by Jackson Kane
“While I make some amazing food.” She smirked mischievously, then grabbed my hand and dragged me to the door. “But you can be my sidekick. Ready, Robin?”
“Like hell I’m going to be Robin! Whenever there’s a situation where one of us is Batman….” I pointed to myself and nodded confidently.
This pseudo-argument would set the tone for the whole evening as we poked fun and tried to one-up each other. As fun as everything with Anna was, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder about that letter. I’d better start looking into it tomorrow.
Maybe a family reunion with Uncle Robert was long overdue.
Chapter Two
Maya
“Yeah?” a gruff voice picked up.
It had taken me two days to build up the courage to finally make this call since getting the letter from Anna. “Hi. I’m looking for Robert,” I announced cautiously into one of my burner cell phones. I had witnessed too many failings in the legal system firsthand to trust in it completely. I didn’t own anything technically illegal, but I made sure to have as many resources at my disposable as possible.
“Who’s this?”
“My name’s Maya. Is this Robert Merritt?”
There was a long pause.
“No,” the man replied begrudgingly. “You got the wrong number—”
“Don’t hang up!” I blurted, hoping to stop him before he killed the call. “Please! I think I’m your niece!”
Another pause, but the line was still open.
I continued on, filling the silence with anything I thought might get this man to talk to me. “My name is Maya Merritt. I think you knew my mother, Amanda. Am I talking to the right person?”
Silence. I knew I’d said what I needed to. This time it was his turn to reply if he was going to at all. It had taken countless hours to track this number down as I had started with nothing else on this man. No current address, place of employment, medical history, anything. “Robert Merritt” was a ghost, but this man, whoever he was, was very much alive. If he hung up now, I knew I’d never get this chance again.
“Little Mai Tai?” the gruff voice on the other line asked in more of a fatherly tone than anything I had heard in years.
I was struck by the tinge of sadness that saturated his words.
“Mai Tai...” That nickname... I was engulfed by one of those blurry memories that orbited the periphery of my mind since I was a little girl. A remembrance that, for years, was completely gone until it suddenly, pressingly wasn’t. It languished on the tip of my brain for days at a time then silently floated away like driftwood atop a dark bay in twilight.
For some reason, I had convinced myself over the years that it was a classmate in elementary school who had given it to me, but that never made any sense. How would nine-year-olds know about tiki mixed drinks? I knew I had reached the right man; I was talking to my Uncle Robbie.
“Y-yeah, that’s me,” I stammered, surprised at the flood of buried emotion that swelled in me. I didn’t know him for long, but I remembered Robbie always treating me well.
“How in the hell did you find my number?”
“I, well... It wasn’t easy.” I had to call in a few favors to get the access I needed just to start searching. After several hours of calling around and dealing with discontinued lines and unhelpful people, I just got lucky. Either way, the why was more important than the how right now. “I need help, Uncle Robbie.”
I heard a deep, regretful sigh, and I could only imagine what was running through his head other than he had no reason to believe or trust me. “I’m sorry, Maya. I can’t help you. Don’t tell anyone you contacted me. It’s for your own good, I promise you. Take care, Mai Tai.”
“No! Wait! Please! I wouldn’t have called you for my sake or even for Mom’s. It’s for my little sister.”
“Anna?” His voice now was a whisper. Was I speaking with a ghost after all? “Is she okay?”
“Yes… uh, sort of... I mean....” My brain was jumbling up all my words, so I stopped, took a breath, and continued. “Anna lives with our father, your brother, and things are getting bad. I don’t think she’s safe there anymore.”
“Angel, I can’t help her. If I come back there, everything will get worse for everyone. You gotta find another way. I’m sorry.”
“There is no other way! She’s just a girl, and she needs help!” With everything that had happened, I couldn’t control myself. This conversation was slipping away from me, and with it went the last hope I had to save my sister. I couldn’t let that happen. “I need you to give a shit!”
“I do care, goddammit!” His distant, sad voice burned; I definitely had hit a nerve. He then paused to calm himself. “I want to help... but I—You gotta go to the cops if she’s in danger.”
“The cops?” I scoffed, typing furiously into my laptop keyboard. “You, of all people, should know better than that. Bruce has them all in his pocket!”
“I’m sorry, Maya.”
Robbie was a heartbeat away from hanging up the phone, and as much I needed to know everything about everything, it was obvious that these revelations would come in their own time if I was able to get close to him. I had to choose my next words very carefully.
“Wait! I don’t want you to come here.” I blurted to keep him on the phone a little longer. “I need to know about the safe-deposit box, and then I’ll let you disappear again.”
“Heh, that damn box. Ya know, I forgot all ’bout that thing. I’ll tell you right now I have no idea what your mom put in there. I can’t even remember where the damn thing is.”
“It’s in San Francisco.”
“That’s right!” Robbie chuckled to himself. “Near her sister’s place, right? Call your Aunt Gina. I’m sure she can help you out.”
“I have and she will, but....” I sighed nervously, ungluing my eyes from my laptop. There was nothing I could do to help the program run faster, so I set it aside and just waited for it to be done.
