by Naomi West
“So we’re gonna let ’em hit us twenty-four hours a day instead?” Alfred mutters, his voice wheezing. He must be ninety years old if he’s a day. He sits hunched over, clutching the table, eyes watery. But when he speaks, he looks like a young man again, if only for a moment. “The Scorpions need to be taken out. I’ve lived in Sunnyside since I was a lad. I helped make this club. And now you’re telling me these Scorpion fucks can just roll in and take over? I won’t have it.”
“The Dinosaur’s right,” Charley Red-Eyes says, his eyes bloodshot as usual. He’s short, stocky, with a flat face and a flat attitude toward violence. “They need to die.”
“I agree,” Danny Simmons squeaks up, nineteen years old, the youngest officer by far. He wipes down his blond hair and smiles nervously. “We can’t let them keep going in on us, can we, boss?”
They all turn to me, waiting. I’ll never get used to that moment. One day I’m sitting on their side of the room, looking to the President for advice, and the next I’m sitting here, dishing it out. Part of me misses just being able to sit there, waiting to be told what to do.
“Some of you might not know this,” I say. “But I had a girl I’ve been seeing on and off for a couple of months now. Her name was Christina. She was a cousin to one of the club girls. Anyway, she was at the bar tonight. One of the men—and I reckon it was that bastard Snake Lafayette, ’cause it’s always Snake Lafayette—left her bleeding out back. She’s dead.” I lean forward. The officers sit up, watching me intently. “So believe me when I say I want the Scorpions wiped out as much as you do. But here are the hard facts. They have just as many men as us, maybe some more. They are just as tough as us. They are just as brutal as us.”
Knuckles heaved up his huge body, smacking a meaty fist on the table. “Bullshit!”
“Do I look like I’m done talking?” I ask quietly.
Knuckles swallows, shakes his head, and hunches down.
“They are our equals,” I go on. “I know you don’t wanna hear that, but they are. So here’s what we need to do. We need to find a way to make things unequal.”
“Like in checkers when you get to the other side of the board and become a king?” Danny Simmons whispers, looking nervous when the men turn to him.
“Sure,” I say. “Like that.”
“But how?” Red-Eyes asks.
“Yeah.” Justin furrows his eyebrows. “Do you have a plan?”
“No. Not right now.” They all deflate. “For now, let’s all get some rest. Get some of the club girls in. Get some life into this place. It’s seven o’clock, goddammit; we’re not all dinosaurs here.” I wink at Alfred, who croaks out a savage insult.
Half an hour later, I’m in my office which adjoins the bar, listening to the sound of glasses clinking and women giggling in the next room. The only one who doesn’t get involved is Justin. He’s in an office next to mine. I can hear him in there, tapping on his keyboard. He’s working out the logistics for a gun shipment, I know. Leaning back on my chair’s hind legs, staring at the framed photograph of me and the previous president, Sonny, I think about Christina. Truth be told, I wasn’t in love with Christina; nothing as dramatic as that. She was just a woman who liked to fuck. But killing a man’s woman, even if it is just some casual thing, is crossing a damn line.
The whiskey bottle calls to me from the drawer of my desk. I’ll crawl into it soon, crawl deep, and forget about the trashed bar and the dead woman. I’ll try and forget about the other memory, too, the smoldering car and cooking flesh—I shake my head, forcing the memory deep down where it can’t bother me.
I need to ride, hit the road and be a man and his bike instead of the president and his officers. I need to pretend I’m just an enforcer again, working a job, trying to keep the Smoking Vipers afloat.
I feel oddly young when I climb out of the window into the parking lot. Not that I’m old at thirty-one, but I feel twelve or thirteen or something. This is the sort of thing Toby and I used to do, back in the day. The sun has almost set now, the silver handlebars on my bike catching an eerie purple color. I climb onto the bike, no jacket, no helmet, and ride away from the clubhouse. The music pumps behind me, becoming quieter as I get further away and release the engine to a full growl.
