“Simplest, not best,” Sid reminded me.
“Well, as long as you’re providing explanations, how did Lou know about Fiona?” I asked.
“Simple,” Sid said. “He found out from somebody who knew.”
25
Lou Shaw
Jack Pollari.
Bane of my fuckin’ existence.
There was a time when being part of the Midnight Riders meant something. It was like being an American – like being a man: it meant freedom. Power. Do whatever you want, don’t take shit offa anybody, and when you gotta kick ass, you kick it good and hard so the other bastard doesn’t get back up.
That was then; this is now. And like every thieving politician and feminist bitch, Jack Pollari gutted something great. Cut off its balls and put it on its knees, all in the name of ‘progress.’
The really tragic thing was Jack was a goddamn good soldier back in the day. Did some things for the club I’d have hesitated to do myself.
But then he got soft. Saw too many things that made him cry like a bitch, I guess, because he went soft like a bitch.
Three years ago, when most of the old-timers were either dead or doing twenty to life, he sweet-talked a bunch of the brothers into handing over their balls. And they complied. Just reached right in their sacks, pulled ‘em out, and gave ‘em to Miss Pansy to put in his goddamn purse.
I did my best to talk some sense into the shitheads, but they elected him president by the slimmest of margins. And I became VP.
That doesn’t mean I gave up the fight.
And I sure as fuck didn’t give up my balls.
No… I bided my time. Waited for the right opportunity.
I have to hand it to Jack – he’s a good talker. Even when he was ass-fucking the club into the ground, he made it sound like the sweetest deal you ever heard: We’re legit now. We work inside the law now. We’re not outlaws anymore.
Fuck being legit.
Fuck working inside the law – especially when you lose 90% of the money you were pulling in.
And I’m an outlaw till my very last breath.
So fuck you, Jack Pollari.
You’re goin’ down.
26
An opportunity finally arose.
It took awhile – damn near three years. Despite everything I’ve said, Jack can be a smart motherfucker. Not all the time, and nowhere near as smart as me, but he has his moments.
The smartest thing about him is he doesn’t trust me one bit. The dumbest thing about him is he’s not very subtle about it.
So when he asked me to give his newest bitch a job in my club, I figured, Why the fuck not. It was pretty transparent from the beginning. He obviously suspected me of something (smart), so he thought he’d put a spy in my operation (also smart) – except he was blatant as fuck about it (moronically stupid).
A better play would have been to recruit a girl on the down-low. Convince her to come work at the club without ever giving away that she was fucking Jack. Better yet, she could’ve fucked me on the regular, then reported all the pillow talk back to him. That’s what I would have done.
But no, he was totally upfront about how he was seeing her. Now that I knew he was banging this chick, I wasn’t about to let her anywhere near the action. She could just hover on the periphery and throw Jack a crumb every now and again while she was blowing him.
But then things got interesting.
27
I was going to Jack’s auto shop to talk about the next shipment of mary jane. A hundred bricks straight from our growers in Oregon, headed for some less-than-reputable dispensaries in LA and San Francisco that badly needed product. We were set to clear 40 grand on the transaction – much-needed dough, given the current limited slate of our economic activities. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, I missed the days when I could clear 40 grand a week just on meth and coke alone.
I was planning on bringing those days back.
Anyway, I went in to talk business, and the dipshit starts mooning about his piece of ass.
“Something really weird happened this morning with Fiona,” he said.
“What, she stick her finger up your ass when you blew your load?”
I figured Jack liked it up the ass. Men, women, donkeys, didn’t matter, just as long as it was up his ass.
He shot me a look. “I’m serious, Lou.”
I just sighed and waited. I wasn’t about to play his little bitch-ass guessing game.
He finally said, “She asked about Alison Levitt.”
The name sounded unsettlingly familiar.
“…who?”
“That stripper of yours last year,” Jack said, and he got a pained look on his face. “The one who…?”
He trailed off, leaving me to fill in the unpleasant blanks.
Which I did almost immediately.
Shit.
Shit, SHIT, SHIT.
I went into red alert. “What the fuck was she asking about her for?”
“Relax. She saw a picture of her on the wall and – ”
The WALL?!
“What the FUCK do you have a picture of her on your wall for, Jack?”
Jack got a dangerous look on his face. “Lou? Back off.”
In life and business, I play the long game – months and years versus minutes and days. I knew it wouldn’t do me any good to lose my shit here and now, so I got a grip on myself.
But I still couldn’t tamp down all my anger.
“Jack, do I need to tell you exactly how fuckin’ stupid it is to have a picture of her hangin’ over your toilet?”
“Don’t,” he snapped.
“Don’t what? Knock some common sense into that fuckin’ head of yours?”
“It’s a picture. On my bedroom wall.”
“Ohhhh, well, that’s so much better. What do you do, beat off to it at night before you go to sleep?”
I was angry – the dumb sonuvabitch was hanging up a picture of a murder victim on his goddamn wall.
A murder victim I could have done a lot of time for.
