Sons of Anarchy Bratva

by Christopher Golden

  “Where’s your cop friend?” Opie asked.

  “Izzo’s not a friend,” Thor said. “But he has his uses.”

  They heard tires on pavement and the low murmur of an engine. Headlights illuminated the corner of the abandoned home-improvement warehouse … and then went out. The car came around the building slowly, almost crawling, and Jax and the others stood away from their bikes a little, making sure that the moonlight would be enough to allow Izzo to see them.

  The car’s headlights flickered, letting them know the driver had seen them. It neither slowed nor sped up, only rolled toward them until, at last, it puttered to a halt. In the darkness behind the windshield, Jax could see the burning tip of a cigarette. The orange glow flared a moment as the smoker inhaled.

  The driver’s door opened. The dome light inside the car did not go on—the man was used to meetings in dark places where he didn’t want to draw attention. He left the car running as he climbed out, studied them as he took another drag on his cigarette, then reached back inside to shut it off, apparently deciding that if they were going to ambush him they would’ve done so already. Jax made a mental mark against his intelligence level, but they didn’t need a genius, just an informant.

  “If it ain’t the mighty Thor,” the cop drawled, cigarette hand dangling at his side. “And friends. Which one of you is Iron Man?”

  “You missed your calling, Detective,” Thor replied. “I’m sure there’s a spot for you on stage at Caesars.”

  Izzo offered a pained smile, waiting. Thin and jittery, he needed a haircut and a shave. Thor and Rollie had explained that he was a detective with the Las Vegas vice squad and that he dipped into the product of his arrests more often than not—hookers, drugs. He wasn’t the sort of cop who wanted to be a kingpin, just a guy who couldn’t control his taste for the forbidden.

  “Mike Izzo, meet some friends of mine,” Thor said at last.

  “No colors on you boys,” Izzo said, gesturing with his cigarette toward their clothes. “No gang affiliation?”

  “Sons of Anarchy isn’t a gang, Detective,” Thor said.

  “I know, I know, it’s a ‘motorcycle club,’ but these guys ride motorcycles, too.”

  Jax gave a shrug—small, but enough to make his body remind him of Lagoshin’s fists.

  “We’re not the joining type,” he said.

  “They’re friends of mine,” Thor said, as if that explained it all. “My friend here is searching for a missing family member and thinks some of her associates might be connected to the murder of Oscar Temple.”

  Izzo cocked his head, eyes narrowing. He smoked and exhaled through his nose.

  “You’ve got interesting friends,” he drawled, but he nodded. “Trouble is, I don’t know shit. Homicide’s not my beat.”

  Jax stiffened. Had they wasted their time with this cokehead?

  “You sing this song every time, Mike,” Thor said. “We both know you’ve always got your ears open, hoping to hear something you can sell or trade.”

  Izzo flicked ash off his cigarette. From the way his nostrils flared, he hadn’t liked Thor’s observation much.

  “Maybe that’s true,” he said, “but this is fresh. Happened yesterday.”

  Jax glanced at the others. Chibs looked pissed, turned and spat onto the cracked pavement. Opie seemed to have been drifting, barely listening, maybe because of the blood loss, but suddenly he perked up.

  “Who found the bodies?” he asked in his familiar low rumble.

  Izzo stared at him. “You boys don’t look too good,” he said, turning to study Jax. “And you look like you got your ass handed to you. What are you really after?”

  “We told you the truth, man,” Jax said, hands up. “We’re not bringing trouble. We’re trying to get my sister out of it.”

  Izzo nodded knowingly. Vice detective in Las Vegas, he’d seen more than his share of sisters in trouble.

  “Wish I could help,” he said. “Not least because I could use the scratch Thor and his boys would pay for information. But the investigation is just ramping up. I can give Rollie a call at the Tombstone if they turn up anything. What I can tell you is that Oscar Temple’s in the gun business—sponsors the big gun show out there in Summerlin—and homicide figures it was a side deal gone wrong.”

  Chibs glanced at Jax. “Illegal guns?”

