Second guessing myself wasn’t something I did often, but as I walked out of the bathroom and through displays of snacks, I began to wonder if asking Sydney out was a good idea. While I stumbled along the dingy tile floor thinking, Otis stepped from behind an aisle and extended his arm.
“Here,” he said as he handed me a box.
I looked down at the pink box. Massengill Country Flowers Disposable Douche.
“You might need it,” Otis chuckled.
I tossed the box into the display of corn nuts and sunflower seeds. “You know I was just thinking how much I appreciated you not acting like an asshole earlier. Good lookin’ out, Otis.”
“I thought it was funny. You want to know what’s funnier?” Otis said as he slapped me on the back.
I shook my head and opened the door. “What’s that?”
As Otis walked through the door, he turned and looked over his shoulder. “That this shit-hole gas station carries douches.”
“Maybe there’s a plague of twat funk down here. Hell, we are in Oklahoma,” I said as I walked out to the bikes.
“Enough said,” Otis said.
“You ready to hit the road, lover boy? Or you want to text your girlfriend and tell her you’re alright before we go?” Biscuit growled as he lowered himself into the seat of his bike.
“No, I already sent her a text, while I was taking a shit,” I responded.
“Let’s roll,” Axton said as he started his bike.
Spending a week with Biscuit after his finding out about my interest in Sydney could prove to be irritating. I reached for the hand controls and flipped the ignition on. As the engine started, I grinned at the sound of the high performance cams. The engine had a definite don’t fuck with me rumble to it now.
“Race to the entrance on the highway?” Otis hollered.
I nodded my head as I pulled my sunglasses down from my brow. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Slice and Biscuit followed as Otis and I pulled our bikes onto the road leading to the highway. After pulling his bike to the side, Biscuit stepped off and stood in front of us with his hands up. After Otis and I both acknowledging our state of readiness, Biscuit dropped his hands.
I released the clutch and twisted the throttle to its limit. After shifting through three gears, I was fifteen feet ahead of Otis and traveling 80 miles per hour. As I slowed down to enter the highway, I began to wonder if Otis allowed me to win, or if I did so because my bike was truly faster.
Either way, it was exactly what I needed when I needed it.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
SYDNEY
Every time I had moved into a new home or apartment, I felt out of place for a period of time; almost like an imposter. Waking up and realizing I was in an unfamiliar place made me feel uneasy. Dishes in a different cupboard, the dresser in an odd location, or a new route home from work acted as a reminder I was in a new location. The uneasy feeling lingered for various lengths of time, but inevitably a day would come when I felt like it was truly my home, and I belonged there.
Today was that day.
“No, I don’t ride, but I’m going to take the course and learn,” she responded.
“Some more tea?” I asked as I stood.
“Sure,” she responded as she lifted her glass.
I carried our glasses to the kitchen and filled them with ice and tea. Avery had been visiting for almost an hour, and as much as I disliked females, I couldn’t help but like her. She was a no nonsense woman, and seemed to have no issues whatsoever with speaking her mind. After meeting in the restaurant, she explained she was the Ol’ Lady of the President of the Selected Sinners. Discussions of my brother being a biker followed, and I later shared with her how I was renting a house from Toad. We immediately hit it off, and I invited her to come over, talk, and get to know each other better.
“Here you go,” I said as I slid the glass of tea across the table and sat down.
“I really like that, you made it?” she asked as she tilted her head toward the chalkboard.
“I sure did. I got an old window, painted it with chalkboard paint, and just scribbled on it,” I responded.
“Well, I like it. You’ve got talent. And you know, a friend who doesn’t judge is like an impossibility to find,” she sighed.
“They’re rare, that’s for sure,” I said.
“You know, I had this friend, Sloan. Well, I guess I still have her. We went to college together. We were best friends. And when I started seeing Axton, she became kind of jealous. She started hitting on him, and walking around the house half naked hoping he’d come over. When he and I started seeing each other seriously, she became more jealous. Then, it was almost like she became obsessed with finding a Sinner to fuck just to compete with me. I guess it’s not really judging, but jealousy. You ought to make another that says happiness is a friend who doesn’t get jealous,” she said with a laugh.
I nodded my head as I took a drink. As I swallowed the tea and placed the glass on the table, I shook my head slightly. “That is why I don’t have many female friends.”
“I’m not big on people who are dishonest; male or female. And jealousy seems like dishonesty to me. It just causes people to act differently, and sooner or later, someone is doing something shady,” she said.
“I never thought of it that way, but you’re right. So did your friend, Sloan, ever find her Sinner,” I asked.
“No, not really. She hung around Toad for a while, but she irritated him, so he told her to kick rocks,” she said.
Strangely, the thought of Avery’s friend being with Toad made me feel uneasy. In some respects, I suppose I felt jealous, no differently than what she and I had been discussing. I had no right to feel the way I did, but I felt it nonetheless. After a short pause to collect my feelings and come to terms with the fact I may be more attracted to Toad than I wanted to admit, I smiled and spoke.
“Kick rocks. My brother says that a lot in the letters he writes me. I don’t know if it’s a prison saying or a biker saying, but he sure says it a lot,” I said.
