Free The Third Magic by Molly Cochran Page A

boy on the brink of manhood.   
    "Well, you can't say that's me," Gwen said. "I really don't know who it is. I've been through all my music magazines. He's not in a band, I don't think, and I don't watch much TV. Ms. B?"
    Emily was still staring at the portrait, transfixed.
    "Ms. B?"
    "I know him," Emily rasped. "His name is Arthur."

Chapter Eight
    PINTO
    H e had been born John Stapp. That was the name on his school and prison records, but everyone knew him as Pinto. He liked the name: Pinto. It was a kind of horse. He didn't know much more than that, even though he'd grown up in Montana, but he'd always liked the sound of it.
    Pinto wasn't in Montana now; hadn't been since he broke parole in '94. He doubted if anyone was still looking for him there, but he wasn't going back. He never stayed very long in one place, anyway. His longest stretch, outside of doing time, was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he'd hung with a gang called the Vandals in a bar called the Mad Dog Cafe.
    A succession of owners had tried to take over the Mad Dog, make it into a respectable place, keep out the bikers. But no one could keep out the Vandals.
    The Vandals were a righteous gang, with colors and discipline, almost like the army. Pinto felt at home with them. He liked the discipline. If somebody had to get whacked, he'd whack them. He did what he had to do, and if people didn't like it, they could leave. Or else he'd kill them.
    He'd ridden his first motorcycle with the Vandals. Now, heading westward on Route 40 out of Ohio astride a Harley Hell Bound Pro Street Custom which he'd taken off some jerk kid outside of Tijuana, Mexico (he’d found nearly four hundred dollars taped to the jerk kid’s inside thigh), he felt as if he'd always known how to ride. And he was wearing Vandal colors, purple and green.
    He didn't always wear colors; just when he wanted to. He wanted to now because colors would give him status at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, where every biker from the Atlantic to the Pacific spent the first week in August. A lot of the bikers were stone fakes, doctors and lawyers who went to Sturgis to pretend they had dicks. But there were some there who knew what was happening. They knew what it meant to be a Vandal. They gave the colors respect.
    But still, he didn't wear them all the time. That would be too much like following a rule, and Pinto didn't follow anything. Once a fellow Vandal named Banger had criticized him for not wearing the colors. Pinto had responded by cutting through the man's nostril with his pocketknife.
    Pinto didn't like rules, he'd explained to Banger after the wound healed and they were tight again. He liked the discipline, he'd whack whoever needed it, but he wasn't about to follow anybody's dumb-ass rules. Sometimes he was a Vandal, okay? Through and through, purple and green, down to the hair on his ass. And sometimes he'd just as soon take these guys' heads off with his teeth. He'd said he hoped Banger understood that point.
    That was why he hadn't hung around Montana after doing time. Too many rules. Well, what did those parole geeks expect him to do, get a job at McDonald's? Or how about selling shoes down at the mall, yes, ma'am, I'll see to little Junior's footsies right away, yes ma'am. Shit, he was on the road an hour after he got out of the joint.
    Never got stopped either, until that last thing in Pittsburgh at the Mad Dog. It had started out cool, nothing serious, just smashing some bottles because the latest owner was this righteous asshole, said he wouldn't serve them, had his finger on the alarm as soon as the Vandals walked in the door. So they knew the cops were coming, and they would have been out of there in a couple of minutes.
    There was just Banger—he and Pinto were tight again by then—smashing a few bottles around, and Metalhead kicking the jukebox, and Fisheye, he was feeling up this girl, some slut probably liked it anyway, when this asshole bartender