Suicide Lounge (Selena Book 3)

by Greg Barth

  Here and there, women’s panties hanging from the tree limbs overhead.

  Many of the grand tree trunks had graffiti spray painted on them. A few black swastikas, crude and crookedly painted. Faded pentagrams popped up here and there. One tree advised “Fuck Yoo.” Another “Pussy Palace Ahead.” There were the normal variations of female degradation. “Cunt” was prominent. “Whore” ran a close second. One simply said “Die Bitch.”

  I’d ridden into this once on the back of a bike. This time I was alone. Neither time was I under any illusions. This was a clearly marked road to hell, no place for a woman to go unescorted by anything weaker than the U.S. Marine Corps. But there I was.

  No guards, no sentry posts, no one stopped me on the way in. There was a gate, but it looked like it hadn’t been locked, not in this decade. These boys were too lazy to fool with such shit. They counted on their reputations, their guns, and their long records to keep anyone from wandering in.

  I hoped Enola and Sloane found their passage as easy as I did.

  I pulled up to the clubhouse, put the truck in park and turned off the engine. I left my shotgun on the back seat, opened the glove box and took out the red clutch purse Choke got me. I tucked it under my arm, grabbed my cane, opened the door and stepped out.

  I put the cane down and steadied myself as I closed the door. I wasn’t in pain, but I was a little swimmy-headed from the Oxy and jumpy from the coke. Each chemical pulled me in different directions, but I had enough experience with them both to know they’d settle it out.

  Smokey stood on the covered porch of the clubhouse. He had a forty-ounce malt liquor in hand, near empty. His arm was in a sling.

  “Dude,” I said. “Looks like you’ve been on the wrong end of gun battle.”

  “We got what we wanted.”

  “All of it?”

  “If we missed anything, we’ll get the rest soon enough.”

  “Looks like you’ve been taken care of.”

  “Rough as you look, kid, you’re in better shape than I heard.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “I heard you and Ragus got into it. Kind of a murder suicide thing. You know how that shit goes. People just don’t respect the sanctity of an old-fashioned man and woman relationship these days, do they?”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

  “I always kind of liked you, Amanda. If you get back in that truck, turn around, and run like hell, you have maybe a ten percent chance of getting out of here alive. And that’s just because the house is drunk. You should really consider doing that.”

  “Gotta see Top Hat.”

  He sipped his beer and pointed a finger at me. “I knew you was gonna say that.”

  I walked around the front of the truck, made sure I leaned on the cane with each step.

  “Top Hat.”

  “It’s a mistake.”

  I nodded. “Top Hat.”

  “Gotta frisk you first.” He came down. I leaned on the cane while he ran his hands over me. He was a gentleman about it. He didn’t get his hands anywhere near my pussy, which experience has taught me isn’t the norm when being frisked. He grabbed the purse from under my arm. “Sorry, but you could have a little .25 automatic in there. Wouldn’t go good for me if you lit up the boss the minute he steps out the door.” He went through the contents of the purse and handed it back to me. He didn’t discover the secret compartment at the bottom Choke had rigged to conceal my knife.

  “Alright.” Smokey jumped back onto the porch, pulled open the screen door, and stepped inside the club. About two minutes later, the door opened again. The first man out the door was neither Top Hat nor Smokey, just a fat, grizzled biker like so many others. I would have found him intimidating, but I was reasonably sure I could outrun him if worse came to worst. Another biker came through the door. This one was tall, lean, had greasy gray hair and a mustache. Another followed him, and another. And another. There must have been fifteen of them in all. They lined up along the front of the clubhouse in the shade of the porch roof. They stood there as if they were lining up for a family portrait. I thought about asking the shorter ones to step forward, but I didn’t think they’d get the joke.

  Finally, Top Hat and Smokey stepped out.

  “Holy shit,” Top Hat said. “You’re still alive. I reckon someone’s gotta kill you now.”

