel stepped sidewise a bit to be able to keep an eye on both him and McLeod at the same time. The biker made it easier for him by slipping through the machines until he was behind McLeod, where he stopped and held position.

McLeod looked at them for a long moment, before saying, “That’s better. Now, Mr. Wolf,” with a sarcastic emphasis on the name, “when people I don’t know say they want to talk to me, they either want something from me or they want to sell me something, usually at an outrageous price. Which is it this time?”

Mordechai’s razor grin sharpened even more. “A bit of the former and a bit of the latter, actually. I want some information from you that won’t generate any risk for you and won’t cost you anything. In return, we will resolve a long-term problem for you, again at no risk or cost to you.”

“Uh-huh. You really expect me to fall for that? I ain’t that big a fool, Mr. Wolf.” McLeod’s rasp was getting more pronounced.

“Tell me what you know about Cord Campbell.”

There was a choked-off sound from the biker behind McLeod, who held his hand up. For a long moment, there was no other movement, no other sound from anyone in their little group, until McLeod started chuckling.

“I must confess I didn’t see that one coming. Well played, Mr. Wolf. Well played.” McLeod’s rasp lightened, and the precision of his speech changed. “Am I correct in assuming that the focus of your question and the long-term problem are one and the same?”

Mordechai said nothing, simply tilted his head a little to one side and a little forward at the same time.

“Very well.” McLeod brought his cane before him and rested both hands on it. “I knew Cord Campbell fairly well for most of his life. We grew up together. His older brother Colton and I were close friends; we enlisted in the Army together, and we served in Desert Storm together, although in different units. I came home, Colton didn’t. That affected Cord. He was single-minded about being in the Army after that, even though he wasn’t really suited for it. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted on enlisting and following his brother into the infantry. His first great disappointment was when he didn’t make it into the Rangers, like Colton did. He got a bit sour after that, but he still did two tours in Afghanistan. The second tour, a string of IEDs took out pretty much his entire platoon and left him with a major belly wound and a massive concussion. He lost part of his colon, and most of what made him him. He was a different man when he came back to the States and was released on a medical discharge.”

McLeod stared past them for a long moment. Ariel said nothing, simply continued to listen and to keep an eye on everything around them. McLeod finally resumed with, “You have to know that most of the military folks are good people…at least the enlisted ones. Some of the officers are good, too, especially the younger ones. But a lot of the officers are political beasts, and that pulls a lot of them toward the liberal side of things. The enlisted folks, though, mostly come out of the service with a pretty conservative mindset, especially if they spend more than four years in. There are a few of them, though…what I’m trying to say is that most of the military aren’t rednecks or white supremacists. But there are a few, and Cord connected with some of them while he was recuperating. He came home a very different man.”

Another pause. “I let him ride with us for a few years, and at first he was okay, but as time passed he began drifting more and more to the nutcase fringe, and he kept pushing that we should be doing something about what he called the Jewish Problem.” Ariel could hear the capital letters in McLeod’s voice as he spoke the label. “Oh, he had names for a lot of other problems we should be dealing with, but that was the number one item on his list. Finally, when the Covid mess happened a couple of years ago, that seemed to push him over the edge. He broke with us right after the vaccine came out, and went out on his own. We probably should have dealt with him then, but we all thought he was a nutcase, and we didn’t think he would amount to much on his own like that. Guess we were wrong.”

“I dare say,” Mordechai said in a chilly tone. “He seems to have attracted several kindred spirits.” McLeod nodded without saying anything. “Who does his explosives work?”

“From what we can tell, he does. Nobody else in his group has military experience.”

“Can you tell me where they meet? Do they have a single lair or hiding place?”

“Before we go any further with this,” McLeod said, “what’s your concern here? Am I going to find you digging into our business? Are you going to be digging up information on us and interfering with our operations?” McLeod’s eyes had narrowed and his voice had gotten raspier again.

Mordechai sighed. “Mr. McLeod, I am here to deal with a single, very specific issue. What you and yours do here in your own area, your own ‘turf’ I think they call it, doesn’t concern me at all. I’m not interested in it. It’s not my business, frankly, and I don’t want it to be my business. Your operations, as you call them, are safe from me and my associates. Bluntly, I don’t care about you and yours, and trust me, you don’t want me to care about you and yours…you really don’t. Let me go on to say that you can say or do anything you think you can get away with or anything your law enforcement and courts will permit you to get away with, and I won’t even think about it. But,” he emphasized that word, “there is one exception: the Jews. You can even blame the Jews for all of the ills of society and the economy, and you’ll be officially ignored. They’ve dealt with those lies for thousands of years; they can continue to do so. However, if you begin inciting people to deal with the Jews, or should you actually lay a finger on one, then it becomes, shall we say, my business. And you really don’t want that, Mr. McLeod. You really don’t. Despite it sounding like a bad movie cliché, I really am the stuff of nightmares.”