The wind feels good in my face, waking me up. I always think best when I’m on the road, metal roaring beneath me. I don’t know how a man can think in silence. There’s too much room for stray thoughts to get in the way. Sunnyside is a smallish town buried in the Californian south amidst trees and dust, San Diego a whisper to the west. As I ride, though, I don’t feel like I’m in California. I don’t feel like I’m in America. I feel like a pioneer, in the middle of nowhere, just me and the wide, unknown road. After about half an hour of aimless drifting, I ride toward the Scorpions’ clubhouse. I guess it can’t hurt to see what the enemy is up to.
During the two years I spent in the army, I learned to move quiet. So I park my bike on the far side of the road, hidden under the trees, and then creep across the road to the clubhouse. The building is squat and ugly, all jagged edges with a glaring neon light proclaiming Scorpion with a flashing scorpion figure next to it. Around thirty bikes stand in the parking lot. I approach from the dormitory side, skirting the lot, crouching low behind some bushes. I’ve got my pistol slung under my arm in its holster, just in case. But I’m confident I won’t get caught. A man can move like a shadow if he knows how.
I crouch here for an hour or more watching the dormitory windows. Most of the curtains are drawn, but I catch a glimpse of a couple of bikers. Mostly it’s just club women, the same kind we have, party girls who like to have fun, or cleaners and cooks doing their work. The moon is fading into the sky when I’m about to get up and leave. Coming here was a stupid idea anyway.
But then a light switches on, a yellow rectangle tempting me to stay. I crouch lower. The woman who walks into the room is like something out of a magazine. She must be around twenty, with a youthful, red-flushed face and big saucer-like blue eyes. Her blonde hair is tied up in a bun. She moves around the room with the grace of a dancer, her body short and curvy in all the right places. She’s the sort of woman who makes a man want to bury his face in her tits. I don’t know whether other men would feel guilty about eyeing up a piece like this after their girlfriend just died, but I don’t. A body and face like hers is too much to resist.
My smile drops when Snake Lafayette enters the room with the woman. I take out my pistol, wondering. But then I slide it back into the holster. I could shoot him at this distance without a problem. I’ve killed men from longer ranges with pistols. But guns are loud, way louder than in the movies. One shot would draw out the whole club and see me dead. The woman backs away from the man, shaking her head. I can’t hear what they’re saying, dammit. I don’t even know why I want to. Before I can question myself, I’m creeping to the window, making sure to stay in the shadows. I press flat against the wall, their voices dim but audible.
“Listen, I’m sure we can work something out.” Snake’s voice reminds me of the brown noses in the army, the ones who’ll do anything to please the officers, or like the brown nose pledges who never get patched. But Snake isn’t a brown nose. He’s just a snake. “I know you’re upset about your mother, but that’s no excuse for being unreasonable.”
“Unreasonable, Dad? Unreasonable?”
Dad . . . I creep away from the window, making my way back toward my bike. Snake Lafayette has a daughter. I had no clue about that. I have no clue how he could keep something like that a secret, either. But the facts are the facts. Snake Lafayette has a daughter, and we need leverage against the Scorpions. If the leader of the club I’m trying to take down has a daughter, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what needs to be done. She could be useful. She could be the difference between the Smoking Vipers living another year or dying in the Scorpions’ pincers.
I ride back to the clubhouse, thinking of that bottle of whiskey. The plan is formulating in my
mind, the logistics slotting together. This man killed my girlfriend. She wasn’t my fiancée, or even a woman I loved, but she was my girlfriend, and the principle of the thing can’t be ignored. Even without Christina’s death, though, I can’t let Snake roam around Sunnyside doing anything he likes to Viper territory. I can’t let Snake rob our stores and trash our bars. I can’t let Snake put my men at risk, men with wives and kids and bills and rent and responsibilities.
