by J. C. Allen
I couldn’t help but eye her up. She was young, that was for certain. She wasn’t so young as to be, say, 18, but I could easily see her being in her early 20’s. And such… like…
Move ahead! Clear road! Go! Now!
Without letting myself linger, I turned my eyes away from her and back on the cross streets, making sure I had a clear shot. I took it, hearing a car honk but not giving a shit given I didn’t even feel its breeze after. No more pity parties, Derek.
A couple of blocks later, I pulled up to the back of our shop. Outside, Matty “Rooster” Rose awaited me, arms crossed and a slightly nervous expression apparent even behind his sunglasses. It didn’t help his cause that I knew him too well to be fooled by some small black shades. Too many years together had allowed me to see too many of his tics that went beyond his eyes.
“Got some good news an’ some bad news fer ya, Derek,” Matty drawled.
I kicked the stand and hopped off the bike, taking a quick glance at my store, my base of operations, my pride and what life had now more or less reduced to my everything. If I put my stereo and my bike in here, I could have moved in here and never needed to go anywhere else.
Out front, “KNIGHT’S MOTORS & MECHANICS” appeared in massive, professional letters. To our customers, to the police, to anyone who drove by on their way to some shitty fast food or their meaningless job, we looked like just another mechanic shop. To the people that walked in and dealt with our front desk, we still looked that way, and when we had a legitimate customer, we acted that way too. From Monday to Saturday, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., we were like any other place you’d find on Yelp.
In the rear of the building, though, the real work went down.
Cracked-open crates of everything but motorcycle parts littered the floor. Plastic-wrapped bricks of marijuana, fireworks, bootlegged DVDs, and stacks upon stacks of counterfeit everything—starting with thousand-dollar handbags and ranging all the way to molded porn star body parts that weren’t molded from the actual porn stars—filled those crates. It looked like a certifiable house of horrors to a good, civilized man or woman.
To me, it just looked like business. Profitable business—assuming we weren’t short as much as I feared.
I walked with Roost into the shop, passing a life-like replica of a woman’s no-no zone. The packaging stated it had the name Bonnie Rotten, but I suspected from the looks of it Granny Smith was more apt. Either way, I pitied the man who used such a device—there was something spectacularly sexy about a beautiful woman but spectacularly unsexy about this toy.
“Give me the bad news first,” I said. Might as well continue the trend of today. “If I’m gonna start my day like shit, I at least want to set up to end it on a good note.”
“Fair ‘nuff,” Matty said with a shrug. “The bad news is ya look like shit.”
I rolled my eyes at him, drawing a devious grin. You know what I mean.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said. “I probably smell like it, too. It’s hotter than hell out here, and I’ve been riding through the steaming bowels of this city twenty-miles over the damn speed limit to get here.”
“R’mind me not to go sniffin’ ‘round ya anytime soon,” Matty said with a laugh as he turned to head inside.
“Don’t think that needs any reminders,” I replied, thinking about the idea of Matty sniffing around me—and how Matty imagined such a scenario would play out.
Inside, despite the early “CLOSED” sign on the shop’s front entrance—after all, we needed some operating hours that didn’t involve teenagers who didn’t know how to handle a bike—the back had some bustling activity. Over thirty of our crew toiled over the crates, carrying them inside with grunts, prying them open with rusted crowbars, and shifting through the contents with little regard for what they were.
Wasn’t like it was the first time they’d ever come across drugs or stolen DVDs, anyways.
In any case, though, the activity, though jarring to someone who had never seen it before, was a routine as an oil charge or a tire rotation to a car mechanic. If we were short, at least we were carrying on with business as usual.
“So what’s the good news, Rooster?” I pressed, able to focus since I wasn’t on my bike.
“Order came in exactly as we wanted,” he said, snatching some stapled pages off of one of the crate for me to examine as he spoke.
Oh thank God. Something went right today!
“Seems the boys’ve decided to go green or some shit. Changed the way they pack their stuff, so what’s normally two-hundred of these sons’ve bitches”—he threw another slap against the side of the crate—“was cut down to one-fiddy.”
Figures.
But we still got what we needed. Don’t really give a damn at the moment if I’m getting my fries in a medium or a large as long as I’m getting the same amount in the end.
“How economic,” I deadpanned.
If that was the worst of it, though, then maybe we would be ending the day on a good note. However…
“Then we’re good, right? No problems? Nothing else we need to consider?”
Matty wagged a bushy eyebrow back at me.
“Ye’re asking if we still gotta figure a way to put the scare in the boys without killin’ them?”
Woah, OK, I was definitely not implying that.
“Actually,” I corrected, leaning against another crate and nearly falling back as it skewed slightly under my weight. “Shit!”
Seemed like my whole day was more than a little unsteady, to say nothing about my mental state. I steadied myself, ignoring the glances from the rest of the boys.
“I was asking in general; as in, ‘no problems’ with anything. Not ‘no problems with having to slit throats yet.’ Goodness, Roost, not everything is life or death with me.”