But it turns out Jack was angrier than me, for all the wrong reasons. He stared at me and cracked his knuckles with his thumb, one by one.
With each knuckle he popped, I wished I could pop a cap in the back of his head. It’d be so much easier. But then I’d have all his little sycophants to deal with, including that gorilla Kade. So I made a tactical retreat.
“Alright – alright, forget I said that.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice, like we were both in this together. (Ha. Right.) “But that was some bad fuckin’ times, man, and I do not see the wisdom in you keeping shit like that lying around.”
“It’s a picture. People have pictures.”
“Not of chicks they barely knew who got their brains blown out in an alleyway.”
I could see his temper was starting to boil again, so I eased off. “All I’m sayin’ is, we went to a lot of trouble to bury that shit.”
Meaning I went to a lot of trouble to bury that shit.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have,” he said morosely.
What a fucking idiot.
“You know as well as I do what she was planning to do,” I said.
Jack looked away, like the guilt was eating him alive.
Pussy.
He hadn’t done anything except fail to stop a cokehead from destroying the Riders, and yet here he was, sweating it out like a boy scout who’d shoplifted a candy bar.
“We shouldn’t have had the cops bury it,” he murmured.
It was so ridiculous it was funny.
“Haha – we shouldn’t’ve had the cops – Jesus.” I shook my head. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? The cops start pullin’ on one string, and suddenly it leads to another, and then the FBI and the DEA are in on it, and then you and me and every other guy in the Riders are left standing there with our dicks in our hands and a couple dozen laser sights on our foreheads. Shouldn’t’ve had the cops bury it, my ass.”
“That’s no
t the way we do things anymore.”
Cuz we’re legit.
Cuz we work INSIDE the law now.
Cuz we’re not outlaws anymore.
Waah, waah, waaaaah.
Suck my dick.
“Yeah, well… sometimes the old ways are the best ways,” I said.
Truer word was never spoke. But there was a way more important question here.
“Why the fuck was that bitch so interested in the photo, anyway?” I asked.
Jack looked at me like he wanted to strangle me. “Don’t talk about Fiona that way.”
“Oh my God, he fucks her once and suddenly she’s Mother Teresa and Mary Poppins rolled into one,” I muttered to myself. “Okay, motherfucker: why exactly was your newest squeeze – and my newest waitress – so interested in that photograph?”
“Just by chance. She saw some photos of a bunch of my exes and got jealous.”
I have a sort of sixth sense about people’s motives – especially bitches – and it was popping off right about now. But jealousy wasn’t the issue here. I couldn’t say how I knew, but I would’ve bet every dollar I had on it.
However, Jack was caveman stupid about this sort of thing, so I played along.
“Not Sloane,” I said, even though I knew he’d burned every photo he had of her years ago. Which was a stupid fucking thing to do on his part.
Sloane… now that was a woman. Jack Pollari didn’t deserve a broad like her. She had bigger balls than he did. Hell, she had bigger balls than just about anybody in the Midnight Riders – except for me.
Back when Jack was starting to go soft, I asked her why she still put up with him.
Huge cock, she’d said. But lately his balls have been gettin’ smaller ‘n smaller every day.
“NO, not Sloane,” Jack said, irritated. “Christine.”
Oh yeah. I remembered her.
“The redhead with the tits?” I asked, and put my hands out like I was cupping some prime double-D’s.
“Yes,” Jack said, though he wasn’t happy about my little mime routine.
“Oh… no wonder she got jealous.”
Although I knew Fiona wasn’t jealous at all. It was something else altogether. What, I had no idea… but there was definitely something there, needling at my sixth sense.
“There you go,” Jack said, relieved that I was buying the party line.
Little did he know.
“And then she just went to the other picture? Just like that?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“She get pissed about any others?” I prodded.
“No.”
“How many bitches – excuse me, ‘ladies’ – do you have up there in your fuckin’ gallery?”
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. A dozen, maybe.”
Huh.
Fiona looked at Christine’s picture… then jumped past ten others, straight to Venus’s.
Venus had been her stripper name, back when she worked for me. Before she wound up dead in a back alley.
“Just those two photos? That’s all she freaked out about?” I asked.
“Yeah, so?”
“Were they right next to each other?”
Jack looked up in the air, like he was trying to recall. “…no. Not exactly.”
“Huh.” Curiouser and curiouser.
“What?”
“Nothin’,” I said, then played it off like it was no big deal. “Fuckin’ bitches, gettin’ all jealous… what’re you gonna do? Besides maybe takin’ down stupid goddamn incriminating photographs,” I said, ribbing him gently. “Besides that, of course.”
Jack got that stick-up-his-ass look again. “Lou, I’m going to tell you what I told her.”
“What’s that, bend over?” I chortled, playing it cool.
“No. DROP it.”
I put my hands up in the air. “Alright. Fine. Consider it dropped.”
Except it wasn’t dropped.
No fuckin’ way.
