SAUL

by Claire St. Rose

  Roughly at the center of this upstairs balcony area was a door marked “Management,” and that’s where Leo directed himself.

  Danny had this room added on to the building when he put in the restroom facilities up there. The room was much larger than you would expect it to be from looking at its position and eying the wall lines. In fact, it felt a little Alice In Wonderland when you first stepped inside.

  The second thing you were surprised by when you came into this room and got over its size was the number of house plants, both hanging and sitting on various shelves and cabinets.

  Danny had a serious green thumb, and one of his favorite hobbies was hydroponics, but he rarely spoke about it. The only way a person might come across this information was to be invited to Danny’s house, which was a rare occurrence.

  Leo had been there eleven times, and each invitation was more surprising an offer than the previous. When Danny wanted solitude, he went home. All of his business and most of his social life was spent here. You could easily believe, with no reason for doubt, that Danny lived in this building and didn’t even have another house he called home. In fact, Leo knew several of Danny’s lovers never woke up in his bed, but rather only in his bunkhouse room up here.

  Leo made his way to the visiting chairs in front of Danny’s desk and sat down while Danny clicked the keys of a huge laptop keyboard with dexterous, thick fingers, finishing something. Leo waited patiently, letting memories of Bev dance in his head.

  “You’re back. Took long enough.” Danny continuing to type.

  “I think I found a real solution to the problem,” Leo told his president.

  Danny stopped typing and looked at Leo. “A real solution?”

  “Total reprisal,” Leo said.

  Danny leaned back from the laptop, giving Leo his full attention. “Within the bounds I laid out?”

  “Not even close to stepping past the lines.”

  “This is much more than I expected,” Danny admitted.

  “A great deal more than I set out to do as well. My personal goals, the ones I felt would be good enough, are a pittance to what I uncovered and have planned,” Leo said.

  “From another man, I might expect hubris to be a factor here, but I feel you are perhaps even downplaying your achievement,” Danny told him.

  “Well, why don’t I lay it all out for you, and then you can see if my estimations are correct.”

  “Yes,” Danny agreed. “Let me send this email off, and then I can give my full attention to you.” Before Danny turned back to the laptop, though, he called down to the bar and asked for chips, salsa, and a large pitcher of beer to be brought up, and for someone to stand on “Do-Not-Disturb” duty on his office door until he released them.

  “Do Not Disturb” duty paid a hundred an hour, so there were plenty of men willing to sit outside Danny’s door, drink a little beer, and keep anyone else from coming near.

  Danny fired off his email and was about to close his laptop when Leo stopped him. Leo pulled out a USB thumb drive and gave it to the older man, who deftly connected the drive and brought up its contents.

  “Just some maps, digital photos, and notes that I’ve made regarding the plan I developed. Read them at your leisure. The main part of the plan is based on Nomar’s use of a tracking device to guide his delivery planes across the border to the temporary landing strips. The device is basically a cellphone with a GPS hook-up. At first I thought it would be a hassle to duplicate, perhaps even impossible, but I’ve already procured a duplicate and put it through a test run with success.”

  “This is that device here?” Danny asked, pulling up one of the digital photos.

  “Yes, that’s it. It’s not very large. In fact, it can be easily put into his jacket pocket and kept there during the whole operation. No bigger than a small cellphone,” Leo said.

  “Why doesn’t he just use a cellphone? Why this device?”

  “This device runs on a different frequency, and it is nigh impossible to snatch out of the air amidst all the other signals bouncing around those canyons and mesas. The plane’s hound receiver gives the pilot a map display and pinpoints Nomar’s signal within a meter of his real position.”

  “So, no talking, no communication of where Nomar is going to be to the pilot. The plane leaves, flying blind until Nomar broadcasts his location,” Danny said.

  “Exactly,” Leo agreed. “Which is perfect, really. No need for extraneous bullshit, which most of the time only opens up opportunities for mistakes and DEA tracking. Also, the pilot cannot be forced to give information he doesn’t have.”

  “How much are we looking at here?” Danny asked, pulling up a digital photo of the plane — a twin engine cargo design.

  “Two to three hundred kilos.”

  Danny’s jaw dropped a little as he quickly did the math. “That’s a little over eight million, Leo.”

  “Like I said,” Leo assured him, “total reprisal.”

  Danny nodded. “Alright. Let’s delve into the details.”

  For the next two hours, Leo told his elder everything: all the places things might go wrong and what he had in place to deal with those possibilities.

  Afterward, Danny sat back from the keyboard. He leaned back in his chair, looking at the white painted slats and exposed beams of his roof. “This really is far more than I expected from your operation, Leo, far more. And as you suggested, it’s well within the bounds I gave you. From this point, until we have a hand-picked crew for the pickup, you are a ghost in this matter. If even a breath of this is whispered into Nomar’s ear, the whole club could be in trouble and war could be imminent.”

