Done Dirt Cheap

by Sarah Nicole Lemon

  She’d forgiven her father, though he didn’t ask for forgiveness, simply because she understood his intention. When she was fourteen, what those starlings in the wind had stood for was something she had not ever wanted to know.

  But now?

  Maybe all she needed to know was buried beneath well-meaning men who whispered soft lies in order to protect her from things that already had her by the throat.

  The creases of sadness on the FBI agent’s forehead haunted her. Maybe, deep down, she might not be the one who would know. Maybe she’d be the last to know.

  The conscript stood and moved away with a surge of force coiled tight in his muscles, making her stomach jump.

  Her father got on the bike and started it, then nodded.

  The conscript turned for the house.

  Taking a deep breath of the heady scent of dripping lilacs, Tourmaline tried not to watch him the whole way to the door. “Why exactly do you think they’re criminals?” she asked carefully.

  “It’s just one of those things everyone knows. Collective knowledge and all that shit.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “Someone is in prison for murder.”

  Tourmaline thought for a moment. Murder? She crossed her arms and legs and shifted to face Virginia. “Dre.” She nodded. “Otherwise known as Drunk Off His Ass Half the Time and in Recovery the Other Half. He’s been doing that for twenty years just fine. I mean. Fine enough. One day, he was driving home after two drinks. The other driver ran a light at high speed, flipped the car, and died. Dre was shaken but walked away. Or would have. The cop knew Dre, knew he was a Warden, and did a Breathalyzer at the scene. He was just over the legal limit. Now he’s serving a ten-year sentence for vehicular manslaughter on a DUI.”

  The Wardens had attended the funeral of the other driver—a single man who cared for his elderly mother. They were still caring for the mother he’d left behind. Jason cut her grass every Tuesday himself. But none of that made Dre any less of a Warden, or the situation any less screwed up for everyone involved.

  Virginia flicked the cigarette and shifted. “I see.” Her gaze stayed fixed through the lilacs. “How about that guy they put in the hospital in a coma?”

  “What guy?”

  “The bar fight one.”

  Tourmaline repeated something she’d heard. “Allegedly.”

  “Well, is it true, or not?”

  “They were at the bar. And there was a fight. That happens.” Even she knew there was a certain type of man who was always looking for a fight, and to that kind of man, the Wardens were always a sure bet.

  Virginia smashed the smoking stub underneath her flip-flop and pulled out the box for another. “How did your parents meet?”

  Tourmaline frowned and cut her eyes at Virginia. Dre’s story was public knowledge for anyone who wanted to wade through court records. Bar fights, ubiquitous and simple to explain. Her family’s stories were something different. Valuable. Private. “Um.” Tourmaline picked at the frayed thread in her cutoffs. “My dad broke down. She gave him a ride.”

  “I heard she was in high school.”

  “She was our age.”

  “And dating someone else.”

  Tourmaline stretched in the chair. The story had been told often. Mom used to snuggle on the couch, Tourmaline beside her, with one of the club scrapbooks opened between them. On the first page was a photo of the entire club—the Wardens of Iron Gate—straddling their Harleys and ready to make the long trip down the coast to Florida.

  Mom had taken the photo. That fact was always part of the story. That Mom had been there, behind it all. Always.

  The page would turn. Tourmaline would sit up and lean over the picture. And they’d stare at a picture of Mom, curvy legs bared on either side of Dad as she straddled the motorcycle and they mugged it up for the camera. Margaret Garrett and Calvin Harris, Daytona 1994 was written carefully underneath in Mom’s handwriting.

  Dad had been twenty-six, but Mom only eighteen. She wore a crown and a thong bikini.

  Now it was a little weird. Embarrassing. Certainly not a picture she was about to drag out and show Virginia. But back then, it was different. Tourmaline remembered the crown more than anything. Mom had been a princess.

  No, ma’am, Mom had answered with a soft laugh. Queen.

