Yvette lifted an eyebrow. “What? Of course I do. What kind of question is that?”
“A serious one. If you want him caught, then you tell the police everything you just told me, leaving nothing out. Even add in what you recall about the tribunal last night. They’ll be all over us with questions and interviews and I’ll be busy as hell, but I’m in.”
“Why are you in?” Yvette asked.
“You showed everyone last night not only what it meant to be a sister, but what it meant to be a woman’s man. When you left with Bev, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Even Danny was crying. I stood the tribunal, and I said what I felt was the truth. But I never meant that to include you. I know it hurt you, and now, like Danny said last night, I have a chance to go a dark mile with you and make some of that up.”
“Bev said you would help me find another lawyer.”
Jay nodded. “Yes. I know of two real good ones and both owe me favors.”
Yvette studied him. “I think I want you. I know you. I know you’ll do the best you can, because you always do the best you can, for everyone. So, trust isn’t really an issue.”
Jay smiled warmly. “That’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever received. Thank you.”
“It’s just true, that’s all. So, back to your question. I know, because I just know, Crash, that Leo was involved in whatever shit he was doing last night. I know that. The police should know that.”
Jay flipped a glance at Beverly.
Bev said, “It might have been about him, and it probably was. But Leo was with me last night, and I guarantee you he wasn’t on the phone.”
“He was with you?” Yvette asked, surprised.
“As with me as he could get Yvette. We were at each other well past midnight, and he was there when I woke up,” she lied.
Jay called his office, and he found that the detective had made an appointment for two in the afternoon the next day. Then he ordered a pizza, sodas, and salad to be delivered so that Yvette didn’t need to make anything for them.
They spent the next two hours discussing her statement and what should be said to give the police the information they needed without involving the club more than was necessary.
“He was already banished,” Jay told her, “but that didn’t make him open game. Remember how Danny put it? ‘I feel that simple banishment is enough.’ That was the punishment, yes, but also a directive to the club. He was telling us, that was enough and to leave him alone. So, I really doubt that it was anyone in the club, especially last night.”
Bev saw an opening and took it. “Alright, just a hypothetical, Jay, if you don’t mind.”
“Alright.” He nodded, putting his game face on.
“You find out that Crash is going to Vasquez with the information he learned at the tribunal last night about Leo, Danny, Hugo, and the determination the Sinners have in making him pay for Woody and Emma. Crash is meeting him in a clearing, not far from here, in about thirty minutes.”
Jay let all that sink in and glanced at Yvette. “Yes, I understand. It could be someone in the club. Under those circumstances, I think any Sinner, including Leo, would kill him. There would be nothing else to do. Vasquez is too strong for us to face head on. That’s a simple fact. At least a hundred of us would die in three days, and whoever didn’t scatter would be hunted down after that. So, you think that someone was keeping an eye on Crash last night?” he asked Bev.
“Could even have been a friend to begin with,” Bev reasoned. “Just someone silently watching his back for the night. Doing a hard mile as penitence for not standing for him, and not being able to stop what was going on.”
“I can think of two men right off the top of my head who would do that. Wesley, for sure, and Jonny Vargas.”
“Even after the banishment?” Yvette asked.
“Yes, and because of it. Just to make sure you got home alright, and that no one was going to fuck with you.”
Yvette didn’t seem to know what to think about that.
After another two hours, Yvette had her statement. Bev typed it for her on her computer. They printed out a copy, and Yvette asked if they shouldn’t give a copy to Danny.
“You know,” Yvette explained, “kind of a heads up, because the club is mentioned and you know the detectives are going to be up there as soon as they hear this.”
“Yvette,” Jay said, “Danny, and every member that was there last night would be grateful for a heads up like this. Also, it would let them know what happened and what you are going through. But are you sure you are willing to do this? Maybe you should sleep on it and think about it in the morning. You’ve been through a lot today.”
“Tomorrow doesn’t give Danny much time to prepare,” Yvette told him, “and I’ll feel the same way tomorrow or a month from now. The cops are going to know this, so the club should know it, too.”
“Danny only? Or those Danny believes should know it as well?” Jay asked.
“Danny’s discretion,” Yvette told him.
“Then, if I may, I’ll email him this from your computer,” he told her.
She nodded. Jay logged in to his own email and sent Danny the statement with Yvette’s instructions, as well as the time of the police interview the next day.
It was one o’clock before they were finished. Jay gave Yvette a kiss on the forehead. “You’re going to be fine. I have to run now. Remember, no cops, and if they do come, just call me. Do not speak to them, not even to tell them your name.”
They watched him leave. Still inside, Yvette asked, “I’m really tired now, but I don’t want to be alone. Could you, you know, take a nap with me, maybe? Just an hour would be good.”
