by CM Genovese
“Pipe,” Tayla said as she wrapped her arms around me again.
“He’s right, Tay,” I replied. “You really should talk to Cassie. You two would have a lot in common. She’s a social worker. Not from our world either. But she’s making the best of it.”
I kissed her forehead and then Rain took her gently by the arm and escorted her out of the room.
“I’ll say goodbye before we leave,” I promised as she looked back at me.
BP hung up his phone and walked back to my room. “That was Lolli over at the Trail Blazer. I called to ask if she’d heard anything about a new Russian hangout. She has. Let’s go.”
The Trail Blazer was the strip club some of the brothers frequented. Lolli was an ex house mouse for the MC and always kept an ear open for us. Half the intel we gathered came from her. It was fucking ridiculous how much men liked to run their mouths in the presence of beautiful women.
As promised, I said goodbye to Tayla and then followed the others out of the club. Our bikes roared to life as we pulled out of the parking lot. Over my shoulder, I noticed Tayla walk out the door and watch us drive away. She didn’t wave or try to get my attention. She only watched, and I knew she was contemplating whether or not this relationship was going to work. I was wondering the same thing.
The Sly Paw looked like a shady joint. The lights out front were so dim they had to be purposely set that way. Only a few cars were parked outside. From what Lolli had told BP, this was a strip club that only let foreign girls dance. Rumors were it was more of a whorehouse than a strip club. One of Lolli’s coworkers used to dance here until she got off drugs and refused to fuck clients for cash. At least working at the Trail Blazer, she could make that choice for herself. At Sly Paw it was expected.
The place’s location was a nightmare – for them. For a group of thugs carrying out attacks all over the damn city, they sure planned their base like a bunch of fucking idiots. Boy scouts would have been smarter than this. From where we were parked around the corner, we could clearly see their parking lot. Behind and around the building were hills. This club was surrounded on three sides by elevated terrain.
“We should climb up on one of them hills and open fire on their punk asses,” Slitz suggested.
“We don’t even know for sure these are the guys responsible,” BP said.
“But you said Lolli heard them talking about the pub,” I replied.
“Talking about a pub,” he corrected me. “For all I know they were talking about where to order dinner.”
He had a point. Plus, the place could have customers and would have dancers. We couldn’t risk killing innocent people.
“So how do you want to handle this, Pres?” Rain asked.
“Cordially,” he said. “Follow me and don’t make a move unless I tell you.”
We parked our bikes where we were watching, around the corner of the old rundown apartment building across the street. Our engines were too loud and if we rode any closer to the building, they’d have a heads up we were coming. We walked side by side through the parking lot. It wasn’t the best plan, but I had to follow BP’s lead, so through the front door we walked.
The interior lighting was pink, and smoke drifted across the room. Not from a machine but from the cigars and cigarettes of the patrons. On stage, a bony, completely naked woman danced clumsily to ‘Piggy’ by Nine Inch Nails. She could barely stay on her feet. The pole was more of a crutch than anything sensual. She was doped up out of her mind.
The stage was shaped like a paw with room for only one girl at a time to dance. Seated around it were five patrons. None of them seemed to be together. This wasn’t the kind of place guys went for a bachelor party or a group gathering. It was the secret place they visited to get their dicks wet in tattered pussy. One of these unlucky guys would be heading to a back room with the meth head stumbling around on stage.
A DJ minded his business at his booth. He played with his phone until it was time to change the song. A bouncer sat at the bar chatting up the attractive bartender. She was the prettiest thing in the place but was a little too goth for my taste. Her black eyeliner, lipstick, and fingernail polish was on thick.
A waitress approached us. She looked nearly as high as the dancer. She was an older woman with stubby nipple piercings pushing against the fabric of her top. Below, she wore only a thong. It seemed she was the only server on staff tonight.
“This place is nasty,” Rain whispered in my ear.