  “We made a deal, you and me,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I told you. My deal was with Pete. When Pete died, my deal died. Every man standing up here knows that’s true and I’m a man of my word. But my deal wasn’t with you.”

  “You said if the teams were evenly matched, you would stay out of it.”

  “Shit, girl. You ain’t got a crew left. And Mozingo’s crew, well them boys’d do anything for that man.”

  “No crew. Mozingo and me. One on one. You stay out of it. You keep your word.”

  Top Hat stared at me a long minute. “Hell, I’m not sure what I said.”

  “Smokey was there. Just now you said, someone’s gotta kill me now. All I am asking is you let that someone be Mozingo.”

  “You really want me to turn that man loose on you?”

  “And for you to keep your word. You’ll stay out of it, and you’ll be on the side of the winner.”

  “Craziest thing I ever heard.”

  “You said you would. I don’t want Mozingo’s crew interfering. I want you to stay neutral. It’s him and me. If I win, his men don’t retaliate. If I lose…well, you can feed my bones to the dogs. Nobody else wants them.”

  “His crew’ll do whatever he tells ‘em. As for my boys, they’ll stand down.” He looked over at Smokey. “Well, go and get him.”

  Smokey stepped off the porch and followed a path strewn with beer cans to a beat up house trailer a hundred yards away.

  A dog barked in the background. “Shut up!” Smokey shouted.

  A man on the porch pulled out a bag of meth powder and blew a rail off the back of his hand. He passed the bag to the next man who did the same and so on down the line until they’d all had a snort. All except Top Hat. He took a hand-rolled cigar out of the front pocket of his vest, clipped the tip and lit the front, rolling the cigar until his ash burned evenly.

  Another dog joined the first with the barking.

  Top Hat blew out his cigar smoke and put his lighter away. “I sure hate it things done come to this. I don’t want to watch what’s going to happen to you here today. That man Mozingo is good at what he does, but he’s got some screws rattling around in that head of his.”

  “There’s no other way,” I said.

  “Yeah, there was. You could’ve walked away. Just gone to someplace else.”

  “It’s not that simple. Besides, what he did to Pete wasn’t right.”

  “Pete had no illusions about the game he was playing.”

  I let his words sink in while I waited for Mozingo. Top Hat wouldn’t know Pete could have stopped my escape from Faranacci’s torture chamber. Instead he gave me clothes to wear and told me where to find Faranacci. Pete had visited me in prison. He provided a lawyer to get a good arrangement for me, landing me some place comfortable to pull my time. He had money put into my commissary account. And when I was at my lowest point, he sent help. He gave me a new identity and put me on a path to live somewhere else and manage a part of his expanding empire. And like everything else in my life, I’d burned it all down.

  I looked up at Top Hat. “I think Pete had illusions,” I said. “I know he did. And I think you have them too.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Enola

  WHEN THE OUTLINE of a large, gray building became visible through the trees ahead, Enola crouched behind a tree. Sloane crept up behind and squatted next to her.

  “Let’s see now,” Enola said.

  Sloane tapped the screen of the phone, activating the display. The red dot appeared in the same spot as always, but there wasn’t enough detail to determine much.

  “Can y
ou zoom in?” Enola said.

  Sloane zoomed in and more detail came into view on the map.

  Enola pointed to the gray building, the only one in view so far. “Looks like that’s it.”

  “Yeah. Let’s get a little closer.”

  They took light steps through the leaves. Passage through the forest was easy due to the lack of underbrush. The terrain was flat. The drawback of having little foliage on the ground was the lack of cover. They went from tree to tree. Each wore camo clothing, including hats and face paint. The backpacks they carried were in camo pattern as well. The packs were empty except for a set of bolt cutters and a few other tools.

  They had closed the gap to a hundred feet when the first dog began barking.

  “Ok. Shit,” Enola said.

  “Nothing we can do about it,” Sloane said.