  Now, all anyone thought about Mom was Burnout, and all Tourmaline’s good memories were shaded with tragedy. There was no way to divide the two, to explain how the Queen and the Burnout were different people, one inside the other. But for once, someone was asking about the Queen rather than the Burnout. “Dad was riding this half-dead Bagger when he broke down outside her school. She was outside, after cheerleading practice or something. I don’t know. She gave him a ride.”

  Eight years older, wearing a ridiculous mustache and working construction, the version of her dad that had struck up a conversation with barely eighteen-year-old Mom was the kind of guy who now gave Dad nightmares. It was a different time, Dad said when Tourmaline teased him about it once.

  It might have been a different time, but Mom had always been the kind of person to forge ahead first and dance quick with whatever happened. The Daytona trip was the first thing they’d done together as a couple. Where it was serious. The Queen coming to take her future throne.

  And now the throne sat empty. The woman in the silver earrings and others like her were aiming for the empty space Mom had left behind. Not in her family, but in the club.

  “Are there any others as hot as Jason?” Virginia asked.

  Tourmaline snorted. “You’re asking the wrong girl.”

  “Now who’s full of bullshit.” Virginia laughed and the chair squeaked. “You’re lying out your teeth if you tell me that man isn’t the most gorgeous thing you’ve seen.” She waved the wafting cigarette into the air toward Jason.

  “Oh God, no. It’s like putting britches on a pig.”

  Virginia smiled like she hadn’t quite planned on smiling and tapped the cigarette on the edge of the chair.

  Smoke trails twisted lazily between them and the men, and the flock of starlings flew across her mind, and it all became serious again. “He’s not the nicest . . . with women,” Tourmaline said.

  “You have my attention.”

  “Have you seen his vest?”

  Virginia shook her head.

  “Not that you would really know this, but vests are really personal. All of them have, like, shit to say, some are . . .” She made a face. “Things I wish I didn’t know.”

  Virginia’s expression steadied and Tourmaline suddenly realized it meant she was hiding a reaction. “I’m a big girl, Harris,” Virginia said. “That doesn’t do anything but make him more appealing.”

  Virginia would never understand what Tourmaline had heard in that courtroom. How everything had been laid out in confusing, revolting detail. “How? How does that make him more appealing?” Jason did not make it difficult to sleep with him. For a split second she wondered if he would even sleep with her, and when the answer was not an immediate no, she closed her eyes in panic and wished she could bleach the thought right out of her mind.

  Virginia didn’t look at her. “Because he’s fucked up and doesn’t hide it. Or maybe that’s all he wants you to see.”

  Tourmaline twisted to look again at Jason. “It’s just weird,” she forced herself to say through a dry mouth. “He’s my dad’s friend. And he’s old.” Dad cut the engine, and she suddenly realized how loudly she was talking.

  “What’s happening over there?” Virginia asked quietly, quirking a brow and nodding in the direction of the garage. “They been standing there for a while. Are they going somewhere?”

  Tourmaline held her hand out for Virginia’s smoke. “That’s the Shovelhead. I think he’s trying to sell it. It’s supposed to be a project bike, but Dad never works on it.”

  “Oh.”

  Tourmaline took a deep breath of the tobacco and menthol, and studied the bike. “I’m not bi
g into bikes, but I like that one. It’s all original, classic Harley iron—”

  Virginia gave her a WTF face.

  “Shut up. I know. It’s the least girly bike ever.” She passed the smoke back to Virginia’s outstretched hand. “But it just sits behind the lawn mower, and occasionally they get it out and stand around looking at it, and nothing ever happens. It’s so irritating. To see something so cool be so useless. At least if he sells it, someone might use it.”

  Virginia gave a tight, smoke-filled laugh. “They should name it Tourmaline.”

  Hilarious. Tourmaline rolled her eyes. “I rebuilt the forks.”

  “The what?”

  Tourmaline leaned forward. “See those two rods that come down from the handlebars and attach to the outside of the wheel? Those are the forks. The front suspension is built into them. Often you get these old bikes with, like, dried-up suspension. I tore the forks down and rebuilt the suspension.”

