The Breaker Read online

  He unplugged the prongs and wiped them on his shirt, then wiped the harness and blew out the sockets. He plugged the prongs in again and wrapped the cracked case tight with electrical tape. With rust flakes on his face and his clothes damp from the pavement, he climbed to his feet, opened his door, and bent to check the fuse. Somehow not tripped.

  When he put his wet butt on the driver’s seat and touched the brake pedal, the sergeant walked up to meet him. “You got it.”

  “Great,” Peter said. “Thank you.”

  Again the sergeant looked Peter full in the face. “I keep thinking we’ve met somewhere.”

  “I don’t get out much,” Peter said. “Unless I worked on your house?”

  “Pretty sure I’d remember that,” the sergeant said. “You have a safe day, sir. Better double-check that taillight when you get home tonight.”

  When the sergeant walked back to his cruiser, Peter finally let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

  * * *

  —

  At the project house, Peter found Lewis pushing a wheelbarrow full of broken plaster toward the dumpster in the driveway. He saw Peter’s face and dropped the handles. “What happened?”

  “I got pulled over by the police. A brake light was out.”

  “Bad couple minutes while he ran your license?”

  “Yeah.” Peter stared at the 1924 bungalow. Taken by the city for back taxes, it was so damaged that no normal person would ever want to own it. The windows were rotting in their frames and the front porch was sinking like a ship. The roof had leaked for years, ruining the ornate plaster and hardwood floors. Mold bloomed in every room. It was a gut job, a labor of love, a new beginning.

  Lewis said, “You’re rattled, man. What ain’t you telling me?”

  Peter looked at his hands. He couldn’t just go back to work. Not now, not with this noose around his neck.

  “Someone broke into our house last night. They took all June’s work stuff, her electronics and notebooks. Whoever it was, they were total pros, because I have no idea how they got in. Plus they left my go-bag behind, with laptop and phone and twenty grand in cash. The only other thing they took were the gunman’s sunglasses.”

  Lewis put his hands on his hips. “And when the fuck were you planning to tell me this?”

  “I didn’t want to get you involved. Once they start looking into your life, what will they find? Plus I promised June I’d stay out of it. She didn’t notice the sunglasses were gone, and I didn’t tell her.”

  “Brother, they broke into your house,” Lewis said. “Whatever this is, you’re in it whether you like it or not. We all are.”

  No matter how hard he tried, Peter couldn’t find a flaw in that logic.

  He sighed. “What do I tell June?”

  Lewis clapped him on the shoulder with a hard hand. “Man, you way too smart to be this dumb. Let your uncle Lewis school you. When it comes to women, you can’t never go wrong with the truth.”

  “June might have mentioned that before,” Peter admitted. “I’m a slow learner.” He waved at the wheelbarrow full of plaster. “Let’s clean this shit up and find an auto parts store so I don’t get pulled over again. Then see if we can find out where somebody might buy one of those crazy custom electric bikes.”

  With the video glasses gone, the bike was the only lead they had.

  12

  They dropped the Toyota at the house and took Lewis’s black Yukon to a shop called The Fix, the closest place that offered custom bikes. Located on Humboldt in Riverwest, it occupied the south end of a funky brick and concrete building designed to look like an old industrial space, down to the exposed and rusting metal beams.

  Inside, the theme continued with polished concrete floors, plywood furnishings, and rows of racks made of bent rebar and sheet metal. The static hummed softly, not liking the flickering fluorescent lights, but otherwise it didn’t mind being indoors the way it used to. There were no employees in sight.

  Most of the bikes on display were radically simple, with elegant triangular frames, flat handlebars, and just a single speed. They looked like a hundred and fifty years of bicycle history put into a pot on high heat until everything extraneous had boiled away and only the most elemental design remained. They had multispeed models, but just for cargo, with stretched frames to accommodate a half-dozen bags of groceries or an insulated pizza delivery case.

  A sign on the wall read all bicycles must come with brakes.

  Lewis eyed a matte-black model and ran a finger across the handlebars. “Man, I haven’t owned a bike since I was ten years old.”

