CHAPTER TWO

"Let’s see what’s left in here," joked Rita Chambers, the officer at the front desk, opening the plastic storage container labeled Joseph Rhys Ryan. The number on the container matched the one on the wristband he was still wearing from his three day's stay in the Contra Costa County lockup.

 

She beckoned for his hand and cut it gently off, holding his ivory fingers briefly in her warm, cocoa-colored one, as fleshy as a padded sofa. She handed him the container’s meager contents--a pair of black leather motorcycle gloves, a helmet, and keys, and he grabbed the helmet, hoping to hold the shield down before Rita could get a glimpse of the ugly purplish puncture wound marring the side of his face. It was a souvenir from a bearded, scraggly wannabe Reaper who had gotten bored gambling his commissary money away to the resident card sharks and decided it would be a great way to make a name for himself in the jail's dayroom by taking a spork to Joseph Ryan’s eye. Joe, agile and more practiced, had easily dropped the guy before the guard intervened, but by then was enough to get both of them locked in solitary for the next day and half--and an ugly souvenir that he was hoping his shaggy wheat-colored hair would hide well enough.

 

Rita eyed his silver money clip, looking down at Abraham Lincoln's visage. "You keep your big bills on the outside?"

 

“'Very funny, Rita." He shoved it in the back pocket of the dark True Religion jeans he'd changed into, along with his gray v-neck t-shirt, hoodie and black leather Steel Jockeys cut-off jacket. Those jeans been a birthday gift from Colt, the nicest article of clothing he owned, and he was ridiculously grateful to get them back. Typical of someone with friends who inevitably skirted the edges of the law, he had heard stories of Gucci wallets and Armani suits mysteriously disappearing while their owners were temporarily detained, then someone spotting it on the jail accountant at a downtown Happy Hour.

 

"Believe it or not, I really was just trying to help a friend," said Rita, narrowed her eyes.

 

"First time you ever heard that, right?" he joked.

 

"Son, those kind of friends don't need no help," she said. "It's one thing to help someone up a mountain, but when they’re gonna pull you over the cliff, you let go of the rope."

 

Joey sighed, looking down at his hands.

 

"I know you've got a good heart, Joey, and a good head. But you need to learn how to use both at the same time."

 

"Listen, Rita," he said, flexing his fingers inside his gloves, "I need you to do me a favor," he said with a mischievous little grin. Rita frowned.

 

Joseph lowered his broad shoulders and rested his elbows on the desk, stretching his long, strong legs behind him in their motorcycle boots. He watched as the rather large woman fluttered her eyelashes as she glanced down at the Steel Jockeys tattoo covering the milky, smooth skin on his slim but wiry inner arm, its tendons flexing with his fingers.

 

Rita's deep, dark eyes looked a bit glazed as she met his warm amber-gold ones, dotted with flecks of green, the kind of eyes more than one transfixed woman had told him she'd never seen on anyone else. Ironically, he'd hated for so long the kind of effect his looks had on people. Of course, there were fringe benefits--he was a guy, after all. By and large though, it tended to be more trouble than it was worth for someone like Joe, who, from a very early age, had showed an innate talent for finding trouble anyway.

 

But sometimes, he had to admit, it worked as a useful way to sweeten a deal when a woman was involved, particularly for someone like him who was chronically short on cash. "Can you do that for me?"

 

"Yes, but only because I don't consider you a con. You're more like a son to me. Or a nephew. Let's keep it at nephew. Once removed."

 

Joe laughed, turned his hand over, and ran it through his thick, longish hair, the color of a ripe wheat field.

 

He pointed to the cut under his eye that was disfiguring the snowy smoothness of his face. Rita drew in a sharp, hissing breath at the sight of the nasty cut. "Lord, child. I'm sorry. Is it bad?" Rita looked like she was about to cry, and Joe backtracked quickly to calm her down.

 

"It's nothing. If it had been bad, I wouldn’t be walking out of here under my own power, that’s for sure. Anyway, that little pissant Chad Carter will be in here until he works out his probation rap, but when and if he does leave...pay attention, okay? Chat him up. Ask where he’s going. Who he’s meeting. What he has planned.” He saw Rita purse her lips, looking skeptical. “He’ll tell you,” he reassured her hastily. “He’s not too bright, I promise.”

 

He thought about Kyle, who had only been trying to do the right thing for the club; right for his family. But he’d been in too deep with someone he shouldn’t have trusted. If only Joe had caught on sooner, had done something differently...He gritted his teeth, trying to shove those thoughts down in the back of his head where they couldn't cripple him; couldn't bare their teeth like wolves, threatening to take him down. It was the only way he'd been able to move forward from that wretched night one year ago.

 

"You got a cell phone?" Rita paused for a second, then slid a pen and yellow legal pad across the counter, quickly re-crossing her arms in front of her massive bosom.

 

"Here." He quickly wrote down the phone number for the Thunderbird bar in Madelia. "The owner there is a friend of ours. He'll know how to get in touch with me. Okay?"

 

Rita clucked her tongue and shook her head. "And here you go again, racing off on to save the world. Mmm-hmm. Some people never learn."

 

He grinned sheepishly. “That was my problem in school, too. Why listen to a teacher when you know everything already?”

 

And if Tony Weston hadn't been an idiot and ran off to Oakland to meet one of their suppliers by himself, Joe wouldn't have spent the last three days locked in a cell before the cops decided to drop the charges against him--and Weston wouldn't be in traction at the hospital, handcuffed to a bed. And if Joe himself hadn't even been a bigger idiot, with no regard for his own welfare, he wouldn't have raced after Tony, trying to warn him not to do it.