  “I just hope it’s on a chain.”

  They took a few more steps and the second dog started in.

  “Shut up!” a voice called from the camp ahead.

  They kept moving forward. They had to cross the last twenty-five feet with no cover. They both got down on the ground and crawled to keep a low profile. Other buildings were in view by then. The phone app kept them pointed to the gray garage in front of them.

  “We’ve got a fence,” Enola said.

  “I see it.” Sloane removed a pair of wire cutters from her pack. The fence was barbed wire fastened to wooden posts. She clipped the bottom strand. The cut made more sound than she expected, but it was masked by the barking of the two dogs. She looked back at Enola. “Ready?”

  Enola nodded. She held the second strand of wire up while Sloane scooted underneath. Sloane then did the same for her, and they were in the camp. They crouched low behind the gray building.

  Footsteps approached. And voices.

  “Wonder what the fuck this is.”

  “No idea. Wish them damn dogs would shut up.”

  The footsteps faded.

  There was a side entrance to the building, secured by a heavy padlock. Enola slipped the bolt cutters from Sloane’s pack. Sloane held the lock so Enola could get a bite with the cutters. The tool was long and heavy, unwieldy in her hands. Once the shank was caught, she worked the cutter grips back and forth until the metal snapped.

  They stood silent and listened. No sound from inside the building.

  Sloane slipped the lock free and carefully opened the door.

  It was dark inside. It smelled of grease, gasoline, and sawdust. They stepped in and closed the door. The large room had a concrete floor. Shadows absorbed all but the faintest of details.

  Enola slipped a flashlight from her pack and turned it on. The building was a workshop. Heavy tables lined the walls. Wrenches, hammers, and other tools were strewn haphazardly across the table tops. Stripped down bikes, engines in various stages of overhaul, and barrels of trash cluttered the center of the room.

  Enola ran the beam along the wall. “Oh no.”

  “What?” Sloane said.

  “I knew this felt too easy.”

  Sloane adjusted her glasses, stepped closer. “Shit.”

  A heavy steel cabinet was against the wall. It wasn’t exactly a safe. More like something homemade from sheet steel in the shop. It was as tall and wide as a wardrobe. The two locks on the front were heavy and circular. No way to get a grip on them with the bolt cutters.

  “What do you think?” Enola said.

  “We need to figure it out,” Sloane said.

  “I mean we certainly gave it our—”

  “Shine the light there.” Sloane pointed.

  “Here?”

  “Over there.”

  “Those tanks?”

  “I think it’s an acetylene torch.”

  “A what?”

  “You use it to cut metal.”

  “You know how?”

  “I took shop class in high school. If it has a cutting torch attached…”

  “Is there time?”

  “We have to move fast.” Sloane grabbed the rig and rolled the cart with the heavy tanks over to the steel cabinet. She found a pair of goggles in the tray, slipped them over her head and let them dangle from her neck. She found the striker. “Looks like a cutting torch.” Sloane turned on the gas, watching the gauge on the oxygen and acetylene until she thought she had it right. She pulled the lever, releasing the gas from the torch nozzle, held the striker in front of it, and sparked it a few times. Nothing happened.

  She adjusted the gas mixture. “It’s been a while.”

  Sloane clicked the striker again. This time the gas ignited. Flame erupted from the torch. She adjusted the gas mixture again, gave it more oxygen. When the flame burned short and blue, she tugged her glasses away and pulled the googles over her eyes. “Here goes.” She levered the cutting torch and pressed it next to the lock.

  The metal of the lock hasp grew red hot under the torch. “Could you turn the green dial up a bit more?”

  “Like this?”

  “Now turn the other one up just a little less than you did that one.”

  Within seconds both locks were on the floor.

  “Find a rag or something so we can open these doors. They’re hot.”

  The doors opened. Enola gasped. “More dope than the delivery. Maybe more money.”