  “Really? June has three, and that’s just in Milwaukee.” Peter had found a good used Rockhopper and tuned it up to ride the root-rutted trails in the Kettle Moraine.

  He left Lewis to fondle the merchandise and walked to the service window in the back. Behind a high counter was a pair of empty repair stands, a rackful of bikes awaiting work, and a long tool bench with a wheel-truing machine bolted to one end. In the far corner, a reedlike young man pedaled an exercise bike no-handed while he noodled on his phone and drank something green from a clear plastic cup. He wore a tangled ponytail, starter sideburns, and stainless-steel grommets in his ears. His T-shirt had the stylized sprocket logo of the Wisconsin Bike Federation.

  The plywood countertop was dented and stained from a thousand greasy bike parts. A sleek computer monitor shared space with an intricate metal business-card holder in the shape of a bicycle, a service-order-form pad, and a tooth-chewed pencil taped to a piece of twine. Peter knocked on the counter and the hipster’s head popped up. “Hey. What do you need?”

  Peter smiled. “Hi. I saw on your website that you do custom work. Do you build electric bikes?”

  The hipster kept pedaling. “Uh, no.” He looked back to his phone.

  Peter resisted the urge to jump the counter. He reminded himself he’d catch more flies with honey and kept smiling. “Really? I see them everywhere.”

  “Electrics are for your grandmother, man. Our customers are people who pedal. Saving the planet one bike at a time.”

  Peter wasn’t crazy about idealists of any stripe. He waved at the rows of bikes behind him. “Tell me something. What’s with the single-speed thing?”

  “Fixed-gear,” the hipster corrected. “The rear gear is fixed to the wheel, so you can slow using your leg muscles. It started with bike messengers, who stripped off everything unnecessary. Fixies are simpler, cheaper, lighter, and lower-maintenance. Although every bike we sell comes with at least one hand brake. ‘Company policy.’” He made air quotes and rolled his eyes. “For the newbies, I guess. First thing I did was take mine off.”

  “People really want to buy a bike with just one speed?”

  “Like you wouldn’t believe, especially in the city. Do you pay any attention to the world? Climate change, environmental disasters, income inequality? Bikes are the future, man. The world’s most elegant machine. Simpler, cleaner, cheaper than cars. Plus I get my exercise getting to work. No carbon, no sitting in traffic, no need to join a gym.”

  Peter raised his eyebrows. “Even in January?” Wisconsin winters were brutal.

  “Studded tires and good gloves. Fifteen miles each way, every day. Makes me strong. Life is a fight, right? Besides, I can’t really afford a car, not with my student loans. Same with most people my age. I’m never going to be able to buy a house, not the way things are going.”

  The hipster swung himself off the exercise bike without using his hands. His arms were thin, but his thighs were like tree trunks. When he set his drink and phone on the workbench, Peter noticed that the phone was plugged into an electrical outlet set into the top of a cardboard shoebox, along with a rechargeable handlebar light and a laptop. A wire from the side of the box went to the exercise bike. It looked like the bike’s wheel had been repurposed into a generato
r, charging the hipster’s electronics.

  Peter said, “You clearly know a lot about this stuff. I saw this crazy electric bike, and it looked custom. I figured your shop was the place to go.” He put out his hand. “I’m Peter, by the way.”

  They shook. “Carson. Like I told you, we don’t do custom electrics. Not enough demand, not in Milwaukee anyway. Try one of the big shops. Wheel and Sprocket will have a bunch of factory models.”

  “Not like this,” Peter said. “Really fast. Like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Like bike-racer fast? The rider standing on the pedals, cranking hard?” Carson the bike fanatic was interested in spite of himself. Maybe electrics weren’t entirely for your grandmother.

  Lewis had been floating in the background, listening to the conversation. Now he stepped to the counter beside Peter and smiled pleasantly. “Man wasn’t pedaling at all. He took off like a rocket.”

