Flatline

Flatline

An Outlaws Tale

Copyright 2017 Mike Matheson

Published by Mike Matheson at Smashwords

ISBN 9781370508624

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

About M. Matheson

Other books by M Matheson

Connect with Me

Chapter 1 — All Tapped Out

Chapter 2 — A Long Short Walk

Chapter 3 — The Box

Chapter 4 — Silas. Silas Who?

Chapter 5 — The Street King

Chapter 6 — Speed Bump

Chapter 7 — By The Time We Get to Phoenix

Chapter 8 — Phoenix Convention Center

Chapter 9 — One, Two, Three, GO

Chapter 10 — Dust, Rust, and Barstools

Chapter 11 — Good Cop—Bad Cop

Chapter 12 — I Spy

Chapter 13 — Chad’s Reprisal

Chapter 14 — On the Road

Chapter 15 — Hares and Hounds

Chapter 16 — Showdown

Chapter 17 — Run to the Border

Chapter 18 — Border Crossing

Chapter 19 — Happy Birthday

Chapter 20 — The Road Ahead

Chapter 21 — The Road to Recife

Chapter 22 — The Job

Chapter 23 — Santa Lucia

Chapter 24 — Into the Labyrinth

Chapter 25 — Flipping the Script

Chapter 26 — A Bitter End

Chapter 27 — Rough Landing

Chapter 1

All Tapped Out

Troy’s trigger finger tapped unconsciously against his graying temple as he chewed over his next words. That finger was as crooked and gnarled as his life up until then.

Like the dust-blown ruins of a forgotten city, his body lies crestfallen and crumpled. The outlaw’s emotions, like ancient walls, have collapsed into a parched gray heap. Buttery yellow lights, signets of inhabitants that once roamed amongst the living, winked from scarce windows. And stonewashed memories faded into an expanding blue haze.

Those are some damn good lines, Troy thought as he sank further into the overstuffed chair he’d paid two dollars for ten years ago. The springs were broken and his skinny butt dropped nearly to the ground. His dead wife hated it with a passion (the chair, not the butt). He loved it as much, enjoying the tug of war to no end.

With a death-like sigh, Troy’s heart took him deep into darker and ever more dismal woods. Like a stormy sea over the gunwales of a doomed ship, despair sloshed from the cup of his life.

Troy wondered if he might be growing whiny, an attribute he would have slapped out of any one of his old cohorts while he was still an active member and Enforcer for the Sacramento chapter of The Breakers, the most legendary outlaw motorcycle club in the world. Now he lived alone with his bulldog Sam and wrote books.

The words he’d written were good but would have tasted better if they hadn’t rung so true. He’d thought rather naively that reaching a modicum of popularity would just naturally have made some things better. So, for the thousandth time, he reminded himself what a friend once said: Preach from your pain brother—Preach from your pain (always said twice with the cadence of a Black evangelist.

Will do, he said, saluting skyward to his deceased friend Skull, so named for his deep thinking and animated oratory. Troy considered which way he was pointed and turned his gaze towards the floor, just to be sure the credit reached home.

Pain, some nasty shit he’d had enough of to fill three lifetimes. Troy prayed that that reincarnation bullshit was just that—BULLSHIT. He'd hate to do this one over again.

He tapped the eraser end of a wooden pencil unconsciously on his teeth and sadly admitted the truth of his words.

On a roll, he typed some more.

Faceless yet named, a long slow parade of used-to-be all passed him by.

Deleting, he tried again.

Faceless yet named, the parade passed him by—

He remembered each one, once enjoying the ride.

His lips mouthed the words, liking the sound, but hating the taste. Too much like curdled milk chugged blindly in a midnight refrigerator raid.

He winced and tiny cobwebs of age trickled from the corners of his soft gray eyes, once sharp as razors. Graying hair crept up the sides of his close-shorn head into jet-black hair mounting a weak defense against the creep of time. The years had snuck up without warning. Chronic pain was bringing down the once impenetrable six-foot-tall and two-hundred-pound granite fortress.

Sniffing with disgust, he typed some more:

Gossamer strands dared the most delicate breeze to blow the fading connections completely away.

Surprise! One more good line.

Yesterday, his daughter-in-law called to check in, three months since her last call. She and Troy Jr. were both successful professionals. He tried telling himself how happy he was supposed to be that they were not on drugs or running wild. Running wild—what a concept! And that from a second-generation Enforcer of the largest outlaw motorcycle gang in the world.

Marina’s apology for Troy Jr. not staying in touch was forced and awkward. He resisted the temptation to say, Why the hell doesn’t he call, then?

