PART TWO
Chapter One
Dax
I woke up the day after the party with the biggest fucking headache I ever had in my life. I swear to God it felt like it was going to explode. As I lay there in bed trying to come out of my coma, bits and pieces of the night before started coming back to me. I drank a lot of beer. Way too much…It was just too damn readily available in that bar. Now I at least understood why my dad was drunk half my life.
After I drank all of that beer I think I got overly confident. I remember going into my dad’s office and looking through his e-mails. He would have fucking killed me if he had caught me. He almost did. I’m sorry I did it though. I did remember finding one e-mail from Terrance.
I reached into my foggy head for the memory.
The e-mail was written the day before I got busted and it said something about everything being all set. I suddenly remembered something else, it didn’t really penetrate last night but I think the subject of that e-mail said Dax.
Damn.
I wish I had time to print it off. I doubt I would get lucky enough to walk in and find the computer unlocked again when my dad wasn’t around to kill me.
That e-mail had to be the key to all of this. They had to be planning the set-up, otherwise, why would my father and Terrance be using e-mail to talk about me? They saw each other every day. If they wanted to talk about me, why not just talk? I wasn’t around a lot back then anyways, with school and everything else. I knew the old man was always paranoid about the club being bugged. That should have told anyone who didn’t think he was doing any back room illegal business with the club that he was as guilty as hell. Innocent men don’t sit around worrying about whether or not someone is going to bug their office. Hell, they could have bugged my cell at Pelican Bay and I wouldn’t have given a damn.
The Smoke Joint is your run of the mill bar anyways, why would anyone want to bug it and why would he care?
I knew that whatever they were talking about had to be something they didn’t want to come back on them later and that was why they were using the short, blunt e-mails.
I also knew that this shit wasn’t doing anything for my pounding head. I needed to get in the shower, that would help…I hoped. As I slowly dragged my ass out of the bed I had another vague memory from last night. This one was of kissing Olivia. At first I thought it was just one of many memories of her that I kept stored in my head. But this one was different. I remembered putting on the mix tape and asking a broom to dance.
Shit! No, that’s not right.
Damn, I really had to stop drinking so much. I asked Olivia to dance while she was holding a broom. She was trying to clean up because she had told my mom she would help. I wouldn’t take no for an answer so finally we danced and she giggled like she was having fun at first—I thought.
But then I messed up.
I got caught up in the moment. I was too drunk to be that close to her. I lost my inhibitions and I kissed her. I had missed those lips for three long years. She kissed me back too. I knew that was a real memory.
She got all weird and started saying, “Oh, Dax, what about Terrance? We shouldn’t be doing this.” What about Terrance, really? The guy who acted like he was my best friend but just couldn’t wait to swoop in and steal my girl the second that I got locked up, that’s who Terrance was. The guy who communicated with the president of the Smokin’ Jokers via e-mail about setting me up, that was Terrance. Her poor innocent boyfriend. I had to wonder if the first time they kissed she said, “What about Dax?”
I growled loudly and grabbed my head. Thankfully my mom didn’t hear me or she might have come racing in with the first aid kit. I really needed to find something to do besides hang out at that bar all day every day.
I pushed up off the bed that I had slept in since I was sixteen. My mom redecorated the whole house that year and my room was included in the makeover. I got a California king-size bed and when I went to college, it was the only thing I missed about home besides my mom. When I was in prison, I missed a lot of other things too, but sleeping on a cement block with a two inch vinyl mattress underneath me wasn’t even in the same realm as my California king.
I made my way into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I stood there while the water heated up and looked at myself in the mirror. It was sad that while I was in prison, I actually looked healthier than I did now. I looked like shit. I had bags under my eyes and a three-day growth of beard on my face. I sighed and stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower.
I stood underneath the spray enjoying the way it felt against my tired muscles. Why they were tired, I had no idea. I hadn’t even worked out since I got out. I was going to have to start hitting the weights or my muscles were going to do a quick transformation into flab. The lack of a work-out could be the source of the sore muscles. If I got all flabby, then Olivia would never want me back.
