The bold, red, stitched lettering across the broad shouldered back of his well-worn black leather vest said “Pinkerton”. He had found the vest several years ago at a crime scene that he had stumbled upon and since the vest was not an actual piece of evidence having any true bearing on the case, he had with great amusement, surreptitiously acquired it and wore it faithfully. Ever since then, most people that knew or became acquainted with him simply called him “Pink”. Almost no one knew that his real name was Rolland Ellingwood III, that he was the last surviving heir to the Ellingwood fortune and that he was obscenely wealthy with numerous accounts all over the world with piles and piles of cash several generations deep. He was in his late thirties, early forties, no one was really sure, considered “rough hewn” handsome by most women, clean shaven, with wavy brown, shoulder length hair and piercing blue eyes like Paul Newman’s.

            He was an independent, not riding with any one particular club but over the last few years, having helped out several individual’s from several different clubs, had developed a reputation and was welcomed to ride with almost all of the clubs whenever he wanted. He rode a 2002 custom softtail; charcoal black pearl with tribal blue flames and always carried a Colt Python .357 Magnum. Pink liked to joke that both were bigger and louder than he needed but that’s the way he wanted it. Somewhere buried in the early chapters of his life was a stint in the military with accelerated advancement to special forces, a brief period with Chicago and Los Angeles police department SWAT units and several years of bi-coastal drifting just searching for that elusive self that he believed to be lurking out there somewhere. But of late, he’d reached a comfort zone, living between several residences in the northeast United States, a houseboat in the Florida Keys and a cabin in an undisclosed location in the western Rockies. He kept busy riding in good weather, laying low in foul, and spending his time helping out individuals within his chosen community of bikers as a fully licensed and bonded private investigator.

It was a lazy, late Sunday morning, in mid-August in Rochester, the air still and already getting hot. He’d made a special appointment with “Tiny”, the owner of a tattoo parlor on what used to be the almost nice section of South Avenue but had changed to not so nice. Pink had helped Tiny out in the past without charge and was calling in the debt by getting some new ink. Between the hum of the ceiling fan, the buzz of the needle, and an old Zeppelin tape in the stereo, Pink was on the verge of a nap when he heard tires screech to a stop out front. He pushed Tiny off of his work stool and slid to the floor himself just as several pounds of lead in forty-five caliber chunks came crashing through the front door and window, glass and wood chips flying. Mirrors shattered, drawings of tattoos hanging on the board awaiting customer approval, pictures of satisfied customers proudly displaying their new looks rippled and shred under the barrage of bullets. It seemed to take forever but was just a matter of seconds before, with another screech of tires; the vehicle out front sped off.