“Come on, baby, we’ll take a nap, and then you can come over to my place, or I’ll run home and get my laptop and come back here, alright? You don’t have to be alone.”
Yvette lay down with Beverly, but she didn’t fall asleep right away. She just cried and then sobbed.
“I miss him so much!”
After almost an hour, Yvette exhausted herself and passed out. Bev slipped out of the bed and called Leo to bring him up to speed.
“I’m going to write her a note in case she wakes up, then run home and get my travel laptop. She doesn’t have WiFi here, but I can get enough done without it. I think I’m here for the day, lover.”
“I’m at home already,” he told her. “I locked your place up. Was Jay able to help?”
“Jay was a god,” Bev told him with adoration in her voice. “Serious hero worship. And, by the way, if you ever leave me, you’ll find me keeping his bed warm.”
“Sounds like I’ll have to keep an eye on Jay, then. He’s a sly one.”
Chapter Seventeen
Leo was on his porch when Bev’s motor raced down the road and to her drive. Less than ten minutes later, her motor raced back toward town.
“A clearing,” he mused.
Close to 3:30, he was ready to go check out one clearing in particular. It wasn’t far, maybe a little more than a mile north. Maybe he would pull the thumper out of the garage and take it for a little spin. It was time to take it out anyway. And maybe he was feeling a little nostalgic.
But his plans were interrupted by the sound of three Harley engines coming up the road. They slowed down as they came up to his access road. He watched them from his rocker as they came closer, and he recognized them as soon as they were in his yard: Jonny Vargas, Wesley DeVry, and Austin, which, now that Leo thought about it, was the only name he had for the man.
Jonny was a wiry, leather-skinned man whose muscles were well defined and who worked hard nearly every day of his life. He ran a hand through his light brown hair and looked up at the sun before climbing the steps to Leo’s porch and coming through the screen door.
Jonny was one of Danny’s trusted, and he was trusted enough to already be on the list of men who were going to help in a couple of weeks with the heist of a great deal of cocaine — though Jonny wasn’t aware of this yet.
“Jonny,” Leo said as he came across the threshold.
Jonny wasn’t expecting him on the porch. His easy manner turned feral in an instant, but it just as quickly turned easy again. “Leo. Good day to be outside.”
“There’s beer in the fridge if you want one,” Leo offered.
“Don’t mind if I do. Want one for yourself?”
Leo lifted his hand and gave it a shake. “Yeah, I guess so, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll be there getting your beer for myself and two others. I guess I don’t mind getting one of your own for you.”
Leo nodded at the well-worn humor and watched Austin come up the steps. Austin was at least 300 pounds: a lot of weight, most of it fat. He was a good-humored man most of the time, and a man you could normally count on to be thoughtful and slow to act. Austin, as it happened, was looking thoughtful now.
“Austin,” Leo greeted him.
Austin nodded his head and looked around.
“Jonny’s in the house, getting beers.”
“Nice. Thanks.”
“No worries.”
Last in, letting the members enter the place first, as was customary for prospects, was Wesley — Wesley DeVry. His brown, straight hair always seemed just barely on the dry side of damp. He had a smooth, strong Preston Dean kind of look to him, though maybe thinner in the cheeks. Loose talk suggested he bedded pussy as fast as it was thrown to him, and that he had few scruples about it. Older, younger, spoken for: if it gave him a wink, he didn’t care about any of the rest. He was taller than the other two, but not as tall as Leo, and he had solid barbell gym muscles across his chest and shoulders and in his thighs.
Leo had once asked Bev’s opinion of Wesley’s looks, and she had given him an approving nod. “Yeah, he’s good looking. Well, until Preston Pope comes through the door. Then you remember what good looking really means.”
Leo took pride in his powers of observation. As Jonny came out with four beers and passed them around, he tuned his mind into figuring this visit out. All three of them had been up at the club a little while ago. Danny got the statement. All three of them had been in attendance last night, so one or all had probably been briefed right away.
All three of them were the core of Crash’s remaining friends.
Leo got slowly up from his chair. “Any of you shoot pool?”
Jonny smiled. “Been known to, from time to time. Nine ball?”
“If you wish, sure.”
“Five on the five, ten on the nine?” Jonny asked.
“If you really want to lose that kind of money,” Leo told him.
Jonny laughed and they went inside, Leo leading.
His pool table was set up where the dining area would normally be, but there was plenty of room around the table for shooting.
Leo racked up the diamond for a nine-ball game and allowed Jonny to break first. Playing this game with this type of bet, if you sunk the five, then five dollars were owed. However, if you sunk the five out of turn, using a combination, for example, with the two-ball, then the five came back out of the pocket so that it would pay again. A game like this could get expensive quickly against a player who knew what he was doing.
