Ace sat at a booth near the back of the bar and sipped his beer. The Midnite Club, a private club in the French quarter of New Orleans, was where he liked to go when he had to lay low. Right now, Ace was laying lower than a snake’s belly, at least until the heat died down. He?d had a terrible run-in with the sheriff of a small town in South Carolina that had resulted in a heinous whirlwind of felonies and violence. He had even stowed his beloved chopper in a garage at a self-storage facility. The damn thing was a cop magnet even when every cop in the country wasn’t looking for it.

The Midnite Club was swanky, upscale and very, very private. The highly coveted membership was by invitation only, and all new applicants had to be vouched for by a current member in good standing. It was, needless to say, very expensive.

The club’s patrons were the hippest of the hip; 24-year-old millionaires from Silicon Valley, Wall Street power brokers, East Coast mobsters and Hollywood stars, with the occasional outlaw type thrown into the mix to add just a touch of danger, completing the scene of wild and erotic mystery. The Midnite Club was a place where the well-heeled could relax, unwind and be entertained by everything from jazz bands to live sex shows.

The club was owned and run by the strange and mysterious Papa Senegal. Papa was, in fact, not from Senegal. He was Jamaican, but Ace supposed that “Papa Senegal” had a better ring to it than “Papa Jamaica,” and none of the patrons gave a damn anyway. Papa Senegal had a fine sense of drama and played the New Orleans voodoo thing to the hilt. The club was decorated in occult black, with plenty of candelabras, skulls, mirrors and stuffed ravens sprinkled about. He was always fashionably late; just late enough to make the club’s newer members wonder whether he was going to show up at all. Then he would suddenly appear, long dreadlocks flying from beneath a tall top hat, wearing a tuxedo with tails and no shirt or cummerbund underneath, washboard abs rippling, carrying an ebony walking stick topped by a small ivory skull, smiling, shaking hands and passing out samples of everything from Cuban cigars to premium cocaine.

Ace worked sporadically for Papa as a procurer of the various commodities that were necessary to keep the club running, and he had negotiated some of his pay in credit, which was the only way he could have afforded to be there at all. Now Ace was watching the band set up and waiting for Papa to make one of his classy appearances.

Suddenly, there he was in the middle of the room as though he’d appeared out of thin air, smiling, milling around and pouring shots of 100-year-old scotch. A murmur of satisfaction went up from the crowd and Papa was temporarily hidden from view again. Ace waited until the crowd died down a bit, then he got up and walked toward Papa. Papa squinted at Ace, who was moving toward him in the dark, before his face broke into a wide grin of recognition. “Ess, my friend!” (When Papa said “Ace,” it came out sounding like “Ess.”) “Eet’s been a long time!”

Ace clasped Papa’s hand warmly and agreed, “Too long, too long.”

“Ahh Esss!” Papa screamed, “thee wan and onlee in-dee-spen-sable Ess!” clapping him on the shoulder. “Eet’s always a pleasure to see you! Tomorrow we talk business, ah? But tonight, tonight we have a good time!” That was fine with Ace; a good time was just what his jangled nerves needed, and it was widely agreed that nobody in New Orleans knew how to have a better time than Papa did.

As if on cue, the stage lights flared to life and the band started up — a wild jazz act with a swinging beat. Mostly-naked waitresses circulated between the small round tables taking food and drink orders, $20 bills sticking out of their G-strings like the plumage of some strange and exotic bird. The tenor man, a tall, gangly white guy with a protruding Adam’s apple, was blowing his horn like his life depended on it, jumping up and down, writhing, twitching and sweating, and the crowd was rising to an almost erotic frenzy as the tenor man struggled to grasp the elusive it, because they knew. An old man in a blue suit sat in a chair by the stage, stomping his feet and yelling, “Blow, man, blow!” at the top of his lungs. Papa tapped Ace on the shoulder and placed a glass of amber liquid into his hand. Ace nodded and smiled, and Papa went off to mill around in the crowd. Ace took a small sip; after all, it’s not often that a man has the opportunity to drink 100-year-old scotch. It went down smoother than silk, with no harsh bite at all. In fact, oddly enough, Ace thought that it almost reminded him of butterscotch. He looked over at the bar and smiled at a pretty young blonde who appeared to be by herself. She looked over and smiled back.

In a garbage-strewn alley in another part of town, the air was crackling faintly as before a storm, even though the sky was perfectly clear. A faint breeze kicked up, stirring scraps of newspaper around in circles and making a rustling sound. Then suddenly there was a body in the alley where there had been none a moment before. If anyone had been there, they would have felt the dull, sub-sonic thud of a concussion wave radiating outward from the figure, whose instantaneous appearance had displaced an amount of air equal to its own volume. The demon gasped for its first breath, then began panting like a wolf. It slowly uncurled from its crouch, painfully and awkwardly, like an infant struggling to learn control of its new physical shell. It tensed, then sprang and took off down the alley, covering 8 feet at a shot with its awkward, loping strides.

Ace slowly cracked one eye open, exposing his throbbing brain to the bright daggers of daylight that were stabbing in through the window. For one terrifying moment he had no idea where the hell he was or how he had gotten there. Then he remembered?New Orleans… Papa Senegal… Business. The long smear in front of him slowly focused into the hourglass form of a woman. Of course, the blonde from the club. That was why the tips of his fingers were tingling; she was lying on his left arm. For a long moment he wondered whether he should wake her or simply chew his arm off like an animal caught in a trap. Then he had an idea. He rolled over and pushed the mattress down with his right hand, slipping his left arm out through the indentation. She stirred faintly but didn’t wake. Ace dressed hastily, then quietly slipped out of the apartment, clicking the door softly shut behind him.

Ace handed the cabbie a $5 bill and stepped out of the cab in front of the Midnite Club. Seeing the club in the light of day, without its neon pizzazz, reminded Ace of an old coat that had hung on a hook on the back of his bedroom door as a child. In the dark of night, the coat had always loomed huge and terrible, casting menacing shadows across the wall like a vampire, but every morning when he awoke it would again become an ordinary, lifeless coat. The Midnite Club seemed to acquire the same sort of drab lifelessness when the city awoke in the morning like a whore, hacking, coughing and blowing trash around in the streets.

Ace made his way through a narrow alley and around to the service entrance in the back. He rapped on a beat-up sheet metal door, which was opened a moment later by a gigantic white man in a tux. Ace smiled and said, “Hey, Tiny, long time no see! How’s it hangin?, big guy?”

Tiny smiled back. “Ahh, same shit, different day, you know how it is, Ace. Heh heh… Papa’s waiting for you in the office,? he said, pointing with a thumb that was more than an inch in diameter.

A narrow spiral staircase, made of welded sheet metal and painted black, led from the service entrance to an office on the upper floor. The stairway was dark and the walls were bare cinder block, as gray and forbidding as any prison. But once you stepped past the threshold of Papa’s office, you stepped into a different world. All of the woodwork was polished mahogany, and the carpet was the color of red wine, which shone like blood against the white walls. Expensive paintings lined the walls, each in an antique, hand-carved frame, and a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, such as one might expect to see in a ballroom. The door was open and Papa sat behind a gold table lamp, which threw a small circle of light onto a large mahogany desk, which was rather like a banker’s. This room was Papa’s concept of luxury, much more so than the club itself; not vulgar ostentation, but tasteful elegance. Papa looked up from his laptop computer when he heard Ace’s boot heels punishing the staircase with a dull clang, clang, clang that echoed around the stairwell. He stood up and smiled, stepping around the desk with his right hand extended. Papa was dressed casually (for Papa) in expensive gray slacks and white shirt sleeves… Come to think of it, Ace couldn’t remember ever having seen him wear jeans. Ace clasped Papa’s right hand warmly. He was genuinely glad to see the old bastard again.

They chatted for a while, a ritual to which Ace had grown accustomed. Papa thought it rude to open a conversation with business, as is the American habit. After a while he leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, making a steeple with his fingers, which Ace recognized as the sign that Papa was ready to come to the point.

“I have a small job for you, my friend,” said Papa. “I need you to go to a man across town and peeck up a small vial for me. Thee pay is wan-thousand dollars.”

“Wow,” Ace replied, “that must be one hell of an expensive drug. How ’bout a tiny sample for the courier? Like my grandma used to say, those who handle honey always lick their fingers.”

Papa shook his head. “Not thees time. Eet ees not a drug in the sense which you are theenking; eet ees a component for use in magick.” His eyes became very intense. “Eet’s powerful magick, eet geeve powerful visions! One must be equeeped to handle eet; a drop thee size of a match head would turn you into sometheeng out of a medeecal encyclopedia!”

Ace smiled. “All right, all right, I get the message. Jeez, I think you’re starting to take your own hype too seriously. Anyway, where is this guy?”

Papa handed Ace a slip of paper with a name and an address. Ace nodded, took the paper and started to go. Papa stopped him at the threshold and said, “Remember, no tasteeng!”

“Right,” Ace replied, “got it. No tasting.”

Ace had waited until after dark to get the chopper out of storage. It was probably a bad idea to be seen on it again so soon, but Ace had been taking buses and cabs everywhere for two entire weeks and he was dying to get his knees in the wind. He rationalized the decision by reasoning that he could stay on the back roads where it was dark and avoid attracting attention. His pipes were fiberglass-baffled and they weren’t obnoxiously loud if you were gentle with the throttle.

Ace putted slowly down the small commercial street, scanning the storefronts for Harry’s Occult Shop. The bottle, whatever it was, was already paid for; all Ace had to do was pick it up and take it back to the Midnite Club.

Presently, Ace spotted a small shop with skulls and jars of colored powder in the window. Bingo. Ace stopped in front of the store, killed the engine and leaned the bike over on its kickstand.

A small bell jingled on the door when Ace opened it. Harry’s Occult Shop was lit by dozens of candles that burned on candelabras throughout the store. Every wall was covered with shelves, which were crammed full of skulls, powders, candles, daggers and old leather-bound books covered in strange symbols. There was a gnarled old tree stump in the corner of the shop that made Ace jump when it moved and he realized that the stump was, in fact, a man.

“Uh, Harry, I presume?” asked Ace.

“Yeah,” the man replied. Hack, cough, wheeze. “What can I do for you, young man?”

“Papa sent me,” replied Ace. “I’m here for the pick up”.

Harry squinted at Ace for a moment, then said, “Yeah, yeah, hold on.” He shuffled into the back room, which was hidden behind a black velvet curtain. He emerged a moment later carrying a glass vial. He put the vial into a brown paper bag and handed it to Ace, who took it with a nod. “Interest you in some powdered bat wing?” asked Harry. “It’s on sale this week.”

“No thanks,” Ace replied, “I’m trying to cut down.” Harry chuckled in a most unpleasant way, and Ace was suddenly glad to be leaving. Harry made his skin crawl.

Once outside, Ace stood on the curb next to the chopper and peered into the bag. The vial was bulb-shaped, about the size of a baseball, with a long stem sealed by a cork stopper. He pulled the bottle out and held it up to the street light. The liquid inside was a faintly shimmering sapphire blue, which, from certain angles, appeared to be green. What the hell is it? Ace wondered. He had never seen or heard of anything like it before. Finally, curiosity got the best of him. Hell, there was no way Papa would be able to tell if he took just one little tiny taste. Remembering Papa’s warning about the dosage, Ace tore off a paper match and just barely touched the butt-end of it to the surface of the liquid. Then, with slight apprehension, he put the match in his mouth and waited for…

Nothing. It tasted faintly like almonds, but it didn’t do a damn thing. Ace replaced the stopper and put the bottle back in the bag. He wondered if he should tell Papa that he’d been ripped off, but then thought, better of it. Papa would find out soon enough anyway and there was no point in pissing him off by admitting to disobeying orders.

Ace straddled the chopper, thumbed the starter and the big engine roared to life. He eased the bike out of the parking space, whacked the shifter into first and headed for the highway. He was relatively sure that he wasn’t carrying anything illegal and he was eager to get back to the Midnite Club quickly in case the stuff had some kind of hellish delayed reaction.

The highway was mostly empty and Ace didn’t have far to go anyway. The cool night air was a welcome relief from the daytime heat and swamp-like humidity of Louisiana. The sky was clear, the stars twinkled brightly and the crescent sliver of the moon seemed to flash him a conspiratorial wink. Ace suddenly felt that this was the America that Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper had searched for in ?Easy Rider? but had been unable to find. This was the real America, land of endless skies and wide-open roads, not the other America, the one where they made you piss in a jar if you wanted a job and threw you in jail if you didn’t pay your taxes.

The exit appeared like a specter, materializing out of the inky darkness. Ace slid the bike around the off-ramp and stopped behind a short line of cars waiting for the tolls.

It began faintly at first, quickly growing louder, a shrill scream like the rending of metal, accompanied by a loud, sibilant hiss, which nearly made Ace jump straight off of his seat. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw a tractor-trailer slowing down, pumping its air brakes as it approached the tolls. The trailer was a cattle car made of gray metal slats, and Ace could smell the faint but rising odor of shit. The brakes screeched and squealed as the truck approached. The din rose to a deafening roar and the brakes gave one long, last hiss as the truck stopped right next to Ace.

The goddamn smell was nauseating. Ace imagined that this was what it must be like to drown in an ocean of shit. He tried to breathe shallow breaths to avoid puking all over his bike. Then, a soft, wet sound emerged from the bowels of the truck. A sludge of greenish-brown shit oozed from between two of the slats, then poured sickeningly to the pavement, splat, splat, splat. The shit was coming in torrents now, splattering all over the ground and spraying drops of filth everywhere. Ace was gagging. Fuck the tolls, he thought, I’m getting out of here.

Then he saw two red points of light winking in the darkness inside the truck like a pair of burning eyes, right above the source of the shit. Cow eyes don’t glow like that, he thought, and even if they did, cows don’t have eyes in their assholes. Ace was transfixed by horror and nausea, like a gawker at a traffic accident, unable to look away. Then the eyes flared up and he could almost see inside the truck; the source of the shit was not an asshole, but a mouth, like a frog’s, but bigger than a basketball hoop, with small, pointed teeth. The demon belched one last torrent of shit onto the pavement, then wiped its befouled lips with a long, thin arm. It turned its baleful gaze slowly upon Ace and laughed, hrf, hrf, hrf.

His mind fused by panic, Ace whacked the bike into gear and twisted the throttle, squeezing through the space between a small hatchback car and the side of the booth, then he roared away into the night. In the rear view mirror, two tiny points of light followed his movements as he sped away.

Ace awoke the next morning not at all rested, having spent most of the night thrashing and sweating through nightmares about giant frogs and shit. He had washed the bike, laundered his clothes and taken no less than three showers before going to bed, an attempt to erase the indelible stink from his skin and hair. Even after all that scrubbing he imagined that he could still smell it, even though he knew that it was all in his head. Fucking hallucinogens, he thought; I’m getting too old for this. Indeed, and there was no time for it either. Papa was waiting for his delivery with $1,000 burning a hole in his pocket.

Ace pulled his jeans on and grabbed his shoplifted wraparound Ray-Bans. He suddenly had new doubts about the legality of whatever the hell was in that bottle, and it simply would not do to be seen by the cops, staggering around the streets of New Orleans with pale skin and bloodshot eyes, cringing from the light of the sun like a sick mole.

Right. Keep a low profile, he thought; get in a cab, give Papa his bottle of Satan-juice, get your thousand bucks, and then we’ll find out if there’s enough whiskey in New Orleans to drown out the memory of that goddamn horror show in the truck…

The short cab ride to the Midnite Club gave Ace the opportunity to somewhat regain his composure. The bright sunshine of a brand new day already made that horror in the truck seem silly and distant, no more than a cobweb to be casually swept away by the omnipotent hand of Good Old Reality. Papa had not yet arrived at the club when Ace knocked on the service door, but Tiny was there to take the bottle, and he had been authorized to pay Ace what he was owed.

So now Ace was walking down the street with $1,000 worth of bounce in his step, feeling the warm sunshine and whistling a little tune. He was, in fact, so preoccupied with the thoughts of how he would spend the money that when he turned the corner, he nearly ran straight into the angel.

It stood nearly 6 feet tall with long raven-black hair, eyes with no pupils at all and pale white skin like a corpse. The feathers in its wings shone like metal, all sharp points and lethal razor edges. It was an automaton, as lifeless as any killing machine. Behind its eyes lurked a terrible intellect that knew neither anger nor pity, a ruthless logic that always calculated the shortest distance between two points, and woe betide the man or beast foolish enough to stand between the angel and its goal. A maelstrom of energy swirled and crackled around the figure. Every primal instinct inside Ace’s skull screamed ?run,? but his limbs somehow refused to obey, and for one terrible moment, he was certain that he would be charred to a cinder, immolated right there on the sidewalk, leaving nothing behind but a pair of smoldering boot prints melted into the pavement like an obscene mockery of an Arthur Murray dance diagram. The angel turned its withering gaze upon Ace. Its dusty lips cracked open and a hot desert wind blasted forth. It spoke with a voice that made no impression upon Ace’s ears, but seemed instead to implant itself directly into his mind. Nonetheless, the voice was terrible to hear; it sounded like the dry grating of metal-on-metal.

A demon is loose in the city, said the angel. Thou hast been chosen to drive it out.

Not me, Ace protested in his mind. I’m a thief and a drunk, I haven’t been to church since I was 12 years old, I’m not any kind of a prophet.

The angel’s eyes flared to life, smoldering like two coals. “Do not give me that ‘I’m not worthy’ crap”, it shouted with a harsh new timbre in its voice, like bags of nails being dumped onto sheet metal. “Have thee any idea how many times I have had to listen to that rotten old swill?”

Sorry, Ace replied. But still, it’s a valid question. Of all the sinners in New Orleans, why me? You’re the freakin angel, why don’t you do it?

I cannot risk provoking a war, the angel replied. Therefore I have obtained permission to choose a man to act in my stead. Thou art the only one in the city who can see the demon for what it is; by tasting the sacrament, thou hast put thyself upon the threshold of their world. A chosen one is not always a saint, Ace. Sometimes, when something must be done, one is chosen simply because no other is able do it.

“I don’t believe it!” Ace shouted. “You’re not real! You’re just another goddamn hallucination!” He was dimly aware on some level that it made no sense to scream at a hallucination.

I haven’t the time to argue, the angel replied. With a lightning-fast motion, it whirled around and struck Ace in the middle of his chest with its open palm. The force of the blow swept Ace off of his feet and smashed him into the brick wall of the alley, knocking the breath out of him and pinning him against the wall. Its palm felt like ice, but Ace could smell a smoldering odor like the smell of burning chicken, and he knew that he was smelling his own flesh.

A few seconds later, the angel released him and Ace slumped to the pavement like a rag doll. His vision began to grow dark and the silhouette of the angel, towering above him, was beginning to dissolve like smoke. Fear not, it said. Thy hand shall be made strong by the hand of the Lord. Then Ace blacked out as the figure vanished, but he wasn’t really sure which happened first.