Ariel had to suppress a shiver at that last. Mordechai’s voice was pure steel, and cold—so cold. He could see that McLeod’s eyes had widened. He didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of that statement.

“So, Mr. McLeod”—Mordechai’s voice had warmed marginally—“might we have the location where we can find Cord Campbell?”

McLeod opened his mouth, then had to clear his throat before looking over at the biker. “Slick?”

The biker said nothing for a long moment, until McLeod frowned at him. “His pack has been staying at that old warehouse he bought a few months ago.”

“Address?” Mordechai’s voice wasn’t any warmer.

“1206 Fairway Avenue.”

Ariel pulled his phone out and made a note, nodding at Mordechai when he looked his direction.

“Very good,” Mordechai said. “My thanks.” He started to turn away, but stopped. “One last bit of advice, Mr. McLeod. If I were you, I would give serious consideration to telling your groups to leave the Jews alone. It will avoid the possibility of misunderstandings, you see. As I said earlier, you really don’t want to attract my attention.”

“I don’t take well to threats, Wolf,” McLeod rasped out.

“Not a threat, my friend, not at all. I don’t do threats. That was simply a piece of sound advice. One last thing…” Mordechai pulled a card case out of an inner pocket, extracted a business card, and held it out to McLeod. “I doubt we’ll meet again, but on the very remote chance that you might need to contact me at some point in the future, send an email to this address. Someone will contact you after that.” He held it out until McLeod slowly reached out to take the card. “Good day, gentlemen.”

With that, Mordechai gave a short nod and turned for the exit. On his way out, he detoured slightly to pick up a loaded barbell from the floor with one hand and hoist it onto a nearby rack. Ariel could see both McLeod’s and the biker’s eyebrows lift in surprise.

Ariel lingered for a moment, looking at McLeod and the biker Slick. McLeod turned his head toward Ariel. “You need something?”

Ariel shook his head. “Keep an eye on the news,” was all he said before he pulled his sunglasses out again and followed Mordechai out the door.

Once he was in the car, Ariel was surprised to see Mordechai looking at his mobile phone. Mordechai’s usage of the phone was usually as just a phone, so to see him doing something else with it was remarkable. Before he could comment on it, though, Mordechai held up a finger, so he sat back and waited.

It took a few minutes, but eventually Mordechai laughed and tapped a control, then tapped another one before he started the car and backed out of the parking spot. Ariel could hear a hiss, and then voices started speaking. The sound wasn’t great, but it was good enough to make clear it was McLeod and the biker Slick talking.

Slick: “Well, that was weird as shit.”

McLeod: “Yeah.”

Slick: “Want me to get a couple of guys and tail them and convince them to stay out of our business?”

McLeod: “No. I don’t know who they’re with, but they’re some kind of special forces—something foreign, based on the old man’s accent. The kid would waste all of you, and I don’t want to think about what the old man would do to you.”

Slick: “You’re shittin’ me, right?”

McLeod: “Slick, you know that T-shirt you like to wear, the one that says ‘Beware the old man in a land where men die young’?”

Slick: “Yeah, what about it?”

McLeod: “That old man is the old man in the shirt. He’s the real deal. I saw it in his eyes. He’s seen more death than all of us put together. Hell, he’s probably done more death than all of us put together have seen. He’s right…I don’t want to see him again, and I don’t want to do anything that will bring him back to town. So pass the word to everyone: as of now, back off the Jews.”

Slick: “You can’t be…” There was the sound of a pistol action chambering a round. “All right, man, all right! Take it easy!”

McLeod: “Yeah, I’m deadly serious, Slick. Serious enough to leave anyone who screws with me on this out in the desert with a nine-millimeter headache pill. Clear?”

Slick: “Yeah, Jake…clear.”

After a couple of seconds the hiss ended, and Mordechai put his phone back in his jacket.

“Looks like you sold him,” Ariel said.

“Indeed. That, as they say, is a good thing.”

“So where did you put the bug? On one of the exercise machines?”

“No. I could have, but they would have found it sooner or later, and they would have guessed where it came from, which would have caused other complications.” Mordechai smiled. “No, you saw me hand it to them.”

Ariel thought for a few seconds. “The business card? Really?”

“Not very sophisticated, good for only a few minutes of transmitting, short range, but almost never detected and easy to leave in a place. And once the power runs out, it really is just a business card.”

“Huh. Do I need to worry about playing poker with you?”

Mordechai laughed.


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