“GIVE IT TO ME!” she yelled, and started beating her tiny fists against my chest.
That’s when I put a hand around her neck and slammed her against the nearest wall.
“Given everything you’ve put me through, loaning me your phone is the least you can – ah ah AAAH,” I snapped as she raised her hands. I knew she was considering going for my eyes with those nails of hers, so I held up the bolt cutter right next to her head. “Do NOT give me a reason to use this thing on you. You look way prettier with your nose on your fuckin’ face.”
She saw the cutter and her eyes went wide. She dropped her hands and just trembled in silence.
“As I was sayin’, I’m gonna keep your phone so you don’t go changin’ your mind and callin’ your Washington friends and spoilin’ our little party tonight. You can have it back afterwards.”
“Lou,” she whimpered, “I swear I haven’t been talking to – ”
I reared back the bolt cutters and bashed them into the wall so hard they left an indention half an inch deep.
She screamed and shut her eyes, then gradually opened them when nothing else happened.
“You can tell Jack all the lies you want,” I hissed, “but don’t fuckin’ say another word to me, you understand? Not another fuckin’ word. NOD YOUR HEAD, don’t speak.”
She nodded, though she couldn’t completely choke down her cries of panic.
I leaned in so far I could have licked her. I knew she could feel my hot breath on her face as I stared directly into her eyes.
“I know everything, bitch. Whose idea do you think it was to shack you up with Benjy? It was my goddamn motel. And how do you think he got all that cocaine? Who do you think paid for your little trip to Vegas? Who do you think he was coming back to every day, telling me every little detail, from who you called on your phone to how many times you sucked his cock?”
Her eyes went wide with shock. I could tell I’d taken her completely by surprise – a punch right to the gut.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “The DEA ain’t the only one with a mole, you stupid fuckin’ whore.”
I let go of her neck and walked towards the door. She slumped slowly to the ground, her back sliding down the wall, as she cried into her hands.
Before I left, I threw the bolt cutters to the concrete floor with a clang.
She jumped like it had been a gunshot.
“Don’t be late tonight, or else I’ll find you,” I growled. “And you won’t like what I do when I find you.”
Then I walked out of the club, got on my Harley, and rode off.
115
Wasn’t nothin’ left to do but wait for the fat lady to sing.
That is, if the kid held up his half of the bargain. Putting your life in the hands of a dimwit ain’t fun, but I’d already dealt the cards. Now it was time to play them.
Interestingly enough, two phone calls rang in on Venus’s cell – both from ‘No Number.’ I kicked myself for leaving the club. I could’ve gotten a stripper to answer it and pretend to be Venus – after all, you can swipe that little bar and answer a call even if the phone is locked.
I thought about answering, see if I could get any information – but I figured the most I’d get would be some random guy’s voice on the other end. And if they knew I had her phone, they might swoop in and pluck her out of the barrel of shit she’d gotten herself into.
That was not gonna happen, so I just let the phone ring.
At ten o’clock I called Jack. “Let’s meet up at the Roadhouse first at 11:45 before we go on over.”
“What? Why don’t we just meet you there at Ace of Clubs?”
“So I don’t have to worry about what you and Kade tell her behind my fuckin’ back, that’s why.”
“You sound paranoid, Lou.”
“Goddamn right I’m paranoid. You should be, too, after what happened last time you talked to her.”
“You’re not going to give that a rest, are you?”
“We all go over together, otherwise I’m comin’ over to your house right now and drinkin’ all your bourbon and takin’ a shit in your bathroom till we leave. What’s it gonna be?”
Jack sighed over the phone. “Fine. See you at the Roadhouse at 11:45.”
I was waiting for them when Jack and Kade got there at 11:40. Early motherfuckers.
“Alright, let’s go,” Jack said as soon as he walked into the room.
I finished off the rest of my scotch and burped. “Gotta hit the head first.”
“Make it snappy.”
Fuck you, asshole.
Ten minutes later Jack banged on the locked door of the men’s bathroom. “What the fuck are you doing in there, Lou?”
“Takin’ a shit – give me a fuckin’ break!” I yelled back as I stood next to the toilet, just wasting time.
“NOW?!”
“I had some fuckin’ coffee an hour ago! Gets my shit movin’. Hey, at least I didn’t do it at your place.”
“Kade and I are leaving.”
“The fuck you are – give me two minutes. Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
I walked out five minutes later, buckling my belt.
Jack stared daggers at me. Kade looked slightly more pissed off than usual.
“What was all that shit you gave her earlier about showing up on time?” Jack snapped.
“She’s supposed to be on time. I can show up whenever the fuck I want,” I said nonchalantly as we strolled out to our rides.
116
We left the Roadhouse at 11:57 and pulled up to the Ace of Clubs at ten after midnight. Plenty of time for the kid to have done his business and run.
If everything had gone smoothly.
As we neared the bar, a small crowd of people were at the mouth of the alleyway. Maybe five or six, just standing there looking on in agitation. Somebody was taking a picture with their cell phone. A woman had a hand over her mouth and looked like she was gonna be sick.
