Chapter Three
Russ
I’m working at the shop across from the bar when a dark purple lowrider comes rollin’ up. I don’t know the car, but I know the driver, and we’re about to have some words.
He gets out of the car, smiling to his ears, and I’m motioning for him to come with me.
“What up, Ghost?” he asks. His name’s Carlos, and he’s always pulling shit like this.
I don’t answer. Most of the people here, they’re our guys, but we’ve got a couple walk-ins I don’t want them to hear what I’m about to say. So we walk to the soundproofed office in the back, and I close the door before saying, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Tell me you’re not stupid enough to make a delivery in the middle of the day.”
“It was my buddy’s car, may he rest in peace,” Carlos says, sitting. My arms are crossed. I don’t answer. “I just wanted to show it off a little, man.”
“Is that all?” I ask. “You’re not carrying anything in the back?”
“You gotta see the trunk space in this thing,” he tells me. “I can load like ten more—”
“Are you shitting where I live?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
“Are you, or are you not, making a delivery?”
“Come on, man. My old lady wants to hit the town tonight. You know, it’s going to be a late night sort of thing. I thought I’d just get it out of the way now.”
“Just how dumb are you?” I ask.
“Do you know what it’s like goin’ out, getting’ home, and then tellin’ the girlfriend I can’t make the passion with her because I got a late delivery?” he asks.
“You shouldn’t be telling her anything, and besides, since when do you have an old lady?”
“It’s nothin’ serious,” he tells me. “Just chill out, man. It ain’t no thing. I’ll even help you guys unload. I’ve just gotta—”
“You just gotta find another line of work,” I tell him. “We’ve been over this and been over this. We schedule our deliveries, and they’re always at night. The car’s gotta be somethin’ the cops won’t think twice about, and you pull in here with that fucking lowrider with a pair of tits on the hood. Let me ask you somethin’. When you heard what went down last week, did you stop to think maybe the cops are onto something and now might be a great time to—”
“Fine, I’ll bring the stuff back later tonight, man, shit.”
I grit my teeth. “No you won’t,” I tell him. “You just screwed up for the last time, man.”
His eyes go wide. I think he’s starting to get how serious his current situation really is. “No, man,” he says. “Look, man, I’m sorry. I screwed up, and I want to make things right.”
“Too late for that,” I tell him. “Make a sound and it ends right now.” I open the door to the office and shout, “Murdoc! Could you give me a hand with something in the office?”
I close the door.
“We can talk about this, man,” he says. “Look, I was stupid. I never shoulda rolled up here in that thing with those gu—”
“Ooh, I’d keep your mouth shut if I were you,” I tell him.
He stops talking. Fucking Carlos. Used to be we worked with his brother, Alejandro. One day, Alejandro comes into the shop, saying he’s done taking risks. He’s got a kid on the way. I can understand that. Hell, I respect it. Just to make sure we were cool, he brought his little brother along, saying how Carlos would work just as hard for us. He said something else, too.
When Murdoc comes into the office, I ask him, “We still got Alejandro’s number?”
“You don’t need to do that, man,” Carlos says.
Murdoc looks at me, then at Carlos, and then back at me. He smiles. “Little brother’s in some shit, huh?”
“You have no idea,” I answer.
Alejandro, Carlos: They’re not Grinning Heretics. I like to think of them as outside contractors. Problem is, they’ve got their own connections, and I don’t want to burn that particular bridge. We’ve worked with their “family” since before I came around. More importantly, they’re armed to the teeth. We could hold our own if we had to, but now’s not the time for war.
“Okay man, shit,” Carlos says. “I’ll do whatever you want me to do, just leave Alejandro out of this.”
I turn to Murdoc. “Dumbass here pulls up in that tricked out lowrider with a full shipment in the back during business hours.”
Murdoc whistles. He pats Carlos on the back, saying, “Man, you did fuck up. Want me to call the family and have them take care of it, or do you want to do this in-house?”