Newspaper. Big newspaper, filling his entire field of vision. Smell of newsprint. As Ace’s vision swam groggily into focus, he realized that he was lying on his back in an alley with sheets of newspaper covering his face. What the hell am I doing here? Right, the angel. Just another bad trip; don’t sweat it, you’ve seen worse on acid. Just get up, before anyone notices you and calls the cops; dammit, get up.

Ace swept the newspapers from his face and struggled to his feet. His whole body felt sore and there was a sunburn-like pain in the center of his chest… Oh, no. With trembling hands, Ace lifted his shirt. In the center of his chest was a red, hand-shaped welt, except that there were four fingers instead of five, and at the end of each fingertip was a small laceration right where the angel’s talons would have been. Holy creeping shit, he thought, I have to talk to Papa.

Papa examined the welt on Ace’s chest with great interest and a grave expression on his face. “What the hell is happening to me?” Ace asked.

“I have already told you,” Papa replied, “that thee drug is not really a drug in thee ordinary sense of thee word. Eet ees a holy sacrament; an instrument of magick which opens thee door between thee seen and unseen worlds. Many sorcerers would geeve everytheeng they own for that bottle.”

“Yeah, well, I would give everything I own never to see it again. OK, so the door’s been opened. How do I shut it?”

“You don’t,” Papa replied. “Thees ees not like returning a pair of pants. Eet cannot simply be undone. You have been chosen. Now you must see eet through.”

“Great, so now I’m an exorcist, too. I think I’ll put that on my card: Ace Calhoun – Obtainer of Rare Commodities and Banisher of the Undead – no job too small, no zombie too ugly. Call for special introductory offer.?

“Bee serious!” Papa snapped. “Thees ees no laughing matter!”

“OK,” Ace replied. “Fine. How do I get rid of a demon then? Crosses? Garlic? A silver bullet in the heart?”

“You have been watching too many Bela Lugosi films. Demons are powerful, but they are bound by certain rules. They are obligated to abide by their own contracts. They are clever but greedy, and their greed makes them careless. Eef you are patient and astute, the demon may be treecked”.

“Trick it? I don’t even know where to find it!”

Papa leaned forward on his elbows and smiled in a very unpleasant way. “Do not worry,” he said, “eet will find you.”

Although certainly no scientist, Ace did consider himself a rational man. As such, he had always lived his life comfortably sure of certain facts — the earth is round, there is no Santa Claus and demons don’t run around New Orleans like baboons that escaped from the Bronx zoo. Now he was experiencing the same kind of mental inversion that bedeviled the medieval Catholic clergy when Galileo informed them that the earth revolves around the sun; his basic a priori presumptions of the world were being turned inside out. However, Ace was a man who was well accustomed to rolling with life’s punches, so he chose neither to believe nor disbelieve the evidence of his senses, but instead to simply ride this strange torpedo to its conclusion. At some point, maybe he would wake up. Or maybe not.

At any rate, he now sat in a back storeroom in the Midnite club, munching a salami sandwich and reading intensely. He had read more in the past four hours than he had in the previous four years. He was, in fact, reading as though his life depended on it, which it very likely did. Tiny had set up a small table for him amid the shelves and boxes, and the table was piled shoulder high with books from Papa’s library; books like ?The Necronomicon,? ?Malleus Malificarum? and dozens of tomes that defied description, except to say that they were bound in cracked, dusty leather and they were very, very old. Ace had never been aware that there was so much to say about demons, but what the hell, live and learn.

Ace leaned back in his chair, swirling the ice around in his drink and trying to relax. It was nearly midnight, which meant that the Midnite Club was in full swing, band and all. This band was a mellower affair than the previous one had been; four elderly black gentlemen smartly dressed in suits and ties, playing cool jazz with an easy virtuosity that came with many decades of experience. All around the club, crowds of people were eating, drinking and smoking, with an occasional card game here and there at the tables near the back. Ace impatiently scanned the milling crowd for a sign of anything unusual. He wasn’t quite sure what he was looking for, but Papa had assured him that he would know it when he saw it. At any rate, he had been orbiting around the crowd once every 20 minutes for the past three hours or so, and he was relatively sure that he hadn’t seen it yet. It was an effort of will not to pace the club like a caged animal. He was actually getting impatient for something to happen, even though he knew that he probably wouldn’t like it when it did.

Ace got up and elbowed his way through the crowd. He moved slowly, like a sleepwalker, peering into peoples’ eyes as he passed. He was aware that he was making people nervous, but he felt fairly certain that the demon would betray its presence through its eyes, which are, they say, the windows to the soul.

Ace was near the back of the club now, where the gamblers were playing cards and smoking cigars at little round tables, each with a lava lamp in the center which threw a circle of sickly yellow radiance around the players. One table was filled with Southern gentlemen who looked like Texas oil tycoons with white suits and 10-gallon hats. Another table was occupied by Mafioso. And another…

Ace’s heart stopped. The third table was populated by two geeky-looking fellows who were probably software tycoons, (one of whom looked remarkably like a fatter version of Bill Gates), and a biker type with long brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard. The biker was facing Ace, and his skin seemed to pulsate and wriggle as though it were alive. As he got closer, Ace saw that what looked like skin was actually a mass of crawling maggots. In fact, it looked to Ace like there was really no head there at all, just a pulsing horror of little white worms, pushed together by some unseen force into the shape of a human head. If you were to hit it with a baseball bat, the bat would encounter no bone, no blood, just a pile of insects that would splatter everywhere like a watermelon being shot with a .300 Weatherby magnum.

The demon looked up at Ace and smiled, its eyes flashing red. Its skin looked normal now as it said, “Gentlemen, I believe we have another player. Deal you in?”

It took considerable self-control for Ace to hold his voice steady and reply, “What are you playing?”

“Five card draw, fifty dollar ante, jokers wild,” the demon replied as it shuffled the deck with a card-shark flourish.

“Fine. I’m in.”

Ace flagged down one of the g-stringed waitresses and tried to look nonchalant as he bought $1,000 worth of chips. He sat down at the table facing the demon, with one programmer on either side. Each player threw a $50 chip into the pot, and the demon deftly dealt each player five cards with a snapping flick of its wrist.

Ace examined his hand with a stony poker face that had been carefully perfected in more taverns than he cared to count. He had a 3, 4, 5 and 6, all spades, plus a jack of diamonds. Four parts toward a straight flush and open ended to boot. That gave him about one chance in four of completing the hand as either a straight or a flush, pretty good odds but still a risky proposition. If it didn’t pan out, he would be left holding nothing.

The programmer to the demon’s left sneered in a disgusted way, then tossed his hand face down on the table to indicate that he was holding nothing and would not open the betting. Ace opened by throwing a $100 chip into the pot. ‘Bill Gates,’ who was sitting to Ace’s left, eyeballed his hand, then tossed it on the table with a grunt. That left only the demon, who smiled and raised Ace by tossing in two $100 chips.

Ace was not rattled because Providence was on his side. After all, hadn’t the angel said that his hand would be made strong by the hand of the Lord? He smiled cockily and did something an experienced player never does, he threw in $700 worth of chips. Hmmph, that oughta make the ugly bastard back down.

The demon looked at Ace and chuckled, then it tossed in a fistful of chips, seeing Ace’s $600. It paused, locked eyes with Ace and hissed, very quietly, “It’s not the money I want.” The software tycoons looked at each other nervously. “Are you a religious man, Ace?”

“Never have been.”

The demon flashed a predatory grin and rasped, “Then I’m sure you wouldn’t mind betting me your soul.”

OK, thought Ace, this is it, the showdown, High Noon. “You’re on,” he replied. “You win, you get my soul. I win, you go back to wherever the hell you came from.”

“It’s a deal,” the demon replied. Ace wondered whether he ought to shake the demon’s hand to make it official, but the thought of touching that pulsating white skin filled Ace with unspeakable revulsion. The demon smiled, licked its lips and said, “Draw!”

Ace discarded the jack, flicking it face down onto the table. The demon also discarded one card, which meant that it was either trying to fill a flush or a straight, or else it was holding a pair or three-of-a-kind and was trying to make its hand look stronger than it really was. The demon dealt two cards, one to itself and one to Ace, deftly flicking Ace’s card across the length of the table. Ace reached over confidently, scooping up his card, then felt his heart sink into his boots when he picked it up and looked at it — 10 of hearts. He was holding a big, fat bust. Shit! Shit! Shit! Trying desperately to stave off internal panic, Ace threw his last $50 into the pot, delaying the inevitable for a few more seconds. Think, dammit, think! The demon smiled as it scrutinized Ace’s poker face, which Ace sincerely hoped was really as good as he thought. The demon called Ace’s bet and paused, savoring the moment. “Do you know what hell is like, Ace?” the demon whispered. It leaned in closer and Ace could see orange flames smoldering behind the empty facade of its eyes. “I’m going to tie you down to a bed of razor blades with a roll of barbed wire. Then I’m going to use a pair of rusty pliers to pull out all the bones in your feet.”

Ace leaned back in his chair, flashing his biggest, cockiest grin, and replied, “You’re pretty damn sure of your hand. What about your wrist?”

“What?”

“You got a bike?” The demon nodded affirmative. “I’ll race you for the whole enchilada, from here to the court house, winner takes all.”

The demon sized Ace up for a moment, then shouted “You’re on!” It threw its cards face-up on the table and laughed triumphantly. “Pair of threes! Ha! I bluffed you out!”

Ace smiled back. He showed his own worthless hand and replied with a bad Crocodile Dundee accent, “That’s not a bluff, mate. This is a bluff!” The demon cursed and sputtered, incoherent with rage. Ace flagged the waitress down again and said, “Hey, darlin’, would you mind watching my winnings for me? I’ll be back for ’em soon.” Ignoring the flabbergasted expressions on the faces of the waitress and the software tycoons, Ace stomped out of the Midnite Club with the demon hot on his heels.

On the curb outside the club, parked right next to Ace’s chopper, was a gleaming yellow sport bike, a hot-rodded Buell. It was obviously built with the singular purpose of speed in mind, and there was no doubt that the demon would have the advantage in the turns. However, Ace had picked the courthouse for a reason; a good bit of the ride would be comprised of straight-aways. The chopper, with its raked front end, couldn’t corner worth a damn, but in a straightaway its huge engine and long wheelbase made it a speeding missile. As Ace saddled up, it occurred to him that if the cops caught him racing, he would really be screwed, but the thought failed to land with any impact. It was a thought from another lifetime, a thought that seemed pale and insignificant when hell itself was breathing down his neck.

Ace straddled the chopper, pulled the enrichener knob all the way out and fired it up. The rich mixture forced the engine into the high rpm range, which made a staccato machine-gun sound that ricocheted off the stone face of the Midnite Club and echoed down the empty streets. He pushed the knob a quarter of the way in and the machine-gun tempo slowed to a loping potato potato potato, like a drummer playing paradiddles. Ace found the sound soothing. The demon fired up its bike as well, and the two of them sat there until both bikes were completely off choke. Ace pointed to the closest traffic light, which had just turned red, and shouted over the roar of the cycles, “When it turns green, we go!” The demon nodded affirmative and did a burnout to heat the rear tire, blackening the pavement and filling the street with acrid smoke. Ace didn’t bother; he knew that the demon would beat him off the line anyway. The speed of Ace’s takeoff would be limited by the fact that he couldn’t risk a power-wheelie; if the front wheel came off the ground, the impact when it landed again would bend the 12-inch-over forks, and that would be the end of the race. Ace wasn’t worried about it, though. He was betting that the chopper’s 50-to-100 time was far shorter than the Buell’s. The race was long enough that giving up a few seconds off the line wouldn’t ultimately matter.

The light that was aimed at the opposing traffic turned yellow, then red, and the demon gunned the Buell’s engine mercilessly. When the light turned green the demon popped the clutch and took off, lifting the front wheel 24 inches off the ground and instantly gaining a three-second lead.

Ace took off smoothly, quickly up-shifting into fifth. There were lines of tar across the pavement where some road crew had covered the thermal expansion joints in the concrete. As Ace accelerated, the sound of the tires rolling over the bumps sped up from a slow gadump… gadump… gadump to a loping wumpwumpwumpwump and finally to a singular sort of braaaap, all within about three seconds. At 3000 rpm, the high-lift cam turned on hard, and the chopper responded to the throttle like a bucking horse to a whip. Ace leaned his body forward and clutched the handlebars fiercely to prevent his ass from sliding off the seat and onto the rear fender. The wind scream in his ears rose to a deafening pitch, and tears streamed from the corners of his eyes. The demon also had its throttle pegged, but the Buell wasn’t designed to be a drag bike. Ace shot forward like a rocket, quickly closing the gap.

Traffic lights and street lamps sped by in a luminous blur as the racers blew every red light in their path at speeds in excess of 100 mph. If a car happened to pull out in front of them, there would be no time to stop. Both bikes would strike the car broadside, erupting in a volcanic ball of fire, showering the street with bright orange sparks and spraying bits of hot metal everywhere. There would be no need for body bags; there would be nothing left for the fire department to clean up except for a big red smear on the pavement and the occasional ear or finger hanging in the bushes or splattered against the curb. Ace desperately hoped that the highway on-ramp would appear soon.

After what seemed like the longest 60 seconds of his life, the big, green sign for the on-ramp appeared. The demon hit the clover-leaf interchange at 100 mph, leaning way over into the turn and dragging its leather-padded right knee on the ground. Ace maintained his speed until the last possible second, then braked hard and slowed to 50. Even so, the chopper’s low-slung frame only had about 4 inches of ground clearance. The right foot peg touched down when Ace hit the ramp, spraying a shower of white sparks behind him and costing him even more time.

By the time Ace had merged onto the highway proper, the Buell had gained a lot of ground, but the highway was where the chopper was at home. Ace nailed the throttle and braced for the acceleration. The chopper responded like a guided missile, with a massive surge of power. The needle of the speedometer quickly rose to 140 mph, and the gap began to close once again.

The road was long and straight, which was perfect for Ace, since the Buell topped out around 145, while the chopper still had plenty of top end left. The Buell’s taillight grew quickly from a tiny red point of light in the distance, until the demon was clearly visible again. The wind blast was nearly unbearable. Ace put his feet back on the passenger pegs and leaned forward with his chest on the tank, trying to escape the vicious slipstream. Gradually, the chopper pulled ahead of the Buell; Ace was finally in the lead.

Everything screamed by in a blur. Insects sand blasted Ace’s face and neck, stinging like hell and plastering his face and glasses with guts. The speedometer was vibrating so badly that it was barely readable, but the needle seemed to be shaking somewhere around 155. The exit for the courthouse was coming up too quickly. Ace had hoped to put more distance between himself and the demon, but there wasn’t going to be enough time. He began to slow the chopper down. It would be suicide to try to take the off-ramp any faster than 50 mph.

As Ace eased the chopper around the clover-leaf, the demon roared up from behind and slipped around him, once again seizing the lead with one knee dragging. The off-ramp let out onto a city street, straight and full of traffic lights. The courthouse was visible in the distance, no more than four or five blocks away.

As Ace wrapped the throttle around, he realized that he wasn’t going to make it. The demon had once again gained about three seconds worth of lead, and there wasn’t enough distance left to make it up. There was only one option left. Ace flipped the switch that armed the nitrous oxide. The last time he had used the nitrous, the force of the exploding gas had caused the front connecting rod to snap the Evo’s skimpy crank pin. The rod had then piled down through the crankcase, destroying the motor’s bottom end and dumping oil out all over the road. Of all of the bad ideas Ace had tried out on the chopper over the years, the goddamn nitrous was definitely the worst, but if he didn’t use it, this race was lost. The courthouse was two blocks away now. He silently prayed that the bottom end would hold, then he hit the button.

The acceleration was comparable to the Batman ride at Great Adventure. The G-force pulled the flesh of Ace’s face back, turning it into a grotesque, grimacing mask. Ace could feel his internal organs being pressed against the back of his rib cage, and it took all of the strength left in his exhausted arms to cling to the handlebars and not fly off the back of the bike. The chopper blew by the Buell like it was standing still, flying into the courthouse’s huge, empty parking lot, beating the Buell by about 20 feet. Ace hit the brakes, rode in a big loop around the lot and came back around to face the demon.

The Buell had stopped dead, frozen in time, as though it had hit an invisible brick wall. The bike stood up, flexing its limbs, and Ace suddenly realized that it was not really a bike at all. How could he have ever mistaken that abomination for a bike? The steed writhed and thrashed, spitting and gnashing its long yellow fangs before dissolving into a cloud of yellow smoke. The demon, meanwhile, was raging and screaming in some language that Ace couldn’t understand. It wanted nothing more than to tear Ace to shreds, to mash him into a pile of bloody hamburger and bone splinters, but it had lost the race, and a deal is, after all, a deal. The life force that had held the demon’s body together was being drained out, and the body was losing the cohesion that had held it together. It was, in fact, turning into a pile of little white worms that fell in heaps upon the ground and crawled away. Within minutes, the Buell and its rider were no more.

In the days and weeks that followed, Ace spent a great deal of time mulling over the recent events, trying to decide if they were real, wondering for the first time in his life, what is reality? But Ace was a man who had always survived by rolling with life’s punches, and sometimes the wisest course of action was not to think. Sometimes, it was better to just ride.

In the back woods of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, there is a small, winding road that does not appear on any map, and which few have ever traveled. It winds around over the tops of the hills, through lush groves scented by pine trees, where white-tailed deer leap gracefully over fallen logs and squirrels make crunching sounds on the thick mat of dried pine needles. On nights of the full moon, when spring is in her glory, stars sparkle brightly in the inky black sky, and millions of fireflies wink in the clean, crisp air, signaling each other with secret tribal semaphores that are not taught to outsiders.

Into this idyllic scene rumbles a man who, in another life, was known as Dan Winslow, but is now called, simply, Brother Daniel. He is a strange figure to see out here in the forest, so his appearance warrants the effort of description. He is riding an ancient BSA Lightning Rocket, which in itself is unusual. But wait, there’s more. His head is shaved clean like a Tibetan monk’s, and he has a long, stringy Oriental-style goatee that flaps in the wind over his left shoulder. He is wearing a hooded cloak made of brown burlap that also flaps straight out behind him as he rides. He is in his 40s, tall and lean, and in his clear blue eyes, abundant peace resides.

Brother Daniel never decides where to go. In fact, he doesn’t even know where he is going; at least not in the logical and intellectual sense with which most of us use the word “know.” He knows where to go the same way the fish know where to swim; he doesn’t have to think about it or rationalize it, he just knows. So now he heads south, and he knows that Buzzard will be there, because that’s what is supposed to happen at that particular time and place. Brother Daniel is plugged into the consciousness of the universe in a way few modern men can comprehend, and as such, his intuition is never wrong.