This could either be a very good sign, or a very bad one.
Jack parked his hog by the alleyway. “What the hell’s going on?” he shouted at the crowd when he turned off his engine.
A shabby-looking dude in his 50’s turned back to us and said in quiet awe, “Somebody got shot.”
Jack’s eyes bugged out of his head and he ran through the crowd, pushing his way past the lookie-loos. Kade and I took off after him, our boots clacking on the asphalt.
I heard Jack scream before I saw the body.
“NO – OH MY GOD, NO!”
He ran over to her, but it was obvious she was already gone. Face down on the pavement in a pool of blood, with a tangle of matted red hair on the back of her head.
“Jesus,” Kade whispered, which was more emotion than I’d ever heard from him before.
“Shit,” I added, just for show – though I was positively gleeful inside.
“SOMEBODY CALL 911!” Jack screamed as he grabbed one limp arm and felt for a pulse.
Anybody could see it was a useless gesture. She was gone.
All according to plan.
117
I wanted to get the fuck out of there, but Jack demanded we stay.
“We’ll look guilty if we take off,” he said, his voice ragged and his eyes blank.
“We rolled up after she got shot,” I pointed out. “We got witnesses, man.”
“We’re staying,” he said, and that was that.
Dan Peters showed up personally around 1AM. The first officers on the scene pegged me and Jack immediately. They must have let the dispatcher know we were present, and from there it worked its way up the chain and finally to the chief of police rousing himself out of bed.
Dan always did like to put in an appearance at big events, just to remind us that the department’s cooperation didn’t come for free.
After he got the Nice to see you’s and the Too bad it’s under these circumstances out of the way, Dan pulled us off to the side. “Anything I need to know, gentlemen?” he asked quietly.
“Of course, of course,” Dan said, reading the temperature of the scene perfectly. “Was she on the outs with anybody?”
Jack looked at me angrily.
I stared right back at him, dead-eyed and emotionless.
“No,” Jack muttered, defeated. “Not that we know of.”
“Okay… what were you fellas doing coming over here at midnight?” Dan asked.
“We were supposed to meet her.”
Dan’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”
Jack glared at him.
Ha – bet you’re missing the fawning deference right about now, I thought.
“We didn’t have anything to do with her death,” Jack snapped.
“Of course not, of course not,” Dan said reassuringly, and I could hear the decimal point moving on the total he was calculating in his head.
“What do the rest of them say?” Jack demanded. He jerked his head at the crowd, who were being questioned by uniformed officers and detectives in rumpled suits.
Dan called one of the detectives over. “Hey Morse, what’s the word on what happened?”
Morse looked at Jack and me, then at his boss. I could practically see the gears turning in his head. He eventually decided not to rock the boat with protests about ‘sensitive information’ and ‘ongoing investigations.’
“Nobody saw nothin’. They heard some raised voices out back, but the music was too loud inside to tell what was being said. Then they said they heard a pop – one shot – and they ran outside. The girl was already dead when they got there, and nobody else was around. No sign of a weapon.”
Well, well, well. The kid CAN follow directions, I thought.
Knock on wood.
“Anything else?” Jack asked.
The detective dropped his eyes to the ground. “They said they heard a motorcycle engine in the distance… but… that could’ve just been coincidence.”
There was an uneasy silence until Dan said, “Good job, Morse. Let me know if you find out anything else.”
After the detective went back to work, Dan tossed us a few more softballs, then said, “Well, let us know if there’s anything else you can think of. Good night, gentlemen.”
As Jack and Kade walked back to their bikes, I hung back and caught Dan’s eye.
“Yes?” he asked.
“Don’t push too hard on this one, Dan,” I said in a low voice. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
He looked at me in surprise, then nodded with a smile. He could hear the cash register ringing loud and clear.
“Whatever you say, Lou,” he agreed.
I turned my back on him. Now it was time to face the villagers with their torches and pitchforks.
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Jack paced back and forth next to his bike. “I swear to God, Lou,” he whispered angrily, “if I find out you had something to do with this – ”
“You goddamn son of a bitch,” I seethed. “Where the fuck was I the whole time? With you, you fuckin’ moron.”
Jack stabbed his finger in the air at me. “You could’ve just as easily gotten somebody else to take care of it.”
“Maybe you don’t know this about me yet, junior, but if I was goin’ to take care of something like this, I’d let you fuckin’ know, just so I could rub it in your goddamn face that you were wrong and I was right, and that I handled it, and you didn’t.”
Jack looked like he wanted to kill me, but there was something in his expression that said, Yeah, that’s true.
And it generally was.
Except when it wasn’t.
“Can we do this somewhere a little more private?” Kade asked quietly, without a trace of emotion.
Jack picked up his helmet. “I don’t want to spend another fuckin’ second with this goddamn psychopath,” he snarled.