“I picked it up from these guys. Did your brother do time?” she asked.
“Doing time now and forever, he’s doing life,” I said flatly.
“Life? Oh wow. I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s okay. It’s just kind of frustrating. If he actually did something, I’d probably accept it more. He was in a club, like I told you earlier, and there was this ATF agent.” I paused and reached for my tea. As I twisted my tea glass in a circle, I continued. “This ATF agent infiltrated the club. He acted like a biker, grew a two foot long beard, shaved his head, got tattoos, and really looked the part. He started hanging around, and then became a Prospect. After he was patched into the club, he began asking about a rival club and what they’d do if they encountered anyone from the other club in their territory. This went on for two years. One night in a bar, after he was half drunk, my brother said he would kill them if he saw them. The sad thing is my brother didn’t offer to kill them; he was kind of coerced to say it. The ATF agent kept asking him would you kill them, would you kill them, would you kill them?”
She stared at me with wide eyes.
“Eventually, my brother said yes.”
She sat up in her seat and pushed her tea aside. “Holy crap. They set his ass up. Like a reverse sting.”
“Exactly,” I said.
It was always nice to have someone share my opinion about my brother’s lack of involvement in the crime he committed. It acted as confirmation he didn’t deserve the punishment he received, and provided me reassurance I didn’t feel the way I felt simply because he was my brother. Later, it always seemed to make me feel a little more saddened by the fact what happened actually happened.
Avery’s eyes filled with excitement. “Sounds like a classic case of entrapment to me. I don’t know how RICO plays in with entrapment, I’ll have to look. I hate to ask, but I kind of have to, did your brother ever kill anyone before this ATF a
gent approached him?”
“No, you might have misunderstood. He didn’t kill anyone. Not before, during, or after. He’s never killed anyone,” I explained as I stared at the ring of moisture my glass was leaving on the table.
“As far as you know, had the club ever been to trial at any other point in time for murder or conspiracy to commit?” she asked excitedly.
I looked up from my glass of tea. “You sound like an attorney. And I don’t know if they had ever been in that kind of trouble before, why?”
She quickly stood from her chair and raised her hands to her face. As she rubbed her temples and stared toward the chalkboard, I began to wonder why she was asking all of the questions. After a long silence, she looked down and spoke.
“Sorry, no I’m not an attorney. I majored in Criminal Justice, love law, hate cops, and now work for an attorney who specializes in Federal Appeals. I was trying to think of a case we studied in college. It was an entrapment case. I can’t think of it now, but it starts with an S. Fucking hell,” she said as she began to pace the floor.
Sometimes it took me a minute to realize exactly what Avery had said. She talked a hundred miles an hour, and often it seemed I had to wait a moment and really think of what she was saying after she was done saying it. It was pretty obvious she was intelligent and her mind worked as fast as she spoke.
I stood from my chair. “So what’s the case say, whatever it is?”
“Well, the law says this. The defendant, your brother in this case, must be predisposed to commit the crime charged in the indictment prior to being approached by government agents,” she blurted.
“Okay, what does that mean?” I asked.
As she continued to pace the floor, she responded. “Okay, listen carefully. If I was an ATF agent, and I wanted to arrest a killer without having him actually kill someone, I’d have to do it in this order. First, prove he was a killer. Second, approach him. Third, get him to admit he was planning to kill again. If the first step isn’t met, and it must be met first, the law says the ATF agent can never approach the man. Entrapment is against the law. And, entrapment is when a government agent coerces or induces a person who otherwise lacked the predisposition to commit the crime to commit a crime. So, if he hadn’t killed anyone before or wasn’t advertising the fact he wanted to, they couldn’t as a matter of law ever approach him.”
“I think I’m still lost,” I admitted.
“Okay, how about this. It’s against the law for the ATF to ask your brother if he wanted to kill someone if they can’t prove he was already a killer, and they knew that fact before they ever walked up to him and said hi,” she blurted.
“Oh wow. Really?” I asked
“Really,” she said excitedly. “Did he appeal the conviction?”.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Did his attorney mention entrapment or try to introduce it as a defense?” she asked.
“No,” I responded.
“You sure?” she asked as she raised her hands to her mouth.
“Positive, I sat through the entire trial,” I responded.
“Did he have a public defender? A free attorney provided by the government?” she asked.
I nodded my head. “Yes, he sure did. I hate to say it, but the guy was a lazy fat prick.”
“Fuck yes! Might be an Ineffective Assistance of Counsel claim right there. It’s enough to get our foot in the door, anyway,” she shouted.
“I really hate to get my hopes up. He can’t afford an attorney, and I know I can’t either,” I said.
She stopped pacing and turned to face me. “I’ll talk to my boss. He may take the case for the exposure alone. If he won’t, fuck it. I’ll do this motherfucker myself.”
“But you said you weren’t an attorney,” I said.
“I’m not. But if we have to we’ll file the shit pro se. One way or another, we’ll get something filed and see if we can get a new trial,” she said as she clapped her hands.
