by Hazel Parker
No one needed elaboration. We could more quickly cite the value of the second amendment than we could the first.
“This city makes it virtually impossible for any private citizen to have a gun. You could be the goddamn president of the United States with a track record of hunting for four decades, never have a gun violence case on your file, and you will never get access to a gun. We start trading in guns? We’ll be fucking richer than the assholes on Wall Street.”
“Hey now,” Fitz said, clearing his throat. “Pardon me, but not all of us are assholes.”
Niner snorted.
“That sounds like the kind of thing an asshole like you would say.”
OK, this is getting off to a swell start.
“I, I don’t know what to say to that,” Fitz said. “However, there’s a problem with your plan. Regulation being tight means we will have no room to wiggle. And as much as I am for investing in a great financial opportunity, what you’re describing to me sounds like a recipe for short-term profits and medium-term disaster.”
Plus, I could get arrested, and that would be that. I refused to bring my selfish concerns out, though. If anything, I wanted to see the banter and interaction of everyone at the table. I could already see Niner and Fitz were going to get along about as well as Sarah and me.
“We are going to need guns regardless,” Niner said. “We start this, we’re gonna have people coming for us. And I don’t just mean law enforcement. You know what the biggest threat to a gang, a club, a group is? It’s not the cops. It’s other groups gunning—literally—for you. Now, in my time on the force, we didn’t have much in the way of MCs. You had a couple of groups pretending they were whatever, but they didn’t have the seriousness. It was just a couple asshole teenagers or broke men claiming they were a Hell’s Angel or whatever. But as soon as some people see us rising up? You’re going to see a lot more.”
“OK, I can understand that. I know I’m not investing in a bank here. I just want to make sure that what I am investing in here stays as clean as possible,” Fitz said.
I didn’t mind Fitz, and I suppose in some way, I should have been grateful for a devil’s advocate of sorts. But fuck, having him on board was going to make things a giant pain in the ass at times.
“I’m going to take blame here. I just wanted to establish some ground rules first here; this isn’t the place to discuss those things,” I said, noticing Christine coming over. “Let’s just put our order in for food real quick, shall we?”
I’d never seen people make such a snap decision over breakfast food. It felt like the others had simply pointed to an item on the menu at random. I was tempted to say something to Christine, but I decided avoiding getting shit from the other members this early was in my best interest.
“Uncle,” I said. “Let’s talk facts. You and Fitz are the primary investors here. How much are you all putting down?”
“Enough for a year’s worth of rent, plus fifteen grand into repairs or whatever else we need to rig up. But don’t think that’s a lot of money. If this were any place but New York, I’d be cutting that number in half.”
“Understood,” I said. “And how soon are we getting the building?”
“Two weeks.”
Some gentle nods and smiles formed at that. This dream was coming together a hell of a lot quicker than I had anticipated. Almost too quickly; I wasn’t just getting thrown into the deep end, I was getting held under.
There’s no closing or opening time with a new business. It’s all the time. That starts now.
“Niner wasn’t wrong. The owner is looking to sell quickly. He’s a little wrong in that because he wanted to sell quickly, I was able to get a deal out of him better than market value, but he’s not wrong in that repairs are not the future. I know it’s easy for you millennial kids—”
“Do I look like a goddamn millennial?”
Even Niner chuckled at that, although it was still the chuckle of a man who didn’t smile much. It would have sounded like a cough on most men.
“Just don’t act like one of those whiny kids and we’ll be good. In any case, yes, two weeks, you got it. And just to reiterate what I told Marcel this morning and I’ll tell the rest of you gentlemen here, this place is smaller than you could ever think. Fitz, I suggest that you have two sets of clothes—one for when you come to the club, and one for when you are at your day job.”
“Well, with any luck, I’ll only have one set of clothes, because I can quit that job.”
Holy shit, Fitz. What do you do? And how desperate are you to escape whatever it is that you do?
“Well, just be warned, this ain’t a penthouse apartment in Manhattan. We ain’t no billionaire tycoons in here. Shit, we’re not even millionaires out here. But I don’t think I need to warn you boys that much.”
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “There is, however, one thing I need to make sure of that has not been confirmed.”
“And what the fuck is that?”
I smirked.
“We all have bikes, right?”
Everyone around me nodded.
“Good,” I said. “Guess my ass better get one before our next meeting then, huh?”
Everyone laughed. It was a nice way to break the tension, and I felt like I’d led my first meeting with some degree of competence. I’d have to keep an eye on Niner and Fitz, as I didn’t think you could get two more opposite people in an MC than that, but hey, the money and the brawn had to come from somewhere.
Christine brought out our food about five minutes later, or what felt like five minutes later, and like five lions that hadn’t eaten in a week, we gorged on our food with a ferocity that she had probably never seen anywhere else. Yeah, I ate eight plates for breakfast yesterday, but one man eating a ton of food was a much more normal sight than five beefy, big men eating more than the average person would eat over the course of the day.
We cleared our plates within ten minutes, tops. None of us were slow eaters; we weren’t the “savor the taste” pussy types. When we ate, we fucking ate.
