Wraith
Page 2
Outside, I find Hammer sitting on his Harley.
“Was it him?” he asks.
“Yeah, the head was cut clean off.”
“No shit?” asks Hammer.
“No shit. Cops think it was gang-related.”
Hammer scoffs. “First Karen, now Declan. You seeing a pattern here, Darius?”
“My thoughts exactly. You think I’m next or you?”
Hammer shrugs. “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”
I’m VP in the Harbingers of Death MC, and Hammer is the President. If someone is after us, there’s no way they’re going to get close enough to hurt us. We’ve been around for a long time and are two of the most vicious men you’ll ever meet. Fuck with us, and we’ll end you.
WRAITH
I have this ability to blend in, to be part of the scenery or not to be seen at all. The members of the MC walk straight past me, not even noticing me. I follow them with my eyes, and when they’ve left the building, I slowly walk to the entrance and watch as they walk across the street. The whole time the VP is animated, talking with his hands but the President, he’s calm. He’s the one I’ll need to watch.
They enter a bar further down the street. I would have thought it was too upper class for them, but I guess a beer is a beer no matter where you go. I push through the double doors and out into the cold. With them both being gone from their clubhouse, now is the time to do a bit of snooping. I walk around the block, get in the cheap car I’ve purchased, and drive to the clubhouse. Well, near it. I change into jeans, a black t-shirt, and an army green jacket and walk past. It’s not lunchtime yet, so there’s not a lot of people about.
Taking a deep breath, I let it out slowly to calm my nerves, turn around and walk into the bar area. A few of the bikers stop their conversations and eye me as I go straight to the bar.
“What’ll it be?” asks the barmaid. Their name, Harbingers of Death, is written across the black tank top that’s three sizes too small for her boobs. If it weren’t for her red bra, she’d be flashing her goods to the entire bar. Maybe that’s the point—show a little to get a little—her tip jar looks healthy.
“Whiskey, neat.”
“Haven’t seen you around here before.” I nod as she pours my drink. “You from around here?”
“How much?” I ask.
A man sidles up beside me and places his elbows on the bar. “That depends. First one is free if you can answer a simple question.” He smirks at me and winks at the barmaid.
“Man, I’ve had a shitty week. I just want a drink, in private, and then I want to leave. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Well, you see you picked our bar to come into, so them’s the rules.”
I nod, sigh, and fix him with a stare. “What’s the question?”
“Are you a cop?”
“What? No! Are you for real?”
“We can never be too careful.” He smiles and nods at someone behind me.
“I’m no cop. I just want a drink or two or twenty, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Shitty week?” he asks.
“Yeah, like I told you,” I reply.
“Tell me about it.”
“Man, no offense, but I don’t know you, and I’m not the sharing and caring type of guy.”
From behind me a voice booms. “We don’t know you, motherfucker, and this is a club bar. Harbingers of Death own this place, so answer the fucking question or get the fuck out.”
Turning slowly, the voice belongs to a man who must be six foot six and built like a tank. I’m six foot four, but this guy’s got more bulk on than me. I’m thinking he knows how to bar room brawl but hasn’t been trained in anything else. I could take him, but if he hit me hard enough, I’d wake up next week.
“My ‘ole lady has been fucking the next-door neighbor, and my kid, my girl, has disappeared. That fucking slut didn’t even notice she was missing.”
I’ve discovered over the years, that the way to make people believe you is not to steer too far from the truth. The brawler eyes me and smiles. The guy next to me slaps me on the shoulder and pushes the whiskey toward me.
“Drink up! Women are all whores!” yells the first guy.
The bar erupts into laughter, and I quickly swallow the burning liquid.
“Another,” I say, pointing at my empty glass.
“The names, Tick.” He holds out his hand, and I grasp it in mine.
“Vince.”
“Give us the bottle, Candy. My new friend here and I are gonna get shit-faced.”
“Pay for the bottle, and it’s yours and your new friend’s,” replies Candy with attitude.
“Don’t be a bitch,” snarls Tick.
“It’s my ass that Ham will take it out of if the bar is short on bottles. So pay for it or leave it!” I throw some notes at her, and she nods. “That’s more like it.”
Tick sneers at Candy, and she winks at him and walks away.
“Fucking women,” he grumbles as he swipes the bottle and walks toward a booth.
I pick up my glass and follow Tick. He flops into the booth, pours himself a drink, and smiles at me.
“Much appreciated,” Tick says as he holds up his glass.
I pour myself a drink. “Anytime. How long have you been a member?”
“My dad was in, his before him.” Tick chuckles and continues, “… back in the day when it was just a club. Just a place to hang out. The good ‘ole days.” Tick throws back his drink and refills his glass.
“So you grandfathered in?”
Tick laughs loud and long. “Nah, had to do my time as a prospect but there was never any other life for me. My old man made sure of that.”
“Yeah, they can.”
“Your woman, you settle the score with her?”
I shake my head. “Not worth it.”
“Your kid?”
“Ann. I’ve been following up on leads but…”
“Yeah, they get to an age, and they don’t need us anymore. I’m sure she’ll turn up.”