Dan Winslow had hated his life. It was to be expected, since he was living out the American dream. He had one wife, two kids, eight credit cards (each with a staggering debt), two $50,000 cars, a $500,000 house, complete with a breathtaking mortgage, and, of course, the old Beezer, which he hadn’t ridden in years. He was post-modern, fast-paced, career-oriented, upwardly mobile, highly fashionable and completely burned out. At the age of 39, he was gaining weight, losing hair and beginning to have creeping doubts about the relative value of things like foyers with cathedral ceilings and 7-foot-high chandeliers that are visible from the street. But, like the song says, there were planes to catch and bills to pay, and Dan wasn’t a man who was overly given to thoughtful introspection. Had he been such a man, he might have given some serious thought to the subject of omens. But Dan Winslow had no time for omens because they were neither big nor shiny nor even terribly expensive (or so he thought), and therefore would, in all probability, not impress the neighbors. Which was a pity, really, because at that very moment, one mother of an omen was teetering, like the sword of Damocles, right above his head. Had he been taught to see such things, it might, in fact, have saved him quite a lot of trouble.This particular omen took the innocuous form of a letter-sized manila envelope. Its upper left corner was emblazoned with the crest of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Just below the crest was the Harrisburg return address of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Dan tore open the envelope with that vague sense of dread that is sadly familiar to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of official correspondence from the state. Inside was a letter informing him that he, Daniel P. Winslow, had 0 traffic tickets outstanding, and that he faced the imminent loss of his driver’s license unless he immediately remitted the sum of 00 dollars and 00 cents. For a moment he couldn’t quite believe it; he just stood there, staring incredulously at the Kafkaesque letter, mouth open like a dying fish. After spending an infuriating hour lost in the bureau’s labyrinthine automated phone system, he was put in touch with a clerk at the Montgomery County Court House in Norristown. The clerk assured him that the computer error that had generated the fantastically absurd letter would be corrected at once, and Dan gave the matter no further thought. An official had assured him; why would he doubt it?

But the executives had an understanding with the cops in the city, as most were heavy contributors to the FOP. Dan’s shiny new Mercedes was like a signal flare; it hinted at secret connections to sources of money and power that no smart cop should ever cross. So Dan wasn’t overly concerned when he saw the flashing red and blue lights in his rear view mirror; hell, he didn’t even think that they were directed toward him. He figured that the cop just wanted him to get out of the way so that he could go get the real bad guys. It wasn’t until the cop ran right up on his rear bumper that his befuddled mind formed the thought that there was nobody else, he was the only thing on this goddamn evil road.

The gray steel guardrail looked surreal, almost like a video game, as Dan carefully eased his way onto the shoulder. A minor misunderstanding, he thought. I’ll just have a little talk with the good officer and straighten this whole thing out. Dan turned his dome light on, hit the button that rolled the driver-side window down and waited for the cop to approach. He didn’t have to wait long. The cop looked apprehensive at first, but his face relaxed once he had sized up his adversary and decided that Dan was probably not dangerous.

“License and registration, please.”

“Just a minute, officer, I think there’s been a little misunderstanding. A little- heh heh- yes, what I mean to say is…”

“Sir, I need to see your license and registration now.” Dirty Harry voice, heavy sheriff-at-sundown overtones.

Dan couldn’t quite believe it. He, Daniel P. Winslow III, was being ordered around like a common criminal, by this kid, who looked to be all of 21…fresh out of the academy, with his hairless cheeks and his I-am-the-law swagger. “Young man,” he said, “do you know who I am? Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with? Just who the hell do you think you are?”

“Sir, please step out of the car.”

“No, wait, this is all a simple misunderstanding. Let me just…”

“Sir, I need you to step out of the car right now!”

Dan sat silently in the passenger seat of his wife’s car, looking out the window and not saying anything. He looked like a man who has spent the last 48 hours in the bowels of Philadelphia’s justice system; unshaven, messed-up hair, black eye and dried blood on the front of his Pierre Cardin shirt. His “suspended license,” which the courthouse was supposed to have corrected, had of course come up on the police computers, so he was now out on bail, pending a trial for driving under the influence, driving with a suspended license and resisting arrest. Without a license, his wife had had to come to the jail to pick him up, and she drove now in utter silence, lips drawn tight into a narrow slash of fury. The drive home was taking forever. Dan wished to God that she would say something, anything, or at least turn the goddamn radio on.

Dan sat uncomfortably at his boss Bob’s desk, waiting for him to finish shuffling through a small pile of papers. Every now and then Bob would look up, and Dan could see his gaze involuntarily flicking over to the black eye. All morning, Dan’s colleagues had been nodding curt hellos or turning away when they saw him coming, which, of course, meant that the rumor-mill had been working overtime, and that the news was all over the office by now. Bob, evidently deciding that he couldn’t stall any longer, tapped the papers on the desk to square them and then set them aside.

“I heard about your little, ah, incident there,” said Bob, pointing with a pencil at Dan’s eye. He waited for a moment, but Dan didn’t say anything. “We’re a tight-knit little community in this business, Dan. Word gets around pretty fast, you know.”

Dan exhaled deeply. “Look Bob, I know what you’re thinking and…”

“Daaaaan, Danny-Boy, why didn’t you come to us? You should have told us if you were having a problem. We could have helped you, there are programs…”

“I’m not ‘having a problem’, Bob. I made a little mistake, that’s all. I’m taking care of it, and I assure you it will never happen again.”

“That’s not the point, Dan,” Bob replied. “Everybody knows now! Your co-workers, your clients, everybody! Reputation is everything in this business, you know that.”

“So what are you saying, Bob?” Bob looked down at his desk. His silence said it all. “Jesus, Bob! How long have you and I known each other? Ten years? Fifteen? How much money have I made for this company?”

“I’m sorry, Danny-Boy, I really am… But I don’t make the rules of the game, I just have to play by ’em. You know how much I respect you, but this isn’t personal- it’s business.”

Dan ransacked the house looking for the $4,000 custom-made golf clubs his wife had given him for his 35th birthday. Right now, he didn’t want to think about his arrest, his termination or his impending trial. All he wanted was to play a few holes to soothe his jangled nerves, just keep his eye on the little white ball and not think about anything else. He distinctly remembered having put them away in the bedroom closet, but now they seemed to have disappeared. He rummaged through the closet and under the bed, a vague unease in the back of his mind making his motions increasingly jagged and frantic. Suddenly he froze, like a cartoon character doing a double take after running off the edge of a cliff. He slowly turned his gaze back toward the bed. There was a sheet of paper lying neatly in the center of it. It was like finding a shark in your swimming pool or a dildo in your oatmeal; an ordinary enough object made extraordinary by being somewhere it had no business to be. Hand trembling faintly, he picked it up. Written on it in blue ballpoint pen were the following words:

Dear Dan,

By the time you read this, I will be gone. Our marriage hasn’t been working for a long time now, and this drinking problem of yours is the final straw. I can’t help feeling that there just has to be more to life than this, so I have decided to go to Bora Bora with my dear friend Philippe, the French sculptor, to find myself. I’m not sure what I want anymore, but it’s pretty clear that this isn’t it. Someday, when all this is over, maybe we can be friends again. But until then, I’m afraid this is goodbye.

-Annette

Of course. That explained the missing clubs. The feeling slowly drained out of Dan’s left leg as he started sliding into some preternatural kind of shock. He lurched against the wall and began sliding down toward the floor. Then his left arm went numb. Then the left side of his face.

Death. He was sure of it. He would die of some unexplained neurological malfunction, a fatal lockup of the medulla, resulting in complete loss of respiratory control. They would find his body here in the bedroom, blue and stiff, clutching this damned letter in his right hand while halfway across the globe some evil bastard of a Frenchman was fucking his wife and swinging his nine wood.

Dan stood on the ledge outside a top-floor window in the university’s main downtown building and looked down at the tiny ant-world below. He pressed his back against the cold stone and his fingers sought out chinks in the rock to stabilize himself against the whipping of the wind, a useless instinct, considering what he had come here to do. Looking down again, the ground seemed suddenly to drop out. All of the lines that made up the giant glass-and-steel skyscrapers around him now disappeared into a single vanishing point far below. He imagined himself swan diving off the ledge, accelerating at 32 feet per second squared, quickly reaching terminal velocity. He saw himself rocketing past the window of a boardroom full of professors, the shock and horror on their faces as they looked at each other, then back at the window, not quite sure that they really saw what they think they saw. Then the explosive impact as his body violently smashes through the hood of a car belonging to some pin-striped stockbroker type who is on his way to work. In his mind’s eye, Dan could see his own skull caving in the windshield; safety glass, brains, viscera and shards of bone spraying everywhere, blood and bits of meat dripping down the fronts of store windows and stop signs. A sudden sense of vertigo seized him now, accompanied by elevator sensations in the pit of his stomach. He averted his gaze from the lethal asphalt below and instead concentrated on the ledge, the texture of its weather-beaten stones spattered with pigeon shit, the intricacy of the scrollwork sculpted into the ledge, the fangs and bat wings of the gargoyle protruding from the corner.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said the gargoyle.

“What the hell do you know about being me?” Dan snarled, dimly aware that he must be going mad.

“Much more than you suspect.”

“Yeah? Well fuck you, it’s my life.”

“Soooo, he thinks his life belongs to him, yes?” said the gargoyle significantly, turning to address another gargoyle that had shambled over to hear the conversation. “If he destroys himself, can he create another man to replace the one which he has destroyed? Ha! He thinks that the vandal who smashes a vase is more exalted than the potter who created it!” Dan felt a palpable jolt of power as the gargoyle turned its gaze toward him. It glowed with an inner light that radiated out through its eyes. It was like being caught in a police searchlight. “You seek answers, yes?”

“What are you, my guardian angel? My spirit guide?”

“Spirit guide!” the gargoyle exclaimed. “I haven’t heard that one in a long time… Some people have called me those things. There is an unseen world that coexists with this one, yes? It lies just below the surface of your perception. If you could see it, you would see that even now the air before you swarms with beings you can’t even imagine.” (This was not an agreeable thought.) “When necessary, I take on whatever form is most convenient.” A pause. “You are searching for something, yes? And you want it so badly that you will follow it right over that ledge. What do you seek, Daniel? What is it you want?”

Suddenly, the pressure that had been building up for years finally exploded and he cried out: “I want to be an idiot dancing in the sagebrush! I want to be like a small child! I want to be as innocent as the lamb!” A pause. Then, very quietly: “I want to be without sin.”

“Very well, then,” replied the angel, “make it so.” Puzzlement. No reply. “Years ago, when a circus would buy a baby elephant to train, the elephant was held captive by means of a manacle that was chained to a stake in the ground. Once the elephant accepted the idea of the stake, for the rest of its life, the tiniest toothpick was sufficient to keep it captive. Why? Because, even when the elephant was full-grown, it did not believe that it was strong enough to pull the stake out. It was held captive, not by the stake, but rather by the idea of the stake.” A pause to let this sink in. “God forgives you, Daniel. Get down off this ledge and go in peace.”

Enlightenment is a strange term. The divine spirit certainly has an aspect of light about it, but really, immolation or even incineration would be far more accurate. Enlightenment is like a blast furnace, a giant cutting torch that burns away the dross until only pure billet remains. To the ego and other false selves, enlightenment feels like death, which for them, it is. But after the purification has run its course, the true self remains, a hollowed-out shell filled with the song of the universe.

Buzzard had a bit of a problem. For the past week, Gino’s Bar & Grill had been frequented- every night on the dot of 8- by a sweet little thing who was finally, absolutely and completely the most beautiful girl Buzzard had ever seen. In fact, it might have been more than a week. Buzzard had no way of knowing how long it had taken him to notice her. (Although, he thought, the man who failed to notice this lovely creature probably needed his head- or other parts of his anatomy- examined.) Now, this is not the sort of thing that most people generally consider a problem. The problem was that Buzzard- the very same Buzzard who fearlessly faced down cops and outlaws alike and never backed down- was extremely shy when it came to women. She sat at the bar, dejectedly twirling a glass of white wine by the stem, long blond hair cascading over her face, lost in her troubles and oblivious to the world. Buzzard was a sucker for pretty and sad. There was just no getting around it. He strapped on his imaginary pair of big brass balls, took a mighty swig of beer for courage and walked over to the bar.

“Uh, hello,” Buzzard said in his most congenial tone. The girl turned her head slowly and found herself looking at a lanky but muscular torso. Then she looked up and seemed momentarily taken aback. But then again, this tall fellow with the long brown hair and neatly trimmed beard was pretty typical of what one would find in a place like Gino’s, wasn’t he?

“Hi,” she replied, a little abruptly.

Buzzard noticed that her glass was nearly empty. “Buy you a drink?” She nodded and Buzzard called out, “Hey Dave! Another Guinness for me and a wine for the lady.” Then, to the girl, “My name’s Horace, but everybody calls me Buzzard. What’s your name?”

The girl’s lip curled ever so slightly, no doubt at the incongruity of this wolf man who stood before her having a name like Horace. She sized him up with her piercing blue eyes, like a gambler weighing the odds before placing a bet. Then she said wryly, “Kira, but everybody calls me Kira.”

“I’ve never seen you here before.”

She looked down at the floor in the most dejected way that Buzzard had ever seen and replied, “I never had a reason to be here before.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Buzzard asked. Kira looked up from the floor. It had been a long time since anyone had taken any interest in her or her troubles.

Officer Willie van Dycke paced his apartment in a state of acute agitation. It wasn’t merely because he ran a risky but lucrative side business selling cocaine he’d taken from crime scenes, although that was certainly a part of it. It was because, for the past month, he’d been hiding his stash in his wife Kira’s car, and she had recently started coming home at later and later hours. Van Dycke did not relish the thought of being caught with a kilo of coke in his closet, and he was anxious to transfer it to the car as quickly as possible.

He paced around the apartment in a mean funk, eyes glazed, popping his knuckles, fidgeting with his cop mustache and flexing his big biceps. He nervously checked his watch. It was only 15 minutes since the last time he’d checked it. Finally he picked up the phone, brutally jabbing at it with his beefy index finger as if he meant to punch holes in it.

“Hello?”

“Hey Jimmy, it’s Willie.”

“Ay, Willie, what’s up?”

“Listen, Jimmy, can you do me a big favor?”

“Sure… Watcha need?”

“It’s about my wife.” He paused. It was damned embarrassing to have to admit this to someone. “She’s, uh, been coming home later and later every night and I wanna know what she’s up to. Do you think you could use one of the unmarked cars to tail her when she gets out of work tomorrow?”

There was a brief pause on the other end, which meant that van Dycke’s suspicions were obvious. Jimmy replied, “Sure thing, Willie. No problem,” in an overly cheerful way that indicated that he had no intention of probing at what he knew must be a very sore spot.

“Thanks a lot, pal. I owe you one, big time. And Jimmy? Just keep this between you and me, OK? I don’t want word gettin’ around.”

“You got it, pal.”

Van Dycke hung up the phone and poured himself a double scotch on the rocks. Apparently, slapping Kira around wasn’t good enough; she wasn’t getting the message. She better not be fucking somebody, he thought. If that dirty bitch is fucking somebody, I swear to God I’ll skin them both alive.

Jesus Moreno sat at the lunch counter of the ?50s retro-style Mill Creek Diner, known affectionately in the neighborhood as the Choke n’ Puke. The Choke n’ Puke had a black-and-white checkered floor, more chrome than a parking lot full of Harleys and walls covered with pictures of classic cars and Elvis memorabilia. The lights were too bright. The overpowered stereo system assaulted the customers with a steady stream of syrupy sweet doo-wop music. But Jesus hadn’t come for the ambience. He had chosen this spot specifically so that he could watch the apartment building across the street through the diner’s big plate glass window. Word on the street was that Officer van Dycke was getting a little too zealous about confiscating cocaine. He rarely made any arrests, but he always took the coke, so it didn’t take brain surgery to figure out that the officer probably had a little side business going. A stash like that would be worth a lot of money, maybe even enough for Jesus to bootstrap himself into The Big Time.

He had been positively elated the first time he’d seen van Dycke rummaging around in that green Ford Probe. He’d realized then that the stash was probably in the car. This was good. Moreno was a pretty good car thief, but he’d never tried his hand at burglary, and he wasn’t eager to cut his teeth on a cop’s apartment.

Jesus looked at his watch. Recently the Probe had begun arriving at the apartment later and later each night. He finished the last gritty dregs of his coffee and slipped a couple of bucks under the empty cup. He decided to follow the Probe tomorrow and see where it went. It would probably be safer to take it there, wherever “there” was, than to do it right in front of the apartment, where van Dycke could come out at any moment, guns blazing.

Special Agent Cox awoke with a start when he heard the big reel-to-reel tape recorder start up. Shit, he thought, musta dozed off again. There was nothing on the face of God’s green earth more boring than stakeout duty. He heaved his lean body upright, ran his fingers through his thinning hair and rubbed the stubble on his narrow jaw. As his eyes swam into focus, he saw the squat, bulldozer form of Special Agent Wacker, coffee in hand, peering through the telescope. Agent Cox turned up the volume of the tape recorder to an audible level. Tinny-sounding telephone audio squawked out of the speakers.

“Sure, Willie. Watcha need?”

“It’s about my wife.” (Embarrassed pause) “She’s, uh, been coming home later and later every night and I wanna know what she’s up to. Do you think you could use one of the unmarked cars to tail her when she gets out of work tomorrow?”

Cox turned down the sound again. “Shit,” he said. “I think the bastard’s using his wife’s car as a stash.”

“Yup,” replied Wacker without turning around.

“What should we do? Try to catch him making a sale?”

“Not unless he does it within the next couple days,” replied Wacker. “Waiting around with our thumbs up our asses is too risky. We don’t wanna blow this. Let’s give him a couple more days and if nothing happens, we’ll just take him the next time he goes for the stash.”

Cox frowned. “It’s his wife’s car. It’ll be damn hard to prove the stuff’s his.”

“Then we’ll take the wife,” Wacker replied, “and force him to fess up.”

“What if he lets her take the fall?”

Wacker turned around and shrugged nonchalantly. “If he lets her go down, it’s not our fault. There’s nothing we can do about it; we’ll just have to take her down.”

Kira and Buzzard were at Gino’s again the following night at the usual time. Kira, who had spent years building a wall of solitude around herself, now found someone knocking on that wall for the first time, trying to gain admittance. He was a mysterious stranger who was a porcupine on the outside but a marshmallow on the inside, and Kira found herself pecking at the wall like a chick trying to break through its shell. Kira and Buzzard were thus locked in conversation when he heard the sound.

Buzzard’s ears were finely tuned instruments that could detect, sort and catalog literally hundreds of different exhaust notes, and this was one he hadn’t heard in a long time, an old BSA. Kira saw Buzzard’s quizzical expression, ear cocked toward the door, lips pursed in the faint precursor to a question. Then his face broke into a wide grin and he said, to nobody in particular, “I can’t believe it! It can’t be!”

