The owner of a coin-operated carwash has a license to launder money. The income was all cash, and could be manipulated one way or the other. Filtering a few hundred thousand dollars of ill-gotten gains a year through one was an easy task that couldn’t be traced.

My LLC owned three of them, but I was far from a businessman.

I was the president of a motorcycle club, an outlaw, and a thief.

A professional thief.

Nonetheless, I needed an office to make my business appear legitimate. So, my LLC bought a three-story building within walking distance of the San Diego Bay. The upper floor was my office. The second floor served as my place of residence. Below that was the Devil’s Disciples clubhouse. Beneath the clubhouse was an underground parking garage.

We used the parking garage to store our motorcycle collection and a few exotic cars. The clubhouse was primarily for drinking beer, relaxing, and an occasional party. The office was reserved as my escape from society, and for planning robberies.

On paper, the men in the MC were employees of the company. They received paychecks, paid their taxes, and were seen from time to time performing maintenance on the car washes they managed.

Logistically speaking – at least for me – having the operation in one facility was problematic. There was no evading the men in the club, regardless of what time of day it was. I lived and breathed the MC.

Wearing a guilty smile, Cash sauntered into my office with one hand hidden behind his back. Half the distance to my desk, he paused and arched an eyebrow.

I shot from my seat, pulled my knife from my pocket, and flicked the blade open with my thumb. “If you’ve got another snake behind your back, I’ll cut you. Again. I guarantee you it’ll be worse than the last time.”

“Settle down. And put up the blade, motherfucker.” His grin widened. “You’re gonna love it.”

“I’m not kidding, Cash.” I took a few steps back. “I’ll cut you and carve that snake into chunks.”

“It’s not a snake. It’s an idea.”

I nodded toward his missing hand. “You’ve got an idea in your back pocket?”

“Something like that.”

“Let’s see it.”

He took a few steps in my direction. “You’re going to like it.”

“So far I’m not impressed.”

He produced his hand. A business card was wedged between his fingers. He flipped it onto the desk in front of me. I picked it up, read the face of it, and then turned it over. A rudimentary hand-drawn diamond and a shitty sketch of a gold coin adorned the back. Apparently, the graphic designer was a six-year-old child.

“Pat’s Gold and Diamond Exchange.” I sat down and gestured toward the empty chair on the other side of my desk. “Let me guess. You bought a wedding ring, and you’re going to marry that stripper from Oceanside. What’s her name? The one with the extra nipple? Crystal?”

He gave me a cross look, and then sat. “It’s a mole.”

I tossed the card across the desk. “A nipple-shaped mole that sits right beside her mole-shaped nipple.”

“Fuck you, Baker. She can’t help it.”

“You doing it in June, or is that too cliché?”

His face formed a defiant scowl. “That place is getting a new alarm system.”

“The strip club? What’s the name of it?” I tapped my index finger against my pursed lips a few times, and then met his gaze. “The Main Attraction?”

“No, god damn it. Pat’s Gold and Diamond Exchange. It’s a shit-hole in Rainbow. A really busy shit-hole. And, he’s getting a new alarm.”

“That little town between Escondido and Temecula?”

“That’s it.”

Following Cash’s logic was like trying to comprehend Nuclear Physics. It wasn’t impossible, but it required far more work than I was willing to devote. So far, I’d completely lost interest in his story. My head began to throb.

I rubbed my temples with my fingertips.

“Migraine?” He lifted a glass paperweight from my desk.

“Yeah,” I whispered.

He tossed it in the air, then caught it. “That sucks.”

“I think I know what causes them.”

He tossed it again, and almost dropped it when it came down into his hand. He looked at it as if it had done something wrong, and then looked at me. “What’s that?”

I looked at his hand and shook my head. “You.”

“Fuck you, dude.” He nodded in my direction, set the paperweight down, and then raked his fingers through his hair. “It’s probably because you don’t jack off.”

It didn’t surprise me that in his opinion, fisting my cock was the solution to cure my migraines. Cash claimed that once he stroked his cock in the McDonald’s drive-thru. For him, it was the answer to everything.

I let out a breath of frustration. “Stroking my meat isn’t the answer.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Might be.”

“You think if I start pulling my pud my headaches will vanish?”

“They might. There’s a reason everyone does it.”

“Everyone doesn’t do it. Do you see Tibetan Monks walking around rubbing their temples?”

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t respond. It seemed I’d completely lost him.

“Masturbation is forbidden,” I explained. “But they don’t walk around rubbing their temples, do they?”

His face went blank. “Huh?”

I shook my head and swallowed my desire to laugh. “Never mind.”

He waved his hand toward my crotch. “You should try it for a few weeks and see if they stop.”

“You should try leaving yours alone, and see if you gain a few ounces of common sense.”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“When you walked in, you looked like you were hiding Coca Cola’s mysterious original recipe behind your back. Then, you tossed me a business card that some second grader designed. After an exhausting question and answer session, I’ve learned that some shitty little jewelry shop in Fuckwater, California is getting a new alarm system. You’ve wasted fifteen minutes of my morning, and I’ve learned nothing. Why can’t you just say what it is you want to say?”

