Nail's Deliverance (Charm City Killers MC #9)

Chapter One

The bathroom door swung open and Nail didn't look up from the glass he was polishing. Didn't need to. He'd been watching Kenneth Tate make his third trip in forty minutes, and the parade of guys following him back there told the whole story.

"Hey, Nail." Kenneth slid onto the stool at the end of the bar, sniffing hard. "Slow night, huh?"

Nail smiled. Easy. Warm. The same smile he'd learned watching his old man work this exact bar before the bottle took over.

"Picking up." He set the glass down and poured Kenneth a Nail Boh without being asked. "You want to close out your tab?"

"Nah, man. Night's young." Kenneth pulled out a fold of twenties, thumbed through them like he wanted everyone to see. "Put me down for another round. Whatever these fine people are drinking."

The regulars at the bar nodded their thanks. Most of them had been coming here since Nail's father ran the place—back when Flynn's was just a Fell's Point dive and not a clubhouse annex. They knew to keep their eyes on their drinks when business happened.

Nail poured the round and collected Kenneth's cash, his fingers brushing the bills long enough to feel the residue. Cocaine had a texture. So did the patience he was losing.

"Generous tonight," Nail said.

"Feeling good, brother. Feeling real good."

Brother. Nail's smile didn't flicker. The word meant something specific in his world, and Kenneth Tate wasn't anywhere close to earning it.

He caught Stevedore's eye at the far end of the bar.

The big man had been nursing the same beer for an hour, his docker's hands wrapped around the bottle like he could crush it by accident.

Which he probably could. Stevedore gave an almost imperceptible nod and went back to watching the Orioles lose on the mounted TV.

Nail worked the bar for another twenty minutes.

Poured drinks. Made change. Laughed at a joke from one of the harbor pilots who'd been drinking here since Reagan.

The whole time, he tracked Kenneth's movements—another bathroom trip, another exchange, another customer leaving with that tell-tale jaw clench.

Third time this month. He'd given warnings after the first two. Keep that shit out of my bar. Said it friendly, like advice between friends. Said it with the smile that made people think he was softer than he was.

Kenneth hadn't listened.

The crowd thinned around eleven. Harbor workers had early shifts. The remaining drinkers were either tourists who'd wandered down from the waterfront or hardcore locals who'd close the place out. Nail started washing glasses, keeping one eye on Kenneth working the room.

At eleven-thirty, Kenneth made his move toward the back hall again.

"Hey." Nail's voice cut through the bar noise. Still friendly. Still warm. "Got a minute?"

Kenneth paused, that coked-up paranoia flickering across his face before the bravado kicked back in. "What's up?"

"Office. Need to talk about something."

The regulars suddenly found the bottom of their glasses fascinating. The tourists didn't notice anything. Stevedore finished his beer and stood, stretching like a man working out the kinks from a long day on the docks.

Nail led Kenneth through the back hall, past the bathrooms, to the office door. His father's old office. Still had the same scarred desk, the same filing cabinets, the same smell of stale beer and cigarettes that no amount of cleaning could remove.

"What's this about?" Kenneth asked, but his voice had gone thin. The confidence was bleeding out now that they were away from witnesses.

Nail closed the door behind them. Leaned against it. The smile was still there, but something had shifted underneath it.

"Third time, Kenneth."

"Third time what? I don't know what you're—"

"The bathroom. The sales. The product you're moving through my bar." Nail pushed off the door, and Kenneth backed up until his legs hit the desk. "I told you twice. Asked nice. Thought we had an understanding."

"Look, man, I wasn't—I was just—"

"You were just disrespecting my place." Nail's voice hadn't changed.

Still conversational. Still friendly. That was the trick his father never learned—the old man got loud when he was angry, telegraphed everything.

Nail had figured out young that the quiet ones were scarier.

"You were just ignoring what I said because you thought I was too nice to do anything about it. "

The office door opened. Stevedore filled the frame, and suddenly the small room felt a lot smaller.

"Problem?" Stevedore asked.

"Kenneth here is leaving. Through the back." Nail gestured to the door that led to the alley. "He's not going to come back. And he's going to tell anyone who asks that Flynn's isn't a place to do business anymore."

Kenneth looked between them, calculating. Nail watched the math happen behind his eyes—the size of Stevedore, the exits blocked, the reality of the situation finally penetrating the chemical haze.

