“Stop it,” she said.
“What?”
Her close-cropped brown hair framed the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. Brown inquisitive eyes sat above a thin straight nose. Her lips formed a half smile as she stood and walked to me. She tucked her head under my chin and wrapped her arms around my waist, holding me tight. I breathed in the clean flowery scent of her hair and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. I felt an ache inside. God, if I missed her this much while I held her how would I feel when I couldn’t even see her? She felt so small and helpless in my arms. I wanted to protect her, to keep her safe. I kissed the top of her head as she pulled back.
“We aren’t going to do this. Right?” She walked back to the table.
“I’m worried.”
“Don’t start.” Her smile faded.
“They’d release me. No problem at all.”
“It was minor, Cam, forget it.” She sat down and sipped her tea.
Glenda didn’t like talking about her heart condition. She’d had it since birth and refused to let it control her. She lived with it; it wasn’t her life. It reared its ugly head while I was finishing my sniper training. She was lucky enough to be on the job at the hospital when she had a cardiac arrest, as in stopped heart. I wondered what would have happened if she was here in the kitchen, alone when it happened. She looked across the rim of her cup at me, reading me. She put the cup down.
“Look, Cam, if you use my heart as an excuse to stay home, you’ll break it,” she said.
“What, you want me to go to war? They told us our wives would want us to stay behind.” I tried a smile. It felt weak.
“Most wives don’t have to worry about a war right here. The kind my husband gets pulled into by the club.”
“This has nothing to do with the club, Glenda, you know that.”
“Let me finish. I never asked you to give up the club, I never will. But that doesn’t mean I like it. Halifax is growing too fast and that means another turf war sooner or later. In Afghanistan you’ll be a sniper, far from the front line. Here your patch will make you a target.” She sipped her tea again, watching me. “Besides, the army and a real war might change your priorities. You might just grow out of the club.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I was going to rejoin the club after the war. She stood and came back to me.
“Look, Cam, my heart is just fine. When I see you in uniform like this, it’s better than fine, it sings. It proves you are more than your father’s son. I want you to be safe over there, but I also want you to see that you are much more than some street thug. I love you.”
Glenda kissed me and walked out of the kitchen. I never saw her again.
I put Glenda’s cup back on the countertop. So much for its calming effect. I did come back from the war. I was out of the club. She got what she wanted. I often wonder if the doctor told her something different after that small heart attack, if she lied to me to protect me. If she knew what was coming but still wanted to give me a chance to break free from the club. It keeps coming up that way when I replay it in my mind. She wanted to protect me from myself. Why didn’t I know how she felt about the club? Why didn’t she ever tell me? I would have quit and become a mechanic, a bus driver, anything else. Would it have mattered? I tossed the sweat soaked T on the mudroom floor, grabbed a clean one from inside the dryer, and pulled it over my head as I walked through to the garage.
I was on my back on the cement floor. I left the garage to shake off the feelings Carla ignited in me. Now I was back and trying to shake Glenda’s ghost. A small jack held the bike level above a plastic oil pan. I took an Allen key to the drain plug and turned it. Hot oil poured over my hand. The plug stayed on the key as I pulled it away. I looked at the magnetic tip. No metal shavings. The engine wasn’t eating itself.
I could see Carla’s boots crossed at the ankles on the opposite side of the bike. She was leaning against the wall beside the old man’s Glide. She seemed okay with being here and not talking. I liked that. I didn’t like her reaction to the Stallion painting. It bothered me that she had some of that my-badge-is-worth-more-than-yours attitude that my Stallion past brings out in some cops. It doesn't bother me in other cops; maybe her opinion mattered more than most.
I moved to the front of my bike and twisted off the oil filter from the base of the engine. Oil poured out from the opening and began to spread across the floor. Carla laughed and tossed me a roll of shop towels from the bench. I quickly spun the new filter into place and wiped up the mess.
“Maybe you’re not such a badass biker after all,” she said.
She moved away from the old man’s bike and looked at me. I smiled back and leaned against the bench, wiping my hands in the oily shop towel. I still wondered why she was here, but figured maybe it wasn’t to bust my balls over my past. I toyed with the idea she was here for reasons that had nothing to do with the case. She seemed to read my mind.
“I want to ride with you tomorrow,” she said.
“Don’t think so. Not on that.” I nodded to the crotch rocket in the driveway.
“Hmm, that’s right. You Harley snobs are afraid of modern engineering.”
“It’s not my party. The club won’t allow any Jap crap inside its formation. You could probably run in the back with the other squares on that thing if you really want to go. But I’ll be up front in the Stallion ranks.”
I let that sit. The fallen rider run may be an open event, but the Stallion members ride at the front. Retired or not, I still had outlaw pride. I wouldn’t be caught dead riding outside the club formation.
She moved over to my bike. I ride with a solo saddle slung low in the frame. She stepped over and sat down into it, her knees bent, boots flat on the floor. The low seat fit her perfectly. She grabbed the raised bars and pulled the bike off the kickstand. She looked good, and she knew it.
“I could take this. You ride that.” She nodded toward the Glide.