His mouth twisted into a smirk. “It’s more fun this way?”

“For you, maybe. Any chance you can hit the highlights of what it is that I’m supposed to get excited about?”

“Pat’s place takes in about fifty grand a week in gold, and another ten or twenty in diamonds,” he said excitedly. “He’s got a steady stream of customers from SD, Vegas, and LA, because he doesn’t ask questions and he doesn’t do receipts unless you ask.”

I looked at him in disbelief. “How in the hell do you know what his income is?”

“Dumb fucker said so.”

“Okay. Let’s say Pat has a banner day. We hit him before he makes his drop. Then, after we pay for expenses and fuel, we’ll split forty-five grand six ways. That’s seventy-five hundred each if we’re lucky.” I gazed at the ceiling, stroked my beard a few times, and then met his gaze. “Sorry, I’m not interested. We can make that much hitting a fucking taco truck in Salinas.”

“He doesn’t make drops.”

A drop was when a business took their cash to another location and made a deposit. Typically, it was done every day – and never at the same time – which made knowing when they were going to be flush with cash difficult. For someone to have tremendous income and make infrequent drops meant that they’d have an inordinate amount of money on hand.

Money that could be ours.

“Everyone makes drops,” I argued. “What do you mean he doesn’t make drops?”

“He doesn’t make drops.”

My interest was piqued. I straightened my posture. “Ever?”

“Rarely.”

“Define rarely.”

“One-eyed Pete went in there two weeks ago after that guy in Henderson paid him back on that loan.”

“For the slot machines he reconditioned?”

“Yeah. The owner of that underground casino paid him with a gold bar. So, he goes into Pat’s and Pat agrees to buy it--”

“A hundred-gram bar, or a four hundred troy ounce bar?”

“How the fuck would I know? All I know is that Pat paid him four hundred fifty grand for it.” He arched an eyebrow. “In cash.”

He’d garnered my interest. All of it. “You’re telling me he keeps that kind of cash on hand?”

“I’m telling you what I know.” He extended his index finger. “He’s gettin’ a new alarm.” He raised his middle finger. “And, he paid One-eyed Pete damned near half a million in cash.”

“Any word on why he’s getting a new alarm?”

“Told Pete he’s gettin’ some state of the art system. He keeps all his shit in a vault, and doesn’t have a safe. He’s gettin’ one at the same time he gets that alarm. Sounds like he’s gettin’ nervous that someone might break in one day.” He shook his head. “The dumb fuck just offered that up while Pete was in there.”

“When’s he getting the new alarm?”

“Not sure. I told you what I know.”

If Cash was right, the take from the job could easily be in the millions. The thought of it filled me with nervous energy. I needed to calm down, devise a way to disable the alarm, and develop a plan to rid Pat’s Gold and Diamond Exchange of its wealth.

“Reno and Goose are downstairs pulling the motor out of Goose’s Shovel,” I said. “Tito’s supposed to be here in an hour or two. When he shows up, bring him up here. We’ll see what we can figure out with the alarm.”

“So, you’re interested?”

“Fuck yes, I’m interested.”

The ear to ear grin returned. “Headache’s gone, huh?”

Miraculously, it was. I nodded. “It is.”

“I’ll holler at ya when Tito makes it in.” He stood and turned toward the door. “You should really try whacking off, though. Do it while you’re staring out that window of yours.”

“I’m doing just fine, thanks.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “I whack off twice a day. Can’t remember the last time I had a headache.”

“I doubt there’s a correlation.”

He shrugged as he turned toward the door. “Never know.”

Anxious about Pat’s Gold and Diamond Exchange, I went to the window and peered down at the street. As I gazed blankly at the morning traffic, Ray Lamontagne’s Jolene played softly over the sound system. Like Ray Lamontagne, I needed something to hold onto, I just wasn’t sure what it was.

I’d solved countless problems staring out at the San Diego skyline, but by no means all of them. The window was my place of refuge, and the men knew it. When I was there, I was off-limits.

As the song ended, my eyes came into focus. At that same instant, a woman on a bicycle rolled to a stop at the bike rack by the corner. After locking her bike to the rack, she removed her sneakers, put them in her purse, and slipped on a pair of dress shoes.

From my vantage point, she looked cute – and had a fabulous ass – but I had yet to see her entire face.

She removed something from her purse, gathered her hair in her hands, and then looked right at me as she pinned it into place.

Oh, my fucking God.

Her hair was a few shades lighter, but there was no denying who she was. My stomach twisted into a knot. Frozen, I stared back at her in sheer disbelief. It had been six months since I’d last seen her, but I never forgot the faces of our club’s victims.

I took a quick step away from the window, blinked my eyes a few times, and then leaned forward.

The sidewalk was empty.

I hoped that my migraines were causing me to hallucinate. I stumbled to my desk, sat down, and pressed the tips of my fingers against my temples.

The odds of it being her were astronomical.

If it was her, I had more problems than I was ready to admit. The first of which was making sure Cash didn’t see her before I figured out a way to get rid of her.