Tap Tap Tap…

Days all blanketed with unfading fog, a miasmal shoe perched and ready to fall.

The lid on the MacBook slammed shut as his chin fell to his chest. Troy jerked his head back and his neck cracked. He froze as stars of pain exploded in his head. The water-stained ceiling seemed an awful lot like a crash of alien rhinos, an oddball thought that hatched yet another stillborn story. Troy heaped it onto the pile marked Get-To-It-Someday.

I’ve got to get out of this place, he thought, remembering an old song by that name (The Animals—If it’s the last thing we ever do). He could hear the tune in his head.

WHAT CRAP!

Troy’s heart filled with contempt, thinking how he depended on the drugstore cane leaning by the front door. A flicker of crematory mourning licked at his soul. He could walk without it but wouldn’t get far, and his lower leg would hurt for days afterward. The bionic knee was scheduled for May, but this is only February.

Yesterday, sunshine poked out from cloud cover and he caught a glimmer of a feeling he’d once known. It outlined a happiness colored in with heartbreak, violence, and pain. Up until recent years, he’d never given much thought to those kinds of soft, kittenish feelings—not until he retired and took up writing. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop, he thought, laughing at his own humor.

Troy had been brought up surrounded by deadly chaos. If it ever went missing and things quieted down for more than an hour, the day would wobble out of synch like a lopsided top.

A soft pleasant memory tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. It was Joy.

Hey, Good Lookin’. Remember me?

Barely, Troy said. I didn’t recognize you with that smile on your face.

He pulled up the lid of his sleeping Mac.

Sunshine peeked around the corner, hacking a scheming chuckle into the back of its hand.

That’s a pretty good line, said Joy. You're getting better at this writing stuff.

Troy could not remember the last time he felt any serious soulshine. Probably since his boy was born twenty-five years ago. But, there it was, flowering in his heart like springtime blooms in a garbage dump. Another good line. Troy wasn’t too keen on the feeling of joy. Something always came along to spoil it, the balloon would pop, or the wife would die—in a hail of gunfire meant for him.

A lifetime worth of grief had kicked off from that intensive care unit where tubes, wires, and bags shuttled piss, shit, and meds into or out of his body for the next two months—keeping him alive—FOR WHAT? he remembered thinking.

Where’s Joy? were Troy’s first conscious words. Silent attendants shuffled their feet, trying not to meet the badman’s eye, and then, like the tramping boots of enraged policemen, the memory rushed in…

Joy went down quick, one bullet to her forehead, then straight through her brain. She never felt a thing. He was the miracle, or so they said. Six shots of high-velocity ammo tore his abdomen into spaghetti before he could even draw his gun.

Scores of club members flowed in and out of his hospital room every day, bringing with them their juvenile antics, succeeding only in keeping the entire floor of the hospital in a constant state of chaos. Eventually, the staff, in a vain attempt to stem the flow of outlaws, refused to let leather jackets and club patches onto the floor. To his friends, it was all good clean fun that they saw on a regular basis.

Troy had put his share of men in that same position, months in the hospital; some crippled for life, most in the ground. And, still, through all that carnage, he had only one regret; now he had two.

Tears fell softly as he typed.

The universe tittered, trying to tickle his heart with springtime sunflowers. Troy mocked its sniggering and flung back scorn. Where the hell’s my Joy?

The lid on the MAC slammed shut and he hoped to God he hadn’t broken another one. Suddenly, he wanted to be anywhere but here.

The muffled thump of Troy’s cane brought a burst of clicking toenails skittering clumsily around the corner. Sam, a saliva-drenched bulldog, slid to a stop and looked up at Troy with permanently sad eyes.

What a pair we are to draw to... thought Troy, shaking his head and wondering if Sam had similar thoughts.

Dogs see only black and white, exactly how Troy felt his world had gone: flat and gray after years of living color, action, and bloodshed.

Sam farted, issued a big wet grunt, and scratched the door with a leg that was never designed to be so short until people got in the way.

Again—Troy could relate.

The outlaw winced into the bright light of day; joy threatened to squash him like a bug, but not if he killed it first. He didn’t deserve it and never would.

Chapter 2

A Long Short Walk

Sam squeezed through the door like a glazed donut through a funnel, stopped on the front porch and, as if to ask if Troy wanted to come too, he turned.

Troy knew he would feel like a big loser shortly as he bagged up Sam’s excrement, carrying it around in a clear plastic bag until a stranger’s trashcan availed itself and he could ditch the foul-smelling goods. Such was the price of being a good citizen.

Hold up, Sam. I’m coming.

The forecast in Troy’s mind had been nothing but another dull gray day. But Mother Nature refused to play along and sent him a bright sun-filled day. He shed his red and white hoodie and turned back for his sunglasses.

