Table of Contents [Report This]
Disclaimer: The characters Miss Parker, Sydney, Jarod, Broots etc. and the fictional Centre, are all property of MTM, TNT and NBC Productions and used
without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.
Hogwild
Chapter One: A Plan
by Allykat D.
Phoenix, Arizona
Juanito smiled up at the dark haired man whom he called his big brother. “What are we going to do today?” he asked. Yesterday Jarod took him to the water park where he rode on big water slides and slid down manmade rivers in inner tubes. It had been great fun.
Jarod reached over and mussed Juanito’s dark hair. “How about a game of basketball,” he suggested and held up the basketball he had tucked under one arm. “After that we’ll go for a horseback ride in the desert. I met a rancher who has a nice pinto pony just for you.” He dropped a companionable arm around the boy’s thin shoulders, and they walked up the sidewalk toward the high school and the basketball courts. Jarod had been a member of the Big Brothers group for several months now, and though he was a big brother to several boys, Juanito was his favorite.
Juanito’s eyes lit up. “A pinto pony! That’d be cool.” He had always wanted to be a cowboy.
The neighbor were Juanito lived was not a good one, and to call it lower middle class might be too kind. The houses were ill-kept and weeds had taken over most of the front lawns. Exteriors consisted of peeling paint, and lawn decorations mostly the rusted skeletons of various vehicles. A few owners had made attempts to clean up their house with too-bright paint and new plants, but the blight of the district seemed to infect everything. Neither of them took note of a rusty, late model car that slowly turned the corner a block away and cruised down the street. A window opened and sunlight glinted off a gun barrel. For a moment, the significance of the scene did not register in Jarod’s mind.
A barrage of automatic gunfire peppered the house behind them, blowing out windows and tearing through the house’s siding. The two men drinking beer on the porch rose to escape, both catching the impact of the bullets, their bodies convulsing in a macabre death dance before collapsing to the wooden porch in a pool of blood. Jarod spun and tackled Juanito, taking him down to the sidewalk and covering him with his body. A bullet clipped his upper arm, hot and painful, another nipped at his upper thigh. Juanito whimpered as bullets passed over them, peppering into the house whose picket fence they cringed against.
Then the silence was punctuated by an odd barking laugh and the car sped away.
Jarod rolled over to his back then sat up, and fell back to the ground. His blood pooled onto the sidewalk. He knew he’d need medical attention, but his wounds were not mortal. Feeling a little dizzy, he looked over at Juanito. The boy did not move, the shoulder of his white jersey shirt stained bright red. Jarod’s first instinct was to hold the boy, but his medical know-how inserted itself, warning him against immediately moving the boy without knowing the extent of the wounds. He felt for Juanito’s pulse and found it weak and thready. People began to gather on the sidewalk around the target houses. A drive-by shooting was all too common in this area. These people all too familiar with mourning. A woman on the porch cried over one of the dead boys, the sound of her sorrow competing with the sounds of wailing sirens growing closer. Though a haze of pain, Jarod saw Juanito’s mother ran out of the house two doors down. He tried to wave but found he couldn’t lift his hand.
“Juanito! Juanito,” she cried, her voice oddly far away. “Where is my son?”
Three police cruisers, two paramedic vans and an ambulance arrived. Revolving lights flashing over the crowd painting faces in reds and blues. As one policeman began to push back the crowd, another began roping off the crime scene and several paramedics jumped out of the van and rushed over to Jarod and Juanito. Juanito’s mother spied them and rushed to her son. A policeman tried to comfort her while the paramedics worked. A third paramedic tended Jarod. They give him oxygen, put him on a heart monitor, both on backboard with c-collar and started an IV drip. Jarod moved his head and saw they did the same with Juanito, but they had started two IVs. That was good, he thought hazily, take care of the boy first.
“How are you feeling?” the paramedic, a young man with shaggy blonde hair asked. “How you doing? Can you breathe?”
“I’ve been shot through the upper chest,” Jarod replied, voice hoarse. “I can breath okay, so I don’t think I have a pneumothorax.”
The paramedic looked up, surprise in his face. “You’re a doctor.”
“Not today,” Jarod replied with a faint smile.
“Funny guy,” the paramedic replied. “I like to see that in my patients.”