  “Well, you do have to pedal an electric bike,” Carson said. “Technically, they’re called electric-assist. Otherwise it’s not a bike, it’s an electric motorcycle, and you need a special license. People do bypass those controls, go full-on outlaw electric. But if you get busted, it’s a big fine.”

  “This was not a regular bike. It was something different.” Peter moved the bicycle-shaped business-card holder aside and pulled the order form and pencil across the counter, talking as he drew. “It was very basic, with none of the curved tubes of a modern bike. Kind of like the fixed-gear frames you have here.”

  He sketched a big rough triangle with the long frame and high crossbar of an old Schwinn, then added the fork, the seat and chain stays, and the tires. He was no artist, but he’d drawn up his share of building plans, and he managed to get the proportions right. “More like an early motorcycle than a bike, actually. The rear hub was thicker than usual, kind of weird-looking.”

  Lewis leaned in, pointing. “And it had these long silver boxes strapped inside the frame, with wires coming out of them, maybe spare batteries? But nothing that looked like a motor. You ever see anything like that?”

  Carson’s eyes were wide. “No, no, sorry.” He retrieved the business-card holder and put it back behind the computer keyboard, then abruptly jammed his hands into his armpits. “You know, lots of people modify their bikes. Stretch the frame, tweak the fork. It’s not that complicated. Any welder could do it.”

  His ear grommets were quivering. Peter smiled. “Carson, what aren’t you telling me?”

  The grommets quivered more violently. Carson looked from Peter to Lewis. “Who are you guys? From the city? Police?”

  “Oh, no.” Lewis smiled, his voice a low purr. “We are mos’ definitely not police.”

  Peter said, “Why would you think we’re police?”

  “Well, uh, if someone has a full electric bike without a license, that would be illegal, right?”

  “We’re not here for that,” Peter said. “We’re just interested in the bike.”

  “Well.” Carson turned away and lifted a bike onto one of the repair stands. “I wish I could help you guys, but like I said, that’s not what we do. Now, uh, I got a couple of tune-ups this afternoon, so, you know.”

  Lewis looked at Peter, tipped his chin toward the hipster, and raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. Carson definitely knew something. It wouldn’t take much to get him to talk.

  But Peter just shook his head, stretched his long arm across the counter, and picked up the little metal business-card holder. The cards had the name and information for The Fix, but Peter wasn’t interested in that. He was interested in the intricate bicycle-shaped holder.

  It was beautiful work, an old-school banana-seat low-rider on a polished steel baseplate. Peter turned it over. On the underside, someone had engraved the words kiko’s welding and custom frames in crisp freehand letters, with a website and phone number.

  Carson’s face fell. Peter gave him a smile. “Thanks for your time, Carson. We’ll get out of your hair.” He tore another sheet off the order form and wrote down his cell number. “If you think of anything else, give me a call.”

  Lewis held up a hand. “Actually, gimme one minute.” He stepped into the showroom and came back wheeling the matte-black fixed-gear model he’d been admiring. “I’ll take this one.”

  13

  According to its aggressively basic website, Kiko’s Welding was owned by Kiko Tomczak, with an address on South Fifth. The location was good, a block from Bradley Tech and down the street from the Iron Horse Hotel and Mobcraft Brewing. But when they got there, they found a former street-front industrial building converted into a glossy modern art gallery. It was closed until Friday, with the lights off and nobody home.

  They stood in the drizzle while Lewis pulled up the gallery on his phone and paged through the site. “Looks like they rent space, too. That address is on Pierce, right around the corner.”

  It turned out to be in the same sprawling building. Right before a lumpy cobblestone alley, they found a reinforced steel door. Someone had taped up a laminated sign that read due to neighborhood thefts, please keep door locked at all times. The knob and deadbolt were high-end Medeco models. A wide-angle security camera perched out of reach on the wall above. The door was propped open with a block of wood.

  Lewis shook his head. “Can’t do nothin’ with stupid.”

  “It’s not nice to call people stupid.” Peter pulled the door open. “Didn’t you learn anything in kindergarten?”