“So you could actually do this yourself?” I asked.
She nodded her head. “Hell, anyone can do it, but you don’t want some dumb ass doing it. It has to be someone who knows their shit. It’s called pro se. It’s Latin, it means on one’s own behalf. Because you only get one shot, and you must reference good law in your legal motions, you don’t want to make a mistake.”
“Sounds complicated and time consuming,” I said.
“It is, and it’s right up my alley. I’ll get copies of all of the court records and start reading as soon as I get them. I’ll keep you posted on what I find. I’ll need his name and the case number if possible,” she said as she walked toward me.
“I’ll get it all gathered up and let you know. Now that I’ve finally got a phone, I can do things like that,” I said.
As she opened her arms and stood in front of me, I was surprised. I barely knew her, and she was offering to do something like this. I doubted it would really make any kind of a difference, but it sure seemed like she was going to try. Hugging an almost stranger seemed awkward, but considering the circumstances, I opened my arms and embraced her.
“Okay, I’m going to go get started reviewing law,” she said as she released me.
“It’s ten o’clock at night,” I said.
“I’ve got inferiority issues. I need to do shit like this to prove to myself that I’m not worthless,” she responded.
Avery’s visit made me feel great. She was genuine, intelligent, full of energy, absolutely gorgeous, and not a typical female. It was almost as if she was a man trapped in the body of a woman. So far she was proving herself to be a great person, and if things continued the way they were, I could see myself becoming very good friends with her.
“You’re not worthless,” I said.
“We’re about to find out,” she responded as she walked to the door.
I held my hand to my chest and grinned. “I already have. I enjoyed this. Thanks for coming over.”
“Well, my man’s out of town, and I need something to do anyway. Maybe I’ll see you again tomorrow,” she said.
“I’d like that,” I said.
After she drove away, I closed the door and turned toward the table. The chalkboard on the wall behind the table was becoming more applicable as the days passed. For Avery to volunteer to do what she was going to do without knowing me, my brother, or the Hell’s Fury club, she was truly a person who didn’t judge.
I picked up the glasses of tea, dumped them in the sink, and got ready for bed. As I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, I realized since the day I met Toad, my life had slowly began to fall into place. The silly chalkboard I had made could really be applied to all of the people I had met through Toad.
Biscuit and Otis were both willing to hand me money upon learning of my being homeless. Toad, without a doubt was nonjudgmental. Junior, his mother, and Avery were the same. Still staring at the ceiling, I closed my eyes and did something I hadn’t done since I was a very small girl.
Thank you, Lord, for introducing me to my new friends. Please keep them from harm. In your name I ask these things, amen.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
TOAD
Axton slid his arm through his cut, began walking toward the bathroom, and glanced over his shoulder. “I think I cut my fucking ear shaving. What did you fuckers decide? Are you going downtown or are you going to just wait in the lot?”
Axton and I had stayed in the adjoining room, and Otis and Biscuit had stayed in the other. After a good night’s sleep and a shower, we were ready to go to the meeting and get our day of relaxation in Austin started. The temperatures in excess of 100 degrees were perfect for riding and enjoying the sun. Additionally, Austin was a place for everyone, bikers included. The cities motto was Keep Austin Weird.
“Doesn’t make good sense to go downtown if the meeting’s only going to be thirty minutes or so, we can wait outside,” I responded.
Axton had explained that the meeting was to include only one spokesperson from
each club. The existing clubs in the area would meet with the spokespersons from the new club, and after finding out the potential new club’s anticipated membership, intent, and claimed territory would vote on whether or not the club posed a threat or would be allowed to assemble in the territory requested. The fact the club asked for a meeting spoke highly of the founders of the club, as many MC’s start up every day without so much as understanding the proper protocol.
Starting a club and wearing colors with rockers claiming territory without the permission of existing clubs is a sure fire way to get killed. Texas was not only a Bandido state, it was the Bandido state. 1%er clubs in Texas were rarely given the right to even fly a rocker claiming the state as their own. The Bandidos refused to give permission. Being established in 1966, they were the original Texas 1% group. A great club with equally great men, but they had no interest in sharing the claim to their state. A non 1% club would have no problems starting up, though. At least this club was starting out on the right foot. After a short meeting, we, as well as all other clubs in attendance, would know their intent or interest in territorial claim. .
“Whatever you fellas want to do,” Axton said as he walked out of the bathroom holding his ear.
“I don’t know that it’s a good idea for you to be running across town alone. I’d feel more comfortable with the four of us. One Sinner is an easier target than four,” I responded as I looked toward Otis.
Otis chuckled. “I agree with the Sergeant at Arms. Fuck, last one of these I went to in Wichita lasted about twenty minutes, shouldn’t be a big deal. We’ll sit in the parking lot, out of sight so we don’t intimidate anyone.”
“All you got to do is show up, Otis and you intimidate people. Point taken, Toad. We’ll roll out there, I’ll go in the meeting, and when it’s over we’ll all go out and you fellas can have some beers. Hell, maybe some of the other clubs will want to go,” Axton said as he removed the bloody tissue from his ear.
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