Cholo

I’d stopped in the shop on my way to the remodel project in La Jolla. As always, Pee Bee and Crip were there, solving the world’s problems one beer at a time.

They stood at the far end of the shop by the workbench. I switched off my bike and coasted through the empty shop, rolling to a stop directly in front of them.

“What’s shakin’, motherfucker?” Pee Bee asked as I climbed off the bike.

I pulled my hat down tight and shrugged. “Just taking care of business before I get to work. What are you two fuckers up to?”

“Waiting for 10:00 to roll around so we can have a beer without feeling like a couple of alcoholics,” Pee Bee said.

“Couple hours of boredom first, huh?” I pulled the envelope from my back pocket and handed it to Crip. “Here.”

“What’s this? Early Christmas card?”

“$1,200. From the night we brought the girls in here. For the violation of the bylaws. Been meaning to get by here and pay it, but I’ve just been busy.”

He pursed his lips, took a long breath through his nose, and shook his head. “Take it back. I just wanted to make a point in front of the fellas. What you did was against the bylaws, but it wasn’t wrong.”

“Rules are rules,” I said. “I broke ‘em, and I demanded the others break ‘em, too. Keep it.”

“Let’s get one thing straight.” He looked at each of us. “I catch either of you two without your colors, I’ll have your respective asses. That night? It was necessary. For the sake of protecting the club. Personally, I’d have done exactly what you did.”

He handed me the envelope. “Put it in your pocket.”

“Appreciate ya,” I said.

He gave a slight nod. “How’s she doing?”

“Who?”

“The fucking girl you went to get. Alejandra, or whatever her name was.”

“Alexandra.”

“Whatever. Alexandra. How’s she doing?”

“Good.”

“Glad to hear it. She looked like hammered shit the night she was here, that’s for sure. Felt sorry for all those girls. Cocksuckers that did it got what they had coming to ‘em, that’s for sure.”

“Didn’t plan that, either,” I said. “Tried to just take her and go, but the prick threatened to kill my entire family. After I shot him, there wasn’t much else to do but kill the rest of those pricks.”

“Fuckers needed killin’.” The veins on his tattooed neck bulged. “Sons-of-bitches raping little girls.”

I nodded in agreement. The thought of it angered me to no end.

Pee Bee nodded his head toward the open garage door. “Got company.”

“Who the fuck is that?” Crip said through his teeth. “Either of you two know this bitch?”

I turned around and upon seeing her, a sigh shot from my lungs. Lucy’s car was parked in front of the door, and Lucy, still dressed in her scrubs, was taking long-legged strides right toward us.

“It’s Alexandra’s mom,” I said. “Name’s Lucy.”

“Looks like Lucy’s mad as fuck,” Crip said.

Before I had time to do anything, she was in front of me, waving her arms and screaming.

“Seriously, Adam?” she seethed. “Seriously? My daughter?”

I tried the innocent approach, but considering her level of anger, doubted it would work. “What are you talking about?”

She glared at me through narrow eyes. “You took my daughter to dinner at your mother’s house? Explain to me what you were thinking.”

“I went by to check on her, and we were both hungry. Settle down.” I motioned toward the door. “We can go outside and talk.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she snapped. “They can hear what I’ve got to say. Maybe they ought to hear it.”

“Look. We went to eat. That’s it. Nothing happened.”

“Her eyes light up when she talks about you, Adam.” Her gaze fell to the floor, and she shook her head. When she looked up, she was crying. “She’s a child. You’re not. Go fuck with someone your own age.”

I would have never expected her to be so upset over my having taken Alexandra to dinner, but I wasn’t about to let the age comment go without me rebutting it.

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “She’s not a child. She’s 21. I’m 31. There’s 10 years between us. That’s it. Ten. If she wants to--”

“So, this isn’t innocent, is it? I can’t believe you,” she huffed.

“It isn’t anything. Come outside, and we can--”

She shook her head. “Stay away from her. Leave her alone. She needs to be comforted, not fondled by some tattooed musclehead that’s in a biker gang.”

“It’s a club,” Crip said with a low laugh. “There’s a difference.”

God damn it, Crip.

She glared at Crip, and then at Pee Bee. Her angry eyes shot to me. “Leave her alone. I mean it.”

She spun around and stomped toward her car.

Half rattled and half pissed by her visit, I turned to face Crip and Pee Bee. “God damn. Didn’t see that coming.”

“So, what the fuck happened?” Crip asked. “You throw the daughter some cock?”

“Fuck no,” I said. “Just like I said. Went by to check on her, and we went to dinner.”

His eyebrows raised. “At your mom’s place?”

“She offered, and it was a free meal. Why not?”

He shrugged. “Guess there’s no harm in it.”

The sound of screeching tires echoed through the shop. Pee Bee chuckled, and nodded toward the door. “See that?”

“See what?” Crip and I said at the same time.

“As she was peeling out of here, your buddy pulled in.” Pee Bee said.

Crip craned his neck toward the open door. “What buddy?”

“That detective.”

“Oh fuck,” Crip said. “Wonder what that fucker wants.”

“What detective?” I asked.

Crip nodded toward the door. “That one.”

I turned around. The detective that arrested Crip on the disappearance of Whip’s brother was sauntering toward us with a shitty grin on his face.

“Let me do the talking,” Crip whispered.

Dressed in khakis and a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to the middle of his forearms, the detective walked within ten feet of us and stopped.

He nodded at Crip and then Pee Bee. “Navarro. Peanut Butter.”

He looked me over, and then fixed his eyes on Crip.

