“It’s alive,” he said in a deadpan voice.
“For now,” I said. “I don’t really have to ask, but where are Charlie, Leon, and Bug?”
“Under new employment with Lou Shaw Enterprises.”
I grimaced. “Figures. This is going to be a bitch until we hire some new guys.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that just yet.”
“Why? Are we not getting any new work?”
“No. In fact, we’re losing work we already had.”
I stared at him. “What?!”
Kade pointed out the window of the office.
A grey-haired guy was walking onto the lot. His name was Tom Crossman, and he was a longtime customer. He was something of a muscle car nut – at least, as much as he could afford on a bank manager’s salary. We’d done restorations for him on a ‘72 Dodge Challenger and a ’74 Camaro over the years, and we were about to start on a rusted-out ‘69 Barracuda he’d picked up at an auction.
Tom walked nervously over to the office and stuck his head in the door. “Jack,” he said in a friendly voice, though it definitely had an edge to it. “Kade.”
“Good to see you, Tom,” I said. “Come on in.”
Kade nodded his head in greeting as Tom walked inside.
“I’m still waiting on the parts for the Barracuda,” I said.
Tom shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Yeah, about that…”
Shit.
“What’s up?” I asked, though I knew exactly what was up.
Tom wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Um, well, money’s tight with my daughter in college, and my wife is throwing a fit… so I think I should probably put off the rebuild for a while.”
“You paid me $10,000 up front for parts,” I reminded him. “We haven’t even touched that yet.”
“Um, well, I could use that back, too, if you don’t mind.”
I could understand him wanting his money back, but the bullshit story was making me angry.
“Tom – tell me the truth. This isn’t about money.”
He wouldn’t look at me. Just kept his eyes on the floor. “Well, you know, things are tough right now…”
“Not for bank managers.”
“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” he said, almost pleading.
“You’re not going to get any trouble from me. But I’m guessing it’s trouble from somebody else you’re worried about.”
He finally glanced up at me, and his eyes were ashamed. “I’m sorry… but I just can’t afford to put myself in a position where…”
His voice trailed off, but I didn’t need him to finish the sentence. Lou did business with Tom’s bank – the commercial loans on the Seven Veils and the motel, if I remembered correctly.
“I understand,” I said, and it was true. I didn’t hate the guy. If I were in his position, I’d probably be worried about potential blowback. After all, he had a family to look out for, and he wasn’t used to dealing with warring biker factions. “I would appreciate it if you could give me a couple of weeks to remedy the situation… but if you can’t, then I understand.”
He looked sad. “I’ve always liked you, Jack. You know that. I trust you. But…”
“But there’s a new sheriff in town.”
He paused, then nodded morosely. “Something like that.”
I walked around to the other side of the desk and pulled my checkbook out of the drawer. “What about the car? Do you want my guys to tow it back to your place?”
“That’d be great… just take it out of the ten grand…”
We all stood in silence as I wrote a check for $9900 and held it out to him. He glanced at Kade like he was ashamed to take it, but he did anyway.
“I need to know something, Tom,” I said. “Should I expect a whole flood of people looking to pull their business out of the shop?”
“…probably.”
“Did Lou call you?”
“No, it was somebody else. Didn’t give me his name, just…”
He trailed off again.
“He made it clear it wouldn’t be looked on kindly if you kept doing business with me,” I suggested.
“…yeah,” he said, shamefaced.
I held out my hand. “I just want you to know, you’re welcome back here anytime. After I get this all straightened out.”
He looked at me in surprise, then shook my hand. “I’m sorry, Jack.”
“Don’t be. See you soon.”
He gave me a sad little smile, like We both know that’s not going to happen.
“See you around, guys,” Tom said, then ducked out of the office as fast as he could.
I turned towards Kade. “How many others have pulled out?”
“Two so far. And there’s a couple of phone calls I haven’t returned that probably want to do the same.”
“Goddammit…”
“Well, it’s not like you didn’t predict it.”
“I thought we’d be losing future business, not shit we already had booked.”
“Could be worse.”
I glared at my former Sergeant-at-Arms. “Yeah – at least I still have my anal virginity intact, right?”
He shrugged mildly. “I don’t know. I can’t vouch for what you were up to the last three days.”
I laughed, then gestured towards the door. “Tell Leon to tow Tom’s car to his house, and prep the rest of our back orders to get pulled out of the shop.”
Kade stood up and walked towards the door. “What are you going to do?”
I sat down behind my desk, like a captain taking the bridge of a sinking ship.
“I’m going to figure out how to keep us afloat for as long as I can.” I smiled grimly. “Might even have to pimp your ass out on Main Street.”
“Make sure you get a good price,” Kade said as he walked out the door.
14
The thing with Tom Crossman hit me hard – and he wasn’t even the worst of it. Four more people canceled their orders that day, and we didn’t get a single new customer.
I ran the numbers, called the bank, and came to the conclusion that I had two months before the body shop went under. Three if I let some of the mechanics go.
