by Kiki Leach
"I'm supposed to pick up my kid from school today," he said, his voice strained. "Straight from her classroom."
"Find somebody else to take your place," I demanded. "I'm not fuckin' around about what I said."
He inhaled as much as he could and tried shaking his head against the ground. "You're gonna regret this shit, asshole--"
"Yeah, maybe, but I guess that's just one risk I'm willing to take," I told him.
"All for a chick?"
"All for a chick." I paused and took in a deep breath. "How much did my brother manage to steal from you?"
He coughed again and sniffed before responding. "500k."
I closed my eyes for a few seconds and rattled my head. "Jesus."
"And I need it back in full." He swallowed back some of his blood and blinked up at me. "By the end of next week."
"We can't get our hands on that kinda cash by next week!"
"You can if you shut the club down starting tonight and re-open." He stopped to cough again. "Get information..." He turned his head and spit. "Get information out to the masses around here -- mainly the high rollers."
"Unless we get 5 people in there worthy of 100k each, there's no way in hell you're getting your cash that fast."
He turned his head to look me in the face again. "Your club needs to figure shit out as quickly as it can. Because this money wasn't just stolen from me. The casinos are family run businesses. I've got people I'm answering to just as much as you've gotta answer to me."
I ripped my eyes away from his face and rattled my head. "Even if we get you this money, you're still holding onto us as collateral for Jeremiah?"
He swallowed and tried nodding his head. "I can't not until I find him. Motherfucker stole from me. Getting my cash back is a necessity, but the shit he pulled requires more than that... Sorry."
"Yeah, you're fuckin' sorry... Shit." When I saw him struggling to move, I leaned down and wrapped my hand around his arm, then pulled him up to his feet. He wobbled forward, but caught his balance after latching onto one of the old bike handles behind him.
"Jesus Christ. What the fuck happened out here?" I turned my head as Atom moved over to us, arms open in question with his head moving back and forth. "Did your stupid ass trip over the shine in your shoes?" he asked Lorenzo.
"No, but I can use that shit when people ask," he replied. "For now." He stared me in the face and rubbed his hand across his nose again, then started moving toward his car. "Let your club know what's up with all of this, Rome. Tell Riggs I'll give him a call about it later."
After sliding back into his car like the snake that he was and slamming the door shut, his driver rammed the car into reverse and sped through the gate, leaving a zig-zag of skid marks across the lot.
Once they were out of sight, Atom moved in front of me and made a face. "What the hell happened to that stupid son of a bitch?" he asked, pointing behind him.
I wagged my head and lifted my shoulders. "You guessed it when you said he tripped over the shine in his shoes."
He shoved his brows together. "You know that you just fucked up with this shit, yeah? Even more than what it's been fucked with already."
I wiped the blood on my hand that had come from Lorenzo's nose against the leg of the coveralls and muttered, "Yeah."
"'Cause he's gonna want blood now. Jeremiah's and yours mixed up with it--"
"He started talking about wanting to fuck Colette after seeing her at the school today."
"What the hell was he doing at her school? He looking to get his own lessons now since he apparently can't count his own money?"
"His kid goes there; she's in Colette's goddamn class."
"Shit."
"Yeah. He started talking about what she looked like and what he was wanting to do with her... I wasn't gonna just stand there and let that asshole degrade my wife just 'cause he thought she was married to my brother instead."
"Listen, brother, I don't blame you for wanting to protect your girl, yeah? I probably would've done the same in your shoes, but Riggs might blame you for it, Tracker might blame you for it, which might lead to the rest of the club doing the same."
"I know," I told him. He stared up at me with concern, but I cleared my throat, attempting to dismiss it. "Did you get Riggs on the phone to let him know about that 51% bullshit?"
He nodded. "And he is fuckin' pissed about it. They're on their way back from the D&C right now."
I sighed. "I was supposed to pick up Colette from the school in a few hours."
"No way you can make that shit now."
"Yeah... Listen, do me a favor and call up Perla, see if she can make it out there to get her for me instead."
"Brother, why don't you just have one of the prospects hook her own car up to one of the tow trucks and he can take it out there to her instead?"
I gave him a look and clinched my jaw. "Can you just do me the favor of calling up your wife to have her go and pick up mine? She'll get her car soon. Shit, it might be good for her to spend some time with more of the old ladies anyway. She's used to only looking at it from the outside and now I'm gonna need her to be all the way in." Atom inhaled and nodded at me. "Alright, good," I said. "I'll call up Colette and let her know what's up."
"You plan on telling her anything about what you did to Lorenzo and why?"
"If I do, the shit won't be over the phone."
"If you do, you better make sure that Riggs and Tracker don't find out about it."
I bobbed my head at him and said, "Yeah."
As he crossed to the other side of the lot and dialed up his wife, I pulled my cell from a back pocket and did the same.
Chapter Fifteen
Roman
When the brothers finally made it back from the D&C, we met up in the chapel where me and Atom let them know about everything that had taken place with Lorenzo and why. Including me busting him in the nose.
"Did you break it?" asked Riggs.
I shook my head at him and said, "I don't know."
