“Forgetaboutitfucking,” she said, as if it were one word.
I looked up from my carb-rich cheesy Italian goodness. “Huh?”
“Forget about it fucking. It’s when you have sex to forget about whatever’s bothering you. It’s for no other reason than to take your mind off catastrophic shit. People do it when they get divorced, after a loved one dies, or if they’re in a really bad car wreck.”
I allowed her explanation to sink it, staring at her blankly the entire time. “You’re out of your mind. Who rushes out to have sex after being in a bad car wreck? Or on their way home from a funeral?”
“Pretty much everybody,” she said. “Think about it. You’re sitting at a stoplight and some high school kid is texting and driving, and she plows into the back of your car without so much as tapping her brakes. You crawl out the window and survey the car. It looks like someone kicked it out the back of a cargo plane from thirty thousand feet. After the tow truck driver hauls it away, the cop gives you a ride home. Still in a daze from the wreck, you look around and realize you’re going to be taking an Uber to work for the next month. Frustration sinks in. What’s the first thing you do?”
“Pour a glass of wine?”
“Nope.” She raised her phone. “You scroll through your phone and get ahold of that guy from college that used you for his booty call every time he was drunk. When he answers, he’s like, ‘hey, I was just thinking about you’ even though he hasn’t heard from you in five years. You invite him over, knowing it’s going to be nothing but sex. He comes over and within fifteen minutes he’s got you bent over the arm of the couch. The sex takes your mind off the car wreck.”
Mel was insane. Nevertheless, her explanation made sense.
Kind of.
I lifted my fork to my mouth. “When I have a car wreck, food is my crutch. I’m having sex with him because it’ll be fun.”
“As long as he doesn’t give you something.”
“I’m not going to ride him bareback, Mel. Jesus.”
“You can still get diseases.”
I liked to think of myself as an optimist. Mel claimed to be a realist, but typically pointed out the worst possible scenario she could fathom when it came to my life. When looking at herself in the mirror, however, she always seemed to do so through rose-colored glasses.
I rolled my eyes. “Why’d you ask what kind of bike he rode?”
“Because they’re totally different people. Harley riders are laid back, but they have terrible tempers. They’re like mixed-breed dogs. When they’re happy, everything’s good. But you never know what you’re going to get when they’re agitated. He could be a lap dog, or a vicious Pit Bull. You’ll never know until you poke him.”
“A mixed breed dog?” I lowered my fork and stared in disbelief. “According to who?”
“According to me. I’ve dated one before. He hated body hair, except on his face. His favorite food was hot dogs, no ketchup.”
“Wow,” I said jokingly. “He sounds like an unpredictable monster.”
“He was okay. He always smelled like peanut butter.”
“Why?”
“It was all he ate,” she said. “He loved the stuff.”
“I thought his favorite food was hot dogs?’
“It was. Peanut butter isn’t food. It’s a condiment.”
Mel had dated countless shitheads in her days. In fact, she seemed to gravitate toward them. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of one man that she dated who wasn’t a complete asshole. I couldn’t, however, remember anyone smelling like peanut butter.
“When was this?” I asked. “I don’t remember you dating a hairless biker.”
She gazed at the ceiling. “Maybe ten years ago.” She looked at me. “I was twenty-ish. He was a friend of the guy Teri was seeing.”
“Teri from El Cajon?”
“Yep.”
“An unpredictable man—when agitated—who smelled like peanut butter and wore a beard. He must not have been too bad, you’ve never mentioned him.”
She picked at her fingernails. “He was okay.”
“He was a Harley guy?” I asked. “Not a sport bike guy?”
“Yeah, he was a Harley guy.” She looked up. “I wouldn’t date a sport bike guy.”
“Why?”
“They’re thrill-seeking maniacs.”
“Which one’s better for a fling?”
“For a one-night-stand? The Harley guy. Definitely.”
I was intrigued. “Why?”
“Because he’ll fuck you like he’s trying to prove a point. In a sense, he will be. He’ll be trying to convince you to be a side piece.” She inspected her nails for a moment before looking at me. “Is he hot?”
“Yes.”
“Describe him.”
“He’s not easy to describe.”
She closed her eyes. “Do your best.”
“Dark hair. He cuts it short. It was kind of messed up when I saw him, but it didn’t look intentional—”
She opened her eyes. “Like he just got out of bed?”
“No,” I said. “Like he ran his fingers through it, and never looked in the mirror. Just kind of messed up.”
She closed her eyes. “Okay. Go ahead.”
“He’s got really sexy brown eyes, dark-colored skin, and he’s muscular. It’s hard to describe, but every time he moves, it seems like it’s choreographed. Each step, each hand placement, everything he does, it’s perfect. It’s amazing to watch. Like the rhythmic gymnasts in the Olympics.”
“Tattoos?” she asked.
“Of course.”
She opened her eyes. “Tall?”
“Compared to who?”
“Me,” she said.
Mel was tall for a girl. I was five-six, and she was at least two inches taller than me. I guessed Tito was five-ten, give or take.