  “I was thinking the same thing, especially since I am going to be required to maintain my position and standing with Nomar before vanishing completely out of his world,” Leo agreed.

  “You have an exit plan?” Danny asked.

  “Yes, a good one, and a backup,” Leo said. “I’ll need a half-mil from the proceeds, after. Is that agreeable?”

  “No,” Danny told him, sitting up to his desk again and putting his forearms down on the surface, “but a full mil would be.”

  “That seems a bit much,” Leo mumbled.

  “It’s not,” Danny told him, “and both Woody and Emma would agree with me. This is going to hurt him and cripple his confidence in his staff and procedures. This will likely put an end to several of his enforcers as he searches for the hole in his security. You are going to need to exit cleanly. A mil is going to come in very handy once Nomar gets to searching his hacienda for mice.”

  “Alright,” Leo agreed. “What I don’t use I can always bring back.”

  Danny nodded at the large man’s doubt regarding his own worth in this matter and smiled. “So, the lower the profile you cast around here for a while, the better. Maybe you can talk that little red filly into a ride with you up the coast and some one-on-one time away from club politics. She’s a good one, by the way. Probably a keeper, just so you know up front. You haven’t been looking to be tied down in the past, so consider yourself fairly warned.”

  “Think she’s casting a loop then, do ya?” Leo grinned.

  “Nope,” Danny told him. “I think you will be, once you’ve spent some time with her. How are you with cash?”

  “Drug running pays pretty well. I’ve got quite a wad in my pocket, and more in hidden stashes for just-in-case emergencies,” Leo assured him. “Rent is paid up for a year, gas and electric has a nice budget of pre-paid monies. I think I’m ready for either hibernation or clean getaway riding, whichever is required.”

  “No temptations of keeping the lifestyle? No qualms about the plan?” Danny asked.

  “Hell no,” Leo told him, clenching his fist. “In fact, it’s taken quite a bit of restraint not to cross your boundaries and put a large hole in Nomar’s head — him and that fucking Ernesto. But, this isn’t about me; it’s about Woody and Emma. So, I’ve kept to the objective and the boundaries. The sooner we’re done though, the better.�
��

  Danny studied him. “Your cool thinking under highly emotional situations is the reason I asked you to do this and not one of the others. Anything else?”

  “Not really. Like I said, I’ve got some notes in there you can read as you like. Basically, they are mental debates and theories regarding my exit plan, the drop hijacking, and the rest of our goals.”

  “Then, welcome back, and we’ll start moving this forward. Good job. Very good job,” Danny told him. “Let the man out there know I need at least another two hours of “Do Not Disturb” time.”

  “No problem,” Leo said, and he left the office.

  Chapter Four

  Beverly was more or less a wreck when she got home. She couldn’t concentrate worth shit, and had to put her laptop down and admit that she was not going to get what she wanted to get done today. She was well ahead of schedule, so a few hours off weren’t going to kill her.

  If her phone didn’t ring soon, the suspense might kill her, though. How long could a fucking meeting with Danny take, for crying out loud! It wasn’t like they could be discussing matters of state or something! Well…they couldn’t, right? If Leo was an important member of the club, he would have shown up more often than this.

  There was a standing officer’s meeting on Tuesdays at seven o’clock, which she usually rode down to in order to hear the outcomes announced. They were things like when the next weekend day run was happening, and where, an any news on the large run that was coming up in April, which was only seven weeks away now.

  Sequoia National Hampton was the destination. The more she heard about it, the more she knew she was in. The plan was for a whole week, but she could ride up, spend a few days in a hotel getting some work done, and then ride back down with the group.

  She really loved that about her job. As long as she had her laptop and Internet access, it really didn’t matter where she was. She could be in Bangkok for all her clients cared, just as long as the manuscripts were polished and ready for the publishers on time.

  Anyway, she never saw Leo at any of these meetings or waiting for announcements at the bar below. Nothing. She was sure she would have remembered, him too.

  Jay obviously knew him and was even close friends with him, which in Bev’s mind was a huge green light for getting closer to Leo. She liked Jay and respected his view and evaluations. This might have had something to do with Jay’s evaluations often coinciding with her gut feelings about someone.

  One night, Crash was mouthing off about how you never knew if a brother was going to watch your back until the moment the shit hit the fan, and Jay leaned to her and said, “I would never trust that asshole to watch my back, or yours,” confirming her own thoughts about Crash.

  “I think I would be more worried about him than the possible threat,” Bev replied with a grin.

  Jay wasn’t smiling when he agreed and said, “True story. No matter what he says, or how well he says it, you would be wise to remember that Crash Bennett is only concerned about Crash. And if he ever perceives that you have done him a wrong, he’ll talk about it incessantly to anyone who will listen. He’s never actually rolled over on anyone in the club, but he’s said enough that it really doesn’t matter.”

