BAKER

by Scott Hildreth

  “This motherfucker better be legit,” I said. “If he gives me the smallest idea that he’s not, we’re walking.”

  Enough time had passed that it was safe to sell the gold on the black market. The man who was to give us pricing for it was a commodities trader that lived in Brentwood, an upscale neighborhood that adjoined Beverly Hills. Despite coming highly recommended by the Hells Angels local Sergeant-at-Arms, I didn’t trust the man.

  Cash glanced over his right shoulder, and scoffed. “He’s as strong as they day is long.”

  I coughed a laugh. “Did you just make that up?”

  His eyes shifted to the road. “It rhymed. I was pretty proud of myself for making it up.”

  “Been pretty proud of you too, lately.”

  He changed lanes and then flipped his hair away from his eyes. “Why’s that?”

  “You’ve been civil about Andy. I appreciate you giving us a little space, even if it is nothing more than a rest from your verbal assaults.”

  He gave me a quick look. “A little verbal assault never hurt anyone.”

  “It’s annoying.”

  “I figured out a few weeks back that you’re not pumping her for information, you’re pumping her with your dick.” He looked at me and held my gaze, despite being in charge of driving. “This deal’s real, ain’t it?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Liar.”

  “It might end up being the real deal, who knows.”

  He rolled to a stop at a traffic light and then gave me an evil glare, Cash style. “It’s real as fuck right now.”

  “Hard to tell.”

  “Maybe hard for you to tell. You’re star struck or whatever. All of us can see it. Hell, we talk about it.”

  I was glad to see him opening up about it. Curious to find out the MC’s opinion, I trudged on. “What does everyone say?”

  “Nobody’s pissed. Goose said the other day if he heard anyone talking trash he was gonna start slicing tires. Pretty much stopped that afternoon.” He grinned a sly grin. “Even the playing around.”

  It mattered to me what Cash thought. More than anyone, really. He was hypersensitive, and childish in so many ways. I felt a need to make sure any questions he may have weren’t unanswered. The traffic signal changed, and he inched away from the light.

  “What if this gal and me get serious? What would you think?” I glanced over my shoulder, and then made clarification. “If it ever gets that far?”

  “Tried to think about it, but it ain’t easy. Other’n Goose marrying that chick with the kids for a while, it’s always been us. Just us. Guess for me, it gets down to trust.” He looked at me and shrugged his right shoulder against his jaw. “And, you know me. I don’t trust anyone.”

  It was the understatement of the decade. He didn’t trust anyone. Prepared to take the conversation a little further, I reached into my pocket to rub my lucky keychain.

  My eyes widened.

  I checked my other pocket.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Turn around,” I demanded.

  “What?” he asked with a laugh. “Need to knock off a piece?”

  “Keychain. It’s at home.”

  He glared. “Seriously?”

  Embarrassed, I simply nodded. “Make it quick.”

  He did a U-turn in the middle of the street, and began backtracking to the clubhouse. I shoved my hands deep into both front pockets, and then gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry, Brother.”

  In ten minutes we were a block away. Normally, I’d have had him go down the alley, and into the parking garage. The black Dodge Charger parked along the curb caused me to change my mind.

  I pointed toward the car. “Park in front of that Charger.”

  “Looks like a cop car. You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  He parked in front of it. I leapt from the truck, walked to the front bumper of the car, and noticed no one was inside. After peering through the windshield and the side windows, I was convinced the car was empty. The doors were locked as could be expected.

  I walked back to the truck, wondering the entire way if I was simply paranoid.

  “What the fuck’s going on?” he asked as I got in the truck.

  “Car’s been out here from time to time for about a month. Maybe longer.”

  “Might live above the bar.”

  “I doubt it. It’s here at weird times.”

  “Wanna run up from here?” he asked.

  “No. Hit the parking garage.”

  He glared at me. “Just run up from here.”

  “Parking. Garage.”