Sam slid down the three front steps like some alien worm and jumped at the gate.

To his right, Troy heard the shout that he knew he would. Hey, old man! Troy twitched with irritation. How’s it hanging? John’s oversized silver tooth glinted in the sun, and with his accent, he sounded like a Soviet gangster. His threat level fell to pieces, though, under the countenance of a Soviet Mister Rogers.

John lived in the only new house on the block. It was built by Habitat for Humanity specifically for John and his family. Troy’s house was much simpler and more problematic—a 1925 bungalow.

What do you think, Sam? A sleeper terrorist or witness protection? Is it all a big front? Troy turned left to avoid thirty minutes of cheery conversation, enough to give a molar a cavity.

Old man… He's no spring chicken, thought Troy. Strike one for the geriatric with the cane and hobbling wrinkled dog. Troy looked down at Sam and uttered his most optimistic words in a long time. We’re going to make it, Old Man, aren’t we?

Their neighborhood lived with one foot in the hood and the other firmly planted in good ole Americana—straight from the nineteen fifties and a Happy Days sitcom. Ancient shade trees arched their limbs over the street, and neighbors stopped to greet one another. Still mid-February, the leafless hibernating branches looked like dead, dry fingers reaching down to suck the last drops of moisture from Troy’s beaten soul. He had no real reason to be dejected. His latest book was doing fairly well. The royalty payments bought groceries last week.

Tendrils of tangled branches reached for the last few shriveled morsels of his life and found that well had run dry a long time ago. He patted his pockets and looked for a pen until he realized that he couldn’t care any less how good that line was and whether he remembered it or not.

Frightfully sunny people lounged on their porches and greeted the duo by name. Some went so far as to come down from their perch and pat Sam on the head. None offered any real conversation except May Bell, a woman in her eighties who grew up in the Oak Park neighborhood. Besides singing the woes of the youth and evil of this day, she always asked Troy if Sam was a new dog.

My, that’s an unusual dog. His legs are very short. Will they grow longer as he gets older? If that were the case, Sam would be as tall as a horse by now, Troy told himself behind a make-believe smile.

Halfway past the next house, Troy whispered to Sam, On the way back, crap on her lawn.

May Bell hollered after them, Did you say something, son?

Towards the left were the meticulously kept houses of the more affluent. Every few blocks, the demographics shifted back and forth, responding to unseen currents.

Troy looked right, with habitual caution, into the streets full of lingering jobless men, where the sirens sounded more frequently, and police cars rushed by with greater urgency and regularity. Two blocks into those sketchier streets sat an old-fashioned neighborhood store. The hand-painted sign read:

WONG GROCERY

Food Beer Ice Cream

The sign, fashioned from rough plywood, hung almost level over a screen door manufactured sometime during the Second World War. Sam and Troy rattled and clattered as they climbed the concrete steps facing the corner. Mr. Wong, a squat, round amalgamation of a host of eastern races, hunched over the counter scanning a foreign language newspaper. Troy secretly hoped Wong would offer another one of his unsolicited old tales plucked from a menagerie of fortune-hunting uncles.

Rows of warped wooden shelves held up stacks of dust-covered cans, and as the fine print of the sign promised, he sold food, beer, and ice cream. Cigarettes, beer, and Zig-Zag rolling papers were his biggest sellers, though, as long as you didn’t count the cases of toilet paper he moved.

A pony-tailed man in his twenties held the door open for Troy. Here you go, SIR. Troy glared after the man as he walked by, pissed at the implication that Troy might be too weak or too old to get his own goddamned door.

Strike two and Troy was the first runner-up in the senior death pool.

Sam slid by, headed toward his usual treat.

Troy bought two ice cream sandwiches and received no stories from the silent proprietor. Troy once asked Wong his first name. Mr. Wong said, Wong, and Troy decided to leave it there. To this day, he was not sure if his name was Wong Wong or if he was telling him it was the wrong question.

Eagerly, Sam waited for Troy at the short tumbledown wall outside where winos once congregated. But, in the city's effort to abate the creep of crime and poverty in a neighborhood that was once defined by the same, they bulldozed a store ten blocks down, a little market no different from this one. Within the week, Wong added a new sign painted in foot-high letters.

NO LOITERING

NO ALCOHOL

NO EXCUSES

WE CALL POLICE

Wong had made a lot of money from the local thugs and winos but figured less money was better than no money.

Troy unwrapped one ice cream sandwich and set it on the ground for Sam, who, with one paw, expertly held the wrapper to the ground and devoured the treat in a flying display of crooked teeth, airborne spittle, and a monstrous pink tongue.

