Playing With Monsters

by Layla Wolfe

  “Good call on the pizza, Manhole!” Birdseye shouted.

  That made Roman feel better, remembering he had basically saved twenty peoples’ asses. Even if they were now going to call him Kiosk. He probably had an imprint of one of those movie rentals on the side of his face—some fucking Hobbit movie, no doubt.

  Roman kept going past the beauty parlor. He saw the Chinese guy Shady referred to. With all eyes on the smoking, ruined clubhouse, Roman felt confident in taking his piece from his jeans and brandishing it directly at the guy. Even from a half a block away he could see the guy’s eyes widen, and he started up his Caddy frantically. He was obviously the guy with the remote detonator, hiding it under his seat. Roman broke into a jog, pointing the barrel right at the guy’s head. But it wouldn’t do to shoot yet another guy in plain daylight, what with the street becoming more and more packed with lookie-loos.

  The guy did a seven-point turn to get out of his spot, having been stupid enough to block himself in parallel. All Roman could do was burn the license plate number into his skull, since there was nothing about the guy that made him stand out.

  And he held his smart phone out with his other hand and took a good, long video of the guy’s terrible parking job. He could at least embarrass the shit out of him later on, get him in trouble with his boss.

  As the guy fishtailed down the street, Roman holstered his piece and walked back to the salon.

  “What a Mongolian clusterfuck, son!” Slushy cried, from his spot hiding behind a salon chair’s hair dryer. All the women working there were cowering in the far back of the store, so Slushy was actually being brave. “Thank God you made the right call.”

  “The smart call,” said Gudrun, slinking out from behind another chair.

  Roman looked at her. She wore a different look now. One might even say it was a seductive look, the way she glanced up at him from under her long lashes. She still has no bra for those delicious melons of hers, and just sashaying a few feet across the tiles had them bouncing enticingly. With her hands behind her back, she swiveled her torso back and forth like a bobblehead, looking innocent, seemingly unaware of the dance her tits were doing.

  Jesus Criminy. This girl’s going to kill me. “Well, ah, it was just an obvious call. No one around there ever orders pizza. The fucking Prospect should’ve known that.”

  Wolf pointed at the ground angrily. “That’s the first thing he should’ve known, man! Any moron knows that!”

  “Any moron, right.” Roman dared to take Gudrun by the upper arms. “I’m just glad you’re okay, but it’s fucking obvious it won’t be safe staying at Wolf’s either. Slushy, we think the Chinese are behind this, just like you said about the Molly. Could Riker have been working for the Chinese?”

  Slushy shrugged. “Sure, anything’s possible. Riker’s sure as shit in the bad books of the Presencións since shredding their driver and taking off with their truckload of H. The Chinese might be pretty much the only ones left who’ll have him.”

  By now, Roman had been touching Gudrun way too long, and he had to lower his hands. He told himself he wanted to protect her like a brother. That was it. That was the ticket. It was a brotherly thing.

  “Look, Slushy. Can you reach out to your member up north and find a safe house for the women? We’ll be fighting in the streets down here and don’t want to endanger them.”

  “Sure, anything!” cried Slushy. “We’ve got plenty of safe places up there no one knows about.”

  “I’ll take them,” volunteered Wolf. “They’ll be safe with me.”

  Over my dead fucking body. But Sock Monkey was sticking his head in the door, causing more Filipino women to run toward the back of the shop, and giving Roman a fresh, new excuse to clutch Gudrun to his side.

  “Hey! Has anyone seen General Schwarzkopf?”

  Everyone looked blankly at each other, and Sock Monkey ran off down the street.

  “Uh oh,” said Gudrun, looking up at Roman.

  “Holy Jesus on a stick,” said Wolf. “I saw him going into the bathroom right before the pizza arrived.”

  After that, Roman didn’t even feel good enough to hold Gudrun. That video of him had started this whole mess, had brought this entire hell raining down on the club’s heads. It would be up to him to set it right.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GUDRUN

  “I wish I knew what was going on in there.”

  Madison Illuminati looked indulgently at me. “You’ll learn, honey. We’re not privy to a lot of the important shit that goes on around here. Don’t worry. It’ll all trickle down eventually to your ears.”

