“Okay, so now tell me.”
“It was a bit of a family business, Malone. As you know.”
“Hmm,” she says. “Did you ever want to be anything else?”
“Well, I did go to fucking university.”
“I forgot,” she says, taking a long draw on the straw. Then she blows into the drink and makes bubbles with the milk. “What did you study?”
“Criminology,” I say.
“No shit?”
“Of course, shit,” I say, laughing. “I was a psych major.”
“No shit?”
“This conversation is starting to get a bit one-sided, Malone.” I move the stir stick around in my drink, mixing the Jack Daniel’s with the melting ice. “What about you? Did you always want to be a cop?”
“No,” she says.
“Then what did you want to be?”
“A Spice Girl.” She makes a mountain of frothy bubbles with her straw; they reach up and one pops on her smiling lips.
We give last call a pass, and the harelipped bartender shows us out the door. There’s no one left in the bar, and he wants to close down for the night. I intercepted Malone’s drinking at a certain point and switched her to coffee. She’s still feeling it, but not like she would have if she’d ordered that fourth Paralyzer she’d wanted. When she gets outside, she breathes in the cold spring air nice and deep, like she’s never tasted anything so fresh before. She doesn’t want to drive, and I don’t have a valid licence, so we stand on the deserted street and pray for cabs. It’s dark and empty, the type of situation where most women have the sense to be nervous. But then again, we’re not most women.
“You know, Malone,” I say. “About these Daybreak Boys …”
“What about them?”
“I’m thinking maybe you should back off.”
She leans against a lamppost and closes her eyes. “Funny, that’s what Selena said. Told me I should let vice handle it.”
“That’s advice you should fucking take, Malone,” I say. “These guys play for keeps.”
“I think the foot in the morgue kind of tipped me off to that,” she says.
“The guy who heads them up. Pauly Strachan. He’s a serious psychopath. They call him The Cubist.”
“Why?”
“Because when he’s finished with you, you’ll look like a painting by Picasso. Seriously, Malone. You don’t know these guys.”
“But you do,” she says. It is a statement, not a question. She opens her eyes. “I know your father used to work for them, Candace. I wouldn’t have taken you on and not read your file.” Just then her phone makes one of those notification noises that sound like an angel getting their wings. Shit, if I knew she had her phone with her I would have told her to call a goddamn cab.
She pulls out the phone and squints at the screen. “It’s about your alibi,” she says, trying to read the text. Then her relaxed face changes. I think I know why.
“Danny Anderson?” she shouts. “Danny Anderson was your bloody alibi?” She holds the phone tightly in her fist.
“He invited me to trivia night,” I say. I’d done quite well, too. Not every girl can tell you that Dom Perignon was the Benedictine monk who invented champagne. But I can sense Malone is not aggravated by my superior knowledge of useless sparkling-wine facts.
She stares at me for a second and then throws up her hands and starts walking away. I follow her. It’s not safe for her walking alone in this neighbourhood. Not that I care, or anything, but I’d have a hard time explaining another person disappearing after they’d been around me.
“It wasn’t anything, Malone.”
She whips around to face me. “Did you sleep with him?”
“I’m not one to kiss and tell.”
“Quit the bullshit,” she says.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” she says. “Danny doesn’t know who you are. He can’t be consorting with a known criminal.”
“Why not?” I say. “You are.”
The truth is, I didn’t bang the guy. That ginger hair and hot bod were tempting, but he’s way too much of a candy striper for me. I mean, the man has a stamp collection. He said he’d show it to me when he invited me back to his apartment and I think he actually meant it. I could seriously hurt a boy like that.
“I just can’t believe you,” she says, her hands on her hips. “You know what, this whole thing is over.” She starts walking away again.
“What do you mean?” I haven’t invested this much time and energy not to come away with the goods.
“I’m done with this whole arrangement,” she says over her shoulder. “Fuck Tyler Brent. Fuck the Daybreak Boys. Fuck …” She doesn’t finish. I’m not sure if she was going to say ‘Fuck you’ or ‘Fuck Lachlan’s foot.’ In any case, she is seriously pissed. I need to throw her a bone. I catch up and grab her by the shoulder, which doesn’t do anything to improve her pissiness.