Matty shrugged at that, as if it was his job to look at things from a life or death perspective. Which, as my second-in-command, probably wasn’t the worst perspective for him to have. I had to have a certain detachment from it all—a laughable notion at least when it came to Maggie and Rock—but I also needed someone willing to see death and danger in everything I did and could do.
He looked at the boys and then turned a careful, observant eye to me. Patiently, I waited for his answer, knowing I could trust Roost to—
“Ya still look like shit.”
—tell some kind of truth, I suppose.
“So you told me.”
I gave a half-hearted roll of my eyes, as close as I would come to giving a good natured joshing to Roost or anyone at this shop.
But any potential for teasing, half-relaxing, or anything approaching calm stopped when something caught my eye. Something… something that we shouldn’t have needed, something that, if discovered, would have fucked us far more than some illegal Chinese DVDs. We had good distance and respect from the authorities, but that’s because our “crimes” were relatively soft. This…
“What the hell are these?” I demanded, starting towards an already half-emptied crate as the outline of what lay within came to view.
“Oh…”
I didn’t need to see Matty to know the color was draining from his face. Nor did I need to see him to know he was all but shitting his pants right now. Everyone who can hear me better be shitting themselves right now.
“Those.”
“Yeah,” I growled.
I reached down into the crate, cradled the black handle, observed the short barrel, and pulled out one of the pistols by the barrel, holding it out to Rooster like a piece of rotting fruit.
I had as much appetite for what holding one now meant as I did for taking a bite of said rotten fruit too. I was no greenie or wimp with guns, but we sure as fuck didn’t need them in our shop. This war of escalation had to stop.
“Mind telling me what the fuck these are doing in our shipment.”
It was not a question. It was a command. It was a goddamn order.
“They’re… uh, getting shipped,” M
atty answered, trying to sound coy but only sounding nervous.
“You’re hilarious, smartass,” I shot, seething.
After a quick glance, I saw that the numbers had been filed away. I wouldn’t have been surprised if further investigation told me they’d been modified, as well.
This was not something I was willing to fuck around with. My humor, if you could call it that, was dry, dark, and often confused for seriousness, but no one would have confused anything about myself right now.
“Since when, Roost, do we deal guns?”
Matty gave a look that would have been more appropriate on the face of a teenager trying to explain the concept of email to their grandparents. I didn’t give a fuck—if it took me longer to get it than it did Grandpa Abe to understand Yahoo, we were gonna do it.
“Since the Falcons started dealin’ guns, Derek. Either we keep up with ‘em and try to cut ‘em off at each turn or we hand ‘em the city. An’ if they get everything? Do ya need me to spell it out for ya?”
He deliberately let the words linger. I didn’t show it… but he was making a point that resonated with me.
“Then these will be the least of our worries,” he said, waving the gun to make a point.
“How do you figure?” I demanded, even as I was already making sense of it in my head.
Matty must have known that, because he rolled his eyes without any of the sarcasm or bellow of a laughter that usually accompanied it.
“The ones who would be buyin’ from the Falcons are the ones who are currently buyin’ from us,” he explained. “If the Falcons say that they can get untraceable guns an’ we don’t get untraceable guns, then the ones buyin’ from us who want untraceable guns start buyin’ from them. Then they’s got an edge on us. Then they start bringin’ in bigger, badder shit with all the cheddar they’re makin’ off our old buyers. Next thing ya know, the Falcons got the leverage and the firepower to smoke us for good. And we’ll be goin’ down like a buncha goddamn Woodstock hippies. Capiche?”
“So… you’re telling me this is a necessary evil?” I said. “Fucking Michael Kors knockoffs, pot, and fake pussies ain’t enough to run things? Now we gotta smuggle in weapons and deal in death? Where’s the end line, Roost?”
There was so much about this I didn’t want to deal with. Death just seemed to hang in my life like a mistress that deliberately wanted to make a scene with my significant other, and she was doing quite well with Maggie and my second wife.
Now, she wanted to give me her modern version of the reaper’s scythe.
“I appreciate that ye’re sticking to yer old man’s morals in how we used to run things,” Matty said in a lecturing tone. “But don’t ya think that ye’re lettin’ yer past cloud yer judgement here?”
I shot him a glare that was all fury, and, judging from the flinch and the wide step he took away from me, he got the message. I could handle some pushback, but this… on this day…
“And if I was,” I said slowly, challenging him, “Would you say I was being unreasonable?”
“I… I…” Matty wiped his face with a calloused, oily hand and shrugged a single shoulder. “Dammit, Derek, I don’t think anybody could say that—nobody who knew ya, least. But… shit, man, ya know what the alternative is, right?”
I did.
Damn it, I really did.
I knew so well, in fact…
With a frustrated roar that really originated from the morning but had its roots many months back, I hauled back and drove my foot into the side of the crate, knocking it over and spilling out the remaining contents across the floor.
“Fuck!”
Unfortunately, the display wasn’t as dramatic as I’d hoped. I’d envisioned an airborne crate exploding into splinters against the wall, sending shattered gun parts raining down over awestruck and terrified workers. Everyone would have stared at me, giving me a Hollywood moment in which the boss’ rage was uncontrolled, giving him instant and complete obedience.