Lou was already burying me. Bit by bit, dollar by dollar.
Even worse than that, I couldn’t concentrate – because my mind was on Fiona. I kept thinking of her walking into my office that first day. How beautiful, how strong, how sexy she was.
How backstabbing.
I’d go off into fits of rage, which reminded me of that time we hate-fucked each other hours before she betrayed me. Which would get me thinking about hate-fucking her again, slamming her down on my desk, ripping off her panties, pulling her hair savagely, fucking her until she came, over and over, screaming my name –
It took a lot longer than normal to actually get any work done.
I didn’t get home until after 10. As soon as I walked in the door, I immediately grabbed some Johnny Walker Black and headed out onto the deck, prepared to drink Fiona and my worries away. As I uncapped the bottle, I looked out over the hills in the darkness and thought, I’m going to lose all this. I lost the club, I’m losing my business, and I’m going to lose everything else.
At the depths of my self-pity, Fiona’s voice whispered in my ear:
So what? Quit whining about it and go get them back.
At first I was furious.
That fucking bitch – that fucking, backstabbing, Judas BITCH had the nerve to say that to ME –
But then I calmed down and actually got to thinking.
I finally realized I was angry at the wrong person. Whatever Fiona had done was in the past. She was gone now. Time to get over it.
But Lou was still here. And that motherfucker had to pay.
I put the scotch bottle back inside, untouched, and went to work on my plan.
15
For about 20 seconds, I entertained the notion of just outright killing him. Walking in on Lou and putting a bullet in his head.
It would so
lve a lot of my problems, and I was pretty sure I could get away with it if I paid Dan Peters enough money.
But I eventually nixed the idea. That’s not what I did. That’s not who I was.
Not anymore.
But the idea was awfully appealing for about 20 seconds.
No, if I was going to take him down, I was going to do it the right way: no killing. Strictly legal.
Well… as legal as possible.
First off: what did I know about Lou?
Now that he was in control of the club, he was going to get the Midnight Riders back into drugs, gun running, and prostitution, just like the old days. No question about it.
To do that, he would need the cops to look the other way. That would require Chief of Police Dan Peters’s continued support – which wouldn’t be difficult. The corrupt asshole was already in Lou’s pocket. Those cops who hand-delivered Fiona and Kade to the Roadhouse the other night? They would have never done something that fucked up without explicit orders from the top.
And it would only get easier for Lou to buy the cops from here on out. In a couple of months, a lot of extra money would start pouring in from his illegal activities, and Lou could afford to stuff Dan’s pockets to overflowing.
BUT.
If there was one thing Dan Peters wanted more than money, it was to stay in power. Without his position as Chief of Police, Lou wouldn’t need him, and there would be no reason for the goose to lay any golden eggs for Dan anymore.
The one thing that could get Dan booted was a big enough public outcry. Technically he served at the pleasure of the mayor and the city council, who were all scared of Lou. But if something big enough happened, the mayor and the council would gladly turn Dan into a scapegoat.
And something big was coming.
One week ago exactly, Lou had killed two Santa Muertes during the armed robbery at the Seven Veils. The Santa Muertes hadn’t hit back yet, but it was a matter of when, not if.
Not only that, but any new illegal activities by Lou would require the club to encroach on Santa Muerte territory. Outside of LA and San Diego, they handled almost all of the meth, coke, and heroin in Southern California. Stepping on their toes would ignite an even bigger explosion than offing the two robbers. It’s one thing to shoot a couple of guys who come into your place of business with shotguns. It’s quite another to start fucking with a drug cartel’s money supply.
If the shit hit the fan between the Midnight Riders and the Santa Muertes, then Dan had a very good chance of getting covered in shit. All it would take was a couple of civilian deaths, which were practically a given. The Santa Muertes were famous for not giving a fuck who got caught in their crossfire.
That worried the hell out of me, knowing that some teenage boy out there was going to catch a bullet on a sidewalk, or some five-year-old girl was going to die playing in her backyard, all because of a bunch of fucked-up bikers. But there was nothing I could do, other than try to take Lou down and make peace with the Muertes before the shooting started. Because Lou sure as hell wasn’t interested in peace. Not if it meant a crimp in his money supply.
The police would look the other way because Dan was on Lou’s payroll, and that’s when the shitshow would really begin. The public outcry would be furious. The city knew the police were corrupt, but they tolerated it – partly because they had no choice, but mostly because they’d had three years of peace while I was president. I didn’t see folks going back to the bad old days without raising a ruckus. You can keep people down when you’ve had your boot on their necks for decades – but if you take that boot off, then try to put it back on three years later? Not so easy.
But the most important piece was this was an election year. The mayor and the city council would be shitting themselves over any shootings, and they certainly wouldn’t want to jeopardize their reelections over a corrupt police department. Not in this day and age, when a cell phone video could go viral and get picked up by the national news.
Now, they couldn’t really do anything about Lou – not without risking their lives, and there’s no way in hell that would happen – but they could put on a dog and pony show to prove they were ‘all about law and order.’ If that happened, Dan would be out of a job within a week, and all to save a bunch of politicians’ hides.