  Bev studied Jay’s face. “It sounds like there is a story attached to that.”

  “There is, and eventually Crash will come back around and begin his triads about it, too. Then he’ll probably get his ass kicked a few more times, and lay off it again for a while.”

  Bev tried to make sense of this. “If he’s gone that far, well, why is he still a patch-holder?”

  “Because the one who is directly affected by these tirades and loose lip conversations with cops and detectives hasn’t pressed for tribunal. If he had, Crash wouldn’t be here, I can guarantee that. Also, Crash and Yvette are responsible for bringing in most of the new blood over the last year, including you.”

  “I would have found this place the next weekend anyway. I was had already planned on exploring the rural routes east of my place,” Bev told him. “What do you think of Yvette?”

  Jay thought about this and said, “Nice ass, great tits, and unfortunate taste in men. She’s a rumor hound, but mostly harmless and sometimes quite useful. She doesn’t hang on men that aren’t hers. She hasn’t cheated on Crash that I know of. She worked weekends here as a waitress for almost two years — took it seriously, worked hard, never expected an ounce of leniency because we were her friends. Consequently, she made very good tips and earned a greater level of respect from the club in general.”

  “Good,” Bev said. “Good, because I really like her. She’s fun to be around and has a great sense of humor, though a little dirty.”

  “If I recall, you aren’t a virgin in that area of humor,” Jay told her.

  Bev had laughed at that — but she wasn’t laughing about another hour going by with still no phone call from Leo.

  “Shit!”

  Then her phone rang, and she pounced on it like a tigress. “Hello?” she managed to say in a distracted, almost bored voice.

  “Oh, I must have the wrong number,” Leo’s voice said. “You sound much too bored. I’m looking for the woman who just dove onto her couch for the phone, nearly bounced back on the floor, and could barely answer but managed to do so under an explosion of tousled hair. Is she around?”

  Bev used her hand to flip her hair back out of her face and looked wildly around. “Where the fuck are you?”

  “Not around, I take it,” Leo continued to tease. “That’s a shame. She and I could get along really well. Phenomenally, in fact.”

  “Seriously, where, the, fuck, are, you?” Bev said, getting up and looking out her front window.

  “Across the street, lass.”

  “How the fuck did you know where I lived?” Bev asked.

  “Well, because you live right across the street from me. Isn’t that a coincidence. I saw your red bike in your drive just as I was turning off the road to run up to my place. I figured I would walk down and knock on your door, but when I got to the street, I changed my mind. I decided it would be better to give you a heads up and avoid the stalker theories before I came over. But that diving lunge for the phone, that was quite unexpected.”

  “Saw that, did you?” She smiled.

  “Couldn’t miss it even if I tried,” he said. “Quite the voice actress as well. That is, if you were going for the, I don’t really care if he calls or not, since I already have a full life, performance.”

  Bev bit her lip. “So are you just going to stand out there, giving the play-by-play? Or are you going to join the game, cowboy.”

  Chapter Five

  She saw him now, and she watched him cross the street with that road god stride of his to the bottom of her drive, where he said, “It looks like quite a game. I think I can make a good showing of myself, though. Any particular rules involved, or is it free play?”

  “If it comes off, it stays off,” she told him with much more boldness than she felt. “And hesitant kissing is an extreme foul.”

  “A game of boldness and strong movements. Definitely where my skills lie,” Leo declared.

  “Passive groping is another foul which could end the game,” she warned him.

  “Only authentic desires displayed by clear and distinct actions. Sounds like high risk but with fantastical rewards,” he said as he came up on her porch. “Nearly there. Anything else before I throw myself to the wolves?”

  “If you bother to knock, the game will be called on grounds of mental incapacity,” she told him with a laugh, she and hung up in time to see him come inside, tossing his own phone toward hers on the couch. Before she could think of what to do, he swooped her up into a kiss with more ease than she had ever experienced before.

  She had already changed out of her lace-up leather vest and into one of the large t-shirts she wore around the house like short dresses. This was normal work attire for her, but it also meant she was only wearing the shirt and a pair of pa
nties. With his display of willingness to jump into her game and the state of arousal she noticed he was in as he came through the door, she felt the likelihood of remaining clothed for another two minutes was minuscule.

  So rather than attempt to defend, she attacked.

  She squirmed suddenly in his cradling arms, enough to break free and fall to the floor, where she spun and pounced, grabbing his leather vest and yanking it back onto his arms, forcing him to shrug out of it or be tied up by it. Then she kissed him furiously while pulling his t-shirt from his pants, yanking it up as soon as their lips parted.

  As he pulled his t-shirt over his head, she grabbed, yanked on, and unbuckled his leather chaps, which, due to their weight, fell quickly around his knees. She laughed and bounced away to her hall.