He sat back in his chair at the head of the table and rested his hands on top of his stomach. "Maybe you should've hit him twice just to make sure that you had, and for the club this time, not just your girl."
"I told you this shit smelled bad the minute you put it out there on the table in front of us," said Tracker. "I told you that this motherfucker was gonna fuck with us, didn't I?! And now we're stuck with this shit of being forced to pay him back with money that we don't have and no way in hell of even getting anything close to it within LESS THAN A WEEKS' TIME!"
"It sounds like he never planned on fucking with us until after Jeremiah screwed him over," said Smack.
Tracker slammed his hand down on the edge of the table and pointed. "He was planning to fuck us over the whole time -- Did you not hear what they just said about the contract he had drawn up for the D&C?! He snatched it out from underneath us long before he ever realized that stupid prick was a thief. The fact that he's now expecting us to pay him half a mil in conjunction with it is just the icing on top of his already snake filled cake. FUCK!" He turned to Riggs. "And all because you didn't have me around to help you read through the fine print of that thing or bring in the attorney for the club to make sure shit was legit, we don't even own our own business anymore." He jumped up from his chair and shuffled across the room. "We are FUCKED as a club! Goddamn!"
Axel bent forward and cleared his throat. "I think you might need to chill out somewhat about this, brother," he said. "Losing your shit on Prez or any of the rest of us won't change what's happening around here."
Tracker turned to him and leaned over the table. "You want me to 'chill out', young buck, is that what you just said to me, to fuckin' chill? This club has now been put at risk, are you not getting that shit? Our Prez practically climbed into bed with the devil himself behind all our backs and now we're being forced to suck his dick because of it along with this one's" -- he pointed directly at me -- "brother being a thief and coward for taking off rig
ht after, leaving us all behind in this mess. And you want me to just sit back and chill?!"
"Being calm about this shit can lead to better thinking about the moves we need to make next."
"We can't make any moves!" Tracker hollered out. "That's the point of all this shit -- this son of a bitch has got us all by the goddamn balls! We're collateral, asshole. Which means even if by some miracle sent down to us straight up from God Himself that we can get him his money in this stupid as hell two-week period, we're still under his thumb and he still owns the larger portion of the D&C. Are you getting this shit now? We. Work. For. Him. That's it. He owns us until further notice. That's it!"
Everyone looked at each other in the room. We all rattled our heads and turned to Riggs. Tracker did the same before recapturing his seat.
"Listen brother, I'm just trying to find other ways of going about this that don't include screaming our goddamn heads off at each other," said Axel. Tracker dragged his hand back and forth across his forehead and sighed. "We start tearing through the club and it's over. He's got us more than what he does already."
Tracker leaned back and took a deep breath in, then released it. "You know what, I hear you, Axel," he said, his voice more calm, steady. "I do. You've got this sunshine attitude bullshit going for you that always seems to remind me of the other brothers I used to get high with back in 'Nam. But in this case, I'm not wanting to hear it, alright? The facts are that we're getting fucked up the ass like bitches by guards in prison cells here. What's going down with Lorenzo is the real deal. People like him, Fontaine and the like, they don't screw around when it comes to their money; you fuck up once with it and it's a bullet to the head, slit to the throat. Jeremiah must've been on his hands and knees and praying every night while stealing that cash 'cause he got lucky as shit Lorenzo even bothered to keep him on for as long as he did despite knowing something was off."
"Jeremiah got lucky on top of being smart for a time," said Riggs. "Which makes me start to wonder if he only decided to hook me up with that son of a bitch to make shit easier for himself."
"I wouldn't put it past him," said Chute from the other end of the table. "Motherfucker left his own brother hanging out to dry, along with his girl; he doesn't give a shit about the rest of us. Probably never did."
"I think he did," I said, speaking up. All eyes in the room turned to me. I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms. "I just think that along the way, money maybe became more of a priority for him, above family, above Colette, even above pussy. He might not have been a member of the brotherhood in the same way that we all are despite my old man trying like hell to get him to patch in. But there was a time when he gave a damn about all of us."
"That time has long since passed, brother," said Tracker.
"And I'm keenly aware of that shit," I replied. I glanced at Riggs from the corner of my eye. He was staring me straight in the face. "I understand what's gotta happen with him and believe me, I'm in no way trying to stick up for him or have his back in any of this shit. But he's still my blood whether I wanna continue copping to it or not."
Tracker raised his hand. "I'd like take 'NOT' for $500, Alex."
"Jesus Christ, asshole, cool your jets!" said Atom. "You're not the only one being affected by this shit."
"I'm the VP which means that this shit hits me harder than anybody else outside of the Prez himself."
"It's hitting Rome harder than anybody else, dipshit," he said. "The club, yeah, we're fucked. But at some point, we're gonna be able to recover from all this shit. How? Fuck if I know, but it'll happen. Once Jeremiah's outta the picture, we, along with Colette, are all that he's gonna have left."
"Yeah, Colette," he replied. "Another jagged piece to the puzzle."
"You're not bringing her into this shit," I told him.
"Brother, you brought her into this shit the minute you put that ring on her finger and declared her yours for eternity out there in Vegas. She's gotta suffer the consequences of being hitched to us just like the rest of our ladies had and have to."
