Chapter Ten
This
Dutch
They went through his side door, Georgie carrying her
backpack and laptop bag, Dutch juggling a pizza and a six pack.
She dumped her stuff first, on the counter by the washer and
dryer, took off her coat, hung it on a hook, then nabbed the stuff from Dutch.
He locked the door, shrugged off his cut and hung it on a
hook.
By the time he’d turned, she was in the living room, cooing
to Murtagh.
Dutch followed her.
She was heading to the kitchen.
He moved around turning on lamps.
When he got to the kitchen, she had two beers popped and her
head bent to her phone.
She sensed him there, though, because she said, “I’m so
wiped, I just want to eat the pizza over the box, down a beer and pass out.”
Not even close to the plans he had for them that night.
He didn’t get into that, or share another good part of
living in the biker world: the fact it was almost a moral imperative not to put
your pizza on a plate, but instead, eat it over the box at the same time
sucking back a beer.
He also didn’t remind her of what he’d already told her.
That he’d called, and the restaurant was booked for the next night, but they
had a reservation for Sunday, so they had something to look forward to.
On the way from the pizza joint, she’d been giving her phone
a lot of attention and not sharing why.
So he got into that.
“Something up?” he asked, leaning a hip against the counter
and flipping the pizza box open.
Her gaze came to him.
“Well, my mom has been texting all day, which is no
surprise, considering Carolyn has probably been buzzing in her ear.”
“Yeah?” he said. “And?” he asked because he knew that wasn’t
it.
“Now my dad has called twice, and that’s unusual, because he
kinda figured things out a while ago, at least with
the designer stuff Carolyn’s always sporting, and since she often went to him
for a handout, he cut her off. This caused a big blowup, as I’m sure you can
imagine. She hasn’t spoken to him in a couple of years.”
“So you need to call your dad,” he surmised.
“Yes.”
He nodded. “I need to call Rush to get briefed on Gary
Bronson. You make your call, I’ll make mine. And we’ll eat over the box. Nab
some paper towels, babe.”
“You need cloth napkins,” she said, even as she moved to the
paper towel holder.
“What?” he asked.
She tore some off. “Cloth napkins.”
“Bikers don’t do cloth napkins,” he teased, though he did it
telling her the God’s honest truth.
She smiled at him as she came over and handed him his paper
towel. “Do bikers like riding roads on this planet we call earth?”
“So your bid to save the planet is to use cloth napkins and
not paper towels?”
She shrugged. “Every little bit helps.”
He shook his head, and since she’d stopped close, he dipped
down to give her a lip touch, then he pulled out his phone.
“Call,” he ordered. “Soon’s we’re done with this shit, it
can be just us for maybe ten minutes.”
She lifted a hand, pressed it into his chest, then made her
call.
He made his.
Rush answered straight away.
“The guy giving anything up?” Dutch asked before taking a
huge bite of a slice while Georgie murmured and munched close to him.
“Jessica Browbridge launders counterfeit cash the black
market operation produces. She does it through that restaurant she manages,”
Rush told him.
Well then.
He gave something up.
“Though, that shit has stopped since other shit got hot for
her after her neighbor was shot dead in her bedroom,” Rush went on.
Dutch swallowed his pizza and asked, “Anything on that?”
“That was a harder pull, but yeah. She likes to get laid.
Though the guy couldn’t pinpoint who was there, since she spread her love
around, which Bronson figures might have been the problem. One of them got
jealous, came over and got up in her shit, things escalated to a fight. She was
fishing too much in a stinking pond, messing with men who don’t like to be
messed with and have no problem sharing that in ugly ways, even with a woman.
Khalon Stephens didn’t like the sound of it. And we are where we’re at.”
“He give you names?”
“He had trouble narrowing it down.”
“Jesus,” Dutch muttered, taking another bite.
“But it doesn’t matter. This racket is highly organized,”
Rush said. “You’re in, you deal with what you deal with. This situation was
big, and she’s flashy, so she was known, and when that went down, word got
around. But Bronson isn’t part of the counterfeit cash gig. He’s on
distribution of Cialis and Viagra that comes in from Canada and Mexico. So for
the most part, he doesn’t know names, just faces. Until I told him her name, he
didn’t know it. Just knew what happened with her, and that she was out, and all
were told not to associate with her.”
“You believe him?”
“He was pretty tweaked he’d been hauled in by Chaos. Can’t
say he spilled right away, but eventually he was cooperative and absolutely not
at one with her shit landing on him, or their racket, in any way. So, yeah.”
Fuck.
“You cut him loose?” Dutch asked.