Shit.
Why did I even still want her back? She dumped me even after I told her I was innocent. She didn’t visit me in over two years inside and she was screwing my best friend. I still saw her the way she was back before all of this happened. She was sweet and loyal. She wouldn’t have even looked at another guy much less slept with one.
But she was with Terrance now and I was just going to keep beating up my own emotions if I didn’t get that through my head. She had made her choice.
I say that like she did something wrong by choosing not to stand by me. But then I have to tell myself that there’s no real proof that I didn’t do it. I was arrested and I was convicted so didn’t that really make her morals admirable for not wanting to be with a guy like me? Her father was a dealer and that messed with her head a lot. I really shouldn’t have blamed her so much for not wanting to be with me when she had every reason to believe I was doing the same thing. Dealers and addicts lie. If I was dealing, I doubt I would have readily admitted it.
I leaned my head into the cold tile of the shower and just let it rest there for a minute. I reached up and grabbed the plastic bottle of shampoo and squeezed some directly onto my head. It felt good to massage the shampoo in, it at least cut down on the throbbing a little.
I was having a hard time deciding how much of this pain in my head was hangover and how much was the rest of this crap I had running through my head. I didn’t want to go through the rest of my life with everyone believing that I was guilty of this crime. It was going to be bad enough to have to explain myself every time I applied for a job, to never be able to get a federal grant for school, or if I was ever in the position to do any real traveling, getting a passport was going to be a bitch. That was all bad enough but when I thought about Olivia thinking that I did this, spending the rest of her life thinking that I was a drug smuggling loser, that was the worst. I needed to find a way to prove that I hadn’t done it. I needed people to know, not just Olivia but everyone, that I wasn’t that kind of scum bag.
I finally got out of the shower, feeling slightly more alive. I toweled off and then shook three ibuprofens into my hand. I sucked those down and dressed in a white T-shirt, jeans and my riding boots and headed for the door. The gods of fate hate me and to prove it my mother walked in just as I was walking out. I wished just once I had something good to tell her.
“Hey, I just ran out to get some milk. I was going to make you some waffles.”
“Oh wow, sorry, Mom. I’m not really hungry this morning, but thanks. I think I’m still full from all of that good food you and Cookie made for the party last night.”
“Or you have a hangover?” she asked with a pursed-lip look she usually got when she was disappointed in me.
“Yeah, maybe,” I admitted. It was easier. She already knew everything anyways.
She gave me a stern look and said, “Okay, where are you headed so early on a Sunday morning?” I guess she figured at this point it wasn’t worth rehashing.
“I was going to meet up with some of the guys at the club. Bobby Knowles is coming by and I haven’t seen him in years.” I was lying through my teeth, but my mom was an expert at being lied to. She knew she was being lied to, but most of the time she just didn’t give a damn. What a fucked up family we were.
“Okay, honey. Don’t drink so much today. You don’t want to get as tipsy as you did last night and be riding your bike.”
I had no idea how she became the old lady of the president of an MC saying things like tipsy. It was hard for me to understand what my mom saw in my dad since she was a complete opposite. Even back then, he couldn’t have been that much different. They say there are women that just go for the bad boys.
I knew I would probably be sorry, but I asked anyways, “Hey, Mom, what was Dad like when you met him?”
She looked at me strangely as if I had never asked her anything about them when they were young before.
“Follow me in the kitchen. I need to put this milk away.”
I followed her. I didn’t really have anywhere else to be. She put the milk in the refrigerator and sat down at the table. She patted the table in front of the seat next to her and said, “Sit.”
I sat down and said, “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it. I was just curious.”
“I don’t mind talking about it. I actually miss the man your father used to be when we first fell in love. I just never thought you would be interested in hearing about it.”
I shrugged and said, “I just wonder sometimes how he got to be who and where he is. He’s never talked to me about it.”