They wheeled Jarod to one of the waiting ambulances. They had already loaded Juanito and through fading vision, Jarod watched it leave with a wail of sirens and flashing lights.
* * * *
One Week Later
Although only 8 in the morning, the day was already hot. Heat waves distorted distant gravestones and dying flowers. Overhead in a tree, cicadas sounded like thousands of tiny ratchets. Sweat plastered Jarod’s t-shirt against his back, but he didn’t notice this discomfort. The newly dug grave held his full attention. Fresh yellow flowers were already wilting. One life cut short too young. Nothing could bring him back. The sound of footsteps intruded upon his grief. His heart lept, and he spun around, relieved to find a uniformed, motorcycle policeman walking up. The man removed his helmet, nodded and together they stood silently paying respects to Juanito.
“You’re Jarod,” the policeman finally broke the silence. “I just wanted to thank you for making a difference in Juanito’s life.” He held out a hand and they shook. “I’m Eduardo, Juanito’s uncle. His father was my brother.” His sigh was shaky and he cleared his throat and gestured to the headstone next to Juanito’s. “That’s him there. Like father like son, he caught a
stray bullet during a rival gang shootout. I didn’t think I’d be standing
here again so soon. Not for Juanito.” He swallowed and brushed at his eyes
with the back of one hand.
“Juanito spoke a lot about his father, and you,” Jarod said.
“He told me about you, too. I wish I could have helped him. Now it’s too late. I work a lot and Connie, my sister and Juanito’s mother, is busy with the twins….” He shrugged. “She didn’t have much time for Juanito, especially after his father died. I live alone, and I offered Connie my house, to get her away from the neighborhood, but she refused. She moved in two days ago. Too late for Juanito.”
“At least the twins have a chance,” Jarod said. “He’s was good kid. He didn’t deserve this. Two days before the drive-by, he mentioned those two next door. He said they were some kind of trouble. I should have listened. Maybe this could have been avoided.”
“Don’t blame yourself. You’re a brave man, Jarod.…?” the policeman left it a question.
“Phillips, “Jarod replied. It was the name he had been using since coming to Phoenix two months ago. “Jarod Phillips.”
“You and Juanito just were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He crouched down and placed his hand on the gravestone. “Damn. The police report said you took two bullets when you shielded Juanito.” Eduardo stood and gestured toward Jarod’s arm still in a sling. “That’s more than most would have done. You thought about Juanito first.”
“Not that it did a lot of good.” Jarod swallowed away the emotion that threatened to swamp him. He couldn’t indulge in sorrow now. He had to think, had to come up with a plan. “Do they know who did it?”
Eduardo shrugged, his expression troubled. “We have some ideas. The targets—those kids on the porch—died at the scene. We have no living witnesses other than you.”
“That was automatic gunfire I heard,” Jarod said. “MP-5’s is my guess. Where do you find those types of weapons?”
“There are several sources in the city if one has the right connections. We believe one source is a motorcycle gang, one gang in particular, but we haven’t been able to prove anything. We’ve tried an investigation a year ago, but two officers turned up dead on the outskirts of town. Executed. Two bullets each through the head. Then the feds came in and took over for awhile, but nothing came of it. A few busts, but they didn’t get the head of the organization responsible.” The policeman shifted and tucked his helmet under his arm. “The stash was said to be in a warehouse at the edge of the city. But when the feds got there, it’d been emptied.”
“They’d been tipped off?” Jarod asked.
Eduardo nodded. “That’s what a few of us suspect. It all points to someone in the department accepting a payoff, but cops are not willing to point a fingers at one another.”
“Which motorcycle gang do you suspect?”
“There are several in the area. The Black Suns are a group of rebel rousers, they get drunk, hang out and cause a few problems, but I don’t think they’re into gun running. I suspect the Demons. Their leader is Crossfire and it’s alleged that they supply guns to the street gangs, or at least they’re one of the bigger suppliers. Those tow young men on the porch were killed, it is said, because they were trying to leave the Demons. Guess the only way to leave is in a casket.”
Jarod’s eyes narrowed. A idea began to bloom. “How does one become a biker?”
“Well,” Eduardo started out, “you have to have a Harley first, there is no substitute. Then you have to hang with the bikers and then they have to accept you as one of them and then, maybe, you’ll be asked to join--,” Eduardo’s voice trailed off, and he looked sharply at the taller man. “Hey, why do you want to know?”
