Fink
I walk into Sal’s office with a box of chocolates under my arm and a grin on my face, though inside I’m not grinning. Inside I’m shit-scared that he’ll tell me I can’t work here anymore. I’ve known Sal since I was fourteen and maybe we would’ve stayed close friends if I hadn’t joined the club and he hadn’t started up this legitimate business. Sal’s the only link I have to my pre-club life, and now that that link might be severed, I realize how much I value it.
“You brought me bribes,” Sal says, standing with that soft smile on his face. Sal has always been soft, too soft. I’m always aware that I could bully him and am careful not to. He’s a good man and doesn’t deserve it. “Chocolates.” He pats his belly. “Do you really think I need more chocolate?”
“Don’t be a drama queen,” I say, smiling. I drop the chocolates onto the desk. “I need to apologize, Sal. That was out of line. If it’s any consolation, I’ve felt like shit about it for the last five days. I’ve hardly been able to sleep.”
“I’m sure,” Sal says, nodding. “Mm-mmm. I’m sure that’s the case. It wasn’t helpful. I won’t lie to you and say it did me any favors. Look, I get that it was a pain in the ass, listening to that man snap at his daughter like that, but he used to be sheriff around these parts. You know that. I’m surprised you never ran into him.”
“I might have seen him around.” I drum my fingers on the desk. “But I’ve never been in jail.”
“Yet,” Sal says, but there’s no viciousness in it. He sounds lost.
“Yet,” I agree.
“You’re here to ask if you still have a job, even though I pay you peanuts and you make ten times more with your club.”
“Yep, pretty much.”
“Why, Fink?” He leans forward. For a second, he’s not almost-thirty Sal. He’s a teenager towering over all of us with a sad smile on his face, looking old before his time.
“I need this job,” I tell him.
“But why?” Sal pushes. “It’s not for the money. So what do you get out of it?”
I don’t answer right away, giving his question some real thought. “It reminds me of who we used to be. Do you remember when we’d go down to the supermarket and help old ladies with their bags and hope they’d give us a dollar, or even a nickel? Do you remember how we’d make sure to split the money evenly and then go to that ice-cream place down near the park? We’d sit there with ice-cream all round our mouths and, man . . . I just like being here. I just like remembering those times. That’s all.”
“I’m sure your biker friends would get ice-cream with you,” Sal says.
“Yeah, I reckon so, too. Only they’d shoot up the place before I got a chance to finish.” I laugh grimly.
Sal doesn’t laugh, just looks at me sadly. “You can work today,” he says. “Please try to avoid hitting anybody else.”
I’m at the door when he says, “Fink. What’s gotten into you?”
I turn and face him. His eyes are watery, which is nothing new for Sal. His allergies have allergies. But the glassy look strikes me today.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You haven’t talked to me about growing up for years. I can’t remember the last time you mentioned it. It was like the day they put that patch on your back you forgot about that ice-cream place. Whole months’ve gone by and it’s like we’re strangers, like we never used to be friends. My wife once told me that it was exactly that: me and you, we were strangers, that people can change so much that even if they see each other damn-near every day, they don’t know each other at all.”
I hold his gaze for a long time, and then sigh. “I don’t know, man. I don’t fuckin’ know.”
I go into the garage and get ready for work. I lied to Sal back there. I do know what’s gotten into me: Nancy. I haven’t been sleeping. It’s Nancy’s face, Nancy’s voice, Nancy’s touch that’s been keeping me awake. I haven’t seen her since that day at the club and yet my thoughts belong to her. I can’t drag them away, no matter how hard I try. I lie in bed and try’n sleep and before I know it, my hand’s on my prick and Nancy’s on my mind. But it’s not always sexual. Sometimes I’ll just lie there, picturing her smile. I need to see her again, but this business with the cops . . .
I asked Snake about it a couple of days ago in a roundabout way. “Let’s just say there was a man, and this man wanted to get with a lady, but the lady’s dad was a cop.”
“And this man was a biker?” Snake said, raising an eyebrow. Snake’s a skinny bastard, hence his name, with a tattoo of a dragon looping around his throat. “I’d say he needs to get his brain checked unless he wants the boss banging on his door at two a.m. Or worse. The cops.” Snake watched me for a long time. “Did you hear me, Fink?”
“I heard you,” I said. “But I gotta tell you something, too. If you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to break your fucking nose.”
Snake stood up and retreated. If the men respect me for anything, it’s my capacity for violence.
I don’t know why I got so angry with Snake. He was just telling me the truth, just trying to do what’s best for me. But the idea that I’m never allowed to see Nancy again is like a punch to the face.
I’m cleaning up after a routine parts change when three men come swaggering into the garage. When you’ve lived the outlaw life for more than a day, you get a sense of when men want to start trouble. All of them are in civilian clothes, shirts and jeans and boots, but the way they hold themselves tells me they’re either soldiers or cops. And since I haven’t hit a soldier in the past week, I’m guessing cops. Their leader is a wide-shouldered man with a shock of gray hair and a stiff upper lip. His goons are wide, too, and fat around the middle. The gray-haired man has a nasty gash down one side of his face, framing his eye.
“Are you Fink?” Scarface asks.
“I’m Fink Foster,” I say, standing with my shoulders squared. I hold a wrench in my hand and I’m pretty certain I could use it to lethal efficiency, but then I spot Sal hiding in his doorway, watching with eyes so full of fear it makes me pity him. I can’t fuck up policeman here; hitting a retiree was bad enough. I drop the wrench.
“I’m Officer Michaels,” Michaels says. “And these are Officers Holmes and Greene. Now that that’s out of the way, I want to give you a simple message from my friend Sheriff O’Neill. I think you’re familiar with him. Aren’t you, boy? Well, aren’t you?”