“No, you’re right, he never would.” She smiled like she had gone far away, back to happier times. “He was handsome and every girl in town wanted him. I was a cheerleader the year I met him. It was 1981 and I was a sophomore in high school. My friends and I went to this hamburger place after the game one Friday night. There were a lot of motorcycles out front, which for us out in the middle of Nebraska was unusual. It only made us want to go inside that much more though. We were curious about why anyone would come here if they didn’t have to. We were all dying to get out. We went inside and the first person I saw was your dad. He had on a white T-shirt and jeans and black riding boots. His jacket was slung over the back of his chair. I couldn’t read what it said, but I did see something about a motorcycle club. He had tattoos and long hair and I had never seen anyone like him before. We ordered our burgers and fries and while I was sitting there, giggling with my friends, I kept seeing him look at me out of the corner of his eye. I got brave at one point and looked back and held his gaze. I think he owned me at that point, I got lost in his green eyes,” she said with a smile. “He came over to the table, strode right up like he owned the place. I loved his confidence and he introduced himself as Bull. That’s what we flirted over the rest of the night…me trying to guess his real name. I never did, but when I left to go home that night, he had my number.
“For the next two years whenever he was in town he would call me. My father wouldn’t let me see him because of what he looked like and who he ran with. I didn’t let that stop me though, I was a rebel. We went and did everything together. I explored my own town and found things and places that I never knew existed. He was always a perfect gentleman. We could talk about anything and everything. He was an enigma, completely opposite of everything that motorcycle club guys were supposed to be. I was young and in love. He showed up on my eighteenth birthday and he wanted to be my boyfriend. We dated for a while but he went to jail for a while and I believed him that he had done nothing wrong. When he got out I was twenty-seven. We got back together right away and the next thing I knew, we were in Vegas getting married.”
I laughed and said, “Do you ever wish it had been the opposite?”
She got that Mom look again and she put her hand on the side of my face and said, “No matter what kind of hard times he and I have had, your beautiful soul was created. I would do it over and over again, just to make sure I had you.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I was guessing by her story that when she looks at my dad now, all these years later, she still sees that part of him she fell in love with at eighteen.
However, I had to ask, “Why do you stay with him? Why put up with all the crap he puts you through? You deserve to be happy.”
“I usually refuse to answer that question. You’re not the first one to ever ask it you know. I stay because I love him. It’s as simple as that. I used to think I could save him, but he came from where he is now, he doesn’t know anything else. I stopped trying to save him when I realized that he didn’t want to know anything else. That’s when I decided to save the one I could…you.”
I smiled and said, “Thanks. I guess I should go, thanks for talking to me.”
“Any time. I’m here if you need to talk about anything else too, okay?”
“Okay,” I told her.
I got the feeling she was talking about the set-up and whether or not my father had a part in that. I had just heard her tell me that she stayed with him because she still loved him. I was going to try and leave her out of the middle of this one if I could.
“I’m gonna take off.”
“Okay, remember, not too many beers today.”
“I’ll take it really easy,” I told her with a grin.
I doubted I would be looking to get drunk again for a long time. I kissed her cheek and told her I loved her and stepped outside. The morning was crisp and cool and the air felt good on the bare skin of my arms. I let myself into the side door of the garage and opened the rolling door before getting on my bike. As the doors lifted, I looked around.
This one place had survived Mom’s grand house makeover. This was my dad’s domain if he ever chose to stay at home instead of at the bar. It still had the old mirrored bar signs on the walls that he and I collected at every bike show we went to when I was a kid. There were posters of half-naked to fully naked women in various positions on top of shiny Harleys. The calendar was full of them as well.
My dad and I didn’t do baseball, football or any of the things that other fathers and sons usually did together. We did bike shows though and we collected alcohol signs and semi-pornographic posters together. Every family had their own thing, I guess. For me it was just always about getting the old man’s attention. It wasn’t about the activity. It was the company I craved. It was the only thing we did together my entire life that was just me and him. The guys in the club were on their own during that time and he never deviated from that rule. I guess he did like me, at least a little bit. Then again, maybe he was smuggling drugs in those bar signs and I was only a pawn.