Jarod’s expression hardened, his hands clenched at his thighs. “I need to become a biker.”
“Wait a minute! No. No!”, Eduardo repeated with more emphasis. “No way, man. What you’re suggesting is crazy. Loco! Juanito’s death hurts us all, and I’d like to go after those bastards, too. I’d like to blow them all to hell with their own guns, but that’s not the way to do it. They’d see through someone like you in a blink.”
“Every other way has failed,” Jarod’s voice was harsh, “and as you said, you may have a department leak.”
“Look man, you don’t have the look, you don’t have the experience.” Eduardo held out his hands as if pleading with Jarod to see reason. “These biker gangs are nasty. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I’ve done this before. This will just take a bit more planning than usual.”
“Don’t tell me you used to be in law inforcement?” Eduardo asked.
“You could say that,” Jarod replied, his mind already jumping ahead, planning. This would be unlike anything he’d done before, not like the limping hitman, not like the safecracker.
“Look Jarod, I know you’re angry,” Eduardo was saying. “I’m angry, too. I’ve just come from Connie’s house. She hasn’t stopped crying for a week. She walks around the house, hour after hour, holding her babies and crying. We don’t want another dead body.”
“If there is one, it won’t be mine. To do this, I need your help. If you don’t help me, I can find someone else.”
Eduardo sighed. “Why do I believe you? This is crazy. I don’t know why I’m doing this. Madre de dios.”
“Help me,” Jarod whispered. “For Juanito.”
Eduardo sighed and looked across the sea of gravestones, like so many dominos. “I have a friend named Martin. We’ve known each other for years. He’s owes me a few favors. I’ve kept him out of jail a time or two. He operatorson the fringe of the biker culture and he could help you.” He shook his head. “Man, I hope I don’t regret this. You make one mistake and these biker’s will kill you.”
Jarod’s smile was thin, and the hoarse anger in his voice sent a shiver down Eduardo’s back.
“You help me become a biker, you help me into a gang, and I promise I’ll bring you the men killed Juanito.” Or dye trying, he added silently, for the first time in his life feeling an alien emotion he would later recognize as doubt.
End of chapter One
without permission. I'm not making any money out of this and no infringement is intended.
Chapter One: A Plan
by Allykat D.
Phoenix, Arizona
Juanito smiled up at the dark haired man whom he called his big brother. “What are we going to do today?” he asked. Yesterday Jarod took him to the water park where he rode on big water slides and slid down manmade rivers in inner tubes. It had been great fun.
Jarod reached over and mussed Juanito’s dark hair. “How about a game of basketball,” he suggested and held up the basketball he had tucked under one arm. “After that we’ll go for a horseback ride in the desert. I met a rancher who has a nice pinto pony just for you.” He dropped a companionable arm around the boy’s thin shoulders, and they walked up the sidewalk toward the high school and the basketball courts. Jarod had been a member of the Big Brothers group for several months now, and though he was a big brother to several boys, Juanito was his favorite.
Juanito’s eyes lit up. “A pinto pony! That’d be cool.” He had always wanted to be a cowboy.
The neighbor were Juanito lived was not a good one, and to call it lower middle class might be too kind. The houses were ill-kept and weeds had taken over most of the front lawns. Exteriors consisted of peeling paint, and lawn decorations mostly the rusted skeletons of various vehicles. A few owners had made attempts to clean up their house with too-bright paint and new plants, but the blight of the district seemed to infect everything. Neither of them took note of a rusty, late model car that slowly turned the corner a block away and cruised down the street. A window opened and sunlight glinted off a gun barrel. For a moment, the significance of the scene did not register in Jarod’s mind.
A barrage of automatic gunfire peppered the house behind them, blowing out windows and tearing through the house’s siding. The two men drinking beer on the porch rose to escape, both catching the impact of the bullets, their bodies convulsing in a macabre death dance before collapsing to the wooden porch in a pool of blood. Jarod spun and tackled Juanito, taking him down to the sidewalk and covering him with his body. A bullet clipped his upper arm, hot and painful, another nipped at his upper thigh. Juanito whimpered as bullets passed over them, peppering into the house whose picket fence they cringed against.
Then the silence was punctuated by an odd barking laugh and the car sped away.