  He put the truck in gear and stomped the gas pedal. “Okay motherfucker.”

  Minutes later, much to Cash’s displeasure, we were on the elevator together. Me to get my keychain, and him to piss. When we left, Andy was still asleep. I feared she was still home, and wondered how Cash may react to her Sunday morning presence.

  When we go the door, I realized I didn’t have my keys. Frustrated that I hadn’t locked the place, I turned the unlocked handle and pushed the door open.

  When the room came into view, I froze. Some cocksucker stood at the edge of kitchen with a pistol pointed at Andy’s head. Despite fifteen years of training for such an occasion, there was nothing I could do without putting her at risk.

  My mind went from recognizing the threat to boiling over with anger. “What in the absolute fuck is going on?” I seethed.

  “I’ll kill this bitch.” Facing me, he snatched her off the bar stool and put her in a chokehold.

  You’re fucking with the wrong girl, motherfucker.

  You are a dead man. Either way this goes, you die.

  My jaw went tight. All I needed to do was clear my pistol from my holster. Hidden by the hem of my tee shirt, it was neatly tucked into the waist of my jeans, in a quick-draw holster. If I could get him to divert his eyes away from my waist, I’d drop the cocksucker where he stood.

  “I fucking swear.” He pressed the pistol to the back of Andy’s head. “Don’t take another step, Baker.”

  I needed one second. One extremely long second. That was all. With my heart in my throat, I prayed that he not move a muscle. If he did, the woman I loved would be a goner.

  Come on, girl. Look at me. Look at me, baby. When I say this, pull away. Run. You’ll know it’s a lie as soon as it rolls off my tongue.

  “Her?” I lifted my hands to my chest. “I don’t give a fuck, kill her. She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “I’m not fucking around, Baker.” He fixed his eyes on mine. “I’ll put one in the back of this bitch’s head.”

  She was facing me, standing in front of him. The only parts of him that were exposed were his head and his left shoulder. My vision narrowed. All that existed was him, and me.

  It was a one in a million shot, but I had to take it.

  I had to.

  Slowly, I began to lower my hands.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them, motherfucker!” he shouted, pulling her even closer to his center mass. He bent his knees and crouched behind her, leaving only a small portion of his forehead and eyes exposed.

  I didn’t have a clear shot. Not without putting Andy at risk. I was fucked. So was she.

  The concussion from a gun being fired deafened me. Startled, I drew my pistol, but it was too late. Andy’s face was plastered with blood. She fell from the man’s arms and collapsed on the floor.

  I pulled the trigger instinctively, hitting the man in the center of the chest.

  He crumbled to the floor. Confused, scared, and deaf from the two gunshots being fired in the confines of the home, I ran the length of the living room, toward Andy.

  I kicked his pistol across the concrete floor and dropped to my knees at Andy’s side. As I brushed her blood-soaked hair away from her face, she opened her eyes.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t tell him a thing,” She muttered. “I swear.”

  “Oh my
God.” I blubbered. “You’re…you’re okay?”

  “God damned right she’s okay,” Cash spouted. “No thanks to you.”

  I pulled off my shirt and wiped the blood from her face. “You haven’t been hit?”

  “Not by anything but the back of his hand.” She sat up and hugged me. “He’s uhhm. He’s a cop. Did you see his badge? It was on his belt.”

  I looked over my right shoulder. With an open-eyed death stare, the dead man looked back at me. Blood oozed from a hole in the center of his forehead.

  Confused, I started to speak, but couldn’t.

  Cash picked up the man’s pistol, looked at it, and then at me. “Government issue Sig Sauer. Must be a fed. Good thing I got that prick before he got your girl, huh?”

  At that instant, for the first time, it dawned on me. The man didn’t get a shot off. The gunshot that deafened me was Cash’s. He’d shot the man right between the eyes. He’d taken the one in a ten million shot that I feared taking.

  Doing so saved Andy’s life.

  “Good work, Brother,” I said, my voice laced with emotion. “You saved her.”

