by Jessie Cooke
Maz got up and was headed into the bathroom when she said, “I don’t really feel comfortable giving out her number, but I’ll ask her to call you, okay? Sure, yeah…yes, ma’am, I promise, I’ll tell Ronnie you called.”
Maz’s hand went to the frame of the door and stopped his forward motion. His muscles and joints had frozen. His brain had frozen. His world suddenly felt like it was going to spin out of control and he wasn’t going to be able to stop it. It was like a movie was playing in his brain all of a sudden. There was the connection he felt to Rhonda. The sound of Marissa’s voice in his head saying, “My mom lived in New Orleans for a while when she was young.” The sound of the old woman’s voice in the restaurant saying, “I thought you two were related.” The sound of Elise’s voice when she told him his mother’s name was Ronnie. The diabetes…Why hadn’t he put it all together before? What the fuck had he just done? Jesus! What the fuck had he been doing for almost two weeks? His stomach began to roll and through the fog that filled his head he heard Marissa calling out to him, but she sounded hundreds of miles away. She was touching him. Oh God, the places that she had touched him. He all but ran into the bathroom and fell down on his knees in front of the toilet.
“Maz, please tell me what’s wrong. Is it your stomach? Should I get you some medicine?” She followed him into the bathroom and he could see her out of the corner of his eye in the mirror. She was naked. He was naked. Motherfucker! How does a person come back from a thing like this…how would someone get over the fact that they had sex…wild, unbridled sex…with their sister? “Maz?”
“I’m sorry, Marissa…I’m going to have someone take you home.”
Her eyes filled with tears and he felt horrible. If she was…if she was his sister, this was going to be as horrible for her as it was for him, but right now she had no idea what was wrong. He could see in her eyes that she thought she’d done something wrong. For a second he thought about telling her what he was thinking…but wouldn’t that be worse? No, he needed proof. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Oh no, ma chérie, I’m just not feeling well.” He was sweating and shaking all over.
“Then let me stay and help you.” She crouched down next to where he was sitting on the floor and put her hand on his face. His body was fighting between warmth and disgust as he looked at her beautiful body and thought about all of the things they’d done. He felt the bile rise in his throat again and he said:
“No. I just need some rest, I think. There’s nothing you can do. I’m going to have Ransom take you home. Get dressed, okay?” She looked like she had much more to say, but she didn’t. She stood up, the tears still floating in her eyes, and she went into the other room. Maz sat there for a while, wondering why the fucking universe hated him before pulling himself back to his feet, throwing cold water on his face and going out into the bedroom. Marissa was dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed. She wasn’t saying anything, and he couldn’t tell if she was mad, or sad, or both. It hurt his heart to think that she was mad at him, or that she thought she did something wrong. He needed time and space to figure this all out though. He picked up his phone and sent Ransom a text message. It was only minutes before Ransom told him he’d be right there. Once he got the text he went over and sat next to Marissa. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, tonelessly.
“Please don’t be upset.”
“I’m not,” she said, still flatly. She was, but now wasn’t the time to push it any further. He didn’t want to do or say anything stupid. He had to know for sure first. She left with Ransom a few minutes later without saying another word. She didn’t try to kiss him goodbye, which he thought was a double-edged sword. If she was his sister…no more kisses. Just the idea of it nauseated him all over again. But if she wasn’t his sister, he was going to have to explain his behavior and hope she understood. With a heavy sigh, he picked up his phone again and pressed in his mother, Elise’s number.
“Maz? Ce qui ne va pas?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Maman. Did I wake you up?” He’d forgotten about the time difference. It was close to midnight in New Orleans.
“Non, mon garçon, j’étais éveillé.”
“Good, is Dad still up?”
“Oui.”
“Can you put the phone on speaker so he can hear too?”
“Oui.” He heard her telling his dad that it was him. He imagined that she was waking him up, probably in his recliner in front of the TV. “Okay, Maz,” she said, in English for his father’s benefit, “you’re on. Tell us what’s wrong.”