And now came the fun part....
“Mom registered the box in your name too,” I added. “And being that I can’t prove you’re legally dead, it won’t pass to the next of kin, which is Dad. You need to come with me. I can’t pick it up without you.”
“Aww... shit!”
“Yeah.” I transferred my laptop to the coffee table and flopped onto my small couch, my head falling back onto the pillow. “So stop being a selfish prick and take some damn responsibility!”
The older man grunted with surprise at my outburst. “It’ll have to wait a few weeks. Something big came up that I have to take care of first.”
“That’s the other thing. The bank is permanently closing its doors in one week. If we’re not there by then, whatever is in that box will be destroyed.” There was a long pause, and after a while, I hoped he hadn’t hung up. “Are you still there? Uncle Robbie?”
“All right, all right. I’m here. Fly out to your Aunt Gina’s place and wait for me. I’m leaving in two days, so I should be in Cali by....” I heard him mumbling to himself. “By the end of the week. So five, six days at the latest. It’ll be cutting it close, but I promise we’ll get ’er done.”
I wanted to believe Robbie. I really did. I had been about sixteen when Dad and Robbie had their falling out and he disappeared. But before that, I remember really liking him. Mom always talked about him fondly but only when Dad wasn’t around. Unfortunately, the cold truth of it was that I didn’t know him well enough anymore. He seemed honest and sincere, but I couldn’t put all my faith in a child’s foggy recollections. I had to do a little more digging. If it was just for me, then maybe I wouldn’t be so cautious, but this was for Anna.
“Did my mom give you a passcode or a key for her safety deposit box? Anything you could either tell me or overnight to me, maybe?”
Robbie thought for a moment.
“No, I don’t think so…. I’m sorry. Nothing I can remember. Mandy… your mom… she was a lifetime ago,” he corrected himself. The
re were subtle hints of mourning in his voice.
I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy. Life had a way of overcomplicating things. But how much did he know about Mom’s disappearance?
“I’ll need to come with you to California then,” I said, mustering up all my resolve.
“Abso-fucking-lutely not!” Robbie was so taken by surprise at the request that he nearly yelled out the reply. “No! That’s not possible!”
“Robbie, if something happens to you on the way, I’ll never get that box. The box could be nothing, but if there’s even a chance that something in there helps me get my sister away from Dad and the Steel Veins, I have to try.”
If I spent enough time with him, maybe I could help jog his memory for that pin number. I was always good at problem-solving and quick thinking. It was a long shot, but I didn’t have any other options.
“Maya, listen to me. You can’t come with me,” he said with absolute finality. “Something goes bad on the road... I can’t protect you. I promised your mom that I’d do whatever I could to keep you safe. For the longest time that meant staying away from you and Anna. Now it means stopping you from coming with us. Take a plane, and I’ll be there soon. I promise.”
“Okay,” I relented. I hated the idea of taking the word of a long-lost relative on something as important as this, but what else could I do? Besides, if the us he was referring to was who I thought they were, I was experienced enough to know how dangerous tagging along would be.
“Mai Tai?” Robbie asked with unexpected tenderness.
“Yeah, Uncle Robbie?” I responded, feeling like garbage that I didn’t have more control over the situation.
“It was real good to hear your voice, angel. Don’t worry. I’ll see you soon.” Then he hung up.
I dropped the phone on the couch and ran my hands over my face, feeling a little defeated at how the whole conversation went. I wanted so much more from that call.
When I finally looked up, I noticed the trace I’d been running on the phone call through my laptop to triangulate his location had finished and was blinking. It looked like Uncle Robbie was in Topeka, Kansas, these days. Given Robbie’s military background, criminal record, and the fact that he’d been off the grid for….
Jesus! While not being declared legally dead, Robbie Merritt had disappeared about ten years ago. How had he been flying under the radar for so long? That meant cash jobs and off-the-books deals. After some more searching, I landed on the one thing that seemed to make sense, especially if he was handling vague big things that were coming up.
Robbie had to be a member of the Coffin Eaters motorcycle club.
I’d spent my whole life on the periphery of the Steel Veins; it’s what made me work hard to become a lawyer. After Mom disappeared, my eyes were truly opened to the horrible things my father was doing in the name of the club. Despite only being a lowly fledging in the hierarchy of attorneys at the moment, I had picked up a lot of useful skills when dealing with outlaws and criminals.
I browsed through town documents and police records, but I couldn’t find much on Robbie specifically. He must have been fairly careful, but the club as a whole…
The Coffin Eaters had suffered multiple attacks from rival gangs in the last few years. Several members had disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and the town itself had filed a lawsuit against the club for public endangerment. After looking into their history—what little I could find outside news of arrests and deaths—it looked like they were pretty much a small-time club. They were nothing like the Steel Veins or even Los Lobos, and the C.E. didn’t have any other chapters.
With all that trouble surrounding them and their club on the verge of collapse, they were going all the way up to California for side work? Now? It had to be a big job, which meant that whatever it was, it had to be extremely illegal.