I sit on the edge of my bed, whiskey bottle in hand, taking slow, long sips. The whiskey is liquid fire down my throat, burning in my belly. I roll my head from side to side, clicking my neck. It’s time we did something. It’s time we stopped letting the Scorpions walk all over us.
I go into the bar, where the partying has reached the lazy stage, music playing low, the men dealing cards, the women sitting on their laps.
“Officers!” I shout across the room. “My office. We’ve got shit to discuss.”
Cards scatter. Women scatter. Whiskey glasses drain and slam into the table.
And then we’re in my office, talking about the sexiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“First thing’s first; one of you needs to get to the Scorpions’ clubhouse. I want that place under twenty-four-hour surveillance.”
Chapter Two
Yazmin
Mom is dead. I say it to myself every day but it’s still difficult to believe. Mom, who raised me on her own, who took me to ballet practice and then understood when I told her I wanted to quit, who baked pumpkin pie every Halloween even when she had to work a double shift at the hospital, is dead. Mom is dead. Lying in bed, my face buried in the pillow as though that means the world doesn’t exist, I giggle madly. Mom is dead, but it doesn’t seem close to real. I keep expecting her to knock on the door and sweep in, demanding to know why I’m here, in the clubhouse, surrounded by cruel men.
The knock comes at the door, but it isn’t Mom. It’s Christopher Michaels. He’s around fifty-five years old but for some reason he brings me my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He has no hair except for a few wispy gray bits. His bald head is covered in purple veins. He always smells of cigarettes and stale sweat. I pull my blanket up around my chin, covering my chest.
“No need to get nervous around me, baby doll,” he says, placing the tray on my bedside table. “We’re friends, ain’t we?” He licks his lips. His lips are always dry and his eyes are always watery.
“Sure,” I say, keeping my voice neutral. “But the last time I checked, friends don’t stare at each other’s tits.”
“You’re a snooty one, missy.” Christopher points a long skinny finger at me. “You need to learn how to take a compliment. I’m not staring at your tits. I’m appreciating your form.”
“Okay, fine. Sure. Call it whatever you want. Can I eat my breakfast now?”
“Ungrateful slut,” he mutters, dragging his feet from the room like a teenager.
I want to shout after him, to demand that he apologize, to tell him to never talk to me like that again. But Christopher has more power here than me, the president’s daughter. I have no power at all. I pick at the toast, eating some crust, but I’m not hungry. I keep thinking of Mom whisking eggs and milk, sprinkling seasoning, smiling at me with eyes bluer than mine.
I go for my morning jog at nine o’clock every morning, jogging around the winding, tree-shadowed roads of outer Sunnyside, wondering if anybody would care if I kept on running. That’s a stupid question, because I know the answer. Of course they wouldn’t. As if reading my mind, when I get back to the clubhouse one of the girls comes to tell me that Dad wants to see me.
A strange feeling hits me every time I’m told Dad wants to see me. He killed Mom, and yet he’s the only person who’s stopping me from being homeless. I hate myself for being here, and yet I’ve got nowhere else to go. I feel like a coward, staying with the man who killed my mother, or at the very least who had my mother killed. I am a coward. And yet I have little work experience and no credit. I was always going to go college but I put it off twice, working part time and reading and partying and trying to figure stuff out. Then life figured it out for me.
I walk through the clubhouse, ignoring the men who leer openly at me. Most of Dad’s men are ugly, gruesome thugs who lick their lips or wink when they see me. A few are just men doing their job, getting on with their lives. But as I walk through the bar, I feel like I’m walking through a house of mirrors where each mirror is a man’s face grinning stupidly at me, mad hunger in his eyes.