28
I hadn’t run a background check when I hired her. Shit, I never check a chick’s background when she goes to work for me. As long as she’s got a good rack and a halfway decent face – and bends over my desk, or gets down on her knees – she’s hired.
Plus, Fiona had waltzed right in on Jack’s say-so. I’d put her straight to work because I knew she was a… not exactly a wolf in sheep’s clothing. More like a bitch in sheep’s clothing.
But now I was figuring it might be time for a background check.
I knew there were tons of places on the internet you could do it, but I didn’t know shit about that. Plus, when you’ve got professionals on your payroll, why bother with the middle man? Get that good shit before it’s cut with baking soda and baby laxative and god knows what else.
So I moseyed on over to the Richards PD and went in to see my number one buttboy Dan Peters.
The desk sergeant waited just long enough to pick up the phone and let Dan know I was here, then waved me on through. Motherfucker knew what was what.
Dan didn’t look happy to see me, though he faked it well enough. “Lou! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Dan,” I said, and gave him a hearty handshake where we each tried to out-crush the other guy’s hand. I won. “I need a little help.”
“Well,” he drawled as he sat back in his chair, “I hope it’s not… too involved.”
“Not at all, not at all. I just need whatever information you can dig up on a girl I got workin’ for me at the Seven Veils.”
He laughed. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“They got websites on the internet for that.”
“So I’ve heard. But I wanted the professional touch.”
Dan sighed. “Alright… I’ll have one of the detectives run it through the – ”
“Actually, I’d prefer if you did it, Dan.”
He frowned. “Is there a particular reason?”
“My gut’s kind of worked up about this, and I trust my gut. But I’d rather keep it quiet in case… well, you know.”
That was pretty much code for In case I have to dispose of a body.
Dan nodded the tiniest bit. He knew the score. “In other words, I’d rather not know.”
“Let’s put it this way: I’d rather nobody know except you and me, if you get my drift.”
He leaned forward towards the computer on his desk. “Whatever you say, Lou. What’s her name?”
“Fiona Christensen.”
In a move I didn’t see coming, Dan frowned. “Fiona Christensen?”
“That name mean something to you?”
He snorted. “Yeah – she’s just the biggest pain in the ass I’ve had to deal with in the last twelve months.”
My alarm bells were going off like a fuckin’ fire station.
“In the last twelve months?” I repeated.
“Yeah – she’s the cousin of that…”
Here Dan’s voice dropped, to let me know we were being all conspiratorial – and that I owed him far more than I’d already paid him.
“…stripper of yours we found in the back alley last May.”
The alarm bells turned into air raid sirens.
“She’s the fuckin’ cousin?!”
“Yeah. Called every day for months and months, accusing us of incompetence, corruption, malfeasance, you name it. Fuckin’ pissy little bitch.”
Dan said it with a righteously indignant look on his face – but the thing was, every last word of it was true. Though Dan would never admit it, not even to himself.
True or not, this was not good. I had a broad with a vendetta, sleeping with my nemesis, working in my own goddamn place of business.
“You know anything more about her?” I asked.
“Hold on, I’ll take a look,” Dan said, and started typing.
If Fiona was just a regular chick – a waitress who’d read too much Nancy Drew as a kid – then it wasn’t that big of a problem. The dumber she was, the easier it would
be for me to lead her off in the wrong direction.
Problem was, she wasn’t a regular chick.
“Yeah, I got a shit ton of notes on her here,” Dan said as he looked at his screen. “Address in LA, got her phone number – oh…”
The way he said oh and trailed off was not reassuring.
“‘Oh’ what?”
Dan sucked at his teeth and looked at me. “I forgot until now, but one of the things she kept threatening us with was she’s a P.I.”
P.I.
Private investigator.
This was… Jesus, this was bad.
I sat back in my chair and thought for a second about my options.
Some of them ended out in the desert with vultures and coyotes.
Dan kept prattling on. “Said she was going to start her own investigation and show us up if we didn’t do our job. Stupid bitch. I don’t think she’s anybody, though – just some little file girl at a strip mall joint. Nothing to worry about.”
Nothing to worry about?
I’ll be the judge of that.
“What’s the name of the place?” I asked.
He peered closer at the screen. “Don’t know, but I’ve got a work number here.”
“Do a search.”
He shot me a look. He resented my tone – a biker and strip club owner telling the Chief of Police to do an internet search, like a common errand boy – but I was in no fucking mood to play nice and pretend he wasn’t my bitch.
You take my money, Dan, so bend the fuck over.
He finally turned back to the computer and did the internet search.
“Abrams Private Investigations… Sid Abrams. She’s not even listed on the site. File girl, I’ll bet. Or maybe a shutterbug. Is she hot?”
“What does that matter?”
“If she’s hot, she might be a honeypot. Bait for married guys getting a little on the side. Whore,” Peters snarled, like he’d already made up his mind what she did on the job.
As a corrupt and greedy chief of police, Peters was useful – but he could be stupid as fuck. Because that’s what writing off somebody without getting all the facts was: stupid as fuck.
Midnight Obsession: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 4 Page 7