Chapter 9
Hound Dog
I wanted to be selfish. I wanted to keep her longer at the house, hear her sing more, because what I heard and what I saw was an old soul rising with the voice of an angel. There was something that told me that this wasn’t the first time our paths had crossed, whether here or another life.
Or I could just be crazy.
When I dropped her off at her apartment door, she offered me a smile and her appreciation. The car door slammed and echoed in my head. Her last words remained ingrained in my soul. “Thank you Hound, I guess I’ll live to sing again.”
I watched her enter the building, hoping that she’d turn back and see me.
I wanted her to soar, to spread that talent to people that would appreciate her. I wanted her to survive, maybe in the selfish hopes that she’d fly back to me. For a split second, I pictured her by my side, her barefoot in the living room with the guitar in her lap. A light to come home to.
Funny thing was, I hadn’t kissed her. And yet, I knew it wouldn’t be enough if I did.
I had to leave her behind, pretend that she was just another person in this whirlwind of a city. I had my responsibilities to my club, to my chapter.
I fought everyday to vanish the thought of her, and move on. How could one person affect you in everything you do? Your thoughts, your memories, your desires. I felt like a hopeless, lovesick fool.
It had been two weeks since I dropped her off when I started to feel even crazier, and I hadn't seen her around the club or any other clubs. I took it as a sign that she wouldn’t come back, which was better for her. And perhaps myself.
But it was two weeks that would turn my world upside down again.
“Heard that a bigger shipment was coming through, might need to get the whole club or at least half with the trucks. Some of the men won’t be happy, we’d get all the prospects together. They can keep themselves away from sweet butts for the night,” B.B started to say before stuffing his face with barbecue.
I didn’t hear him, my mind must have been somewhere else. I picked at my food, pushing it around with my fork. The sun was shining, the early fall weather was coming our way. Someone snapped their fingers, “Hello earth to Hound!”
I looked up at B.B’s face twisted in confusion, “What?”
He curled his lip in his humorous way, “Saying that you need a sweet butt to screw you back into place.”
This man was too much a ray of sunshine whether he was getting screwed or not. The man could get any woman he wanted. Sometimes the man would elaborate how he would make them scream and in the end, his face would meet my fist due to my annoyance.
“Ha ha,very funny” I pushed the tray of food away from me.
“I mean, say the word and I’ll find you a nice woman,” he offered. In the end I knew he cared about his family, his brothers.
“Not interested.”
“Oh come on, one that would scream your name, begging you to go harder,” he tempted.
“You really want me to mess up that pretty face of yours.” I rolled my eyes.
He held up his hands, stopping the conversation. I continued, “Did Twitty get the last round of shipment?” We already had one shipment come in a week ago, it wasn’t much, but enough to tie us over.
“And we’re back to business, you're no fun,” He pouted.
I let out a growl as B.B attempted to snag my food I had pushed away. “Jesus, you weren’t going to finish it. Like you fucking need it, you giant.” I waved him off, as he scarfed down the rest of the food.
Swingin’ and kissin’, laid out under the stars.
Dreamin’ and lovin’, fightin’ until tears were shed.
Because after all this time.
I’ll never say goodbye to that old oak tree.
That melody stuck in my head. Like a siren call.
“Did your mind leave the building?” B.B interrupted my thoughts. Melody’s ghost voice faded away.
“I’m fine.” I leaned back into the chair.
“No you’re not. This about that damsel in distress from the Sax?” B.B inquired.
My eyes snapped to his face; the slightest smirk on his told me that someone blabbed a little too much about my life. My business was my business. The itch to fight someone was there, and boiling.
“You gonna answer me about Twitty,” I growled out.
“You gonna answer about the little hurt singer that Waylon mentioned,” B.B taunted.
“Drop it, B.B.”
“You poor sap. Don’t tell me you fell.” he went to pinch my cheeks as I smacked his hand away from me. “I’m just saying, since when have you been hung up on a woman?” he asked.
Before I could answer, the grace of the heavens interrupted. My phone started to buzz, but the name across the screen wasn’t who I was expecting, especially that early in the morning.
Lieutenant Howard Greene.
A cop under our protection, but still with the law. The only cop we could rely on, trusted, but always kept an eye on.
“Greene, what do I owe this pleasant phone call?” I said.
“Please tell me you can account for the whereabouts of your boys.” he quickly replied. I shot a look at B.B. as he dabbed his face and started to get up. B.B knew it was time for us to go.
“Currently, no. Might need to be more specific,” I told him.
“Last night,” he said quietly.
“I believe so. What's going on Greene?” I stood up and started walking toward the bikes.