“What’s my biological mother’s full name?” There was a pause and then Elise said:
“I gave it to you, Maz. Her name is Ronnie Lane.”
“Ronnie, not Rhonda? Dad?”
“I only ever knew her as Ronnie – what’s this about, Maz?”
“Lane…that was her last name…you know that for sure?”
“It’s what was on the legal papers when she…” he hesitated and then said, “gave up her rights. Now, Maz, please tell us what this is about. Have you made contact with her?”
“No…I don’t know.”
He heard his father sigh. “No, or you don’t know? You need to start from the beginning, son. You’re not making sense.”
“Do you have any pictures of her?”
“Non,” Elise said.
“Can you describe her to me, again?” He’d asked before, many times, what she looked like, and his father had told him. Elise had described the woman she saw watching them that day in the park before he left for California. But, obviously feeling the need to indulge him his father said:
“She was about five foot six, thin build, dark hair. Back then she wore it long and just in loose curls. Her eyes are dark, the same color as yours. When I knew her, she didn’t have any tattoos or anything like that.”
“I met a woman,” he said. “She’s the right age, and she looks like the person you just described. Her name is Rhonda Williams. Does that sound familiar at all?”
“No,” his dad said.
“Non,” Elise told him.
“Damn, okay.”
“Maz, who is this woman and what makes you think she might be your mother?” his father asked.
“I just have a feeling,” he said. His father, the man who saw everything in black and white, sighed. Elise said,
“Faites toujours confiance à votre cœur.” Always follow your heart.
16
Maz’s next phone call that night had been Hunter. Hunter was a bounty hunter and a private investigator in Boston who worked for his cousin and with Dax, and at the same time he was an unpatched member of the Southside Skulls. He had done a lot of work for Wolf and the Westside Skulls over the years too…and Maz didn’t know where else to turn. This was no ordinary situation. He couldn’t just go and talk about it to one of his friends, one of the brothers in the club that was his life. He was mortified, and the idea of anyone knowing he’d had sex with his sister made him sick. And if she wasn’t his sister…well then, he intended to keep seeing her, maybe even make her his old lady…and things like this could hang over people in the club. He trusted Hunter, though, and after making small talk and asking how things were going in the search for Jammer he worked up his nerve and said:
“I have a problem that I was hoping you might be able to help me out with…even if it’s just making some phone calls or whatever magic you work.”
Hunter laughed. “My magic’s a little rusty, but I’ll give it a shot. What’s going on?”
“I met a woman that I think might be my biological mother. I was wondering if you could look into her background for me, find out who she really is.”
“Hmm…you know this woman?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you thought about just asking her?”
Maz laughed nervously and said, “Yeah, I thought about it. Fuck…Hunter, this has to stay between you and me, alway
s.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve been seeing her daughter for a few weeks now, and it’s gotten pretty hot and heavy.”
Hunter whistled through his teeth and then said, “Fuck.”
Maz laughed again, not happily. “Exactly.”
“Your dad’s still in New Orleans?”
“Yeah, I talked to him and my maman, but all he could tell me was the name I’d always known her as, Ronnie Lane. The woman, the one here in California that I think might be her, her name is Rhonda Williams.”
“She married?”
“No. As far as I know, she’s never been married.”
“How many kids?”
“Not counting me, one, a daughter.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s disabled. She hasn’t worked in about five years. She has Type 1 diabetes and she had some serious medical issues related to that.”
“Okay, here’s what I need. Send me all the information you have on Ronnie Lane and do the same for Rhonda Williams. Everything you know about either of them, even if it seems insignificant. I’ll see what I can stir up.”
“Thanks, Hunter. I’ll get a text together with all of that right now. This is fucking…”
“Yeah, I get it.” Maz appreciated him saying so, but he doubted that the other man really got it. He’d been having wild sex with his sister, maybe…unprotected sex…Jésus. When he put the phone down he was still shaking. He sat on the edge of his bed again, completely at a loss for what to do with himself at that point. He had no idea how long he sat there with the ramifications of what he might have done running through his head over and over…until there was a knock on his trailer door. He sat there again, ignoring it. After a few minutes there was another knock, this one more urgent.
