I was going to Jack’s auto shop to talk about the next shipment of mary jane. A hundred bricks straight from our growers in Oregon, headed for some less-than-reputable dispensaries in LA and San Francisco that badly needed product. We were set to clear 40 grand on the transaction – much-needed dough, given the current limited slate of our economic activities. Jesus fuckin’ Christ, I missed the days when I could clear 40 grand a week just on meth and coke alone.

I was planning on bringing those days back.

Anyway, I went in to talk business, and the dipshit starts mooning about his piece of ass.

“Something really weird happened this morning with Fiona,” he said.

“What, she stick her finger up your ass when you blew your load?”

I figured Jack liked it up the ass. Men, women, donkeys, didn’t matter, just as long as it was up his ass.

He shot me a look. “I’m serious, Lou.”

I just sighed and waited. I wasn’t about to play his little bitch-ass guessing game.

He finally said, “She asked about Alison Levitt.”

The name sounded unsettlingly familiar.

“…who?”

“That stripper of yours last year,” Jack said, and he got a pained look on his face. “The one who…?”

He trailed off, leaving me to fill in the unpleasant blanks.

Which I did almost immediately.

Shit.

Shit, SHIT, SHIT.

I went into red alert. “What the fuck was she asking about her for?”

“Relax. She saw a picture of her on the wall and – ”

The WALL?!

“What the FUCK do you have a picture of her on your wall for, Jack?”

Jack got a dangerous look on his face. “Lou? Back off.”

In life and business, I play the long game – months and years versus minutes and days. I knew it wouldn’t do me any good to lose my shit here and now, so I got a grip on myself.

But I still couldn’t tamp down all my anger.

“Jack, do I need to tell you exactly how fuckin’ stupid it is to have a picture of her hangin’ over your toilet?”

“Don’t,” he snapped.

“Don’t what? Knock some common sense into that fuckin’ head of yours?”

“It’s a picture. On my bedroom wall.”

“Ohhhh, well, that’s so much better. What do you do, beat off to it at night before you go to sleep?”

I was angry – the dumb sonuvabitch was hanging up a picture of a murder victim on his goddamn wall.

A murder victim I could have done a lot of time for.

But it turns out Jack was angrier than me, for all the wrong reasons. He stared at me and cracked his knuckles with his thumb, one by one.

With each knuckle he popped, I wished I could pop a cap in the back of his head. It’d be so much easier. But then I’d have all his little sycophants to deal with, including that gorilla Kade. So I made a tactical retreat.

“Alright – alright, forget I said that.” I leaned forward and lowered my voice, like we were both in this together. (Ha. Right.) “But that was some bad fuckin’ times, man, and I do not see the wisdom in you keeping shit like that lying around.”

“It’s a picture. People have pictures.”

“Not of chicks they barely knew who got their brains blown out in an alleyway.”

I could see his temper was starting to boil again, so I eased off. “All I’m sayin’ is, we went to a lot of trouble to bury that shit.”

Meaning I went to a lot of trouble to bury that shit.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have,” he said morosely.

What a fucking idiot.

“You know as well as I do what she was planning to do,” I said.

Jack looked away, like the guilt was eating him alive.

Pussy.

He hadn’t done anything except fail to stop a cokehead from destroying the Riders, and yet here he was, sweating it out like a boy scout who’d shoplifted a candy bar.

“We shouldn’t have had the cops bury it,” he murmured.

It was so ridiculous it was funny.

“Haha – we shouldn’t’ve had the cops – Jesus.” I shook my head. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? The cops start pullin’ on one string, and suddenly it leads to another, and then the FBI and the DEA are in on it, and then you and me and every other guy in the Riders are left standing there with our dicks in our hands and a couple dozen laser sights on our foreheads. Shouldn’t’ve had the cops bury it, my ass.”

“That’s not the way we do things anymore.”

Cuz we’re legit.

Cuz we work INSIDE the law now.

Cuz we’re not outlaws anymore.

Waah, waah, waaaaah.

Suck my dick.

“Yeah, well… sometimes the old ways are the best ways,” I said.

Truer word was never spoke. But there was a way more important question here.

“Why the fuck was that bitch so interested in the photo, anyway?” I asked.

Jack looked at me like he wanted to strangle me. “Don’t talk about Fiona that way.”

“Oh my God, he fucks her once and suddenly she’s Mother Teresa and Mary Poppins rolled into one,” I muttered to myself. “Okay, motherfucker: why exactly was your newest squeeze – and my newest waitress – so interested in that photograph?”

“Just by chance. She saw some photos of a bunch of my exes and got jealous.”

I have a sort of sixth sense about people’s motives – especially bitches – and it was popping off right about now. But jealousy wasn’t the issue here. I couldn’t say how I knew, but I would’ve bet every dollar I had on it.

However, Jack was caveman stupid about this sort of thing, so I played along.

“Not Sloane,” I said, even though I knew he’d burned every photo he had of her years ago. Which was a stupid fucking thing to do on his part.

Sloane… now that was a woman. Jack Pollari didn’t deserve a broad like her. She had bigger balls than he did. Hell, she had bigger balls than just about anybody in the Midnight Riders – except for me.

Back when Jack was starting to go soft, I asked her why she still put up with him.

Huge cock, she’d said. But lately his balls have been gettin’ smaller ‘n smaller every day.

“NO, not Sloane,” Jack said, irritated. “Christine.”

Oh yeah. I remembered her.

“The redhead with the tits?” I asked, and put my hands out like I was cupping some prime double-D’s.

“Yes,” Jack said, though he wasn’t happy about my little mime routine.

“Oh… no wonder she got jealous.”

Although I knew Fiona wasn’t jealous at all. It was something else altogether. What, I had no idea… but there was definitely something there, needling at my sixth sense.

“There you go,” Jack said, relieved that I was buying the party line.

Little did he know.

“And then she just went to the other picture? Just like that?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“She get pissed about any others?” I prodded.

“No.”

“How many bitches – excuse me, ‘ladies’ – do you have up there in your fuckin’ gallery?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. A dozen, maybe.”

Huh.

Fiona looked at Christine’s picture… then jumped past ten others, straight to Venus’s.

Venus had been her stripper name, back when she worked for me. Before she wound up dead in a back alley.

“Just those two photos? That’s all she freaked out about?” I asked.

“Yeah, so?”

“Were they right next to each other?”

Jack looked up in the air, like he was trying to recall. “…no. Not exactly.”

“Huh.” Curiouser and curiouser.

“What?”

“Nothin’,” I said, then played it off like it was no big deal. “Fuckin’ bitches, gettin’ all jealous… what’re you gonna do? Besides maybe takin’ down stupid goddamn incriminating photographs,” I said, ribbing him gently. “Besides that, of course.”

Jack got that stick-up-his-ass look again. “Lou, I’m going to tell you what I told her.”

“What’s that, bend over?” I chortled, playing it cool.

“No. DROP it.”

I put my hands up in the air. “Alright. Fine. Consider it dropped.”

Except it wasn’t dropped.

No fuckin’ way.