Chapter Seventeen – Jack
Chapter Seventeen
Jack
I parked my vintage Lincoln Continental down the street from the Hogg’s Heaven, far enough that no one would associate me with my car, and walked in.
My hair was done differently tonight, as were my clothes and my attitude.
I wore my black cowboy boots, my darkest jeans and a black t-shirt under a leather jacket that was form fitting, utilitarian, not ostentatious.
I scanned the bikes for clues, but members of the Pack weren’t fond of personalized plates, so I walked in.
Amber wasn’t there, which was a good thing. But neither was my mark for the evening, Wade—one of the other members was behind the bar. I bellied up, well aware of the stink-eye I was getting, and leaned over when the bartender came to tell me to go.
“I have a business proposition for Murphy—is he here?” I picked another of the Pack’s leaders at random, pushing my remaining blood-luck.
One of his furry eyebrows rose, disbelieving me. “Tell me and I’ll tell him.”
I shook my head. “My boss said only me—and only in person.”
“Your boss being?”
Who was the scummiest currently? Vegas had a lot of churn, it was hard to keep up. “Jayson. From New York.” I’d done a tattoo on one of his underlings recently, who’d talked up his boss’s dark side, and I’d smelled the gun oil on him.
The bartender measured me, as did the men in earshot on either side. “And the business?”
I pretended to be bored. “Import, export. Your sort of thing. I’ll tell Murphy the specifics.”
He wanted with all that was in him to blow me off, but instead he went into the back. After a few minutes he returned, smelling like a Cuban cigar.
“Murphy says after the last time, your boss can go fuck himself—and you’re lucky that we don’t fuck you.”
I leaned in to protest. “Come on, I can’t go back to Jayson with that—"
The man to the side of me pulled out a knife and planted it into the wood between us. “You do, or you don’t go back at all.”
I looked from him to the bartender, and pushed back in the way I thought a petulant criminal underling might, then walked outside. I had what I needed—Murphy was here.
Under the streetlight outside a group of bikers were talking shop, holding beers in one hand and cigarettes in the other.
You could still smoke inside in Vegas, especially at a place like this—but a lot of places had smoking pavilions out back, where one could shoot the shit in a civilized fashion, smoking beneath the stars.
I walked down the street and then pulled left, coming up behind the rest of the strip mall.
After a cursory glance to make sure I wasn’t seen, I jumped up and caught the edge of the GOLD 4 CASH’s awning and pulled myself up.
The strip mall’s roof was sun battered, with a few scattered tarps held down by rocks to keep intermittent rains at bay.
I kept low and near the center where anyone on either side would be hard pressed to see me, until I knew I was over Hogg’s.
Then I crept towards the back and was rewarded with a plume of cigar smoke.
Murphy. I smiled cruelly and leaned over to sight him.
He was a stocky red-haired bearded man—looked almost like a dwarf from one of those fantasy movies—and he was pacing in a small circle, clearly agitated, listening to someone on his phone without answering except to say, “Yes. Yes.”
When he was done he pocketed it and turned to someone under the awning where I couldn’t see.
“You’ve gotta calm down, Murph.”
“Easy for you to say—you didn’t have to do it.”
“You could’ve said no.”
Murphy stopped pacing. “Don’t pretend that—"
“You’ve got free will—"
“Fuck you, Daziel. You know the plan.”
“Yeah. And Wade was in on the plan until Gray changed his mind.”
“He’s in there because of us. I’m not turning my back on him.”
“I wouldn’t either.”
There was the soft sandy sound of a cigarette being quenched and the other speaker emerged.
Daziel was long and lean and rugged, everything about him looked well-worn, from the bends in his boots to his shaggy salt and pepper hair.
Well-worn in a prepared way—and another of the ‘big-dogs’, according to Amber.
Murphy came over and jabbed a finger up at him. “You picked a hell of a night to be out of pocket.”
“Sorry for wanting to find someone a little taller to blow me.”
“Goddammit, Wade’s dead, stop joking.”
“Joking’s how I cope, brother. Always.” He fished in his vest and pulled out a fresh cigarette. “I don’t envy what you and the others had to do. Glad I missed it, honestly.”
I inhaled the secondhand smoke deeply, contemplating. I could jump down there and kill them both easily. I had otherworldly strength. But I couldn’t torture and bleed one effectively without killing the other and there was always the chance that I’d kill the wrong one first….
“And all over that whore. I can’t believe her pussy’s worth more than Wade’s life.”
My ears perked. That whore—did they mean Bella?
“It ain’t the whore. It’s the kid.”
“Then we take the kid.” Murphy said, pounding a fist into an open hand.
“But he don’t want it like that,” Daziel said.
Murphy grunted. “Too much silver’s made him soft.” He reached into his vest and lit another cigar and went through the ritual of clipping it, lighting it, sucking the smoke deep. “I did the right thing, didn’t I?” he asked, after exhaling the first fragrant puff.
Daziel did a whole-body shrug. “You did what Gray wanted. That’s close enough.”
I rocked back on the roof. Now that I knew what they looked like, retribution was just a matter of time.