26. Chapter 26
“We got a mouthpiece, a kilo of coke and fucking dog covered in spots.”
“It ain’t contagious, Hangman,” Hash says. The bugger’s funny, even if he is an asshole.
“Don’t fucking care. Ugliest thing I ever seen.”
Coyote grins at me, but I keep my mouth shut about his sisters’ Neapolitan Mastiff. The dog is a pampered useless mutt, but he’s injured from the attack on Peyton and Bryce, so I figure I shouldn’t kick him while he’s down.
Joker brings the topic back around to me. “I know this coke problem didn’t originate with you, but you went off on your own without telling us what you were doing.”
I don’t like being put in a defensive position, so I shrug like I don’t give a fuck. “I ain’t a pussy. Don’t need one of you guarding the door with a gun in hand while I break some asshole’s kneecaps.”
“How’d that work out for you?” Jawbone asks.
I give him the dead-eye stare.
“I tell you how it worked out,” Hangman snarls. “We got the cops breathing down our asses and someone looking for the coke.”
Joker leans back in his chair. “Not mob-related or cartels. No one’s talking.”
Trigger nods. “Nope. It’s like Lake Placid out there.”
Jawbone looks at him. “That don’t make sense.”
“Yeah, it does,” Blood says. “Guess Trigger used too many syllables.”
“Fuck off,” Jawbone replies.
“Ask again! Put on more pressure!” Hangman looks at Mothman. “Call your old man, get him to squeeze our southern contacts.”
Mothman nods. He’s on loan to us from our Vegas chapter. His old man is the prez of the club.
I interrupt the exchange with a thought of my own. “Someone was dealing on our turf at Hook’s. Not one of ours, but some other asshole. Was about to chase it down when X interrupted.”
“What a fucking surprise,” Hangman says drolly.
Can’t fault him for that. “I know the asshole who was buying. Regular at the club.”
“Who’d be stupid enough to deal on Jury turf that close to Hook’s?” Trigger says.
“And the dick buying the stuff is no genius either,” Coyote adds.
“It’s like calling the kettle black,” Hash says in disgust. Coyote’s our resident genius and sometimes a bit of a prick about it, so the irony gets a few grunts of laughter.
“I’ll corner him and have a convo,” I tell them.
“No. You got enough on your plate,” Eight says. “Let me know who it is and I’ll follow up.”
“Looks more like a morsel to me,” Red says.
A surge of something like jealousy rips through me. “What the fuck were you doing looking at her that closely?”
Rocky stares at me. “Who the fuck are you? And what have you done with the real Reaper?”
“Shut up,” I come back at him. I’m clever that way.
“Christ. I’m raising baboons,” Hangman says. “Where the fuck were we?”
“Reaper fucked up. Found a dead body. Got arrested. Now has an extra appendage attached to him,” Red says, crossing his arms.
Blood looks at Jawbone. “That too many syllables for you?”
Jawbone ignores him, which is a miracle unto itself.
Hangman turns to me. “She’s trouble. Cut her loose.”
Despite thinking the same thing earlier, I take exception to his words. “What the fuck is wrong with her?”
“No one can pronounce her name,” Hangman snaps.
“That’s not a reason,” I reply.
“How ‘bout this then, asshole.” He stabs his finger at me. “She sent you to a murder scene. You got arrested. Then she fucks off on her own.” He starts to raise his voice as he gets into his tirade. “Where’d she go after she left the chamber? Who the fuck did she talk to? How do you know she isn’t playing you?”
I turn to him. “Shut the fuck up about X. Every fucking woman in this club is trouble.”
Hangman’s fists curl and his face gets red. I get ready to stand.
Joker stands first, takin’ a walk so he’s standing between me and the prez. “Your girl is more trouble.”
Hangman curls his lip but stays seated. “She fuckin’ escaped the chamber. Who does that?”
His words diffuse my temper and I snort a laugh. X is special, that’s for sure.
Joker makes his way back to his chair as he brings us back on topic. “The bigger problem is that her asshole ex got his hands on a kilo of blow, which is now in our possession. What I can’t figure is why whoever it belongs to hasn’t connected with us to get it back.”
“Two reasons,” Eight says. “One. They might not know the Jury has it. And two. They might not want the Jury to know they’re dealing in coke.”
“Are they that stupid?” Mothman asks. “The cops put Reaper at the scene. Everyone will know we have the coke including every pusher, hophead, and hooker.”
“They picked him up for murder,” King says to Mothman as he takes a smoke out of its package, fiddles with it and then shoves it behind his ear as if remembering there’s no smoking in church. “I expect there are rumbles out there, but if the pigeons got nothing to say, then it’s unlikely the connections been made.”
A few nods, then Fender says, “We gotta figure out how the dead boyfriend got his hands on the coke in the first place.”
“Ex,” I say stupidly.
“Jesus,” Hangman mutters as looks at the ceiling, before turning his temper on me. “This is on you, cocksucker. So talk to the fucking mouthpiece and figure it out.”
I stare at Hangman for a few seconds while the room goes quiet. “Keep it respectful, Prez,” I say in a deadly voice.
Hangman stares back at me. “Watch yourself, you fuckin’ prick. She ain’t worth the trouble.”
Red cuts the tension. “You need someone watching your back?” he says to me.
“No,” I reply because I’m fucking sick of this entire club. “I’ll solve the fuckin’ problem myself.”