Troy turned and observed his youngish face reflected in the grimy store window; it disagreed with the report of his tired body and worn out soul. He still had a full head of short hair, jet-black except for the chrome bumpers, and a fashionable soul patch, which had gone silver entirely.

When huddled at church within a group of people his own age — hell, he still couldn't believe it — CHURCH… What had the world come to? With all those other people around, he always wondered, Where the hell did they get all these old folks?

Nevertheless, it had been there he’d found a little piece of something he never knew was missing. Even a stone-hardened killer like him might find some hope of redemption. Those particular thoughts had never been given any attention before. If they did pop up, they were quickly drowned under a fifth or two of Jack Daniels.

Despite having sane friends now and a church he enjoyed, Troy had lost his way inside of a crushing thick fog. Alive and barely present, sir.

If he’d known ahead of time the mundane dreariness of doing good, he would have opted to die in a hail of gunfire just as his father had. George Bittles went out doing what he loved. Running and gunning—balls to the wall, as Dad always said while hoisting a beer and waving his gun.

Thoughts sliced a whipsaw course through his mind like a two-dollar carnival ride; the car slowed, bumped to a stop, and Troy issued a sigh like the last rotten exhale of a dying man.

Just as his soul was about to shrivel to a raisin, a lovely young woman flashed Troy a gleaming smile. There might be some hope yet, he thought. She shuttled paper bags of groceries from her car to a neat older house with all the trimmings expected of a successful mid-thirties professional.

Can I help you with those? Troy asked.

Oh, hey, handsome! Startled by his good fortune, he watched as she bent to scratch Sam between the ears. Her eyes shifted from his cane and back to her bags.

These? No, I got them. Only a couple more. There were ten. Troy had counted. Her smile was free and easy; she wouldn't have to fend off this old dude’s advances—since—he didn't really have any.

Strike three! Bang! Bang! Bang! The lid slammed shut, nails knocked down and cleated over. Now he was just one more old man walking his dog, and his strong square shoulders sagged one notch lower.

Half a block from the park, he awoke from a polluted daydream to a familiar odor, a pungent smell. It wafted in on a light breeze emanating from a noisy cluster of men loosely arranged around a picnic table at the little park built for little kids.

Thick sweet smoke lazed around the men as they shuttled dice in a blur flying from pavement to hands and back again along with a constant stream of smack talk.

The men were amateur bullies, their mere presence misappropriating a playground meant for kids. Troy was suddenly annoyed. Their mouthiness ticked him off. The look on their faces—Hell, just the fact that they were alive bothered him. Their arrogance, thrown up into everyone’s face, made Troy’s neck muscles shake.

Hey! Troy shouted. In unison, sinewy faces snapped towards Troy and locked icy stares on the old man with the ugly squat dog. He intended to blister them like children until the short one started his bark; his mouth was full of crooked yellow teeth and reminded Troy of an ancient angry snapping turtle.

What do you want, old man! The kid’s face was screwed into a knot.

Why don’t ya all take your weed smoking, dice shooting selves up out of this park so kids and mothers will feel like coming here? Troy could not believe what just came out of his mouth. Sam looked up as if to say, One more word and I’m gone.

The group was a gumbo mix of Latinos, Black, and Asian with one token white guy, the short mouthy one. The latter looked as if he just drove down from the hills—as in hillbillies—his white wife-beater shirt was stained in all the right places and he hadn’t shaved in weeks—couldn’t grow a proper beard at gunpoint—and all by himself he put the poor in Poor White Trailer Trash.

Troy was primed to take him out—into eternity. That was what he would have done if that smiling saint, Gary, hadn’t showed up on his front porch—twice. The first time, Troy pushed him off on his ass and told him, If you ever come back, I’ll buy you a one-way ticket to meet Jesus.

Gary came up smiling, dusted himself off, and walked away looking like he had the world’s greatest secret. Gary showed up again, about two weeks later, and this time, Troy had less JD in him. He was still tempted to pitch him off the porch, but Sam liked him and that was always a good sign. The dog had never steered him wrong, and like Troy, there weren’t too many people he was keen on.

As a writer, Troy always looked for a story, and there was a big one behind Gary’s green eyes. Thin as a wisp, Troy could’ve broken him in two with one hand; nevertheless, the stranger on his porch was unafraid. The outlaw was accustomed to people’s fear.

Perhaps that was what tipped Troy over the edge, along with the unspoken message that Troy was okay as is. Shoot, Troy wasn’t even okay with himself as he was.

Gary walked away after inviting Troy to church.