  “Well, it is all about me, after all.”

  Madison scoffed, looking high above it all on her stool. She was a stunning woman who could have been a model herself, but she’d been saddled with an enormous rack like me. We sat in the dispatcher’s office down in the old airplane hangar. It was the closest to the “chapel,” the meeting room where all the men gathered after leaving their cells in a bucket by the door. Top secret, apparently. I was enraged because I was the subject of the fucking meeting—well, basically—and they hadn’t even invited me into the room.

  “Once you get into the swing of club life, you’ll start understanding. It really takes a lot of the heat off of us, not to have to worry our pretty little heads over club business. They’re bringing it to the table whether or not to take you and Tracy in, whether to take on that additional liability.”

  Tracy and Wolf Glaser were over on the mechanic’s side of the hangar. It was clear that Wolf had the hots for my nursing buddy. We were here at The Citadel, the former army airfield hangar belonging to the original Bare Bones, Red Rocks Original. It was stunningly gorgeous up here in the land of the red sandstone monoliths, a refreshing change from the flat sameness of Tucson. The Citadel was the Bones’ clubhouse as well as offices and yard for their construction equipment, their most profitable business that made a great cover for their more subterranean jobs.

  We had come here because it had become painfully evident that Tracy and I needed to hide. And it probably wouldn’t hurt poor Roman Serpico and a few of his brothers to shutter up their burned-out clubhouse, either. A long-time brother named General Schwarzkopf had been killed in the explosion, giving more immediate muscle to the need to hit back at Riker, at the Chinese. Last night the four of us had spent at Madison and Ford’s sprawling mesa McMansion. The beautiful Madison had loaned me a bunch of clothes, most of which were too tight on me, but much nicer than the whorish sweetbutt clothes I’d been wearing. Their house was protected like Fort Knox but was still too dangerous for us, so I guessed that better ideas were being floated around in the top secret “chapel” room right now.

  “But I don’t want to get into the swing of club life, Madison,” I protested. “I just got caught up in all of this when I made a fucking fatal mistake and went off with a psychotic loser at a rave. Speaking of, can you get me any more Percocet?”

  Madison, an RN for a downtown cardiology practice, had given me a handful of them after first meeting, after hearing about my plight. However, now she said, “We can’t get you hooked on those again. It’s just going to increase your tolerance, make you want more. I want to set you up for an MRI in my building. There’s an orthopedist in the building. We’ve got to find out more about why you’re in so much pain.”

  “Because I’ve got a god damn pin in my hip,” I said, grouchy.

  “Yes, but pins don’t necessarily equal pain, Gudrun.”

  I got so angry when people were right. I’d known there was something wrong—some fuck-up had occurred during my surgery or my rehab or whatever. “Once this shit is over with, I’m going back to my regular life, my regular job in Tucson.”

  Madison sighed, practically shaking her head with pity. “You don’t realize yet, dear. There’s no going back.”

  “Why? Because I made a one night mistake?”

  “Because I’ve seen the way you and Roman look at each other. It’s the same
way Ford and I used to look at each other—before he became the big man on campus, that is.” Madison didn’t seem to have any regret or bitterness. She was just stating a fact. Ford seemed to have become too busy for her. They had an adorable little daughter too who had been hauling ass around their house causing no end of work.

  I protested. “Look at each other? We barely know each other! Sure, Roman came to save me from that disgusting trap house. That’s probably what you’re picking up on. I feel grateful to him, that I owe him something. But he just did it to please the club, to please his stepfather who also happens to be my father, Slushy McGill.”

  “Yes, we all adore Slushy. But I’ve seen this look too many times to disregard it, Gudrun. Roman isn’t looking at you with a sense of loyalty or commitment to family, that’s for fucking sure. He’s looking at you with adoration, with love. And not the brotherly kind of love.”

  “Oh, pshaw!” I waved Madison away, my face all screwed up. “He’s fucking celibate, Madison! I don’t know why, but he is. And he seems like a pretty determined guy. If he wants to be celibate, he will be. I don’t see a fat old cripple like me getting in his way.”

