“Years ago, sure, back when you and the Riders were going toe-to-toe with ‘em. But since then? Nothin’.”
“There weren’t any shootings because we weren’t at war with them,” I said, slowly and deliberately, like I was explaining it to a child.
“Exactly,” Dan said, stabbing the air with his finger as though I’d made his argument for him.
…what the fuck?
Goddamn idiot.
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re saying that just because the Midnight Riders aren’t currently at war with the Santa Muertes, there’s no possible way they might send in shooters to take us out, and therefore there’s no reason for the police to investigate.”
Dan shifted uneasily in his chair. “Well… it sounds a little simplistic when you put it like that.”
More like fucking stupid.
“But basically, yeah – it makes no sense,” he continued.
“It makes perfect sense. I still have bad blood with Rodrigo Alvarez – you think he’s forgotten that?”
I’d rearranged Rodrigo’s face back in the day, which had put me in Chino for three years – not to mention on Rodrigo’s permanent shitlist. Now he was the Santa Muertes’ Sergeant-at-Arms. Even though the Riders had negotiated a peace treaty with them when I became president, Rodrigo was never going to forgive or forget. He was just biding his time.
“If you guys have such bad blood,” Dan asked, “then why the hell would a couple of Santa Muertes walk into a club with the Riders’ President, VP, and Sergeant-at-Arms all in the same place, and then only shoot some little pissant new guy? ‘Scuse my talkin’ about your friend that way.”
For a second I got angry at him for referring to Benjy as a pissant.
Then I felt a pang of conscience that I’d totally forgotten about Benjy in the chaos of the last few days. I need to go to the hospital and check on him…
Finally, I realized that what Dan had asked was a damn good question.
“Say it was a hit,” Dan continued. “Why would they send in the JV team? If they wanted to take you guys out, they would have used a dozen heavy hitters with machineguns. But they didn’t. They sent in two retards, one who got himself shot right away, and the other – ”
Dan caught himself before he spoke the truth out loud.
Instead, he just chuckled. “Well, I guess the other one got away, so he wasn’t too much of a retard.”
Despite being a loathsome asshole, Dan had a good point: if the Santa Muerte brass had been behind last Friday night, why the fuck had they wasted a prime opportunity to assassinate me, Lou, and Kade? And why had they sent in a couple of jack-offs to do the job?
Dan shook his head. “Mark my words, they were just two guys who got a wild hair up their ass. Probably high on somethin’. That, and just plain stupid enough to stumble into the wrong fuckin’ titty bar.”
Stumble into the wrong fuckin’ titty bar.
Well, they’d definitely come into the wrong fuckin’ titty bar – but they didn’t stumble in by accident. The Seven Veils was known to every Santa Muerte in Southern California, because five of their men had gotten gunned down in the parking lot two decades ago. It was one of those epic stories in outlaw biker legend – not to mention that shooting had sent Lou to prison for five years. I could absolutely fucking guarantee that every single Santa Muerte foot soldier knew the Seven Veils, knew who ran it, and would have loved to burn it to the ground.
Stupid enough to stumble into the wrong fuckin’ titty bar, my ass.
“Was the shooter high on something?” I asked.
Dan looked confused. “What?”
“Was he high at the time? Did you do any blood tests?”
Dan gave me a smug little smile. “Well, as you know, we pretty much determined cause of death at the scene. Anything beyond that would just be a waste of tax payers’ money.”
Like you give a shit about tax payers’ money.
“What was his name?”
Dan gave me a blank look. “Who?”
Jesus Christ. “The shooter’s.”
There it was again – that little fleeting look of unease on Dan’s face. “Why you want to know that?”
“Because I’d like to know the name of the asshole who tried to kill Benjy.”
Dan waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t remember.”
“Well then why don’t you fucking look?” I growled, pointing at his computer monitor.
Even though I wasn’t the President of the Riders anymore, I was still a scary motherfucker. And Dan Peters was, at heart, a coward.
He swallowed hard, then turned to his computer and tap tap tap came up with a name. “Emilio Gonzalez.”
Emilio Gonzalez. I thought about going to see Benjy again. At least I could tell him the name of the guy who’d shot him, and assure him the asshole was dead.
Dan must have taken my brief silence for some kind of weakness, because he finally grew a pair. A small pair, anyway.
“If that’s all, Jack, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he snapped, the smiley bullshit a distant memory. “I got a busy day ahead of me.”
Figuring out how to squeeze the biggest bribe out of Lou, no doubt.
“Alright,” I said, then walked to the door without another word.
As I left, I glimpsed a brief, fleeting look of hatred on his face.
Good.
I vowed to see that look on his face as often as I could, until his sorry ass got fired. And hopefully thrown in jail.
And if he got shot, I wouldn’t mind that, either.
17
I called Kade once I got out to the parking lot. “What’s going on with Benjy?”
“He’s out of the hospital.”
“What? When the fuck did that happen?”
“While you were off exploring your Irish heritage over the last few days.”
“Fuck you,” I laughed. “He’s home?”
“Yup.”
“I’m going to drop by and say hello.”
Ten minutes later, Benjy answered the door.
Jesus Christ.