“I’ve got some information about Tyler and Lachlan,” I say. “And what they might have done that made them targets for the Daybreak Boys.”
That gets her attention. “I’m listening,” she says, still walking, but a little more slowly. My long legs have to take unnaturally short steps in order to match the pace.
I tell her about my meeting with Rory. About how the boys were already in trouble for playing stupid games, and then the money and the horse went missing. I leave the part about me threatening the turtle out. She listens. She listens real good.
“We’re going in there,” she says.
“What do you mean, we’re going in there?” I stop on the sidewalk, but Malone continues on. She does a little half-pirouette to face me, calling back words I don’t want to hear.
“We’re going to the Daybreak Boys’ clubhouse,” she says, then turns around again and keeps walking. A lonely cab comes around the corner. She raises an arm to hail it.
“That place is like a goddamn fortress, Malone. It’s reinforced with cement blocks a yard thick. About a dozen bikers with Uzis sit by the front door ready to mow down anyone without patches who comes over the welcome mat.” The cab stops at the curb. “Who the hell is going to get us in there?”
Malone opens the door of the cab. “You are,” she says before climbing inside. “Wait for my call tomorrow.” She closes the taxi’s door and taps the driver on the shoulder. The cab takes off around another corner, leaving me alone on the street wishing I’d let Malone have that fourth Paralyzer.
CHAPTER 19
“THIS IS SO RACIST,” MALONE SAYS.
“You got to play the part.” I’m using black liner to emphasize the shape of her eyes. I’ve put her in a tight black The World of Suzie Wong dress with distracting cleavage. You can see the red lacy bra poking through.
“Like everyone who’s Asian belongs to the triads,” she says.
“It’s the only way those white supremacist bastards will let you through the door.”
I’ve set up a meeting with the Daybreak Boys. Told them I have a “Straw Slipper” from the Red Dragons from out east in town who’s interested in finding a distribution cell for Hong Kong heroin. The triads have names and numbers attached to every level of their organization. Straw Slippers act as liaisons and have the number 432. White Paper Fans are administrators. Their number is 415. If I worked for them I’d be a Red Pole and 426. The numbers are supposed to be lucky. I hope some of that numbered luck rubs off on Malone and me.
“It just irks me,” she says.
“Immigrants get a bad rap,” I tell her, drawing the black lines up into the outside corners of her eyes. It would annoy me, too. Particularly since new immigrants are about as likely to commit a crime as hack off their own genitals. I learned that in school, but I’ve also observed it. Freshly minted U.S. citizens are too damn happy about being here to do anything to jeopardize it. It’s the people already in the country who feel entitled enough to break the rules.
“I was born here,” she says, trying to pull down the high sl
its on either side of the black wrap dress sprinkled with silver dragons. We finally found one in Macy’s after a search through Chinatown came up empty.
“To people like the Daybreak Boys, you’ll always be a foreigner trespassing in their country.”
“Are they really that bad?”
“Tuning in to ten minutes of Fresh off the Boat by accident when they’re looking for Dexter is about as left wing as they get.”
“Wow.”
I step back to inspect my handiwork. She looks damn good, even as a stereotype. “We don’t have to do this, Malone,” I tell her.
“Yes,” she says, blinking her eyes now that I’m done with the liner. “We do.”
“What about Jessica Mendler’s dad? You said you still weren’t convinced he didn’t take out the little shit.”
“We don’t refer to murder victims as little shits, Candace. Every life is valuable.” She smacks her lips together to distribute the red lip gloss she’s applied. “Besides, the dad’s out. I talked to the strippers. I talked to the bartenders. He was at the Doll’s House all that Saturday night and into Sunday morning. That place is open twenty-four-seven, can you believe it?” Malone doesn’t seem to realize that the appetite for women bent over naked doesn’t know how to tell time. “And when he was let out for that domestic on Thursday, Lachlan was probably already at the bottom of the lake. Between the evidence and my gut, I’m thinking he’s not our man.”