  “Can’t let cocksuckers go around threatenin’ my best friend’s ol’ lady, can I?” He walked past us and kicked the dead man in the ribs. “Wonder who this fucker is.”

  “Get his wallet and his keys out of his pocket,” Andy said. “Push the door lock button on his key fob and you’ll find his car. Then you can search it. Maybe that’ll help you find out. Find his phone, too. They’ll be doing a trace on it.”

  “God damn,” Cash said with a laugh. “Is your night job being a hit woman?”

  She wiped the back of her head, and then looked at her blood-stained hand. “I watch a lot of Netflix. At least I used to.”

  Cash searched the man, found his keys and wallet, and shoved them in his front pocket. Then, he reached over my shoulder with a bloody hand. “We haven’t officially met yet. Name’s Brock, but everyone in the MC calls me Cash.”

  She shook his hand. “Andy. Andy Winslow. Nice to meet you, Brock.”

  He released her hand and cleared his throat. “Call me Cash.”

  FORTY-ONE - Andy

  “Seriously,” Baker said demandingly. “You need to take a shower, lay down, and get some rest. We’ve got a medic that I can have come by here and--”

  “Remember that asshole I told you I used to date?” I asked from my seat at the bar. “The one that beat me?”

  His jaw muscles flexed. “Yeah.”

  “What he did to me was ten times worse than this. I’m fine,” I assured him.

  “Leave her alone,” Cash said from the kitchen. “Girl says she’s fine, she’s fine.”

  They’d covered the dead cop with a blanket and rolled him up in a rug. I stared at it for some time, thinking about what my father had gone through. No differently than me, he’d been held hostage by my mother the night she shot him.

  My perspective on the entire event changed. I no longer felt hatred toward him. Nor did I cherish her the way I had for all those years. A decision was made, and in an instant, lives were forever changed. Not just theirs, either. The repercussions of such an event ripple outward, touching everyone in their path until there’s no one else to touch.

  I shifted my eyes from the dead cop to Baker. “He was looking for something. Around the bar. That’s where he was when I came out of the bedroom.”

  Baker searched the bar and found a small listening device tucked into the molding that surrounded the brass railing used as a footrest.

  He walked into the living room and looked at the rolled-up blanket. “That motherfucker.”

  “I’m going to guess by the way he was acting, that he’s not on the up and up,” I said.

  Cash barked out a laugh from behind me. “You think not?”

  Baker flushed the device in the toilet, and returned after a moment. He looked me over and shook his head. “What about some rest? How about getting some rest?”

  I needed a shower, but there was no way I could sleep. “I just woke up,” I said in protest.

  “You need a shower.”

  I was still wrapping my mind around what happened. I’d gone from making a bed to seeing a cop murdered, and it wasn’t even noon. There was no doubt in my mind that if Cash hadn’t shot the man, I would have been the victim. It wasn’t easy to accept, but it was the truth.

  Grateful for what happened, but angry that I had to spend a lifetime carrying the baggage, I stood. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Some of the fellas are coming to help out with things,” Baker said.

  “I’ll be gone right after I clean up.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair, pulled it away from his face, and paused. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m going to shower.”

  “Take your time.”

  I went to the bathroom. As if I was traipsing through hip-deep mud, I dragged my feet across the floor. Each step grew more difficult than the last. Once in the bathroom, I all but collapsed on the floor.

  I stared at the shower’s drain as the blood washed away. Shorty, the water ran clean, giving no hint that there was anything else to clean up. I stared blankly at the drain for some time, mentally arguing with the message it was trying to send. I felt filthy. I wondered how they did it. How they coped. If time would make it easier to accept.

  I turned off the water. Like a blanket of anger, the steam hung thickly in the air. I wiped the mirror with my hand, and looked at my likeness in the mirror. I raised my hand to my neck, touching the discolored skin where he had choked me.