  Lewis chuckled, low and dark. “Brother, I think we went to different kindergartens.”

  Inside, they found a small informal entry with a high white ceiling and ancient pine floors painted a cool modern gray that hid everything and competed with nothing. Bright art hung on three walls, giant portraits made with many-colored bottle caps glued to sheets of plywood. Peter admired the level of obsession required.

  There was no directory of tenants. To the right was a steep narrow stairway leading up. The static hummed low in his blood, letting him know it was ready.

  Lewis said, “Would you run a welding business on the second floor?”

  “Not if I had to carry steel up and down those skinny stairs all day. Unless there’s a freight elevator somewhere.”

  A faint pulse of music came from the far side of the lobby where a wide corridor led away into the building. The drywall was punctuated by double doors inset at long intervals, all closed. They were decorated with taped cartoons and sketches and watercolors and other demonstrations of wit and talent. It reminded Peter of his college dorm.

  The hallway came to a T at a large corkboard covered with announcements for upcoming exhibitions, workshops, and classes all over the city. The music came from the left. Peter followed. It grew louder and louder until they came to a plywood partition, twelve feet wide and hung like a barn door on a steel track. Screwed to the partition was a rough rectangle of metal, engraved with the same crisp freehand copperplate writing as the baseplate of the little banana-seat bike sculpture.

  It read i’m already disturbed. for your own safety, don’t make things worse.

  The music thumped through the plywood, a light fixture visibly vibrating on the wall beside it. A bass-heavy REO Speedwagon remix, rolling with the changes. The static hummed higher.

  Lewis said, “How we doing this?”

  Peter shrugged. “Smile, be friendly, ask questions.”

  “That works for you?”

  “It will if you stand there and look like the muscle.”

  Lewis snorted. “Brother, I am the muscle.” He pulled the door open.

  * * *

  —

  Inside, the music was louder still, nearly overpowering the buzz of a MIG welder on a rolling cart, its thick cable looping a thick-bodied man who labored at a rough steel table, his back to the door.

  His shoulders were broad and powerful under the heavy suede
welder’s jacket. His salt-and-pepper hair poked through the straps of the welder’s mask on his massive head. The MIG’s bright spark cast flickering shadows on the walls.

  He was surrounded on three sides by a strange steel frame that came up to the middle of his back. It was mostly scrap pieces tacked together with spot-welds, but it looked supremely functional. Wheels sized for a bicycle were mounted on the left and right, with hard rubber tires scarred by flying sparks. Above each wheel hung a pivoting steel tool rack that held an orderly array of hammers and punches and pliers and other metalworking tools. On the back of the frame, twin tanks of oxygen and acetylene stood chained to a stout shelf, the hoses and torch slung for easy access. Below sat a greasy cube the size of a milk crate, surrounded by a network of thin stainless tubes leading to hydraulic pistons whose purpose wasn’t clear.

  The bike maker had built himself a rolling work platform, everything he needed within arm’s reach.

  The big man hadn’t noticed his visitors, the MIG still buzzing away. Peter wasn’t going to walk up and tap the guy on the shoulder. He’d learned long ago not to distract anybody with a live power tool, for their protection and his own. So he found the sound system on a high shelf, a vintage Pioneer tuner with a cool green glow, analog dials, and a smartphone plugged into the input jack. As REO Speedwagon gave way to Dick Dale’s booming surf guitar, he picked up the phone, then held it so Lewis could see the screen. It showed four missed calls, all from the same number.

  Lewis leaned in to be heard over the music. “You think our friend from the bike shop tried to warn him?”

  Peter nodded, set down the phone, and dropped the volume on the Pioneer. After a moment, the MIG went silent.

  “Sorry,” the metalworker called over his shoulder. “I didn’t think anyone was here.” He pulled off the welder’s mask and hung it on one of the pivoting tool racks, then popped out a set of foam earplugs. On the other rack, he flipped a switch and the hydraulic platform began to shift. While they watched, the frame sank down between the wheels. When the metal stopped moving, he put his hand on a joystick and spun the platform to face them.