The Vigilantes (Badge of Honor 10)

Or maybe it’s “little dick syndrome.”

As the headlight swept around, it again washed the girls in its beam. Then the motorcycle engine roared loudly and the beam moved upward as the bike popped a wheelie, the front tire rising about three feet off the asphalt. The rider, half standing on the foot pegs, drove the bike on its back tire as he roared past the group of girls.

Fucking showing off, Curtis thought.

Like he owns the street.

And wants to own one of them. . . .

As the motorcycle came closer to where Will Curtis peered out from behind the filthy Ford van, the rider backed off the gas and the front tire returned to the pavement. The headlight beam flashed Curtis in the eyes, momentarily blinding him.

He instinctively dropped back behind the van and went into a crouch. He heard the motorcycle approaching quickly, followed by the sound of skidding tires. The motorcycle’s engine revved twice, then went silent.

The only sound Will Curtis now heard was in the distance, up the street. The school girls were giggling and talking—both nervously and excitedly—as they slowly walked on up Nineteenth.

And—boom!—the sights and sounds of the high schoolers triggered a memory.

This time, though, the flashback wasn’t an unpleasant one.

Wendy had attended Hallahan. And Will remembered the last day of her senior year. She had come home with her blue-and-white athletic jacket dripping wet because, as was traditional at the girls’ school, she and the rest of the senior class had jumped into the Logan Circle fountain, which was just blocks south of the school in front of the Four Seasons Hotel.

And then the Catholic school memory—boom!—filled his mind with scenes of attending Saint Vincent’s Catholic Church with Wendy and Linda.

In addition to worshipping there, near their West Mount Airy home, Will had volunteered his time. Mostly it had been in the capacity of scout-master with a Boy Scout troop that the church sponsored. Never mind that he’d had no sons in the program. He liked what the Scouts did—he’d been one as a kid, working his way up to just two merit badges shy of the top rank of Eagle Scout—and, bending rules a bit, he liked taking his daughter on camping trips and other outings with the boys. He’d treated her like the others. He taught them how to handle knives and how to shoot pistols a

nd .22-caliber rifles (though, to his disappointment, she never kept any interest in guns).

In Scouts he’d also, of course, taught Wendy how to tie her knots.

And that—boom!—did cause an unpleasant flashback.

Damn it!

An ugly one, a vivid one, because he knew that the morning after Saint Paddy’s, after that evil date-rape drug had worn off, Wendy had awakened to find herself naked and spread-eagled—bound with nylon stockings knotted around all four of the bedposts.

As Will Curtis’s eyes readjusted to the darkness and he could make out his surroundings again, the flashback faded.

He looked across the street and saw that the motorcycle rider had nosed the machine to a stop in front of the cracked frosted plate-glass window with LAW OFFICE OF DANIEL O. GARTNER, ESQ.

The window still pulsed with colored lights from the television.

The bike was indeed an aggressive-looking racing machine. It had bright neon green plastic body panels and a neon green fuel tank, a sleek, swept-back windscreen, and bold decalcomania that damn near screamed in black lettering: KAWASAKI NINJA.

The rider dramatically swung his right leg over the seat as he dismounted. He then began loosening the chin strap of his matching neon green helmet, a full-face model with its silver-mirrored visor pushed up.

Then, suddenly, the battered metal door of the office opened.

The motorcyclist turned to look toward it.

Will Curtis thought, All that engine roaring and rubber burning got someone’s attention.

And then he saw a familiar face in the doorway.

Curtis had amused himself the first time he’d seen the criminal defense lawyer’s name listed on court papers as: COUNSELOR, DEFENSE—GARTNER, DANIEL O. He’d begun by calling him “Danny O.” Then he’d switched that around.

Well, hello, O Danny Boy.

You sleazy sonofabitch. . . .