Jarod rolled over to his back then sat up, and fell back to the ground. His blood pooled onto the sidewalk. He knew he’d need medical attention, but his wounds were not mortal. Feeling a little dizzy, he looked over at Juanito. The boy did not move, the shoulder of his white jersey shirt stained bright red. Jarod’s first instinct was to hold the boy, but his medical know-how inserted itself, warning him against immediately moving the boy without knowing the extent of the wounds. He felt for Juanito’s pulse and found it weak and thready. People began to gather on the sidewalk around the target houses. A drive-by shooting was all too common in this area. These people all too familiar with mourning. A woman on the porch cried over one of the dead boys, the sound of her sorrow competing with the sounds of wailing sirens growing closer. Though a haze of pain, Jarod saw Juanito’s mother ran out of the house two doors down. He tried to wave but found he couldn’t lift his hand.
“Juanito! Juanito,” she cried, her voice oddly far away. “Where is my son?”
Three police cruisers, two paramedic vans and an ambulance arrived. Revolving lights flashing over the crowd painting faces in reds and blues. As one policeman began to push back the crowd, another began roping off the crime scene and several paramedics jumped out of the van and rushed over to Jarod and Juanito. Juanito’s mother spied them and rushed to her son. A policeman tried to comfort her while the paramedics worked. A third paramedic tended Jarod. They give him oxygen, put him on a heart monitor, both on backboard with c-collar and started an IV drip. Jarod moved his head and saw they did the same with Juanito, but they had started two IVs. That was good, he thought hazily, take care of the boy first.
“How are you feeling?” the paramedic, a young man with shaggy blonde hair asked. “How you doing? Can you breathe?”
“I’ve been shot through the upper chest,” Jarod replied, voice hoarse. “I can breath okay, so I don’t think I have a pneumothorax.”
The paramedic looked up, surprise in his face. “You’re a doctor.”
“Not today,” Jarod replied with a faint smile.
“Funny guy,” the paramedic replied. “I like to see that in my patients.”
They wheeled Jarod to one of the waiting ambulances. They had already loaded Juanito and through fading vision, Jarod watched it leave with a wail of sirens and flashing lights.
* * * *
One Week Later
Although only 8 in the morning, the day was already hot. Heat waves distorted distant gravestones and dying flowers. Overhead in a tree, cicadas sounded like thousands of tiny ratchets. Sweat plastered Jarod’s t-shirt against his back, but he didn’t notice this discomfort. The newly dug grave held his full attention. Fresh yellow flowers were already wilting. One life cut short too young. Nothing could bring him back. The sound of footsteps intruded upon his grief. His heart lept, and he spun around, relieved to find a uniformed, motorcycle policeman walking up. The man removed his helmet, nodded and together they stood silently paying respects to Juanito.
“You’re Jarod,” the policeman finally broke the silence. “I just wanted to thank you for making a difference in Juanito’s life.” He held out a hand and they shook. “I’m Eduardo, Juanito’s uncle. His father was my brother.” His sigh was shaky and he cleared his throat and gestured to the headstone next to Juanito’s. “That’s him there. Like father like son, he caught a
stray bullet during a rival gang shootout. I didn’t think I’d be standing
here again so soon. Not for Juanito.” He swallowed and brushed at his eyes
with the back of one hand.
“Juanito spoke a lot about his father, and you,” Jarod said.
“He told me about you, too. I wish I could have helped him. Now it’s too late. I work a lot and Connie, my sister and Juanito’s mother, is busy with the twins….” He shrugged. “She didn’t have much time for Juanito, especially after his father died. I live alone, and I offered Connie my house, to get her away from the neighborhood, but she refused. She moved in two days ago. Too late for Juanito.”
“At least the twins have a chance,” Jarod said. “He’s was good kid. He didn’t deserve this. Two days before the drive-by, he mentioned those two next door. He said they were some kind of trouble. I should have listened. Maybe this could have been avoided.”
“Don’t blame yourself. You’re a brave man, Jarod.…?” the policeman left it a question.
“Phillips, “Jarod replied. It was the name he had been using since coming to Phoenix two months ago. “Jarod Phillips.”