That was my leverage point.
That was where I’d start.
16
The next morning, I went to the Richards police department and called on Dan Peters.
The first indication that things had changed was the fucker kept me waiting half an hour. Five days earlier, he would have come to the lobby personally as soon as I set foot in the door.
No longer. I wasn’t the president of the Midnight Riders anymore, and that thirty-minute wait was Dan Peter’s petty little way of letting me know the pecking order had changed.
Of course, he was too much of a pussy to say anything to my face. When the duty officer finally escorted me back, Dan was all smiles and bullshit.
“Jack!” he said, greeting me from his desk. Didn’t get up. “How’s it going?”
Considering that the bastard had taken an indirect hand in Lou’s coup against me, I wanted to punch his face until it looked like raw hamburger. But I restrained myself.
“Not bad, considering,” I said as I took a seat across from him.
“Heard you had a club election the other night. Sure am sorry to hear about the… well, changing of the guard, I guess you could say,” Dan said, with a perfectly faked expression of concern.
It was all a calculated message: I know you ain’t the top dog no more, son, so don’t act like you are.
My knuckles were white, I was clenching my fists so hard.
You have your men kidnap my best friend and my woman, deliver them to my enemy as leverage against me, then sit there and say ‘I heard you had a club election’?
I promised myself that, one day, no matter what happened, I was going to make Dan Peters wish to God he’d never met me.
In the meantime, I just clenched my jaw and gave a tight smile. “Shit happens.”
“Indeed it does,” Dan agreed sunnily. “Now what can I do for you?”
Go fuck yourself and die, for starters.
But instead of saying that, I followed my plan. “I came here because there’s a storm coming.”
Dan gave me a ‘concerned uncle’ kind of look and flapped his hands in the air. “Now, I can’t get involved in whatever goes on between you and Lou, you know that.”
You fucking piece of shit – you already did, when you had your cops nab Fiona and Kade. You just won’t do anything for ME unless I pay you more than Lou does.
I restrained myself yet again from leaping across the desk and pummeling his face. “I’m not talking about me and Lou. I’m talking about the Santa Muertes.”
“Oh, you mean that shooting over at the Seven Veils last Friday.”
“Yeah. That,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
“Well, I wouldn’t concern yourself if I was you,” Dan said patronizingly, like he was telling a sixteen year-old girl Don’t you worry your pretty little head. There was also the added jab of, You’re not the Midnight Riders’ president anymore, so why are you even here?
I ignored his tone. “All of Richards is going to be concerned when the bullets start flying. Especially the mayor and the city council.”
Dan smiled and paused before he answered. The smile said everything: Ohhh, now I see why you’re here… but I’ll play along, anyway.
Asshole.
“I’m not currently worried about reprisals,” he said loftily, as though using a three-syllable word made him a fucking genius.
“And why is that?”
“If they haven’t hit you fellows yet, I doubt they will.”
What the FUCK?
That was like saying, It’s not raining right now, so it probably won’t ever rain again.
“Oh, they will,” I said. “Trust me.”
> Dan shrugged. “Well, I can’t arrest people for a crime they haven’t committed yet, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
‘Wait and see.’
Jesus Christ.
“Two of their people did commit a crime,” I pointed out.
“And they’re not around anymore, are they?” Dan said smugly, like he and I were sharing some sort of private joke.
“But the leaders are.”
Dan looked at me blankly, like What’s your point?
“Aren’t you investigating them?” I asked in irritation. “Did any of your detectives even talk to the Santa Muertes?”
Dan shrugged. “Even if the top brass was involved, they’d deny it.”
That was the Richards Police Department for you. Oh, you say there might be a giant criminal conspiracy? Well, the perps would probably deny it, so there’s really no use in hauling them in and questioning them about it.
The irony was, corruption in Richards was mostly the Midnight Riders’ fault. We’d paid off every cop we could for 20 years – and, I’m ashamed to say, I hadn’t said ‘no’ to Lou when he wanted to sweep shit under the rug. Things like the shooting at the Seven Veils… drunken bar fights…
The death of Ali’s cousin.
I’d been telling myself for three years that I was making the club street-legal and legit, that I was changing things for the better. And for the most part, I was… but I’d looked the other way plenty of times.
In a way, maybe all this shit I was going through was the chickens coming home to roost.
But something Dan had said wormed its way past my guilt-ridden thoughts.
“Wait… what do you mean, ‘even if they were involved’? What makes you think they weren’t?”
There was a look on Dan’s face like uh oh, but it was fleeting. Just enough to make me take notice and think, Huh, what’s that all about?
He lapsed right back into the bullshit, smooth as silk. “You ever known a Santa Muerte to just walk into a joint with a bunch of other bikers and start shooting?”
I tried to keep the You idiot tone out of my voice. “Yeah, actually, that’s happened plenty of times.”
Midnight Obsession: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 4 Page 4