Well, actually, even acting alone with no resources, she’s been keeping up with our entire club every step of the way. She’s a natural. Even the way she handles herself on a motorcycle feels like she was meant to be there. She’s got every bit of the fire I do to dive right into things at the first whiff of foul play. She’s got even more of a stake in the murder investigation, and she’s handled herself like a professional more than once.
I feel a pang in my chest as I realize how much I’ve been thinking about her. What’s gotten into you, Leon?
I’ve got to shake myself out of it. But fuck, it’s been a hell of a ride on my own, trying to fight upstream against what seems like the whole institution lined up against me. The patch members and my officers, they’re truer brothers and sisters to me than any flesh-and-blood siblings ever could be. I couldn’t ask for a tighter group to ride with, and we’d all take a bullet for each other if it came to that.
To meet someone else, a ghost from brighter days, storming into town with all the tenacity and fire I had when I was just starting out, looking like a vixen with eyes and lips that could knock a man out, and a body so stunning I can still feel it when I think about her...
“Hey, boss?” I hear Eva’s voice from behind the door with a light knock before she lets herself in. “Still tied up in all that paperwork?”
Snapping out of my thoughts, I grunt in response, setting my beer aside and leaning back. “Kill me. We ought to hire a suit to take care of this kind of work for us.”
“Might not need to,” she says with a smile. “we just got a tip from one of the maintenance workers at James & Son.”
“You’re shitting me,” I say, sitting up with a sudden smile. I can’t express how done I am with dealing with this paperwork, and I’m eager to get out on the streets again.
“Apparently he overheard a meeting with the bosses. It’s a definite lead, but you’re not gonna like it. They’re trying to sell to NexaCo.”
I feel fire burning in my chest, and my hand clenches. They aren’t fucking around. NexaCo is the big leagues.
It’s a superstore corporation that has branches all over the United States. There’s even been talk of them spilling into Canada, but there’s been a ton of pushback up there. Having a NexaCo in town spells death for any local businesses that don’t have hefty backing from somewhere else. They drive consumer prices into the ground, making competition basically impossible, to the point that NexaCo gets to dictate the prices they pay to their suppliers and shipping companies. They’re single handedly responsible for the fall in farmers’ wages over the past few years, and I don’t want to think about what they’ll do to the workers at the docks here in Bayonne.
Worse yet, the company employs one of the most highly trained divisions of union busters in the country. So much as a whisper of collective action, and corporate descends on a branch like the hammer of the gods.
Not in my town.
“That’s all I need,” I say, standing up and striding around the desk. Eva follows me out the door as I step out into the bar, where a couple of the members give me respectful nods, happy to see me emerge from that lair.
“Alright, everyone,” I shout, “listen up! James & Son are bringing NexaCo to town if we don’t do anything about it. So we’re gonna go have a chat with them.”
There’s an angry shout of agreement from everyone in the bar, beers and pool sticks raised high.
“Eva, Genn, you’re with me. We’re gonna go have a talk with them ‘quietly.’ The rest of you, go make some noise close to Mickey’s. It’s far enough away that if the feds catch a whiff of you, they won’t be paying attention to where the real business is. Just don’t answer any questions if you get pulled over, and remember which of the boys in blue are on our take, got it?”
“You got it, Prez,” shouts one of the members. A few moments later, half the club is gearing up to get moving, and I take a deep breath.
This is what I live for.
We’re riding again, this time for what feels like a more white-collar meeting than our trip to the liquor store. Well, not for us—we normally don’t go storming into realty offices like this.
Our bikes pull up at an office building with a nice exterior garden plan. It’s got a fountain outside and everything.
“James & Son Realtors,” Eva says as she pulls up beside me in the parking lot, Genn pulling up a couple of seconds later. “Nice place. Wonder if they’re busy this time of day?”
“Nah,” I say back, “most of them will be out to lunch right about now.”
