Damien
When I get back to the clubhouse, I ditch the car in the parking lot and charge through the front door.
“Ogre!” I roar. “Gunner! Ogre! Gunner!”
I pace into the dormitory section, kicking open the doors, but there’s nobody in there but a bunch of club girls.
“Where is Gunner?” I ask. “Where is Ogre?”
Kourtney, or Spider-Girl as some of the men call her ’cause of her tattoos, starts her long-winded shit. She always does this, drags out everything when she’s talking to me so it takes twice as long. I’m not in the mood for it today. She has this way of cocking her head and putting her hands on her hips and thrusting her chest out like I’m just goin’ to decide I don’t want the woman I love and want her instead.
She starts on, but I interrupt her, “Tell it quick.”
She pouts, and then says, “I don’t know. There was a problem with one of the girls, Angel, something to do with one of the men—but we were out at the time and we don’t know much more. One of the pledges said Gunner and Angel left, looking for the man, but we don’t know more.”
“What sort of problem?”
“We don’t know,” Kourtney says.
“Well, where have they gone?”
“We don’t know that, either.”
“Goddamn, who is this man? Which one?”
“We’re not sure.”
I shake my head, and then go into the bar section. Two pledges are shooting pool, but otherwise the place is empty. Jobs, maybe, or just at home with their families, them which have got families.
“Where is Gunner?” I ask the pledges.
The mood I’m in, eager to get the hell out of here, they both look exactly the same. Tall, freckled, young, even if I know they must look different; all I see right now is Alice and Callie and my mission.
“Don’t know, Boss,” one of them says.
“What happened with the girl—Angel?”
“Don’t know, Boss.”
“Jesus Christ. Then who is this other man?”
“Don’t know, Boss. We was out at the time, and when we got back Kourtney said Angel had told her about some guy trying to hurt her, but quick because Gunner was leading her out of the club, and slurred because she was really drugged up, on coke and something else, something the man gave her, I guess, so she couldn’t say who exactly. She was the only one in here, the way she told it to Kourtney, and then Gunner got back, and they went looking for the man. Maybe Angel sobered up a little and told him who the man is. Don’t know.”
“Fuck’s sake.”
I take out my cell and dial Gunner, but it goes to voicemail right away. Dead.
“Fuck’s sake!” I snap, snatching the kid’s pool cue and pounding the table with it, over and over, until the cue is naught more than a jagged piece of shrapnel. My toothpicks fly from my pocket and scatter across the floor. Absurdly, I think about collecting them for a second, but then I decide that calming down ain’t what I need right now. This anger is good.
I dial some of the other guys, those that might be with Gunner, but all of them tell me the same thing: they don’t know anything about this and they don’t know where Gunner or Ogre is.
“Alright, you two,” I say to the pledges. They’ve moved around to the other side of the pool table, maybe afraid I’m going to start in on them next. “I want you out ridin’ and lookin’ for Gunner and Ogre. Make Ogre your priority, but I’ve got a fuckin’ feeling this guy who bothered Angel is Ogre.” Has to be. Otherwise, there’s more than one weirdo in my club. “Call me when you see either of them.”
“Yes, Boss.”
They leave at once. I go into the dormitory section.
Kourtney puts her hands on her hips, tilts her head, even now inviting me to do something. It makes me sick, really sick, right down in my stomach. I’ve never thought like this before, but now I have a kid, a family, and the idea of getting down and dirty with one of these girls suddenly seems disgusting, even more than off-putting, which it has already seemed for over a year now. Maybe it’s always been that way and now I’m just seeing it.
“If Gunner or Ogre comes by here, call me straightaway. In fact, I want one of you looking out the front window at all times, ready to call me. Whoever calls me with solid news of Gunner or Ogre gets five grand.” I raise my voice so the whole dormitory can hear me, and repeat the statement.
The hallway fills with women.
Then I go into the bar, find the lockbox where we keep the keys to the spare bikes, and take a key out into the parking lot.
I mount up and ride into town, squeezing the throttle too hard, kicking the gear shifter too hard, riding too fast on these icy roads. I cruise around the town, my headlamps on full blast, going down alleyways, past nightclubs, in the deep corners and dark places, but there’s no one but a few poor homeless bastards and the occasional person out walking their dog. It’s a cold winter evening, far too cold to be out here like this, unless you got the devil of a mission to complete and no other choice. I stop every so often and check my cellphone.
For about three hours, I roam, until ice settles inside of me and my teeth begin to chatter. But chattering teeth isn’t the sort of thing that’s going to stop me from looking for my daughter. I swear to God, I wouldn’t stop all night if my cellphone didn’t start ringing.
I pull up by the side of a suburban road where a few of the men live with their families and pick up.
“Gunner,” I say, though it’s more of a growl. I want to reach through the phone and smack the man across the fucking jaw.
“Boss,” he says. “One of the club girls said you were looking for me. It was Kourtney; she seemed pretty eager for you to know it was her especially—”
“Yeah, I was lookin’ for you. Are you at the club?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright. I’ll see you soon, ten minutes, tops. Answer me this, though. Was Ogre the one that bothered that girl?”
“Yes, Boss.”
“Fuckin’ thought so. Right, give Kourtney five K from petty cash. I’ll be back soon.”
I hang up, rev the engine, and make my way back toward the club.
So Gunner has Ogre then, I think, which means either that Alice is at the club, or that I can beat Ogre to a pulp until he tells me where she is. I feel excitement begin to swell in my chest. I try and trample it, try and tell myself that I am jumping the gun, but if Ogre’s location is secure, then I am in a massively better position than I was even a few minutes ago.
Anger still grips me, but even so, the world does not seem so bleak as it has since this afternoon—
This afternoon, goddamn. This afternoon, and I have discovered I have a daughter, that Ogre was the one who killed Tinhorn and his men, that Ogre has kidnapped my daughter.
I just want this mad day to end, to hold my daughter for the first time, to be able to call up Callie and tell her that everything is okay.
With a fresh shock, I realize that all I really want now is to give this family thing a try. Even if stuff like that ain’t built for men like me.