  “Hasn’t he told you? About that slut Andrea?”

  I leaned closer, too. My heart sped up with excitement to know what Madison knew. “What? Andrea who?”

  Madison lifted a lip with disgust. “A major groupie whore. She was into Roman for his fame and fortune, knowing it’d propel her in her slutty modeling career. He loved her too, I suppose. That all changed, of course, when he quit the band when his father was murdered. When Andrea found out that he planned on leaving all that rock-and-roll glitter and glam behind and join a fucking motorcycle club, she went absolutely apeshit. Slandered his name all over the twitterverse accusing him of all sorts of shit that everyone close to him knew wasn’t true.”

  “Oh my God!” I whispered, horrified. “No wonder he wants to stay away from women! Women can be so mean.”

  “Tell me about it, sister. She started tweeting that he was abusive, that he hit her, that the reason he was joining an MC was because we were the lowlife scum that he was born with, we were his true family. Well, that was the only true part, but that wasn’t what she meant. She started even getting us and Roman in trouble because she started throwing around his father’s name, the murder, how Roman’s dad had worked for a cartel too, throwing around the name of the suspected murderer, I mean it was just so—”

  I gasped and jumped when the dispatch door opened and Wolf stuck his head in. “The meeting’s adjourned.”

  “What happened to the slut?” I hissed.

  Madison looked at me sideways, nodding with authority. “Oh, we took care of her, all right. She ain’t gonna tweet again, that’s for fucking sure.”

  I almost laughed as we went upstairs to the row of offices. It should have filled me with dread that the MC would “take care of” a harmless slut, a mere girl. But the fact she was filling the airwaves with all sorts of slander about one of their own, that made it all right. Even funny.

  Surrounded by the clatter of the men’s engineer boots, in the stairwell Madison turned to me and said, “He lost his father and the woman he loved all in the same month.”

  When I caught sight of Roman again in the upstairs hangar hallway, a sea change of emotions had taken place in me. Madison’s story had given Roman an aura of vulnerability that was very attractive. I imagined how devastated he had been to find out the woman he’d loved had only pretended to love him, had only cared about the superficial trappings of fame.

  I started wondering if Roman’s dad had worked for a cartel. I knew nothing about his murder, but I noticed how everyone called it a “murder.” It wasn’t just “his death.” It was definitely “murder.”

  Roman smiled at me. Now I saw that his face, although he wasn’t more than thirty-five, had that sort of weary, battle-hardened look. He wasn’t just some rocker who’d had life handed to him on a silver platter. He wasn’t just some guy who repaid his fortune by doing drugs and screwing bimbos. He was thoughtful, deep, and above all, honest. I’d been lied to so many times by stupid fucking men, I was starting to doubt everything they said, even stupid stuff, like “I’m going to the bathroom now.” I would know they were really going to call some chick, or do some drugs behind my back. It was like my husband Vince had never existed, that’s how jaded and cynical I was becoming. All men before Vince were moronic dogs, all men since Vince idiotic dirtbags. Roman was starting to stand out from the pack.

  Roman lifted an arm as though about to put it around me, then thought better of it. A group of us went into Ford’s office. Madison, Tracy and Wolf stayed behind, but there were a few new people I didn’t recognize. One was a darker, rangier version of Ford. I assumed this was his half-brother, Lytton. Another guy stood out like a sore thumb. His hair looked as though someone had placed a bowl over his hair before cutting it, his trousers narrow, his belt white. He looked like he’d been placed among the bikers just so someone could ask, “Which of these things doesn’t belong here?” He was armed with a notebook, its pen stuck behind his ear.

  Ford sat behind his desk while the rest of us grabbed chairs around a table. I sat between Roman and Slushy. This was Ford’s legitimate construction office, and there were many photos of him posing at gala events with Madison and their daughter, or posing with his equipment, his rollers, loaders, his excavators. It was funny, all these guys in their leather cuts with facial hair and random piercings and tats, sitting at attention as though in a nurse’s meeting at my retirement home.