I pulled myself mentally out of my trip down memory lane and walked my bike out into the driveway. As I started to lower the garage door my eyes fell on the last big, lighted sign that my dad and I had ever found and bought together. It was about four years ago, right about the time that someone stole a whole lot of money from the club. He was livid over it, but he couldn’t say when it happened exactly because he just happened to need some cash and when he went to get it he realized that a bunch of it was gone. He had said at the time that the last time he had remembered getting into the safe was a week or two prior, but he was never able to pinpoint the exact date. For whatever reason, I suddenly remembered that before the bike show that day we had to stop by the Smoke Joint because he said he needed to get some cash. He had gotten the cash that day and two days later it was gone. It gave me an idea.
I hopped on my bike and started it up. The engine vibrated through me.
I’ve had people ask me before, “What does it feel like to ride?” I said things like, “cool” and “awesome,” but the truth be told, it was a completely indescribable feeling. It didn’t matter if I was riding two blocks to the 7-Eleven or cross country, it was exhilarating. People who didn’t ride always liked to say, “But it’s so dangerous!” I guess it is or it can be. I knew that me on my bike versus a car would spell big trouble for me and my bike. I did my best to keep myself out of people’s blind spots, that way if they’re not paying attention I didn’t end up squished like a bug on their windshield.
It made me laugh when I heard it compared to driving too. There was just no comparison. Stepping on the gas pedal can feel good, I guess in the right car, but rolling on the throttle of a bike is semi-orgasmic. The feeling of leaning into a turn while still keeping a bike that outweighs you by about a ton becomes merged with your soul after a while. There is little if any thought process involved in it. I was part of my bike when I rode it and I felt like we were united as one. The sight of a curve melding into a straight road caused me to automatically roll on the throttle and the feeling of cool wind against my face was like being propelled through space, and it’s all done naturally, like taking a walk.
I was also more aware of my surroundings on my bike because all of my senses were heightened. I really saw and smelled things that otherwise I would miss. I even tasted the air sometimes and I loved it. It was like going from an ordinary life to an extraordinary one just by climbing onto that seat and firing it up. Every time I took a ride, no matter how long or short, I was taking my life to a whole other level.
Thank God I was out of prison.
---
When I pulled up around the back of the bar I saw my dad’s bike. His was the only one there this morning. It was probably too early for the rest of the losers. He came out when he heard the bike and waited for me to cut the engine and climb off.
“Hey, kid, what’s up?”
“Not much,” I told him. “I just needed to get out of the house. It’s a really nice morning for a ride, cleared my head and got rid of my hangover.”
“Yeah,” he said with one of his deep laughs. “You were putting ’em away last night.”
“Yep, I paid for that shit this morning though. I felt like a truck drove over my head and I had to endure Mom telling me to not drink so much today since I got so tipsy last night.”
My dad laughed again and said, “Yeah, I’ve gotten that lecture a few times, that one and a whole shit-pot full of others. I got some pretty strong coffee brewing in there if you want a cup.”
“That sounds great,” I said honestly.
He followed me in and after I poured my cup of literal sludge we sat down at his regular table. He lit a smoke, which he loved to do out front when the place wasn’t open yet. It was his fuck you to California’s, “no smoking in public places” law. He had to have one of those for every law he didn’t like…which is most of them.
“Any luck on the job front?” he asked me.
I snorted. I didn’t really mean to but, he knew better than anyone that the odds of me getting any job, even the ones that involved me saying a lot of, “Would you like fries with that?” were slim.
“No, no luck,” was all I told him.
“I can give you a job here, above board after you finish your parole, but in the meantime your PO ain’t gonna be okay with you working here on the payroll.”
“I know,” I told him. “I already got the lecture from her.”
“Your parole officer’s a woman?” he said with a chuckle.
“Yeah, I didn’t pick her.” I was automatically on the defensive. Taking jabs at my manhood was one of his favorite past times.
He laughed harder and said, “Yeah, I know you didn’t pick her. They reserve the chick POs for the lightweights though, you know that, right?”