It was as unrealistic as…
The phantom face of Maggie, smiling, of a waving beauty cupping her round belly burned behind my eyes as she rose from the bed…
Exploding aerial crates of guns… right there in the realm of “Not Real” with her.
“Fuck.”
I did get part of my vision right, though. The back room went quiet as all the workers, diligently working to unload and stockpile the shipment, looked over to see what was wrong. They’d just seen their leader—if I even deserved that title right now, something I wouldn’t contest too hard—throw a tantrum and kick over a bunch of handguns. They probably thought I was about to start shooting next. I might have gotten unyielding obedience, but I now saw why that “big, bad boss” usually died at the end.
Everyone knew he was batshit crazy.
At least the majority of my workers knew that the Saviors weren’t that sort of club—my father and, after him, my older brother had seen to it that things were done differently with us—but with the Saviors “under new management” and half of us disbanded and working to bury the other, I figured they wouldn’t be surprised to see the other shit-covered shoe drop on our way of life.
Still, having the grace of our past meant that I could get a pass on at least one episode of insanity. The more that came, though…
“Fuck…”
“Feel better?” Matty asked.
Why even lie?
“Not really, no.”
Matty sighed, folded his arms across his chest, and leaned against a stack of crates. I wasn’t proud to admit to myself that I was inwardly jealous of his success at doing so without having the stack betray him and nearly topple him as my own crate had done to me. To say nothing of his composure right now.
“Ya know,” he began, stretching out his already lengthy drawl into something almost comical. Almost. “What ya need is a—”
“I swear, Roost,” I cut him off, knowing where this old conversation went. “If you’re about to offer to buy me another prostitute—”
Seeing him already shaking his head, I stopped and sneered.
“Or if you’re going to suggest I buy my own…”
Matty rolled his eyes and planted his hands on his hips in a manner that gave away his sexuality in spades. Not that he cared, I knew; anybody in the Saviors that wanted to try to take a chance at jabbing their second-in-command for being gay either had a death wish or half a brain, or likely both. Above all else, I made sure of that.
Since we didn’t recruit the suicidal or the stupid, it was a safe bet that Rooster could do whatever he wanted—even parade about as the neo-trucker incarnation of RuPaul—and most wouldn’t even bother to quirk a brow in his direction. The only case of somebody actually saying anything in regards to Rooster’s lifestyle was still, to this day, called “Pee-Bag Ricky,” and we had laughed so hard at it—a rare moment of levity—that old Roost went along with it just fine.
“Whores’re fine and all, God knows I love my type,” Matty drawled, “but what ya really need, Derek…”
I could practically hear the suspenseful percussion rolling in his own mind as he paused for dramatic effect. I was mildly curious what he was about to say only in the intellectual sense, not in the truly emotionally curious sense.
“Is a date!”
A date. A girl I would go out with, pay for her dinner, pay for her drinks, take home to the bedroom, and fuck until I passed out post-orgasm.
Curiously, the next thought that followed wasn’t nearly as jaded as the one I’d just had.
Instead, I thought about the hooker I’d seen at the street corner just a few minutes before I’d arrived here. The one with the soft, pretty face. The one who looked like she didn’t belong in the streets. What was she like? Was she… could she be a real date?
She’s a whore, Derek.
“So… a prostitute by any other name.”
“BAH!”
Matty waved a dismissive hand, clearly losing hope in me, our lives, and likely the entire
human race in that instant. Whether it was a gay-thing or just a Matty-thing, there was something to be said about the flare that punctuated just about everything he did.
Can’t really blame him, either. Not like he should have much hope in my romantic life, if you don’t want to call it my romantic death. The fact that I’m reduced to drawing my eye to hookers…
Or, rather, one hooker… who doesn’t look anything or even stand as a hooker would…
“Ya’ve let yerself get too far along if ya think datin’s as simple as ten minutes and a crumpled twenty… or, for that damn matter, as cheap!”
He finished with a loud, barking laugh, a laugh that got a smile out of most and, in my quietest moments, a feeling of jealousy that I never felt like laughing like that.
“I’m already tired of this conversation,” I informed him, walking back through the crates toward… I don’t know, anything else. Not only did I want to discuss this, not only did I not want to overthink a girl I found sexually attractive, I just wanted to get back down to business in any fashion.
“How can ya be tired of a conversation that’s only jus’ started?” he asked, his heavy footsteps starting after me.
“Cause it’s a conversation we’ve had before, Roost! And many, many, many fucking times, I might add. And, what’s more, it always ends with you giving up, tracking down some prostitute, and throwing a wad of bills at her to ‘show me a night.’ Do you know how many times we’ve done this game before? Do you know how boring and unfulfilled that game leaves me feeling?”
“An’ do they show ya a night?” Matty asked.
I stopped in mid-step, sighing heavily, and gave an exaggerated shrug so that I could be sure he’d see it from behind. I mean, I got laid. I’d come. Sex felt good.
But was it really being “shown a night” if the sensation was nothing more than physical ecstasy for twenty minutes followed by the reality of life returning?