“You and Juanito just were in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He crouched down and placed his hand on the gravestone. “Damn. The police report said you took two bullets when you shielded Juanito.” Eduardo stood and gestured toward Jarod’s arm still in a sling. “That’s more than most would have done. You thought about Juanito first.”
“Not that it did a lot of good.” Jarod swallowed away the emotion that threatened to swamp him. He couldn’t indulge in sorrow now. He had to think, had to come up with a plan. “Do they know who did it?”
Eduardo shrugged, his expression troubled. “We have some ideas. The targets—those kids on the porch—died at the scene. We have no living witnesses other than you.”
“That was automatic gunfire I heard,” Jarod said. “MP-5’s is my guess. Where do you find those types of weapons?”
“There are several sources in the city if one has the right connections. We believe one source is a motorcycle gang, one gang in particular, but we haven’t been able to prove anything. We’ve tried an investigation a year ago, but two officers turned up dead on the outskirts of town. Executed. Two bullets each through the head. Then the feds came in and took over for awhile, but nothing came of it. A few busts, but they didn’t get the head of the organization responsible.” The policeman shifted and tucked his helmet under his arm. “The stash was said to be in a warehouse at the edge of the city. But when the feds got there, it’d been emptied.”
“They’d been tipped off?” Jarod asked.
Eduardo nodded. “That’s what a few of us suspect. It all points to someone in the department accepting a payoff, but cops are not willing to point a fingers at one another.”
“Which motorcycle gang do you suspect?”
“There are several in the area. The Black Suns are a group of rebel rousers, they get drunk, hang out and cause a few problems, but I don’t think they’re into gun running. I suspect the Demons. Their leader is Crossfire and it’s alleged that they supply guns to the street gangs, or at least they’re one of the bigger suppliers. Those tow young men on the porch were killed, it is said, because they were trying to leave the Demons. Guess the only way to leave is in a casket.”
Jarod’s eyes narrowed. A idea began to bloom. “How does one become a biker?”
“Well,” Eduardo started out, “you have to have a Harley first, there is no substitute. Then you have to hang with the bikers and then they have to accept you as one of them and then, maybe, you’ll be asked to join--,” Eduardo’s voice trailed off, and he looked sharply at the taller man. “Hey, why do you want to know?”
Jarod’s expression hardened, his hands clenched at his thighs. “I need to become a biker.”
“Wait a minute! No. No!”, Eduardo repeated with more emphasis. “No way, man. What you’re suggesting is crazy. Loco! Juanito’s death hurts us all, and I’d like to go after those bastards, too. I’d like to blow them all to hell with their own guns, but that’s not the way to do it. They’d see through someone like you in a blink.”
“Every other way has failed,” Jarod’s voice was harsh, “and as you said, you may have a department leak.”
“Look man, you don’t have the look, you don’t have the experience.” Eduardo held out his hands as if pleading with Jarod to see reason. “These biker gangs are nasty. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“I’ve done this before. This will just take a bit more planning than usual.”
“Don’t tell me you used to be in law inforcement?” Eduardo asked.
“You could say that,” Jarod replied, his mind already jumping ahead, planning. This would be unlike anything he’d done before, not like the limping hitman, not like the safecracker.
“Look Jarod, I know you’re angry,” Eduardo was saying. “I’m angry, too. I’ve just come from Connie’s house. She hasn’t stopped crying for a week. She walks around the house, hour after hour, holding her babies and crying. We don’t want another dead body.”
“If there is one, it won’t be mine. To do this, I need your help. If you don’t help me, I can find someone else.”
Eduardo sighed. “Why do I believe you? This is crazy. I don’t know why I’m doing this. Madre de dios.”
“Help me,” Jarod whispered. “For Juanito.”
Eduardo sighed and looked across the sea of gravestones, like so many dominos. “I have a friend named Martin. We’ve known each other for years. He’s owes me a few favors. I’ve kept him out of jail a time or two. He operatorson the fringe of the biker culture and he could help you.” He shook his head. “Man, I hope I don’t regret this. You make one mistake and these biker’s will kill you.”
Jarod’s smile was thin, and the hoarse anger in his voice sent a shiver down Eduardo’s back.
“You help me become a biker, you help me into a gang, and I promise I’ll bring you the men killed Juanito.” Or dye trying, he added silently, for the first time in his life feeling an alien emotion he would later recognize as doubt.
End of chapter One
