“Clubhouse,” Cherry said. “This is where the Comets hang out, conduct their business. Some of them even sleep here, pretty much live here.”

“Wingstaff?”

“No. He’s got a house in town. Doesn’t look like a bunker, but it’s still got plenty of surveillance equipment around it.”

I felt a sense of unease sweep over me. “We’re going in here?”

“Huh? No. This is just part of the tour. We’re meeting Bruce someplace else.”

Cherry turned around in the gravel lot out front of the clubhouse and headed back into the city’s older residential district. We were driving through a neighborhood of traditional Victorian-type homes when we came upon a large park illuminated with flood-lamps.

We parked, and as we walked toward the park, we could hear the sounds of children’s voices, pounding feet, soft chatter. It was a kids’ soccer match, boys about ten years old, kicking the ball back and forth, working their way from one end of the field to the other. Standing along the sidelines, and sitting in a set of wooden bleachers, parents watched and cheered.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

Cherry ignored me, working his way through the parents. He glanced up the bleachers and started climbing them, a row of seats with each step. Sitting at the top, off to one side, was a large man in his forties, not fat but big, dressed in black jeans and a windbreaker. He was clean-shaven, with dark, neat hair and glasses. A bit Clark Kentish. This, I concluded, could not be the head of a biker gang. Maybe this guy was going to tell us where we could find Wingstaff.

“Hey, Bruce,” Cherry said.

Okay, so I was wrong.

Wingstaff kept his eyes on the field. “Mike, how’s it going?”

“Who’s winning?”

“Other side. We’re getting our ass kicked. Blake got a goal, though.” His eyes caught something, and he was on his feet. “Hey!” he shouted. “Come on!” He sat back down. “It’s not hockey, for Christ’s sake. You can’t check a guy like that.”

“This is the guy I told you about,” Cherry said. Wingstaff sized me up in half a second and returned his eyes to the field.

“Hi,” I said. “Thanks for seeing me.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Anything for Mike here.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “You’re looking for some woman?”

“That’s right. I think, although I don’t know for sure, that she might have something to do with Gary Merker, maybe from a few years ago. Or Leonard Edgars.”

“This lady you’re looking for got a name?”

“Trixie Snelling.”

Wingstaff was on his feet again. He coned his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Hey, ref! You wanna borrow my glasses?” He sat back down. “Name don’t mean nothing to me.”

“Maybe she wasn’t using that name at the time,” Cherry offered.

“Well, if you don’t know what name she might have been using, then I don’t know how I can help you. Hey, Blake’s got the ball. Come on, come on…Ah, fuck. He’s got to learn how to hang on to it. He’s falling all over himself.”

“Show him the picture,” Cherry prompted me.

It was nighttime, but we were under the spotlights. I got out the picture from the Suburban and handed it to Bruce Wingstaff. He looked down, squinted, reached into his pocket for a pair of reading glasses and slid them on.

“Nice looking,” he said. “But I don’t know…” He glanced up at the field, looked again at the picture. “You know who it could be?”

I felt my pulse quicken. “Who?”

“Well, maybe not, the hair color’s not right, but it looks a bit like maybe it could be Candace.”

“Candace?” I said.

“Yeah, what was her last name…Shit. She got knocked up by Eldon Swain. Remember him?” He was asking Cherry.

“Oh yeah.”

“Car pushed in front of the train, with him in it?”

“I remember.”

“And I would like to state, once again, that we had nothing to do with that,” Wingstaff said. “Given half a chance, we mighta, but we didn’t.”

“Sure, Bruce,” Cherry said. I was having some difficulty getting used to this, a bike gang leader and a cop having a casual chat, talking about old murders like they were reminiscing about somebody they’d known in high school.

Wingstaff was on his feet again. “Go, Blake! Go! Go!” I turned and looked at the field. A blond-haired boy was moving up the field, then tripped himself up on the ball, without any interference from an opposing player, and landed on his face.

Wingstaff winced, made a face.

“So you think this woman might be Candace,” I said. “And that she had a child.”

“Little girl, I think,” Wingstaff said.

“Whatever happened to them?”

He looked up at the stars for a moment, as though the answer could be found in them. “After those three got shot, I don’t remember ever seeing her, or her kid, again. Kid couldn’t have been more than a year old at the time, anyway. But come to think of it, she did just seem to disappear. But then, so did a lot of the girls who worked at the Kickstart-they’d come and go-’cept for those that came to work for me.”

“She was a stripper? Or a prostitute?” I asked.

“Uh, I don’t think she did much hooking. Started out dancing, I think, but then she started working in the office. Had a head for figures.” Wingstaff cocked his head at a funny angle, half smiled. “Fuck, now I remember.”

Cherry and I glanced at each other, then studied Wingstaff.

“After that little massacre, Pick arranged a meeting with me. We had to set it up, careful like, because we figured Pick thought we’d put the hit out on his guys. Found some neutral ground, which actually turned out to be a Starbucks on Elmer Street. Anyway, we had this sit-down, and I expressed my condolences, and I figured he’d be accusing me of offing his boys.”

“But he didn’t,” Cherry said.

“Naw, which I thought was kind of interesting. Anyway, he as much as said that he was packing it in, taking Edgars with him. Said it wasn’t just the others getting offed. He was broke. Couldn’t make his bills, no money in the kitty. But he said to me, if I ever saw Candy, I was to let him know. Like, if she came to work for me, or I just saw her around. He said I owed him that, for letting me take over his share of the market. And that if I saw her, he’d see that I got a little reward on top of that.”

“Really,” I said.

“I think he put the word out to the rest of my guys, and others that he knew, like regular customers at the Kickstart. Said no matter where he ended up, they could reach him through his mom, leave a message with her.”

“Where is she?”

“In town here. Getting kind of on, I suspect. Don’t see her out and about. Not what you’d call very motherish.”

“So did you ever see her? Candy?”

Wingstaff shook his head. “Never did. Never really cared. Got my own problems to take care of.”

“Why do you think he was wanting to find her so bad?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Didn’t ask, wasn’t my problem. But you know, you had the sense that maybe she was something of a liability.”

“A liability?” I said.

“Someone who could tell people things,” Wingstaff said. “Sometimes you don’t want people telling other people things.” He gave Cherry a wink. “Ain’t that so, Mike?”

“Certainly is, Bruce,” Cherry said.

A whistle blew. The soccer game was over.

“That’s about all the time I have, gents,” Wingstaff said.

“You come out for your boy’s games a lot?” I asked.

“Never miss a one,” he said. “You have to get the kids involved in things, you know, or they’ve got too much time on their hands, get themselves into trouble.” He nodded and headed down toward the base of the bleachers.

“You think he’s ever killed anybody?” I said quietly to Cherry.

“You mean this week?” the detective replied.

We worked our way down to the field, saw young Blake Wingstaff run over to see his father. His face was muddy from when he’d fallen on the ball.

“We got killed,” the boy said, his face awash with shame. His father, the biker boss, smiled and knelt down and gave his son a friendly rub on the head. You could almost feel him aching to hug the boy, but he didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his teammates.