When he calls me boy, I see my thumbs buried in his skull, pushing and pushing until his eyeballs pop and there’s nothing left of his face but mush. I see my boot on his neck and my fists smashing into his face over and over. If it wasn’t for Sal . . .
“I’m talking to you,” Michaels says.
“I can hear you,” I reply. “I just don’t know what the fuck you want from me, is all.”
“Careful,” one of his goons warns. I’ve forgotten their names already.
“Careful.” I let out a harsh laugh. “Careful, or what, exactly? You are cops, ain’t that right?”
“We are.” Michaels grins and I don’t like it one bit. “And our friend was a cop, still is a god to us. He was the best damn sheriff this shithole town has ever known and he deserves respect, so when he tells a little shit like you to fix his car and mind your own business, you fix his car and mind your own business. That’s all. You don’t run your mouth off and sucker punch him to boot.”
“Sucker punch.” I try to stay calm, remembering Sal. Sal, Sal is the man I have to think about here, not myself. I unclench my fists. I can’t hit a cop. I repeat that mantra over and over in my head. I. Can’t. Hit. A. Cop. Not here, anyhow. Not again. But I also can’t let these men talk to me like this. “If your friend didn’t fight like a girl, maybe he wouldn’t’ve ended up on his back.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Sal lowering his head. That hits me right in the gut.
“You need to be careful with your words,” Michaels says. “I don’t know who exactly you think you are, but it ain’t somebody big or special, if that’s what you think.”
“You came here to threaten me. I reckon you’ve done that. You can leave now.”
“You think you tell me what to do?” Michaels lurches forward, his face so close to mine I can see each individual shot of blood in his eyes, each individual jagged line in his scar. “You don’t tell us shit. You say yessir and shut your fucking mouth. Do you think we don’t know about you, Fink Foster? Do you really think we don’t know about you and your little club? Sons of Wolves. What sort of fuckin’ pansy-ass name is that? Sons of Wolves, more like Sons of Bitches!” He laughs raucously at his own joke. “Let me tell you something,” he goes on, clearly annoyed that his goons didn’t laugh with him. “You can’t go around hitting sheriffs and getting away with it.”
I could dodge the punch. I see it coming a full half-second before it connects, but I’m also painfully aware of Sal, and painfully aware that if I don’t take this beating it’ll ruin his business. More and more cops will hound this place until there’s nothing left. Sal is my friend. He doesn’t deserve a war. So I take the punch, and the kicks, lying on the floor limp and pathetic as they do their work. I hate myself for it. I’ve never given in like this before. Since I don’t fight back they take me for a coward—and right now, covered in blood, I can’t disagree with them—and leave off after a few seconds.
Michaels kneels down next to me, elbows resting on his knees, his blood-stained knuckles hanging loosely. “I think that was pretty clear, right? You learnt your listen, little pup?”
That’s too much. Little pup. I can’t stop myself. I spit blood right into his face and then jump to my feet. The men leap back, surprised at my sudden movement.
“Throw one more punch,” I say, “and we’ll get to fighting for real.”
Michaels looks at me like a timid dog who’s suddenly sprouted claws. “Tough guy,” he mutters, turning away. “Tough fuckin’ guy.”
I watch them go, dripping blood onto the floor, and then turn to Sal. “I’m sorry, man,” I say. “I didn’t . . . I’m sorry.”
“You should get cleaned up,” Sal says. “And I think you should leave for the rest of the day. I can’t have customers seeing one of my mechanics like that. It isn’t good for business.”
I sigh, and then nod. “Fair enough,” I say, seething with rage at these bastards, these arrogant bastards thinking they can just swagger in here and mess up my life. And the worst part about it is that they can. They did.
I get on my bike and head back to the club, needing a drink to clear my head, maybe to get into a fight, if there’s a fight to be had. I squeeze the throttle so hard my palm stings; my knuckles ache like they want to bust out of my skin. And that’s how I feel, humiliated and ashamed and pissed the hell off like all I want to do is break my fist against something. Fuckin’ cops, fuckin’ pigs. Corrupt fuckin’ assholes.
“What happened to you?” Snake asks when I join him at the corner table.
“Nothing,” I say. “Fell into a goddamn wall.”
“Come on.” Snake leans forward.
“Just leave it.”
We play poker for a while, drinking more and more, and then Joseph the Old Man comes hobbling over. He’s been in the club since before most of our parents were born, an old man with crooked bones and a whispery beard. “I heard a rumor,” he says in his crackling voice. “Some cops did that to your face. They were bragging about it at their bar. Is this true, Fink?”
I know why he’s asking me. Not because he wants to know if it’s true—he already knows that—but because he wants to see if I’ll lie.
“Yeah,” I say. “It was the cops.”
“Fuckin’ pigs!” Snake roars. He jumps to his feet and kicks a chair across the room. “They did this to one of ours? They did this to one of ours?” He kicks another chair. “Who the fuck do they think they are?”
I don’t want to get angry, ’cause I know where this anger could lead, but the memory of them looking down on me like I’m dirt is too powerful. My rage grows until I’m standing up with Snake, kicking a chair and spitting and getting myself ready for vengeance. For a moment, Sal and Nancy are banished from my mind. I’m just a biker, an outlaw, nothing more.
Snake roars across the bar: “We’ll get revenge on these fucking animals! We’ll show them they can’t fuck with one of our own! We’ll show them they can’t fuck with the Sons of Wolves!”
The men cheer, Joseph clapping his wrinkled hands together, and even in the midst of my anger, I wonder if we’re making a terrible mistake.