Jonny broke, sinking the eight with the cue coming in behind enough balls that he had no shot for the one. He chose to call a safety and put Leo in a similar position. Leo studied the layout.
Jonny said, “So, you’re bedding the new filly.”
Leo raised an eyebrow. He leaned down and took his shot, sending the cue off the wall, clipping the one into the corner pocket, and the clipping the five into the corner on the other side.
“Not exactly a nice way of saying that, but yes, it’s true. And getting close to her as well. She’s a good riding partner,” Leo told him, which basically meant: She means something to me, so be polite, or…
But Leo knew where this was going, no matter how many warnings he made. Crash was dead, and last night he had been banished, and they figured if Leo hadn’t actually pulled the trigger, he was guilty nonetheless. So, justice was to be served. Leo figured he should be a little insulted that they had only brought three.
In fact… “Jonny, why only three?” he asked. He leaned down and careened the two ball into the side pocket with the cue coming off the wall to kick the nine in the corner.
Jonny lifted an eyebrow.
“You don’t have to insult Bev to get a rise out of me. You already owe me fifteen bucks. You’ll owe four times that if you let me keep shooting.”
Jonny set his pool stick down and came at him fast.
Since rules of engagement were set in that moment of Jonny setting his cue down, instead of using it, Leo sent his cue down the wall, angling it so that it would trip up Wesley when he finally got around to acting. Austin was on the other side of the room near the living room.
Jonny came in fast, really fast. His muscles rippled along his arms and chest as he hammered his fist toward Leo. Leo watched him, taking in every detail of speed, momentum, and body weight. He brushed the strike aside with a twist of his body and brought his own fist down on the back of Jonny’s skull like a sledgehammer as Jonny’s momentum carried him past.
Jonny’s momentum kept him going into the far wall of the dining room as Wesley charged at Leo. He got tangled for a moment in the pool stick that was angled and rolling across his path. It didn’t slow him down much, just by a fraction of a second, but that was enough time for Leo to snatch Jonny by the shoulder and redirect his nearly unconscious body into Wesley as well. The two went down into a heap at the side of the table. Leo gave Wesley no time to recover, coming in with a solid kick to his head and catching him on the side of his face just under the eye. Then he kicked him again in the forehead, and Wesley was out. Jonny moaned, dazed from the blow to his cerebellum. Leo sent a kick into the side of his head and the moaning stopped.
Austin had just set down his beer and was figuring out what to do.
“You really want to do this, Austin?” Leo asked, walking toward him.
“Not really, no,” Austin admitted.
“Good, because someone has to carry these guys out of here,” Leo told him.
“I can do that,” Austin agreed.
“Then get to it. I have a phone call to make,” Leo told him.
Austin walked by him and, with more ease than Leo expected, picked up Wesley’s body and tossed him over his right shoulder, then started for the door.
“Shit,” Leo breathed, duly impressed.
Leo called Preston Pope, the sergeant at arms, and gave him a brief account. “I hope I’m not going to be visited like this all night.”
“No, that’s not happening. I’ll drop some words and make some calls,” Preston said. “Want some guests?”
“Naw, not going to be here tonight anyway, I don’t believe,” Leo told him. “Just giving you the heads up.”
“And thanks for it,” Preston said, ending the call.
Austin was walking back through the door heading for Jonny.
“So, this was Jonny’s idea?” Leo asked from the other side of the pool table.
Austin nodded, saying, “Yeah. He said he really needed a third, so I came, but … well, they’re my friends. What could I do?”
“I know the feeling. In fact, that feeling, a little more than four years ago, was really what started all this shit,” Leo told him.
Austin straighten back up, letting Jonny droop to the ground again. “Yeah? How so?”
Leo told him the story of him and Crash. At least, his version of it, up to the part where he turned and rode away.
“See,” Leo said, “I shouldn’t have gone in with him, and I knew it was all wrong. Crash was too up, probably did too much meth that day. The bike was damaged.… Who goes into a robbery with a damaged getaway vehicle? I mean, that’s so fucking stupid. And I knew that, but then he said he was going to do it on his own and started for the door — like you said, he was my friend. What could I do?”
; Austin shook his head. He had leaned back against the wall as he listened. “I never heard the whole story. I only heard that you were on a robbery, the cops showed up, and you rabbited. That was it.”
“Most of the time, Austin, things are never that simple, and the person trying to tell it as that simple is either lying or doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. Take Jonny here, for example. He gets you two and tells you what? One guy, three people? Simple job and Crash deserves it, right?”
“Yeah, pretty much like that. Said you would be alone, and no one was around your place. So it was a three against one fight and you would never see it coming, because Crash was already banished and you probably didn’t even know he was dead yet,” Austin told him.
SAUL Page 36