I go into Dad’s office and wait on the opposite side of the desk as he finishes some work up on his computer. I was shocked the first time I saw Dad, which was only eight months ago after Mom died. Mom died, I repeat in my head bitterly. But she didn’t just die. What the hell am I doing here? What the hell is wrong with me? Am I that desperate for a father? Am I that screwed up? I force these questions away, sensing that I won’t like the answers. I was shocked when I saw Dad for the first time because he looks nothing like me or Mom. Mom was blonde, blue-eyed, short, and curvy like me. Dad looks like a weasel with beady brown eyes and a gaunt, whiskery face. He has a small, mean mouth and sweat constantly drips down his forehead, making it glisten. He leaves me waiting for five or so minutes, acting as though I’m not there. Anger twists in my belly, but somehow I manage to keep myself calm.
Finally, he leans back and gestures at the chair. For the past eight months since I’ve lived here, I’ve come to learn that Dad is a cruel man who does cruel things to those who disobey him. On my second day, I saw him order a man whipped for talking back. On my fifth day, he made a man twice his size stand still as he punched him over and over in the face. Women, too. He’s beaten more than I can count. Maybe that’s why my anger is quickly replaced with cold fear. What am I doing here? I ask myself for the hundredth time. This man is no father.
He lays his hands flat on the desk, squinting at me with weasel’s eyes. “You haven’t really been pulling your weight, Yazmin, have you?” he says. “Everyone under this roof works. The women clean and cook and suck and fuck. The men fight and bleed and die and ride. But you just sit in your room, or go running, or read, or whatever the hell it is someone like you spends their time doing. Are you an invalid? Is that it?”
“No,” I say stiffly. “I’ve just . . .” I pause, wondering how to best describe myself. “I guess I’ve just been trying to find myself, and then Mom died and—”
He waves a hand. “I don’t want to talk about your mother.”
Suddenly the anger I’ve been able to keep repressed for months rises up. Even a few nights ago when he called me unreasonable for not wanting to sit on one of his friend’s laps, I was able to keep it repressed. But now, watching him wave away my mother’s death as if it’s nothing, it explodes.
“Why? Because you don’t want to talk about how you killed her?” I snap. “You don’t want to talk about how you left her on her own and then killed her? You don’t want to—”
“Enough.”
“You know what confuses me about you?” I go on, raising my voice. “You made her call me Lafayette, like you. She had her maiden name and you wanted nothing to do with us, and yet you made her call me Lafayette.” I look around the office, guilt like acid, chewing through me. “I shouldn’t be here. I’m disgracing her memory.”
“Go, then.” He waves a hand, meaning to make me homeless as casually as he killed Mom. “I never asked you to come here, girl. I made her give you my name because a man’s children ought to have his name. At least I thought so once, twenty years ago. But now? Do what you like. Change your name to any damn thing you please. But let me tell you something, girl. You’re not getting a free ride here anymore. I won’t stand for it.”
“You’re going to kick me out,” I say. Even now, despite everything, part of me wants to beg him to let me stay. I’ve never been on my own.
“I won’t kick you out,” he says. “I’d like you to leave, but I won’t kick you out. But I won’t have you her
e for free, either. I ordered your mother killed, yes. I did that because I loaned your mother ten thousand dollars and she didn’t pay it back.” He stares at me coldly. “I don’t give free rides, girl, never have, never will. So here are your choices. You can work at our strip club in town. I’ll put in a word for you with the manager. Or you can become one of our guys’ old ladies. Christopher has said he wouldn’t mind taking you on.”
My skin crawls when he mentions Christopher’s name. I think of all the times he’s brought me breakfast, his eyes moving all over my body. I think of the time he walked in on me while I was getting changed, how he just stood there, staring at me in my underwear, before trying to kiss me. I managed to fight him off, but if I was forced to marry him . . .
“Mom told me who you were a week before she died. She said I might need to know in case something happened. She said you were a cruel man but you had your own sense of honor which would stop you from hurting me.” My voice is devoid of emotion. I realize now that no amount of anger or tears will break through to a man like this. I realize now that this man is evil, pure and simple. “Where’s the honor in this? You think nothing of selling your only child to a man twice her age. You don’t even care.”