  Izzo scratched at his stubbled chin and took a drag on his cigarette. “I know, right? People breaking the law. Can you imagine?”

  Jax cocked his head to one side, trying to figure the cop out. “You never answered my friend’s question.”

  “Sorry, right,” Izzo replied, waving toward Opie with his cigarette. “One of the dealers from the gun show, an old friend of Temple’s, went up to the house to have coffee or something after he’d packed up. Found the bodies.”

  “This gun dealer, does he have a name?” Thor asked.

  “He’s an old dude. Older, anyway,” Izzo said. “Irish guy, I think. Last name is Carney.”

  Thor stiffened. “John Carney?”

  Izzo dropped his cigarette, crushing it under his shoe. “You know the guy?”

  “Heard of him,” Thor admitted.

  Jax watched Izzo’s eyes and realized the detective was thinking precisely what he’d been thinking—that if Thor knew the old man’s name, maybe John Carney hadn’t gone up to Oscar Temple’s house for coffee at all.

  “I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything,” Izzo said, digging out his keys as he returned to his car. He paused just inside the open door. “You make sure you do the same. I could use a little career boost.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Thor told him.

  None of them believed it, not even Izzo.

  11

  John Carney had slept poorly ever since the death of his wife. Over time he’d developed the habit of falling asleep in the recliner in the living room, bathed in the flickering blue light of the television. Living in Arizona required air-conditioning, but his backyard opened up to nothing but scrub and distant hills, and it could get awfully cold at night. He kept the windows of his little adobe house open and covered himself with a thick blanket, never taking his slippers off. Past the age of fifty, his feet had begun to feel cold pretty much all the time. And he’d left fifty in the rearview mirror quite a while back.

  Tonight he moaned and shifted in the chair, rising up from the shadows of dreamtime, cobweb memories of a nightmare clinging to him. He frowned and rubbed his eyes, sleepily contemplating the possibility of leaving the chair and actually sleeping in his bed for once. Instead, he pulled the blanket up to his neck and nestled deeper into the chair. The ghost of his dead wife occupied that bed, and he figured it always would. Whenever he tried to sleep in there, he felt her presence. No, that ain’t it, he corrected himself. He felt her absence.

  Drifting in that gray fog between sleeping and wakefulness, Carney thought he heard voices. He groaned softly and slitted his eyes open. One of his animal shows played on the TV. A baby gorilla clung to its mother, and the sight made him smile, still more than half-asleep. His animal shows could be grotesque at times, and even then they were fascinating, but there was something soothing about the programs concerning bears and monkeys and apes.

  Knock knock.

  Thump thump.

  Carney jerked in the chair, adrenaline burning him awake. He threw the blanket aside and stood, barely noticing the arthritis pain in his knees. Turning slowly, he tried to locate the source of the noise, and it came again. Thump thump. He spun, staring at the short little corridor that led into the rest of the house.

  A rapping came from the back of the house, a fist on glass, urgent but not angry. Not on the verge of shattering.

  Carney twisted the little iron key, opened the body of the grandfather clock, and stopped the pendulum’s swing with his left hand. With his right he reached past it and grabbed the shotgun that always sat waiting there, just behind the tick of the clock.

  The knock came again as he
made his way down the little corridor, giving him a chance to zero in. The sound hadn’t come from his bedroom or the bathroom or the smaller second bedroom he used as an office. There wasn’t much house out here in the desert, but how much house did an aging widower need?

  He ducked into the kitchen, stared at the blinds that hung over the sliding glass door that led onto his patio. A low adobe wall ringed the patio. On any ordinary night there’d have been nothing but snakes and coyotes beyond that wall, but snakes and coyotes didn’t knock on the wall or rap on the glass. The blinds were closed. The patio light was off.

  “Who’s there?” he shouted at the closed blinds, leveling the shotgun at the slider. If they wanted to kill him, his voice gave them a location. They could start shooting right now. But did murderers knock?

  “Friends, Mr. Carney,” came a reply, a raspy voice—not an old man’s rasp.

