Mark
“So, I’ve got some good news finally,” I said to Alan when he picked up the phone on the other side of the glass.
“Let me guess. You finally got that bitch pregnant,” he said. “Jesus, boy, it’s written all over your face. I hope you’re not walking around like that. Everybody can probably read that shit.”
“Yes, Alan, I got Nora pregnant. You know, she has a name. She’s not just that bitch, okay?”
He laughed. “Damn, and she’s got you wrapped around her finger, too, huh? Must be one hell of a lay, man.” He licked his dirty old lips with his fat old tongue.
“Look, that’s not what I’m here to talk about,” I told him. “I came in to let you know that I’m making progress on the kid front.”
“Do you know that it’s a boy yet?” he asked gruffly. How was it so difficult for him to congratulate me and tell me that I was finally doing something right for a change? Why was that so fucking hard?
“No, Pop, I don’t know if it’s a boy yet,” I admitted.
He seemed to think for a moment. Then, “That’s fine. You can still use the news that she’s pregnant to rally the guys together. You take care of that mess in New Hampshire yet?”
“Funny you should mention rallying the guys around Nora and the baby,” I mentioned. “Ozzy and I are actually working on getting the guys prepped for the ride.”
“The ride?”
“Yeah, we’re going down to put the fear of God in those boys in New Hampshire. You know who it is?”
“Yeah, ‘cause I still get all the news in here,” he mocked me. “Who is it?”
“The Asphalt Demons,” I told him.
“No way. Not the Demons. Who told you it was the Demons?” he asked, lowering his voice so the guards couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Ryan,” I replied.
“The mule? And you believe him? Boy, did he actually say it was them?” he asked me.
I shook my head and looked down. “No, he didn’t.” My voice hardened. Ryan had only said that it was the same group of guys who’d stuck Alan behind bars. He didn’t tell me explicitly that it was the Demons. I had assumed he knew what he was talking about.
“I don’t have to tell you not to trust him,” Alan said. “You know better.”
“Yeah, I do.” On one hand, I did feel like an idiot for letting that jackass convince me it was the Asphalt Demons, the same assholes who put Alan behind bars by setting him up with their little fight. At the time, I had felt like Ryan was somebody I could trust. In a single word – mule – Alan had given me some perspective.
“You’re slipping,” Alan said. “You need to focus, boy. You need to stop letting your feelings for this girl and for your unborn child – who might not even be a boy – cloud your judgment.”
I took a deep breath to center myself against his words. “I agree. I know what I need to do,” I said.
“I know you do. Handle your shit, or else I will start calling shots from here,” Alan threatened. “You don’t want me to do that, boy.”
“Alright. I’m on it,” I told him. I hung up the phone and got up to leave. I left him sitting there, watching me leave. I had work to do.
# # #
I needed to track Ryan down and get any information he might have out of him. He could have been throwing me off the trail by telling me it was the Demons. He might not have had any real information at all, or he might have known something he had been trying to hide. Either way, it was worth the visit.
I knew the right person for the job, too. Since Ozzy and I had failed at getting any real information out of Ryan, I figured I’d enlist the help of someone closer to him, someone who might have had an advantage in getting him to open up. I drove back to the clubhouse and called Nora to come in. I didn’t want to discuss business at the apartment.
“This feels pretty official,” she said as she sat down across the desk from me.
Inviting her into the office had been a good idea, I figured. It seemed to get everyone’s attention. Of course, she was recognized as my woman by everyone at the clubhouse when she came in. Meeting with her in the office let everyone know she had an important place with the MC.
“Well, I have a job for you,” I told her.
“A job,” she repeated. “You mean, you need me to do something for the MC?”
“That’s right,” I answered, nodding.
“So there’s a task I can perform for you that’s not sexual.” A cunning little smile lifted the corners of her lips.
“Don’t get cocky over there. This doesn’t change our arrangement,” I told her. “Speaking of which, we have to be careful to take your current situation into consideration while we’re planning this move I need you to make.”
“Oh, this is serious,” she remarked, and her expression straightened up. There was no more playing around.
“Could be very serious,” I warned her.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked, a mixture of worry and curiosity playing out across her face.
“I need you to pay Ryan a visit,” I said.
“Whoa, what? No, I’m done with him,” she protested, shaking her head emphatically.
“I know, and I understand that,” I explained, “but you’re also the only person who can get through to him for me. Ozzy and I have tried to get information out of him but it hasn’t worked.”
