“Would you like to try first?” Hank asked Orlin.
“I am searching, and I have no idea,” Orlin said.
“Focus on one of the things, the gun, and that it has been fired today. Begin by removing reasons you know aren’t true, leading you to the reason it is,” Hank suggested.
Ernando didn’t like standing there being observed so closely by either of them, but especially the gringo.
After nearly two minutes, Orlin ended his searching and said, “No, it isn’t there for me. I know you are going to say it, and I’ll smack my head, because I did know it and it was right in front of me. But no. I cannot see it.”
“He’s wearing a pendant of Saint Dismas,” Hank said, and then shifted his eyes to Orlin.
“FUCK!” Orlin shouted with a laugh. “Fuck, how could I miss something so damn obvious! He believes that he has to keep his gun awake, so he will fire it occasionally, to wake its spirit, and enforcers with this belief often wear the pendant of Saint Dismas. Yes, I get it. You didn’t say when, but you did say less than three hours ago.”
Ernando looked down at his pendant, and decided he would take that off as soon as possible.
“But what about the rest? Parking in back by the tree? Food at Roberto’s? You know it is Roberto’s? Not possibly someplace else? Eating in his truck on the way?” Orlin asked.
“He had a small limp coming in, from a small stone in his shoe. He would have taken it out by now, if he didn’t just acquire it. He was focused on getting here, though. So, he parked in the gravel area in back, the only place he could have gotten the pebble. When I parked in back, I noticed that there was only one space left, the one beside the tree,” Hank explained.
“Then I could never have gotten the parking space. I did see the slight limp but didn’t put the two together. Very observant. Go on, please,” Orlin said.
“When he walked by the window over there, we both saw him throw the bag away in the trash. Why would he have the bag if he didn’t eat on the way here?”
Orlin’s jaw dropped. “I recall it perfectly!” Then he laughed, and said, “This is too much!”
“The prayer,” Ernando said through gritted teeth. “How do you know this?”
“Your timing, the speed that you were walking as you passed the window. You reached the door, but you didn’t open it right away. Since you didn’t spend the time removing the pebble, and you are obviously religious, the logical conclusion was a prayer.”
“And he is right. I’ve seen you do this myself, before entering rooms, so I should have been able to guess that as well,” Orlin sighed. “That is really amazing, Hank.”
“Not really. I was just seeing what is there and putting it together. I do it regularly. Just like Ernando wakes the spirit of his gun, I keep the spirit of my eyes awake and watchful.”
Too awake, too watchful, Ernando had thought then, and he thought it now.
He should not have been surprised that Hank spotted him. Hank always spotted the planes first, always saw the hooded lights of DEA trucks in the dark. He demonstrated his trick several times on other enforcers, but while amazed, they were blind to the threat he was.
Hank should have kept his mouth shut, because he saw too much, knew too much. Every day, the secrets of Orlin’s Cartel were being told to Hank as if every passing man was shouting them at him!
How could Orlin not see this? It was so obvious!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Cynthia felt that the rest of Saturday was just as they had planned and everything she hoped for. The ride up the coast was wonderful. In Oceanside, near the pier, they found one of the little cottage places for rent. The man was happy to rent it for two days.
“Two? You want to spend Sunday as well?” she asked him.
“I thought the option would be nice to have,” Hank told her. “We don’t have to stay, but at least we can sleep in as long as we please.”
She nodded her head. “Nice, I like sleeping in. Well, I like the thought of sleeping in. I don’t seem to do much of it these days.”
“What do you seem to do these days?” he asked as they emptied their saddle bags and brought in food, bottles, cheeses, and breads.
She looked around. The cottage was a single room with a small bath behind a door. It was a very small bath, in fact, and there would be no showering together here. She checked the bed, seeing as most of their playtime would be spent there, and found the mattress surprisingly good.
“Well,” she started in answer to his question, “I work a lot. I try to make it down to the club at least three or four times a week to get out of the house and to see my friends — Daphne most of all, though I talk with her on the phone every day, sometimes more.”
“Daphne?” he asked, and then added, “As in Derrick and Daphne?”
“Yeah, that’s them. I’m not that fond of Derrick, but Daphne’s my best friend. What’s that look? You’re looking all browbeaten and stuff,” she observed.
He looked around the cottage, which had really no room to pace. “Can we take a walk?”
“Yeah, let’s go out on the pier,” she suggested. “I take it there’s some bad blood between you and Derrick. Doesn’t surprise me. There seems to be bad blood between the club and Derrick sometimes.”
As they walked further out over the ocean, Hank told her the story that had begun four years ago. “So, yeah, I left him. It was that or murder a cop, because she had him. He was pinned under his bike by his leg with a shot gun in his face, and his bike was pinned under her car.”