“Good,” Genn says, cracking his knuckles, “I’d like a little one-on-one time with someone right about now.”
“Only a couple of cars in the parking lot,” I point out. “Whoever brought lunch from home today is going to get a rude interruption, hate to say. Let’s go.”
We push the door open and let ourselves inside, making a quick and direct path to the nearest open office door we can spot.
“E-excuse me?” the secretary at the front desk tries to say as we stride past.
“We’re expected,” Genn says with a friendly smile as we walk by, and the secretary just gapes for a moment before giving up. The balding, white-collar scrub inside the office we make our way to looks up from the sandwich he’s eating, and his face goes pale at the sight of us.
“C-can I help you three?”
“Yes, we’d like to arrange a meeting, immediately, if you’ve got an opening,” I say, standing in the middle of the room with my arms crossed as Eva and Genn flank me.
“Y-yeah, I guess I can squeeze you in,” he stammers, sweating at the forehead before taking a deep breath and getting his bearings. “You’re from the Union Club, aren’t you?”
My face splits into a grin. It feels good to get a little recognition every now and then. “And you must be one of the lackeys opening the doors for NexaCo to stroll up in here, huh?”
“Now sir,” the man says, holding a hand out as if trying to explain, but there is a definite edge of condescension to his voice, as though he’s explaining down to someone. “NexaCo has a complicated reputation, but besides the fact that we’re just agents carrying out a sale that’s been trying to go through for years, the jobs that NexaCo could bring into this city are—”
“Underpaid, without benefits, and designed to drive the local competition to the poor house,” I finish for him. “Unlike yours, I’d be willing to bet, but you don’t have to think about that on a day to day basis, do you?” I add with a wink.
His face is still, but he looks nervous.
I continue, “Now I know the town’s newest guests from Washington make you think we’d change our tune, but just to be clear that isn’t the case, I thought we’d drop by to—”
I’m cut off as the man leaps from his office chair, making a mad dash for the door to bolt out the office. Genn catches him at the waist as he tries to slip by, and as he loses his footing, he smacks his head against the side of the doorframe and starts kicking his legs, knocking over some of the office equipment on the desk, I catch a snippet of the voices up front.
“I’m sorry, the only person in the office i-is tied up w-with something right—”
“Okay, yeah, I know them, now just let me get past so I can—”
I know that voice. “Cherry!” I shout out from the office, and it goes quiet up front a moment, the only noise being Genn’s grunting with the agent in his grasp. “Hey, you two got a handle on this guy?”
Genn gives a stoic nod, and I return it before slipping around them and making my way out the door and down the hallway to see a flustered-looking Cherry standing beside the distraught secretary.
“Leon, what the hell’s going on here?” Cherry has to keep her volume in check, despite the shouting from the office behind us.
“Look, I know what this looks like. We— one sec. Miss?” I turn to the secretary, slipping a $50 out of my pocket and setting it on the front desk. “Give us some privacy and go get lunch, will yo
u? You can tell ‘em we threw you out.”
The secretary looks hesitant for a moment, then takes the money and gives a curt nod before shuffling out.
“As I was saying,” I try to continue with a coy smile, but Cherry doesn’t look amused.
“Save it, Leon,” Cherry almost snaps, “this is too far.”
“Is it?” I say, genuinely surprised. “The weasels who work here are capable of doing a lot more harm than skeezes like Mickey, you know.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Cherry says, pacing around the room. “I know why you’re here, Leon, and this is insane. You claim you’re trying to protect the people in this city, but by all means, tell me how busting up a land sale to keep a shallow grave hidden constitutes ‘helping’ anyone but yourselves?”
The words hit me out of nowhere, and I just stare at her, dumbstruck for a few moments. “...huh? The hell are you talking about?”
“I went to the plot of land these people are trying to sell, Leon,” she says, taking out her phone and showing me the county appraiser’s website. “I found out who’s selling it, as well as the fact that it’s been on the market for ages. And I just stopped by there. I saw the grave, Leon.”
