by Karen Renee
“Alex does know the end of the month is on Wednesday?” I commented as I looked back to Roxanne.
Roxanne took a long pull on the tall Pilsner glass sitting in front of her as the bartender set my wine glass in front of me. Once he walked away, Roxanne said, “Anyone else, I would never say this shit, but you got talent, Frankie. You’re good with brokers, you’re good with walk-in customers, and you’re good with internal departments. What I’m saying is that you have the talent to move up, but it likely won’t happen anytime soon at New Star. Alex is all too aware that the end of the month is on Wednesday. I don’t know why he’s playing it that way, and I know that if I were in your shoes, I’d be beyond frustrated.”
I took a large sip of my white wine and realized I was getting confused. I decided to hold my tongue and let Roxanne finish her round-about thought.
“I got a friend at one of our competitors,” she started and I closed my eyes and tilted my head slightly to the side.
This couldn’t be happening. It was bad enough that Mark-fucking-Stillman had broken my hand, bruised my ribs, which finally didn’t hurt any more, and had given me a black eye; from the sound of Roxanne’s statement it seemed he was genuinely going to take my job away from me. I knew Roxanne had come to the credit union after a long stint with a sub-prime mortgage lender where she had managed a region of account executives. If the friend of hers was still part of the sub-prime loan environment, I didn’t want anything to do with it. I knew there were people who genuinely needed loans and didn’t have optimal credit backgrounds, but I loved being at a credit union. I loved it for many reasons, but one of my top reasons was the camaraderie. I wasn’t talking about going out as a group and doing hokey corporate-mandated ‘team-building’ exercises. I was talking about a company-wide camaraderie because everyone working there knew we were working with someone else’s money. It wasn’t like we all had to buy in to some lamely-written mission statement from a suit in the PR department or the marketing department. It was the customer’s money and we all had to respect it. That made working with the various departments on someone’s home loan that much easier in my mind. I wasn’t sure I’d find such cooperation with people in the sub-prime business.
Roxanne must have read my face, because she put a hand on mine and said, “He’s at another credit union, Frankie. It’s not sub-prime. If this starts going south, I want you to let me mention your name to him. He and I talk every month or so, and a few weeks back he mentioned that his boss’s boss is retiring. End date has not been announced, but right now, his boss will move up into the vacated position, and odds are strong that he’ll move into his boss’s office. He called me to make the move, but I don’t want to cross the river every damn day. You already cross the Intercoastal and the damn river every day. You immediately came to mind, and I didn’t drop your name, but I said I had someone he needed to think about. Now all this shit is going down, and I hate to say it, but my gut tells me you’re about to get screwed over even though we’re a locally-based credit union and don’t normally act like we’re run by corporate schmucks. Just, if things go bad Wednesday, tell me I can pass your name along.”
I turned my head to the side and watched a waiter take plates of yummy-looking food to a table beside the bar. I moved my gaze back to Roxanne with a sigh, but said, “Sure. Things go haywire next week, feel free.”
We were silent for a long moment, and I finally had to break it by saying, “It goes without saying, this shit sucks ass.”
Roxanne’s head tipped back slightly as she cackled, “It certainly does. It most certainly does.”
Before I could so much as smile back at Roxanne, an intense unease came over me, and I turned slightly to my right to see Mark Stillman standing there holding a plastic bag with a to-go container inside it.
He looked down his nose at me. “Those hoodlums you’ve taken a shine to get tired of you, Frankie?” he asked with a sneer.
Oh shit! Oh fuck! Where was a tough-as-nails biker when I needed one? You ran away from them, you doofus! My wayward thoughts seriously needed to back off. I pulled in the deepest breath I could manage through my nose, but before I could say anything, Roxanne leaned across me.
“You wouldn’t be Mr. Stillman, would you?”
Mark’s beady hazel eyes jerked to Roxanne. “What’s it to you?”
In my peripheral vision, I noticed Roxanne arched an eyebrow at him. “What it is to me, is proof positive that this woman in no way, shape, or form, approached you. Now, if you’ve been harassed by someone, I would think you would steer clear of them, so how about you do just that?”