  “First thing first,” said Ford. He seemed to be speaking to me. “We decided downstairs to split up you girls. This way, if they get one of you, they don’t get the other.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement. My fate had been decided for me. No one explained if by “get,” they meant “abduct” or “kill.”

  Ford went on, “We’re sending Tracy with Lytton here up to his Leaves of Grass weed farm on Mormon Mountain. You don’t need to know any more about it than that, Gudrun. That way you’ve got plausible deniability if anyone asks you.”

  “Makes sense,” I mumbled.

  “As for you and Roman, Slushy will be pleased to know we’re going to be hiding you here on the airfield. There’s a great officer’s housing area that’s been abandoned for several years.”

  “Oh, excellent!” said my father, practically fist pumping. He could be like a kid sometimes, I had noticed. He definitely never let his age stand in his way. He turned to face me. “That’s a gorgeous area, Gudrun. You should see these old Spanish style homes, like miniature missions with all the scrollwork, the red tiled roofs, the giant arched doorways. I’ve been inside a few of those homes, doing business with the Corps of Engineers. They actually run this airfield—we’re just renting from them. Even this hangar belongs to the government.”

  “Fascinating,” I said sullenly. The prospect of being locked down, even in some Spanish colonial mansion, for God knew how long, well of course that depressed me. I had obviously lost my job by now. The concept of not working for a living sent me into a sheer panic. The only time in my life I had not worked was when I’d been with Vince—then I’d gone to nursing school, to find a career away from modeling, a job where strange hands wouldn’t be placed all over me. I hadn’t completed the school when the accident had happened, so after the hospital the only job I could get was as a nurse’s aide. Living with Valentina, I couldn’t afford t finish school, not even with her parade of home boys running drugs.

  Ford went on, as though he hadn’t just disposed of my life with a couple of sentences. “The next part, I didn’t want to say in chapel, Roman. I want you to be the first to know.”

  Everyone looked at Roman quizzically. He looked the most mystified of all, turning his hands palms up on the table, like “what’d I do?”

  “Tobiah Weingarten here, for those of you who don’t know him, is Lytton’s business manager at the Leaves of Grass.” He referred to the ne
rd with the bowl haircut, who looked about to take a bow. “I put him on the track of that fucking video that was sent to me. Of course it was sent from a burner phone, but Tobiah was able to get to the fucking bottom of it.”

  Ford’s look was dark, so Roman and I shared dark looks. What the fuck was going on?

  Tobiah actually did stand up then, waving his notebook around as though he intended to use it for audio visual effects. I had a feeling that what was about to come was even more depressing than me being held in a beautiful prison. I was right.

  Tobiah said, “People think they can avoid detection with burner phones. That’s true to a large extent. Problem is, most people, when they start using a burner, they don’t change their call patterns. Un-fucking-fortunately for them, database analytic algorithms make the connection between one phone and another as long as both phones were dialing similar sets of numbers.”

  “Okay,” I heard Roman mutter. I felt sorry for him. He’d been through the wringer, probably more so than I had.

  “Well,” said Tobiah, “I compared this burner to a few usual active phones of a few usual suspects.” He paused for effect. He’d found the video-texting culprit? No one seemed to breathe, and I wanted to vault over the table and throttle the skinny nerd. Tell us, damn you! He finally obliged, hand held to his chest like a little Napoleon. “The burner belongs to Riker.”

  A dozen pair of stunned eyes looked into the eyes of their tablemates. What the fuck? Tobiah shared looks with Ford, as though he hadn’t even told us the worst part yet. Maybe Riker had bought the burner before he died, that was my thought. Nothing so surprising about that. Then someone had used it to text the video of Roman carrying my body. No such luck.

  Tobiah added tremulously, “Riker’s alive. He used a credit card at a gas station in Cottonwood yesterday, which is scary close to us.”

  “Wait,” said a Red Rocks Original Boner named Knoxie. He was so stunningly handsome he looked like guys I used to model with, posing on a surfboard or something. I knew he’d been there the day Riker had taken out their brother Ziggy. Some strange drama about a religious nut in the mountains. “That motherfucker must have nine lives. Roman here said he shot him in the throat with a fifty cal.”