 

"You be careful, Joey, you hear me?" Everybody said be careful; parents said it to their children; friends to other friends. But Joe knew that when people said it to him, it was more than just kind words. Joe found danger. He tried to be careful. He just wasn't very good at it--not when the welfare of someone he cared about was at stake. This was because for most of his life there had been too few people falling into that category. He knew the value of them, the worth of each. He never took it for granted. Rita handed him a slip of paper. "Oh, and your bike's in the impound lot. Here's your ticket to get it out."

 

Joe grimaced. "How much?"

 

"One seventy-five. Have a good one.” She signaled to the guard to open the door of the sally port. He stuck his hands in his pockets; it was a brilliant, cloudless fall day, crisp and a bit cool, and the sun on his face again after three days under harsh fluorescent lights made him squint. He raised his hand to shield his eyes at the glint from the chrome finish of the bike of Bruce "Colt" Curtis, his friend and sergeant-at-arms of the Steel Jockeys Madelia Charter. Colt, true to his name, was the kind of man you'd see if you looked up "biker" in the dictionary--almost seven feet tall, with a frizzy reddish-gray beard he knotted together messily almost down to the center of his weathered black cut. Scars and tattoos covered his arms, neck, and every inch of his visible body, fitting together like a puzzle so that it was sometimes hard to differentiate which was which. Out of context, he was truly terrifying, leaning on his Dyna Glide that was polished like a diamond and was as massive as he was. His arms were crossed impassively in front of his chest, barely nodding at Joe as he emerged. Loyal to the club to a fault, Colt was the kind of man you wanted on your side in a fight--and his size had nothing to do with it.

 

"Sun hurts your eyes, doesn’t it?" asked Colt, clapping the younger man on the back and pulling him close in a hug that was genuine and not a bit gruff. If Kyle had been like Joe's brother, Colt was the closest thing he'd ever had to a father. "You should know, Colt. They told me you met two of your ex-wives while you were in here."

 

Colt tipped his head back and guffawed. "I can't help it that the second they saw me, they forgot all about whatever clown they came to see."

 

Joe put a hand over his mouth, trying to hide a yawn, and Colt took a step back and looked at the young man critically. Joe shrunk back, knowing Colt was looking at the stab wound on his temple, not to mention the dark circles under his eyes. Needless to say, he hadn't gotten much sleep in there.

 

"You look like hell, kid."

 

"Thanks, I hadn’t noticed. Have you seen Tony?"

 

"Nah. Tried to go to the hospital, but they wouldn't let me in to see him. I guess they thought I looked like a disreputable character."

 

Now it was Joe's turn to laugh. "Do you think they'd let me?" Colt eyed him thoughtfully. "I've been told I can pass for only semi-disreputable." He looked down sheepishly, then put on one of his angelic smiles, the same one he'd used on Rita.

 

"You're also an accomplice," said Colt. "Of sorts."

 

"I've got to see him, Colt. It's my fault he's in there."

 

"The hell it is. You were trying to help him. That greedy little bastard knew full well he shouldn't have done that deal alone. Without a gun, no less. What was he thinking?"

 

"He thought it would be a walk in the park. Aaron Beeson was one of our closest suppliers. I mean, he knew Kyle back in the day. They used to shoot pool together.”

 

“This wouldn’t have anything to do with that cousin of his, would it?”

 

Lydia. Joe’s stomach twisted at the mere thought of that name, and not in the good way it had when they’d first gotten to know each other. No, it hadn’t been about her, but it certainly complicated things--as women always did. He tried to steer the conversation elsewhere.

 

“I just had bad feeling about it, so I followed him. And then when we got there, it wasn't Beeson."

 

"I don't care if he was going to meet his grandma. You don’t play fast and loose with your life or the club's money. He's lucky he didn't come home in a body bag." This was another reason people trembled when they met Colt--his absolutely unrelenting scorn for anyone who went against the M.C. Joe pitied Tony--even if he made it out unscathed and with no charges, he'd still have Colt to deal with. "Who was the guy, anyway?"

 

"No clue. He just ran at me as he was on his way out after stabbing Tony. Got the stuff, the money. Everything."

 

"How much?"

 

"Tony said it at was at least fifteen grand."

 

Colt's eyes grew hard. Joe didn't blame him.

 

"Did you get a good luck at the guy?"

 

Joe looked down at the asphalt, trying to picture the guy’s face. "Tall, dark-haired. A lot of acne scars. Nobody I knew." Joe tried to change the subject; he'd get enough of the third degree when he got back to the bar. He set one of his boots on the pedal, prepared to hop on the wide leather seat, inhaling the smell of leather and vinyl and gas, folding into it. Then he remembered it wasn’t his bike. "Mind if I drive?" His lip turned up daringly. "I know, I know. One scratch and I'm going to be the one in a body bag."

 

"No. One scratch and I'll make sure there won't be enough left of you to bother with one."

 

Joe grinned and slid forward, flexing his gloved fingers on the chrome handlebars, warmed by the sun. He kicked the engine into gear.

 

But wait. He froze. There was something he had forgotten to check, and it was the one thing he owned that was irreplaceable; the one thing, along with the photo of his sister, that Kyle had entrusted to his best friend in the moments before the life drained away from him, as softly as drawing a curtain closed. Was it still there? Had it fallen out? Had one of the jail guards pawned it downtown? Heart now racing, he shoved his hands into the tight pocket of his jeans, and exhaled audibly as his fingers closed around the gold chain, then sliding down to the heart-shaped ruby to which it was attached.