“So, he got arrested and wound up doing two years and you got off with the cash,” she summed up.
“He didn’t have to do the two years, and all of the cash I put on his prison books, along with five grand of my own money that I was going to use for his bail. But he fucked that up, too,” Hank told her.
“How?”
“Larry and I, we go down to the bail hearing. We’re expecting at the max they are going to give him $100k bail, so the bond is ten grand. We got the bondsman with us, another member, Gary. So all three of us are there and they bring Derrick in, who’s talking under his breath.
“Larry goes up to represent him, and he gives out the spiel that Derrick has close ties to the community, he’s part owner of a shop. He’s only been arrested once, six years ago for drug possession. But Larry is so good at this he makes even that sound like it’s nothing and happened in the Dark Ages.
“Then DA, she gets up and hands Larry a transcription of Derrick’s interview with the detectives, and then passes a copy to the judge, and she says: ‘And I quote, “As soon as I’m bailed out of here, I’m getting my share and heading to Mexico.
"Fuck the bros, and the hoes, I’m done. I’m going to Mexico and never coming back,” end quote. So, your honor, since he swears he isn’t going to make his court date, and that he has a share coming from the robbery, practically admitting not only guilt but guilt without remorse, I ask the court to make the bail five million dollars, or not offer it at all.’”
“Seriously?” Cyn said, looking at him. “Derrick told that to two detectives, while being interviewed about the robbery. That is so fucking insane!”
“Oh, it gets worse,” Hank told her. “Even with that, Larry is sure he can get him off completely, if Derrick will just shut the fuck up. ‘Don’t say anything to anyone else!’ But then Larry gets the rest of the transcript from the detectives. And it’s impossible. Derrick admits, several times, to them that the plan was his and that his partner would never have even got a dime out of this sweet deal if Derrick didn’t trust him, and the cocksucker left him behind.”
Hank looked out at the ocean.
“He rolled you?” she said with a gasp.
“No, not once. He did described me, dark hair and green eyes, spider tattoo on the neck. He tells them what kind of bike I ride. He tells them his club isn’t going to stand for this shit. He all but tells them where the clubhouse is, but he never mentions names, or the club name, or actually
tells them where the club is. It’s fucking obvious, of course, because there is no other bar near that area, and the detectives come out several times, looking for me, or someone who is tall with dark hair and green eyes who rides a blue Lowrider. But they don’t actually know my name.”
“What did Knight do?”
“Oh, Knight was furious. He tells me to call for tribunal, and he’ll take care of the rest, but even though I know there was nothing I could do for him, I still have this guilt, ya know? So, I don’t call, and I never saw Knight more angry at me before. I explained to him, if they take his patch now, there’s no telling what he’ll say in there. The patch is the only thing restraining him from names, dates, and marks. ‘And just how many jobs is he aware of?’ I ask Knight. It takes him a bit, but he calms down and nods his head, and says fine.”
“But as soon as he is out, you start making yourself scarce,” she notes. “From what I gathered last night, you’ve been leaving for two months, three months, at a time, and this last one has been eight months.”
“Well, yeah,” he nods, “but not because of Derrick. I’ve just discovered that I love to ride long roads.”
“Nothing to do with him at all,” she pressed.
“Nope, not at thing.”
“So, you’re not feeling mad or guilty about any of this anymore?” she asked.
“Nope, feeling just merry with it.”
“So when he starts his bullshit some time when we go back to the club—”
“I’ll kick the shit out of him,” he said, looking into her eyes.
“What about tribunal?”
He looked away and out to sea with a look in his eye like he might have been wondering if sailing was anything like riding a bike. “No, no tribunal. Not from me. He’s a sick man. Something broke in him. He wasn’t always like this — well, not this bad. Not this arrogant, and certainly not this stupid. Something broke when I rode away.”
“Something that you didn’t break,” she told him, putting her hand on his chest.
He gave her a smile and a nod but didn’t say anything. She wrapped her arms around him, wishing that there was some way to heal this wound, some way known to her.
Over ten minutes passed before he said, “You know, in chess, it is possible to make every move perfectly and still lose the game. Doesn’t matter to me that I didn’t do anything wrong. I want to know what I could have done right, or what there is to do now.”
“At this moment, the right thing to do is take me back to the cottage for rumpus sex. After that, we can check out that sushi place I can see from here, and then we’ll have some more sex. How’s that sound?” she asked, rubbing her hand across his chest, loving the feel of him.
“Sounds like words of wisdom to me,” he said with a smile. “I really hope you and Daphne can see your way past Derrick and I.”
“I’m sure we will,” she said with a grin.
CHAPTER NINE
After a sweet, relaxing weekend, they rode back together to Lakeside and then down the road to where her house was.
