Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
C hainsaw…
I hated that Ruth had gotten away for so long with the shit I had initially pulled by playing opossum.
It was how we’d gotten a decent foothold in our internal civil war within the club.
I’d played dead, had healed up, and when I’d gotten fit enough to move around and get shit done, I’d come a runnin’ and brought Hell with me.
Methodical like, I’d started taking out the lower-ranking members, the newbies who none of us owed shit to. It’d been me an’ Axe or me an’ Saint. Sometimes, it’d been me and LaCroix takin’ ‘em down or completely out one by one.
It’d been slow, painfully slow, making this one look like an accident, that one look like an overdose, setting these three up to go to prison for a long fuckin’ stint – but Ruthless knew. Somehow, he knew that none of it was as coincidental as all of that.
Now we were on the receiving end of the same type of play, only thanks to Saint’s new woman, who happened to be Louie’s sister, we’d unraveled the Gordian knot of Ruth’s bullshit faster than he’d caught on to ours.
We’d only lost one before finding him out. He’d lost more. Just another spotlight on the truth that that narcissistic fuck couldn’t come up with an original idea if his life depended on it – which it did.
His years of drugging had taken their toll, and he wasn’t half as smart or clever as he used to be.
I looked from one to the other to the next of my brothers around the table, as we plotted and planned our way through the fuckin’ cabinet of the Bayou Brethren based on the intelligence that Velina had gathered for us.
We’d taken out the schmuck she’d been forced into proximity with, along with one other just a little while back, and it was time to make a play for the next one. We weren’t concerning ourselves over much with the lower rank and file.
We knew by this point what they were like, and what they were like was easy fuckin’ pickin’s.
Cut off the head of the snake and they’d topple and scatter.
They didn’t know the meaning of loyalty.
They hadn’t been tested and found true. Not like they should have been.
Not like we’d been when it came to each other.
Shit, Louie’d taken out his own mother. Put club over family and made us his family in the offing.
I’d done some pretty heinous shit to prove my own loyalty back in the day to Ruth, but as it turned out, he was the disloyal one.
That still rankled me to this very fuckin’ day.
“So, who’s on our hit list now?” Axe asked without any preamble.
Saint was looking tan and refreshed after his time out in Florida with his woman. Hex got up with a piece of chalk in his hand and went over to our cabinet board. We only had the fuckin’ thing because things grew so fast and changed so quick as a result under Ruthless.
We’d actually needed a fuckin’ blackboard to keep track of his cabinet changes on his whim when any one of us fell out of favor with him for longer than five fuckin’ minutes.
It was blank, now. Had been since we’d booted his and every one of those lame-ass motherfuckers outta here.
We knew who we were and what role each of us served within our club. We didn’t need a fuckin’ board – but it was good it was here. It served a new purpose now.
Under president , Hex put Ruth’s new name – Lazarus – though I doubted any of us would ever fuckin’ call him that.
He went down the line, and the board ended up lookin’ something like this at the end…
Club President: Lazarus
Chapter President: Rebel
Vice President: Strychnine
S.A.A.: Hatchet
Enforcer 1: Spite
Enforcer 2: Malice
Secretary: Warden
Treasurer: Brewster
Road Captain: Chicory
Tail Gunner: Hurricane
Member: Crash
Member: Panhead
Member: Roman
Member: Vandal
Member: Crow Dad
Member: Everclear
“You sure that’s Crow Dad and not Crawdad?” Bennie asked when the second-to-last member of any kind of merit was written down.
“I’m sure,” Hex declared. “That’s what Temperance said, and she made sure of it.”
“Fuckin’ weird,” Cypress said, and there were some chuckles around the table.
“There’s round about forty-some-odd members total,” LaCroix intoned.
“But these are the ones we were told we needed to pay attention to the most,” Hex finished.
“Why’s that?” Axe asked, and I was curious too. But I knew if you waited with your questions long enough, most of ‘em would be answered to the point you had none of ‘em left. If you did have any left, well, then was the time to ask.
“Because these are the ones closest to Ruth, the ones climbing the ladder so to speak,” Saint answered.
“We ain’t too worried about anyone with ‘Member’ in front of their name,” Hex said. “Just pretty much be advised we take any of his cabinet out, they’re likely the ones gonna take their place.”
“Got it,” Collier said and leaned back in his seat with a grunt, folding his arms over his chest.
“So, where to begin?” Axe asked.
“Here.” Hex circled Strychnine’s name.
“Whoo, we’re skippin’ right to the good part right here,” Cypress said with a savage grin. I nodded.
“He got a wrecking crew?” I asked.
“You know it. Ain’t none of the upper cabinet making moves without at least two members with ‘em,” Saint said, and I nodded, expecting as much.
“So, what’s the word, then?” Bennie asked.
“They’re expecting us to gun for ‘em,” I said. “Not sure it’s the right play.”
Hex snapped his fingers, tapped his nose, and pointed at me.
LaCroix smirked. “So, where you wanna hit ‘em?” he asked.
“Where they least expect it,” I said. “What’re they into? Where is it at? Let’s put a stranglehold on their cash flow and really kick the hornet’s nest.”
“Two for one deal on that one,” Hex said, grinning.
“You got a line on their meth lab?” Collier asked, sitting up straighter.
“You fuckin’ know it.” LaCroix’s soft grin turned somewhere between demonic and feral.
“Well, alright then. Let’s stop beating around the bush and see how many we can take out with it,” Saint said, and I laughed, mostly because he was just speaking out loud what we were all thinking.
We had a coordinated attack to pull. We had a location of not only their meth lab but also their three main trap houses.
This was gonna require four teams to make it happen if we wanted to collapse his entire operation in one night.
We divvied up.
Axeman and me, we would take the main trap. Saint and LaCroix were taking the lab. Hex and Collier had the second trap, and Bennie and Cypress were taking the third, which ironically was here in the ninth, on the edge of the neighborhood.
We were an even number. We’d been nine, a nice odd tie-breaker when we’d brought Louie on board, but now? There wasn’t a tie-breaker anymore, so it was a good thing we’d all been on the same page lately and didn’t need one.
Plans were made, the game was set, and we were all pieces dressed in black, moving across the board.
It was a hell of a thing we were doing, but it needed to be done. It’d needed to be done a hell of a long time ago. We’d been too lax and look where it’d gotten us.
I looked up to the wall where we’d relocated Louie’s picture and his urn here in the chapel on the Baron Samedi’s wall.
He was club. Not a fuckin’ prospect anymore. A patched member. He didn’t belong out in the bar where we spent less time these days until the renovations could be finished. The renovations that we’d had to put on the back burner as the build on the distillery moved forward around back.
We’d get back to it, but right now, we were all being stretched more than a bit thin.
One day, one death at a time, we’d get there. So long as it wasn’t any more of our crew doing the dying.