  Dad had brought the Shovelhead home one winter day in the middle of Mom’s trial. It was clearly an emotional impulse purchase. Tourmaline understood: She still had several pairs of boots from those days. The Shovelhead had been the first and only bike Dad had let her do anything on. She still remembered the cool, slick feel of the metal as she eased the rods back into the greased outer shell. And how satisfied she’d felt when the project was finished.

  “Damn, girl. Look at you,” Virginia said. “Why’d you stop there?”

  “I don’t think he wanted anyone else around when he let me do that. But that moment passed.” When Tourmaline’s father worked on bikes, he wanted Jason or someone with real experience to help him. Not Tourmaline.

  “You should keep going.”

  “It’s not my bike.”

  “Yeah, but. I mean, would your dad really care?”

  “Probably. I don’t know.” Her mom had never done anything with the bikes. And since that day in the driveway, Tourmaline did not go places she wasn’t welcome. “I once heard my mom say, ‘Why bother having your own bike when you could get your own biker?’”

  “I appreciate that lovely thought,” Virginia said. “But, like, you could have both.”

  Tourmaline tipped her chin to the leaves and smiled. “I miss her.”

  They were silent for a few minutes, the only sounds the whisper of wind and the raindrops, and every so often Virginia taking a deep drag on the cigarette.

  “What is it you really need?” Virginia flicked the smoke; ash shook free into the breeze. “Is it just to get a pair of socks into prison?”

  If only. If only she were still sitting here, trying to find a way to restore the things broken in the past instead of having to fight a consuming present. Who knew the banishment was only the start of her problems?

  Our fate cannot be taken, it is a gift. It was something the Wardens always said. But Virginia made it seem as if fate were something she had by the throat and forced to her will. And maybe in that, there would be an answer that would allow Tourmaline to move beyond the day her life had finished falling apart.

  She swallowed and forced the fear into words. “I need to do something about Wayne. Without my dad.”

  “Who’s Wayne?” Virginia muttered over the cigarette, hoping against all hope it wasn’t the state detective. Any situation involving a state detective might be the one thing worse than doing this Hazard’s way.

  “My mom’s ex-boyfriend. He just got out of state prison and is after some kinda revenge.” A strangled look twisted Tourmaline’s face. Jaw tight. Eyes hard. Not even a little margarine as she sat there without the makeup or preppy clothes to dull a history of danger now evident in all her limbs. “She went to prison for a federal drug and weapons charge. They were his drugs. His weapon. And my panic.”

  Virginia put the smoke back to her mouth and narrowed her eyes at the lilac bushes, trying to catch a glimpse of Jason through the branches again.

  Wayne. The guy Tourmaline had put in prison. This was serious. They’d jumped from socks to people. Tourmaline probably didn’t have any idea what she would want to do about that. Or what she might have to do. Virginia stared at Jason’s back, cigarette to her mouth. If she kept on this way—bartering only for time around the club via Tourmaline—she would have no guarantee of getting what she needed.

  Jason glanced behind him, eyes bright even over the distance as his gaze connected with hers.

  Virginia’s heartbeat surged ahead, but she forced herself to stare back until he looked away, expression unchanged. She released a tightly held breath and glanced at Tourmaline. “What’s this Wayne like?”

  “Exactly what you would expect of a low-level drug dealer in Roanoke, Virginia. Always on a concoction of something. When he was with my mom they were playing with Oxy and meth.” Tourmaline blinked at the ground and slumped a little deeper in the chair. “He’s not smart. Or clever. He’s got a weasel quality that keeps him alive, I think. Like every time death will have him, he just manages to wiggle loose. But I haven’t really seen him in four years.”

  “How do you know he’s after revenge?”

  Tourmaline hesitated. “A guard told me.”

  Virginia relaxed a little. “That’s probably shit. Prison gossip.”

  “He found me last night.” Tourmaline shifted and the chair legs scraped against the stones. “Before I had you pick me up. He’d followed me there.”

  Shit. Virginia stared at the cigarette. Her phone buzzed and she knew without looking that it was Hazard checking in. Part of her felt as if she were still sitting in that office chair, with hardly any air and the sudden jerk of reality tugging on her face. It made her stomach heave, but she wasn’t sure if it was from the memory or because she was letting him down by not giving in. None of this was just a job—it was the rest of her life. Her no wasn’t worth much when she kept trying to spend it everywhere. And she heard her mother, squawking over the cigarette, Stop being so precious, Virginia.