His skin was pale and sickly, and I could see the outline of bandages under his t-shirt.
He brightened up considerably when he saw it was me, though it took a few seconds for him to react. Benjy never was the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was even slower than normal. I figured they must have him on painkillers.
Not his usual choice of drug.
That brought up a lot of bad memories, so I brushed the thought away.
“Jack!” he beamed. “Hey, man!”
“Hey, Benjy. How you doin’?”
“Good, real good! Hey – you wanna come in?”
It was a shitty apartment, a one-room studio with peeling paint and a stained futon bed. I felt bad for the kid – then reminded myself that in a couple of months, I’d be lucky to have a place like this.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked me as he hobbled feebly over to a mini fridge in the corner. “I got some Budweiser.”
“No, I’m good. Sit down, don’t tire yourself out.”
“Okay.” He settled gingerly back onto the futon. “It’s nice to see you, Jack.”
“It’s good to see you, too, kid. Sorry I haven’t been around earlier, it’s just – some shit went down and… well…”
“I heard,” Benjy said sadly.
Ouch.
When you’re getting pity from a mentally deficient guy who’s just been shot, you know your life has turned to shit.
“You did, huh?”
“Yeah. Chuck gave me a ride home from the hospital yesterday. He told me. I’m real sorry, Jack. You were a good president.”
“…thanks, Benjy.”
That moment reminded me that it wasn’t just the Lou’s and Dan Peters of the world – there were good people, too.
We talked for a while about this and that. How the Dodgers were going to do this year. What he’d watched on television since he got out of the
hospital. Just shootin’ the shit.
I thought about mentioning I found out the name of the guy who’d shot him, but decided it wasn’t the right time. He’d been through enough, so I just kept things light and pleasant.
There’d be plenty of time to talk about bad shit after the Santa Muertes started raining down a world of hurt on the Midnight Riders.
18
Except they didn’t.
The counterattack never came.
Days passed. Then a week.
Nothing.
I couldn’t figure it out. We’d gunned down two of their guys; we should’ve seen the beginning of World War III by now. Never mind that the assholes had broken a three-year treaty by shooting one of our own – that wasn’t going to stop them from getting revenge. If you fucked with one Santa Muerte, you fucked with them all.
And yet, they didn’t do shit.
I thought about it a lot. Seeing as the body shop lost every single restoration and major job we had, and the only two clients we got over the next week were oil changes, I had more than enough time on my hands to chew it over.
In fact, the only thing I thought about more was Fiona, and that wasn’t by choice. She was an obsession I didn’t have any control over.
Never thought I’d say this, but I was actually glad I had a bunch of murderous assholes to take my mind off her.
And the Santa Muertes were murderous, all right. Even if the top brass had arranged the robbery/hit, they wouldn’t have cared that it failed. They would have used their two dead buddies as an excuse for massive, over-the-top retaliation.
And yet, ten days passed… and still nothing happened.
I didn’t go anywhere near the Seven Veils or the Roadhouse – I wasn’t about to let Lou gloat over his fucked-up little victory – but Kade kept in touch with other members of the group, and nobody reported a single run-in. Not even a rumor of one.
After two weeks, I was half-insane. Between my constant fantasies about Fiona and the mystery of why the Santa Muertes hadn’t come for revenge, there wasn’t much else going on in my brain.
So it was probably unavoidable that my two obsessions started to overlap.
Fiona was a PI, I thought, and that led me into a daydream of tracking her down in LA… showing up at her apartment at night… then ripping off her clothes, slamming her against a wall, and fucking her till she screamed from coming so hard. Making her squirt, over and over –
It took a while to get my mind off of that one.
When I finally got back around to the Santa Muertes, I thought, She knows detective shit. She might be able to help me figure out what the hell is going on.
Almost immediately after that, I thought, HELL no. FUCK that bitch.
I wasn’t that desperate for help… although I was getting there.
If the Santa Muertes never came for revenge, then Dan Peters would never feel the heat from the mayor and city, and I would lose my only chance to separate Lou from his bought-and-paid-for protection.
I felt bad that I kept waiting for a bloodbath, but mostly I was just bewildered.
What the fuck was keeping them from retaliating?
After a few more sexual fantasies involving detective stake-outs, I thought to myself, If she WAS here… and if I ever wanted to see her backstabbing ass again… how would she help me?
She’d go undercover like she did with the Midnight Riders.
I grunted. THAT didn’t turn out so good.
Well, she WASN’T here, and there was no way I was going undercover. I didn’t have any spies I could pay off, no connections to any of their rank and file. Hell, the only Santa Muertes I knew were the people at the very top – Rodrigo and Hector Reyes, the President of the North American chapter. About the only fucking thing I could do was call them up and ask them directly.
My eyes went wide.
That’s fucking insane, I told myself. And it was.
But after two weeks of endless frustration, so was I.
19
“You got a lot of fuckin’ balls, ese. I’ll give you that,” Hector said with a nasty smile.
We were in a diner in Lancaster, California, an hour north of LA. Hector and Rodrigo sat on one side of the booth, me on the other. I’d wanted a public place with a lot of witnesses because that was the only way I could be sure they wouldn’t try to kill me.
