The New York City cops were a bit confused. I wasn't too coherent myself. I'd ended up doing 250 miles in one shot on a Commando that was falling apart under me. I should've known better than to trust some brute of an old English bike. That's what an extended period of sobriety does to you. The engine had been rigged so that it'd last long enough to get me out of the state. I could just picture the bastard garage owner chortling his way through a six-pack, overwhelmed with his good luck at finding a credulous limey idiot. It didn't do much for my predicament that his bad karma would catch up with him eventually. He'd come back in the next life as a rat or cockroach.
To add to my woes, riding through the dark the light first blew and then fell off. Doing a moonlight serenade of curses for a few hours had not exactly filled me full of love for fellow humanity, nor ancient British motorcycles. My eyesight had been rendered marginal and I'd ridden off the road a couple of times.
American cops, especially those floating around the Big Apple, have some quaint habits. English cops you can give a bit of lip, sure that nothing more than a few more heinous offences will be added to the list. Doesn't matter if you sport a false licence and change of numberplates. The American way of greeting consisted of two lunatic cops screaming abuse, waving huge guns at me. One nearly tore my arms off as he twirled me around and spread-eagled me over the patrol car. He gave me the kind of perverted pat-down that offered the illusion that the New York Police had been infiltrated by closet homosexuals.
Okay, I'd finally had to pull the Commando off the road, stagger away, spew up and then do a wild dance to try to get some life back into my limbs. You wouldn't believe the amount of vibes a Commando engine puts out when the main bearings are falling apart. So, maybe I looked slightly suspicious. A couple of days growth of beard and riding without a visor (it had flown off when I'd started looking behind after the vibes had caused the mirrors to twirl off) had left me looking like a drug crazed maniac. Which didn't help.
One of the cops was a steroid warrior, a huge body and tiny pin head, the peak of his cap almost coming down to his mouth. He looked like if I stuck a pin in him he'd explode. If he hadn't been waving his gun and screaming abuse I would've found him hugely amusing. His partner was the kind of wiry bastard who'd kick you between the legs before you'd even clocked the movement.
As my body stopped shaking, I was able to get a few coherent words out. Waving a false press pass at them seemed to help, but I resisted the urge to offer them a bribe. These Yanks can be touchy buggers. The Commando seemed to speak for itself, oil flooding out of blown gaskets, even with the motor turned off the cylinders still seemed to be leaping up and down.
Porky gave the bike a vicious kick which made it fall over with a terrifying crunch. I jumped about a foot. He eyed me, trying to decide if it was worth giving me the same treatment. He nonchalantly waved his gun at my balls, then flicked it towards the Norton's side. Thud, thud, thud. The noise blew my eardrums away. Three neat holes in the sidepanel. I couldn't hear their parting words but by the expressions on their faces they'd found the whole deal hilarious. And, I'd though I was screwed up.
Welcome to New York. I left the Norton where it was. I knew how cops' minds worked, they'd cruise around, coming back looking for a second helping. I doubted if I had the strength to lift the thing out of the ditch. The lack of oil wasn't the only thing that was going to stop the motor working, it had been only moments off going into total seizure. I knew just how it felt.
The cops had left me in the midst of some desolate bit of New York real estate that either had a few more years to sink into total squalor or would end up being renovated by the next generation of yuppies. Old Brownstones, filth strewn streets where only the rats were getting bigger. It was ten in the morning, so I had a while to get out of there before night fell and god knows what madness would follow.
I walked for an hour, eyes straight ahead, tuning out all the hoodlums who were leaning on walls, looking for an easy touch. I must've appeared just the ticket, but I also looked road weary, not worth the hassle. My boots full of dollars couldn't be sussed from my gait. Came to a better commercial centre, a subway offered me an escape route but before I took it I spied a bike shop. The signs said it was full of Japanese stuff, no Brits or Harleys. Figured I couldn't be suckered twice in one month.
Ended up with a five hundred dollar Yam XS650 Custom that was almost as old as the Commando, but the engine ran without rattles, the mill famous for running on against the odds. The owner of the shop looked like he was auditioning for the Mafia, but he'd let me have a test run around the car park and thrown in a pair of shades for free. Obviously, all heart.