Fitz and Uncle left before the rest of us. They had “rich people” business to attend to, and they warned us that this would be close to the norm for some time. They couldn’t leave their normal, money-making lives just yet, not completely at least. I got Uncle’s position—he might as well have had multiple feet for his ability to jump boundaries and go different places. But Fitz?
I guess old Fitz would be someone I’d have my eye on.
That left just Niner and Biggie and me. Niner tossed me a twenty, told me to keep the change, and got up and left. I looked at Biggie, who just shrugged.
“He’s not one for company,” he said.
“Any idea why he fell out of the NYPD?”
Biggie just grimaced and shook his head. I believed him in the sense that he didn’t know, but it was obvious to both of us that there was something more to it than that.
Just then, the door swung back open. Uncle had returned.
“Biggie!” he said. “I need you to come with me. Need some work done.”
“But the check—”
“I’m gonna give Marcel the cash; get your ass up here.”
Biggie shrugged, not one to refuse free cash, and moved toward me. He had a twenty… and several hundred dollar bills.
“No fucking MC president is going to be without a bike,” he said softly. “Get your ass a bike before I see your face, or I’m throwing a fucking coup and making Biggie president. And I’ll make it bloody to teach you a goddamn lesson.”
Only Uncle could have made something sound so threatening and so hilarious at the same time. I snorted, nodded, and remained expressionless as Uncle slid the cash into my hand before leaving the restaurant. As soon as I could, I counted all of the bills.
Three thousand dollars in cash.
It wouldn’t buy something new, but why the fuck would I need a new bike in Brooklyn? That would have ranked among my top five dumbest decisions ever, and I had
made some truly dumb decisions. No, this wasn’t a disappointment—this was a major blessing.
“They left you with the check, huh?”
I looked up from my stupor of dollar signs dancing in my face to see Christine leaning by the edge of the table, smiling at me.
“Not quite,” I said. “They left me with the chick, though.”
I immediately berated myself for that stupid, flirtatious commented. How fucking rusty was I? It was of enormous luck that Christine thought that that was funny.
“Well, they left me with the hunk, so I guess it works out. I’ll go get your check as the chick.”
Whatever attempts we had made before to keep things on the down-low had vanished entirely. I wasn’t clear if she had just seen the cash or if she’d just been in one of her “move-in” moods, but now the hormones were pumping, and the desire was there.
As soon as the check came, I asked for a pen, even though she hadn’t run anything. I put down two hundred dollars, more than enough to cover the bill—even for five very hungry dudes—and wrote my phone number down.
“You’ll like the tip,” I said with a smirk.
I left before she said anything else, mostly wanting to leave her wanting more… but also because I knew if I got carried away, I wasn’t going to do what Uncle had instructed me to do.
Go get a goddamn bike.
* * *
Three hours later, with dusk settling in on New York City, I heard a beautiful sound that I hadn’t heard in over three years.
The sound of a motorcycle revving up underneath me.
It was not exactly a rocket ship of a thing, probably built well before my most recent jail stint, but as soon as I revved the bike and sped ahead, I was yelling in celebration. She could fly, she could hit eighty, and she handled well. She’d need some paintwork done to get her closer to Savage Saints appearances, but goddamnit, she could work.
I could have just gone home and started thinking of ways to recruit new members, parties to throw, or other ways I could support the Saints, but right now, I just needed to taste freedom on two wheels. I’d had freedom on my own two feet, but unless I suddenly morphed into a cheetah, I wasn’t even breaking fifteen miles per hour, let alone fifty.
I soared down the roads, lifting the visor on the helmet I’d gotten so the wind could smack my face. It was so liberating. It was so glorious.
It was so… fleeting.
Once the sun had set and I paused to overlook the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, I waited for the satisfaction, a Zen to come that I figured the bike could provide. I waited… and waited… and waited…
And it never came.
You don’t have anyone else.
Not Lilly. Not a woman. No parents.
I dismissed the thought. How would that have worked, anyway? I was never going to let Lilly on my bike, not until she was at least eighteen. I didn’t really… well, maybe I did want a woman. Jail had convinced me that I could be fine in the real world without a woman, but just how real was jail, anyway? How well did it resemble what happened in the real world?
I knew the answer to that.
This wasn’t the time, but was there ever “the time?” I knew the answer to that as well.
And it was then that my phone buzzed from a number that I both didn’t recognize and knew.
Chapter 6: Christine
Who are the Savage Saints?
I’d been dutiful for the remainder of my shift, but as soon as we swapped that sign on the front door from Open to Closed and I was outside, I pulled out my phone and started doing as much research as I could.
It shocked me, but not in a bad way.
On the one hand, everything that I read suggested the Saints were evil criminals who seemed hellbent on introducing anarchy to the cities of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, respectively. On the other hand, though, I knew from my previous job that once the media decided you were an enemy that needed to be judged and scorned, it was incredibly hard to shake that reputation. If these two groups were so bad, then why had officials not shut them down or arrested all of them yet?