  “Just take what you came for. Leave theirs,” Sloane said. “No sense pissing off the bikers any more than we have to.”

  Enola filled Sloane’s pack first. “I don’t even know if we can get all of ours. Which is more valuable? Cash or drugs?”

  “Let’s fill each bag half and half. We have to push the bags under the fence first. Otherwise we won’t fit.”

  When hers was full, Sloane filled Enola’s bag.

  “We have to go. Now,” Sloane said.

  They exited from the side door.

  Enola stopped at the fence. “I have to see,” she said. She walked back along the edge of the building.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I have to see what’s happening.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I have to.” Enola turned and walked in the other direction, followed the outside wall of the workshop.

  Sloane followed her. She reached out and took hold of Enola’s backpack and pulled against her. “We have to go,” she said.

  Enola kept walking. At the corner of the building she stopped. She was careful not to draw attention in her direction, but she wanted to see what was going on in the club center. Carefully she peeked around the corner of the garage. There was a clamor of activity in the courtyard a hundred yards away. A group of men stood in front of the clubhouse. Amanda stood alone in front of the porch. Her white shirt was covered in blood. She held something in her hand.

  Amanda seemed to notice Enola from the corner of her eye. She did nothing to acknowledge Enola’s presence, but Enola knew the look. She had seen that look flash across Amanda’ face many times in the recent past. Don’t try to stop me.

  Then Enola saw Mozingo. He stood facing Amanda. Before she could register what was happening, Mozingo raised his arm high. He held a knife in his hand—a massive, nasty looking knife. He rushed at Amanda. Enola saw the knife come down, a flash of blood, and Amanda was on the ground.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Selena

  I WATCHED THE front of the trailer. The door opened and Mozingo stepped out. He wore a yellow silk shirt with a floral print, unbuttoned down the front, a tuft of hair on his chest and another on his belly that went down into his faded jeans. He was barefoot. His long hair blew in the breeze as he walked through the yard. Smokey came out next followed by a woman with hair so light red it looked orange. Her hair twisted and snarled in tight curls that hadn’t seen a hairbrush in a while.

  Other men came out from a garage further back, from mobile homes, and campers. Everybody suddenly cared about what was going on at the clubhouse.

  Good.

  Mozingo stopped about twenty feet from me. He wore his long kn
ife on his side.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “Girl, I thought you was dead.”

  “Weird, huh?” I said. “And this isn’t the first time that’s happened to me.”

  “I’m glad you came. I never did get to fix you that meal I promised.”

  “You were going to jam something up my ass also. I was kind of drunk that night.” I snapped open my purse, undid the false bottom and took out the tanto knife. I tossed the purse to the ground. “I brought my own knife.”

  “You want me to come to you? Would that be easier?”

  I put my weight against the cane and limped forward. “I think I can manage.”

  He drew the long knife from the sheath. “You’re gonna look awful funny after I’m done chopping things off you.” He moved slow, lazy-like. He didn’t think he’d have to put much effort into it. But I was ready.

  He rushed forward and slashed at me with the knife.

  I held my blade low, point facing him. I brought the cane up with my left hand. I held the crook of it from the underside and let the length of it run along my forearm. I caught the edge of the knife with the cane. It wasn’t perfect. The blade bit into the wooden shaft, but the cutting edge hit at an angle. It also cut through the skin of my arm. I moved fast. I thrust upward with my knife. He pivoted to the side just in time. He brought his arm down, and I sliced through the back of his hand as he stepped away. His knife pulled free from the shank of the cane. A splinter of wood fell away.

  He stepped back, pointed the tip of his knife at me and shook it. “Now that was a trick you pulled there.” He wiped the back of his hand against his pants. A long smear of crimson spread across the faded denim.

  I held my position—cane up along my forearm, knees bent, leaning forward, knife poised to strike. He had the advantage of reach and the heavier blade. But I was faster. I was loose, my reflexes charged on coke.