“He’s taller than you.” I said. “But he’s not what I would describe as tall. He doesn’t need to be, though. He’s got an…I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like he’s got an attitude that surrounds him like a force field.”
“Oh. Wow.” She grinned. “He sounds awesome.”
“He’ll be awesome for what I need him for. After that, we’ll go our separate ways. I’m sure it’s what he wants, too. He’s not looking for a relationship. He didn’t seem the type.”
“That’s good,” she said. “Because your dad will kill you if you started dating a biker.”
I laughed out loud at the thought. I’m sure there were benefits to having a father who was a cop. In thirty years, however, I had yet to find out what they were.
210
Tito
The motorcycle club I belonged to was unconventional to say the least. In fact, the motorcycles were more of a common interest between the members than a necessity for membership. In short, we were a group of criminals. Fittingly, our club was comprised of six professional thieves, all of which had an area of expertise to offer the club.
Baker, the club president, planned the crimes we committed. He was meticulous, considered every angle, and rarely made a mistake.
Ally, the only woman in the club, was our getaway car driver. She could outdrive anyone—the police included—and never cracked under pressure.
She was in a relationship with Goose, who was the club’s weapons expert. He was as good of a sniper as any military-trained equal. Possessing the wisdom of a monk, he also acted as the club’s voice of reason.
Reno was the club’s explosives expert. His extensive special forces military training gave him two areas of expertise—tactics, and explosives.
Lastly, there was Cash. He was the six-foot-six thorn in the club’s side. Always the antagonist and rarely an asset, Cash was the club’s muscle.
The problem was that we rarely needed any muscle. We were all—Ally included—capable of taking care of ourselves. This absence of necessity for Cash’s offerings caused him to throw his weight around for no other reason than to justify his existence.
/>
I, like the other members, took him—and his excessively large attitude—with a grain of salt.
At least I tried to.
“I say we go in guns blazing and take what we’re after,” Cash said, glancing at each of us as he spoke. “Pistol whip the prick and take his load of coins out the front door. Ramona’s a fucking ghost town, anyway. I bet they’ve got one cop. If it’s lunch time, he’ll be at the local café eating pie and drinking coffee. We’ll be long gone before he gets off his fat ass.”
“That’s a great idea,” I said snidely. “Shoot the place up in broad daylight. Pistol whip the gold trader. He’s probably sixty years old. Ideas like that are the reason you’re not in charge.”
He flipped his hair out of his eyes and glared at me. “You’re not in charge because you’re too fucking short to be taken seriously, midget. Nobody’s going to argue with gunfire. It’s an effective tool. It makes old coin collectors pay attention to our demands.”
“If you think going in there in broad daylight waving guns around isn’t an unnecessary risk, maybe you need some sense beat into you,” I said, looking him up and down. “I think I’m tall enough to do just that.”
“Stop fucking arguing,” Baker snarled. “Tito’s right, Cash. It’s an unnecessary risk.”
The job in question was presented to the club by Ally, who’d learned of it while eating with Goose at a rural restaurant. The local newspaper mentioned a gold broker who was taking bids on a coin collection that was worth in excess of five million dollars.
According to the article, the offering was a small portion of his entire collection, which, as a whole, was priceless. The complete collection was to be on display at his place of business in five weeks. It was the first public viewing of the entire collection. Soon thereafter, he was accepting bids for portions of it in pre-selected lots of coins that had been separated by demonization and variety.
The job was in Ramona, a town of 20,000 residents. Downtown Ramona hadn’t changed much in the past sixty or seventy years. Pulling off the job at the right time should be an easy task, considering some of the complex jobs we’d done in the past.
Pulling it off at the wrong time would be nothing short of a disaster.
“Tito, do you want to research his place of business and see what we’re going to have to do to get around his security system?” Baker asked.
I nodded. “Sure.”
Baker glanced at Reno. “Take a look at Ramona in general, and see if there’s something we can do to create a diversion, if need be. Might not be a bad idea to get that small police force at one end of the city while we’re at the other. The outskirts of town run all the way to the mountains, so we may even be able to get the police out to one of those rural ranches while we’re doing this deal.”
“Got it, Boss,” Reno replied. “I’ll head up there today and nose around.”
“This deal couldn’t come at a better time,” Cash said. “I’m needing some money to finish the remodel on my house.”
Ally gave Cash a look of disbelief. She shook her head slowly. “How can you spend so much money? You get the same amount as the rest of us, and you’re always broke. It amazes me.”
“What I do with my money isn’t any of your business,” Cash snapped. He looked Ally up and down. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about you.”
“You’ll never be a worry of mine,” Ally responded with a dismissive laugh. “I was just curious. You defy all logic.”
Ally was correct. Cash defied logic, especially when it came to finances. Despite the millions he’d been paid, he was always broke. Feeling defeated for the moment, Cash waved the back of his hand in Ally’s direction and turned away.