She walks over to the mirror, checks her face, adds a little powder. Maybe she’s thinking a lighter skin tone will make her more appealing to guys with swastikas on their helmets. I look out the floor-to-ceiling window of her apartment. The twentieth-storey apartment looks out on the east side of the city and the lake. I don’t think her cop salary pays for this. There must be some family money backing her up. There’s a soft grey sectional couch in the middle of the room, with muted charcoal-and-white accent pillows. It would be a nice place to watch the sunrise. But right now the sun is on the other side of the building.
“What do you think you’re going to learn there?” I say. “You can’t wear a wire. They’ll be on to that in a second.” I can’t believe I’m helping Malone with this. But she said if I didn’t she’d try going undercover alone, which would definitely stir the shit up and probably get her killed. She doesn’t know the landscape. I’d be left to Saunders and his tough-guy interrogations about Tyler Brent’s death and I’d never find out what bastard took my dad’s watch after slitting his throat.
“If I can find out which members were involved with Tyler and Lachlan, I can use it to get warrants later to search the clubhouse or their homes for something incriminating.”
“I told you, they don’t do their own hits. If you toss their homes, you’ll just find their old ladies and a bunch of bike tools in the garage.” The Daybreak Boys know better than to soil their own nests. You wouldn’t be able to tell an MC member’s house from an average midlevel businessman’s. Which, after all, is what they are. They say half the time their wives don’t even know what they’re up to. Although I think that’s a crock of shit. Where do they think the money comes from, selling fucking Girl Scout cookies?
“We always find something,” says Malone.
“If you ask too many questions, they’re going to waste us right there in the clubhouse,” I say.
“I’m not stupid, Candace.” I figure she’s right about that. But I’m risking a lot here. Of course, if things go south, I can lie and say that I didn’t know that Malone was a cop. That I was taken in as well. Maybe even get Danny Anderson to arrest me to make it look good. I’m not patched, of course, being a woman. But I’m an Official Friend, which should buy me some protection and trust. Bikers have their own terminology for roles within the club: Full Member, Prospect, Hangaround. They don’t assign numbers like the triads, though. But Official Friend or not, there’ll be nothing I can do to save Malone’s ass if they figure her out. Her foot will never wash up on any beach. They’ll sink her cubed-and-bagged body in the deepest part of the lake.
“I don’t like this,” I say. “I just want to go on the record as saying that.”
“So noted,” she says, putting on a pair of black stilettos. I hope she’s as good at wielding those as the cheated-on wife in the newspaper. She’s not taking her gun. There’s nowhere to hide it in that tight dress. “What time is it?” she says.
“Eight o’clock.” We’re meeting them at nine. I check my own reflection in the mirror. There’s a tiny black hair between my brows that I missed when I was tweezing. Malone’s mirror must be better than mine.
“Okay then,” Malone says, putting on her London Fog and taking a deep breath. Her eyes pop with all the liner and mascara. She looks like one of the girls down at the Happy Ending Massage Parlour, except her right bicep isn’t overdeveloped from hundreds of hand jobs and no one is holding her passport.
She turns off the lights, and we walk out the door and down the hallway to the elevator. The gun in my pants rubs against my last pair of starched underwear.
“You ever do an undercover op before, Malone?” I ask as we step inside the elevator.
“Nope,” she says, pushing the button for the ground floor.
As the doors close, I wonder if they will open again on another dimension. I also wonder if Malone will ever get to watch another sunrise. Hell, I wonder if I will.
If the sun were rising, we wouldn’t know. The Daybreak Boys’ clubhouse used to be a tavern, but now all the windows are bricked up or covered with steel plates. We’re in the foyer, getting frisked. There’s a moose head on the wall opposite, and I briefly wonder if the rest of the moose is on the other side.
A fully patched member goes over Malone, lingering on the hot spots, as you can imagine. They assign a prospect to me. No one wanting to be the one to do the job. Malone is escorted by the others into the main room, and I’m left alone with a pasty kid with a barbed, tangerine-tipped mohawk. His Fu Manchu mustache hangs off his face like two furry saddlebags strapped around the chin. Despite the badass grooming, his cut-off leather jacket looks shiny and new. He really should roll it in the dirt a bit to make it look more like the rest.
