by J.P. Voss
16
Reno whimpered like a beat dog. Using the bedrail for support, he stood up and hobbled toward the front of the pickup. The cowboy crawled into the cab and pulled away, swerving as he drove down the alley. After he turned right and disappeared, Vince and me went back inside the apartment. When I flopped on the couch, I caught the faintest hint of Harper’s soap.
“We need to find Harper,” I said.
“She’ll turn up.”
“We’d better go look; she has the plan.”
“Don’t you have a plan?” Vince asked.
“I planned on getting my ass kicked.”
“That’s not much of a plan.”
Vince stepped into the kitchen. I could hear him open the fridge. I walked in and stood by the sink. ‘Last one’ he said. He bit off the bottle cap, and we split the last brew. I went to use the head, and Vince told me to meet him out by the garage.
When I got out front, a sleek black ’65 Buick Riviera was idling in the driveway. It had knockoff wire wheels, chrome twice pipes, and was dumped in the rear so the back bumper almost touched the ground. The front end was pointing up, like it was getting ready to takeoff. And written on the side-rear windows in red script were the words “Choosey Beggar”.
“Nice Short,” I said, sliding into the passenger seat. “Where’d you get it?”
“I met a foxy blonde divorcee from Pacoima with huge tits and an insatiable desire for yours truly. When I told her my ride was down, and I was going to be without wheels for a few days, she let me borrow the car.”
“That was awfully nice of her.”
“The girl can’t help it; she’s in love.” Vince pushed in the import eight-track tape, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and the God of Hellfire burned.
Rolling south on Sepulveda, Vince kept his head tilted back, arm straight out, and drove one handed, lowrider style. He hung a right at Manhattan and took the boulevard to the beach. We parked in a red zone by the pier and looked around for Harper. When a cop pulled up behind us, Vince pulled away low and slow, cruising south toward Hermosa.
Vince slipped a reefer out of the ashtray and torched it. He took a huge hit, like he was sucking on an asthma inhaler, and then handed the joint my way. I passed; Vince continued. A few tokes later we stopped at a burger shack in Redondo Beach and ordered something to eat. The sandwich was good, but my stomach was restless, and I only took a couple of bites. The evening air was warm until a Pacific wind came up and blew a chill down my spine. I shivered in the salty breeze while my cousin shoved food in his mouth.
I said, “I’m getting a bad feeling about this deal at the Pike tonight.”
“You said the chick had a plan.”
“She might have a plan. Girls always have a plan. That doesn’t mean it’s realistic. I haven’t heard the details. All I really know is Harper thinks she can swing some deal with the insurance company and get Morgan out of jail. The whole thing sounds sketchy. What am I supposed to tell Lawson? The guy’s gonna go ape shit if I don’t give him the money tonight.”
“No sweat,” Vince replied. “I can handle Lawson.”
“I don’t think so Vince. Lawson is on the edge. He could snap without warning. The fuckin’ guy is completely shell-shocked. Did you know he got kicked out of the Marines for fighting? Can you imagine someone actually getting kicked out of the Marines for fighting? It must of been a pretty bad scene.”
Vince slurped down his root beer. When the soda ran out, he stood up and tossed the cup over my head into an open trashcan. “I’m not worried about Lawson.”
“What about T-bone?”
Vince looked the other way, like he didn’t want to answer. “Fuck T-bone.”
“My sentiments exactly.” I nibbled on a French fry and tossed it back in the bag. “You know it’s not just Lawson and T-bone. There’s a pack of ‘em. I don’t know how many, maybe a hundred.”
“That’s bullshit.” Vince scratched his nuts and sat back down. He looked at me with his streetwise eyes and said, “Lawson feeds that crap to chicks and dumb fucks like your brother. He’s just trying to look like a big shot. There’s not anywhere near that many members. There’s like ten guys in the Serpents.”
“That’s not what the FBI says.”
“Fuck the FBI. That Andrews dude is just trying to scare you. You can’t trust him. He’ll set you up, and then throw you under the buss when he’s done.”
“I don’t know man. I’m starting to have some serious doubts about this whole thing. The shit’s coming down, and all Morgan cares about are the fucking Serpents. Maybe I should talk to the FBI? Why should I go to jail for something those guys did?” I tossed a French fry at a scavenging seagull. “Morgan’s a lot more concerned about Lawson getting his money, than he is about keeping me out of jail.”
“Didn’t you say Morgan was ready to plead guilty if the DA in San Bernardino would drop the case against you?”
I nodded my head and smirked, like yeah so what. “It’s his fault I was in jail.”
“It could be his fault; it could be yours. Either way, you gotta back up your brother. Even if he did do something stupid.”
“Why should I care about him? He was going to toss me out in the street so he could bum around with his motorcycle buddies. Morgan doesn’t give a shit about me. He talks about loyalty, but he doesn’t know anything about it.”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you this,” Vince said. “But since you’re being such a pussy, I’m going to fill you in on some need to know info. You know when your mom got sick last year, Morgan turned down a commission in the Marines and took a hardship discharge instead.”