  Carney slid to the side, toward the stove, and sidestepped past the kitchen island so he came at the blinds from an angle.

  “In my experience,” he called back, “friends don’t bang on your back door after midnight.”

  “Sorry if we woke you,” that voice rasped again. “The lateness couldn’t be helped. It’s pretty urgent I talk to you.”

  I guess it must be, Carney thought.

  “You armed?” he called.

  “Yes, sir. But none of us have weapons drawn. If we wanted to do more than talk, there are open windows.” Carney reached out and opened the blinds. Through the slats he could make out five men silhouetted by moonlight. Shotgun leveled at them, he flicked on the patio light, and the men blinked at the sudden brightness. The one in front squinted but didn’t raise his hands to shield his eyes, too smart to want to spook Carney into pulling the trigger.

  “Hands up, slowly,” Carney said.

  The men complied. The guy in front, blond and bearded, was the first to do so, and the others followed suit. In the back of the group, a massive red-haired man was the last, and his reluctance was obvious.

  Carney studied the faces. “I don’t know any of you.”

  “I know how this must look,” said the blond, the owner of the raspy voice. “My name’s Jax. I think you may’ve met my sister, Trinity—”

  A memory flashed through Carney’s mind. Gunshot and blood spatter in Oscar Temple’s kitchen. The woman’s face floated across his thoughts, and he saw the resemblance. Carney’s heart had been thundering in his chest, and now it skipped a beat as the copper stink of blood returned to him.

  “Irish girl?” he asked, voice raised to be heard through the sliding glass door.

  “That’s her.” Muffled. Quieter.

  “You don’t have an accent.”

  “Different moms.” The blond man put the palm of one rough hand against the glass and gazed calmly at him. “She’s not safe, Mr. Carney. I just want to get her the hell out of here and home to her mother.”

  A fine sentiment. Carney had taken a shine to the girl from the moment she’d approached him at the gun show, and not just because her accent reminded him of home. She had a raw energy that he’d admired. But that wasn’t why he lowered the shotgun.

  The rough men on his patio seemed surprised when he raised the blinds all the way and unlocked the slider. He stepped back and covered the door with his shotgun, but he kept his finger outside the trigger guard. John Carney had gotten old, and his hands trembled sometimes. If he shot somebody, it would damn well be on purpose.

  “Just you,” he told Jax. “Your friends can make themselves comfortable on the patio.”

  A goateed man with startling scars on his face looked disappointed. “Any chance of a cup of coffee?”

  Carney heard the mix of burr and brogue in his voice and smiled. “You’re not a guest. You’re a stranger who woke me in the middle of the night.”

  The man beside him, pale and bearded with his hair tied back in a small knot, nodded. “He does have a point.”

  Jax slid the glass door open and entered the kitchen as the other four made themselves comfortable on the patio furniture, sprawling as if they hadn’t a care in the world. They weren’t worried about him killing them with his shotgun, which told him they had no intention of trying to kill him. But he hadn’t gone to Oscar Temple’s house thinking anyone was going to die, either.

  “Lock it behind you,” he told Jax, who complied without complaint.

  “Can I sit down?” the man asked.

  “You’re not getting coffee, either,” Carney told him.

  Jax smiled, but it turned to a wince. Carney flicked on the light above the kitchen table, and now he saw the bruises and swelling on his visitor’s face.

  “Rough night?”

  “I’m alive,” Jax replied. “I’d like to stay that way, and keep Trinity alive, too.”

  “She told me her name was Caitlin Dunphy. I heard one of ’em call her Trinity, but I didn’t put it together that it was her name till you said so. I would’ve known who you meant regardless, though. You resemble her a little. Plus, she’s the only woman I’ve run into in a long time that I figure might cause armed men to show up on my patio. How did you all get here, anyway? You got a van out front?”

  “Bikes,” Jax said.

  Carney almost laughed at the image of these five leg breakers riding bicycles out here with the lizards and dust devils. Then he realized the guy meant motorcycles, and his humor dissipated. Had he slept through the roar of five approaching engines? A disturbing thought. If they’d meant to do him harm, he really would have been dead by now.