Not that I had any intentions of getting involved, of course. Not that I had any intentions of reading the receipt that Marcel had left, noticing his cell phone number on it, and pocketing it for later. Not that I had any intentions of taking him up on that offer and seeing what might happen…
Most of this reading took place on the walk back home on my phone, the research being done quickly and through news headlines more than actual news articles. When I got back to my apartment, though, I sat down with my laptop and dug through some of the message boards, the places where I felt the truth came out. If news articles were meant to sensationalize, message boards were meant to show the truth—the real man on the street interview.
Of course, a lot of the men on the streets were just batshit crazy. I could count myself among them, that was for sure.
As I read message boards, I picked up on a theme. Yeah, there were a few crazy ones. There were some legitimately bad MCs, especially ones with names like Devil’s Mercenaries and Degenerate Sinners. But if you had a good one, like the Savage Saints, you had to count your blessings, because they defended the town.
That sounded great for a small town like Green Hills. It even made sense for a place like Las Vegas, which I had frequented more than I had even admitted in my AA meetings and I knew was just a small town with one internationally famous street splitting it down the middle.
But Brooklyn? The only reason anyone could ever confuse Brooklyn for being small was in comparison to Manhattan. Otherwise, there was most certainly nothing small about it. It was a borough with over two million people, larger than almost every so-called “big city” in the US. It had a police force more than capable of protecting it, and while Williamsburg had some crime, it wasn’t like the Wild Wild West.
So why, then, was Marcel looking to start a chapter of the club out here? Did he know of the other groups?
Perhaps better asked, did the other groups know of him? Did it even matter?
Maybe I’d just overthought it. Maybe it was just going to be a bunch of men in their thirties and, in this case, a couple in their late forties or early fifties, looking to recreate some sort of team bond they’d had in high school athletics. Maybe it was just men who had a love of motorcycles who happened to stumble upon a cool name from the news.
The nagging voice in my head, though, knew that wasn’t true.
Whether or not Brooklyn’s “chapter” was a thick, book-long chapter or just a quick sentence, I found myself enraptured by the general concept of the MCs, especially how women saw them. It was interesting how the men were split about thirty-seventy in terms of disliking it and liking them, but the women were somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-ten liking it. The ones who disliked them had kids or seemed haughty about it, but the praise was almost universal otherwise. “Handsome,” “protective,” “real men,” “tough guys,” “hot as fuck,” were phrases I saw more than once.
Had to say, Marcel certainly fit into that category.
I looked at photos of MCs with their cuts on. Would Marcel wear one soon to Egg? He had the body and the face to pull off the look. Maybe I was biased.
Just maybe.
Eventually, my stomach started to rumble. Not wanting to dip into the savings fund that I had built from my time on Wall Street, I started cooking a very basic dinner of rice and beans. It was the same meal as the rest of the week, but barely making enough money to pay the rent had a way of reducing food to the bare minimum. Ironically, I was in better shape now, but I attributed that to the lack of stress and the free time to work than suddenly having to give up steak and duck three times a week.
I had the plate laid out in front of me, the rice steaming and the beans mixed in properly, when my phone started to ring. The last time I had gotten a call on that phone, it was Tucker. I hadn’t given my number to Marcel somehow, had I? I didn’t remember contacting him…
Of cours
e.
“Hello?” I said, pretending not to know who it was.
“Christine, Christine, Chris. Tine!”
Tucker, again. He sounded like he was calling from a bar, the noise in the background overwhelming. I heard people laughing, glasses clinking, and some music piping in. Tucker sounded like he had hunched over his phone, trying to block out all the noise.
He couldn’t block out the fact, though, that he was ninety-nine percent certain to be someplace with alcohol. Lots of it.
“I was thinking about the call this morning, and I realized that I let you off the hook just a smidge too easily.”
“Did you?” I said, barely making the words a question. My tone was dry enough it could have just as easily been a mere statement. I put him on speakerphone and started to consume my meager dinner.
“Yes, you know the first rule of business. A no is not a no. A no is a moment of clarity. A moment when we realize what the other party is objecting to that prevents us from being involved. Once we understand more of them, we can make our move!”
How predatory. How creepy. You know what you sound like right now, right, Tucker?
“Uh-huh,” I said, hoping that if I bored him to death or was bland enough, he’d find some other girl to desperately call and chase after.
“And I realized I didn’t even get why from you. That was a very poor business move on my part, but it was just a poor move in general, you know. So may I ask, Christine, why you are not coming out tonight?”
I shook my head. No way was I telling Tucker that I had quit because of drinking—OK, I’d gotten fired, but at least HR was nice enough to say it was for general conduct, not for alcohol related issues—and that I was now in AA. No way was I going to do that when he didn’t really want to catch up; he just wanted to get into my pants.
“I just don’t want to,” I said, my voice still devoid of emotion. “I—”
I cut myself off. I wasn’t obligated to say anything else.
“Yes, I am aware of that, but work with me here, Christine. Why is it that you don’t want to come out?”