by Mel Odom
He wore his colors, and his jacket covered the two Glock. 45s he carried in shoulder holsters. His jeans were clean but held old mud, blood, and oil stains. Under the jacket he wore a sleeveless black concert T-shirt featuring Steppenwolf. Square-toed biker’s boots encased his feet.
Fat Mike sat astride his Harley next to Victor. There were a lot of other sleds in the gravel parking lot. Tawny Kitty was a biker bar and not a tourist attraction.
There were a few cars there too. Victor swept them with his gaze. Some of the vehicles belonged to college kids still in town for summer classes who thought slumming would be cool. Or they belonged to young women looking for bad boys.
The bar was a rough-cut square of stone and wood. Neon lights promising “Beer” and “Live Entertainment” hung in the windows. Another sign advertised Open. The sign advertising Tawny Kitty showed a young blonde in revealing clothing with a saucy glint in her eyes. The years had faded the colors of the sign, but it still drew salacious attention.
Victor stretched and reached into his jeans pocket. After a moment of digging, he brought out a crumpled cigarette pack. He unfolded it and stuck a cigarette in his mouth, then lit it with a skull-embossed Zippo lighter.
Without another word, he swung his leg over the motorcycle and stepped toward the bar. As always, Fat Mike was right behind him.
›› 1707 Hours
The interior of the bar was a little better than the exterior but not by much. Tawny Kitty was twenty years out of date. Two dance stages equipped with brass poles and backed by mirrors divided the large room into distinct areas. The long bar serviced both areas.
The stench of beer, cigarettes, reefer, sweat, nachos, and cheap perfume hung in the turgid air. Victor barely noticed it. He’d spent more time inside places like this than he had outside of them.
Young women-their bodies hollowed out by drugs and years of having their pride stripped out of them to leave only hard-edged anger or dulled acceptance-gyrated on the stages to an old 38 Special song. Nearly two dozen men and a handful of women sat around the stages. None of them appeared especially entertained.
Victor swept the bar with his gaze and didn’t see the man he was looking for. He wasn’t surprised. He and Fat Mike had arrived a little early. Victor did that when he was meeting with people he didn’t particularly trust. Staking out the terrain first was important. That had been one of the first lessons he’d learned in Vietnam.
A petite hostess approached them. She wore immodestly cut jean shorts and a chambray shirt with the sleeves hacked off and tied well above her waist. Her dishwater blonde hair held a green tint under the weak light. Tattoos covered her arms and legs and ringed her navel.
“Can I get you boys something?” the waitress asked.
“Beers,” Victor said.
“Domestic or imported?” the waitress asked.
“American,” Victor said. “I fought for this country. I’ll drink the beer that’s made here too.”
“You want me to take you to a table?” the young woman asked. “Or do you want to pick one out for yourselves? It’s early yet. Got plenty of room.”
Victor waved her off. “When you get those beers, we’ll look just like this.” He walked through the tables and took one against the back wall that gave him a good view of the room. Then he dropped into a chair.
Fat Mike sat at another table nearby and to one side. They always left each other clear fields of fire in case they needed it. If the waitress thought the seating arrangement was odd when she returned with the drinks, she didn’t mention it.
›› 1717 Hours
Minutes passed as rock and roll pounded the bar’s walls.
Victor drank his beer and gazed around the bar. Other bikers lounged nearby, but none of them were Purple Royals. The Tawny Kitty was a neutral zone, a lot like the DMZ back in Nam.
“You seen your boy today?” Fat Mike asked from his table.
“A little.”
“A little?” Fat Mike shook his head sadly. “Don’t he know it’s Father’s Day? He should be hanging with you. A boy should be with his daddy on Father’s Day.”
“This ain’t exactly something I want Bobby Lee hanging around for.” Victor took another sip of beer. “Boy’s got enough problems.”
“That beef with them jarheads down in Camp Lejeune?” Fat Mike waved the possibility away. “If they was gonna do something, they’d have done it by now.”