“Do it then!” Hangman barks. He looks at Red. “I don’t give a fuck what this prick wants. You’re playing nursemaid, asshole. Keep him from gettin’ arrested again.” He plucks at his beard as his mood drops from fury to general hostility. “Got one more thing to talk about. Hash, Reaper, Eight. In my office. You too, Joker.”
I think of X wreaking havoc in the clubhouse and open my mouth to protest, but he stomps by me and out of the room.
“Geez,” Hash says. “Not even a goodbye. Maybe he doesn’t love us anymore.”
Hash, Eight, Joker and I follow Hangman into his renovated office. It’s bigger than before with room for a couple of extra chairs. Hash gets one of them because the fuck can still barely stand after the attack on him. Joker grabs the other one and Eight leans against the wall next to where Hash is seated. He never sits in a chair when the club is meeting. I don’t know why and he’s never said. We have a code. I don’t ask him questions and he doesn’t ask me questions.
I’m left with the fucking hard chair, which is placed in front of Hangman’s desk. It’s what we call the executioner’s chair because it sits opposite to the .44 levered under Hangman’s desk. Given Prez’s volatile nature, no one ever wants to sit in that fucking chair, so I shove my back against the wall next to the door.
Hangman takes a breath. “The coke thing needs resolving. After that, we gotta do something fast to find the fuck who’s been talking to the feds. Hash got hurt. Crank killed. The thief and Scary Spice attacked.”
“We need a set-up,” Eight says.
“Yep. Something plausible.”
Joker shifts in his chair. “We know it’s none of us in this room. Not Trigger or Rocky. Doubt it’s Red. This was happening before he got his colours so he wasn’t included in most convos we had back then.”
“It wasn’t Red,” Hangman snarls almost defensively. Red was his prospect, so we get why he’s protective of the big guy. Still, don’t know the history behind their relationship, but then again, I’ve never wasted my time thinking about it.
“Then it also ain’t Zero,” Hash adds. He blinks his eyes. “Or Crank.”
A silence settles over the room as we think of him. He was a prospect when he came to the aid of Hash when he was being attacked. It was what saved Hash’s life. It was what made Crank dead.
Hangman takes a deep breath. “Not Coyote.”
We shake our heads.
He looks between Eight and me. “So if it ain’t you two, then we got the passarounds Diamond and Roxy. Chrissy, Gillian, Verity, and Fender.”
I say what the rest of us are thinking. “Fender then.”
“Yeah,” Hangman says softly. “Can’t be any of the women. They might have been there when me and Hash talked about where the girls were, but not the other times. Too much inside information.”
I frown. “Unless Fender’s talking to someone in the club.”
“Chrissy?” Joker says. Chrissy is Fender’s wife. “Can’t see that. The girl’s too caught up in her own misery to be of use to anyone.”
Chrissy and Fender’s kid was killed in a hit and run accident and while Fender seems to have gotten past it, Chrissy still struggles.
Joker shrugs. “He fucks around with Roxy. Maybe he’s talking and she’s listening.”
I keep my thoughts about Fender to myself. I’m not exactly an example of moral superiority but my thinking is you commit to someone, you fucking commit to them. I look at Hangman. Can’t imagine he’s thinking the same given how he fucked around on Verity.
Eight shifts. “Can’t rule out anyone on the short-list because they might be working with someone else in the club. Fender ain’t the only one Roxy’s sleepin’ with.”
“Fender and Blood?” Hash ventures.
“Why?” Joker challenges.
“Why the fuck not? Chrissy’s Blood’s sister.”
“All in the family,” Hangman mutters.
Eight kicks off the wall. “We gotta float a job and make sure they all hear about it, then we split the possibles among us and tail them.”
“Guess you’re gonna have to take Roxy.” Hash smirks at the man who wouldn’t touch a passaround even if it were to rescue them from a burning building.
Eight, in a rare moment of emotion, gives him the finger. “Fuck off, asshole.” He leaves the room like the conversation’s over.
Hash seems to think it is too. “We done?”
“Get lost,” Hangman says to him.
I follow suit and get lost too.
When I get to the main room, X is sitting alone at a table, staring at the bottles on the shelf behind the bar but it’s clear she’s not really seeing them. Besides Max and Oscar playing a video game, Verity and Slag are hanging around at the bar, deep in conversation, beers in front of them.
X doesn’t see me and I watch her for a few minutes. She really is a beauty, sitting there, her mouth closed, her eyes, two deep pools at midnight, unblinking. There are lots of beautiful women in the world, but X has something indefinable. Nothing about her fits in a box.
I see us in my head, in my house. Maybe she is everything I need. My world is black and white. Or varying shades of grey. Hers is a rainbow of color. I see the brightness of my future. See me stepping out of the darkness; having a family for the first time in my life. Maybe kids, but more than that. X and Paulie have a tight loving relationship. I don’t want to come between that, I want to be part of it.
My shoulders droop. Paulie hates me and I can’t blame him. I don’t know how I can turn him around and if I can’t, there is no X and me. No us. She matters too much to me and my conscious wouldn’t let me cause a rift between her and the most important man in her life.
My thoughts turn cold as I think of Paulie and what he means to X. Of what’s on the line for her. We left the man unprotected because of his Italian machoism. Thinking he’s got things under control at the bakery. Whoever is looking for the coke isn’t playing games. They know X is involved, probably know she’s the one who has it. The most logical next step for the mystery men is to target Paulie.