“Wait wait wait,” I stop her, shaking my head, trying to wrap my mind around what I’d just heard. “What’s this about a grave? Cherry, what’d you see?”
Cherry looks long and hard into my eyes, and for a moment, I almost forget she’s accusing me of murder. It’s an intense gaze that holds me still for a moment, and as I look back into hers, I wonder if she feels the same as I do.
“You really don’t know, do you?” she says, her shoulders lowering just a bit. “Oh my God, you don’t. Leon, you need to come out there with me. I think this is more serious than we know.”
Now it’s my turn to rub my hand over my face, thinking quickly. “That doesn’t make any sense, though. If they’re trying to sell the land off, if there’s really somebody buried there, they’ll find them the minute they start setting up for construction. Unless…”
Cherry watches my face for a few moment, then the light of understanding sparks in her eyes, and she blanches. “Unless someone knows there’s a grave there.”
My eyes meet hers, and I give her a hard look before nodding curtly. “The FBI may be in town to do more than intimidate us. Come on, follow us back to the bar. I’ll get the two in the back to finish up and follow us. As soon as it’s night, we’re paying the lot a visit.
The grave we find that night is plain as day. I stand over it with my arms crossed while a few patches from the club patrol around us. Cherry is pointing a few things out on the site.
“I’ve moved a few things around—it wasn’t as plainly outlined as it is here, but this is clearly disturbed dirt, about six by two, and there was brush covering it when I found it.”
The moonlight is scarce, but it casts just enough light for us to see.
“Only one way to know for sure,” I say, and Genn steps forward from behind me with a shovel in hand. Cherry looks horrified.
“Are you kidding? What do you think you’re doing? We can’t just…”
“I know, but would you rather involve the cops?” I ask, a grim look on my face. Cherry looks reluctant, but finally, she steps back and lets Genn get to work.
He’s a tough bull of a man, so it doesn’t take long before his careful digging uncovers something, and he sets the shovel aside to start parting the dirt with his hands. As he starts to uncover the body, my brow furrows, and Cherry covers her mouth with a hand.
“Oh my God…”
I was expecting whatever we exhumed to be a body I recognized—someone the mob had dealt with a while ago, or maybe some unsolved murder case locally. But no.
The face in the shallow grave was foreign; clearly someone from south of the border.
“I’ve heard of this kind of thing happening in Texas,” Cherry breathes, “but all the way up here?”
“Prez!” calls one of the men from a dozen feet or so away. “Got another one over here!”
“Here too!”
Now it’s my turn to go pale as I sweep across the field with the men to see the extent of what we’re standing on. There are over a dozen men and women buried here, all immigrants.
“What do we do, Prez?” Genn asks, kneeling over the grave after looking down on the poor man with a sorrowful look. “We can’t go to the cops with this, can we?”
“On the contrary, Genn,” I say, a stony expression on my face, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
“What?” Cherry asks, shocked. “After all that talk about keeping the police out of this? Land disputes are one thing, but Leon...this is serious. Really serious. A full-blown investigation could get out of hand. If you were worried about the FBI being in town, this would have them swarming all over us.”
“I don’t think they came to town to investigate this, though,” I say, crossing my arms and looking the dead man in the face. “So we’re going to play them at their own game. We’ll make this public, and we’ll kill two birds with one stone—we’ll get justice for the victims here with unmarked graves, and making this place a crime scene will shut down the NexaCo branch for so long they won’t even want it by the time they’re finished investigating.”
Cherry seems uncertain for a while, but finally, her expression softens, and she nods. “It’s risky...but these people need justice. I’ll bet there are some families that want closure over this, too.”
A smile tugs at my face as I look at her. “I agree. Alright everyone,” I say to the patches around me, “let’s clean up and head back. Come tomorrow, we’re doing something the Union Club has never done before. We’re gonna reach out to the police.”