“They been looking for Bobby Lee.”
“Well, they ain’t found him.”
“We met a lot of jarheads while we were doing our bit,” Victor said. “You know the problem with jarheads.”
“Ain’t smart enough to know when to give up on something. I know. Bobby Lee shouldn’t have left any witnesses behind when he jacked that car. Me and you wouldn’t have done that.”
“Me and you wouldn’t have jacked no car.”
Fat Mike shrugged. “Me and you was always too smart for that. We learned what we needed to know back in the Army.” He grinned like a sly old hound. “But you got to cut Bobby Lee some slack. You wasn’t always there. He’s learning the best way he knows how.”
That rankled Victor. He hadn’t even known Amelia was pregnant with the boy until he’d gotten served with the papers. He’d married her while on a weekend bender, then come to his senses when he was sobered up back in South Korea. He hadn’t come home again.
He’d told himself that Bobby Lee wasn’t his, that Amelia was just sticking it to him for the child support the Army made him pay. But then he’d come back home after the Gulf War and seen the boy. There had been no denying it then. The boy had been the spitting image of him.
Victor could remember how weird that had felt. With everything he’d done, everything he’d seen, he’d never once thought about being a daddy. He didn’t run with guys who had kids-in the Army or out. He remembered his old man, but there weren’t any fond memories there. His daddy was the reason Victor had joined the Army at eighteen and quit high school midterm to go to Vietnam. Fighting the Vietnamese made more sense than trying to fight his daddy.
At first Victor and Bobby Lee had only grudgingly admitted the other existed. Victor hadn’t held that against the boy. He didn’t hold it against him now.
He could remember when the child support had been pushed through and the Army had given a big chunk of his pay to Amelia every month. Victor hadn’t had much love for Bobby Lee then. But things were different now. Victor liked the idea that the boy was a lot like him and that there was some part of him that would continue existing after he was gone.
He just wished Bobby Lee wasn’t so reckless. That carjacking in Jacksonville had been boneheaded. But Victor figured the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree there either. If Uncle Sam hadn’t covered Victor’s mistakes, then found a use for them, he might have ended up the same way.
“Bobby Lee and me are gonna hook up later,” Victor said. “Gonna be down at Spider’s. I’m buying Bobby Lee a new tattoo.”
“Boy’s got a fetish about them, don’t he? I’m surprised Spider can find a place to put a tattoo on him.”
“Been saving a place right over his heart. For when he was in love.”
“Bobby Lee’s in love?”
“Thinks he is. He’s got a girl pregnant who says she loves him. She ran off from her folks and they’re thinking about getting married.”
“Is the kid his?”
“He thinks it is.” Victor could barely remember having the conversation with his son. They’d both been blitzed at a recent cookout when the chapter had gotten together to celebrate the prison release of one of the members. Victor couldn’t even remember the girl’s name.
“Be good if it is.”
Victor nodded and sipped beer.
“Hey,” Fat Mike said, “I just realized he’s about to make you a granddaddy.”
“Yeah.” That concept was still new to Victor. It sat among his thoughts like a poised rattlesnake and made him feel uneasy. He was just now
starting to get comfortable with the idea of Bobby Lee. Adding to the confusion wasn’t a good idea.
And there was no telling what Amelia might try to do. Back when Victor had mustered out and come home, after Bobby Lee had started coming around when he was twelve or thirteen, Amelia had tried to stop it. She’d even taken out a restraining order to keep Victor from the boy. The problem with that was that Bobby Lee was coming to see Victor, not Victor to see Bobby Lee.
Then Victor had gotten busted on the manslaughter charge. There hadn’t been any way around it, and he’d been lucky they hadn’t gotten him stuck with murder one. Time inside the pen hadn’t been easy, but he’d done it standing up.
When he’d gotten out three years ago, Bobby Lee had ridden up with the other Purple Royals like he belonged. Fat Mike had even given him the keys to Victor’s ride, and Bobby Lee had ridden home behind his daddy for the first time ever.