“Dude, keep the car,” Carlos says. “I know I screwed up—”
Ignoring Carlos, I continue, “He may be our problem right now, but he’s their problem all the time. I think they’d appreciate the excuse to show him how they deal with problems.”
“I hear they can get pretty nasty,” Murdoc says. “You sure you want to do that to the kid?”
“I don’t know what you want!” Carlos says. “I’ll do anything, just leave the family out of this.”
“Give us a minute,” I tell Murdoc, and wait for the door to close behind him before turning back to Carlos. “You know what you did?”
“Yeah man, I shouldn’t have come here in that, and I shouldn’t have done it in the middle of the day, just please—”
“We’ve had a long relationship with the family, a good one, too,” I tell him. “What you just did, though, you put us all at risk. We’ve told you to keep your record clean. We’ve told you to only drive cars that blend in, and here you are in that. We told you never to come by here when we’ve got customers in the shop. What did you think was going to happen? Did you think we’d be like, ‘Sorry, Mr. Blah-Blah, but your Harley’s gonna have to wait while we move a shipment of guns out of the back of some dumbass’s lowrider?’ How did you think this was going to work?”
“I didn’t think about—”
“You’re right, you didn’t think,” I tell him.
I take a deep breath. I’ve never killed anyone before, and I don’t plan on starting now. Carlos is a decent kid for an idiot, but if I just let this go, it’ll only get worse. If he’s going to learn anything, he’s going to have to feel that fear. He’s going to have to see his future, all his plans slipping away from him, and he’s got to know there’s nothing he could do if we made that phone call. This may not be what I want my life to be anymore, but that doesn’t mean I want to see everyone in the club burn because of it.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I say. “I’m going to let you go, and you’re going to tell your brother what you did. I’m going to call him tonight to make sure he got the message. If you try to cover it up, or you try anything I don’t like, and you’ll wish you were just dealing with the family. You got that?”
“Yeah man,” he says. “Hell yeah.”
“Right now, you and Murdoc are gonna go for a little drive,” I tell him. “You’re gonna do what Murdoc says, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll make it through all of this in one piece.”
“Thank you, man,” he says. “You’re not gonna regret this.”
“I know I’m not,” I tell him. “Our people, they’ve been working together longer than you and I have been alive. We’ve got a good thing going, and neither side wants that to change. You fuck up again, though,” I tell him.
“I know, Ghost,” he says. “I know, man. I’m so sorry.”
I open the door to the office. Murdoc’s waiting outside, so I motion for him to come in. When the door’s shut, I tell him, “Follow him down to the docks, plain clothes, and make sure you guys aren’t followed. Transfer the merchandise. You know what to do with it from there. Anything goes wrong—hell, if anything feels wrong, you know what to do.”
“Got it,” Murdoc says. He bends down next to Carlos who’s wide-eyed in his chair. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch, you know that?”
Carlos’s eyes are still wide, and he’s nodding fast. “Yeah, I know. I’m so sorry, man. I didn’t think. I know better than—”
“For your sake, I hope you do know better from here on out,” I interrupt. Looking to Murdoc, I tell him, “Get him out of my sight before I change my mind.”
“You got it,” Murdoc says, pulling Carlos out of his seat.
Just before Murdoc’s hand reaches the doorknob, I say, “Hey Carlos.”
Slowly, timidly, he turns around to face me. “Yeah?”
I say, “Cool car.” He almost smiles before I add, “Don’t ever let me see it around here again.”
“Yeah,” Carlos says, and turns back toward Murdoc, hanging his head. They leave the office, and I take a breath. Carlos: He’s all right when he uses his head. If he puts us in that kind of position again, though, I’ll have no choice, but to take it up with the family. We have an agreement that each side cleans up after itself, and Carlos has a nasty habit of making a mess of things. For his sake, I hope he’s learned his lesson.
