“You’re new here. What’s your name, doll?”
I looked over at the young man who had addressed me and smiled at him invitingly. Jackpot! He was on my list. This was good. It made me happy that I was starting out with one of the major players.
“Janessa Cabri. Today is my first day. What’s your name?”
“They call me Jack Knife.”
“Jack Knife? That’s an interesting nickname. Should I ask how you got it?”
“You probably shouldn’t. Come sit with me. Maybe I’ll tell you about it later.”
I joined him at his table, giving him my best doe-eyed new girl look. I knew I was fresh meat, and I also knew I was just his type. He had a thing for tall brunettes with dark features, and I possessed all those features with the aid of contacts and dye. It wasn’t really a surprise that he picked me out so quickly. In fact, I had hoped for it, though I didn’t expect to get lucky on my very first night.
“Would you like me to get you a drink first?”
“Nah. One of the other girls can do that. I want to look at you for a while.”
His tone was seductive and that played well into my plans. I had no desire to waste any time in getting what I wanted from this place and its members. One of them killed my father even after he paid off the debt he owed to them. I had every intention of finding out which one, no matter what the personal cost. If I had to liquor up Samuel “Jack Knife” Robinson and fuck information out of him, then that was what I would do.
“Like what you see?”
“I sure do. Where are you from?”
“Upstate. Small town girl come to the big city.”
“Big switch from the country side to working in a casino.”
“That’s for sure. I was bored though. Nothing ever happens out in the middle of nowhere. I’m ready for a bit of fun. You know, cut loose and let my hair down for a while. I guess you could say I’m sewing my wild oats.”
“That’s what I like to hear from a beautiful girl. I like to sew a few wild seeds myself.”
“I’ll just bet you do.”
The truth was that I had never seen a farm in my life. I had grown up in small town with my mother after she and my father had divorced. He was always a bit of a nomad, moving from place to place, but the one thing he never left behind was me. Though I was rarely allowed to go out with him as a child, he routinely stopped by to see me and spend time with me. Often, my mother would use to the time to go out and let her hair down for a while, her stress relief from being a single mother under harsh conditions.
We lived in a bit of a shack on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. It was all she could afford and Dad wasn’t any help other than the random amounts of money he sometimes gave her when he visited. There was never enough of anything in our house, but it was always clean and safe. My mother did the best she could, and when she died, right after my seventeenth birthday, I had gone to live with my father in a tiny, cramped apartment in the city.
I had stayed there to take care of him even after I finished high school and got an accounting degree from the local community college. He had been all I had and the Black Aces had taken him away. That was the only reason I was here and the only reason I would do whatever I had to do to make sure his death did not end up in a cold case box somewhere at the back of the local police station. If it was the last thing I ever did, I would find the truth. I just wasn’t sure that I had any clue what I was up against.
Despite my initial bravado, I found that I felt a little ill at the thought of what I might have to do with Jack Knife. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Six foot four, broad shouldered…a very nice physique. He was well known muscle for the Black Aces MC. He got his nickname after making an example of a narc by putting him in a wheelchair with a broken back – folding him in half like a jack knife. It was pretty typical of how the Black Aces operated. They preferred to leave someone as an example rather than take them out completely.
That fact made the murder of my father even more out of place for the group. Not only was he killed over a debt that was no longer due, but it wasn’t their usual style. Nothing the authorities had found led to any information that the overzealous punishment might have been caused by something other the debt, so it didn’t make sense. I was determined that it would before I was done. It would be crystal clear why it happened and the people responsible would be punished.
“Sandy, bring us some shots of tequila.”
Sandy smiled at him but shot a cool look in my direction before making her way toward the bar. It was a hazard of what I was doing that I’d most likely step on the toes of a few of the other girls by putting the moves on guys they deemed their territory. For some, it was affection. For others, it was merely business. They took care of these guys, and they were taken care of, simple as that. Some of them were just as lethal as the men they served.
“I don’t think she is very happy about my being here.”
“Fuck her. She was getting too clingy anyway. It will do her good to see she doesn’t own me. Besides, she fucks like a crazy bitch when she’s pissed and jealous.”
“Is that why you called me over? Just making things a bit more interesting with your usual girl?”
“Hell nah. She’s everyone’s usual girl. That slut’s been rode more than a retired race horse. Ain’t a guy in here that hasn’t been fucked or sucked by her.”
I was quiet for a moment as Sandy dropped the drinks off. I felt almost sorry for her. She was nearing thirty with three kids by three different fathers, none of which she was absolutely sure should be on their birth certificates beyond a doubt. She looked older than her years and had a rap sheet longer than her legs. Depending on men to get ahead had only set her back in the world and she probably didn’t even realize it.
“Is that all?”
“Yeah, that’s all, Sandy.”
I watched as she snapped around and headed for a nearby table, leaning over it seductively and smiling at the man there, one that I didn’t recognize from any of my research. It was obvious that she intended to cut her losses and replace Jack Knife with someone else, or perhaps more than one someone else.
“See? I told you. Didn’t waste one single minute locking in on another pair of legs to climb between tonight. Enough about her though. Let’s have some drinks.”
“I’m all in, babe.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
Jack Knife handed me a shot and held his up in a toast, clinking our glasses together before we each downed a shot. Despite my practice at holding my liquor a little better than I usually did in preparation for the heavy drinking, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fake here. It burned all the way down. I would have to start strong and then pace myself after he was a bit fuzzy to keep up appearances. Luckily, he was already way ahead of me.
As the evening progressed, I was surprised that he wasn’t really getting as drunk as fast as I had thought, though he was plenty intoxicated. It was too soon to ask any questions, not from someone like him, so I had to just accept that I might not learn anything on the first go around and instead just do what I needed to in order to win his trust. Still, I tried to broach a few with him when it fit into the conversation. It quickly became obvious that he had other things in mind.
“Why don’t we blow out of this place and have a little private fun?”
“I thought you’d never ask. Let me get us a room key and a bottle to go.”
“My kind of girl.”
I made my way to the bar for the bottle and a set of keys to one of the rooms held in reserve for the MC. All my efforts to get Jack Knife to open up without being obvious about it had proved futile. He wasn’t about to talk too much to a new girl he didn’t know. My only option was to make him feel like he knew me much better, and that was going to include fucking him in a way that would keep him coming back for more until I could get what I wanted from him.