11
Cherry
Going to the police this morning was nerve-wracking. I have been fortunate — or boring — enough to never have a real run-in with the cops. Even in the crime-laden city of New York, I managed to stay on the straight and narrow, keeping my business to myself. I’ve never had so much as a noise complaint or a parking ticket in all my years on this earth, and it’s a point of pride for me. So walking into the police station in Bayonne was terrifying. A totally unfamiliar experience.
Especially since I was there to report a murder.
Granted, the detective I spoke to was quick to assure me that the case could not definitively be labeled a homicide until a full investigation and autopsy were completed. Which is police slang for: “Okay, crazy lady, you’re the fifth person today to walk in here all wide-eyed trying to report some bizarro crime just for the attention.” The detective, who introduced herself as Maria Hanson, took down my name and details on a little chart.
“Name?” she prompted, not looking up from the clipboard.
“Uh, Cherry LaBeau.”
She immediately looked up, a flicker crossing her dark features. I waited for the usual incredulous “Cherry? Really? Your name is actually Cherry?” But it never came. And then I realized she was noticing my last name. Because my father recently died. I didn’t get a chance to ask about his case — or whether the police even had a case for him — before she reassumed her previous nonchalance and continued the interview.
Detective Hanson took all my information and nodded through my description of the shallow grave on the NexaCo plot of land. She did raise an eyebrow at my explanation of the upturned earth and shoddy attempts to cover it up. Of course, I don’t tell her that Union Club members exhumed the body themselves just to make sure. I conveniently left that part out. I had a strong inkling that the cops wouldn’t be too pleased with the prospect of civilians digging up bodies in the middle of the night. Especially civilians who happen to have a rough relationship with the authorities. I hoped she would believe me, at least enough to get a team out there to check it out.
And luckily, she did.
Now I’m standing in the field with my hands on my hips, biting my lip nervously as the forensics team starts the exhumati
on process. There’s a group of several guys with digging equipment, along with a couple of skeptical cops standing around shooting the breeze. I can tell they all think this is most likely a waste of time.
“You sure there’s a human body down there?” pipes up one of the cops, a fresh-faced young rookie with a name badge that says WILLIS. The older, paunchy man next to him elbows Willis in the ribs.
“Could just be some poor kid’s dead dog or something,” he adds gruffly. His badge says his name is NELSON. I want to slap both of them for joking around about this.
Detective Hanson is here, as well, instructing the forensics team and taking down information. She’s a tall, soft-spoken black woman with a graceful presence. I hope to God she’s one of the good ones, because she seems to actually have some idea of how serious this is.
“Alright, let’s get started,” she calls out, holding her clipboard under her arm. She gives me a respectful nod and goes off to chat with the two cops, likely to chastise them for being so flippant about a homicide accusation.
The team starts digging, and I bite my nails anxiously, waiting for the first body to turn up. Sure enough, before long that first body we found is uncovered. “Got one, Detective!” shouts the digger. I glance over just in time to see Willis’s face go white as a sheet before he faints. Nelson catches him in his arms before the rookie falls completely to the ground, and in any other situation the sight would have been rather funny — a dignified old cop romantically cradling the swooning body of a younger officer.
But in context of the number of dead bodies turning up in this field… I can’t exactly blame the guy for passing out, especially since he’s clearly new to the job. He can’t be more than nineteen years old. I’m sure they’ve only got him out here as a kind of hazing process, to see if he can handle the dark side of being a cop. From the looks of it, the answer is a resounding no.
“Wake up, kiddo,” Nelson says to Willis, patting the kid’s cheek and jostling his blue-suited body to jolt him back to reality. The younger cop wakes up slowly, looks around to see at least a dozen bodies have already been exhumed, and he immediately claps a hand to his mouth and runs off to vomit.
Hitman - the Series: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Collection (Alexis Abbott's Hitmen #0) Page 28