Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
C hainsaw…
It was me, LaCroix, and Axe.
We were out in the country, the sounds of the swamp typical and unwavering out there. Insect song and frog song marrying and harmonizing into the symphony I so loved falling asleep to with my woman in my arms, even if I had only gotten to do it the once, so far.
We were outside the house Velina had come to, the night of the Bayou Brethren’s big shindig – when she’d been undercover as Louie . We were checking things out. There was a bike parked out front, and we had no idea whose house it was, but we knew it was one of the Bayou Bitches.
There was a slight rustle in the tall grass to my left, and I looked to LaCroix, who, emotionless, gave us our orders.
There were three doors – front, off the small porch, where Velina had supposedly taken a big one for the team, a side door in front of us that looked like it led into a small mudroom off the kitchen, and then finally the back.
LaCroix was divvying up responsibility, telling me to take the side door and Axe to take the rear.
I knew Saint and Bennie were out there somewhere, but Hex? Hex was sitting this one out. He had to. If shit went sideways and we were taken out? Or worse, caught by the pigs? One of us needed to stay out of the shit to keep Ancient Spirits alive and thriving and to look after the girls.
One of us needed to be out here to rebuild until the rest of us got out or acquitted, or whatever needed to happen, you know?
We still had good intel coming from our asset in Singer, the Bayou Brethren club girl, we’d gotten out of the city and to safety out in Florida with The Kraken.
We were grateful our bond with the Kraken boys was still strong enough that we could rely on them, and that was partially Ruth’s own fault.
He’d sent us out to deal whenever they’d called for aid to keep friendly with them, and it’d worked in our favor.
The Kraken boys not only had shown us there was a way, a better way, they’d stayed connected with the faces and those of us who had shown up when they’d needed us.
Remained loyal to the men over the institution, which is honestly, as it should be.
According to Singer, this place belonged to the chapter president, Rebel.
It was lookin’ like he was home alone, which deep down, a part of me hoped his woman, Midnight, wasn’t in there with him.
The decision had been no witnesses. Get in, get what information we could on the rest of the club, take anyone out that was inside, and fuck right back off into the night.
I argued with LaCroix to take the side door, and let me take the front, silently, with insistent hand gestures, but he shook his head, dark eyes darkening even further with the devil inside.
I snorted from behind the purple rag that was tied around my face and nodded.
He gave the hands to move out.
Saint melted out of the brush on the other side of the house and joined up with LaCroix, taking point, which meant he’d be the one kicking doors and shit in, and LaCroix would be first in to follow the breach.
I was on my own at the side door, Axe taking point at the rear with Bennie at the ready to follow his breach.
I was waiting to see if my door was going to burst open and I would take down anyone who tried to come through it.
I was under orders to wound before kill if I could, so I kept my back to the wall and my gun pointed low for center mass rather than a head shot. It was a crapshoot that I wouldn’t get anything too vital, but I wasn’t risking a leg shot and having them turn on me with their own gun to take me out.
Genesis needed me home .
A mourning dove called out in the night, but it was LaCroix. We hadn’t heard any mourning doves in waiting, but we certainly had heard an owl.
I guess during his time locked up, he’d had enough free time on his hands to perfect various bird calls. It’d been a good party trick when he’d gotten out, but had also proved useful in circumstances like these when we needed a signal.
Doorframes cracked, and doors slammed open. I winced when I heard feminine screaming over the masculine shouts of my brothers and whoever else may be inside.
A shot rang out, and I braced for a runner. Sure enough, the side door burst open and a woman flew out the door, tripping and landing on all fours, about to scramble to her feet in her cut midriff top and bikini-style panties.
I shot her in the back, going high, and caught her in the right shoulder, blood spraying dark into the grass, her voice hitching as she slammed back down face-first into the ground, unmoving.
I shook my head. I didn’t like it, but we’d all agreed, no witnesses. According to Velina, Midnight knew just about everything that Rebel did.
I hauled her up, unconscious, and carried her back to the house, setting her down beside the steps and leaning her up against the corrugated metal skirting around the underside of the house.
It was set higher to keep it out of floodwaters, like most places in South Louisiana, even though the place was old – probably sixties, maybe even earlier than that — certainly not upgraded in any of that time.
“Chainsaw, you good?” I heard Bennie call from just inside the side door.
I called back, “Yeah, I got her. She’s alive but unconscious.”
He came down the back steps and looked down at her.
“It was just her and him. We got him in the living room.”
“Inside or outside?” I asked.
“Inside,” LaCroix called from deeper back behind in the darkness of the old house.
Bennie helped me drag her ass up the steps and into the house, tossing her down in front of the couch next to her man and leaning her up against it.
“Midnight? Baby? Shit, what have they done to you?”
“No worse than you sent your boys out to do to our women,” I reminded him.
The interrogation took a while. Axe was up, and got ol’ Rebel singing like a canary. Bennie and Saint went through the place and removed all kinds of books, files, and ledgers out of it. We cleared out the safe, took their cache of weapons, and shot ol’ boy in the face like Ruth had done Cy.
Midnight screamed and screamed. We took our time with her next, demanding answers, trying to get anything we could out of her that Rebel may have been reluctant to tell her.
She begged us not to kill her, but LaCroix made it swift. He double-tapped her – twice in the head and twice through the heart.
We debated dragging them out into the grass before torching the place, but ultimately decided we didn’t need to really be dramatic about the statement we were trying to make.
We set the place on fire and made sure it was a good roaring blaze that engulfed the entire place, before picking up and helping to carry the spoils back to the box truck waiting out there in the dark.
I sat in the back, Saint driving and Bennie riding shotgun with him. Back to the wall, we sat, LaCroix next to Axe, me across from them.