  The breeze gusted, warm and wet. A smattering of drops plunked on the mostly dried stone. Jason shifted back into the space between the lilac bushes, and instead of addressing Tourmaline or thinking any more about Hazard, Virginia focused on him.

  He wasn’t wearing a vest, just a ratty black T-shirt with short sleeves that showed a nasty smear of scars on his left arm. Not scars. More like his skin was the scar. It made her uneasy. Virginia wanted to know what had happened, but she didn’t want to ask Tourmaline. The evening light bathed him in melted-butter warmth, picking up the blond in his dark hair and deepening the gold in his tanned skin. He laughed at something Tourmaline’s father said, a hint of dimples under his beard, the boyish charm in stark contrast to the hardness of his body. A deep ache opened up inside Virginia’s chest, threatening to pull her inside out. An ache she didn’t understand at all, except to know she did not want Jason to be work, no matter how easy the job would be.

  Virginia shifted in her chair, turning back to Tourmaline. “How serious is this?” And how serious are you?

  Tourmaline shrugged. “I don’t know.” But her voice seemed small and tight, as if she did know. “I just need to keep him from bothering me ever again. Without my dad or anyone getting involved.”

  Just. Virginia rolled her eyes and flicked the smoke. “Oh, you think me and you can beat him up or something?”

  “Well. I was . . . I mean. He’s only threatened me. So maybe I can get him to move on. I just need him to move on.”

  “You want to reason with him? With the guy who you just said was mixing Oxy and meth?”

  “No, that won’t . . .” Tourmaline looked stricken.

  “He sure sounds reasonable.”

  “My dad would be able to fix this,” Tourmaline snapped.

  “Maybe. But you don’t have nearly the same reach.” Virginia crossed her legs. “I’ll help. But it might be messy. If he violates his probation, they’ll send him back. How you want to go about that will depend on how long you want him back inside.”

  Tourmaline didn’t meet
Virginia’s eyes. “I should just let my dad take care of it.”

  And the fact that she could do that, if she chose, made Virginia’s mouth tighten and any sympathy she might have had drain away.

  “Listen here.” Virginia leaned forward on her knees, forcing Tourmaline’s skittery gaze to hers. “I’m not going to sit here and tell you what you should do. I’m here to tell you what no one else is going to say. If you want to handle this, without hiding behind them”—she stabbed the cigarette toward the garage—“you have two options. You can do what I just told you. Or you can go find yourself a lawyer, and a judge who will issue a piece of paper, and a cop who will come out to this address I’m sure he’s familiar with, to a last name he knows means bad shit, and enforce that piece of paper. Believe me when I say that rarely goes well for women on the right side of the law. And you, Tourmaline, are on the wrong side of the law.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re a Harris. Of the Wardens.”

  Tourmaline mashed her lips together and looked away. “But if they do anything, Alvarez will be watching. If they even, like, fuck Wayne up. There’s State Detective Alvarez just, like, whistling on his way to work, ready to turn simple assault into murder two or something. I have to be the one to do it, or they will.”

  “Only those of us who have any expectations of safety ever speak up. Especially in a goddamn court.” Virginia flicked the cigarette with vehemence, half irritated she had to sit here and explain, and half relieved to make the truth into words and lay them around someone else’s neck for a change. “You can’t end this until you end him, basically. I don’t know what that might mean for you. I’m just telling you what it usually means. There’s not much that’ll work on a not-clever, beat-down, strung-out man looking for revenge.”

  Tourmaline shook her head, looking vaguely sick. “I’ve got three months until I leave. I can’t let any of my family go to prison for this. I can’t tell my dad or Jason or anyone. I’ll just have to . . . survive until then.”

  Virginia’s phone buzzed, and the words she’d so vehemently pushed out of her throat seemed to sink back into her stomach. She dug her phone out and glanced at the unread message.