Mark’s face lost the sneer, and slowly but carefully went blank. He assessed Roxanne, and then walked around the opposite side of the circular bar. I let out a breath, but still felt like the little bit of wine I had consumed was going to come back up.
“Thanks for that,” I said to Roxanne.
Roxanne was staring hard out the open double doors, but said, “Don’t thank me yet. He’s standing on the fucking sidewalk, and I still feel like stomping over there to kick him in the back of his ugly head while standing on the raised steps of the patio.”
I leaned toward Roxanne and saw that he was indeed still on the steps, but then he slid a cell phone into his back pocket, and sauntered away. I leaned back into my own stool, and then took a generous swig of wine. How did you miss what a colossal jerk that guy was? Well, there was a fine question, if ever there was one.
I grabbed my tiny purse and pulled my phone from it, thinking to call Henry. Unfortunately, the battery was stone-cold dead. My charger was stuck in Vamp’s saddlebags. I could run to my car to charge my battery and then try to call him, but I felt a whole lot safer staying with Roxanne and plenty of total strangers who could be witnesses, even if they couldn’t make me safe.
*** ***
Vamp
Vamp and Gerald Bernstein were rounding the block away from the police station. Anger was still raging through Vamp after spending four-and-a-half long hours in a tiny room for questioning. He hadn’t eaten since ten-thirty and now he’d have to deal with rush-hour traffic before he could get to the club in order to check on Rainey. He’d already lost six fuckin’ years with her, so any unnecessary amount of time he lost irritated him like fuck. Only two good things had happened during questioning. The first was seeing the red-headed associate walk in to find out if Bernstein needed anything from her. No one said it outright, but Vamp knew she had to be the lawyer who got Rainey out of her questioning. However, she had strutted her skinny ass into the claustrophobic room three hours before Vamp and Bernstein left the station. The second good thing to happen while at the station was that Detective Winston took a call on his cell right in front of Vamp and the club’s lawyer. The club didn’t fuck around about legal representation on retainer and Bernstein was one of the best in town. He didn’t miss the significant look exchanged between DeMarco and Winston.
Nonchalantly, he said, “Detective, has something come up? It is getting late in the afternoon, and my client and I are looking forward to a three-day weekend.”
Detective Winston leveled his intelligent, dark eyes at both men. “Emily Yates has regained consciousness. Officer outside her room showed her an old mug-shot of your client, when he was brought in for aggravated assault. She’s adamant that it wasn't Vamp who beat her. Said she knows who did it, and we need to get over to Baptist to get her statement.”
Standing behind the police station, Vamp ran a hand over his head, looked to Bernstein and asked, “What do you make of this shit? Everything about this damn situation reeks of a set-up to me.”
Bernstein’s hazel eyes behind his rimless glasses gazed at him steadily, “I can understand why you would think that, but you have been brought in for assault in the past. Occam’s Razor and all that says that the most obvious answer is usually right, but in this case they’re wrong. Having said that –”
Vamp couldn’t tolerate the legal pontification while standing outside
in the ninety-something-degree heat, so he interrupted, “But why bring Frankie into it too? Why in the hell would they think that she had anything to say on the matter?”
“The only real information they had to go on was received from the girlfriend Ms. Yates had following Mark Stillman. They aren’t certain of the time at which she was beaten, but she saw Frankie and implored her to speak with her sister about the attack. If Frankie was desperate to keep out of that, you are certainly someone Frankie knows could physically dissuade Ms. Yates from moving forward with that.”
Vamp arched an eyebrow, and spoke his mind. “That’s weak. You know it. I know it. Ignored my gut too much in the past. Not doin’ that shit any more. This is a set-up, I just don’t know why. Thanks for your help, Gerry. Hopefully we won’t meet up like this again anytime soon. Gotta get back to Frankie.”