Then the door creaked open and a tall figure glided silently in, head shaved, long beard, dressed in brown burlap, a strange-looking priest of some mysterious religion. Buzzard looked at the figure, then back at Kira and said, “It’s Brother Daniel!” in a voice that was all joy and boiling excitement. He sprang up to meet Daniel, gave him a bear hug and clapped him hard on the shoulder. “Brother Daniel!” he shouted. “Gawd-damn it’s been a long time! Come here, sit down, you look dog-tired. Hey Dave,” he shouted at the bartender, “some red wine and another Guinness!” But in the back of Buzzard’s mind, a vague foreboding was forming, like the gathering clouds of a storm front. Brother Daniel had an odd habit of appearing at the exact moment when his presence was needed, and Buzzard couldn’t help but wonder what sort of mischief the Fates had in store.

Jesus grimaced and flexed his legs as far as space would allow. For the past two hours he’d been hiding behind the big green Dumpster at the far end of Gino’s parking lot. He had gotten his cousin to tail the Probe and drop him off here, at this seedy bar in a run-down section of town.

Jesus crept over to the building and peered in through the window. The cop’s wife looked preoccupied with a big wolf man and some reject from a bad kung fu movie. It seemed as good a time as any to get started.

He crept back to the car, unrolled a small tool-roll full of lock picking instruments and quickly went to work on the lock.

Officer Jimmy Rafferty sat in an unmarked car across the street from Gino’s. He was dressed in black, slouching low in the seat to avoid being seen, and peering into the window of the bar with a high-powered pair of binoculars. Some Puerto Rican guy was breaking into Kira’s car, but Jimmy wasn’t overly excited about that. He could afford to wait until the thief actually began taking the ignition lock apart, then he could get the guy for grand theft auto. Besides, Jimmy had more important things to worry about at the moment.

He put the binoculars down, whipped out a small cell phone and punched in a number. “Hello?” said a voice on the other end.

“Hey Willie, it’s Jimmy. I found Kira.”

“Great! Where is she?”

“She’s at this little dive called Gino’s. It’s on Gregg Street, near the warehouses.”

“Yeah, I know where it is. Made a couple of busts there once. What the hell is she doing there?”

“Looks like she’s with some big hairy guy…”

“Big hairy guy? What big hairy guy?”

“I dunno… Lanky guy, maybe 6-3, 6-4…long hair, beard; you can’t miss ‘im.”

“Thanks,” growled van Dycke as he slammed down the phone.

“Willie, wait!” shouted Jimmy, but he was shouting into a dead phone.

Agent Cox was rummaging through a brown paper bag full of stale snacks. Agent Wacker was peering through the telescope as usual.

“Our man’s on the move,” said Wacker. “Looks like he’s in a hurry, too.”

“Wanna follow him?” asked Cox.

“You bet,” replied Wacker. “Let’s roll.”

Kira was both intrigued and amused by the unusual cast of characters that had chosen to converge at, of all places, this seedy little biker bar. This latest character moved like a cat and spoke like a Zen monk. There was something about his presence that made her keenly aware of everything around her, as if her own psychic energies were being somehow buoyed by his immense and powerful aura. She reached down to get a cigarette from her purse, but her purse was not hanging from the chair. “Damn,” she said.

“What?” replied Buzzard.

“My cigarettes… I must have left my purse in the car.”

“I’ll get it for you. Which car is it?”

“Green Ford Probe,” she replied as she dug the keys out of her pocket and handed them to Buzzard.

“Be right back,” he said, drawing his long body upright.

Buzzard started to open the door but stopped short. Through the crack, he could see the Probe, as well as the little skinny guy who was working away at the lock. In one fluid motion, Buzzard reached his long arm around the bar to where he knew Big Dave kept the shotgun. Dave did a take, then a doubletake and shouted “Hey!” but by then Buzzard was already out the door.

“You better get the fuck away from that car!” Buzzard shouted as he strode toward the Probe. Jesus whirled around, a long, wicked-looking blade appearing suddenly in his hand, but then he heard the ch-chak as Buzzard cocked the shotgun and he knew he was fucked.

Jesus and Buzzard were both taken by surprise when they saw the cop cruiser screech into the parking lot, practically on two wheels. Jesus was still holding the knife, but in his panic, he seemed to have forgotten about it. A big, muscular cop with a square jaw and a cop mustache leapt out of the cruiser, revolver drawn. Buzzard put the shotgun down, pointed at Jesus and yelled, “He’s trying to steal that car!”

Incredibly, though, the cop was pointing his revolver at Buzzard, foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. Buzzard’s guts clenched into a knot as he suddenly realized that something was very, very wrong. “You hairy freak!” the cop screeched. “I’ll teach you to fuck around with my wife!” The tip of the revolver was jittering in the cop’s shaking grip.

“Wife?” Buzzard yelled. “What wife? Who the hell are you?”

A black sedan screeched to a halt behind the cop cruiser and two men in black suits and black ties jumped out. One was tall and lean, the other short and built like a bulldozer. Both had auto pistols drawn. They ran toward Buzzard and van Dycke, guns pointed at the latter. The squat one was shouting, “Put it down, van Dycke! The jig is up!”

“This sonofabitch is fucking my wife!”

“Fuck you! I’ve never seen your wife!”

And suddenly, there was another gun-wielding man adding to the bedlam, shouting, “Willie! Don’t do it! He’s unarmed! It’s not worth it!”

Nobody even saw Brother Daniel move. But suddenly he was standing there, holding a katana in a two-fisted kenjutsu stance, its blade spattered with dark red gore. Van Dycke looked down; where before there had been a hand and a gun, now there was nothing but a stump. He opened his mouth as if to scream, and a fountain of red began to gush from the end of his ruined arm. Van Dycke sank to his knees, his nervous system locked up with shock. For a long moment nobody moved. Then Jimmy started yelling, “Ambulance! Somebody get an ambulance!”

The magic words “officer down” had brought the ambulance quickly. Jimmy had been able to prevent van Dycke from bleeding to death in the interim by using his belt as a tourniquet. Jesus Moreno and Brother Daniel had both been taken into custody at the scene. Daniel had simply shrugged, handed his sword to Agent Cox and stepped into the car without complaint or protest.

Brother Daniel was released two days later. Moreno had cut a deal for leniency in exchange for his agreement to testify against van Dycke, so Kira was off the hot seat. Officer van Dycke was at the county hospital in critical but stable condition, awaiting indictment on attempted murder and assorted drug trafficking charges.

Now Buzzard and Brother Daniel were back in Gino’s, Buzzard with his ever-present Guinness, Daniel with his red wine. “They took me down to the station for questioning,” said Brother Daniel, “but they had to let me go after they took the other witnesses’ statements. That cop was going to shoot you, everybody saw it. They even gave me my sword back.”

“What didja do,” asked Buzzard, grinning, “use The Force on ’em?”

Brother Daniel returned the grin. “Something like that,” he said.

“Where are you going now?” asked Buzzard.

“I don’t know,” replied Daniel with a shrug. “I guess I’ll just keep listening to the wind.”

The End

Francis “Ace” Calhoun awoke with the fear, accompanied by guilt, which wasa bit odd. It wasn?t that Ace didn’t have plenty to feel guilty about. In his 32 years, he had been involved in as much debauchery as any 10 pimps or con men. He had slept with his best friend’s wife and his wife’s best friend. He’d gotten the clap from his boss’ daughter and given it to his daughter’s boss. Then, of course, there had been that notorious, drug-addled day back in ’87 when he’d stolen 23 cars.

But none of this had ever bothered Ace before because he viewed morals inmuch the same way he viewed underwear — he knew they existed, but he?d never understood why others considered them necessary. It’s not that Ace was immoral in the traditional sense. It’s just that morals had simply never occurred to him, and he lived in a world where consequences were like getting caught in the rain — it just happened sometimes, and not necessarily as a result of anything you did. To Ace, the world contained two kinds of people, Ace and not-Ace, and he had no doubt about who existed to serve whom.

Nonetheless, there it was, that itching sensation, accompanied by apremonition that retribution was at hand and that the hammer wasabout to come down.

Fortunately, however, there was the ever-present hip flask of JD to stupefy that one rebellious nerve ending that refused to vibrate in synch with the larger picture of Ace’s persona. He took a mighty swig, pulled on a crustypair of jeans and shambled stiffly out to the garage of the dingy apartmentin which he stayed (under a phony name, of course). The garage was whereThe Beast lived…

Ace’s bike was a dozen bad ideas all rolled into one. From the “Easy Rider” front-end to the worked 96 ci Evo engine, it cornered like shit and triedto power-wheelie every chance it got. It looked like a collision between achopper and a medieval weapons locker; hand-made parts (including thehardtail frame) had been hack sawed and flame-cut with the jagged edges andsharp points left on. But once you got it up around 80, it was 520 poundsof pure, smooth hell, and there weren’t many vehicles on the road that couldcatch it in a straight line. Ace straddled the monstrosity, wrestled itupright and thumbed the huge engine to life.

Minutes later, he was out on the open road, rolling down the pre-dawnhighway, thoughts of divine retribution far behind him. With a little luck,he would cross the bridge from Pennsylvania into New Jersey before theyuppies were even out of bed, then cut across to Wildwood and the HOGrally. Aaah, the HOG rally, where beer flowed like a river and the women(not coincidentally) looked mighty fine. Ace had his knees in the wind,the rumble in his ears, and was feeling like the king of the world.

Glancing in the rear view mirror, he suddenly noticed that he had picked up one of those inevitable tailgaters who won’t give you any space and refuseto pass. Annoyed, Ace eased the throttle open. Seventy and the tailgaterstill hung in there. At 80 mph he began to fall away. Slowly, Ace’sirritability faded and the peaceful feeling of the open road returned.

Then he saw the flashing red and blue lights.

Shit! The goddamn cop didn’t even see the tailgater. (Or else he did, buthell, why hassle a taxpaying citizen when you can bust a big bad bikerinstead?) In any case, there was nothing to do but wrap the throttle aroundand hope for the best. Ace was wanted in at least a half-dozen states, andthe bike had so many stolen parts in it that it was practically a rollingfelony.

At 120 mph, the cop was still hanging on. Ace was practically blind inspite of his shoplifted wraparound Ray-Bans. The wind-scream wasdeafening and the tears that streamed from his eyes evaporated evenbefore they reached his ears. The pavement sped by in a blur andhard-shelled bugs impacted against his face and jacket like shots from a BBgun. At this speed, there was no margin for error. Everything, from adiscarded beer bottle to a patch of oil, represented a life-threateninghazard. Then the engine began to cough and sputter, and Ace knew that hewas really fucked…

The high-speed chase came to an inglorious end as Ace coastedunceremoniously to the side of the road. In his rear view mirror, he couldsee the cop getting out of his cruiser with his revolver drawn, but the copseemed to have understood at once what had happened, and Ace thought thathe could see him laughing. The cop strolled over to Ace with no realsense of urgency, but nevertheless pointing the gun at Ace’s back. Therewas no point in even getting off the bike. Ace kept both hands on the ape-hanger handlebars where the cop could see them. No sense compounding his miseries by getting shot.

“Keep your hands where I can see ’em!” the cop shouted. “Do you understandthat it is a crime to run from an officer of the- “

“Yeah, yeah,” Ace replied, cutting him off. “You got me. Shit, I’m guiltyas sin, why argue?” The cop smiled. For the first time, Ace noticed that hewas dealing with a mean, pig-eyed fellow with a missing tooth, who wasobviously enjoying the opportunity to humiliate a biker. The cop relaxedand stopped pointing the gun directly at Ace, although he didn’t put itback in the holster either. He eyed Ace up and down for what seemed like avery long time, as though carefully weighing some kind of decision.Finally, he said, “This can go down two ways. First way is I bust you forleading police on a high-speed chase, reckless endangerment, resistingarrest and anything else I can find when I check for outstandingwarrants.”

Ace inhaled deeply. Far away in the foggy extreme of his memory heremembered his grandmother saying that if you’re going to eat with thedevil, you need a very long spoon. “What’s the other way?” he asked.

“The other way,” replied the cop, “is I do somethin’ for you, and you dosomethin’ for me.” He scrawled something on a scrap of paper and handed itto Ace. It said, ?Holiday Inn, 2831 Roosevelt Blvd., Rm. 254, 8:30 p.m.? “Andjust to make sure you’re a man of your word,” said the cop, “I’m impoundingyour bike.”Ace stood on the pavement outside the gray monolith that was the HolidayInn and looked at it for a long time. There seemed to be no doubt thatwhatever was about to go down would be something he would later regret. The only alternative, though, was to let the pig have his precious bike that he?d built, piece by piece, with his very own hands, and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening. Steeling himself, he took one last drag from his cigarette, flicked the butt into the gutter and walked inside.

Once in the lobby, Ace was aware that his long hair, beard and tattoos were drawing stares from the people behind the desk. Trying to look nonchalant,he strode over to the elevator, punched the “up” button and stepped inside.Getting off at the second floor, he walked down the hall toward room 254.He paused a moment, wondering what sort of heinous trouble was almostcertainly waiting for him inside. Then he knocked.

The door opened just a crack, but nobody beckoned him in. Whoever was onthe other side of the door obviously didn’t want to be seen or identified.Ace pushed the door open and walked in.

He was instantly struck in the face by a powerful halogen light that reduced the rest of the unlit room to jagged shadows. Some unseen figureclicked the door shut behind him and there were two silhouettes standingon the other side of the light. “You’re late,” rasped one of the figures.The voice belonged to Officer Pig.

“Yeah, well, I had to take the goddamn bus to get here,? Ace replied.”Would you mind turning that fuckin’ thing off?”

“Apologies for the inconvenience, Mr. Calhoun,” said another voice, whichcarried a hint of Spanish accent. “But it would be to our mutual benefit for you to remain ignorant of our identities.” The voice was low, resonant and smooth as aged brandy.

“OK, enough of this X-Files crap,” said Ace. “You wanted me here. I’mhere. What the hell do you want?”

“A proposition, Mr. Calhoun,” said Mr. Smooth. “We have a job to offer you. We want you to drive a tractor-trailer from Mexico City to California. Ofcourse, we would not expect you to accept our proposal merely to recover your motorcycle. The job pays $50,000 upon your arrival in the United States.”

“If I refuse, I suppose you’re gonna put me in jail?”

“Oh no, Mr. Calhoun. It’s much too late for that. Should you refuse us, bythe time they find you, your own mother won’t recognize your remains.”

Ace thought about this. He had considerable experience with posers andwannabe tough guys who tried to bluff their way through confrontations.Whoever Mr. Smooth was, he didn’t sound like one of them. “What’s in thetruck?” asked Ace, as if he didn’t know.

“That information is only available on a need-to-know basis,” replied Mr.Smooth. “However, I will tell you that there will be 10 drivers. Of the10, nine will be decoys carrying crates of coffee. Only one will becarrying the actual merchandise, and none of the drivers will know whetherhe himself is a decoy. So you see, the risk is minimal, and the rate ofpayment is quite good.”

Ace thought about the potential mess he was getting himself into, but thelure of the 50 grand was too great. “I’ll do it,” he said, “but I wanthalf up front. And I want my bike back.”

From the shadows, Mr. Smooth chuckled.The following day, Ace cruised down a deserted country road,which is where he liked to go to think. Right now the hamster wheel in his head was turning even higher rpm?s than his engine, pondering this incredible turn of events. Mr. Smooth had, of course, refused to give Ace the 25 grand up front. He had, at least, returned the bike, which Ace had had to tow back to his garage to fix the traitorous son of a bitch. At any rate, Mr. Smooth was clearly not a man to be trusted, and just as clearly not a man to be crossed. It was not all that hard to believe that even a medium-sized drug kingpin would be willing to pay half a million dollars to his drivers; an 18-wheeler full of coke wouldsurely make the half mil look like chump change.

The question was, what was the real chance of Ace ending up with the hottruck? On the one hand, Ace was a fairly conspicuous person, so it wouldprobably make more sense for him to be a decoy. On the other hand, since hewas the new guy, he was expendable. Hell, they might just reward him byriddling him with bullets when he got to California, if he got toCalifornia. Although it was likely that the other drivers had beenrecruited in much the same way, and Mr. Smooth couldn’t damn well kill themall…

Round and round he went, like a dog chained to a $50,000 stake, knowing that it was a bad idea but nevertheless unable to let go of the thought of all that green. One thing was certain, though: Mr. Smooth had Ace at a definite disadvantage, and Officer Pig was probably the key to figuring out the identity of Mr. Smooth. Ace slowed the bike to a halt, walked it around a Mack-truck-sized U-turn, then twisted the throttle and roared back home.An hour later, Ace impatiently paced his apartment like a cagedanimal, a ringing telephone clamped tightly to his ear. After what seemedlike an eternity, a voice answered on the other end.

“Hello?”

“Hey Buzzard, it’s Ace.”

“What’s up, bro?”

“You’re not gonna believe this…” Ace briefly recounted the incredibletale of the last 24 hours.

“So whatcha gonna do?”

“Well,” Ace replied, “for starters I want to figure out who the pig is. Can Scratch still hack his way into the cops’ personnel records?”

“Sure. They ain’t changed their password in five years.”

“Good,? Ace replied. “We’re looking for a fat cop, about 50, with smalleyes set close together.”

“Hate ta tell ya this, bro, but that don’t narrow it down much.”

“Our man’s also missing a front tooth on the left side.”

“OK,” replied Buzzard. “I’ll getta holda Scratch. We probably shouldn’ttalk about this over the phone. Meet me at Gino’s tonight at 9 and I’lltell ya what we dug up.”

“Thanks, bro. I owe you one.”Ace pulled up to Gino’s Bar and Grill, a run-down dive in a dilapidatedsection of town. He could see Buzzard’s ’53 Panhead chopper parked outfront and he eased his own bike up next to it. He sat there, letting thebig beast rumble between his legs for just a moment before hitting the killswitch and flicking the kickstand down with the well-worn heel of his leftboot. The honky-tonk blare of the jukebox, the clacking of balls on thepool table and the raucous laughter of barroom banter wafted through theclosed door and out into the moonlit night. Ace dismounted, clicked thefork lock into place and clumped up the short flight of rickety woodenstairs that led to the front door.

Ace pushed the door open and scanned the dark, smoky room for Buzzard?s lanky form. Sure enough, there he was, drinking a beer and smoking a fat cigar in a booth near the back door, and right on the dot of 9. Old Buzzard was as reliable as ever. Ace felt somehow comforted by this.

Big Dave nodded a silent greeting to Ace from behind the bar and, withoutwaiting to be asked, poured a tall, frosty mug of Guinness Stout. Ace slidinto the booth with Buzzard, and Big Dave sent the beer over with the newwaitress, a tender little blonde with pouty lips and lobotomy eyes. Acecould tell at once that the news was bad by the grave look on Buzzard’sbearded, leathery face. He waited for the waitress to get out of earshotand said, “That bad?”