I can’t see a visible gang tat on him. They probably won’t let him get one until he’s fully patched. MCs will rip the skin right off you if you try to put one on before you’ve earned it. Tyler and Lachlan must have thought they could get around this by hiding their ink under their pant legs, making sure the wolf was encircled with only four arms instead of the official five. But the truth is, if the Daybreak Boys had found out, they would have taken a blow torch to their calves just the same.
The prospect rubs his hands together and then starts walking toward me. I don’t move from where I’m standing under the watchful glass eyes of the moose.
“Touch me and I’ll cut your nuts off.”
He stops a few feet away. The orange spikes of his mohawk gleam under the overhead light, so sharp they could probably cut glass. I wonder how he fits that ’do under a motorcycle helmet. Looking over his shoulder, he sees that all his buddies are gone. When he turns and looks back at me, I lift one side of my lip and give him my best snarl. After a moment of consideration, he and his punk haircut do an about-face, leaving the foyer to join the others. I follow, just close enough behind to let him know his nuts are still not out of danger.
A fully stocked bar runs the length of wall where I go to stand beside Malone. I saw it as soon as I walked in, being the type to notice such things. Then again, I’ve been here before, with my father, when I was much younger. There’s a full casino in the basement. I’m not sure who gets roughed up if someone doesn’t make good on their markers, since the house and the members inside are one and the same. A large chalkboard is set up on an easel in one corner; the bikers use it to communicate if they think they might be bugged. The walls have posters of Harley Davidsons and naked women, mostly in some form of bondage. The girls, not the bikes. A carved wooden plaque bolted to the wall reads NO
RATS, NO FAT CHICKS, NO GUNS in black embossed letters.
“So, Candace, long time no see,” says Pauly Strachan, sprawled on a leather sofa with deeply riveted brass studs. The rest of his crew are similarly reclined in armchairs and other couches, except for the soldiers standing guard at the exits. All of them are dressed the biker part in their motor-oil-stained jeans and black jackets. The Daybreak Boys don’t have the class of the more well-known MC that controls them, with their three-piece suits and well-managed hedge funds. They’re just a bunch of nasty street thugs who like hitting people and who saw The Wild One too many goddamn times.
“Well, you know I was on the inside for a while,” I say. Heads on thick necks nod around the room. Doing time is a mark of prestige to be acknowledged.
Pauly sits alone on the leather sofa, either a testament to his rank or how much he stinks. His long, greasy black hair is held back with a faded gold bandana. He wears two wide copper bracelets on each wrist and a tight T-shirt with the stars and stripes across the chest. Give him a pair of thigh-high black boots and he’d look like an incredibly ugly Wonder Woman. The black wolf head etched on his right bicep has all five disembodied arms surrounding it. Each inked hand sports a tattoo of its own, a small dagger. This symbolizes how many people he’s killed, and I think the number might be understated, despite his orders from head office to farm the murders out. This is, after all, the guy they call The Cubist. Not many people who mess with him are left alive in much more than an abstract way.
“I heard about that,” he says. He pulls a fat cigar out of his pocket. A lackey jumps up and cuts it for him before he lights up. Jesus, hasn’t anyone heard of nicotine gum or the goddamn patch? “Also heard your dad went for a swim while you were in the pen. That’s a shame. He was a good friend to the club.”
Once the orders came from the larger syndicate that runs this puppet gang that they should distance themselves from hits, my father did a fair bit of work for these goons. Those higher up in the food chain were sick of the vicious shits getting caught for their crimes and then selling their souls and their superiors’ identities in order to get murder reduced to manslaughter. I remember one Daybreak Boy walked up in broad daylight and took out a prosecutor waiting in line for a hot dog at the beach with his kids. By turning in one of the big boys, he got off with homicide by misadventure. As if he accidentally lifted his thirty-eight and shot the man between the eyes, blowing brain matter onto the ice cream of his two daughters like red and white sprinkles. My dad would never take a target out in front of his children. He also would never get caught. A combination that well suited a group that didn’t need the liability of amateurs or the outrage of the public. It was bad for PR.
The Starr Sting Scale Page 18