“You might want to come down here. I think that you might want to see this,” Greene said.
Normally, our chapter is very low key, better to keep the law off our backs. Though it was nice to have Otis in the chapter, especially since he was previously an attorney. Greene was one of the happy encounters when more than one or two of our members got their asses handed to them. Greene and I had a discussion, knowing that the more backlash about our club, the worse for the city.
As the bikes started up, B.B looked at me. “Where we going?”
“Down south.”
We weaved through traffic, even though the majority of it seemed to be tourism which should have been gone. We took the back neighborhoods and got down toward the scene but a few blocks away.
I had Shooter come meet us as well. If one of our men did this type of shit, he would be the one I needed with me. He stood proud, ready for any movement. The man looked like he had seen the sun for too long, always bronzed.
As we approached him, he grunted. “What kind of bullshit do they think we’re up to now?”
We had picked the right person to be enforcer, his protective instinct was a force to be reckoned with.
“Wasn’t much detail, but something tells me that whatever it was, it will land on us,” I said.
“If it wasn’t serious, Greene wouldn’t have called,” B.B offered.
Whatever was coming our way, I had high hopes that the men would be better than to be caught in something they didn’t need to be involved with. They knew better than to test me and prove that they didn’t need to be an Outlaw.
In the distance, Greene was in his plain clothes with someone in tow walking toward our meet up location, away from everything that was going on down the street. Greene kept looking back, as if someone else was following him or that he was hiding something.
Greene wouldn’t have taken a chance on bringing in someone else if it wasn’t serious. Would I have approved of it to begin with? No, I don’t take chances in these situations and bringing in an unknown person is a greater risk to the club than a turf war with another club. Even worse, it was a greater risk than a lovers’ scorn. But Greene had come far with our trust in him, fortunately, he’d never given us a reason to mistrust him or put him on a tight leash.
“You got a rookie or something there, Greene,” B.B yelled out. I smacked his stomach before his mouth got him into more trouble than he was worth.
“Gentlemen, hated to make the call.” He sounded apologetic.
“And yet we’re here. Let’s cut to the chase shall we,” I said, straightening up, showing that time was everything at that moment.
“First, this is Officer Daniels, my trainee,” he introduced the fresh looking officer, too pure looking for the dirt that might rub off on him.
“And you thought it was a good idea for him to come here? Looks like he quotes the rulebook like it’s the pledge of allegiance.” Shooter growled out. He took a step forward challenging the man to see if he'd back down.
Daniels stood his ground firmly and didn't take his eye off of Shooter.
“Easy, Shooter. You’ll be happy to know that he comes from the club life.” Greene vouched for him.
“Old man was a member turned Road Captain,” Daniels started to explain himself.
I looked back at Greene. “Whatever your history is, doesn’t mean jack shit.”
He rolled his eyes and before I could address it, Greene cleared his throat. He dug in his pocket to pull out his phone. Once he found what he was looking for, he turned the phone in our direction.
What we saw wasn’t something we expected. The three of us crowd around the phone, looking at a picture that would set off a new problem in our city. Shooter took the phone out of Greene’s hands.
The picture captured a scene with a presumed male body with a bloody, foamy dried mouth. The person looked to have suffocated or choked. The question was how did it involve the club and why?
“What am I looking at?” I finally asked as the guys stood there gawking like there was more to find out, more details that we weren’t seeing.
“Nathan Ewing, age twenty seven, resident of Nashville, but apparently was here for a gig in the city. Want to take a guess of where?” Greene said sternly.
“I’m assuming a bar or a stage,” Shooter said bluntly.
I shot him a look to be careful of what he said next. But it didn’t take long to put two and two together to make it make sense. The only other reason why Lieutenant Greene would make our asses come to him and why he was giving straight information, was if he thought we were involved somehow. The only connection the club could possibly have is that he was an artist in our city to work.
“Which one?” B.B asked, catching the information from Greene.
“Growler,” Daniels cut in, delivering the truth we could agree on.
The Growler was a dive bar, something that B.B had thought of when we first got patched into the club. Growler would be the “hole in the wall” place on the outside only to reveal a place where sin and art came alive. We would get a range of heart broken, lustful sinners to the lost soul that needed a place to be theirs. A place that sometimes the darkest of art could come alive and still be supported.
I trusted B.B and a couple of members to take care of it, as it was one business that I couldn’t see myself exploring, at least not yet. I turned to B.B, whose eyes were full of anger and shock.
“You think this person was murdered at the bar?” Shooter began his questioning, glancing back at the evidence in front of him.
“We don’t know, but one thing was for sure, he appeared to have drugs on him and most likely in his system,” Greene answered, throwing his hands in his pocket.