Riding one of these old twins, with a worn out gearbox and suspension that had sagged menacingly the moment I'd sat on the Yam, required a certain amount of attention and skill. I was tired out of my head, roaring up the road on the wrong side, until some caged horrors made with their horns. I dumped the engine in third, reassured by the torque that flowed in from 2000rpm. The engine went dead at 6500rpm (from old age, less worn ones would pull to 8000rpm), foiling my attempts to get the hell out of the area. There was always the chance the cops might cross my path again.
New York traffic is as manic and malevolent as the cops, the bigger the car the more likely, some eunuch behind the wheel, it is you'll be run off the road. Under normal circumstances I can get into the rhythm of even the most wild of traffic, but by then I was dog tired and only surviving by making a hell of a racket on the horn and throttle. The former consisted of a pair of air-horns probably off a ship and the latter was aided by a pair of rotted megaphones. Even louder than the Commando
After 15 minutes of riotous behaviour I hit an elevated expressway that was chocablock with stalled cages. I rode between them, not too worried when I ran by a hemmed in cop car. I ignored their siren, no sense of joy some people. Unless they had some way of going airborne there was no way they could hope to catch the Yam. I'd got the box up to fifth, after a lot of trouble, and was hurtling forward at 90mph. I'd taken a great deal of care to obscure the back end with dirt before taking off. An old trick that used to send English cops into a frenzy, but they very rarely caught up with me.
The XS had some pretty crap discs out front. If any of the auto's had decided to impinge on my narrow strip of tarmac the quickest way of stopping would've been to lose momentum in the energy expended tearing off the side of the car. Quaint, these old Jap bolides. Holding my finger on the horn button seemed to keep the buggers at bay. Many would find the Yam as vibratory as its brakes were vile, but after being shook to bits on the Commando it seemed as smooth as some new Honda four.
Peering up ahead, the flashing lights of a couple of patrol cars slewed across the road, blocking off any hope of forward motion on our side of the expressway, alerted me to the end of my speeding run. It was taking paranoia a bit too far to suspect that they were there solely to apprehend Malone for a mere speeding felony, but you could never tell with these Yanks. They had no sense of humour.
As we were about 20 feet off the ground on an elevated section of the freeway, the usual ploy of hopping off the road for a bit of crazed trail work to lose any pigs wasn't going to work. Not unless I fancied my chances of going airborne for a while and trusted to the robustness of the Yam's chassis during the landing. Little hope of that, with its reluctance to hold a straight line causing me to doubt the basic rigidity of the frame, let alone its resistance to exploding when launched 20 feet through the air.
The central barrier was cut occasionally by bollards, presumably to let rescue vehicles go into wild manoeuvres. It seemed pretty ideal to me to twist the Yam between a couple of Yank hearses and roar through such a gap. The Yam's a heavy beast, coupled with the momentum from its speed, the bollards were thrown apart by the front wheel but rather than being chucked out of the way they bounced back on to my legs. Ouch!
Halfway through the swearing fit I was brought back to reality by the sudden need to throw the XS out of the way of a descending parade of cars. All calling attention to my malfeasance by the demented chorus they made on their horns. I was quite impressed with the way the XS responded to my desperate struggle with the bars, but not too amused by the harsh pains that shot through my chest. I must be getting old.
Luck was on my side, as I was able to get off the main route in a matter of moments. Just as I hit the slip road the engine coughed, tried to die a death. I was close to a screaming fit, my head full of wailing sirens and helicopter rotors, but in a moment of pure inspiration I turned the reserve tap on. Cough, cough, brrrrrrr....almost ran off the road as the power suddenly cut in but wrenched on the bars and more heart flutter put me back on the right track. Shit, having a heart attack in the Big Apple without any health insurance had to be a one way trip to the morgue.
Christ, this is what happens when you go f..king straight! There I was trying to get around the States in a merely righteous manner and all kinds of horrors were coming down on my head. I needed a hotel almost as much as I needed a ticket back to the UK (hint to the Editor), but the slip road led to some terrible place, and just stopping at the lights was likely to get me mugged. I thought, hell, I might as well show them something, popped a massive wheelie on the buckling Yam. A barrage of vibes, could hardly see anything as the front end reared up and just to make sure they took note I hit the horn. Gone very weird? Damn right.
Johnny Malone