The Blades hammered the last hour of the trip. The time they had spent fooling around with the motorcycle and the woman had cut into their time. They couldn’t risk getting caught for possession with intent because of a speeding ticket, but they pushed the envelope and ran a bit faster than the prevailing traffic.
They arrived in Yuma fifteen minutes late, despite the push, and didn’t have time to fill their bikes before meeting the Advocates, so they proceeded directly to the south end of the airport. They could fill up on the way out of town.
They were early, but the Advocates were already waiting on them in the wide dusty area behind the airport. Local kids came here to watch airport traffic take off and land and make out where their parents wouldn’t walk in. It was often busy on weekends, but was normally deserted on weekdays. The best part of the location was nobody blinked an eye at seeing people parked and standing around, so they could conduct their business easily but without arousing suspicion. Plus, there was something oddly satisfying about doing a drug deal less than ten miles from the regional DEA office.
The Blacktop Blades pulled to a stop fifty feet from the Devil’s Advocates bikes. As expected, the moment the Indian went silent, the woman stepped off. “Wait here,” Arsen said softly. “I’ll be right over there.”
Arsen waited as the Blades retrieved the molly from their bikes, five 5,000 pill bags, then led the brothers as they started toward the Advocates. The moment they started walking away, the woman began to follow.
“Wait a minute,” Arsen said then turned to the woman, taking her arm and steering taking her back to his bike. “I need you to wait here, okay? I’m not going anywhere, and you’re right by the bike. Can you wait here?”
She didn’t respond, and he held up both his hands in front of her, as if giving a dog a stay command. When he started walking away again, she followed.
“Chet!” When Chet arrived, Arsen turned back to her. “Chet is going to stay with you, okay? He’s not going to hurt you. I need you to stay with him. Do you understand?” Again, she didn’t make a sound or give any gesture of confirmation. When he stepped away this time, she started to follow, but Chet held her arm.
“Nuh-uh. You heard him. Wait here.” When she didn’t try to escape, he relaxed his grip a bit. “What’s wrong with you that you can’t talk?” After a moment of silence, he sighed and settled against Arsen’s bike to wait.
“Who’s that?” Jason Herld, President of the Devil’s Advocates Motorcycle Club, asked Arsen as he nodded at the woman.
“A lost puppy we picked up along the way.”
Jason squinted his eyes. “You know I don’t like surprises.”
Arsen gave a shrug. “What can I say? She wasn’t part of our plan either.”
“You got the stuff?”
Arsen grinned. “Don’t we always? 25K, your standard order.” He waved and Zane brought the bags up. Jason waived his man over with the cash. The two were exchanged before the proxies returned to their over watch positions. He knew the pills would be quickly checked, just as Zane was giving the cash a cursory count. Trust, but verify was the name of the game.
“What’s so important that you needed to see me?” Arsen asked.
“I wanted to find out if you were dealing behind our backs.”
“What?” Arsen pushed out a laugh to keep the worry from his voice. He ran his club straight, but that wasn’t the same as everything being on the up and up. “Why would we do that? This relationship has been good for both of us. Why would I screw that up?”
“Because someone is selling Hearts and Daggers besides us.”
Arsen glanced at Zane, the info man. Zane shook his head. “Our other customers know that southern California is off limits, but I have no real control over the molly once it’s in their hands.”
“You selling it to them cheaper?”
“We charge everyone the same wholesale price. I don’t play favorites. Because you’re my biggest buyer, I give you a head’s up about price increases, but I don’t do special deals. It’s bad for my business. I give you a discount, then everyone wants one. Then I give some other guy a discount, somebody finds out, then everyone wants that one too. You want our stuff, it’s $5 a pop, 5,000 minimum, for everyone. Come clean with me. What the fuck is going on?”
Jason reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny baggy with two tablets in it. “This is what I’m talking about.”
Arsen took the baggy. Pressing the plastic smooth against the tablets, he studied both sides. “These aren’t ours.”
“They have the Heart and Dagger symbol on them.”
Arsen flipped the pills over. “Yeah, but they don’t have our Heart and Dagger. Look at the handle on the blade. It doesn’t have the guard. And look.” He pointed at the tablet. “Our heart is ninety degrees to the blade. These are aligned.”
Jason glanced at his own second, then took a tablet from the fresh drop the Blades had brought and compared the two. “Does that matter?”
“Yeah. The pills are stamped in the production press. To change the orientation of the stamps, we would have to change the stamp in the machine. They only fit one way. Also, look at the color. It’s not quite right, and mottled. See how uniform our blue is?”