“I know she will. Even if I have to skin whoever took her.”
Tick sits back, looking confused. “She was taken?”
Fuck. I’ve said too much.
I shrug. “I’d like to think so. I’d like to think she wouldn’t have just fucking left without so much as a note.”
Tick nods. “Yeah, I get that.”
“She was hanging out with the wrong crowd. People who were only trying to drive a wedge between her and me, well, her family. Ann trusted them, and they betrayed her.”
“Sounds like she was lost to you a long time ago.”
I nod, and for a while, neither of us speak. We drink in silence. Tick drinks three for every one of mine. Mind you, I’m trying to be smart and not get shit-faced.
Tick refills his glass. “Where were you? Why weren’t you at home with your girl?”
The closer to the truth, the better. “I was in the army. Deployed overseas. I guess I was away more than I was home.”
Well, a kind of truth. Similar, but not the same. I was overseas, but not military, CIA, Black Ops. I was sent to places and did things that would make a normal person’s hair curl and turn white. It gives you a taste for certain things, but it made me very good at my job.
“Fucking government!” sneers Tick.
“Yeah,” I agree.
We each have another drink, and I stand as Tick pours himself the final round.
“Where you g-going?” Tick slurs.
“Need cash, need to find a job.”
“You m-mind getting your hands dirty?”
“I don’t mind hard work,” I reply.
Tick laughs. “Not that k-kind of hard work. It’s d-dirty, though.”
I cock an eyebrow and sit back down. “What do you mean?”
“Tick! Shut your drunken mouth!” yells the six-foot-six behemoth from three booths away.
Tick gives him the finger and grins. “Fucking make me, you ugly s-son of q b-bitch!”
“You ain’t one of us. We don’t need someone like you,” the man fires back.
“Someone like me?”
“Yeah. Like I said, you ain’t one of us.”
“Who ain’t one of us?”
I turn and come face to face with Hammer, their fucking President. I’ve stayed too long.
“I’m leaving,” I state.
Hammer gives the barest shake of his head, and two men block the door, everyone in the bar goes quiet.
“You looking for work?” asks Hammer as he drags a chair toward the booth.
“Look, man, I was just shooting the shit with Tick here, having a bad fucking day, hell of a month. I’m on the bare bones of my ass.”
Hammer gestures for me to sit down, and I do. He then sits, staring at me intently.
“Out of all the bars in this town and you chose to come here?” Hammer looks around the bar, one eyebrow cocked up.
“It was the first bar I found.”
“Really? The first bar you found, and it’s an MC bar?” Hamm pauses, then continues, “I call bullshit.”
The hairs on the back of my neck rise. There’s too many of them to get out clean. I nod, my mind is scrambling for a reasonable explanation.
“I knew it was an MC bar. I knew the Harbingers of Death owned this place. I need a job where no one asks too many questions, a place where my past… indiscretions won’t come into play.”
Hammer cocks his head to the side and smiles big. “Indiscretions?” he asks. A smile tugs at his lips.
“I was dishonorably discharged. It makes it hard to get a job. I guess I figured you’d have jobs going for someone like me.”
Hammer stands, the men at the door go back to whatever it was they were doing, and the conversations around the room go back to normal.
“We ain’t hiring,” Hammer states as he walks away.
“I have a particular skill set.”
Hammer stops and looks back at me. “Don’t come back here again.” I nod at Tick and head for the door. As I’m about to walk through it, Hammer says, “Wait.”
I stand stock-still, not sure whether to bolt or do as he says. I turn, and the whole bar is looking at me. Hammer clicks his fingers at Candy, who hands him a pen and paper.
“Write your name and a number where we can contact you.”
I do as he says. Hammer nods at me, and I keep walking. I don’t go back to the car—it’s not safe. The hairs on the back of my neck are still raised, which means I’m either being followed, I’m in danger, or my paranoid delusions are in full swing. Either way, it’s kept me alive for a long time, so I listen to it.
HAMMER
“Rat!” I yell, and he comes scurrying toward me.
“Yes, Ham?”
“Follow him. Tell me where he goes, who he speaks to.” Rat is skinny with beady eyes that dart around the room. The man knows the underside of this world. Rat has survived a junky mother and an abusive alcoholic father. “And Rat?”
“Y-yes?”
“Don’t get caught.”
“Yes, Ham.”
Rat hands me his cut and goes outside.
“You think the guys a plant?” asks Darius.
I shrug. “We’ve lost two, and then this guy turns up? Not sure, but it pays to be safe. We follow him. If he’s clean and he does indeed have a particular skill, set we’ll see how far he’s willing to go. If we can use him, we will. If not, he means nothing to us, and we dispose of people who are of no use to us.”
“Harbingers of Death forever.”
“A-fucking-men, brother.”
I slap him on the back, point at Candy, and head for the back room. Like the good little employee she is, she follows. I wait just inside the door. When she enters, I close and lock it.
“Tell me.”
“Fucking Tick! That bastard tried to get a bottle for free, and he’s been talking to that guy all afternoon.”