Of course, that hadn’t fixed everything between them. There was too much history that had been bad, too much time that had been lost. Bobby Lee’s own arrogant rebelliousness-honed to a razor’s edge fighting his mama and stepdaddy-had kept him from getting too close to Victor.
The fact that Victor didn’t want the boy in the Purple Royals was another stumbling block. It wasn’t to keep Bobby Lee from a life of crime. Bobby Lee’d had a long history with juvie even before he met Victor for the first time. There was no keeping the boy out of trouble.
The attack on the Marine in Jacksonville was going to be a problem sooner or later, though. The best thing Bobby Lee could have done was leave North Carolina. Go out West to California.
The reason Victor didn’t want Bobby Lee in the Purple Royals was because he didn’t have enough of what it took to be a member of the gang. Bobby Lee was too independent and boneheaded. Victor had seen a lot of young men like him. He’d seen them blown up and shot down in the bush.
Maybe in time Bobby Lee would change.
“You a granddaddy.” The thought seemed stuck in Fat Mike’s mind. Thoughts often got that way for him. He was rattlesnake smart and junkyard-dog clever, but his mind tended to run in the same track when left to itself. “Means only one thing. Me and you are getting old.”
“Speak for yourself. I intend to stay young until they scrape me off the highway.” Victor upended his beer and drained the last of the bottle’s contents.
Then the door opened and the man Victor was waiting for entered the bar.
He was young, and his appearance was rough. His road leathers were scarred and dusty. His black hair hung wild and tousled to his shoulders. When he lit a cigarette, his jacket separated long enough to reveal the semiauto pistol tucked into his waistband.
Most people, Victor reflected as he looked at the guy, would have been surprised to learn that the man was an undercover FBI agent.
His true name was unknown to Victor, but on the street he went by Thumper. He even had a tattoo of the bunny from the Disney film on one shoulder. Except that the image wore biker’s leathers and breathed fire. One guy had made fun of the tat in a bar, called him Bambi, and Thumper had put him in the hospital.
Whoever the federal agent truly was, Victor knew the man had been around the track.
Thumper nodded at Victor, then crossed the room and dropped into a chair on the other side of the table.
“How’s it hanging, bro?” Thumper asked.
“I’m not your bro,” Victor said. He moved his hand on his thigh slightly. The butt of one of the Glocks was only inches from his fingertips. “I’m here to do business. Not make friends.”
Thumper smiled slightly. “I can live with that. So tell me what’s on your mind.”
5
›› Interstate 85
›› Near Salisbury, North Carolina
›› 1718 Hours
For a long moment, Shel thought about just ignoring Remy’s question. He knew if he decided not to answer, Remy wouldn’t push it. Finally he said, “We’ve never talked about family.”
“No.”
Since Remy had been pulled into the team to replace Frank Billings, who had been killed in South Korea, he’d gradually warmed up to everyone else. But-like Shel, Nita, and Maggie-he hadn’t talked much about family.
Only Will and Estrella did that. Will’s current situation was screwed up, what with figuring out the pecking order with his ex-wife’s new husband in the picture. And Estrella had never gotten over her husband’s death. Both of them had pictures on their desks and computers, and they had stories to tell about what was going on in that part of their lives.
“Did you get along with your daddy?” Shel asked.
Remy looked ahead at the interstate. His face was as expressionless as his tinted sunglasses. “I never knew the man. My grandmere raised me and my brother.” The French Creole influence from New Orleans sometimes crept into Remy’s words.
“Didn’t know you had a brother.”
“I don’t. Not anymore.”
Shel knew there was a story there. He could feel the jagged pieces of it in Remy’s words. But he let it go.
“My daddy’s a hard man to get to know,” Shel said. “All my life he’s been distant. Not really a part of my life. Like he was just somebody curious and looking in through a window at me.”
Remy didn’t say anything.
“When Mama was still alive,” Shel went on, “it wasn’t so bad. She buffered everybody. Kept us all on an even keel. But Daddy was distant with her, too.”
