Moon held a beer in each hand. Took a shot from each. Only the tops of the cans showed above the thick index finger and thicker thumb that held them. He always grabbed two from the cooler. Cut in half the number of times he had to get up. His stomach pushed a faded 4XL Stallion T-shirt out into his lap. His shaved head showed more bumps than a back road in springtime.
“They’re always watching the fucking place, Moon. We can get around that.” Grease returned to the JD. “I say we move it all.” He took a long drink and looked at the bottle. Not much left.
Gunner raised a hand and stood. He headed for the bar as Grease sat back down. He pulled a new bottle out, peeled the black plastic wrapper away from the cap, spun it open, and took a drink. He placed the bottle on the bar and watched his bros debate the pros and cons of hiding shit he knew should never be in the house. A couple of guns on hand, no more. That was always the rule. He voted to have the big guns stored off-site in case of a police raid. Big guns brought long sentences. The club voted him down. A street-hardened gang of black thugs living the gangsta life was muscling in on Stallion territory. They ran street hookers and sold poor-grade shit in Dartmouth. The Litter Box Boys were busy keeping the peace in Spryfield, and the Dartmouth gang was taking advantage of that. The bastards were fearless and shot at anything that pissed them off. Shot at each other every second night, just to prove they were tough. Every one of them carried, and as long as they did, Snake insisted on keeping the house fortified.
“Let’s give ’em the tape,” Gunner said as he moved back to take his place beside Snake. He placed the new bottle on the crate.
“What? How much of that shit you drink?” Moon asked, raising a hidden beer can to his face.
“Fuck off, Gunner, we’re serious here,” Snake said.
“So am I.”
“Fuck me. He’s going rat like his brother.” Dirty Lyle was back on his feet.
Gunner covered the distance between the wooden crate and Lyle in two quick steps. He grabbed a fist full of perfectly pressed shirt and slammed the smaller biker into the wall beside the picture of Cam. “You’re new, Lyle, so maybe you need a lesson in club history.”
The others watched, but no one made a move. Gunner was sergeant-at-arms, as well as VP, and discipline was his to hand out.
“Cam is no rat,” said Gunner. “Made a stupid life choice for sure, but that doesn’t make him a fucking rat. You understand?” He held Lyle just off his feet with his right hand. With his left, he grabbed his face, and shoved it so it was pinned to the wall pointing toward the picture of the victorious Cam in the ring. Lyle remained silent. “He is a member of this club out in good standing. Means he gets respect like any other bro. You call a bro a rat, Lyle, then I got to investigate. If it’s true, he gets killed. If not, you get fucked up for saying it.”
Gunner released both hands, and Lyle dropped back to the floor. He stood slumped against the wall, his eyes fixed on Gunner.
“He’s a fucking cop,” said Lyle. “Cop, rat, what the fuck is the difference?” Kid was standing his ground. Good trait for a Stallion. Bad idea at the moment. Gunner’s right arm was moving back.
“Fuck, Gunner, hang on.” Grease put a hand on Gunner’s shoulder. Gunner spun away from the wall and pushed past Grease, trying to walk it off. He turned back from the opposite side of the crate.
“You stunned cunt,” Gunner said. “He’s been a fucking cop for seven years. If he was fucking ratting the club, they’d have busted down that door long ago. We’d a been in jail before you were even a prospect,” he said.
Grease sat back down. Gunner moved quickly back to the wall and brought a right cross with him. The fist smashed hard into jawbone, and Lyle dropped to the floor, unconscious. Grease was back on his feet. Gunner turned back to him.
“He called me a rat, too. You got a problem?” The two stood face to face.
“He had that shot coming. Now sit the fuck down, both of you.” Snake leaned forward and reached for the bottle. “Gunner, why should we bend over for Cam and his useless fucking pals? And this needs to be good.”
Snake handed the bottle to Gunner, and he sat back down. Gunner took a longer shot. Fucking hand was throbbing again. He took a couple of deep breaths to work the adrenaline out of his system as he passed the bottle to Grease.