Beyond the stage, the rest of the club was shrouded in shadows. Doors led to the back of the house and there was a cubby area that was nearly pitch dark inside and I guessed was where the lap dances took place.
“Gentlemen,” the waitress said, “can I get y’all a drink?”
“Where’s the boss?” BP asked.
“Maxim?” she asked.
“Is he the boss?”
“Yes.”
BP scoffed and shook his head. “Yes. Maxim then.”
“He’s in the back. As always. With his friends.”
“His friends?”
She glanced at each of us, suddenly looking suspicious. “What did y’all want to order again?”
I was thirsty, but I didn’t trust the beer bottles let alone the whiskey glasses in this place.
“He’s back there?” BP asked, pointing at a door in the back of the room.
“Maybe I should tell him someone’s—” she began.
“Tell the customers they should leave,” BP ordered. “And make sure she keeps her mouth shut.”
Rain took the waitress by the arm and held a finger up to his lips to warn her to be quiet. He dragged her over to the bouncer, who only stopped flirting with the bartender when he saw the gun Rain had pointed at his side.
Slitz and I walked over to the guys seated around the stage.
“Time to go, buddy,” Slitz said to one of the guys on the right side.
“Who the fuck are—” he began.
Slitz showed him the gun at his hip and the man shut up. The guy seated nearest him also got up and left.
“Sorry, guys, but show’s over,” I told the three on my side.
“Show ain’t fuckin’ over,” one of the guys, a man with his hat pulled low argued. “Tootsie’s still on stage. I’m meeting her after—”
“I said the show’s fucking over,” I told him.
I showed him the gun at my hip.
“That don’t scare me,” he said, so I hit him with a ridged hand strike across his throat.
He doubled up and fell onto the floor. The other two men backed away.
“Y’all know him?” I asked.
They shook their heads.
“Do me a favor and help get him out into the parking lot,” I said.
They quickly reached down, grabbed the man’s arms, and dragged him out the door. With all the customers gone, we only had the dancer, the waitress, the DJ, the bouncer, and the bartender to worry about.
BP pointed his gun at the DJ and with his free hand made the cutthroat motion to let him know it was time to turn off the music. He did as he was told and then slowly walked toward the door. When he neared us, he said, “Umm… I work here part time. Can I go?”
“It would be better if you did,” BP advised him.
The bartender wasn’t as scared. She picked up a phone and pushed a single button on it. Then she hung it up.
“Who did you just call?” BP asked.
She smiled.
“Bitch, who’d you call?” Slitz asked.
“You better watch your fuckin’ mouth—” the bouncer started, but Rain clocked him on the back of his head with his gun and the big guy went down, where he lay passed out on the floor.
“Bitch? Really?” the bartender said. “That’s the best you can come up with? I work in a fucking dive bar. A dive tittie bar. You think I haven’t heard that one before?”
It didn’t take long to get the answer to who was on the other side of the phone. The door in the back popped open
and out stepped five guys in business suits.
Fucking Russians.
Behind them, a couple of Samoan gangsters stepped out. All seven of the men were armed.
“Looks like these are our guys,” I said. “Can’t imagine a lot of Russians and Samoans are hanging out together.”
“It seems you would like a private show, yes?” the guy out front said. He was big and looked like he could easily be in charge.
Even I was surprised when BP pointed his gun at the guy and shot him in the throat.
Guns came up from everybody in the room. It was a standoff. Their six versus our four. I wished we’d brought more guys.
“Drop your guns!” I ordered the two Samoans standing across from me.
They looked terrified.
Russian curse words came at us from all three of the others. The Russian who’d been shot fell to his knees and dropped his gun. His face was a mask of confusion while his hands frantically tried to close the wound seeping blood all down the front of his body. When he finally pitched forward onto his face, a huge puddle of blood had spread all around him.
“You drop your guns and we’ll put ours away,” BP said.
“Fuck you!” one of the Russians said.
“No, fuck you!” Slitz replied.
It was all yelling and shouting. Everyone was frantic.