“Well good, ‘cause I don’t want to spend another fuckin’ second with a goddamn stupid son of a bitch like you. Arguin’ and pointin’ fingers when we should be closing ranks and figuring out how we’re going to deal with all this.”
Jack stared daggers at me. “I’ll tell you how I’m going to deal with this: when I find out how you’re connected to her murder, Lou, I’m going to send you to hell myself.”
“Well I guess I’m goin’ to heaven then, since I didn’t have shit to do with it.”
“Let’s go,” Jack growled, then fired up his hog and tore off at top speed.
Kade just watched me dispassionately as he started up his own ride and took off after Jack.
Those two are gonna be trouble, I mused.
But right now, I had bigger problems.
I had to go make sure the killer wasn’t gonna spill his guts.
And I had to get rid of a gun.
119
I live on six acres of desert that leads up into the hills. I bought the place for its seclusion. Over the years, I’ve done a few things up there I didn’t want anybody hearing.
Anyway, my house is set back away from the main road a ways, and my neighbors are few and far between. If Benjy did what I told him and walked in from one of the side roads, chances were good that nobody saw him.
When I got back to my place, the light was on in the kitchen, but it was empty. I walked warily into the den, the next room over.
Benjy was sitting silently in the dark. His cheeks shone wet in the dim light coming from the kitchen. A half-empty bottle of whiskey was wedged between his legs, and the gun lay on the sofa next to him.
I watched him for any sudden movements, just in case he was harboring resentments against the guy who ordered him to go kill his old lady. But no – he was basically a zombie, thousand-yard stare and all.
I walked over, picked up the gun, and put it in my jacket pocket. It smelled like burnt gunpowder.
“Anybody see you do it?” I asked.
He shook his head silently as he stared off into the darkness.
“Anybody see you come here?”
He shook his head again. Then he looked up at me like he was in a trance. “I did it, Lou,” he said, and his face suddenly crumpled and he started crying.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “It had to be done, kid. You did good. I’m proud of you. You manned up.”
He just kept crying, tears dripping off his chin and snot coming out of his nose. Disgusting.
I went back into the kitchen and grabbed some paper towels. One I used to wipe down the gun, in case of any fingerprints; the rest I took back into the den and thrust at Benjy.
“Clean yourself up,” I ordered.
He wiped his face and blew his nose, then took another slug right from the bottle.
“So… what happened?” I asked.
120
He got there early and hid in the shadows by a dumpster, just like I told him.
Ali showed up ten minutes later, at 11:55. He said she looked nervous and was chewing her fingernails.
No wonder. Although he didn’t know it, she was strung out from no coke, scared out of her mind, wondering if she was about to die, guilt-ridden about being a narc, and unable to get in contact with her guardian angel at the DEA.
Poor little fuckin’ snitch.
When he said, “Ali,” and stepped out from behind the dumpster, she almost had a heart attack.
“Benjy?!” she cried out, then got angry. “What the fuck are you doing here?!”
He had the gun – and his hands – in the pockets of his denim jacket, so she didn’t know she should still be frightened.
“Did you cheat on me?” he asked.
I could imagine his voice: sad-sack and whiny instead of angry and mean.
She stared at him for a second, then got a look of pure hatred on her face. “You fucking asshole – how dare you ask me that!”
Our little talk back at the Veils had apparently put her in the right frame of mind.
But Be
njy didn’t know that. Her anger only shocked and confused him.
“…did you?”
She got all up in his face. “Did you spy on me for Lou? What did you tell him? Did you tell him about me?! Did you tell him about us?! Did you tell him all about us FUCKING?!”
Now he was even more confused – mostly about how she knew. Problem was, he was too stupid to know he should lie or be angry in return.
So instead he said, “Lou’s my friend,” in a pathetic, childish voice.
She had a goddamn meltdown at that. “Lou’s not your friend, you idiot! He’s a fucking psychopath! He’s using you! I can’t believe how goddamn stupid you are – ”
Of everything she’d said, it was that last part that got him. “I am NOT stupid!”
She was too enraged over his betrayal to reel it back in. “You ARE stupid!”
“Why are you being a bitch?!” he yelled back.
That’s when she hauled off and slapped him in the face.
He spun around, then looked back at her in shock, tears in his eyes.
“Because you’re stupid, and you’re a liar,” she screamed, “and you’re a fucking TRAITOR!”
Unfortunate choice of words on her part.
‘Traitor’ instantly brought to mind every single thing I’d said about her.
Suddenly, he wasn’t seeing Ali in front of him anymore.
He was seeing Venus – a screaming, demented harpy.
A cheater.
A liar.
A traitor.
All of his hurt and pain was suddenly replaced with hatred.
She didn’t see that, though – or she only felt contempt for whatever she saw. Instead, she turned around and started to stomp off.
The last thing Benjy heard her say was, “Fuck Lou – fuck Jack – fuck all of you assholes, I’m out of here!”
That was when he pulled out the gun and shot her in the back of the head.
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Midnight Obsession: A Midnight Riders Motorcycle Club Romance Part 4 Page 27