A battery-operated, cheap-ass kid’s camping lantern illuminated us dimly, a pile of paperwork, weapons, and some stacks of cash sitting in a pile between us.
“Think that’ll leave a mark,” LaCroix said, and I nodded.
“Sure as shit’ll get their attention,” Axe said and sniffed.
“Thinking we should drop a gear and disappear?” I asked. “Take the women someplace else?”
“Think they’ll go without a fight?” LaCroix demanded.
I shook my head. “Hell no.”
I looked to Axe. “Who is she?”
He sighed and said, “Was wondering when you’d get to grilling me about that.”
“Doesn’t matter,” LaCroix said. “She’s yours, and things are only going to get hotter around us.”
“Matters to me,” I said, and kicked Axe’s book, and he grinned.
“You stupid fucker. If I promise to tell you everything later, you promise to let it go?”
I thought about that. “Are you not wanting to say anything because if I don’t know and get caught up, then it’ll keep her out of it?” I asked.
“Pretty much exactly that,” he said, losing his smile.
“I can accept that,” I said with a sage nod.
“We did good tonight,” LaCroix said, and I nodded.
We had. We had plenty to run down and follow up on, and we also had knowledge that it was Ruthless, and we knew Ruthless’ playbook. Things were looking up for the Voodoo Bastards.
“I hate to say it,” I said. “But we need to start recruiting.”
LaCroix gave me a dirty look, but nodded. We just didn’t have the numbers, and that was bad. Real bad.
“Two prospects to start with won’t be too bad, but they better be trusted, man. Friends of the club.”
“Might be we need to call in another favor or two with the Kraken boys,” I said.
“What, like see if any of ‘em feel like re-locatin’?” LaCroix asked.
I shrugged and said, “I hadn’t thought of that, but maybe…”
He grunted and turned back into his thoughts, and we were silent the rest of the ride back to home base, which for the moment was LaCroix’s old Bayou House.
We got out of the truck and loaded shit into one of Cy’s old skiffs, LaCroix boarding it solo and pushing off with a long pole into the swamp.
“Hey wait a minute, would you, boss? I got something I’d like to discuss,” I called out.
“You comin’ with me?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Yeah.”
I was planning on staying out here the rest of the night anyway. What was the difference between here and out on the hidden houseboat?
He pushed back closer to the dock, and I leaped into the bottom of the boat.
“See you then.” Bennie gave a wave of his hand and turned with Saint and Axe to head into the Bayou House.
“What’d you want to say to me?” LaCroix asked when we’d been poling our way in silence through the swamp for a minute.
I pulled mine out of the water and stood it up in the bottom of the boat, leaning on it.
“Genesis and I want to get a place together,” I said. “Out here, in the country, at the edge of the swamp, more than in the city.”
“You looking for my blessing?” he demanded.
“Sort of,” I answered truthfully. “We wanted to do up a place where the club was welcome and safe. You know we already got your daddy’s old place, but…”
I didn’t know how to approach this part.
“Spit it out. You want to buy it and fix it up or some shit?” he asked.
“No, I want to buy the land, burn it the fuck down with you, and build something entirely new.”
He paused in his poling through the muck and peered at me through the dark.
The moon was up, but only in half her glory, so it was hard to see, but I could feel him study my face. He remained silent.
“That place ain’t but full of old ghosts for you,” I said.
“You ain’t set foot in it long before your daddy died, and ain’t set foot once in it since he did.
I know the value of keeping it as a base outside the city, but with Cy gone, and me with Gen most of the time, it sits empty.
Burn it down, collect that bag, sell the land on the cheap to me and Gen, and keep it in the club. ”
He stood for an age, thinking about it, and finally dropped the pole back into the water and shoved off, steering us in the direction we needed to go to get back to his lady.
He was quiet for so long, I didn’t think he would go for it, but then…
“I’ll ask the Bayou Baroness,” he said. “Feels like the right thing to do, but I want confirmation from the spirits that I ain’t about to take on some bad juju disposing of the family land.”
I nodded, and even though I didn’t go for a lot of his superstitious shit, I respected him enough to do whatever he felt was right. I mean, worst-case scenario, it was a “no” which I’d anticipated would be the case.
We could sit on it longer.
Gen and I had been trolling listings out this way, but nothing had struck us the way that this property had. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to ask the big man.
She’d agreed, the worst-case scenario was a “no”, but I’d been afraid of worse – that it would somehow hurt or offend our president, who was a man I greatly respected.
“It’s a good idea,” he said as we turned a cypress tree and the golden glow of light from his houseboat came into view, welcoming us in the dark.
“I was half afraid it would offend,” I told him, and he shook his head.
“No, you’re right… New beginnings require change, and change is coming swift, hard, and unrelenting. It’s a good idea. Just let me check with the family first.”
I nodded and said, “Sure thing.”
I knew that by family, he meant the rest of his family, who had all died off. About the only way to call them up was with a ouija board, or in his case, the Bayou Baroness, and I got that.
We pulled up to the houseboat’s barge, and I helped to moor us in place against it. The trip back would be easier. We could use the engine.
“You know where the guest berth is,” he said. “Mi casa and all that.”
We embraced, and he murmured, “I’m sorry she was there, too.” I nodded.
We would keep that between us, but it helped, knowing I wasn’t alone on that front.
Shooting her hadn’t felt good or seemed right, but the Bayou Brethren had set forth the rules of engagement.
They’d find out soon enough that they would have much rather played by our new set of rules we’d put down for ourselves, but c’est la vie… that was life in the Big Easy.
Now it was on, and as we liked to say in the Crescent City, laissez les bons temps rouler, or let the good times roll…
The End