“Sorry, that’s for Gunner. It’s our father’s bike, and he’s one of the fallen riders being honoured tomorrow. Only a full patch can ride that bike to a Stallion event.”
“I thought you were,” she said, stepping off the bike and looking back at the club crest painted on the rear wall.
“Was. I retired my patch long ago.”
“Why are they letting you take part in the ride then?”
“It’s like the law-enforcement hockey league. Even retired cops can play. Especially if they can put one between the pipes.”
“Well, we have a problem then. Inspector MacIntosh ordered me to stick with you tomorrow.”
So there it was. I walked over to a set of shelves that ran along the side of the garage and pulled a long, black leather seat from the top. It was a two-up version of the solo on my bike. Not much of a pad in the back, but enough for a passenger with a tough butt. I passed it to her.
“It won’t be comfortable, but if you don’t mind riding bitch, I guess I can swap the seats.”
“I believe you would be the one riding bitch no matter where I sit, Constable.”
Guess rank mattered, after all. Well, not if she wanted to ride with the club. When two worlds collide, sometimes things get turned upside down, and she’d have to learn a little about the outlaw code.
“You want to come, that’s fine, Sergeant, but you have to leave that rank shit behind. You will be my ol’ lady, as in ‘property of,’ and that means you do what I say, no matter what. Sorry, but that’s how it works.”
“You can’t be serious, Cam. I’m sure there will be women there who ride their own bikes and carry their own weight.”
“There will be two kinds of women hanging around the club. Some will ride their own bikes, but most won’t. There will be ol’ ladies and patch pussy. Old ladies are tied to a club member exclusively and are off limits. Patch pussy belongs to every club member.” I watc
hed her stiffen. She had to be a tough independent woman to get to where she was in the world of the badge. She’d either swallow her pride or miss the ride.
“My God, you’re serious. You mean you treated women like that when you rode with the club?”
“Maybe, I guess, but it wasn’t what it sounds like. I didn’t abuse anyone. Didn’t have to. The club attracts a certain kind of woman. The kind that wants the Property of Satan’s Stallion tattoo above her ass more than anything in the world. Will drop in front of any patch holder to get it.” I didn’t like explaining the club to her.
“Jesus, have you been tested?”
“Long time ago, Sergeant. I’m fine.”
“Good to hear.” She handed the seat back to me. “You won’t need this. The gixxer is my brother’s ride. I have a little custom that should be slow enough to cruise beside you in your little formation,” she said.
“Behind me,” I said. “The way it has to be.”
She looked at me for a moment. Put her Coke can on the bench and started to zip up the padded riding jacket.
“I guess I can be your property for a day, in the line of duty.”
“It’s a memorial ride, not an orgy, so relax, but we may end up back at the house, and everyone needs to know who you belong to. I know a good tattoo artist, and we can get you done up tonight.”
“In your dreams, Neville, in your dreams. I’ll just make sure no one sees my ass.”
Too bad. I watched her walk back to the gixxer as she pulled on a full face helmet. She straddled the tall sport bike, only her toes touching the pavement. Not smart. She pushed the start button and leaned in over the tank as she pushed it off the kickstand. She popped the clutch and kept just enough pressure on the brake lever to force the bike into a controlled burnout as it slowly rolled forward, and then shot to the end of the driveway. The smoke clouded my view, and I listened to the engine scream as she disappeared into the night. It was going to be fun watching her around the other old ladies. They weren’t going to like her. Guess the badge attracted a different kind of woman.
The garage door slid slowly down into place as the opening bars of “Simple Man” rang from the speakers above the workbench. I poured fresh oil into the tank and capped it as I listened to Ronnie Van Zant. I love the pure white-trash wisdom of the song. Stay simple, avoid the rich man’s gold, find peace in what you have. Fuck everything else. A Southern rock sermon.
I keep a set of folding canvas lawn chairs wedged behind the workbench. I pulled one out and slid it beside the bike. I cracked open a Coke and tipped it to the speakers as I dropped into the chair. I tossed my feet up on the still-warm exhaust to listen to the tune and relax. As Ronnie sang, I wondered if my badge was the fool’s gold I was chasing. Carla’s words stung. Her shock that the white shirts in professional standards let me carry a badge. Truth is, they said no. When I came back from the war, I was lost. I quit the club and everything else. My wife died thinking I was dead. The doctors said the congenital heart problem she’d entered life with took her out of it. I wondered if it wasn’t a broken heart.
I jumped into the bottle like a world-class coward. It’s mostly a jumbled blur of blackouts and drunken runs on the Harley. Greg somehow yanked me out of the self-pity spiral. It didn’t happen fast, but he got me sober. I knew if I was going to stay that way, I needed something outside of myself, and it wasn’t the higher power Greg was preaching. I needed brotherhood. The kind I’d found in the war and in the club. Trouble was, I didn’t want the club, and I wasn’t going back to the war.
I tried to become a Mountie. Having fought for the country, I figured I could join its national police force. It was rage more than the need for brotherhood that drove me to the badge. I’d seen the poppy fields and fought the drug lords over there. Knew the heroin trade paid for the shells that had killed Master Corporal Ronald Gosse and put the AKs in the hands of the kids I’d killed. I wanted payback for what happened on the mountain. I wanted to hurt someone for keeping me in chains while Glenda died alone.