“What?” he yelled down the hallway. The door opened and Wolf stepped inside. Maz got to his feet right away. “Sorry, Boss, I didn’t know it was you.”
Wolf smiled. “Obviously,” he said, chuckling. “You look like shit. What’s going on? Where’s your pump?” Maz looked down at himself. He was still shirtless and his insulin pump was still sitting on the nightstand in his room where he put it before he and Marissa started having sex.
“It’s in the bedroom,” he said. “I was getting ready to take a shower.” Wolf cocked an eyebrow.
“You might want to check your glucose first…you really look like shit.”
Maz chuckled again, “Thanks, Boss. Did you need me for something?”
Wolf frowned and looked like he was thinking for a second and then he sat in Maz’s recliner and said, “The Southies have had their fair share of problems with the law over the years.” Maz didn’t say anything, but he knew that was a huge understatement. Dax’s father Doc was a legend. Unfortunately, he was more infamous than famous. He founded the Skulls, got into a bloody war with his partner, fought one war after the other with street gangs, and even got tangled up with the mob for a while, while he was establishing the Skulls territory. He fucked his way across the East Coast. He drank like a fish, and he didn’t bat an eye at using violence to settle an argument or take something he wanted, or protect what he believed to be his. He dealt in drugs, prostitution, the porn industry, gambling, and guns.
When Doc died and Dax took over the club, he ran it on the dark side for a while himself. Maz heard stories about Dax’s old lady Angel being the turning point in his life. He’d met her when she was a cop, investigating his club…almost as awkward as fucking your sister, Maz would imagine. “Dax is doing his best to keep his club from getting into an all-out war with this gang, the Nikkas, mostly because he doesn’t want to deal with cops and feds and task forces again. That shit can cut into the day-to-day operations of business and if you get a gung-ho detective or federal agent, well…we’ve been there too, so you know. Dax has busted his ass to make that club what it is today and he doesn’t want to lose it thanks to some fresh-out-of-high-school clowns that walk around with their asses hanging out of their jeans.”
“So…he’s not going after them?”
Wolf laughed, knowing that Maz was being facetious. “Yeah, that’s the word on the street. The Neponset Nikkas are telling everyone that the Southside Skulls went into lockdown, aka hiding, to keep from facing them.”
“But in actuality?”
“Last I heard they were missing about six of their members, not counting the ones that Jammer already took care of.”
Dax Marshall was a magician…the kind that you didn’t want to piss off or meet in a dark alley. “So where are we in all of this?” Maz was sure that Wolf hadn’t shown up at eleven at night just to shoot the shit with him about their Boston brothers.
“Well, to be honest I was planning on sending you on a run…but seriously, you look like shit.”
“It’s a woman,” Maz said, not exactly lying. “Has nothing to do with my diabetes boss, I swear. You have no idea how much going on a run and getting the hell out of this valley for a while would help me. So…where am I going?”
Wolf smiled. “How’s Louisiana sound?”
Louisiana. Home. A place that Maz had been anxious to leave twelve years earlier. He’d been back a few times since, but only to visit his parents. He hadn’t ventured out into any of the places that called to him as a kid. His mind associated those places and the people that lived in them with weeks in the hospital, being sick as a dog, put on dialysis, and told he had nearly completely ruined one of his kidneys. The truth, as he knew it now a dozen years later, was that the places and the people hadn’t had anything to do with any of it. His self-destructiveness had been just that…self. It came from a place inside of him where that abandoned child still lived. No matter how much love and warmth he’d been shown growing up, that dark child still ached for attention. Unfortunately, in those days, the attention had all been negative and he’d set off on a course that was leading straight to his grave.