“Pretty certain we got all we could from him, so again,
yeah.”
“Right.”
“The kid?” Rush asked.
“You line ten thousand men up that all meet the same
description, he’d pick the fucker out in five seconds flat.”
“So we need to be all over that warehouse when you said we
can’t be all over that warehouse.”
“Nightingale is on that. Vance, Luke and Roam met the kid,
witnessed his break, and not surprisingly, man hours loosened up. They’re all
in. They’re setting up surveillance equipment as we speak.”
“Fuckin’ great,” Rush said.
“Yeah.”
“Between us on her and Nightingale on that warehouse, we’ll
get him, Dutch,” Rush said.
He hoped so.
“Yeah.”
“Catch some sleep. Wanna meet with you tomorrow, set a
schedule of who’s on her, who’s on security for Carlyle and his mom and
sister.”
“Time?”
“Whenever. Your call.”
Dutch studied Georgie, who was off the phone and
concentrating on eating and not falling over.
He got that.
You could run a marathon, and if you’re fit, probably paint
your bedroom after.
But emotion will suck it all out of you every time.
“I’ll text you in the morning,” Dutch told him.
“Right. Cool. Later.”
“Later, Rush.”
He disconnected, tossed his phone on the counter and asked,
“Well?”
She looked up to him and watched him take another huge bite
before she spoke.
“Well, taking nothing away from the fact that I think
Carolyn genuinely does probably love your brother, and that was part of why
this morning was off-the-hook, it’s clear another part of it is that she’s in
some financial trouble and Jagger was her bid to freedom from that. With him
out of the picture, she went to our mother, who shot her down, and was
desperate enough to break the silence with Dad, who’s now entirely freaked
out.”
“Did he shoot her down?”
“He asked her to come and talk to him. Something she did.
And since he hasn’t seen her in a while, and she’s lost some weight, and was
tweaking, he asked pertinent questions he knew the answers to. She lied. He
cottoned onto that too. So, yes. He shot her down for money to buy coke or
whatever else is at issue. But he offered to pay for rehab. She refused.”
“Shit, baby,” Dutch whispered.
She looked to the pizza and grabbed another slice, saying,
“And now Dad’s mad at me because I admitted I knew there was a problem and I
didn’t let him in on it.”
Uh…
No.
“Fuck that, Georgiana,” Dutch clipped.
She again gave him her eyes. “I know. He’s just worried.
He’ll get over it.”
“The last time you ate her shit happened this morning,
baby,” he warned her.
“Okay, Dutch, but what if her financial situation involves
owing money to a dealer?”
Dutch drew in breath through his nose.
The reason why dope was zero tolerated by Chaos was not
solely because that shit was fucked up and they wanted no part of it.
It started back when Tack’s sister overdosed.
The Club dealt.
His sister dead, Tack went on a mission and he recruited
brothers to that mission, and this mission was to get that shit, and all the
other, out of the lives of Chaos.
The final battle sparked when Tabby’s best friend, who was a
junkie, got in over her head and the Club intervened to get her out of a very
bad situation.
Carlyle, they were on board.
Carolyn, they would let swing.
And not just because of the dope.
Because she’d played a brother.
Even knowing this, Dutch offered, “You want me to ask
around, darlin’?”
“I don’t want you eating shit because of this either,” she
mumbled irately, and took a bite of pizza.
“And I don’t want you worried,” he returned.
She chewed, swallowed and refocused on him.
“I’m going to have a conversation and share this with her.
Share that this is what she’s saddling me with. Mother with. Dad with. This
gnawing worry. And I’m going to tell her this one time, I’ll intervene with
Mother, Dad, and pitch in myself if she promises to get her shit straight. But
if she can’t, we’re done. At least I am. I’ll be out. For good. I can’t let
this infect my life like that. Of course, there is no way I can just switch off
the love and worry I have for my sister. But she doesn’t need to know that.”
“That’s a very mature response,” he told her.
“It’s big words,” she replied. “I’m totally going to go back
on it.”
Dutch started laughing and hooked her with an arm to pull
her to him.
He could finish eating with her tucked close.
So could she.
“So…Carolyn down,” she put a line under it, sharing
succinctly she was done talking about her sister. “What do you have?”
He ran down what Rush told him.
When he was done, she asked, “Do you think we should hand
this over to the police? Because, Dutch, pictures Chaos or Nightingale
Investigations takes are not admissible.”
“We just want Carlyle to identify his father’s killer. The
cops can deal with black market shit. That isn’t the mission here. The mission
is justice for Khalon Stephens. The end.”
She nodded.
“So we get a picture, and hope to God a name, of the man