“I don’t think the fact that the Department of Corrections thinks I’m a lightweight should be an insult.” At least if you’re not the son of the MC’s president.
“No, of course not,” he said, actually trying to stifle his laugh. A guy like him really should have had a tough big ass kid who liked to fight more than he did read. Instead, he ended up with me. Prison helped in the big department, but I’d still rather read than fight. He did get himself an old lady that said things like tipsy though so maybe he wasn’t as tough as he thought he was.
“Hey, Dad, I was wondering about something.”
“What’s that?”
“Do you keep your old security tapes? I know they each only hold about a month or less, right?”
“Yeah, something like that. I think I got all the old ones in that big closet in the back office. It’s stuffed full of them. Cookie changes them out and puts the old ones in the closet. Why would you want them?”
“It’s probably just because I have way too much time on my hands but when I was pulling out of the garage at home this morning, I was looking at that Bud mirror with the Clydesdale and—”
“And the chick in the pink thong bikini?”
I smirked and chuckled. “Yeah, that one. Anyways, for some reason I remembered that trip you and I took to that bike show in Dinuba and that was where we bought that one. On the way out of town, we stopped here to pick up some cash. It was only two days later when that money came up missing. I don’t have anything else to do and I guess I’m getting desperate for an activity. I thought if you didn’t mind I would go through the tapes and pick out the ones around that time and watch them, just to see what I notice about who came in and out of the office those couple of days.”
“That’s actually a pretty good idea,” he said, looking impressed that I had thought of it. “Yeah, have at it. I don’t care. I’d like to know who took that money. I still get royally pissed every time I think about it, ain’t nothing lower than a thief. Thanks for doing that, I can’t believe one of the boys hadn’t thought of it already.”
Right, in his world a drug dealer was fine and a thief…not so much. Damn my conscience though. His thanks made me feel guilty for lying to him. I didn’t really give a shit who stole his money. I doubted that a penny of it had been legally earned. What I really wanted to see was who came and went from my dad’s office the times leading up to me being busted. I didn’t know if it would help me figure everything out or not, but it couldn’t hurt. I wished I could be as cold as he was sometimes though. He didn’t seem to be feeling too guilty about what he did to me at all.
A few of the club guys started pouring in and when my dad got busy with them I went to search for the tapes. Feeling guilty or not, I wanted to see those tapes. I was happy with the fact that the bar had a decent system with audio as well as visual. I was a little shocked that he kept them lying around in a closet though. If the place ever got raided and the tapes were confiscated, that could spell trouble for the club.
I went down the hall toward the back office and on my way I passed the bedroom. I had somehow forgotten about that. It had a bathroom attached and my mom had put a nice big bed in when she had done her decorating. That was weird when I considered what most of the guys in the club, my dad included, used it for.
The older I got, the weird things that my family did surprised me less. I decided that I was going to ask if I could sleep there for a while. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate my mother letting me stay at home, but I was starting to feel stifled there, like I was back in high school.
When I made it to the back office I opened the closet and almost shut it right away and said forget it. It was a mess. The tapes were at least marked with the date, which would help but it looked like when they pulled them out they just tossed them into any old box and there was no rhyme or reason to it. The office tapes were mixed up with the bar tapes too. It was a good thing I had no life because it was going to take forever to get through them.
I sat down on the floor and started sorting through them, setting aside the ones that were anywhere from two months before to six months after I got busted. I was going to have to put in a full day, maybe two, to find them all. I went through two full boxes and I was actually able to find five or six tapes that were labeled during that time period that would give me a good start. I started putting them in my backpack when I heard a noise behind me. My stomach tightened, I thought it was my dad checking in on me. I hoped I wasn’t going to have to explain why the tapes I took would have absolutely nothing to do with the burglary.
Shit. I should have looked for those too so I would have at least had them in my hand if he was suspicious. I wasn’t good at this criminal stuff. Trying not to look guilty, I turned around. It wasn’t my dad, it was Olivia.