Vamp thought about checking his phone for messages and texts, but he was desperate to get back to his woman. He slung a leg over his bike, and roared through downtown to get back to the compound as quickly as he could. What should have been a twenty minute drive, turned into forty-five minutes, thanks to road closures for the Jazz Festival being held in three different locations, all in the middle of downtown, and a fender-bender on Blanding Boulevard. Vamp put the kickstand down on his Harley outside the clubhouse, pulled his phone from his back pocket and noted the time was six-thirty.
Entering the common room, Vamp clocked Abby with Blood and Jackie with Volt at the bar. He did not see Cal or Mallory, but he seemed to remember that they had plans for tonight. His head swiveled toward the couches along the inside wall and saw Trixie sitting next to Roll and a club groupie sitting adjacent to them. The groupie had been around for about two months, and she always threw shy smiles Vamp’s way. This chick was attractive in the way that bitches who routinely associated with the brothers needed to be attractive. She had great tits, a full ass, long blonde hair that was compliments of Clairol and it was teased out, and her face was made up heavily. Vamp didn’t know her name, and he did not care. He always ignored the smiles, but today was definitely not his day. Today, the groupie decided to follow the shy smile with a physical approach.
Had shit not gone down the way it did in March, Vamp would have been receptive to the smiles. Shit did go down though, and it was a vicious wake-up call which meant empty pussy was not happening. He had been bitten by a woman who was nothing more than the same thing, a biker groupie who wanted to try things on with him but then decided she wanted to get more of him. At the end of the day, though, she didn’t want him. What she wanted was what he could do to help her take care of her own business. This shy-smiling chick might not be Starla, but he’d be damned if she was going to get the time of day from him.
Vamp moved immediately to Volt and Jackie.
Extending a hand to Volt, “Brother. Thanks for getting Bernstein and company on our shit so quick.”
Volt shook Vamp’s hand, and then asked, “You talk to James?”
Vamp’s head tilted. “James? No, why?”
Volt’s jaw tensed and he blew out a breath. “He left you a message while you were being questioned. That Stillman fucker is half-siblings with Starla Leventon.”
Vamp’s eyes went so big he felt his eyebrow ring pulling at the skin above his eye. “Do not fuck with me, Prez.”
Volt gave a miniscule lift of his chin. “You know I would not fuck with you about that fucking cunt who tried to use us. James and those guys found a buried electronic trail. They share the same mother, different fathers.”
“Which is why he isn’t Mark Leventon.”
Volt gave him a chin-lift and Vamp asked him, “Where is Frankie? Do not tell me you let her go back to her place alone?”
“Fuck, no,” Volt almost snarled.
Jackie placed her hand on Vamp’s bicep, “She took a shower in your room earlier, and then she was going to catch a nap. Her friend Tucker has talked her into going to the Metro tonight for a drag queen show. It’s going to be fabulous because Mallory, Cal, me, Trixie, Abby, Blood, and Jim are going too.”
Vamp sighed. He had no problems with homosexuality. Back in the day, he had gone with Reggie and Frankie to gay bars just to make sure none of the other women got any ideas about his woman. But going to the Metro for a drag show was not something he felt remotely like doing tonight. He felt like getting Frankie, loading her into her SUV and getting the fuck out of Dodge, even if Johnny Law told him not do it. Hell, probably just because Johnny Law had told him not to leave town was the reason he was itching to do it. This wasn’t his first time being wrongly-accused of something though, so Vamp knew better than to leave town or do anything that would make him look bad and definitely not anything that would make Frankie look bad.
Vamp shoved those thoughts to the side and asked, “So you’re saying my woman is in my bed, here, asleep?”
Jackie smirked at him knowingly, but said, “Yep.”
“See you tonight, babe. I imagine Volt here’s gonna pass due to other shit going down, but he’ll reap the rewards of your drunkenness when he gets you home to himself.”