“We give him the tape that shows the headlights drive past the clubhouse, go up the hill, and leave. Not the part where the dumb bitch comes here. Nothing but a blurry fucking car. I say we give it to Cam as a favour to a former bro. Not to the cops but to him personally. No need to worry about a warrant or cops in the house if they have the thing.” He walked behind the bar and filled a draft beer pitcher with water from the tap.
“Maybe. Maybe. Can we cut it that way?” Snake asked.
“I can.” Moon rolled out of his chair, wheezing as he moved to the cooler beside Snake. Grabbed two more beers.
Gunner walked to the still-unconscious Lyle and dumped the pitcher of water on his head. The smaller biker rolled over, coughing. His right hand moved to his belt, searching for a gun. He shook his head and seemed to realize he was safe. His hand relaxed. Gunner looked down.
“Get the fuck up. You’re missing the meeting, dickhead.” Gunner walked back and took his seat. Lyle pulled himself up and did the same.
“Word gets out we helped the cops, we lose serious cred out there,” Grease said.
“Well, then, word doesn’t get out,” Gunner said. “We make the prospect do it to be safe. People start talking; he never gets a patch. Shit happens.” He looked at Lyle. “Cam won’t say shit about how he got it. Hell, he’s coming to the ride; we can do it then.”
“They can’t come kicking the door in looking for something they already have,” Snake said. “Gunner, I hate like fuck to give anything to the cops, but I think you just solved the problem. Let’s vote on it.”
Snake cracked the gavel again.
Chapter 10
Saturday morning
An empty strip club is almost as gloomy as a full one. When the beer is flowing and the cat calls mix with the pounding bass lines, you can almost taste the desperation. It rolls off the stage where dead-eyed women fake passion on a pole and dream about the big break that will never come. It falls face first on tables where fantasies about attaining the unattainable are drowned in cheap draft. It drops hard-earned cash on lap dances that feel cheap. That’s when the club is really rocking.
It wasn’t rocking now. Lolita Shines sat alone at a table in the centre of the room. She wore loose-fitting jeans under her blue-and-silver Satan’s Stallion support hoodie. The morning sunlight peered through slats in the shuttered windows. The shafts of light bounced off the angled mirrors behind the stage and searched out the darkest spaces. The club was closed. Glen, the bartender, was out back waiting for a beer truck to make its daily delivery, and Lolita was the only dancer out front. She worked the onscreen keyboard on a pink-and-white iPhone. The colour suited her stage image, not her mood.
At nineteen, Lolita was a barely legal headliner. The best kind. Clubs billed her as Little Lo, The Private School Ho in newspaper ads in every city on the Stallion circuit from Vancouver to Halifax. The Montreal clubs were better. Lolita, La Petite Étudiante Cochonne, they called her in posters there. She didn’t know what it meant, but it seemed classier. Either way, she knew what it was about. Fresh meat. If only they knew.
She leaned over the table as she reread the text on the screen. Her long black hair fell from her head like a curtain around the phone. She stared at the tiny screen: “Tatjana, my love, it is our time.”
She wanted to answer the text. She knew better. The Stallion members read all of her texts, and she’d have to explain this one.
At least they didn’t know her real name. She’d tell them it was a mistake, she had no idea who Tatjana was. In Montreal, they’d taught her that the police watched dancers and r
ead their phone messages, too. Cops were dumb, so she didn’t worry about them reading it. They couldn’t even figure out how old she was. For three years, she’d danced from Vancouver to Halifax as a nineteen-year-old headliner, and not one cop did the math. They didn’t care, probably came to watch her like that Indian cop last night. She hated Jimmy Williams, but was glad he got that cop away from her.
She wanted to answer Samuel’s message, but knew she couldn’t. The girls had their own code, but he wouldn’t know how to read it.
She slipped her phone into the pocket of her hoodie and headed to the backroom. She knew exactly what it would take to convince Glen to let her borrow his phone.