The members of the club were all different when it came to the income they received from our jobs. Reno gambled it away. Baker, on the other hand, gave most of his to the less fortunate. Goose and Ally were both frugal with their earnings, retaining most of it for their later years in life.
I’d invested most of the money earned throughout my criminal career. My modest way of living required no financial support beyond the wages I earned at my legitimate job.
Unlike most of the men, the lure of financial reward wasn’t what drove me to be a criminal. Each job had its own challenges. Determining the specific obstacles, conquering them, and then emerging the victor was my incentive. The more complex the job, the higher my desire to succeed. Succeeding was my reward. Receiving payment for my knowledge and participation was a bonus.
Easy jobs no longer interested me. They weren’t worth the risk associated with attempting to pull them off. Luckily, there hadn’t been a simple job in over a decade. If one presented itself, I feared I’d refuse to participate in the operation. If that day came, the backlash from the club would be endless.
Anxiously, I waited for the meeting to adjourn. Short of Cash and his unpredictable behavior, the club operated like a well-oiled machine. Rehearsing every detail once a week wasn’t necessary.
Baker’s voice faded and then diminished to nearly nothing.
“Tito!” Baker barked.
I looked up.
“You alright, Brother?” he asked.
“I’m good.”
He nodded toward the arm of the chair where I was seated. “Something’s bothering you.”
Naturally, I glanced in that direction. Flakes of varnish littered the floor beneath my hand. The chair’s ornate wooden arm had been picked of its finish, leaving a strip of discolored wood as proof.
I brushed the palm of my hand across the surface as if I had expectation of erasing the damage.
“You’ve been a little off lately,” he said. “You sure everything’s okay?”
I wiped my hands against the thighs of my jeans and met his gaze with a reassuring look. “Just upset about the hat, I suppose.”
“There’s not more to it than that?” he asked.
“Nope.”
He stroked his beard. “You sure?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Really.”
“We can’t do this without you, Brother,” he said. “Hell, we can’t do anything without you. I need you on your game. I know that hat was part of your daily routine, but it was a hat. Five years ago, you were getting along fine without it.”
“Ten.”
His face washed with confusion. “Ten what?”
“Ten years. That’s how long I had it.”
“Okay, ten.” He stood from his seat. “Even if it was twenty. It’s an article of clothing. Pull it together, Brother.”
I wished it was that easy.
211
Reggie
A degree in theatre. When I was eighteen, it seemed like the thing to do. Following college, I learned that half the women living in Southern California had a degree in theatre and that nearly all of them were employed outside of their area of expertise.
I had a difficult decision in front of me. Stripping, working at Starbucks, or managing a shopping mall clothing store were my post-college employment options.
Although grinding my twat on a bacteria-laden brass pole while Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me blared in the background was enticing, the clothing store was the winner in the end. Afterall, it was close to the mini Asian buffet in the food court and my coworkers were mostly gay men.
I tidied an out-of-place tee shirt and looked at Raymond. “How was it?”
“Last night?” He rolled his eyes. “Disastrous.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s too needy. Needy people make me want to help them. I hate being caught in that trap.”
“What trap?”
He forced a dramatic sigh. “I can’t say no to needy people, especially if they’re pretty. You know the way a tiger senses the weakest animal in the jungle?”
“Yeah.”
“Needy people can sense my inability to resist from a mile away. They flock to me like seagulls to a sandwich. Then, it’s ‘Raymond, give me this. Raymond, help me with that. Raymond, I ne
ed a manicure. Raymond, my car needs a new Schlond Poofa.’”
“What’s a Schlond Poofa?”
He looked at me like he’d caught me masturbating in the dressing room. “You don’t watch Life in the Dreamhouse?”
My shoulders slumped in false regret. “No, I don’t.”
“A schlond poofa is the part that breaks on Barbie’s car. It started in the second episode of season one.” He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Oh. Yeah, I don’t partake in Barbie.”
“You can watch them on Netflix. They’re hilarious.”
I tried to force a smile but managed to produce what I suspected came across as a shitty little grin. “I’m sure they are.”
Sensing my lack of interest, he straightened the shirt I’d adjusted moments before. “My point is this: I can’t do needy.”
“Well, that sucks,” I said, glancing at the shirt. “I’m sure he’s out there somewhere. You’ll just have to keep looking.”
“What about the guy who asked you out?”
“He doesn’t seem like the needy type,” I replied. “I should be fine.”
“I was asking how that’s coming along. Trying to be polite.” He looked me up and down. “You should try it.”
“I have. It tends to attract the needy,” I said with a laugh.
He cocked his hip. “Touché.”
“I haven’t heard from him since that day,” I admitted. “I guess we’re still on.”
“It’s Thursday. You should send him a text. Just ask what you should wear.”
“I might do that.”
He arched one of his perfectly sculped eyebrows. “Might?”
“I don’t want to scare him off.”
“Guys love women who are assertive.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.” He dragged his eyes up and down my frame. “You’re assertive. Act like it.”
I gave him a look.
“Where’s your phone?” he asked.
Devil's Disciples MC Series- The Complete Boxed Set Page 110