That was two years ago, and how Troy found himself in that nearly all black church the next Sunday remained a mystery. How they accepted him as family was an even greater question. But he learned the answer, and it changed him like turning a sock right-side-out.

He and Gary were accountability partners until Gary died last year (went home to be with the Lord in Troy’s new church lingo). Troy would rather die in a gunfight or with a knife twisting in his ribs than suffer through the cancer that killed his friend.

While that memory zinged through Troy’s mind, a Latino with tattoos up to his ears got loud and mouthy, singing along with the hillbilly.

What the hell you want here, Pops? This ain’t none a’ your business, you limp-dicked — As Troy turned to face him, his head rang like a church bell. It wasn’t the white guy; he didn’t have enough meat on him to knock out a gnat.

His hand closed on the grip of his gun, but he never got it out of his shoulder rig. The last thing he had seen before the lights went out was the yellow-toothed white boy grinning down at him like a Cheshire cat.

That first punch set the pack off like dogs on a trespasser, and Troy's face got screwed into the dirt. Blows came from every side. When he finally came to, his head banged like reveille in a Marine Corps boot camp. One eye still opened, thank God, and he was treated to a close-up view of tiny dead bugs swaying in invisible cobwebs.

It had been a while, but he still recognized the tang and coppery taste of his own blood. The writer kept tapping in the back of his battered head.

The mean streets opened wide and bit him hard.

Troy didn’t know it yet, but his wallet was gone.

He grimaced, actually finding the humor before reaching back to check for his wallet. Goddamn sonofabitch!! The familiar click-scratch sound of fat dog toenails gaining traction rushed towards him. Sam’s tongue and panting wet breath slopped over Troy's face, licking away some of the drying blood. The dog whimpered in sympathy.

If you were a goddamned pit bull, you could have helped.

Troy looked up past Sam, and his heart swelled like a balloon squeezing out through his throat.

Wooden stick legs rose sockless from a pair of beat-up black church shoes. The bony ankles were coffee-colored and ashy. Higher up, he saw a spindly old man attached to those legs. He was sitting atop the green wooden picnic table under which Troy lay broken. The mystery man had an unconcerned air as he hummed a low, sad song. A toothpick shuttled back and forth in his oversized mouth.

The man’s voice came down to Troy—raspy, weathered, and smooth as jazz. It was a warm, comfortable sound. Is that you stirring down there, Pops?

The old man laughed and slapped his thigh.

Pops? That was what the Latino had called him before they kicked the stuffings out of him, Troy thought. Was that what he was laughing about?

You should have been here to see it! That skinny little cracker got to explaining that tattoo on your forearm, and they all lit outta here like tha’ ass was on fire. That white boy’s eyes growed big as dinner plates. Yessir, they did. The old guy laughed to himself some more. That Death head tattoo sho’ put the fear of God in them or mabe it was the devil. He waited for a reaction from Troy and got none. You actually a part a’ that motorcycle club?

Troy tried to stand and lay back down. WAS! I’m retired. He attempted to get his feet under him again and recalled the times he had been rat-packed as a young prospect. Since those days, he had done his own share of the rat-packing; some out-of-line prospects and a few too-brave-for-their-own-good citizens.

Like a ghost, the stick-man slipped off the bench. Troy heard wisp-thin old bones snap, crackle, and pop like a sack of dried twigs. The man extended his wraith-like arm and pulled Troy to his feet. The old man’s strength was astounding.

Whoa, boy! They gave you a GOOD stomping! Like a medic, he attempted to examine Troy’s wounds.

That hillbilly cracker saved yo’ ass. Not sure he meant to, though. The man reached towards Troy’s face and Troy pushed him away. Touchy, ain’t ya’? Just trying to help, my friend. Have it your way… Me thinks maybe that white boy was attempting to save his homies from a sentence worse than death. Am I right?

A lot has changed since them days, Troy groused. Who the hell are you?

A lot has changed—a lot has changed, the man mocked in a singsong voice. Then why you carry that automatic in a shoulder rig? Troy didn’t answer.

As the old man reached for Troy, the sleeve of his threadbare suit coat slid up to reveal his own faded tattoo: A smiling skull with a five-pointed crown. Spelled out in the five points of the crown were the letters B-L-O-O-D. Troy knew exactly what they meant, and by the condition of the ink, it had been there for decades.

I see you got your own firepower, Troy said and pointed at the .357 revolver swinging under the man’s coat.

Well, a lot ain’t changed here, he said as his voice flashed a sinister tone before morphing back to full charm.

The man pulled closed his jacket and looked down at the tattoo. His eyes grew misty. "That there’s my old church. Seems I spent more than a lifetime there. It’s