I need some air, so I leave the office and walk outside. No matter who’s in charge, showing weakness is the same as begging for a hole in the head. There’s a lot of ambition and testosterone flowing through the club, and if there’s hesitation when discipline needs to be handed out, you’re already on your way to an obituary.
That’s when things are running smoothly.
Rev is well regarded, and he can be brutal when he needs to be. Me, I’m in the way. I have my friends in the club, but I don’t command the same kind of respect as Rev. If I had the choice, I would have left already, and it’s not that nobody can ever leave. People come and go all the time, but when you’ve reached a certain level, earned particular colors, you learn things. Leave the club after that, you’re a liability.
In the club or not, so much as a rumor goes around you’re talking to the wrong people about business, and it’s only a matter of time. I have no intention of talking, but it’s not like it matters. If Rev gave the nod to someone else, they’d be the target, but lucky me…
I get outside in time to see Murdoc, one of the only people I still trust, speeding off behind the dark purple lowrider, but that’s not what’s got my attention.
Across the street, I see someone, a woman, walking across the parking lot to the bar. It’s that black-haired chick from the other night, the one I pulled out of there when the fight broke out. It was one thing when she was with Riley. I don’t know what the hell she’s doing now, but if I don’t get over there, things are going to get bad for Riley’s friend real quick.
I holler back to Raw Dog that I’m going on break, and I hurry across the street. Stupid girl. I don’t know what she saw on TV that made her think she’d be okay alone in there.
Opening the door, I spot her immediately. She’s standing at the bar, almost shrinking into herself as every man in the bar crowds around her. Guys are making passes, grabbing at her. I can hear her stumbling over words, trying to tell Chas why she’s there, but Chas is just shaking her head.
“What’s going on?” I call out loud enough half the guys in the group jump a little.
Within a few seconds, the group’s thinned out and everyone’s back doing what they usually do: Drink and argue among themselves. It may be short-lived, but being in charge does have its perks.
She starts walking toward the door. Just as she’s about to pass me, she says, “Would you walk me out?” She doesn’t break pace as she says it; she just keeps walking until we’re out on the hot pavement, heading toward what must be her car. About halfway between the bar and the vehicle, she stops.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“I know, it’s stupid. I mean, not that your bar, or your group are stupid, I mean me coming here unannounced when you don’t really know me or—anyway, the other night, things got a little crazy. I was trying to let my hair down for the first time in, I don’t know, ever, and I thought my intern might have some ideas on how to do that, but then she brought me here, and, well, I guess you know what happened after that.” If she took a breath during any of that, I didn’t see it.
“Your intern?”
“Riley,” she says.
“Oh, so that’s how you know Riley.”
“What surprises me is it seemed like the rest of you know her, too. I mean, it’s not my place to judge—not that I’m judging or anything. I mean, I’m sure you’re all decent people and that, just, you know, you see someone in the office, and that’s the only way you really think about them until you see them in the world, or you go out for a couple of drinks or something, and then you learn that person’s got their own life, their own friends, their own experiences… Anyway, that’s not what I came here to talk to you about.”
I’m trying to hold back laughter, but it’s not working very well. “I’m not sure I followed any of that.”
“Yeah, I know, I tend to ramble when I get nervous,” she says. “I’ve been trying to work on it, but I’ve still got a way to go, I guess.”
This is quickly becoming one of the most confusing conversations I’ve ever been a part of.
“Anyway, so I know the other night, you pulled me out of the bar, and I guess I was just so freaked out, I didn’t really stick around to find out why. I mean, with everything going on—I don’t know you, and my first impression of the guys in the bar had a lot to do with people hitting each other and, well, you know. You were there, obviously.” She takes a breath, but there’s that look in her eyes telling me she’s not remotely done. “So, I guess, the first thing I want to ask is why you pulled me out of there like you did.”
I give it a couple of seconds before responding, just to make sure she’s stopping with the question. “You looked like you needed help,” I tell her. “That, and Riley asked me to keep an eye on you after the two of you came in.”