Hank followed up to that point and gave her a kiss. “Think I’ll go home and change, get in some pool table time. Dust off some things as well. Want to meet up and head for the club at about eight?”
“That would really be good. It will give me a chance to catch back up on some things,” she agreed.
“You worked like a demon yesterday for four hours in that cafe,” he reminded her.
“That was catching up for Friday, but this is Monday, lover, a whole new world in the work force,” she teased.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that, and happy I don’t. See you about eight,” he told her, and he kissed her again.
He pulled out, crossed the street, and zipped between the fence posts onto the dirt track leading to his house, a little rooster tail of dirt curving up behind him. As soon as he pulled up to his house, she skipped up to her porch and went inside her own, feeling like life was new.
She wanted to call Daphne and tell her all about her weekend of sex, sushi, and sleep, but she wasn’t sure that telling her that Hank was her lover over the phone was a good idea. But then, maybe ambushing her with it at the club out in public wasn’t that great of an idea either.
After several minutes of thought, she decided she would tone down the wondrous sex part and give her friend the heads up.
“Hey Daphne, how you doing?”
“Alright, considering. What you been up to?”
“I just got back from a weekend with Hank,” she said, jumping right in.
“Hank Park?” Daphne asked.
“Yes, Hank Park.”
“You should break that off. The man has no balls and is dirty as hell,” she told her flatly.
“Hank told me the whole story, all the way to the point where Derrick tells the courts, ‘Fuck the bros and the hoes,’ the hoes being you and me. But that shit is four years old, Daphne, and I’m really hoping it’s not going to fuck with things between you and me. I love you.”
“Hell, fuck what he did four years ago, Cyn. How about what he’s been doing for the last eight months?” Daphne said.
“What’s that?”
“He’s running drugs for the cartel, and not just any cartel. He’s running it for fucking Orlin Ruiz of all fucking people, which shows he could care less about this club, its people, or what we care about, as long as the cash is good. And when he goes down for this, which he will, if you’re with him, with the amounts we’re talking, you’ll be going down too, sister. The man has a rotten fucking core.”
“How do you know this about the cartel? And what makes Orlin so especially bad?” Cyn asked.
“Yeah, you probably don’t know about Howey and Margaret. Before your time. They were long-time members, founding members you might say. Damn cute couple, too. Well, anyway, back nearly a year ago now, when they were selling pot legal in San Diego? You remember that?”
“Yeah, sure, I went and got my green card and everything,” Cyn said.
“Well, Howey and Margaret, they get in real early on that, having great connections and both real good at business, and they open seven stores in prime locations. And bam! They are making money so fast they have to hire people to count it. They hired me to work a counter at one of those stores. Making $20 an hour with them. It was sweet. Most I’ve ever made in my life.”
“Alright, I don’t think I like where this is going,” Cyn said, sitting down on her couch.
“Well, if you are thinking it is going to shit, you’re right. Men from Orlin’s cartel, they come down and tell Howey and Margaret that they are going to buy into their little chain. Howey tells them to fuck off, and Knight sends down shifts of guards to work the stores for them, which seemed to put a stop to it. Except one night, the guard is late coming in for the 8 to 2am shift, and when he gets there, he finds the counter girl killed, Howey gutted, and Margaret raped and killed. Next to her is this little Mexican flag, just to make sure we know who did it and how fast they operate.”
“Ah, shit,” Cyn said putting her hand to her forehead. “So, what did Knight do?”
“He was going to make all the stores club stores, but then the DEA came in and closed all the stores with court orders and 48-hour notices. So it was done. Orlin’s cartel is too big for us to just go to war with. Knight’s pissed, but he can’t add to Howey and Margaret’s deaths by throwing us into a bloodbath, and he tells the club this. But he also promises us that this shit ain’t over.”
“And you think Hank would work for these guys?” Cyn asked.
“Think? Hell no, I know he is. Derrick and I saw him two months ago, riding up to the Orlin hacienda with saddle bags full of coke.”
“How did you do that?”
“Derrick spotted him on the freeway, and we followed him.”
“Why haven’t you told Knight about this then?”
“Well, because we really don’t know for sure, sure. And Derrick’s told me to keep it quiet, because he’s going t
o reap some payback from Hank. So, I haven’t told anyone except for you right now. So, no, I’m not talking about shit four years old. I’m talking about shit yesterday, girl.”
“This is really hard for me to believe, Daphne. Seriously hard. I don’t mean to suggest you’re lying, or anything like that, but … shit.”
“Well, I kind of know what you mean, Cyn,” she confessed. “I’ve sort of been secretly on Hank’s side through all of this. I have to stand by Derrick or leave him, but Derrick gets really stupid when Hank rolls back into town. But after seeing what we saw, with the coke bags and everything, I’m beginning to understand Derrick’s view point about Hank.”
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