Well… reasonably sure. I was still at red alert the entire time. Especially with Rodrigo mad-dogging me across the table, looking like he was two seconds away from trying to slit my throat. But that was nothing unusual. Rodrigo had wanted me dead ever since I bashed his face in years ago.
But Hector… Hector was acting strange. He was his normal self – charming with a side of asshole – but he sure as hell wasn’t angry. From the moment I sat down, he acted relaxed, like he was in a good mood.
Which I didn’t understand at all.
“I needed to know some things, and… given the current situation… I figured it was best to go straight to the top,” I said, as diplomatically as I could.
Hector leaned back, his arms spread out across his side of the booth. “Speakin’ of the top, sounds like somebody fell straight to the fuckin’ bottom.”
Rodrigo grinned for the first time. Made me want to punch his face in again.
“You heard, huh,” I said.
“Everybody from here to Seattle heard it, cabrón. Jack Pollari got bitch-slapped by Lou Shaw.”
“Bitch-slapped!” Rodrigo shouted, then snorted with laughter.
Hector chuckled along. “And all over a fuckin’ puta.”
‘Puta’ was Spanish for whore.
He was talking about Fiona.
Actually, now I kind of wanted them to try to kill me. It’d be a good opportunity to bash both their faces in.
Instead, I got a hold of myself and said grimly, “We need to talk about what happened at the Seven Veils.”
“Why? Is that where you took it up the ass from Lou?” Hector asked.
“Up the ass!” Rodrigo hooted.
A lady seated nearby with two little kids gave Rodrigo an angry look, then immediately averted her eyes in terror when he yelled at her, “What the fuck you lookin’ at, bitch?”
All the customers around us stared at the ground, afraid to move in case they drew the raving psycho’s attention. The waitresses glanced in panic at the manager, who remained frozen behind the cash register. He wasn’t going to do a goddamn thing, that was obvious.
But I wasn’t going to stand for it. I didn’t care if I did have to kill him right here. Might as well finish the job I’d started years before.
“Shut the fuck up,” I snarled. “NOW.”
Rodrigo’s eyes bugged out of his skull. “What the fuck you say to me, puto?”
‘Puto’ was Spanish for faggot.
I was about ready to kill this motherfucker.
I kept my eyes on Rodrigo, but spoke to Hector. “You want to call off your dog before I have to beat some manners into him?”
Rodrigo tensed, about to lunge across the table at me –
Hector said something quietly in Spanish. Rodrigo froze, then settled back slightly in his seat – though his savage expression didn’t change at all.
Hector smiled at me mockingly. “Look at you, actin’ like you still in charge, when you ain’t in charge of shit.”
I scowled. “Can we get down to business and quit fucking around?”
“I been waitin’ five minutes for you to do just that, pendejo. All you said on the phone was you wanted to talk. Well here I am, so fuckin’ talk already.”
“You know, you seem a little too happy, considering what happened,” I said.
Hector laughed. “‘Too happy’? Ain’t no fuckin’ thing as too happy, ese. I been waitin’ to see your high-horse ridin’, bitch-ass get slapped down for years.”
I squinted at him, not believing what I was hearing. Hector was many things – murderous, sociopathic, scum of the earth – but the one thing he wasn�
�t was dumb. And yet he kept going on and on like this was some stupid biker version of ‘Who’s On First.’
“I’m not talking about me and Lou, I’m talking about the robbery,” I said.
Hector frowned. “What robbery?”
“The one where two of your guys walked into the Seven Veils, shot one of ours, then got their heads blown off.”
Everything changed in an instant. Hector leaned in, deadly serious. Rodrigo scowled, too, though he didn’t seem as upset as his boss.
“When the fuck was this?” Hector asked, his voice cold and dangerous.
“Three weeks ago.”
“Three weeks?” Hector asked in disbelief.
“Yes.”
Hector shook his head. “Impossible.”
“I was there. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Then why the fuck I ain’t heard about it?” Hector snapped.
This was very fucking strange.
“The shooter’s name was Emilio Gonzalez,” I said.
Hector spoke to Rodrigo in Spanish again. Rodrigo didn’t say anything, just shook his head ‘no.’
“We don’t got no fuckin’ Emilio Gonzalez in our crew, ese,” Hector said.
“That’s impossible.”
“Impossible or not, it’s like I said: I don’t know who the fuck Emilio Gonzalez is, but he ain’t no Santa Muerte.”
“They were wearing your club’s leathers.”
“You’re sure?”
I glared at him like Give me a fucking break. “I saw them.”
“Then that’s a different issue, and I’m gonna have the head of any motherfucker who gave ‘em those jackets,” Hector said. “But I can tell you this for a fact: whoever those two chingados were, they weren’t Santa Muertes.”
I sat there, absolutely dumbfounded. Everything I knew seemed called into question.
“Well… I guess I wasted your time,” I said as I slid out of the booth.
“Not necessarily. You find out who gave ‘em those leathers, you let me know,” Hector said. “I’d consider it a personal favor.”
I nodded, then walked out, careful to keep my eyes on them until I was out the door.
Midnight Obsession: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 4 Page 5