“Detective,” Crip said dryly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well.” He paused and gazed around the shop. After taking in all there was to see, he looked at Crip. “I was headed to the donut shop for my morning routine, and I got to thinking about a case that slid across my desk. A gang case. I dabble in those. You knew that, right?”

“Rumor has it,” Crip said.

“Well. Over the last month, half a dozen girls have been abducted from one 7-Eleven here in our great city. Hell, there might have been more, but only six got reported. We didn’t have many clues to go off of, other than the color of an old Ford truck, and a plate number. Plate was stolen off a late model Toyota Prius, so that didn’t pan out. Anyway--”

“We don’t abduct girls, detective,” Crip said, interrupting him mid-sentence. “They come willingly. Bitches love bikers. You can write that on your little notepad.”

The cop cocked an eyebrow and gave Crip a one-eyed glare.

“See any girls in here, detective?” Crip asked.

“Can’t say that I do, Navarro. Hear me out, though.”

Crip nodded. “I’d be delighted.”

“So, with nothing to go on, we get nowhere with these disappearances. Six girls, ranging in age from 14-20, all missing from one fucking 7-Eleven. The owner adds security cameras, we add a patrol to the area, but we come up empty-handed.”

“Sounds like bad cop work,” Crip said sarcastically.

Through the officer’s entire speech, I remained stone-faced, nervous about what he knew, and what he thought he knew.

“Wait. It gets better,” the detective said. “Magically, they all surfaced.”

“Big hoax?” Crip asked.

“One might think,” the detective said flatly. “But then there was something that connected to it. Loosely, but a connection, nonetheless.”

Crip crossed his arms and gasped like a scared girl. “The hell you say?”

The detective nodded. “Place over on 14^th. Four of Calle 18’s boys were gunned down in a shitty little dope house. We got to it long afterward, and although there wasn’t any dope or money left on the scene, there were four dead vatos and some other interesting effects.”

Fuck.

“Do tell,” Crip said.

“Room in the back had a five-gallon bucket full of piss and shit, a couple hundred oatmeal bar wrappers, blood-stained sheets, a few fistfuls of hair, and some other shit that leads me to believe that the deceased were keeping girls in that room. Sad thing was I couldn’t ask the vatos, because they’d all died from lead poisoning.”

Double fuck.

“Somewhere in that sad exchange, you lost me, detective. What brings you to darken my door?” Crip asked.

The detective rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “As you might guess, the neighbors in those neighborhoods are all blind and deaf when it comes to giving testimony against Calle 18. There was a little boy who lived across the street that was fond of lollipops, though.”

“And we both know you’ve got a pocket full of those, don’t we?” Crip snapped back.

He grinned a false grin and nodded. “I’ve got one less after this morning.”

“Kid give you a handjob for that, detective?”

“No. But he gave me some information.”

“I can’t wait to hear it.”

I didn’t want to hear it. By my guess, he had my tag number, or the tag numbers of one or more of the fellas. The thought of it made me sick.

“Kid said the girls were all hauled out on the backs of Harleys. More than a dozen, from what he said. In the middle of the night.”

“More than a dozen?” Crip’s brow wrinkled. “Sounds like the work of an MC, detective. Were they wearing kuttes? Any of them sporting colors? Maybe I can point you to their clubhouse.”

“No. As fate would have it, they weren’t wearing their colors,” he said.

“Sounds like a loose-knit bunch, detective,” Crip said. “Here at the Filthy Fuckers MC, we have a strict policy. If one of the fellas is on their bike, they’ve got to wear their colors. It’s a pride thing. And we’re a mighty prideful bunch. Any MC in SoCal has the same policy, if that helps. My guess is it’s the work of vigilantes. Probably some do-gooder Christian group.”

“Thanks for the tip, Navarro. I’ll stake out the local churches and look for Harleys.”

“Anything else?” Crip asked.

He folded his arms in front of his chest and shook his head. “Calle 18 doesn’t give a fuck about the deceased, Navarro. Hell, they can replace ‘em in ten minutes with a few more volunteers from Tijuana. Rumor on the street, however, is that they aren’t too fucking happy about the missing dope and money, though.”

Crip shrugged. “Don’t imagine they are.”

“My concern isn’t so much with the deceased, it’s with what might happen up the Calle 18 food chain,” the detective said. “This could very possibly start a war.”

Crip cocked an eyebrow. “With the Christians?”

“With whoever took the fucking money, Navarro.”

“I’ll let you know if I see any bikers spending money frivolously,” Crip said.

The detective looked at me, and then at Crip. “You do that.”

“Sure will, detective. Now, if you don’t mind, we’ve got to get busy wreaking havoc on the city.”

“I’ll let myself out.”

He turned around and walked to his car, and then left.

“Holy shit,” I said. “My asshole is tighter than a nun’s twat.”

Crip looked at Pee Bee, and then at me. “You didn’t mention any money.”

“We didn’t take any,” I said. “Or any dope. Left it right there where it was.”

“Who was the last one out of the house?” Crip asked.

“Smoke,” I said. “I think.”

“No,” Pee Bee said. “He was outside with me.”

“Not sure who it was,” I said. “Not really.”

“How much dope, and how much money are we talking?”

“From what was out in the open, I’d say three kilos of smack, and fifty grand. Maybe more.”

He looked at Pee Bee.

“We talked about it, Boss. Decided taking it wasn’t worth it. With them being Calle 18, and all, the risk was too big. I didn’t count it, but it was a good-sized pile. Could have been a hundred grand for all I know.”

“Make a list of who was there, and who you’re absolutely fucking positive was outside when the last of the fellas came out,” Crip said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

The thought of someone taking the money was difficult for me to accept.

Going to prison for murdering the four men, however, was incomprehensible.