"Alright, enough of this back and forth bullshit," said Riggs. "This is a club, not kids pissing each other off at recess. We know who's to blame and we know who isn't. Now what we need is to put our heads together and try to figure out just how in the hell we're gonna be able to come up with half a million dollars by next week."
"Maybe prostitute some of the girls out at the D&C," said Reefer. "Charge a couple grand for each; on the low."
Riggs shook his head. "No," he snapped. "We can't start charging for sex in a strip joint in Culver City, this ain't Nevada."
Smack chimed in. "Maybe we should start upping the prices on a few things around here, general car repairs, oil changes, shit like that."
"We can maybe work with that," replied Riggs. He looked at Reefer as he sat slumped over his chair at the end of the table. "That's a workable idea." Reefer shrugged.
"Maybe we can have something up here too," said Atom. "Something that'll help us raise some cash. The girls can put together a BBQ or something like that and sell off some plates to the people around here. Or maybe even have something at the park."
"We could do that, but you know 5-0 will be around in a heartbeat asking just where that money we're putting in a jar is heading off to."
"We could always lie," said Tracker, his eyes focused down on the table, his head tilted to the side.
"'Cause that shit has been working out real well for us so far, yeah?" said Riggs. "Look, whatever we come up with, it's gotta be soon. It's gotta be clean and it's gotta be under the radar. That'll be your homework for tonight, boys. Thinking of a way to help save this shit before a snake oil salesman takes off with it and runs us into the ground along the way."
"We're done?" asked Poker.
Riggs nodded. "I can't take any more of this shit right now. I'm tired and I need to get my cock sucked before passing out." He picked up his gavel and slammed it down. "Meeting adjourned." As everyone got up from the table, Riggs looked at me and shook his head. I sat back down in my chair, then glanced up at Atom, who shifted his eyes between the both of us.
"Something going on Prez?" he asked.
Riggs looked up at him and arched his brow. "Nothing that concerns you at the moment, brother," he told him. "Unlike those seven cars out there that've yet to be worked on."
"Those seven cars were Rome's job to do this morning."
"We'll brother, Rome'll be in here with me and you'll be out there with the rest, so round the boys up and get to gettin'."
Once he left the room, Riggs put both of his hands on top of the table and looked me square in the eyes. "Are you planning on telling your girl about any of this shit?" he asked me. I rattled my head. "That's good. Because I like Colette. She's always seemed like a real good person; and she's a damn good cook, which is rare to find in a woman these days. But I also know that she's never been a fan of the club life."
"I think she's learning to adapt to it," I told him. "She's starting to come around."
"And that's all well and good too, son, but I still need you to be on your P's and Q's with her as far as all this shit goes."
"I understand, Prez."
"I'm just making sure. Because I got the feeling after hearing about you going off on Lorenzo that you might be thinking of telling her some shit that--"
"I'm good." I pushed myself up from the table and gulped. "That it?"
He looked up at me with caution in his eyes and said, "Nope." He paused and glanced toward the door. "You plan on finishing that truck anytime soon that you were saying you wanted to take home for the two of you?"
"I don't know. I might have to get to it tomorrow."
"What about her car? That shit has been sitting out there for the last three days. If nothing's wrong with it, it needs to be moved because I've got folks already coming in and asking if it's for sale."
"I'll..." I moved my head from side to side. "Get it towed off the lot at some point."
"Is she s
ick of driving it or some shit? Or you just don't want her having any access to something that she could possibly leave you in at some point?"
"She won't leave," I told him.
"Okay. Then get her goddamn car off my lot and give it back to her already."
I headed for the door, "Yeah, alright," I mumbled, leaving the chapel. When I stepped out, I noticed the other brothers hanging around outside, checking out each car that had yet to be taken care of.
Atom stood by the bar and waved me over, then he leaned in and lowered his voice when he realized Riggs had yet to leave the room. "What the hell was all that about?" he asked.
"He just wants to make sure I plan to keep my mouth shut about this shit to Colette."
"He's right. Just like the rest of them, she's on a need to know basis and right now, she doesn't need to know shit. In the meantime, Perla headed out to pick her up. Said that she wants to bring her back to our place for a bit, just to get to know her better as your wife now and instead of just Jeremiah's 'play thing', which is apparently what some of the girls around here had been calling her behind her back."
"Jesus--"
"But not Perla," he said with reassurance. "Or the old ladies. The general pussy on the other hand was another story." I groaned and lowered my eyes to the floor, then massaged my forehead. "You might want to keep on doing that."
I stopped and lowered my hand. "Why?"
"Because she also told me about having a few of the girls over for some beer and a poker game earlier; one of which included Cherry."
"Fuck."
"Yep, and they were still over there when I called. But I explained the deal regarding what happened, and she's gonna do her best in what she can to prepare Colette in seeing her. And maybe play referee if need be."
"Why doesn't she just take Colette back to our house to avoid all this shit? We've already got enough going on around here as it is."
"In the words of Axel, brother, chill your ass out. If Colette happens to deck her a few times, it's no big deal. You know Cherry won't be fighting back knowing she's your old lady now."