The late-morning sunlight reached over the top of the hill and spilled inside the concrete and barbed wire box surrounding the Stallion compound. Wisps of vapour rose from the parking lot where the first rays began to cook the blacktop. The sunlight bounced from the chrome and glass on fifteen bikes lined up side by side in front of the clubhouse. The lot was big enough to hold twenty half-ton trucks and often did during weekly church in the dead of winter. An old gas pump sat on a raised platform in the darkest corner of the lot. It would be well past noon before the sun found it. A row of wooden tables lined the long wall leading from the front gate to the house. The tabletops were spotless, the bottles and glasses from last night’s party gone. Two oversized barbecue pits sat on the opposite side of the gate, a short distance from the tables, a safe distance from the gas pump.
Jimmy Williams directed a stream of water at Gunner’s bike. He dropped the hose and grabbed a soap-soaked sponge from a large plastic bucket and began wiping the tank. He was getting the bikes ready for the ride, and he resented washing Gunner’s. He knew the prick wouldn’t even be riding it. He’d have his old man’s Glide, and when that got here, Jimmy would have another bike to clean. When the bikes were clean, Williams had to struggle as he rolled them over to the gas pump to top off each tank. The bikes with Apes were beyond his reach. They would have to wait for one of the other prospects. Gunner had him doing the yardwork alone this morning. Like it was his fault that fucking Indian cop arrived at the bar. He spit on the sponge, and rubbed it into the pistol grip at the top of the shifter.
As he leaned over to pick up the hose, he felt the phone vibrate inside his jeans’ pocket. He pulled it out to see a text: “Time to be a winner. Get what you need to deal with it.”
Fucking Mapp. As if Gunner wasn’t a big enough asshole. Well, he couldn’t do shit right now. He had bikes to wash, a run to go on, and then he’d be behind the barbecue flipping burgers all afternoon. He was about to stuff the phone back in his pocket when it began to vibrate again.
Another message: “I’ve got your back covered. It’s been confirmed.”
Williams stared at it for a moment. His back covered. A patch for a dead cop? Cops were off limits, mostly. Killing the wrong person was always fine if you didn’t get caught. Killing cops, prosecutors, or even reporters brought too much heat, but sometimes it had to be done. You show the balls for that kind of wet work, and you climb fast. If he pulled it off, and kept the heat away from the club, he’d be a hero.
Williams moved to the next bike, thinking it through. Pull it off, and he was in. Fuck it up, and he was dead. Shit, seemed like a reasonable gamble. Still, he’d need the tools, and he was too fucking busy. He grabbed the phone and punched in Phil’s number.
The smell of coffee filled the open market as Blair limped slowly to the corner cafe. He needed a quality caffeine jolt. The brew at the morning briefing was almost as hard to swallow as the beating. He loved the Second Cup below the Bedford office. He knew it was a chain but still thought of it as a cafe. It had all the flavour but none of the bullshit of the trendy downtown shops that grew quiet when a cop walked in. In Bedford, the money crowd sipped the expensive brew, but they had nothing in common with the artists, pissed-off anarchists, and high-school Goths filling the downtown cafes. Money didn’t mind a badge around as long as it didn’t get too close. A caffeine boost and a little comfort food were in order. He could smell the freshly baked scones along with the coffee, and he decided what Sue didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. She’d been pretty upset about the beating, or maybe that it happened in a strip club. He’d had busted, cracked, and bruised ribs before. That kind of pain got his attention. Sleep was impossible, and this time sympathy was in short supply at home.
Two cops walked out of the coffee shop as Blair approached. Both were HRP officers, and Blair couldn’t remember their names. One was an older, white-haired guy. His eyes peered out over heavy bags, his broad nose showing a map of red veins. He was carrying too much weight around the middle, had the look of a lifer who was about ready to hang up the badge. The guy carrying the coffee was maybe thirty, had the close-cut hair and squared-away look of a uniform new to the job. One guy on his last plain-clothes assignment, the other on his first. They stopped in front of Blair.
“Shouldn’t you be going over there?” The old guy nodded to the far corner of the market.
Without turning, Blair knew the guy was pointing to the liquor boutique. The young cop smiled.