I just sat there, thinking and staring at the blinking cursor in the navigation bar. It mocked me with its impatience. Meanwhile, my laptop was softly humming, awaiting commands.
Online, I was a digital lioness in data crunching. I could find and tear through countless research and backlogs with ease. Though outside in the real world, what was I? I’d done my best to pull Anna away from our father once and failed miserably. The realization that I just wasn’t strong enough or smart enough made my hands tremble slightly. I was just another scared girl caught in the silky yet sticky MC web, like a fly waiting to be devoured.
Now my sister’s only salvation was completely out of my hands. It hinged upon a man who probably never even met her in person. Never saw the naïve hope that twinkled in Anna’s beautifully innocent, brown eyes.
I covered my eyes to hide myself from my living room window and the shame it reflected back at me from not being able to help Anna more. I could no longer see the glowing laptop screen, the portal that held boundless possibilities, but I could still feel the crushing weight of that defeat all the same. Twisting me from the inside out. At any moment, I would snap and burn away like kindling in a fire.
My phone lit up and vibrated with a text message. I heard it but was too lost to move. Then it vibrated and lit up again. Then again. Then it rang. It was Anna.
“Hello? Anna?” I asked, trying to keep the worry from entering the sound of my voice.
“Hi. Can I come over?” she asked through stifled breathing.
I could immediately tell that she’d been crying. That kindling inside me began to catch, but it turned out to be anger, not shame, that was the flame.
“Yeah, of course.” I cleared my head and focused on the logistics of picking her up.
“Can you pick me up now?” Her urgency stoked that budding flame within me. I could only imagine what had happened to her this time.
“I’m on my way.” I sprang up from my stupor and grabbed my wallet and keys. “Is everything okay? What’s going on?”
“Dad’s really drunk, and he…. I didn’t get out of the way quick enough. It really was my fault.”
“Fucking Christ!” I snarled. That flame in me became a fire. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. It’s just a few little cuts from his rings.” Her voice sounded strained, and I could hear her biting back more tears. “I’m sorry. I know you’re probably busy—”
That bastard backhanded her!
“Anna, I’m leaving now. Give me five minutes. Get your stuff and wait for me outside. This wasn’t your fault. Listen to me. It wasn’t your fault!”
“Thank you, Maya.”
“Always.” I hung up and raced to my car. I could feel all my self-pity melting away. Anger had a way of laying things bare.
This was serious. I was going to have to take drastic measures now that Anna’s safety was at risk. I couldn’t bring her to my apartment. She might be safe tonight, but tomorrow he’d demand that she come back home after school so he could give her an empty apology and probably some money for reparations. That’s how he operated. He did whatever he wanted to whomever and bought off the repercussions.
And then what would stop him from doing it again?
Bruce, you fucking bastard!
How many more phone calls like this did Anna have in her? One day, it would be a police officer that called me, apologizing and asking me to come identify a body, a murder they would never pin on our father. Or worse, there would be no call at all.
She would just be gone.
The chilling thought shook me to the core. Putting my cowardice aside, I knew what needed to be done. I had to take Anna to the one place I knew she would be all right. With Dad so connected with the police here, traditional safe houses were out of the question. He’d just show up and pull her out of there. I needed to take her to an organization I knew that took in abused women and children outside the purview of the law. These places weren’t strictly legal. They were more like underground railroads to keep victims away from their abusers when the system had failed them.
Anna wasn’t going to like it, but at least she’d be
safe. Hopefully she wouldn’t have to stay there for long. If there was any incriminating evidence in that safe-deposit box, then I could use that to legally remove her from our father’s custody. Until then…
I guess I’d have to get used to operating outside the law.
I no longer cared what my Uncle Robbie said about staying out of this. There was too much on the line. I needed to ensure that he made it to that safe-deposit box. He’d have to figure something out because come hell or high water, I was going with him to California.
My chest tightened a little. Growing up around the Steel Veins made me apprehensive of bikers in general, and the thought of spending almost a week with a motorcycle club scared the shit out of me, especially one that didn’t want me there in the first place. I guess I was used to that though.
I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I was caught with the Coffin Eaters by the police. I didn’t care that I was jeopardizing my career, my freedom, my life for a box that might only have some baby pictures and maybe some old love letters. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least try.
I couldn’t trust my sister’s fate to be in anyone’s hands but mine. After I dropped Anna off at the underground depot as directed by my contact, I would leave for Kansas and ride out with Robbie’s club somehow.
Chapter Three
Hendrix
I knew it was coming.
Toward the end, all you can do is count. The minutes. The seconds. The white-painted bricks that make up the six-by-eight cell walls. This was my second stretch in county. The longest by far.
The original case against us fell apart. It was some paperwork error mixed with the fact that the jury wasn’t a big fan of the cops’ piñata approach to bringing in perps. At least that’s what they told me a few days later when I woke up from the coma.
Everyone was released but me. It turned out that I didn’t fill out some paperwork on one of my guns and I had some drugs kicking around my room that I probably shouldn’t have.