“You ain’t the most talkative man I’ve ever met,” Remy commented.
Shel had to grin at that. It was true. “Neither are you, kemosabe. And that’s why you and me having this conversation is… odd.”
“We don’t have to have it.”
“Unless we play another basketball game.”
“Never again on Father’s Day.”
Shel knew Remy was giving him an out and gently letting him know he didn’t have to continue talking. Or maybe the topic was a little uncomfortable for him too. Shel wasn’t sure.
But Shel discovered that once he’d opened the can, the worms insisted on crawling out. Most of the reason for that, he was sure, was because he was confident Remy would never tell another soul. And because Remy wouldn’t waste time trying to correct Shel’s thinking or tell him how he should feel.
›› 1723 Hours
“Mama always said Daddy got messed up in the war,” Shel said. “She knew him before he went to Vietnam. His daddy raised him to be a rancher, but when he got old enough, he signed on with the Army.”
“Not the Marines?”
“I was never one to follow in my daddy’s footsteps.” Shel admitted that honestly. “It started long before the choice of service in the military.”
“Your father was in Vietnam?”
Shel nodded. That was a source of pride for him despite the confusion that generally roiled up when he thought of his father. “Pulled four two-year tours. Got released in ’72 when his mama took sick. He had to go back and help work the ranch-the Rafter M. Mama said that taking care of Grandma was the only thing that brought him home.”
“But somewhere in there he met your mother.”
“Somewhere.” Shel reached back and patted Max on the head. Having the dog with him 24-7 was a blessing. “Mama said they knew each other in grade school, all the way through high school. She said they talked like they were going to get married, but Daddy wouldn’t do it because he thought he might get killed.”
“A lot of boys did. Today isn’t much better.”
Shel nodded. “She said Daddy was surprised when he came home and found out she hadn’t married.”
“Eight years was a long time to wait.”
“That’s what Daddy said. But Mama said that eight years wasn’t any time at all when you were waiting for the right man.”
Remy grinned, and the ease that the expression created on his face had Shel grinning before he knew it too.
“So they had a love story going on,” Remy said.
“The way Mama told it.”
“How’d your father tell it?”
“He didn’t. Never said one word about it. And my brother and I never asked him. Not even after Mama passed. Daddy came back to the ranch, and he worked it hard. He still does.”
“Sounds like Kurt Russell should be a ranch hand there.”
Shel grinned at that despite the bad mood the day had left him in. “It’s a working cattle ranch. The living’s hard and the profits are lean, but Daddy’s a simple man and keeps at it. Mama’s buried there with Grandpa and Grandma McHenry. Two of Daddy’s brothers are buried there too.”
“Sounds like a big commitment.”
“He’ll never leave that piece of ground. I reckon when the time comes, we’ll plant him there too. My brother, Don, isn’t happy about that, but that’s how it goes. Daddy’s leaving me control of the land. According to the will, I have to buy Don out if he wants me to.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“One. Don.”
“Is he military too?”
“Nope. He found a way to irritate Daddy even worse than I did. Of course, Don doesn’t see it that way. He became a Bible-thumper.” As he talked, Shel heard his accent thickening. His words-his thoughts even-turned more toward how he’d been raised when he was talking about his daddy.
“A preacher?” Remy asked.
Shel nodded.
“I still don’t see why Father’s Day bothers you so much. A lot of people have father issues.”
Shel took a moment to think about that. It was hard, he was discovering, to get everything he felt into words that someone else would understand.
“I joined the Marines because I wanted my life simple,” Shel said.
“That was your first mistake.”
Shel ignored the comment. “I liked the idea of organization and structure, of knowing how I was supposed to treat other people.”
“You don’t think you got that at home?”
“From Mama, sure. And from Daddy, too, I guess. He taught me how I was supposed to treat other people, but-” Shel stopped, suddenly embarrassed. He had already revealed far more than he’d intended to.