“Worse,” Buzzard replied. “The pig’s name is Scanlan. Tom Scanlan. See,Scratch figured he’d talk to Snoop ’cause Snoop knows everybody. Turns outSnoop knew a guy that was once recruited by Scanlan, an’ he barely escapedwith his ass in one piece. Anyway, the guy says that Scanlan’s on thepayroll of an outfit that smuggles coke fer a Colombian cartel. Wheneverthey make a run from Mexico to California, they divide the real goodsbetween 10 or 20 trucks, not ta put all their eggs in one basket.Those trucks are driven by clean-cut sorta guys who can usually make itpast customs. Then they recruit another 20 or so decoys ta draw theheat, mostly high-profile types like ex-cons with swastika tattoos andgrunge kids with long hair an’ nose rings.”

“And outlaw bikers,” added Ace. “What happens to the decoys when they getto the States?”

“Most a’ them don’t get to the States,” Buzzard replied. “The bosses plantjust enough dope in the trucks to get the drivers busted. They get pickedup at the border fer possession of contraband or some bullshit like that,an’ then they rot forever in some Mexican hell-hole of a jail. The few thatdo make it back are paid with a bullet in the back a’ the head, an’ thendumped in the river. That’s why they use outlaws an’ derelicts fer the job;nobody misses ’em when they disappear. Best thing you could do is disappearright now; go ta Canada or someplace an’ lay low fer a while.”

“That would be the safe and smart thing to do,” Ace agreed.

“But it ain’t what you’re gonna do,” said Buzzard, reading the malicioussmile that spread slowly across Ace’s lips.

“Hell,” said Ace, “I was riding along, minding my own business. I justwanted to get that tailgater off my ass, and next thing I know someasshole with a badge drags me down into this goddamn tar pit. If I have togo to Canada and lay low, it’ll damn well be for a good reason. Maybe Ican’t get to The Big Man, but I can get that son of a bitch cop!”

“Whatcha got in mind?” Buzzard asked. Ace thought for a minute, then anevil grin spread across his face.

“You still got that camera with the telephoto lens?” Buzzardnodded. “Good,” said Ace. Ignoring Buzzard’s puzzlement, Aceslid out of the booth and walked over to the pay phone near the bathroomsat the back of the bar. He fished around in his pocket, came up with aquarter and jammed it into the slot. He punched in a phone number and,holding the tip of his left finger in his left ear to block out the barnoise, waited impatiently while the phone rang. Presently, he heard thetelltale click of the phone on the other end being lifted out of itscradle, followed by a sexy, female voice, which said, “Hello?”

“Yeah, Nina? It’s Ace. Not too bad… Listen, remember that time I bailedyour brother out of jail? Well, I’m in a bind here, and this time I needyour help…”It was 5:25 a.m. and Ace was hidden in the bushes by the side of the road, not far from the spot where he had originally been stopped. He looked impatiently at his watch, which he had carefully synchronized with Nina’s andBuzzard’s. He slowly flexed and relaxed his leg muscles to relievethe cramps; he had been hidden in the bushes since before Scanlan had comeon duty. I’m gonna owe Scratch and Buzzard for this big time, he thought.Ace looked down at his watch again to see the seconds roll dutifully by:5:29:58, 5:29:59, 5:30:00. Mark.

Nina’s red Mustang came over the ridge right on schedule, 20 mph over the speed limit. She passed the spot where Ace knew Scanlan’s copcruiser was hidden, and within seconds the red and blue lights flared tolife. The cruiser eased out onto the road, ran up behind the red Mustangand blared its siren a few times. The Mustang coasted to a halt bythe side of the road, right near where Ace was hidden.

Scanlan grunted as he heaved his ponderous bulk out of the cruiser. Hewaddled over to the Mustang and motioned for the driver to roll down thewindow. Ace could see Scanlan’s eyes get wide as the window rolled down andhe came face-to-face with Nina’s perfect, round, braless 38 D?s, hardnipples poking through a thin, low-cut Spandex top. He smiled as heimagined the sultry, seductive look that he knew Scanlan was getting fromNina’s gorgeous blue eyes; Ace had been on the receiving end of that lookhimself, and he knew from painful experience what it could make a man do.Nina leaned forward slightly, pushing her ample cleavage into full view.

“License and registration please,” said Scanlan, trying his damnedest tosound professional and nonchalant.

Nina began to whimper softly. “Please, officer,” she begged, “I can’tafford to get another ticket. I’ll lose my license! I’ll do anything.Please!” Her gaze slid downward toward Scanlan’s crotch. Scanlan stoodthere, dumbstruck. Without waiting for an answer, Nina eased the door openand slid down onto her knees in front of the cop in one fluid, catlikemotion. She ran her finger up and down over the growing bulge in his pants,then started to pull his zipper down. This brought him to life again, andhe began to furiously undo his pants. By the time he heard the repetitiveclick-click-click of the camera shutter, it was too late. Scanlan wasstanding on the road with his uniform pants down around his knees and agorgeous blonde kneeling in front of him, his tiny dingus sticking out fromunderneath his massive belly.

On a little dirt road on an abutment overlooking the highway, Buzzardstood up. Scanlan saw the camera with the telephoto lens hanging around thelanky biker’s neck, and his little stick wilted instantly. Buzzard movedquickly out of view, and Scanlan heard the roar of a Harley coming to life.Before he could react, he heard a rustle in the bushes from the other sideof the road. Nearly tripping over his own pants, he whirled around just intime to see Ace climbing out of the bushes and moving quickly around theparked cars.

“That’s a shameful display, that is!” said Ace, grinning ear to ear. Inthe distance, Scanlan could hear the sound of Buzzard’s bike fading away.”Positively disgusting! Why, when I stop to think of a pervert like youtaking advantage of that poor, helpless girl… Why, what would the chiefthink? Hell, what would Mrs. Scanlan think if she saw that picture in themorning paper? It’s more than any taxpaying citizen should have to bear, Itell you!”

Scanlan’s face turned bright red. His nostrils flared with rage and hate,and his eyes bulged out of their sockets. His mind was a congealing mass oflead, paralyzed between conflicting impulses to pull his gun and to shovehis dingus back into his drawers. Fortunately, he chose the latter. Thiswas good; it meant that Ace’s Walther PPK could stay tucked away in theback of his waistband.

“Goddamn son of a bitch!” Scanlan raged. “You set me up! Fuckin asshole!”

Ace grinned triumphantly. “This can go down two ways,” he said. Scanlanwinced as his own words came back to mock him. “First way is I send copiesof that photo to the chief of police, the DA’s office and every newspaperin the city.” Ace waited, but Scanlan said nothing. “Second way is you fuck off and never get in my face again.”

Scanlan looked down at his shoes. His shoulders slumped and he knew he’d been defeated. After a very long pause, he said quietly, “OK.”

“Good,” said Ace. “Now get yer fat ass outta here.” As Scanlan turned to go, Ace said, “Hey Scanlan, one more thing.” Scanlan turned just in time tocatch Ace’s rock hard knuckles in the side of his jaw. His head lashedbackward from the impact and he fell into the dirt like a sack of potatoes.

Ace winced and briefly rubbed his fist. Both he and Scanlan would feel that tomorrow. He looked up to see Nina’s baby blue eyes gazing into his own.Smiling with satisfaction, he slipped his arm around her waist and said,”Come on, beautiful, I’ll take you out someplace nice tonight.” She smiledin return. Ace took one last look back at Scanlan, moaning in the dirt,then he slipped into the Mustang beside Nina. She threw it in gear andstomped on the gas, and within seconds they sped away.

Another update… Yesterday was a complete bust. Valerie made a pass on the International track, she did 151, however a major storm blew threw and she was not able to make her back up pass. We hustled to get the tents down, tarps up, tables braced against the motorhome and the bike loaded in to the garage. All this happened in a matter of moments of rain starting, wind blowing and hail pelting us. Ah, the excitement of Bonneville.

The first few miles on the track, the Assalt Weapan was shooting salt about fifteen feet behind it. We're taking that as too much power and not enough traction. Today Keith and Berry decided to add some weight to the bike in the way of tent weights and dumbells duct taped in the rear, under the panels.

Today started out dark and cloudy, but all the local and nationwide weather channels said it would blow off and warm up and it did.

Wed. 2:30 – As I was typing this, Val made a pass that didn't look good, in fact it appears as if the bike died on the track.

More later…

Just a quick update. We arrived on Saturday, but couldn't get down to the salt as the track had been closed. Set up on Sunday and had to do some modifications per the tech inspection. We had to cut a chunk out of the side panel to uncover the rear brake caliper otherwise we were considered full streamline.

Mods done, Valerie took a test ride today, a few more modifications to her specification and as long as the rain and wind stay away, she may get an official pass today.

I'll do another update either tonight or tomorrow, stand by.

Layla

I had ceased to trust El Cid after the knife incident in New Mexico. I had stress fractures forming in my brittle psyche. I could feel the paranoia drifting in through every pore that wasn’t already blocked with bug guts, salt, or 60-weight bike oil. Every access point-the nostrils, the ears, the parched tear ducts, the busted and seat-polished asshole-it seeped in everywhere, slow, gray, like gutter bile. Paranoia defies the laws of permeability and non-permeability. As with nickel cigar smoke or a dirty New Orleans B chord, the gamy bitch beds where she damned well pleases, and the best defense is arrogant allegiance. Ride it, ride the sick mother like an adopted twerp, whipping and screaming, beating the juices out of it with a crop of tightly woven doom, into the rubber wall of relativity in hopes of being hurled all the way back to contemporary reality, social acceptance, and perceived salvation.

I had ceased to trust El Cid after the knife incident in New Mexico. I had stress fractures forming in my brittle psyche. I could feel the paranoia drifting in through every pore that wasn’t already blocked with bug guts, salt, or 60-weight bike oil. Every access point-the nostrils, the ears, the parched tear ducts, the busted and seat-polished asshole-it seeped in everywhere, slow, gray, like gutter bile. Paranoia defies the laws of permeability and non-permeability. As with nickel cigar smoke or a dirty New Orleans B chord, the gamy bitch beds where she damned well pleases, and the best defense is arrogant allegiance. Ride it, ride the sick mother like an adopted twerp, whipping and screaming, beating the juices out of it with a crop of tightly woven doom, into the rubber wall of relativity in hopes of being hurled all the way back to contemporary reality, social acceptance, and perceived salvation.

My partner, El Cid, and I were in Bandit’s hideout located at the peak of the Malibu hills, overlooking the Pacific. This was where the wanted rogue and his legion of hoodlums generated the motorcycle world’s most twisted yellow rag. A far reaching table of brushed aluminum, surrounded by barstool-style motorcycle seats, bearing a billet fruit bowl filled with chromed human skulls ran along one wall. Bandit lounged heavily in a broad, high-backed leather chair made from old motorcycle jackets, with zippers running in all directions like an interchange of county highways. He leaned far over the vintage Panhead springer frame and engine, which acted as the legs to the eight-foot slab of crystal that formed his desk.

“When you ride up to Sturgis, you really feel your bike. That’s the true Old West up there. You may never come back…” Bandit said calmly, smoothing the pages of his white tiger-skinned atlas with his Harley-bedecked hands. He gazed for a moment at a black shield that hung above his door. Upon the simple, almost crude fixture were burn-engraved the words, “To my good friend,Bandit. Only those elements time cannot wear were made before me, and beyond time I stand. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

“I’ve plotted a route I want you to take. I think it’s the mostbeautiful and interesting way to get to Sturgis … back roads, out-of-the-way places. You’ll meet characters there you can’t meet anywhere else,” the outlaw told me, smiling warmly.

Bandit handed me a piece of his 5-Ball-embossed stationary (five wives), and for an instant I had a pointed burning sensation in my hand, similar to the feeling one gets when a bootleg Cubano smoke rolls off a poker table in Miami. Without thinking you involuntarily grab the coal end, snatching it from its ruinous descent. On it was written, in Old English, a detailed route originating in L.A. and ending in Sturgis, South Dakota. He hadn’t bothered to draft a return route.

I’d written for Bandit before and figured his route would be as good as any. Our assignment: Cover the greatest motorcycle rally in the history of man-Sturgis. Fifteen countries in five languages awaited our account on the biggest thug orgy in the world, based on a cherry route hand-picked by one of the most overpaid outlaws to ever bend a footpeg. And despite his numerous social handicaps, dammit, I liked the guy. He was on our side.

El Cid and I saddled up and put the spurs to our twins at the witch’s hour. We were to ride deep into the desert, travel at night (safer that way-less chance of burning up a scoot in the 120-degree heat), snort a few June bugs, and knock the cobwebs out of the tail pipes before setting in for the big pull north. El Cid, in typical Spaniard bravado, tossed his tattooed prick onto my beaten road map and proclaimed that with an inch equaling 100 miles, a man can judge his riding ability by the distance he spans in a day. By his measurements he predicted we would ride somewhere deep into the broiling litter box known as Death Valley.

At around 4 a.m. we shut down in a nameless, paintless hotel on the hot side of Hades on Cinder Street for two hours sleep. Six a.m. came quicker than usual, but there were no complaints. There’d been a chill in the air when El Cid had marked our coordinates thenight before, so we had only ridden 500 miles. Big Lucy, my’93 Wide Glide, had a dead battery-the first sign. We push started her and headed east. Fifteen minutes later, she blew her tail pipes off and I became a pedestrian in an area on the map near the Nevada border called “The Devil’s Playground.” I sent El Cid on to find help. He roared off east toward Vegas, his red cape cracking in the wind, burning like fire under the dry-scald sun of the desert, which God made just to prove he was God.

I’d been down in these conditions before, so I moved quickly. Unpacking my saddlebags, I pulled out anything white-bandannas,T-shirts, underwear-and covered all exposed skin to prevent horrendous burns and retain fluids. The blacktop was partially liquidized with heat and I shifted from one boot to the next to prevent scorching the soles of my feet. I scanned the map. The nearest water was in Furnace Creek, 30 kilometers over a 3,000-foot rock range. Then I noticed in parenthesis the word “Dry.”

The thing a person notices in the desert, is the silence. Heat waves make no sound and in this area they are the only thing that moves. I could hear my own breathing, each dry puff, every gravely movement on the radiating pavement, the grind of the sand beneath my ass as I sat, staring out into the shimmering oblivion. Mysounds traveled to infinity, finding no competition. I could hear thejoints on the hard outer shells of the scorpions creaking as theyslowly, laboriously inhaled and exhaled the brittle, spiny air. Billions of expired plants protected themselves with thousands ofhomegrown swords against marauding beasts who would never come. The entire desert is a vast exercise in misery and irony where humor falls on its face and dies in the sand to lie uneaten by sweating ants.

Two more hours passed. I watched as a big rattler tried to race across the interstate, only to flop and writhe on the ribbon of impassable ebony death until it became a knotted rope of scrambled eggs where it sat, softly smoking.

At last the Red Dog appeared on the rippling horizon, coming on hard. El Cid had brought not only a gallon of water, but also Las Vegas Harley-Davidson’s search and rescue unit, the 121st Flying Angels.

Ten minutes after our arrival in Vegas the 121st had Big Lucy on a freshly evacuated trike hospital rack and had tracked the problem.

“Got a smoked stator,” Hiro told me. “Gonna have to tear it out, put in a new one.”

“How long?” I asked, pulling a pair of cotton underwear off my head.

“Three hours, door to door,” Hiro hollered over his air impact wrench. He knew the importance of our mission and worked accordingly.

El Cid and I walked across the street to the Poker Face and ordered lunch.

“We’re gut shot,” El Cid said bluntly, slugging back a tequila andorange juice.

“How do you figure?” I asked, chipping the salt off my bottom lip with a flathead screwdriver.

The waitress, a busted soul with do-it-yourself fingernails, skidded two plates loaded with cheeseburgers and rust-proofed french fries onto the blackjack table where we were seated.

“We got to be back in L.A. in three days. We’re already a day behind.”

“We could blow it straight through,” I said.

“To Sturgis?”

“Yep.”

“That’s 40 hours north … fucking crazy gringo bastard,” El Cid trailed off, chopping angrily at his fries with a long K-bar knife.

“Right.”

El Cid looked up at me from under thick, ebony eyebrows.

We blew out of Vegas at 6 p.m., dark spirits moving quickly over the landscape, riding the left lane hard, faces rippling in the hurricane of wind, and stifling heat.

At Mesquite, Nevada, we stopped for breakfast at the Casablanca Hotel with the sun burning up over the rise.

A wizened strumpet wearing a deco blue, DOT-approved hairdo hurled sterile eggs and cold potatoes geared up with hotrod Cajun ketchup that burned a man’s mouth. She returned a few minutes later with a plate bearing a leather tortilla covered with red 30-weight synthetic engine oil.

“Here’s your pancakes,” she snapped, releasing the plate four inches above the table.

At the next table was piled a bulbous, white-meat college boy trying to talk a chunk out of a 45-year-old divorced Olympian who had moved out west in order to legally change her name to Cheyenne. She was glad to tease him long enough to get a free breakfast and enough money to pull on the slots. But it was clear he was never going to be allowed to stand up in her guts.

I’d dabbed some urine-colored medicine in a small bottle, which the hotel clerk had given me, on my mouth to deaden a split in the side of my lip where a tooth had punched into it during a misunderstanding in the alley behind a bar a few days back. At once my lip went dead. Then the left side of my face. Then my left arm.

“Sweet mother, I’m done for,” I croaked as I felt the feeling draining out of my left leg.

El Cid snatched up the bottle and read the label, “For relief oftemporary oral discomfort caused by oral irritation. Caution, in caseof accidental ingestion, seek professional assistance or contact thePoison Control Center immediately. Well shit, you’re not even supposed to put the stuff directly into your mouth,” he mumbled and took a slug.

I slumped against the side of the booth. A waitress wandered up as El Cid turned off my recorder.

“Uh oh,” she muttered, seeing the recorder. She rotated on one of her white spiked heels and clattered off to the kitchen.

“That’s where they butcher the children,” I whispered hoarsely, drool dangling from my slack face. I saw myself in the mirrors, a stroke victim, piled up against the greasy wood.

“Who gave you this shit?” El Cid asked, referring to the bottle of vile buzzard poison? It’s not bad.”

“The bellhop,” I whispered, throwing my left arm onto the table with my right hand.

“The bastard dosed you,” El Cid said. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“This is all Bandit’s doing. I’ll eat that honkey’s liver.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’re playing White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane in the middle of the desert where they butcher children after a stator just happens to fall out! What does that tell you, idiot?” El Cid hissed. He was beginning to slump in the vinyl booth.

“I can’t feel my legs. How can I ride with no legs?”