I walk toward her, not smiling as I unbuckle my belt. Candy backs away until she hits the desk.
“I’ll deal with Tick.”
I reach down, grab her ass, and pick her up, placing her on the desk.
“This isn’t part of the deal.”
“I’m changing the deal.”
Reaching under her skirt, I pull down her panties and push her, so she’s laying on the desk, legs dangling over.
“I’m just here to serve drinks, keep the peace, and make sure no one steals from you. That’s what you said.”
I spread her legs and push down my jeans.
“What I said was, ‘you’re here to serve.’ And right now you’re going to service me.”
I spit on my hand, rub it over my erect cock, and place it at her entrance. Candy’s been around the club long enough to know the deal. Candy is looking at me wide-eyed.
“What?” I ask, annoyed.
“I don’t do bareback.”
“You got condoms?”
Candy nods. “In my bag.”
“Get them, then.”
I move out of her way as she heads for the locked door and opens it, then I slam it shut again.
“You better come back or send someone else in, cause my dick is getting dipped. Get me?”
Candy nods as I let her leave the room.
CANDY
Fucking bikers! Fucking Hammer!
I am not a whore. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with earning a living, but that’s just not the way I choose to do things. I only took this motherfucking job because Hammer said I’d get to run the bar the way I wanted to, and this is not how I want to run it.
I pick up my bag as one of the club whores and part-time bar wench leans over the bar and grabs my arm.
“You okay, Candy?”
“Hey, Mindy. Yeah, just got something I need to do.”
“You look pissed,” Mindy states as she lets go of my arm.
I glance at the closed door and back at her.
“Mindy, you’ve been around the guys for a while, yeah?”
“Yeah, babe, going on three years.”
Fuck me, three years of fucking whoever they tell you to fuck, but she must like it, right?
“Ahh, Hammer is right through that door… he’s looking for some company.”
“Hammer?” Mindy shakes her head. “He’s a little… rough.”
“Yeah.” I shrug, sling my bag over my shoulder, and head for the door. “It’s been real.”
“Candy?” asks Mindy as I get close to her. I look up with eyebrows raised. “He won’t be happy if someone doesn’t go in there.”
“Not my problem,” I state.
“It will be. You know how they get.”
I look around the room. Debbie is over by the pool tables falling all over one of the guys.
“What about her?” I ask, gesturing toward her.
“She’ll do anything for a bottle.”
I open my bag and hand Mindy a twenty. “The bars all yours. Give her the cheapest bottle of whatever we have and send her to the backroom. I’m leaving.”
“Hammer likes you. He’s not going to like this. You sure you want to cut and run?”
“I got dreams, being a club whore ain’t one of them.”
“Too good for us?” Mindy asks with an edge to her voice.
“No, love. I’m just on a different path.”
Mindy squares her shoulders and nods. “Debbie! I’ve got a job for you!” Her eyes never leave mine.
I reach out and grab her hand, squeezing it lightly. “Thank you. You take care.”
“Right back at you.”
I turn on my heel and double-time it out the door. I don’t need this shit. My car is parked up the block. I get in it, slam the door shut, and lock it. Not that it’ll do me any good if they come after me. Once I’ve got her running, I gun it and leave. I’ll need to clear out my apartment and move. N
ew city, new life. I’ve been in and around these lowlifes long enough to know that if one of them gets it into his head that he can have me, the others aren’t far behind. I could’ve made some real money in that joint.
As I pull in front of my apartment, I reach over to the back seat and put on a long-sleeved blue shirt. I run up the shitty staircase, open my door, and smile like I don’t have a care in the world.
“Hey, little man!” I say to my five-year-old son, Jack.
“Momma!”
I sweep him up in my arms and rub my nose against his.
“Suzannah, what are you doing home so early?” asks the sitter.
“I missed my little man!” I say as I tickle Jack. “Linda, you can go home.” I put Jack down, open my wallet, and give her a handful of notes. “This should make us square.”
“Honey, it’s way too much,” protests Linda as she shoves it back at me.
I place my hands over hers and shake my head. “No, you keep it.”
“Suzannah?”
In a quieter tone, I say, “And if anyone comes looking for us, you don’t know us. Got me?”
A frown creases Linda’s features, but she nods, looks down at Jack, and ruffles his hair.
“Be good, little man.” Then she turns and leaves us.
I walk into the area of our apartment that I’ve tried to block off as a bedroom. I pull the suitcase out from under the bed and begin throwing clothes into it.
“Are we going somewhere, Mommy?”
“Yeah, baby. Mommy has found us a new, nicer place to stay,” I say brightly as I continue to pack.
“Will Linda be there?”
I look down at my boy, and his bottom lip is trembling. In his short life, we’ve moved a lot.
I crouch down in front of him and shake my head. “No, honey. But I promise, it’ll be nicer than this.”
Jack nods, and my heart breaks. I draw him into my embrace.
“What if we get a kitty at the next home?”
His little face breaks into a smile. “A kitty? Can I name him?”
“Yeah, baby, you can.”