Page 17 of Jazz
“A fella doesn’t just walk in asking for ‘different’. Tell me, who pointed you my way?”
“Tony the Tool,” he said instantly. “Used to race with you at Croft. Said you built him a front end that didn’t try to kill him every corner.”
I stopped, like a two-stroke seizing at full tilt. Tony was a mouthy fucker, but he wasn’t stupid enough to hand my name to the wrong person.
Jerking my chin towards a door on the far side, I strode off, the man in the expensive jeans following behind me, nearly as expensive trainers squeaking obscenely on my showroom floor.
The Yamaha shone under the strip lights, gleaming red and mean as sin, one of five bikes in the back room. The man behind me whistled.
“You know what you’re looking at?” I asked him.
His eyes glossed, his mouth hanging open as if his chin was filled with lead. He walked closer, careful not to touch, just staring, eyes roaming, taking every single rivet, line and contour in.
“TZ750. Mid-seventies, right? Four-cylinder, two-stroke, about a hundred and forty horses. Kenny Roberts said it wasthe bike that scared him straight. That fairing, fuck me, that’s gorgeous. You don’t see them intact anymore.”
I watched him, silent. The words weren’t rehearsed. They came out low, reverent, talking about something that’s lived in his blood for years. The fella knew his bikes.
Finally, he turned back to me. “I didn’t come here for a toy. I came here because I want something that bites back. Something that makes the rest of the world come when they hear it screaming down the road. You’ve got it. I’ve got the cash. We doing this or not?”
For the first time since he walked in, I felt my shoulders loosen. He wasn’t a copper. No copper would know that bike’s history, let alone talk about it like it was holy scripture.
I nodded, my eyes glancing over the machine one last time. The red paint caught the strip light, glowing like fresh blood. The fairing was scarred but proud, the frame still carrying that raw menace only a two-stroke bitch like her could hold. A relic and a weapon in the same breath.
I’d spent months coaxing her back to life; every gasket and seal fought me like she wanted to stay dead. Now she would purr, polished, ready to bite the hand that dared to ride her. She wasn’t just a bike; she was a widowmaker wrapped in fiberglass and steel.
It would be a fuckin shame to let her go. But the stack of cash he was offering would keep my brothers fed, my business flush, and the law off my back for another season. I gave him the ghost of a smile as he thrust a bulging envelope of it in my direction. I nodded, turning to count the money out on the desk behind me. Fifty fucking thousand pounds. I could keep her, send her to auction. Get twice as much. But this deal wasquiet. Under the table. That’s the way it needed to stay. And the fucking tax man wasn’t going to see a fucking penny.
I unlocked the drawer in the desk, thumbing the little tab on the bundles of keys until I found the right set and then handing them over.
“Keys are yours. Just remember, she doesn’t forgive. Treat her rough, she’ll put you in the ground.”
My mind flitted somewhere else. Just for a moment. A split second before the vibration of my mobile in my back pocket started again.
“You got a lid?” I asked the man smoothing his hands over the red paintwork. “Aye, in the car. Just waiting for me Dah to get here to pick the car up.”
I grunted, my attention already back to the incessant buzzing of my phone.
“What?” I answered gruffly, grimacing when my President’s Scottish tone responded.
“Chase, Thrash is on his way to the warehouse.”
“What do you mean?” I hissed, keeping my tone low and out of earshot from the guy who’d just handed me a load of cash. But he hadn’t heard, his eyes still roaming over the bike shining under the spotlights like it was the first woman he had ever seen.
“I need you at the warehouse. Thrash is going mental.”
“How the fuck does he know where to come?”
“’Cos I told him.”
I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. That fucking warehouse wasn’t going to stay fucking discreet for much fucking longer.
“Need you there now.”
“On my way.”
Chapter Eleven
The door squeaked. The faintest of noises, almost unintelligible. But now I could hear it, and the shuffle of softly soled feet on concrete. There was something uneven about the steps. Short. Chase? He had long confident strides, not this creeping unevenness. This one had a limp or a bad leg. Or a bad knee. Fuck.