El Cid was clearly awaiting a response.

“El Cid, I was kidding about the butchering children bit. This isAmerica. We only butcher the children of other countries. It’sillegal to do it here. I’m sure the events taking place behind thoseinexplicable one-way glass walls are perfectly legitimate. The one-way glass is probably just used to cut down the glare from the sun.”

“No you weren’t,” El Cid replied.

“No I weren’t what?” I slurred.

“No you weren’t kidding.”

“I wasn’t?”

“No. You were quite serious,” El Cid assured me.

“Oh. Well, in that case, we should ride,” I said, feeling horriblyparanoid.

The place represented where America’s trek in search of bliss and prosperity had taken us. We were sitting on a giant cyst formed by the idealistic breakdown of America-a boil that could never burst, swelling up to a shiny dome in the blazing daytime heat and then shrinking back down to a heavy, wrinkled pod of cold, viscous jelly at night.

A silken flit adorned with gnashing colors sallied past us and uttered something with chilling detachment.

“What’d he say?” El Cid asked me, looking through the steam off his tequila-spiked coffee.

“I think he said, ‘Reno’,” I replied, puzzled, trying to flick thedrool from my lip by tossing my head.

“We aren’t scheduled to go through Reno,” El Cid said, pointing with a ketchup-stained hunting knife at the red line Bandit had drawn.

The flit floated by again, this time making eye contact.

“Keno?” the flit asked, then dashed off.

“Keno?” I asked.

“Who the fuck is Keno?” El Cid asked, now wholly on guard.

We looked about, but the flit had vanished in a cloud of knockoff perfumes and double crosses.

“Do you know anyone named Keno?” I asked. El Cid pondered this for a moment.

“No, do you?” he asked me with venomous suspicion.

I kept a close eye on the bastard’s knife. We were tired, we were a long way from friendly territory, and things were starting to get weird.

“I don’t know any Kenos,” I assured the jumpy alien.

“Didn’t you say you had a cousin named, Keno?” El Cid asked, running his oil-stained finger along the edge of the blade.

“I never said I had a cousin at all, you goosey commie. This is no time to get spooked. He must be a connection. Something’s wrong. Bandit is trying to get a message to us,” I said.

“I think we should track Cheyenne, see where she goes,” El Cid said. “Just look at how that pretty-boy prick talks to her. I could take you to the moon, my sweet Cheyenne.”

El Cid looked around, then slid some eggs into his vest pocket. “That no good mother Bandit is behind this shit, I know it,” El Cid snarled, suddenly leaning in close. “I will drive him from Sturgis the same way my great, great, great, great grandfather drove the Moors from Spain!” El Cid slammed his knife into the tabletop, causing several patrons to immediately evacuate their tables.

It was time to go. Get El Cid on the road. Blow a little air through his radiator fins, cool him down before he went nuts with the blade and started carving the college boy up. The constant ring of the gambling machines, the tones, the bells, the whistles, the shrieks, the screams of the dead, it was all too much for a couple of burned-out freaks with a sluice of drowned gnats in the bottom of each eye and years of run-ins with the straights. I had enough feeling in my right leg to make it to the door.

In the parking lot I spotted El Cid eating a handful of something.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded.

“Melatonin,” he snapped, “helps me relax. You know, when I getnervous.”

He stood there, his molars slowly grinding a dozen or more of the pills, crumbs and chunks falling from between his parched, cracked lips, small whiffs of pill dust floating out of his nose like Indian smoke signals telling of bad times to come.

“Let me see those,” I said, grabbing the bottle of small, gray pills with my good arm. “You evil wretch! This is not melatonin!”

“How do you know?” El Cid asked defiantly.

“Because that’s a prescription drug and these have a picture of a clown’s face on them!”

“That’s to help get kids to eat them without a fuss,” El Cid snorted in disgust.

“They don’t give melatonin to kids, you sorry geek. What the hell are you taking?”

Suddenly El Cid began to leap about, clawing frantically at the air.

“Get them off! Can’t you see them? They’re all over me! Get ’em off me!”

I gimped for Big Lucy at top speed. If this bastard wanted to tour the inbred justice machine in the middle of an area self-proclaimed as “Death Valley,” fine. But I wanted nothing to do with it.

“You can stay here all day if you want, I’m going to Sturgis,” Iyelled, hoping to motivate the Spaniard to follow.

“That’s just what Bandit wants us to do, charge into the trap! Fuck you! You’re probably working for him!”

“OK,” I said, pulling up alongside him. “But you won’t have me here to help when they come.”

“Who?” El Cid asked with alarm.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” I said, roaring off. In minutes I could see El Cid in my mirrors, coming on strong, his red cape standing straight out behind him. It was time to get some miles between us and the hotel and find Keno to see what the hell was going on. For all I knew, Bandit had been captured. Perhaps Bandit was Keno. We roared past a bride sitting on the side of the road, weeping. El Cid tried to spit on her, but the wind blew the spit back into his face, causing him to curse violently.

Some time later, in southern Utah, I realized I’d lost El Cid. I stopped on the side of the road. The last I remembered having seen him was as we were fighting our way through buffeting canyon winds that had tossed us easily from lane to lane. A leaden wind swept across the mountains. Lightening cracked and exploded in a large ring around me, which seemed to be closing in. Purple curtains of rain, coming in at 45-degree angles encircled me. I’d been on the road now nonstop since Vegas.

Most of the feeling had returned to my left leg and I was able to see out of my left eye again. I searched for the map to find out where I was. It was gone. I knew it. El Cid, that turncoat swine had stolen the map and abandoned me in the middle of Mormon country. I was sure to be lynched by men without zippers or ball bearings. I was on a high hill, with enough ammunition for the H&K .45 in my saddlebags to hold out for a few days, that was all. Where the hell was Keno?

Perhaps I should burn Big Lucy … slide her into the ditch, light the tanks. Make it look like I was all but consumed in the fire. Take out a molar with a filling in it with the pliers and toss it into theflames to cook, make it look legit. Then I saw a headlight ragingthrough Bryce Canyon.

“What happened?” I asked El Cid, when he slid up.

“No time to talk!” he yelled. “They’re right behind me!”

“Who?” I asked in horror.

“Hercules and Zeus! Who the hell do you think?”

“What?”

“Didn’t you see all that lightening?” El Cid screamed over the groaning wind.

“Yeah!” I yelled.

“They’re right behind me!”

“Who is behind you?” I bellowed over the wolf winds.

“Hercules and Zeus! They’re working for Bandit! They’re trying to-”

A crack of lightening split a fence post in the ditch next to us,drowning out El Cid’s words and illuminating his face in a brilliantwhite light.

“Ride! Ride! Ride!” El Cid shrieked as he roared off into the flying dust and leaping tumbleweeds.

I swung aboard Big Lucy and rocketed up out of the ditch. El Cid was very religious and would often stop and pray in the ditch, building makeshift shrines out of beer cans, road kill, weeds, and superstition.

But this was different. Billion volt spears of electricity stood inthe ground all around us, bouncing the pavement under Big Lucy’s tires, blinding us, melting the asphalt, electrifying the barbed wire.

We rode back down through Arizona on 9, then on 89 to 160 where we fled back north into Utah. Our plan was to lose the gods by heading south, when they thought we would continue north, toward Sturgis. Then we’d run back north up 191 to the I70 where we’d make a fast run across the Rockies at Vail Pass.

After a few hours it looked like our plan had worked. We rodesmoothly, and the weather cleared. We stopped in Arizona.

“What the hell did you do?” I yelled.

“It wasn’t me, Bandit sent them. All I did was try to strike a deal with them. Didn’t work. He must be paying them a fortune.”

I decided to run with the lunacy, let it play out, and try to discover what we could do to rid ourselves of the bad luck that was plaguing us.

“But by definition, if they are truly gods, shouldn’t they be able to find us anywhere?” I asked, electrical taping a bottle of 60-weight oil to each hand grip.

“Apparently not,” El Cid quipped cheerfully. “It only proves that Bandit sent them. That’s why they’re looking for us further up the trail. Bandit’s trail,” El Cid added with great and sudden savagery.

I ran a rubber line from each bottle into a second line which ran directly into the oil reservoir. Lucy had developed a quart per fill-up oil habit which I didn’t have the time or tools to address. The IV would give us the kind of range we needed at the molecule-shearing speeds we were traveling at to make Sturgis on time to meet with the man.

“Where’s the route take us next?” I asked as we fired up.

“Monument Valley,” El Cid growled. “But we’re asking for trouble if we stay on it.”

He had lobbied to turn off Bandit’s route and continue on an alternate route in order to surprise the outlaw and kill him, but I had refused. I was damned if I was going to fall victim to his paranoid Catholic superstitions.

I was riding in a daze through Monument Valley when the first boulder hit. Billion-year-old dust and rock split and splintered, daggers of fragmented fossil shit ripping the air to tatters. Hercules flung the second meteor from atop one of the monuments. It came on at a dazzling speed, whistling sweetly as it passed over Big Lucy’s front fender. I dumped the throttle and gave her the gas. On the opposing side Zeus leapt upon another pillar of stone and began slinging lightening javelins. The sky was at once purple, then orange as the air traded electricity for stone and dust explosions.

The bastards had me in a crossfire. I had ridden right into their trap, half asleep, delirious, off guard. But how could this be, I thought as a boulder and a lightening bolt collided only a few meters over my head. Hercules and Zeus were myth, legend, figments of a band of idle philosophical perverts. There was no reality whatsoever to theirexistence. A boulder nicked my helmet. It was too late to turn back,so I made a run for it. Winding Lucy up into the triple digits, I laiddown on the tank and gave her hell. When I shot out of the other side I realized El Cid was nowhere to be seen. Egad, I thought, had the grim swine slain him? Or worse, had he been captured? He would talk for sure. I was doomed. I torqued up atop a large overlook andscouted the road. No sign of the red cape, but Hercules and Zeus wereflinging round after round at a dust cloud which was streaking acrossno man’s land at well over a hundred miles an hour. Bolt after bolt,stone after stone, they threw, but the dust cloud kept coming. El Cidwas making a run for it.

“Ride you cockeyed, ill-bred, result of an Aztec rape!” I hollered, knowing if they caught the adulterate, his first notion would be to sell me out to save his own DNA-stained hide.

A lightening bolt shot straight into the cloud of dust and there was a fierce explosion. Hercules pissed on us from the mountain, turning the road to slick mud.

“Shit!” I bawled. “He had the maps! You unlearned monkey!” I yelled.

A rocket of red cape, fire, and fury blew out of the cloud of dust.

“Viva, El Cid!” I cheered. “Ride you illegitimate bastard, ride!”

El Cid shot out of the corridor and headed off across the plains,obviously desperate to catch up with me, beating violently at theflames which snapped and popped from his rear fender.

“Curses!” I barked, as I leapt aboard Big Lucy. “Stop you fool!”

Three hours later, I caught up with El Cid at the foot of the Rockies. He told me that Zeus had managed to hit one of his spare fuel canisters and when it had blown it cost him his left saddlebag, which contained his “medicine.”

“You look healthy to me.”

“That’s because I’ve been taking my medicine! I expect massivecellular and psychological deterioration to begin any time,” El Cidsnapped savagely, the right side of his face already beginning totwitch.

“What do you mean by psychological deterioration?” I asked with blooming suspicion.

“Well, nothing really, I mean, nothing more than theusual … withdrawal.”

“Oh you worthless mutant!” I roared. “I knew that was some homegrown bathtub aspirin you were eating! You get the hell away from me! I don’t want to be anywhere near you when you start thinking I’m a desert tarantula!”

“Now really, you should calm down,” El Cid said with a twisted gleam in his eye. “This is a very tough time, we need to stick together, amigo…”

I ran for Big Lucy as El Cid went for his knife. El Cid got a bath of gravel, which did nothing more than send him running for his bike, his south of the border problem solver clenched between his gleaming teeth.

The murderous Spaniard chased me for over four hours into the night as we climbed higher and higher into the Rockies heading for Vail Pass, first through rain, then sleet and finally, as we passed 11,000 feet, snow. Twice the loco inbred Indian got close enough to actually take a swipe at me with the hunting knife. At last I saw him in my rearview mirrors look around at the towering rock cliffs in a puzzled manner, sheath the knife, and wave to me in a most friendly and bewildered way.

“What’s the rush?” El Cid asked as I walked stiffly back to him, the 20-degree temperature having frozen the life out of my lower body.

“You were trying to kill me with your knife,” I said, my teethclattering.

“I was? How embarrassing,” El Cid replied apologetically.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Let’s see the map.”

We were somewhere near the peak. The snow had stopped, but it was becoming even more windy and the pitch black night made the dangling cliffs even more dangerous.

“Better get the hell out of here,” I said, trying to swing a frozen leg over the iced saddle. “Get caught all the way up here in a big blow and we’ll be bear shit.”

We coasted the last five miles to a fuel station, having reached the summit just prior to running both bikes out of fuel. The woodsman pumping the gas said we had 12 hours to get to Cheyenne. The good news was, he told us Sturgis was only two hours beyond Cheyenne.

“We’ll eat breakfast in Cheyenne,” I told El Cid. “It’ll be light bythe time we hit Denver.”

By Denver the temperature had reached a balmy 50 and the wind chill had risen to a tropical zero degrees.

Northern Colorado was a seamless blur of pain that started from the second joint in each finger and continued in a building symphony of skeletal torment where it crescendoed somewhere at the tip of my coccyx.

Then we rode into a river of chrome. Rolling rubber, sound, cracking leather, raging hair, taillights, headlights, boots, beer, blood,tattoo ink, and body sweat stretched into oblivion-hell’s salmon run. Every on-ramp spewed more iron into the main artery, crowding, gunning, gassing, braking, jockeying, fighting for position to be allowed into the flow. Red blood cells from the bad side of town rammed and brawled for passage through the narrow capillaries on their way to the aorta.

We rolled in a stream of fresh bikers, filled up with coffee,sleep, and gusto. But we were just trying to get through, to make itwithout falling off and becoming pink stripes with helmets at the end. Sleep was smothering me. It was the only thing I thought about when I was able to think at all. I could crash now, I thought, it wouldn’t be so bad. I probably wouldn’t even notice it. Just drift off and let her slide. Sleep right through it. Maybe I’d be lucky and get a nice, warm hospital bed. Or better yet, a quiet, padded, silky coffin that I could have all to myself. I could close the lid and drift off tosleep…

In Cheyenne we parked in front of a small cafe. El Cid and I sat on our bikes, staring across the street at an abandoned post office. My ears are ringing, I thought. It’s so quiet now and my ears areringing so loudly. I wonder how they could make so much racket on their own? Aren’t ears supposed to be hearing instruments? So what are they doing making so much noise? It’s not so cold now. That post office sure looks lonesome. I wonder what the best love letter that ever went through there read like?

I don’t know how long El Cid and I sat there. I vaguely remember other bikers walking out and watching us closely as they wandered past, their conversations drifting off into silence as they observed the blank, penniless, straight ahead gazes we bore, sitting atop our bikes, exhaustion drunk.

It was the clicking of Lucy’s chrome which broke me from the trance. Thank God for shrinking chrome. I had tried several times to leave the trance on my own, but like a dream one can’t wake up from, I did not posses the power to break the spell.

“Sturgis?” the waitress asked as she sat down the food El Cid and I ordered. “That’s six hours north of here.”

“Six hours?” I said in horror. “You must be mistaken. We were told back at Vail Pass it was only two from here.”

“Well, two, plus four. That’s probably what they meant, honey,” the woman said with a look of concern.

“Six hours…” El Cid echoed in a tone of clean defeat.

“Best bet is to take 85 north. That’s the way most of the boys ride. If you leave now you’ll be there by nightfall,” the waitress added.

El Cid applied a fixed look of despair to my face.

“We can’t make it,” he croaked hoarsely. “We have to be back in L.A. in 48 hours.”

Razor snapped back to the reality of the moment. He looked up at thecracked orange paint and the flaming letters, which proclaimed CYPHER’SCYCLES.

About two months ago, one of my riding buddies suggested a ride through Death Valley.

Was he serious?!

Death Valley; where the rocks seem to come alive as the shadows from the ever-present sun play tricks on your eyes. Death Valley; where men have lost their fortunes, their sanity and their very lives. Death Valley; where the temperatures can get up to 120 degrees in the shade. Death Valley; where the ground temperature is 40% higher than the air temperature (a ground temperature of 201 degrees Fahrenheit was once measured in this valley!).

Suddenly, ‘Stitch’ Carmain, my riding buddy, wants to ride through the heart of it on a motorcycle?! I had to think about this one.

For some reason, I remembered that rubber tires begin to melt around 220o Fahrenheit, and that a human’s brain can actually begin to boil inside his skull under extreme heat!

“Sure thing!” I said, “Count me in!”

Plans were made for a 3-day weekend in April (trust me; you don’t want to tackle Death Valley in July). As it turned out, there was more than a passing interest from several friends and relatives, so by the time we pulled out of Palm Desert, California that Friday morning there were six bikes and 10 riders. The sky was cloudy, and the outside temperature was in the low 60s…comfortable riding weather.

Our route took us up CA Highway 62 towards Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree. After about an hour in the saddle we made the requisite stop at Hutchins Harley Davidson dealership in Yucca Valley. Hutchins has a lot of motorcycle history on the walls of the showroom, as well as out on the floor, so it’s worth a look. Also, the Route 62 Diner is a fun place to grab a cup of coffee or enjoy a meal before heading out again.

Rested and full of coffee, we rode out past Joshua Tree and onward toward the tiny town of Baker, CA. The roads along this leg of our journey were some of the worst of the trip, particularly along Amboy Road. Be advised, there are a lot of ruts, grooves, potholes and loose asphalt (Come on California DOT, we are paying our taxes, take care of our roads!).

Baker is a small town out in the middle of the Mojave Desert well known to the Las Vegas crowd as a good place to stop, stretch tired muscles, and gas up before continuing on to Sin City. We stopped just long enough to hit the restrooms, grab something to drink, and fuel-up before heading out across the Mojave. By the way, it’s a good idea to top off your fuel there because there are no other gas stations between Baker and Furnace Creek, which is inside Death Valley Park. It was still chilly, but the roads outside of Baker made a significant change for the better. They were smooth, well-groomed black asphalt and this leg of the journey was, by far, the most enjoyable riding of the day. I highly recommend that you take a few minutes every hour or so along this route to stop, stretch, and just take a look around. The vistas are incredible!

As we rode along, the scenery actually seemed to move around us. The sun played tricks on our eyes with the morphing of the shadows into the rock formations thus giving them the illusion of life. I began to understand how one can see beauty in these barren deserts.

The sun was setting over the western rim of Death Valley as we rode into the Furnace Creek Resort that evening. As I shut down Rogue (my ’06 Harley-Davidson Street Glide) the only thought that kept running through my head was – WOW! ….just… WOW!

