Sacramento, California

Saturday, 21 March 1998, 0145 PT

The night air was fairly warm for this time of year, a first taste of the mild springtime evening temperatures that were right around the corner. The back door to the Bobby John Club, on the alley between Del Paso Boulevard and Anne Street, was open, and the bouncer assigned to the door had been told to move his bar stool out into the alley.

The bouncer saw the figure coming down the alleyway from about a block away. It was a guy wearing a full set of leathers, carrying his motorcycle helmet. He had on a plain dark watch cap, so the bouncer couldn’t see much else of his face.

Neither could the police surveillance team parked on Anne Street, across the alley from the rear entrance to the club. The police had installed a surveillance camera on a light post across Del Paso Boulevard to cover the front of the club, but still had to use a two-man surveillance van to cover the rear. Cameras snapped as the newcomer came up to the door, and the surveillance crew adjusted the “big-ear” directional microphone to hear the conversation better.

“Where’s your ride?” the bouncer asked as the guy approached.

“Broke down, back on Calvados Street,” the stranger replied. “Gonna use the phone.”

As the stranger started to walk through the door, the bouncer stuck out a finger and placed it against the guy’s chest in a clear order to stop. “I seen you around before, sport?”

“Sure. I been around.”

The bouncer noticed that the leather jacket was fairly new and hardly worn. It certainly didn’t look like it had been worn by anyone riding a motorcycle during a wet, sloppy Sacramento winter-it didn’t even smell worn, in fact it smelled crisp and new, right off the rack-and there were no colors or logos on it. It looked like the guy could’ve picked up the jacket at the mall earlier in the day. He wasn’t wearing leather chaps or pants either, but some kind of dark gray coveralls. “You flying any colors, bro?”

“No.”

“Then use the phone at the Safeway back where you came from. Club’s closed.”

“Phone’s broke.”

“Ours is broke too. Hit the fucking road.”

The stranger turned as if he was going to leave, then stopped and turned back to the bouncer. “Okay,” he said, “my motorcycle didn’t break down. In fact, I don’t have a motorcycle. Never rode one in my life.”

“Like I give a shit. Beat it.”

“The actual truth is this,” the stranger said. “I’m going to ask you some questions about Joshua Mullins.” He saw the sudden tenseness in the bouncer’s face. “Good. You know who I’m talking about.”

“Fuck off, bozo.”

“Mullins was Brotherhood,” the stranger went on. “He was also part of a holdup gang that did the Sacramento Live! shootout…”

The bouncer could move fast for a guy his size. He shoved the stranger away from the door, then reached inside the doorway for a piece of galvanized steel pipe used to bar the rear entrance when it was shut. The stranger flew backward, landing hard on his back and side, though from his dazed expression it looked more as if he’d hit his head. “You’re trespassing, buster,” the bouncer yelled. “You get lost, or you get hurt.”

“That guy’s gotta be a 5150,” one of the officers in the police surveillance van said with a chuckle as they listened to the interchange. A 5150 was the radio code for a mental patient. Recent events around Sacramento had brought out a lot of weirdos who thought they could clean up the town all by themselves. “Or probably another stupid cop wanna-be.”

“He’s gonna get his head smashed in if he doesn’t run like hell,” his partner said. “Think we should call a Patrol unit before this guy gets hurt-or dead?”

“Yeah. Better get a black-and-white heading this way,” said the other cop. “We can always Code-ten him if the 5150 beats feet.” He got on his portable radio and called Central Dispatch, requesting that a Patrol unit swing by and shine its spotlight down the alley, “It’ll take a few minutes to get here,” the cop said. “That’ll be enough time to give the 5150 a good healthy scare-hopefully.”

“If the bouncer starts beating on him, we’ll have to do something.”

“Relax and wait for the Patrol unit.”

The other cop lowered his binoculars, his mind racing. “Intel did speculate that Mullins was one of the guys that did that robbery, right? He was the one they found dead a few days later, right?”

“I think so.”

“Did that ever come out in the papers?”

“About Mullins? Yeah. He was a security guard or watchman at Sacramento Live!, one of the missing guards.”

“Yeah, but did it ever come out that he was a Satan’s Brotherhood member, or that he might have been involved in the robbery?”

“Yeah, sure… at least I think so,” the other cop said, not much interested in the subject.

“I don’t think it did,” his partner said.

“So?”

“So if it didn’t come out in the papers, then how could this guy know that Mullins was Brotherhood and involved in the heist? Not many cops know about that, only guys in Intelligence or Gangs. How could a buff know?”

“How the hell should I know?” his partner said irritably. “Just take the pictures, okay? I got enough to think about.”

The stranger got himself up to a kneeling position, his chest heaving as if he was having difficulty breathing. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “You tell me everything I want to know about Mullins and I go away. If you don’t, I’ll break your head, and then I’ll go inside, break some more heads, and destroy the place.”

“Listen, shithead, you got one more chance,” the bouncer said. “Get up and get your fat ass outta here or I’ll bend this pipe around your fucking head.”

The stranger got up, retrieved his helmet, and took a couple paces right toward the bouncer. “Last chance for you,” he said. “Mullins was working for a guy called the Major. The word is that Mullins met the Major or one of his men here about a week before the robbery. Tell me about him. Who was he? Did he have a German accent? What did he look like?”

“Not as bad as you’re gonna look, asshole,” the bouncer said-and swung the pipe. He faked a head shot, brought the pipe back, and swung it at the side of the stranger’s left knee. The blow would’ve put a two-inch dent in the side of a car. He gaped as the pipe ricocheted off the guy’s leg as if he’d hit a concrete post.

“What did he say about Germans?” the second surveillance officer asked. “Did he say ‘the Major’ was a German?”

“Yeah-I heard about the Major but that never got in the papers either. And I never heard about no tie-in between him and any Germans. What makes him think the Major was… Ohhh, shit, he hit him, right in the fucking knees! Better get that Patrol unit over here fast. Looks like the bouncer just tried to break that turkey’s knees.”

“They’re on their…” Both cops stopped to watch. The guy was still standing after being clubbed in the knees. No set of biker leathers would protect him against a shot like that. “He must’ve missed, trying to scare him?…”

“He hit ‘im,” the first officer said, sounding unsure whether or not he saw what he saw. “That pipe didn’t faze him. He must be wearing full body armor, but it sure doesn’t look like it.”

His partner put down his light-intensifying binoculars. “I’m going over there and talk to this guy,” he said.

“You what? You’ll blow our surveillance, man…”

“The guy knew about the Major, and he knew about the meeting here between him and Mullins,” the second cop said, rolling open the sliding door of the van. “He knows a lot more than any civilian should know. If he’s a cop, then he’s trying to pull some kind of off-duty or vigilante shakedown thing, and we gotta stop him before he sets this city on fire. Besides, I want to figure out how he can take a hit from a steel pipe and keep on standing. Tell the black-and-white I’m 940.”