“The Marines offered my brother a commission?”
“It was right after he won the Silver Star.”
“My brother won the Silver Star? Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He didn’t want his little brother making a big deal out of it, so he told me to keep it under my hat.”
“What happened,” I asked. “How’d he win The Star?”
“He saved some Army Captain’s ass over in Vietnam. The guy got all weepy eyed about it and made sure your brother got a medal. Then the fucking Marines offered Morgan a commission. He was on his way to Officers Candidate School when he found out about your mom being sick.”
“No shit?”
“No shit,” Vince replied. “Morgan was going to be a lifer, but he gave it up to come home and take care of you and your mom. Morgan always backed you. Why do you think he took that job out in Barstow? He didn’t do it for his health. It was the best bread he could make, so he took the lousy job at the mine to support your punk ass while you finished high school. He planned on helping you go to college, but that thing with the chick went down, and he got fired.”
“After Morgan got fired,” I said. “It was pretty much to hell with everything.”
“Getting fired from the mine was part of it. It was a lot of stuff. You know Vietnam was no day at the beach for Morgan. He saw some pretty hairy shit over there.”
“Going to Vietnam is no reason to rob an armored car.”
“Did I say it was? My point was—people do what they do for a lot of reasons. Sometimes the shit starts to pile up and life doesn’t seem like it’s worth the hassle. Your brother started running with the Serpents because he didn’t give a damn anymore.”
“Sometimes Vince, I think you smoke too much rope. What does getting shot in Vietnam have to do with robbing an armored car in the Mojave Desert?”
Vince pilfered one of my French fries and said, “Nam wasn’t the reason, but it was one of the reasons. Think about it man. Morgan gets his ass shot off over in Vietnam. Then he comes home and some dickhead war protester spits in his face at the airport and calls him a baby killer. That kind of crap made Morgan feel like he put it all on the line for nothing.”
“I guess. I mean I get what your saying, but I don’t know.”
“And the way your mom died,” Vince said. “The cancer ate her so fast. She
looked okay the day he got home. Three weeks later she was gone. Morgan went dark after that.”
“Yeah—those first few months after mom died were the worst.”
“That was just the set up. Morgan is tough, and he got back up, but there was more shit to come. You guys had been in Barstow a few months, and Morgan was starting to feel a little bit better, when he meets the chick and falls in love, but it turns out she’s married, and the whole thing blows up in his face.”
“Morgan told you he was in love with Harper?”
“Not in so many words,” Vince said. “Morgan told me without actually saying it.”
“Told you what?”
“He told me he thought he’d met the one, and how she turned out to be just another whore. And how he hated her guts. Then he got droopy eyed and started to tear up. He acted like he needed to take a piss and went to use the toilet. When he got back, he starting guzzling gin and calling all women sluts. That’s when I knew he was in love.”
“If he loves her, why is he being such an asshole?”
“It’s because he’s in love Clyde. A man has no natural defenses against a woman he cares about. They can cut your heart out, and all a guy can do is act tough, get pissed off, and become a drunken asshole.”
“That sounds like my brother.”
“He was broken hearted,” Vince said.
“I didn’t think Morgan had a heart.”
“Shattered into a millions pieces.” Vince lifted a foil packet of Sen Sen out of his t-shirt pocket and emptied the licorice candies into his mouth. “Don’t ever tell your brother I told you this. But after he finished the bottle of gin, he started drooling on himself and telling me about the night she tore his guts out.”
I leaned across the picnic table. “What happened?”
“It happened one night after she got off of work. They were talking out in the parking lot at the truck stop. Morgan tried to put a lip lock on her, and she blew him out of the water. After the chick told him she was married, your brother’s nut sack shriveled up, and he just stood there staring at her. Neither of them said a word. Then a group of guys from the mine stumbled up and interrupted. The guys were pretty blitzed, and they wanted everyone to join the party. Morgan went with the guys, and left the chick standing out in the parking lot.”
“That’s it?”
“Morgan told me, the next night he was getting shit faced at the Wonderland after work, and some short-fat dude comes into the bar and tells him to stay away from the chick because she’s his old lady. Morgan blew him off, but the dude just kept getting in his face, so your brother dropped him with a Waimea right to the chin.”
“I can’t believe my brother slugged his boss.”
“Didn’t know who the dude was until the next day. Morgan gets called into the office at work, and the little-fat guy was sitting behind the boss’ desk. He tells Morgan that he’s the new top dog. Then he fires him.”
“The system does suck.”
“Like I said cousin, Morgan was having a real bad run of rotten luck. And all that time Lawson was coming by every few weeks telling Morgan the world was turning to shit and he should join up with the Serpents and raise hell because nothing fucking mattered anymore.”
I spun around on my seat and tossed my soda cup in the trashcan. I could do the same thing with my brother.
“To hell with Lawson,” I said. “And the FBI too. Let’s find Harper and get my brother out of jail.”