That evening was one of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever experienced. I wish there were a way to record memories so we could play them back for friends and family to experience. Suffice to say, that sunset is firmly locked away, to be played back whenever I am in need of a little rejuvenation from life’s daily grind.

Not surprisingly, ‘Stitch’ and his lovely wife Debbie, picked a perfect place for us to stay inside the Park. Furnace Creek Resort used to be Furnace Creek Ranch, built in the 1880s as a working ranch – and later a home for the now famous 20-mule teams. It is centrally located to some of the best sites in Death Valley. After we checked into our rooms (pricey and in need of some refurbishing, but clean and comfortable), washed the road from our faces and rested up a bit, we met for dinner at the Wrangler Steak House. The steaks there were very good; the bread hot and fresh, and there was plenty of iced tea. Considering this is only one of two or three restaurants for miles in any direction, it was a pleasant surprise indeed.

Being a ‘morning’ person, I was up before dawn the following day. Not everyone in our group shared my exuberance for an early start, so I took the time to explore the resort grounds. I found a fine place to get some great shots of the morning sun hitting the weathered wood of old buckboards, broken-down wagons and rusty old mining equipment. It was in the back yard of the Borax Museum located right there on the resort grounds.

Afterwards, I wondered over to the Furnace Creek Stables as I am a bit of a cowboy myself. I always enjoy being around horses and horse people. Once there I watched as the ranch hands saddled up several horses and mules for an early ride with some of the resort guests. While there, I had a friendly chat with one of the local wranglers who offered some good advice on where to ride and what to see while in the valley.

Finally, there were signs of life from the other members of my posse, so we met for breakfast and a pre-ride briefing at the Forty-Niner Café. The food was good basic fare, but certainly not as enjoyable as the steakhouse the night before. The route was agreed upon, and my posse and our bikes were fueled up and ready to explore. Before we hit the road, we stopped at the Furnace Creek Visitors Center and Museum, just outside the Furnace Creek Resort grounds. Here we obtained our Park passes and took one more look at the map.

The morning ride was perfect. The temperature was in the low 80s, the roads were smooth and in good repair, and, again…the scenery…it truly was amazing. The changes in the geological formations from one mile to the next, the vast array of textures and colors in the rock walls, and the feeling of freedom and space out there on the bikes, all combined to make the ride one of the best I have had in a long time. Too soon, we made it to our first destination; Scotty’s Castle. A peculiar place indeed; tucked into a side canyon in the middle of one of the harshest deserts on earth, it is a castle that includes; a huge main house, a bunkhouse, a swimming pool, a tower, a mine, stables, a guest house, and several other odd out-buildings.

It has a fascinating history filled with characters and stories right out of the Old West. It’s a place where Walter Scott, better known as ‘Death Valley Scotty’, and his wealthy benefactors, Albert and Mrs. Johnson, lived and entertained guests for many years. Here you can stop and take your time looking around the ‘castle’ grounds. There is a guided tour of the inside of Scotty’s Castle offered for a nominal fee.

After a walking tour of the grounds, and a lot of pictures, we had a snack at the local café. This is a good place to sit, relax and re-hydrate. I suggest bringing along some extra water bottles in your saddlebags as well, they didn’t name it Death Valley for nothing, ya know?

Our next stop was Ubehebe Crater, (pronounced You Be He Be) only eight miles away. This is a great place for fun pictures of your friends standing perilously close to the 770 foot crater. It was created 3000 years ago when water from underground suddenly flashed to steam, shattering the rock above and hurling debris for miles. What remains is one BIG hole in the desert floor. After some great shots of the bikes, with the mountains as the backdrop, we retraced our route back the side road and headed down Highway 190 toward Badwater Basin.

Once again, the ride was incredible. The rocks were mesmerizing, and I found myself constantly slowing so I could better take in the surrounding scenery. Badwater is the lowest ground point in the western hemisphere, a full 282 feet below sea level! At the center is a dry lakebed, the water in the lake has long since evaporated, another victim of Death Valley. The only thing remaining is a thick layer of pure salt. It almost looks like snow. There is a walkway allowing you to walk out onto the dry lakebed, which stretches out for miles.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so we pointed our tires back toward Furnace Creek. However, on the way back we made a detour onto a small road loop called Artist’s Drive. The high point of this fun road is a stop at Artist’s Palette, where the rocks are covered with various minerals, each providing a different muted shade of pastel against the stark rock cliffs. Mother Nature at her finest!

As the sun was setting, half of the group headed back to the resort. However, half of the crew had to see one more site before heading back to the resort. So, ‘Wild’ Bill, Christiaan, his wife and trip photographer, ‘Spider’ Johnston, his wife Mindy, and yours truly agreed we had to see the sun setting over one of the Parks most popular lookouts, Zabriskie Point. It was a short 15-minute ride from the resort, and as promised, the views were breathtaking! Some of the rock formations resembled butterscotch ripple, peanut-butter fudge, and chocolate marshmallow swirl. (…ok, so it was way past dinner time and my stomach was growling).

We ate at the Forty-Niner café that evening and discussed the days’ ride. It was evident that everyone had a wonderful time. The days flew by, and we had to leave much too soon. There was so much more left to explore; The Devils Golf Course, The Race Track ( where huge boulders seem to crawl across the desert floor unaided, leaving only their own trail as witness), Mesquite Flat Dunes, Natural Bridge, Harmony Borax Works and a hike through Golden Canyon Trail. It was obvious that three days was not nearly enough for this trip.

I admit I had been skeptical about this Death Valley ride. I had envisioned what most people envision when they hear the name Death Valley; heat, sun, heat, desert, heat, rocks, heatstroke and more heat. However, I came away awestruck by the valley’s incredible beauty and diversity. I would definitely return, maybe next time during the scorching heat of July. I wanna see just how tough Death Valley really can be.

‘Hey, Stitch, let’s come back in July, and make it a real “Danger Man” trip.’

‘Whaddaya say?’

‘Stitch??’

‘ Ol’ Buddy??’ …maybe not.

Furnace Creek Visitors Center – main visitor information source for Death Valley. (760) 786-3200

Scotty’s Castle – guided tours and historical artifacts. (760) 786-2392

Artist’s Drive – striking ravines and rock formations.

Artist’s Palette – mineral deposits form striking colors on the rock.

Badwater Basin – lowest point in the Western Hemisphere.

Devil’s Golf Course – salt spires that dot the landscape.

Harmony Borax Works – remains of a 120 year old mining operation.

Mesquite Flat Dunes – 150-foot dunes surrounded by mountains.

Racetrack Playa – giant boulders slowly slide across a flat lake bed.

Ubehebe Crater – 770-foot crater.

Zabriskie Point – Fantastic sunsets.

IF YOU LOVE STURGIS, YOU’LL LOVE THE SPOKE– You want to share it with your friends. Now you can buy them a drink when you?re there together! That?s right, bring all your friends to the Broken Spoke Campground and you can earn big Bucks ? Broken Spoke Bucks that is.

HERE?S THE DEAL: – Earn $20 in Broken Spoke Bucks for every Tent Camper that you refer, that books with us – Earn $30 in Broken Spoke Bucks for every RV reservation referral that books with us – Earn $50 in Broken Spoke Bucks if your referral books a cabin with us

HOW DOES THE REFERRAL WORK? The referrer ? you ? must already have reservation. Just have your friend include your name (first and last) when making their reservation over the phone, and the Bucks Bonus will be noted in your reservation. If they?re booking online, they will enter “ReferAFriend” and your name (first and last) into the “How did you hear about us?” field. It?s as easy as that, and you?ll simply pick up your Broken Spoke Bucks when you arrive at the Broken Spoke Campground.

The Broken Spoke Bucks referral program ends June 30, 2010, so tell your friends to hurry! This Spoke Bucks offer is not valid for referrals made prior to 5/14/2010, but once your friends have made a reservation, they can refer friends too, and earn Spoke Bucks themselves!

WHAT ARE BROKEN SPOKE BUCKS? Broken Spoke Bucks are a form of currency that is only good for beverages at the Broken Spoke Saloon located at the Broken Spoke Campground. It is simply a way for us to say “Thank You” for spreading the word about The Spoke. ? Spoke Bucks are issued in $5 denominations – Spoke Bucks can only be used for beverages at the campground bars – Change in US dollars will not be given – Spoke Bucks cannot be redeemed for cash, and have no value after August 15, 2010 – Spoke Bucks cannot be used at the Broken Spoke Saloon on Lazelle St. in Sturgis.

WHY SHOULD YOUR FRIEND JOIN YOU AT THE BROKEN SPOKE CAMPGROUND IN STURGIS? You already know, but just a refresher: The Broken Spoke Campground is home of the World?s Biggest Biker Pool complete with bars, bands and beautiful barmaids! We have 600 acres of land for camping and the best rates in all of Sturgis. Great bands, rides, food, and now ? you can get free money from the Broken Spoke just by referring a friend.

Send your friends here: www.BrokenSpokeCampground.com

This offer cannot be combined with other offers

AEROMACH USA CLEANS UP YOUR AXLE–Hide the unsightly axle nut with a billet aluminum skull axle cover. See more at www.AeromachMFG.com.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK–The past is a Wilderness of Horrors. Anthony Hopkins, Wolfman Movie

Licks New Distributor for Oberon Adjustable Levers!!–Did you ever wish you could adjust the travel distance of your clutch or brake lever? Well we finally have the solution to your woes!!! How does it work?? The Oberon Lever adjustment is achieved with fingertip control in either adjuster direction. The eight adjustments are either side of position 4 (similar to stock) giving adjustment up to 30mm or (1 1/8?) of lever travel. This extraordinary range of adjustment is possible because of the RADICAL CAM design.

These units are precision made and the close tolerance design, coupled with the high quality roller bearing, around which the cam operates easily locates your next position with a recognizable “click”. The cams inside the lever assembly have been hard anodized for longevity, reliability and have been sufficiently lubricated on assembly for smooth adjustment transition.

Each lever is shipped fully assembled in the style and color of your choice and ready for use. We also supply a full specification sheet including part numbers with all levers.

All levers feature the following:

? Simple installation for both Clutch and Brake Lever
? 8 selectable position settings
? Lever position range up to 30mm or (1 1/8?) of travel
? CNC machined from billet aluminum
? Precision roller bearing for smooth action
? 3mm Ball Bearing click guide
? Short Reach setting for easier operation
? OEM anti-rattle shim accommodated
? Stainless steel fasteners
? Integrated adjustment stop
? Manufacturer?s warranty

Available in the following variations:

? Lever Blade Colors: Black, Blue, Gold, Red, Silver
? Adjuster Switch Colors: Black, Blue, Gold, Orange, Red, and Silver

*** PLEASE NOTE *** NOT compatible with any model that has a Hydraulic Clutch

D&D DEALER DIRECT SYSTEM CONTINUES TO EXPAND– Here are the last five weeks of new D & D Dealers. If you’re looking for highly tested performance exhaust, look for a dealer or click on the banner above for a D&D Dealer near you.

1) GM Cycle 150 Middlebelt Garden City, MI 48135 734-522-1260
2) Old Road H-D 21130 Centre Pointe Pkwy Santa Clarita, CA 91350 661-964-0506
3) Cycle Stuff 599 D Waldron Rd Lavergne, TN 37086 615-535-1186
4) Vip & P Seating Inc 819 Southfield Rd Lincoln Park, MI 48146 313-381-1460
5) Quicktime Motorsports 2122 Parkway Dr # D St Peters MO 63376 636-441-2453
6) Koups Cycle Shop 189 N HBG St Harrisburg, PA 17113 717-939-7182
7) Central Maine H-D 2387 Route 2 Hermon, ME 04401 207-848-5709
8) Freedom Motorcycle Supply 13756 Old Hwy 40 Boonville, MO 65283 660-882-2538
9) Mike’s Garage 4735 Rt 130 Pennsauken, NJ 08110 856-486-4403
10) Chop Shop Ironworks 7111 Eckhert Rd San Antonio, TX 78238 210-767-1012
11) Gilby’s Street Dept 1567 Sullivan Ct River Falls, WI 54022 715-425-9322
12) State 8 Motorcycles 100 Cuyahoga Falls Ind Pkwy Peninsula, OK 44264 330-929-8123
13) Triola Cycles & Auto 30544 Hwy 190 Lacombe, LA 70445 985-882-5211
14) Auto Effects LLC 191 9th St Monaca, PA 15061 724-728-6003
15) Rahn’s Motorcycle Eng 800A Adams ST Abington,MA 02351 781-878-3683
16) Milwaukee Bagger 118A Sussex St Pewaukee,WI 53072 414-550-9550
17) Hawkeye Superbiker 9005 M66 Hwy East Leroy, MI 49051 269-441-1148
18) FV Custom Cycle 44865 Fremont Blvd # 4 Fremont, CA 94544 510-449-5889
19) Jay Riddle Racing 340 Detroit Ave Morton, IL 61550 309-266-8085
20) KIC Import & Export 737 Third Ave # G Chula Vista, CA 91910 619-482-6989
21) Hardtailz Choppers 3601 Parmer Ln # 105 Austin, TX 78727-4113 512-219-6155

–Jen

LUCKY DEVIL 1969 XLCH PROJECT–Here is a shot of my ride, she’s been sittin’ in the corner for a while waitin’ for me to get it together for way too long. . . .hehehe. You know how it goes. . .start with wanting a new carb and end up setting off a whole list of shit to do, hahaha! I am hard at playin’ catch-up at the moment, so I doubt I’ll touch it for the next 3 or 4 weeks? I will keep you posted when I get her going again.

–Kent

It gets crazier and crazier.This nut case want breathalyzers in all new cars– You know if it starts there motorcycles are going to be added at some time.

Here is his e-mail for those that want to contact himjohn@johnsarbanes.com.

Maryland Congressman John Sarbanes has proposed an amendment to theMotor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 that could ultimately lead tobreathalyzers being put in every car.watch vidhttp://www.wlos.com/shared/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wlos_vid_2363.shtml

–Rogue
Sturgis Freedom Fighters
Motorcycle Hall Of Fame Member 2005

BIKERNET MEDICAL CENTER OIL STUDY, A Healthy Way To Use Coconut Oil–Coconut oil has no positive role in a healthy diet. Because it is a highly saturated fat – one of the few saturated fats that doesn’t come from animals – coconut oil can raise cholesterol levels.

In the past, coconut oil was widely used in movie popcorn, candy bars and commercial baked goods, but has been phased out of many of these products due to consumer concerns about the health effects of consuming tropical oils.

While there is still debate about the hazards of dietary saturated fats, using cosmetic products containing coconut oil is another story. Although I prefer skin care products with natural anti-inflammatory activity, some components of coconut oil have been studied for their benefits to both skin and hair.

The lauric acid found in coconut oil is available in a wide variety of skin and hair care products, including body and facial cleansers, soap and sunscreens. Clinical research supports the safety of these products in general, and the utility of coconut oil to help moisturize skin in particular.

For a daily dose of medical information contact DrWeil.com. He’s good.

NEW BIKERNET DEPARTMENT, GAMES, BEGINNING WITH TRIVIAL PURSUIT– Can you guess which of the following are true and which are false? Answers are below.
1 . Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
2. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button.
3. A pack-a-day smoker will lose approximately 2 teeth every 10 years.
4. People do not get sick from cold weather; it’s from being indoors a lot more.
5. When you sneeze, all bodily functions stop, even your heart!
6. Only 7 per cent of the population are lefties.
7. Forty people are sent to the hospital for dog bites every minute.
8. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until they are 2-6 years old.
9. The average person over 50 will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.
10. The toothbrush was invented in 1498.
11. The average housefly lives for one month.
12. 40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.
13. A coat hanger is 44 inches long when straightened.
14. The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute.
15. Your feet are bigger in the afternoon than any other time of day.
16. Most of us have eaten a spider in our sleep.
17. The REAL reason ostriches stick their head in the sand is to search for water.
18. The only two animals that can see behind themselves without turning their heads are the rabbit and the parrot.
19. John Travolta turned down the starring roles in ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ and ‘Tootsie.’
20. Michael Jackson owns the rights to the South Carolina State Anthem.
21. In most television commercials advertising milk, a mixture of white paint and a little thinner is used in place of the milk.
22. Prince Charles and Prince William NEVER travel on the same airplane, just in case there is a crash.
23. The first Harley-Davidson motorcycle built in 1903 used a tomato can for a carburetor.
24. Most hospitals make money by selling the umbilical cords cut from women who give birth. They are used in vein transplant surgery.
25. Humphrey Bogart was related to Princess Diana. They were 7th cousins.
26. If coloring weren’t added to Coca-Cola, it would be green.

Scroll down for the answers.

–from Robin Hartfiel

Bill to Outlaw Open Carry Passes Assembly, Heads to Senate– Please Contact Your State Senator Today!

Yesterday, Tuesday, June 1, the California Assembly passed Assembly Bill 1934 by a vote of 41-25. AB1934 now heads to Senate for consideration.

Simply put, AB1934 would outlaw the open carrying of a handgun for self-defense. This bill is a blatant attack on the self-defense rights of law-abiding Californians.

AB1934 is a knee-jerk reaction by anti-gun legislators to punish citizens for engaging in the legal act of openly carrying an unloaded handgun. In reality, the open carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens is forced by California’s unfair concealed carry law, which allows some citizens from some counties to receive a permit to carry, while their neighbors in the next county are denied that basic right for political, not public safety, reasons.

Please contact your State Senator TODAY and respectfully urge them to oppose AB1934.

UNCLE MONKEY ON DENNIS HOPPER–Like many of us I was saddened to hear of the passing of Hollywood icon Dennis Hopper. Dennis is probably most famous as the character of Billy in the movie “Easy Rider” (1969). What few people realize is that not only did Dennis Hopper star he also directed the movie and along with Peter Fonda and Terry Southern co-wrote the script that would help define an entire generation and draw the curtain on the 1960’s. Unknown at the time but Dennis had become disillusioned with Hollywood and had all but given up being an actor to become a teacher. Fortunately for us he changed his mind and agreed to shoot “Easy Rider”. The preliminary 16mm rough shots hastily filmed to entice the Hollywood studios would become an intricate part of the movie. Dennis career in film had started years before and he appeared in “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) where he would meet and become close friends with James Dean. He has appeared in such notable films as “Hang ‘Em High” (1968), “Apocalypse Now” (1979),”Speed” (1994), and “Waterworld” (1995).

Dennis’ free wheeling, free spirited character became the blueprint for thousands of bikers as many tried to emulate his spirit and the Ben Hardy built chopper that he rode in the film. Along side Peter Fonda the two men will forever be tied to motorcycle culture. Dennis’s salute to the establishment will adorn shop and living room walls for decades to come. More recently we saw his hardened scowl riding his own personal Indian motorcycle in “Hell Ride” (2008).