The RCMP recruiting officer kicked me to the curb in a heartbeat. No former one-percenter was getting into that gang. The Halifax Regional Police turned me down too. A newspaper reporter on the cop beat caught wind of it and ran a front-page story under the headline War Hero Not Good Enough. I’m no hero, and I hate being called one. The newspaper rehashed the same old story. They said I’d battled alone behind enemy lines. The newspaper said I’d killed armed Taliban warriors and fought my way back into Afghanistan. Two sleepy kids with rusty AKs. Some hero.
The day after the story ran I got a call from HRP. The chief had overruled his professional standards officers. Greg watched as they pinned the badge on me. After the ceremony, I gave him the gold crucifix I’d pulled from Ronald’s body. I still wonder if Ronald talks to him now that he wears it.
I looked at the Stallion mural on the wall as the music filled the garage. Skynyrd wisdom in simple verse, telling me why I wouldn’t feel peace. Not as long as I wanted something I could never have. I needed that bond that comes in a sniper team or with the patch. In the blue-and-gold brotherhood, I was the chief’s bastard child. In the blue-and-silver world, the badge put a target on my back.
Gunner blocked a Stallion vote to kill me when I badged up. There are a few in the club who still want to see a bullet sent my way. Despite that, I get more support among the outlaw crew than from the crowd I roll with now. Pull the patch off a one-percenter and you’ll find a real patriot. Outlaw clubs treat vets with the kind of respect I have never seen in the square world. That, and the old man’s rep earned me a Nomad patch that is still mine if I walk away from the badge. Stallion Nomads are an elite crew, with no ties to any charter. My former bros don’t think I’m elite; no charter wants a former cop at the table. The Stallion Nomads don’t either, but they say the patch is still mine. I’m sure they’ve already had a vote on what to do about it if I am ever crazy enough to put it on. Someone will get a red demon with my name on it.
I drained the Coke as Blair walked into the garage. His right eye was a blood-red ball centred in a swollen mass of yellow and green. He looked like he had a baseball tucked in the side of his mouth. He favoured his right leg as he pulled another chair from behind the bench. I could see the pain in every movement as he opened the chair and took a seat beside me.
“Beer might be nice,” he said through a crooked smile. At least all the teeth were still there.
I went to the fridge, grabbed him a beer and an ice pack. Wrapped the pack in a shop towel and handed him both. I sat back down to let him drink. He’d tell me when he was ready. He took a long slow drink.
“This place smells like burned rubber.” He took another drink. Just another night.
“You look like someone burned rubber on your face. What the hell happened to you?” I let him win the cool contest. Looked like he needed a win.
“Disagreement with the bouncer at The Bank.”
“You went there? Shit, what happened? I thought you wanted to check out a stripper, not start a war.” I tossed my Coke can into a trash barrel near the door.
“Apparently they don’t want us talking to her.” He held the ice pack against the side of his head as he sipped the beer.
“So it seems. You arrest him?”
“Nope.”
“He look worse?”
“Nope. Never even got a clean shot. Pulled my gun to get him off.”
“You use it?”
“No.”
“Good. Paperwork’s a bitch.”
“What I was thinking.”
“Glad the head shot didn’t cloud your priorities.”
“Clouded ’em a bit. I called it in to MacIntosh on the way here.”
“What?”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
“Guess he was going to find out. You get the name of the guy who did it?�
�
“Was Phil Murphy and some bald guy with a head full of ink. Him, I dropped.”
“Sounds like Glen Carroll. Dirtbag trying to make his bones with the Litter Box Boys. If he’s with Murphy, it sounds like he made it. You saying they jumped you to keep you away from the dancer?”
“Indeed. Fair fight, though. I was on my feet and ready. That Murphy, man can he hit.” He lowered the ice pack to his hip.
“Fuck fair fight. We’re cops; it’s only fair if we win. Let’s send a couple of squad cars out and scoop those assholes up.”
“Let it go. Jimmy Williams broke it up. Said they had a room full of witnesses would say I started it and didn’t identify myself.”
“That true?”
“Close enough.” He brought the ice back to his face.
“You wanna go to the hospital? That looks pretty bad.”
“No, Sue will look after it. I just wanted to bring you up to speed before I went home to show her my pretty face.”
“Good thing she married you for your money.”
“Good thing.” He polished off the beer and tossed the can after mine. He pulled himself out of the chair with the freezer pack still pressed to his side. He was being cool about it, but I knew there’d be payback. I wanted to be part of it, wanted to go out there now and pistol-whip Murphy. The badge carries a lot of weight, but it can be a pain, too. Revenge beatings happened, but you had to be careful. Let the other guy start trouble and then finish it hard.
I knew Murphy didn’t throw a punch unless Jimmy Williams gave the order. If that little idiot was unleashing his bull on a cop, the Stallion had something to hide. I’d see the useless prospect in the morning and beat some answers out of him. I wouldn’t be taking my badge on the memorial ride. I could start my own trouble. Carla might just see a slice of club life.
Disposable Souls Page 19