In a way, he had his biological mother to thank for saving his life. It had been his drive to find her that had pushed him away from all of the things that were killing him. Now, he wished that he’d gone through with his plans to find her as soon as he got to California. Twelve years ago, Marissa would have just been a little girl, and he would have been her big brother. Now…she was all woman and he was afraid he’d have to spend the rest of his life somehow atoning for what he’d done…to his sister.
He shuddered and tried to put those thoughts away as he pulled his bike off the main road and slowed way down before turning onto a narrow dirt trail that led up to the Jokers clubhouse. He wasn’t surprised to see that it was still dusty, narrow, overgrown with weeds, and full of huge holes dug by the tree squirrels that outnumbered the bikers ten to one. Growing up, Maz had always pictured himself as one of the Jokers. Their black vests bore patches with multicolored jesters on them. Each level of the club wore a different color. The prospects’ jesters were black and hard to even see against the black leather of the vest. A new patch-in got a yellow jester for the first year. If they made it through that, they graduated to a blue jester. The SA, the road captain, and the VP wore dark orange jesters, the enforcers dark green…and the president’s jester was blood red.
Of course, back then Maz had pictured himself someday wearing that blood-red jester. That was before he was wise enough to figure out that power came with a level of responsibility that he was content, at this point in his life, not having. He enjoyed his position as an enforcer and he was glad that he’d met Coyote and Wolf and he’d become a Skull…but there was something thrilling about being home, and he felt it all the way to his bones as he parked his bike alongside a row of Harley Davidsons and killed the engine. He sat there for a good five minutes, listening to the sounds of the music coming from inside, and the sounds of the swamp all around him. It was a good five minutes before the peace was sliced in two by the rumble of another Harley. Another few minutes passed and Sledge pulled up next to him, killed his engine, pulled off his helmet, and looked around.
“What kind of fresh hell is this?”
Maz grinned. “You talking shit about my old stomping grounds?”
Sledge always squinted at him when he talked. Maz wondered if maybe the big guy needed his ears checked, especially because nine times out of ten he had to repeat what he said to him. “Are they all gonna talk like you?”
Maz laughed and got off his bike. He hung his helmet on the handlebars and said, “You think I’m hard to understand…just you wait.” He started up toward the door of the ramshackle-looking clubhouse and heard Sledge following him. Before he opened the door, Sledge said:
“Dude, before we go in, can you at least tell me where the fuck we are? I thought we were going to New Orleans…you know, Bourbon Street, Harrah’s on Canal Street…we’re in the fucking swamp, man.”
Maz laughed. “We’re in Jefferson Parish. It wraps around New Orleans and it’s one of the most mystical places you’ll ever set foot in.”
“Did you say mystical? Like voodoo and shit? I don’t do that shit.”
Maz was still laughing at him. For a big guy, he spooked easily. “Okay, well, how about this, we are only fifteen minutes from downtown New Orleans, and look, we’re surrounded by wetlands. The fishing is fucking phenomenal. There are hundreds of different species in that water. Cypress trees are in bloom. Gators are…”
“What the fuck? Gators? What the fuck?” Sledge was looking around like he expected one to be nipping at his ankles. Maz loved it. This was just what he needed…home, amusement, adventure, and a few days with too much to think about to be left to dwell on his situation with Marissa…and Rhonda.
“If we have time while we’re here, I’ll take you out gator hunting.”
“Fuck you. Fuck that.”
Still laughing, Maz pushed open the door to the club and took another step back in time. He just stood there for a second in the loud, smoky room and let the good memories flow through him. A cute little waitress in a jester hat was pouring shots at the bar as the loud bass of the live music rocked the paper-thin walls. People were drinking and dancing and by now, most of them were probably drunk off their ass…or high from what was being smoked out of the colorful hookahs that the Jokers had set up throughout the place. Over in one corner a tattoo artist was inking a muscular arm that already looked like a tapestry…and on top of a few of the tables, naked girls danced and gyrated to the music. Sledge was looking around like he wasn’t sure what he’d gotten himself into by volunteering to come along with Maz on this ride. He was only months into a new relationship and undoubtedly wondering what his old lady would think if she saw where he was right at that moment.