Dennis made no secret of his addictions and often stated that it really was marijuana that they are smoking in “Easy Rider”. It made him at one time an outcast of Hollywood, a spokesman for a generation, and poster child for all that wished to escape conformity. He will be truly missed.

–bad Uncle Monkey

TRIVIA PURSUIT ANSWERS: They are ALL True

ANOTHER AMAZING WEEK IN PARADISE–We’re beginning to ramp up for Bonneville with tuning sessions and fitment for Valerie Thompson, the pilot of the World’s Fastest Panhead. We would like to put her carefully into the 200 mph club this year.

One of my projects is to find a trailer to pull the Assalt Weapan behind the Bikernet Hearse to the Salt flats. The girls will drive the Bikernet Motorhome. Here’s a rough list of Trailer Manufacturers. We are looking for deals and recommendations. If you know something about any of these companies, let us know.
http://www.motorcycletrailer.com/
http://www.trailersplus.com/Motorcycle_Trailer
http://carsontrailer.reachlocal.net/
http://www.sportutilitytrailers.com/
http://www.bigtextrailers.com/tdo/
http://www.fthr.com/atv_recreational-trailer/
http://www.adventuresportsproducts.com/
http://www.kendonusa.com/

So, what’s on the vast Bikernet Horizon? We have our next Bonneviller report, with the new Saddlemen seat rebuild, and the Peashooter rebuild by Rodan. It looks great. We have Marilyn’s Big Mountain Ride report, and a lesson on building bikes from Gypsy Raoul. I’m going to pick up my 1929 Peashooter stroker motor and start to mock up the bike. That’s going to be interesting. And Dar at Darwin Motorcycles, the builders of Brass Balls Bobbers, has asked me to help him design a new model, the Brawler Bandit. It’s destined to be a serious street fighter, capable of freeway madness and cross country runs.

Hang on for reports on this build.

Ride Forever,

–Bandit

Hey,

I don’t know about you, but holidays kick my ass. We think about kicking back and having a barbecue, which turns into a spring cleaning exercise and a five course menu. The next day, I need a day off to recuperate.

So, Tuesday began with a heavy dose of malaise. But as the day rolled along I revved the engine and let out the clutch. It grabbed, and I began to slice through my projects list. I now have my Saddlemen shots, and you’ll see a Bonneville update next week. I installed late model points and condenser in the Doctor’s VL. We launched a bunch of hot content on Bikernet and even a piece or two in the Cantina. Tomorrow, I will buy my TIG welding supplies and begin my training session.

Let’s hit the news. The project list continues to grow.

NEW MOTORCYCLE ARTIST DISCOVERED–I’ve also attached a couple of ink drawings done by a good friend of mine Mike Corbin, not the Mike Corbin we all know, this Mike Corbin is a old concrete finisher by trade. Mike’s hobby throughout the years I’ve know him is doing ink renderings of old street rods. I’ve always thought he was talented enough he should have done something with his art, but he says he’s nothing but a doodler.

I was over to his house last week and I was looking through his street rod drawings and ran across some pen and ink drawings he’s done of bikes. I asked him why he’d never shown me those and he said although he always loved bikes he never had the feel for drawing them and he just thought they weren’t that good.

I thought they were and we took them to Kinko’s and had then scanned and saved on a CD. The orange Softtail is the first bike he ever drew. His next one was the old Knuckle which I really like. Thought you might enjoy them, particularly the old Knuck.

–Da Reader

Somehow we lost the image of the Knuck. We’ll try again.

Sen. Inhofe Introduces Legislation To Protect Second Amendment Rights Of Military And Dept. Of Defense Civilian Personnel: Over a period of some months, NRA members in the Armed Forces have called NRA’s attention to the fact that certain military base commanders, exercising arbitrary authority given them under military law and regulations, have issued orders violating military personnel’s Second Amendment rights.

In a particularly egregious example, Fort Riley, Kansas, has imposed a preposterous regulation that, among other things, (1) requires the registration, with Fort Riley, of its soldiers’ privately-owned firearms kept off-base, and those of the soldiers’ family members residing anywhere in Kansas, (2) prohibits soldiers who have firearm-carrying permits from carrying firearms for protection off-base, and (3) authorizes unit commanders to set arbitrary limits on the caliber of firearms and ammunition their troops may privately own.

Hillary Clinton And The UN Arms Trade Treaty Rumor:

We continue to receive numerous inquiries regarding UN international treaties, and their impact on our Second Amendment rights. The latest rumor making its way around the Internet claims that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton actually signed a UN small arms treaty. It’s false.

Voter Registration Alert:

With the 2010 elections rapidly approaching, gun owners have a tremendous opportunity to elect officials who will support our Second Amendment rights. This will not be possible, however, unless you make your voice heard by voting, and encouraging your family, friends, and fellow gun owners to do the same.

Therefore, it is critical that gun owners in these states are registered to vote for the November elections, and for the upcoming primary elections.

Motorcycle Industry Event Liability Insurance – So cheap even a vendor with little to no sales can afford it!–As you all know, Bikernet Insurance is totally focused on bringing bikers the best insurance products at the best price. Just look at the important coverage of Event Liability insurance for vendors and exhibitors. You can’t show your stuff without it at most venues these days.

We offer the most cost-effective event liability insurance solution in the business. In fact, many exhibitors can secure a $1,000,000 policy limit for between $65 and $150 plus taxes and fees depending on the policy they choose. It’s the lowest price in America folks. Plus, no one can match our combination of coverage, price and biker-friendly service. Just ask Lil Joes Legendary Leathers (www.liljoesleather.com) .

Lil Joes’ Crew arrived in Laughlin ready to sell their “Made in the USA” and “Guaranteed 4 Life” brand of leathers but were without their Exhibitors Liability Certificates. They got online and went straight to Bikernet’s Insurance Department. Clicked on the green Total Event Ticket banner. Completed the form in minutes. Paid with their credit card and received their two Certificates in time to get to work.

Bikernet’s Special Event Liability Insurance is available for short term events, annual meetings coverage and on an annual multi-exhibition coverage basis. Appetite for coverage is very broad. We’ll cover everything from Fairs and Festivals, Beauty Pageants, Biker Weddings, Tradeshows and Consumer Shows. And of course, we love Biker Rallys and Motorcycle Runs. For example, check out our Sturgis Event Liability Insurance special on the home page of Bikernet.com. We’ve set up a special group policy for the 70th Sturgis Rally where vendors and exhibitors can obtain their own liability policy for as low as $65 plus taxes and fees. This is simply the best deal anywhere.

Go Ahead! Go tohttp://www.bikernet.com/insurance and save on your insurance folks. All the best at biker events this summer folks.

Ride safe out there. We care about you.

Contact us anytime.
Toll Free: 888-467-8703
Fax: 858-693-8703
>clientservice@bikernet-insurance.com

PROFILE: JRL CYCLES BUILT LUCKY 7–AMD World Championship of Custom Bike Building showcases world class sleds from around the world. Lucky 7 sports a Rotec radial motorcycle engine boasting a seven-cylinder R2800. Riders looking for more power can order a 36,000cc nine-cylinder engine through JRL.

While this particular machine uses a frame built by Twisted Choppers, future production models will be built around chassis designed and built by Michael Prugh, who came to fame designing the Lowlife and Hardlife frames for Independent Cycle.

Check out custom bikes from across the globe at the 2010 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

RALLY WEEK 2010: K&G Cycles to be a Major Event Sponsor at the Legendary Buffalo Chip–Legendary Buffalo Chip, SD (May 27, 2010) – Two ‘legendary’ motorcycle industry magnates are coming together to get the party going during this year’s 70th Annual Sturgis Rally Week festivities. K&G Cycles, the virtual motorcycle parts and accessories superstore will be a major sponsor at Sturgis’ premier entertainment venue and motorcycle travel destination, the Legendary Buffalo Chip.

Eager to become an integral element at Sturgis’ best party anywhere, K&G Cycles will be making a large presence at the Legendary Buffalo Chip during Sturgis Bike Week. An official sponsor of the 3rd Annual Legends Ride and the 10th Annual Motorcycles as Art Exhibition, K&G Cycles has also recruited the help of a couple carefully selected K&G girls that will be distributing K&G bandanas- you won’t want to miss it.

Founded in 2006 by George Marakas, K&G Cycles was born out of his love of motorcycling and a desire to turn his hobby of restoring antique bikes into a business. With the advent of K&G Cycles’ Web store in February 2009, Marakas has successfully created a revolutionary approach to online merchandising without sacrificing his personal touch or passion for the industry.

“I’m thrilled to partner with the Legendary Buffalo Chip for Sturgis 2010,” explains K&G owner, George Marakas, “Being a sponsor at the Chip allows us great exposure during one of industry’s premier rallies. In addition, K&G will get a taste of the true Sturgis experience that only the Chip can offer.”

“We are proud to have K & G Cycles as an official sponsor of Michael Lichter’s 10th annual Motorcycles as Art Exhibition and the 3rd annual Legends Ride,” says Lon Nordbye, Director of Corporate Partnerships for the Legendary Buffalo Chip. “K & G Cycles is one of the industry’s best online sources for quality parts and accessories for our customers. It’s a great partnership moving forward for the 70th annual Sturgis Rally.”

Also with new lines being added daily, K & G’s goal is to provide their customers with the widest possible selection of American and foreign-made motorcycles parts as well as clothing, apparel and gear at prices you simply will not believe. Driven by their love of motorcycling and the idea of creating a new kind of shopping experience within this marketplace, K&G Cycles have streamlined the buying process while still offering competitive pricing and great customer service. For more information about K & G Cycles, please call (785) 542-9227 or visit them on the Web at www.kandgcycles.com.

–Sarah Wozniak

BRAWLER CAUGHT TERRORIZING THE STREET–The New Brawler from Brass Balls Bobbers. The bike sounds outstanding, it comes fitted with a set of custom pipes for D&D Performance Enterprises.

Brass Balls Bobbers / D&D Performance Enterprises

Get more of the good stuff in Bikernet Studio.

BONNEVILLE PRE-REGISTRATION DEADLINE, BE THERE, BE THERE, BE THERE–Last chance reminder that the BUB Speed Trials pre-entry discount closes tonight at 11.59pm. Get your form in today to make the most of the discount!

Details on our website at www.bubspeedtrials.com

Price increase becomes effective for all entries received tomorrow onwards.

BUB Motorcycle Speed Trials Information
www.bubspeedtrials.com
PH: 530 272 4310
FAX: 530 477 7489
Email: salt-info@bubspeedtrials.com
Mail: 180 Spring Hill Dr, Grass Valley, CA 95945

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS-BUB Enterprises, Pingel Enterprises, SheEMoto, NRHS V-Twin Performance, Buell Bros & Sisters Racing, HDT USA, Bakker Motorsports, Spectro Oil, Klock Werks, Thynk, Bikernet.COM, Special thanks to Montego Bay Resort & Casino & ERC Racing Fuels. Brought to you by BUB Racing Inc, Officiated by AMA and FIM

POST MEMORIAL DAY TECH FROM THE GANG AT CHOP N GRIND RACING– With some imagination the old tool box can be mounted on just about any bike. Just need thought and patience. If you ride a lot, nothing like being on the side of the road broke down with no tools.

–Bob T

BIKERNET WEB TRENDS REPORT–According to Web Trends Bikernet received, 320,000 unique users last month, 540,000 Visits, 843,000 page views or impressions, and 8,553, 000 hits.

According to Google our numbers are: 154,000 visits, 437,000 page views, 112,000 unique users.

ZIPPERS HAS A THUNDERMAX EFI SYSTEM FOR EVERY FUEL INJECTED HARLEY-DAVIDSON–See how a ThunderMax with AutoTune can help you to reduce engine heat while adding substantial power. Stop by our booth at any major evernt, and let’s talk about the many additional features ThunderMax has to offer. Zipper’s will be equipped with inventory for the New ThunderMax TBW systems for 2008-2010 FL Touring models. Get your ThunderMax installed at the show!

We have a ThunderMax system to fit every fuel injected H-D bike, including:
2008-2010 Throttle-By-Wire Touring Models
2001-2010 Big Twin Models with Cable Throttle
2007-2010 Sportster? Models
2002-2010 V-Rod? Models
2008-2010 XR 1200? Models

The Zipper’s staff is available to provide you with professional advice related to ThunderMax installation and tuning, as well as answers to all of your performance questions.Contact Zipper’s Performance Products to plan your ThunderMax installation today!

Zipper’s Performance Products
6655 Amberton Drive, Elkridge MD
Phone: (410) 579-2828

Zippers@ZippersPerformance.com
www.zippersperformance.com

HISTORIC SHOTS FROM THE SHERIFF–Cory Ness and some shots from Daly City Aug 1984 by yours truly.

SHERIFF MEDIA GROUP
S-36030 LAMMHULT
SWEDEN
http://www.facebook.com/SHERIFFMEDIAGROUP

The JIMS Cruise Drive Seal Installer–JIMS, a manufacturer of performance parts and specialty tools for use onHarley-Davidsons, has just released some new and practical tools for 2010.

The new JIMS Cruise Drive Seal Installer No.786, is a must wheninstalling main seals for all 6-Speed Cruise Drive transmissions 2006 topresent. H-D?s new 6-speed transmission is a very stout piece ofengineering, incorporating some of the best bearings made. These main casebearings are of such high precision that you must be very gentle whenworking in or around them. For this reason, JIMS has developed a driverstyle seal installer (not a pushing or pulling type, which could damagethese bearings).

This new tool installs the main seal to the correctdepth, without applying any stress to the new precision bearings or newseals. JIMS Cruise Drive Seal Installer is manufactured from high gradesteel and 6061 grade aluminum with a precision CNC machine, and thenfinished with JIMS black oxide coating, and JIMS? famous blue anodizing.Suggested retail $135.50.

For more information find JIMS on the web atwww.jimsusa.com, become a JIMS facebook fan, or call 805-482-6913.

–Randy Richardson

THE BLUE LAW DEBATE–Just a quick note to say that not everyone in Maryland is excited about motorcycle dealerships being able to sell bikes on Sunday. Those of us who ride AND work at motorcycle dealerships will soon be forced to adjust to a work schedule where Sunday–which up until now has been held “sacred” and reserved for riding–is forced into the mix and will need to be staffed.

The days of being able to take much needed rides with one’s “brothers and sisters in arms” will soon be over. Our own riding, which is limited during the long Mid-Atlantic summer and includes no rallies or other such events, is going to be even more strictly limited to short, solitary rides during the work week.

While current and potential motorcycle enthusiasts are going to be glad to be able to shop for bikes, parts and apparel on Sunday, I suspect what they may unknowingly find is a shop staff that is somewhat reduced in talent on all days, given the addition of Sunday.

For myself and others who have come to the powersports industry from elsewhere in retail, much of the attraction came from being able to have at least one set day off during the week. If that is going to be taken away, I know that many of us may have to look in other directions for employment.

Competent professionals are hard to find in any industry, but in this one we must have people who share the passion for riding in order to best serve the rider. All the technical knowledge in the world can’t compete with being able to talk with someone who has ridden across the continent, including multiple 500+ mile days in the rain and cold, plugged a tire in the rain, etc.

Thanks for listening,

–Howard in Maryland

High court rules suspect must invoke own silence right,Dissenters say Miranda warning now ?upside down?WASHINGTON ? The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a criminal suspect must explicitly invoke the right to remain silent during a police interrogation, a decision that dissenting liberal justices said turns the protections of a Miranda warning ?upside down.??

The court ruled 5 to 4 that a Michigan defendant who incriminated himself in a fatal shooting after nearly three hours of questioning thus gave up his right to silence, and the statement could be used against him at trial.

?Where the prosecution shows that a Miranda warning was given and that it was understood by the accused, an accused?s uncoerced statement establishes an implied waiver of the right to remain silent,?? Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court?s conservatives.

Suspect Van Chester Thompkins remained mostly silent for three hours of interrogation after reading and being told of his rights to remain silent and have an attorney. He neither acknowledged he was willing to talk nor wanted questioning to stop.But detectives persisted in what one called mostly a ?monologue?? until asking Thompkins whether he believed in God. When asked, ?Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down??? Thompkins answered, ?Yes.??

The statement was used against him, and Thompkins was convicted of killing Samuel Morris outside a strip mall in Southfield, Mich.

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said that Thompkins?s silence for two hours and 45 minutes of the interrogation ?offered a clear and unequivocal message to the officers: Thompkins did not wish to waive his rights.??

But Kennedy said it was not clear enough. ?If Thompkins wanted to remain silent, he could have said nothing in response to (the detective?s) questions, or he could have unambiguously involved his Miranda rights and ended the interrogation,?? wrote Kennedy, who was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. ?The fact that Thompkins made a statement about three hours after receiving a Miranda warning does not overcome the fact that he engaged in a course of conduct indicating waiver.??

Kennedy said the court?s new rule ? in the case of Berghuis v. Thompkins ? was an extension of the logic in a previous case that said a suspect must affirmatively assert the right to counsel.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the sharpest dissent of her young career on the court, accused the majority of casting aside judicial restraint and creating a rule that marks ?a substantial retreat from the protection against compelled self-incrimination?? that Miranda established more than 40 years ago.

?Today?s decision turns Miranda upside down,?? Sotomayor wrote. ?Criminal suspects must now unambiguously invoke their right to remain silent, which, counterintuitively, requires them to speak.??

She was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer.

Elena Kagan, nominated by President Obama to join the court, sided with the police as US solicitor general when the case came before the court. She would replace Justice Stevens.

The Constitution ?does not require that the police interpret ambiguous statements as invocations of Miranda rights,?? Kagan said in court papers.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post / June 2, 2010

–from Rogue

SEMA POWERSPORTS (INCLUDING MOTORCYCLES) GROUP GROWING–I will send out a report shortly, but here’s a teaser, the mission statement: SEMA Powersports Advisory Group?s Mission Statement:Help the powersports industry?s members? businesses succeed and prosper by elevating the industry to new levels of growth through proactive leadership, world-class educational programs, legislative and regulatory advocacy and participation in industry?s leading trade show.

SEMA Powersports Advisory Group?s Strategic Plan:

?The SEMA Powersports Advisory Group (PAG) will lead the development and delivery of programs, activities and information in anticipation and response to the emerging and ongoing needs of our powersports industry members.
?The SEMA PAG recognizes that the automotive and the powersports industries are undergoing major structural changes and the decisions our members make today, as well as their understanding and knowledge about industry technologies, challenges, solutions and opportunities will impact their futures.
?The SEMA PAG will provide members relevant information and insights, as well as develop collaborative relationships that help them compete and grow their businesses today, while also offering increased awareness and knowledge of major technologies, systems and engineering trends to help them create solutions and prepare for tomorrow?s challenges and opportunities.

Over the upcoming weeks I will bring you information concerning SEMA educational benefits, their government affairs capabilities, and resources available to benefit our industry.

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