“Information about what?”
“About the guys who are trying to interfere with our operations in New Hampshire and Vermont,” I said, reminding her.
“I thought you knew who that was.” She seemed to be avoiding accepting the job. I understood her reluctance to go talk to Ryan, but I wasn’t giving up.
“I thought so, too,” I admitted to her. “But I talked to Alan earlier today, and he seems to think Ryan was pulling my leg.”
“I wouldn’t imagine Ryan would know a whole lot about that sort of thing unless he was involved,” she mused.
“Exactly. Now you see why I need to know what information he has. He said he heard it on the street, but I don’t buy it. Ryan might sell to some of these guys, so he might know a little something about what they’re up to,” I tried to convince her.
She nodded. “I can get down with that,” she said. “I mean, he never talked to me much about his work, so I don’t really know who else he was selling to. I knew about you guys because I’d tag along with him. Other than that, I was kept out of the loop.”
“So you’ll do it?” I asked.
She leaned forward and stared into my face with thoughtful eyes. She thought about it for a few moments.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I could use a little revenge for being sold like a piece of property.”
I laughed. “Is it really that bad? I thought we had a good thing going.”
“Oh no, I don’t mean like that. Things are much better this way, but still, that shit was insulting. He deserves to be screwed over.”
“Now the question is, how do we keep you safe?”
“Very true,” she agreed. “I’ve never known Ryan to get violent, but more than ever, I need to be careful now.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t send her into a potentially dangerous situation with precious cargo unless I had a good team watching her back. We had a guy watching the hotel Ryan was staying in already. It wouldn’t take much to double up on the watch.
“So how do we do this? Am I going in wearing a wire? Is someone going to sit back and watch me? I can’t walk in with someone on my arm claiming they’re my bodyguard or whatever.”
I laughed at the image in my head of Nora letting one of our guys walk her into Ryan’s hotel room and trying to convince him that the dude was her personal bodyguard or assistant. There was no way Ryan would have simply sat back and ignored the guy’s presence, but it was a pretty entertaining thought.
“No, you can’t walk in with someone. That’ll never work,” I told her. “I’ll work your security out with Ozzy. We’ll make sure you have protection. We already have someone watching his hotel, so we know where he is, and we know he’s still in town. If you go ahead and set up a time to meet up, you should be able to do it before he has to head back.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I guess I can do that.”
I could tell she was nervous about it, so I urged her a little more. “If you wait until the next time he’s in town, you’ll be too far along to do this. You should be showing by then, and he’ll know the baby is ours. I know it’s scary and I’m asking a lot, but right now is probably the best time to do it. Time is not on our side with this.”
She nodded. “I’ll go ahead and give him a call,” she said. “I’ll set up a time for us to meet up and let you know.”
“You can call him right here if you want,” I told her. “I’ll step out of the office and let you have a little privacy.”
“Sounds good,” she said, fishing her phone out already. “But how do I do this?”
“Call him. Tell him you miss him or something, and tell him you need to talk to him about the deal he made with me for you,” I recommended. “He’ll surely want to talk to you then.”
“Yeah, probably. Especially if he thinks there’s a chance of getting me back,” she thought aloud.
“Exactly.” It pained me to encourage her to trick him with thoughts of getting back together, but what needed to be done, needed to be done. There wasn’t much getting around that fact.
I got up and left the office to give her space to use the phone in silence. The sooner she called him, the better. We couldn’t afford to let him get away without taking this chance.
I walked to the bar and waved Ed over without a word. He handed me a beer and went back to helping the other people hanging out in the clubhouse, knowing I wasn’t in the mood to talk. It must have been obvious on my face that I was waiting to hear back from Nora.
It killed me not to know what was going on behind the office door, not to know what was being said. But I could tell that she was uncomfortable calling him in front of me. And not knowing was preferable to having to sit in there and listen to whatever she pulled out to convince him to meet with her. I didn’t want to know. In fact, the beer was intended to keep me from thinking about it too much.
“I did it,” her voice came from behind me a few minutes later. I turned around and saw her standing in the open doorway. She managed to smile when I looked at her, even though in her eyes, I could see she wasn’t thrilled about having talked to him.
“Did you two decide on a time to meet up and everything?” I took a long drink from my bottle.
“We did,” she said and nodded.
I pushed the rest of my bottle away and got up to discuss the details with her in the office.