Messenger of Death by Alex Markman Page B

seemed very young, eighteen
or even less, and wore vulgar, tasteless, makeup and clothes; they
appeared to belong to a lower social class. On the street, Camilla
would have taken them for whores.
    A huge man
stopped momentarily near her table, holding a bottle of beer in his
hand. He wore a vest with biker gang patches. His arms, bare to his
shoulders and thick with bulging muscles, had been densely
decorated with bluish tattoos, which filled up all the available
space. Long, untidy hair fell onto his shoulders; a beard hid his
throat. He was smiling, but his unfriendly eyes made him look like
a “typical” biker from a movie. He made his way toward a petite
woman; the length of her miniskirt was not enough to hide her
bikini underwear.
    “Harry,” he
introduced himself. The woman giggled.
    “I’d love to be
taken for a ride,” she said, wiggling her hips.
    “I’ll take
you,” promised the biker and put his huge hand on her buttocks to
finalize their deal.
    “Oh, Gary, you
always cheat me,” the woman said, her backside swaying in the hand
of a man she was meeting for the first time in her life. She was
already drunk; her lips moved slowly, as if frozen by anaesthetic
at a dentist’s office.
    “Harry. My name
is Harry,” corrected the biker, kneading her behind like a piece of
dough.
    “Right. That’s
what I thought.”
    Harry produced
a pack of Marlboros and pulled out a cigarette.
    “D’yah mind if
I give yah something in yah mouth?” he asked, pushing the cigarette
filter between her thickly painted lips.
    “M-m-m-m.” The
woman chuckled. Her lips parted, opening for the cigarette. “Ha,
ha. You’re funny, Terry.”
    Camilla shook
her head and glanced at a newspaper that was spread across the
table. Large, bold letters in the headline were meant to draw the
reader’s attention: “Biker’s War Escalates.” A picture in the
center of the page resembled a modern painting of a disaster—a
biker bar in the aftermath of an assault. She looked more intently
at the article. The assault, it said, had been conducted by masked
hoodlums, who used baseball bats to break everything inside. The
bar, according to the writer, was patronized by members of the Iron
Ghosts and was a haven for drug sales. According to speculation,
the rival Devil’s Knights gang had sent one of their “baseball
teams”—the author demonstrated familiarity with biker jargon—to
make a mess of the place. They broke in and ordered everyone not to
move. One hoodlum used his heavy bat to take care of everything
behind the bar. Shards of glass flew around the room from broken
bottles. Others took to beating the drug dealers. One of the
clients, too drunk to understand what was happening, had tried to
protest. A masked hoodlum hit his legs with a bat, sending the man
unconscious to the floor. The article said that police were still
looking for any traces of evidence that might lead them to identity
the criminals. From there, the piece gave a short history of biker
gangs in Quebec. But Camilla did not go much further because two
glasses had been placed on the newspaper, making reading
impossible. One glass had the whitish, brownish color of Baileys in
it.
    “Interesting
article?’ Stanley asked, taking the chair beside her. The other was
half full of a golden brown liquid that smelled like cognac.
“Someone must have forgotten the newspaper here. I’ll tell the guy
on duty to watch for these things.”
    “Is it a
secret?”
    “No. But it
might give the wrong impression to someone that we’re defenceless.
We’ll respond, that’s for sure.” He leaned back and took a sip from
the glass. His lean face relaxed as he looked around, leisurely
observing the party. Camilla watched him with a warm glow in her
eyes.
    Suddenly, the
whole building shook like a dollhouse kicked by a monster. The
sound of a rough, terrifying clap of thunder accompanied the jolt,
but it was more deafening than even the strongest bolt of lightning
could