“What are you telling me? Someone is counterfeiting your molly?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Arsen agreed. Rage was burning through him, and he let Jason see it, let him see that this was going to be taken care of. He looked at the fake pill again. “Their stamping isn’t as crisp as ours either.” He considered for a moment. “I’d like to take these with me and run some tests on them, but I’m betting these are typical street drugs, made in a kitchen somewhere.”
“Motherfuck,” Jason sneered. “Assholes are counterfeiting illegal drugs now. Is that what the world is coming too? What are you going to do about it?”
“Do you know who’s doing it?” He watched Jason carefully, looking for any sign of deception.
“No.” The man’s gaze stayed level and calm.
“Then nothing,” Arsen said. Jason looked confused, and once Arsen started talking again, plain scared. “You’re going to find out who is supplying these, and then we’ll do something about it.”
Jason shifted on his feet. “They’re undercutting us on price.”
“So? Put the word out that there are imitation Hearts and Daggers. Say they’re cut with rat poison. The easiest way to know our stuff from the fake is the orientation of the heart to the blade.”
“I never noticed that before.”
Arsen bit back the urge to punch the fool in the head. “We do everything for a reason and we don’t change shit up. You know our stuff is pharmaceutical grade. You don’t know what kind of shit might be in this or what the dosage is.”
“They said it’s 150.”
“What they say and what it is are not the same thing. But even if they’re right, 150 is pretty hot. That could kill a small, first time, woman, if she’s susceptible.”
Jason nodded. “We’ll put the word out. If we find out who’s manufacturing, we’ll pass that along too.”
“I’ll test these and let you know what I find.”
“Will you even tell me if they’re as good as yours?” With his eyes narrowed like that, Jason looked more like a rat than normal.
Arsen laughed. “I can tell by looking at them they’re not. I’ll make you a deal. If they’re as good as mine, I’ll give you the next 25k. Let the fuckers try to undercut free. But if they’re not, you don’t try to bite me in the ass over the price of the good stuff.”
“Deal. But if they cut into us too much, it’s going to affect you too.”
“Maybe, but I’m not going to start making shit just to compete on price. What’s the price on this?”
“$15 on the street.”
“What are you selling at?”
“$16 for ten or more, $20 for a single.”
“That’s it? People know our product. They know it’s safe and a consistent 90mg. When they risk their life on some unknown shit,” he raised the hand with the two pills in it, “they might wish they’d spent the nickel.”
“Give me something to work with and I’ll scare the shit out of people.”
“I’ll send the lab results with the next shipment. You’ll see it for yourself.”
Jason smirked. “You’re chemist, not me. Just tell if it makes your dick fall off or something.”
“Or something.”
“What’s the story on chickadee?” he asked, nodding back towards Chet and the woman.
Arsen looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t know. Found her on the side of the road. Somebody has obviously beaten the shit out of her. She can’t, or won’t, talk.”
“A woman who can’t talk? If she gives blow jobs and fetches beer, she’d be perfect. What are you going to do with her?”
“I was going to turn over to the cops, but when I tried to leave her at a gas station where the cops could pick her up, she went nuts.”
“Want us to take her off your hands?”
Arsen gritted his teeth. He didn’t know why, but Jason’s sneering attitude about the woman got under his skin. If he let her go with him, she was probably in for another rough ride. “No. We’ll find her a good home.”
“Find a good home for your cock you mean.”
“We done here?” Arsen asked, keeping his tone neutral. “We’ve still got a long ride ahead of us.”
“Yeah, we’re done. Let me know if this fake shit makes you grow two heads or something.”
Arsen nodded. “Count on it. You find the source and we’ll take care of it. Making molly is one thing, but stamping it with the Heart and Dagger? That’s something else.”
“Yeah. That’s like wearing an Advocates patch when you’re not an Advocate. We find out and you’re going to have a real bad day.”
Arsen dropped the two fake tablets back into the little bag and folded it into his pocket. “You got that shit right.”
The two men shook and turned, their brothers forming up on their Presidents as each group walked back to their leaning bikes. “Hey!” Jason called, causing the Blades to turn. “You sure you don’t want to leave her with us?”
Arsen gave him a dismissive wave and a smile, a smile that disappeared as soon as his back was turned. “Prick,” he muttered just loud enough for Zane to hear.
“It would solve out problem,” he pointed out.
“Not in the way I want it solved. She give you any trouble?” he asked Chet.
“She started to follow again, but once I stopped her, she just stood and watched.”
Arsen shook his head. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked her, expecting no answer and getting none.
“Let’s get something to eat, gas the bikes, then get the fuck out of here,” Zane said, and Arsen found himself agreeing. He divvied up the cash, mounted, and felt the woman slide into place behind him even before the Indian rumbled to life.