  It was easy to joke about the dead man in front of the men. They seemed unaffected by the event, entirely. I, on the other hand, wasn’t so fortunate. I feared the memories would haunt me for a lifetime.

  I lowered my hand and turned away.

  Wearing nothing more than a towel, I stumbled to the bed. I needed to take time to digest everything. To find a way to make it all seem sensible. Making sense of such a morbid act wasn’t going to be an easy act.

  When I woke the first time, it was dark. Baker was at my side. I got up, waking him when I did. Silently, I apologized.

  I walked to the living room, turned on the light, and scanned the room. There was no blood. The rug had been replaced. It smelled not like gunpowder, but like a hospital.

  I flipped out the light and turned toward the room. Baker stood in the doorway. As I walked past him, he draped his arm over my shoulder.

  I nestled against him on his side of the king-sized bed that night. In his arms, I slept until morning came. As the sun’s light filled the room, we both woke at the same instant, naturally.

  He rolled to the side and looked me in the eyes. “I love you, Andy.”

  His eyes told me they weren’t simply words. He meant what he said. My eyes welled with tears, and eventually a few of them escaped. Not because of what had happened. Or because of what he’d said. The tears were those of gratitude. I knew the only way I could get back to normal was to make the trip with him. With love in his heart, he could guide me through anything life had to offer me.

  I kissed him, knowing that in time, everything would be fine. “I love you, too.”

  FORTY-TWO - Baker

  My life hadn’t been plagued with death, but I was no newcomer to how it smelled. We found out the cop wasn’t a cop, he was a private detective. He’d either been hired to look into my life, or was simply someone who believed there was something valuable to find in my condo.

  He’d been disposed of, as had his car, phone, and all his personal effects. I was confident that they’d never find enough of him to perform a DNA test. Remnants of his car were in Arkansas, crushed into a ball of steel no bigger than a kitchen stove.

  His cell phone was in the front yard of his El Cajon home, right beside the driveway. They’d find it wiped clean, and with a dead battery. Our resident Brainiac, Tito, had performed a deep search of the device, finding no indication that he’d talke
d to anyone about me, the club, or his investigation.

  I was confident the mess had been cleaned up, but my life would forever be stained from the events of that day.

  The sound of the bell echoed beneath the mall’s concrete canopy.

  Ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding ding.

  Wearing a surf shop hoodie, I walked toward the red Salvation Army donation bucket. When I passed, I stepped in front of the bell toting woman, blocking her view of my intended offering.

  I pulled my hand for inside the hoodie’s pocket, and dropped four five-ounce gold coins into the red canister. As they hit the bottom with a clank, she looked up.

  “God bless you,” she said with a smile. “And, Merry Christmas.”

  I gave a nod and ducked through the door. After making the same donation at each of the mall’s entrances, I drove to another location, five miles away.

  Each holiday deposit would provide the recipient with roughly thirty thousand dollars. It wasn’t much, but by the end of the night, I would rid myself of close to a million dollars in gold.

  It was never from the club’s take. The donations always came from my personal funds. The club’s take was to shield the men from prosecution, pay attorneys fees, and give them something to retire on when that day arrived.

  It was a holiday ritual of mine. One that I’d done soon following my arrival to Southern California. Each holiday season I spent an entire day casting the coins with a mold and stamp I’d purchased in Monterrey, at an antique shop.

  My charity didn’t right my wrongs, nor did I expect it to. But it was the main reason I did what I did. Over time, things somehow got out of whack, and our means and methods changed. I’d get back on track, somehow. It was going to take time and considerable planning, but it could be done.

  Until that day came, I’d live with the knowledge that the swath of my scythe was wide.

  FORTY-THREE - Andy

  My Gala Christmas Bash was a flop. I learned a good portion of the tenants left to see family for the holidays, and many others simply weren’t as festive as I was. In summary, Stephen and Michael came by, Mort and Mister Greene paid a visit, and Viktor from 1C brought a bottle of vodka and stared at my tits for half an hour.