  He lowered the shotgun and leaned against the counter.

  You’re crazy. Letting this man into your house.

  Motorcycles might mean they were part of a biker gang. That made a certain sense. He’d caught a glimpse of what looked like some kind of logo on the vest that the big red-bearded bastard had been wearing out on the patio. Oscar Temple dealt illegal guns—a shitload of illegal guns—and Jax’s sister had been trying to make a deal with him on behalf of some Russians.

  “You involved in the gun business, too?” Carney asked.

  Jax cocked his head. “I’m told you used to be pretty involved yourself.”

  “I’m not casting aspersions, lad. Just trying to figure out all the connections here.”

  “The only connection that’s relevant is that I’m a concerned brother. I don’t want to involve you in anything that’s going to cause you trouble—”

  “Your sister involved me already,” Carney said.

  Jax nodded, said nothing more.

  Carney sighed deeply and then shrugged. “She did save my life, I suppose. Though it wouldn’t have needed saving if I’d never met her.”

  Jax opened his hands, palms up as if in surrender. “Question is, What are you gonna do right now? Tonight?”

  Carney turned the question over in his head. He glanced out at the men on the patio. Would there be consequences for the wrong answer? Jax seemed intense, but not intimidating. Was it an act?

  “I spoke to the police already,” he said, hesitating.

  “I can hear a ‘but’ coming.”

  Carney raised the shotgun slightly, barely noticing that he’d done it. Maybe his subconscious mind wasn’t as sure of Jax’s motivations as his conscious mind was.

  “I liked her the moment I met her,” Carney went on.

  “She has that effect,” Jax said.

  “I didn’t want the police to find her, but I wasn’t just protecting her.”

  “You were protecting yourself. Makes sense. I figure you told the police being up there at the ranch was a coincidence, but whatever deal Trinity and her boys were trying to strike with Temple, you were a broker. Maybe coming out of retirement?”

  “One night only, like all the great Vegas comebacks,” Carney said. “Anyway, I wasn’t in a hurry to help the cops track them down.”

  Jax leaned across the table, blue eyes alight. “So you do know where they went?”

  Carney’s hands felt sweaty on the metal
of the shotgun. “No. But someone else might. One of the men your sister was with mentioned a name, after the killing was done. Something about how they had to make sure they couldn’t be tracked back, or Drinkwater would have to find them a new place.”

  “That name mean something to you?”

  “Louis Drinkwater is a local real estate guy. Never met him, but I’ve seen him in the papers. He’s had his share of legal trouble.”

  Jax stood abruptly, the chair scraping linoleum. Carney flinched, raised the shotgun, but Jax had almost forgotten he was there. The biker unlocked the slider and snapped at his men.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “The night is young.”

  “Drinkwater has a lot more money that I do,” Carney said. “Probably has better security, too. Maybe you oughta wait till morning.”

  Jax stepped onto the patio, then turned to look back through the door. “If I get my sister home safe, we’re both gonna owe you one. Thanks for your help. And sorry again for waking you.”

  I did it for her, not for you, he wanted to say. But the men were leaving and taking their guns with them, so he thought it best not to antagonize them.

  * * *

  Jax liked to ride late at night, when the world was quiet and dark. Even if he wasn’t riding alone, it still felt like solitude. Even more so with the dry wind blowing down from Desert Hills and Red Rock Canyon. They’d gone south to visit Carney, but now it was past one o’clock in the morning and they were roaring along the beltway with Jax in front and the other guys riding two by two. Joyce had put in a few hours at the Tombstone and then met up with them before the visit to Carney.

  Headlights strafed Jax from a truck headed the other direction. He let himself drift back to Belfast, back to his first meeting with Trinity. They had recognized something in each other that had been difficult to identify. She had a core decency that he admired, but also blunt, rough edges. She wasn’t a part of the RIRA, but her family was inextricably linked to it, and maybe being raised in that family wasn’t so different from Jax’s life with SAMCRO. He’d practically been born on the back of a Harley, heir apparent to the gavel.