"I'm connected," Kenneth tried. "I know people. You can't just—"

"You know people." Nail stepped closer, and his smile finally reached his eyes, which made it worse. "I know people too, Kenneth. Difference is, my people don't talk about it. My people don't need to."

Stevedore moved forward. One hand on Kenneth's shoulder. The grip looked casual, almost friendly, but Kenneth went pale.

"Back door," Nail said. "Go home. Reconsider your life choices. Don't come back."

Kenneth went.

Stevedore followed him out to make sure he actually left, and Nail stood alone in his father's office, listening to the muffled sounds of the bar through the walls. The smile was gone now. He didn't need it when the audience was gone.

He pulled out his phone. Two texts from Beltway about some movement in Canton. One from a bartender friend at a place in Federal Hill about strangers asking questions. Nothing urgent. He filed the information away the way he filed everything—organized, cross-referenced, ready to use when needed.

The man who knows everyone's business because they told him over a drink they don't remember buying.

That's what Verdict had said when he patched Nail in. The information broker. The friendly face. The guy who could walk into any bar in Baltimore and walk out knowing more than he came in with.

His father had been like that too, once. Before the bottle. Before the debts. Before the night the harbor took what was left.

Nail locked the office and did his final rounds. Checked the bathrooms—clean enough. Checked the register—tonight's take was solid. Checked the back door—locked, with Kenneth Tate nowhere in sight.

By one-thirty, he'd closed out the last customers and turned off the Nail Boh neon. Stevedore had already gone, back to whoever was waiting for him, and Nail was alone with the ghosts.

The cobblestones of Fell's Point rattled under his Harley's tires as he rode the three blocks to the compound.

Past the bars that were still spilling light and noise.

Past the tourists stumbling toward their hotels.

Past the corners where his father used to drink away the receipts before coming home to make excuses.

The compound gate opened before he reached it—prospect on duty had seen him coming. Nail rolled through and parked in the garage, his bike settling into its spot between Cull's stripped-down Dyna and Formstone's road-worn Street Glide.

The clubhouse was quiet at this hour. A few brothers playing cards in the corner. The prospect behind the bar looking bored. Nautical memorabilia and club photos on every wall, ship timber under the brass rail, the smell of old beer and leather that meant home.

Nail poured himself a bourbon from the top shelf. The good stuff. He'd earned it after dealing with Kenneth without putting him in the harbor.

He took his drink to the end of the bar, away from the card game, and let the smile drop.

This was the only place he could do that.

The only time. Behind the bar at Flynn's, he was always performing—reading the room, working the crowd, cataloging information.

Here at the compound, with brothers who knew exactly what he was, he could stop.

For a few minutes. Until the sun came up and the show started again.

The bourbon burned going down. Good burn. Honest.

He thought about Kenneth Tate and all the Kenneth Tates who came before him. Men who looked at his friendly face and saw weakness. Who heard his easy laugh and thought soft. Who never learned, until it was too late, that the smile was camouflage and the charm was a weapon.

Charm City Killers.

The name wasn't ironic. It was a warning dressed up in tourist-board language. They smiled while they worked, every one of them. The friendliest killers in Baltimore.

Nail finished his bourbon and considered another. Decided against it. He'd watched his father pour too many second drinks that turned into third drinks that turned into mornings passed out on the office floor.

Some legacies you inherited. Some you burned.

He rinsed his glass behind the bar—old habit, a bartender's instinct—and headed for the stairs. His room was on the second floor, nothing fancy, just a bed and a bathroom and a window that looked out over the harbor.

Tomorrow there'd be work. There was always work.

Information to gather, debts to collect, the thousand small tasks that kept an MC running in a city full of people who wanted what they had.

Beltway's texts about Canton were probably nothing, but probably wasn't certainly, and Nail's job was knowing the difference.

Tonight, though, he just wanted to sleep. To stop performing. To let the mask rest.

He lay in the dark and listened to the harbor sounds through the window—the distant horns, the water against the pilings, the city breathing around him.

Fell's Point had been his whole life. His father's bar.

His uncle's fishing boat. The corners where he'd learned to read people before he learned to read books.

Now the bar was his. The club was his. The information network he'd built from drunk confessions and careless words—that was his too.

The smile that hid everything else? That was the part of his father he'd kept. The only part worth keeping.

Nail closed his eyes and let the darkness take him, already rehearsing tomorrow's performance before sleep dragged him under.

The show never really stopped.

It just paused for intermission.