“Seriously, how do you know Riley?”
I smile. “Everyone knows Riley.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps saying, but nobody will elaborate. I guess it’s really none of my business. I was just so scared. I really thought I was going to get killed, or at least seriously injured in there, and I mean, assuming I survived, sure, I get great health insurance through work. I mean, it’s not cheap, but it would probably take care of everything, but that doesn’t mean I want to have to use it, you know? Then, out of nowhere, there’s this hand around my wrist, pulling me through the bar and out of harm’s way, but I didn’t know you—I guess I still don’t, huh?—and I didn’t know if you were going to hurt me, or if you were trying to help me or what. All I knew was I wanted to get out of there while I still could, you know? Gosh, you must think I’m crazy going on the way I am, but I suppose what I really came here to tell you is thank you for doing what you did. I don’t know what would have happened if you didn’t, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have been good.”
“Yeah, probably not,” I tell her. I’m halfway to saying she’s welcome when she starts again.
“Listen, I didn’t come down here to take a whole lot of your time. It’s just, I’ve never really had someone rescue me like that, not that I’ve really been in that kind of position before either, but for someone like you—I don’t mean that in a derogatory way, I mean that as, you know, we don’t know each other. So for a stranger to come to my rescue like that, I mean, once I talked to Riley and she let me know you were trying to protect me and everything, I mean, I just had to come down here and tell you that in person.”
My palm meets my forehead, and I’m laughing. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “You lost me there.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “No, I meant, thank you. That’s what I meant to say. God, you must think I’ve totally lost it.”
“Not totally,” I answer.
“See, now that’s funny,” she says with an affected smile. “Unless you weren’t trying to be funny. Oh my god, are you serious? Of course, given the way I’ve just been going on and going on, I can’t really blame you for forming an opinion like that, especially when I’m sure you never really expected to see me again, or for me to just bring you out here and start—”
“You’re right,” I tell her.
She stops and cocks her head a little to one side. “Right about what?”
“You do seem nervous.” I smile.
She smiles back. “Yeah,” she says. “I know. I’m sorry.” She takes a breath.
The other night, I didn’t really get a good look at her. She’s around 5’6” with long black hair that seems to bounce even when it’s not moving. She’s dressed in modest business attire, but it’s form-fitting enough to hint at the curves beneath. I doubt I’ll ever see her after today, but for some reason, I find myself wanting to make her smile again if I can. She does have a beautiful smile. It’s about the time I come to that conclusion that I realize she’s talking again, and I haven’t been paying attention.
“—not really the sort of thing I do all the time. I mean, I guess I’m kind of a homebody. It’s not that I don’t like people or anything like that, it can just be really hard to relate when my upbringing seems to be so much different than everyone else’s. I mean, I know that’s not really true, either, but—”
“You’re welcome,” I tell her.
“Huh?”
“Funny, you didn’t really strike me as the kind of person who says ‘huh’ a lot,” I tell her.
She smiles again. Mission accomplished.
“Well, thank you,” she says. “Anyway, I’ve probably taken up more than enough of your time, but I wanted to say thank you, and that I hope I didn’t come across as too judgmental. I’m really not that way, but like I said, sometimes I get nervous—especially coming back here after everything—and I just keep talking like that’s somehow going to make things better, when all it ever seems to do is make it worse, you know?” She chuckles. “And there I go again, so I’m just going to go before I embarrass myself too much more.”
I don’t know what else to say, so I tell her, “Okay.”
I’m about to turn and head back to the shop when she says, “You know, I’m not sure I’d really feel comfortable coming back here, but if we should happen to see each other again sometime on neutral ground, I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to ride on the back of a motorcycle.” Her mouth is open like she’s going to say more, but she just stands there a second. Finally, she seals her lips, gets in her car, and drives away.
I’m not entirely sure what just happened, but at least I got a couple of smiles out of her.