Behind us, the bartender screamed into the phone, “Maxim, they shot Rat!”
“Rat, huh?” BP asked as he kicked at the man choking on his own blood at his feet. “Rats are never good for business. I think I did you a favor.”
“I will fucking kill you!” one of the Russians yelled. This one was mean, had a permanent “in pain” face, and was marred by a large, bright red scar that ran from the top of his head down over a missing ear and all the way to his chin. He looked like he’d been hit with a machete. He’d been through some shit, and I had no doubt he was close to firing his weapon.
At any moment, if one person pulled their trigger, all the others would follow, and all of us would die tonight.
“Whoa! What is going on here?!” a sleazebag Russian with his dress shirt unbuttoned way too far said as he stepped out from the door in the back, late as hell to the party, with his hair slicked over and long Elvis-like sideburns.
“Maxim?” BP asked.
“Yes, I am Maxim. What is going on here?”
“I took care of your Rat problem. You see, y’all shot one of mine tonight. Drive-by at Paddy’s pub.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
The two Samoans suddenly looked even more nervous.
“You shot up the pub,” I said. “And some of your goons attacked me at a motel.”
“I heard about that,” Maxim said. “You are a great warrior, no? You shot two of them. I thought all this was over then. They tried, they failed. Right, Manny?”
One of the Samoans was terrified. “Yes, boss.”
“But it’s not over, is it?” I asked Manny. “You punk motherfuckers went into Carla’s apartment and attacked her in the shower. And you shot up her pub tonight. Almost killed my fucking woman!”
“Fuck you, man,” Manny replied with only half the toughness I would expect out of him.
“Is this true?” Maxim asked, walking over to the two Samoan men.
Manny glanced at the Russian with the scar on his head.
Maxim noticed it and looked over at the guy. “Sacha, this is true?”
Sacha looked back at him and shrugged. “We had to finish the business. You know.”
“It stops now,” Maxim ordered. “You fucking idiots with that stupid fucking robbery. Of a pub. Paddy’s. They have great peach cobbler. You fucking morons.”
Manny dropped his gaze to the floor and mumbled something.
“What did you say?” Maxim asked.
Manny lifted his head and suddenly seemed much prouder than he had before. “I don’t answer to you. Do you know what my people—”
Maxim pulled a gun out of his pants, put it to Manny’s head, and pulled the trigger. I flinched as his brains blew out the side of his head and the Samoan fell to the ground, dead. The other Samoan didn’t move. He froze in place. Maxim turned toward him.
“Bobby, are we going to have a problem?” he asked.
The Samoan man, Bobby, shook his head. “No, boss.”
Maxim walked to BP and stood only a couple of feet from him. We all still had our guns raised. BP lowered his, and I knew he was expecting one of us to react quickly enough to save him if it came to that. Maxim stared at the Royal Bastards emblem on BP’s kutte.
“Royal Bastards,” he said. “I have heard of you. You went to war with some of my people who were here doing some… bad things. No?”
“Won the war,” BP corrected him. “You don’t come into my backyard, kick shit around, fuck with women, and then carve out a small piece of Alaska land to start shipping back and forth.”
“How about guns and drugs?” Maxim asked.
BP didn’t answer.
“I have a much quieter operation,” Maxim continued. “With my Samoan friends. I don’t bother you. I haven’t, no?”
BP laughed. “Do I need to go over the laundry list of all the shit y’all have done again?”
“The shootings you mean?” Maxim asked with a chuckle. “Truly. I am sorry about that. It was a stupid mistake by young men. A robbery gone bad. Then they tried to fix the mistake and made more. I assure you it will not happen again. And, as you can see, one Russian is down and one Samoan. You killed one. I killed the other. It is like we are brothers.”
“I’m not your fucking brother,” BP replied.