I shook my head, “A possible drug happy artist comes to perform and you think it’s us.”
Greene glared at Daniels. “Show him.”
Daniels huffed out and reached into his jacket pocket, holding out an evidence baggie of some drug substance inside. But if you looked closely, it was a familiar bag to the club.
The evidence bag held a small blue bag with a tiny symbol of a devil.
It looked like the same product that was part of a recent delivery. Not that we got drugs all the time, but when we did, I had set rules and enforced them.
Our bag.
Our products.
Someone had to be setting us up. We didn’t sell in our own establishments, but somewhere close. We marked our own product, no one would trace it back to us. That was the hope. Something inside of me said it wasn’t us.
Our brothers nor our vetted sellers weren’t stupid enough to go off base.
“There’s no way one of ours was fucking dumb enough to break my golden rule,” I sneered out.
I didn’t have many personal rules outside of the charter and board. One, keep your noses clean even when you think no one is watching. Two, never forget to show manners to those who deserve it. We were southern and all. And lastly, never sell to addicts or near our businesses.
The last one was my golden rule. We never needed to fuel a problem, but fuel some kind of desire. But to sell at our businesses painted a target on our backs. Ones that were hard to get rid of for this very reason.
Something to trail back to us, painting us as the city’s villains rather than vengeful protectors.
Someone had some explaining to do as Twitty and Fender oversaw a lot of this side.
“That’s why I needed you down here. Because if it ain’t you then someone is after you. Who knows if this was a one and done?” Greene took back his phone.
“How did you all get the call? And why here? There’s not much over here, and obviously nowhere near our businesses,” Shooter said.
“And why does this have to do with us?” I asked the most important question.
B.B’s nerves got the best of him as he took out a cigarette, ones that he promised he’d quit. He lit one up and walked away to settle down. The man wasn’t easily nerved, but shit had him worried.
“Call came in at seven this morning, a bystander out on a morning run. The 911 caller sounded like he was hyperventilating, the man could barely get out any words. The dispatcher had to ground him in order to tell her what was going on. What little details he gave, dispatch had a unit car go out, along with the EMS. But it was no use, it was more of a recovery and evidence call. There wasn’t much to recover. He had his wallet, some cash, and his guitar case which had that little bag in there.” Greene nodded to the bag still in Daniels’s hands.
“Greene, you already know that someone is fucking with us. A dead body with signs of tainted product, and a bag that is similar to ours. After over a decade would we be that careless?” I got protective, defensive over our club.
B.B strutted back to having stomped out his cigarette. “You gotta get them off our trail,” he said.
“My friend, the club hasn’t been brought up, let alone the fact of this little present. But we both know that if I do turn up with this evidence, it’s going to get found out and then there goes my job and your inside man,” Greene whispered.
For a moment there it almost sounded like a threat and I didn’t take kindly to threats. I stepped up his eyes staring into mine. “Is this going to be the one time that you play by the rules? You protect us, we protect you. Last time I checked, we never had a problem.”
He didn’t respond right away. He listened. He let the thought of all this time make his final decision before his fresh meat decided to speak. “I’ll find it.” Daniels spoke up.
“What?”
“I’ll find it. It will make it look good on both ends, the fact that I found it under the guidance of my T.O. and it won’t raise any suspicions about his loyalties.” Daniels was a smart man. Maybe, for a brief moment, I could trust him.
“Hound, I have looked the other way and protected you all from serious jail time. You’ve taken care of me and helped my family. I’m not trying to place blame. I’m giving you a heads up that trouble is coming your way and you may have pissed someone else off.” Greene took a step back and extended his hand to shake on it.
I looked down on it. Looking back at him, I reached out and gripped his hand. “You can’t blame me. If this shit fucks with the club, then everything that this club has built, what it has started, would all go away.”
“I wouldn’t cross you,” Greene tried to reassure me. But, unfortunately, some things were going to get handled by me. Sometimes, I still could only trust myself.
With a nod, Greene left with Daniels in tow. If the plan and trust worked then the club wouldn’t be a moving target. Shooter shook his head, his blood must have been boiling. His fists clenched at his side. “Find out where everyone was the last two nights, I don’t need any surprises. You hear me,” I commanded.
“You got it, Prez.” He took off without hesitation.
A beat later, B.B spoke up, calmer than before. “You really think it’s one of ours?”
I rolled my neck from side to side, “For the club’s sake, I sure fucking hope not.”
I was ready to take flight and shed blood. No one was going to come here and make it as if we were cold blooded killers. If anything, we knew how to paint the town red and call it art.