“Problem?” Blair locked eyes with the older cop.
“Yeah, big problem, asshole. Next time your DNA cries for firewater do us all a favour. Grab a bottle and a brown bag here. Don’t make up some shit excuse to go to a bar and start a fight. Make a mess the rest of us have to live with.”
As Blair moved toward him, the young cop blocked his path.
“It’s all right, Ricky, this guy ain’t gonna do shit.”
“You’re right. Can’t beat stupid out of a moron, no point in trying.”
Blair pushed past and headed into the coffee shop.
He smiled to the brunette barista as he walked in. She touched her temple with a look of concern. He shrugged, ordered, and then eased into a seat by the window. The shop didn’t have table service, but he knew she’d look after him. He tried to adjust his position in the seat. The Kevlar vest under his shirt was too tight. He wasn’t planning a gun fight. It helped protect his ribs.
He was trying not to let the confrontation with the two morons upset him. But he knew they weren’t alone. Most of the team was still upstairs in the office, and more than a few would be second-guessing his decision to go to the strip club. Inspector MacIntosh beat him down for it during the morning briefing. Said he should have been working real leads, not hanging out in bars. Ordered him to forget the stripper and focus on the case. Blair was more concerned about the real cops. He knew the two morons had a right to be pissed off. He had left the fight with his tail between his legs. Left those assholes believing they could beat on a cop. No one with a badge could live with that, and Blair would wear it until he set it right. On the upside, no one from The Fog Bank filed a complaint, and no one knew he pulled his gun.
His coffee arrived. The barista looked at his bruise and grimaced. Maybe it wasn’t cool. Three attractive young women sitting at a nearby table broke off their conversation as Father Greg walked past. Blair had walked past the Bedford blondes’ club a hundred times and never gotten a notice. Cam’s brother, indeed. Greg chatted them up before ordering a coffee, then carried it over and sat across from Blair.
“My, that doesn’t look good,” he said by way of a greeting.
“Slipped in the shower.”
“Well, you must have bounced a few times.”
The barista still had the look of concern as she watched Father Greg join him. The attention would have been easier to take if he’d actually landed a good punch. At least the ego bruise didn’t show. Hurt though.
“So, Father, things are a little hectic. How can I help you?” Blair sipped his coffee, grateful Murphy hadn’t connected with his jaw. He wasn’t sure why Father Greg had wanted to meet, and really didn’t have the time to chat. He was going to interview members of the Church of Salvation youth group while Cam played biker.<
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“Yes, I’m sure you are quite busy, and I have to be getting out to Peggys Cove for today's bike blessing as well,” the young priest said. “I just wanted to have a word about the investigation.” He wrapped his hands around the warm coffee mug and glanced at the people sitting along the counter behind Blair.
“Can you tell me first what Bobby had to say?”
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you know we talked.”
“It’s what we do.”
“Yes, I guess it is. I can’t talk about what Bobby said.” He glanced around again.
“You saying Bobby confessed something, Father?” Blair took another drink. Father Greg kept his cup between his hands.
“Blair, you know I could never answer a question like that.”
“No, I guess not. Is he Catholic?”
“I suppose that’s fair. Yes, lapsed, I’m afraid, but I think maybe he’s ready to come home.”
“Well, Father, his home may have more bars than pews.”
“I’ll tell you what I told Cam Thursday. I don’t believe Bobby capable of these things.” He held Blair’s eyes.
“I appreciate that.” Father Greg had made the remark to Cam before Bobby Simms’s confession. If he was still calling him innocent, that carried weight.
“Is that what you needed to tell me?”
“No, well, yes, I suppose, but I’m worried about something else.”
“What would that be, Father?”
“Blair, you are a strong Catholic, and I feel confident that you believe, as I do, the Church has suffered more than perhaps it should have.”
“Lot of bad things have happened, Father. Going to take time for that to go away.”
“Indeed, the healing will take time, but I feel it is beginning and I’m afraid of what all this could do to slow that.”
Disposable Souls Page 21