“Brother, cousin, friend… whatever,” Maxim said. “You go now. You never hear from us again. We don’t bother you. You don’t bother us. Unless you want in on our… our little business. I will reach for my card, yeah?” Slowly, Maxim reached into his suit jacket. He fished out a business card and handed it to BP. “If you want in on our business… I’m sure there is something we can work out.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to kill every single one of these pricks, but then again, if there was a peaceful way out of this, I knew we had to take it. Maxim was right. Only Carla had been shot on our end and she’d live. They’d lost two in their botched robbery, two the night they attacked me at the motel, and two here in this strip club. Six of their deaths to zero of ours wasn’t bad odds.
“Maxim…” an old, cracking voice called out from somewhere in the room. It seemed to float on the air and come from all directions at once as if played through a surround sound system. “Maaaaaaxim.”
“Grandmother, one moment,” Maxim replied.
“No, now,” the old lady’s voice called out.
“I’m sorry. One moment,” Maxim said as he walked away from us and into the dark, cubby-like space in the room where I’d imagined strippers would perform lap dances.
In total silence, we all stood waiting for him. I didn’t like him disappearing in the darkness. Technically, he could have opened fire on us, and we wouldn’t have known until it was too late, but those shots never came.
Less than a minute later, a dull purple light came to life inside the cubby. It cast an eerie glow over a rocking chair at the back of the space.
Seated in the chair was an old woman with long, grey, stringy hair that hung down over her shoulders and swept the floor each time she rocked back and forth. Her nose was big, her mouth crooked with no teeth as she smiled our way and licked at her lips. Her gums slapped inside her mouth. Bile rose to the top of my throat as I watched her disgusting grin and listened to the sloshing of her tongue. She wore a dark, maybe brown robe. Her slipper-covered feet slid back and forth over the wooden floor in time with her hair.
She held up a hand and pointed a finger at me.
“You,” Maxim said as he stepped away from his grandmother and walked toward me. “My grandmother is a sort of… a seer. She would like to speak with you.”
“A seer,�
� I said. “What the hell’s a seer? Like a psychic?”
“Um… yes. Something like that,” Maxim replied. “Some, mostly people of an old age, might call her a witch.”
I looked back at BP who shrugged his shoulders. I rolled my eyes and made my way toward the old woman. I hadn’t noticed it before, but seated on a chair against the wall was a young man, probably no older than eighteen. He was shirtless and his skin had a sweaty sheen to it. His hair seemed wet and was parted down the middle like some kind of real-life ventriloquist dummy. His eyes seemed to glow in the purple light. His teeth were nearly as rotted as the old lady’s. He was a creepy little shit, and I wanted to wipe the fucking smile off his dumb face.
“We will leave you alone,” Maxim said as he walked out to the rest of them and led them all toward the bar.
“Pipe, you okay in there, brother?” BP called out.
I turned toward him and held a thumb up. He nodded and joined the others at the bar.
“Yeah?” I said when we were alone.
She raised her hand to her face and stroked her chin with her thumb. Her long, bony arm seemed to disappear in the darkness of her robe sleeve.
The young man seated beside her giggled and it gave me the chills. “She doesn’t speak English,” he said. His voice was very feminine and only added to the strange vibe I was getting. I didn’t want to stand here and talk to these people. I wanted to get the fuck out of the club. “She says your name is Kieran.”
Nobody knew my real name. Not since Holly had I heard anyone call me that. BP knew it, but he never used it. I’d been Pipeline, Pipe, since he brought me into the Royal Bastards.
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
The old lady prattled on in Russian and the young man filled me in along the way.
“She says that is not important,” the man said.
“It’s pretty damn important to—”
“She says you have upset the balance.”
“What balance? I haven’t upset—”
“You upset the balance many years ago. The price was the baby. Maybe now it will be yours.” The young man giggled and tucked his legs up under him.
When I didn’t respond, he continued, “She says the Black Volga wanted the baby’s blood. They were there for the child, not for the girl. Not for you. But you got in the way, so now maybe her curse has been passed on to you.”