As Vamp turned on his heel, he noticed a wicked grin split Volt’s face and his chin went up marginally. Vamp moved to the kitchen without looking toward Trixie, Roll, and the groupie. He grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge, and then he went to his room. Quietly, he opened the door, and as he expected, the lights were off, but there was still ambient light from the sun which wouldn’t set until around seven thirty. What wasn’t in his room was the petite sleeping form of Lorraine Frances Ingram. Alarm slithered up Vamp’s spine because he knew something was wrong. Tagging the light switch, Vamp put the two bottles of beer on his dresser. His bed did look rumpled, like someone had laid on it without pulling down the covers. Rainey’s shopping bags were neatly lined up in a corner.
Vamp moved to the bathroom, opened the door and could smell the faint scent of Rainey’s floral perfume. Some of her cosmetics were sitting in the corner of his pedestal sink. She had pulled a fast one; Vamp knew it, but he needed to know why. He left his bathroom, left his room, and slammed his door behind him with so much force the sound of multiple conversations in the common room died out immediately. Vamp prowled into the common area and all eyes were on him.
“Where did she go?” he asked, looking towards Jackie and Abby who were together at the bar with Trixie.
“What are you talkin’ about?” Trixie demanded.
“Rainey is not in my room takin’ a nap, and she’s already taken a shower. I can smell her perfume in the air of the bathroom. Where the fuck is she?”
Volt, who had been leaning over one of the pool tables, laid his pool stick on top of the table and went directly past Vamp to the back of the clubhouse. Both men went out the back door and looked to the parking lot.
“Fuck!” they both said, but Volt’s was a shout while Vamp’s was a whisper.
CHAPTER 21
Roxanne’s fiancé showed up around seven-thirty, which gave me and Roxanne plenty of time to talk shop and also gab about girlie stuff. Her fiancé’s name was Heath, and he worked as a pediatrician at an office a few blocks away. For a guy who spent his days coaxing children into telling him where they hurt and examining all manner of illnesses, he had one of the strongest and most vulgar senses of humor of anyone I had ever met. To me this was saying something, because let’s face it, it’s hard to be more vulgar than an outlaw biker group.
However, his sense of humor took to hibernating after Roxanne informed him that Mark Stillman had been by to speak with us. Luckily, he didn’t get to say anything to me about it, because Roxanne had ordered for him in advance and our respective plates of food arrived. I felt guilty eating so soon after my grilled cheese, but the cool thing about Kickback’s was that they had a ‘vintage’ section in their menu. So, I decided to keep with my retro theme and ordered the Fluffer-nutter sandwich from the Vintage menu with a side of sweet potato fries to keep with the sweet theme and also to have something a
smidge “healthy” with my sugary sandwich. There was nothing healthy about this sandwich. It was served on two thick slices of brioche bread so buttery it was school-bus yellow on the inside and the peanut butter was heaped on in an extremely thick layer. The marshmallow fluff was warm and oozed out of the front of the diagonal cut and the back end of the crust. It was a sandwich ten times better than anything I could concoct at home on my own, and that was the sole reason I was willing to pay for such a decadent meal.
We finished eating around quarter to eight, and I knew I had yet another hour to kill on my hands. Luckily, Roxanne and Heath were happy to shoot the shit with me for another half-hour while we had one last round. Heath was looking at me hard. I had hung with him and Roxanne plenty in the past few years, but I could tell that he was debating on whether or not to say what was on his mind. I wasn’t particularly in the mood for him to speak his mind to me, but I figured anyone who cared enough to be concerned deserved to have my attention.
There was a lull in the classic-rock music that had been piping through the restaurant and Heath asked me, “You sure about what you’re doing, Frankie?”
I tilted my head at him, “What do you mean?”
Heath’s lips puffed out a little in skepticism. “You know what I mean. I don’t get into the hospital much these days, but I catch an occasional on-call at the ER. I got contacts, and I can find a decent doctor. Every mother’s dream for their daughter, find themselves a nice doctor to spend their time with, right?”
It was a good thing I hadn't mentioned coming here to Tucker, or he and Reggie would have been here for that little offer. Nothing against doctors, but Reggie would have torn Heath a new one, because he knew what Cary and I once had. An offer to set me up with a ‘nice doctor’ would not go over well with Reggie or Vamp for that matter.
