SUSAN FANETTI
THE FREAK CIRCLE PRESS
Slam © 2017 Susan Fanetti
All rights reserved
Susan Fanetti has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC, #3)
CHAPTER LIST
CHAPTER ONE
December 1992
CHAPTER TWO
July 1993
CHAPTER THREE
March 1993
CHAPTER FOUR
November 1991
CHAPTER FIVE
September 1991
CHAPTER SIX
June 1974
CHAPTER SEVEN
February 1992
CHAPTER EIGHT
August 21, 1993
CHAPTER NINE
August 2, 1993
CHAPTER TEN
January 1992
CHAPTER ELEVEN
March 1992
CHAPTER TWELVE
July 1993
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
June 1993
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
October 1993
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
September 1981
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
December 1976
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
July 1996
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
October 1993
CHAPTER NINETEEN
December 1992
CHAPTER TWENTY
December 1993
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY SUSAN FANETTI
The Brazen Bulls MC:
Crash, Book 1
Twist, Book 2
THE NIGHT HORDE MC SAGA:
The Signal Bend Series:
(The First Series)
Move the Sun, Book 1
Behold the Stars, Book 2
Into the Storm, Book 3
Alone on Earth, Book 4
In Dark Woods, Book 4.5
All the Sky, Book 5
Show the Fire, Book 6
Leave a Trail, Book 7
The Night Horde SoCal:
(The Second Series)
Strength & Courage, Book 1
Shadow & Soul, Book 2
Today & Tomorrow, Book 2.5
Fire & Dark, Book 3
Dream & Dare, Book 3.5
Knife & Flesh, Book 4
Rest & Trust, Book 5
Calm & Storm, Book 6
Nolan: Return to Signal Bend
Love & Friendship
The Pagano Family Series:
Footsteps, Book 1
Touch, Book 2
Rooted, Book 3
Deep, Book 4
Prayer, Book 5
Miracle, Book 6
The Pagano Family: The Complete Series
The Northwomen Sagas:
God’s Eye
Heart’s Ease
Soul’s Fire
Father’s Sun
For the lost: may you be found.
For the alone: may you be loved.
For the broken: may you be made whole.
With special thanks to TeriLyn,
for her keen insight, her support, and her friendship.
And, as always, to the Freaks.
Freedom is what you do with what is done to you.
~Jean-Paul Sartre
THE BRAZEN BULLS MOTORCYCLE CLUB
Tulsa, Oklahoma
1997 Roster
Brian Delaney—President
Oskar “Dane” Nielsen—Vice President
Conrad “Radical” Jessup—Sergeant at Arms
Simon Spellman—Secretary-Treasurer
Fernando “Ox” Sanchez—Enforcer
Edgar “Eight Ball” Johnston—Enforcer
Gary Becker—Enforcer
Richard “Maverick” Helm—Soldier
Maxwell “Gunner” Wesson—Soldier
Griffin Hayes—Medic
Neil “Apollo” Armstrong—Soldier
Andrew “Slick” Zabek—Prospect
Walter “Wally” Hansen—Prospect
CHAPTER LIST
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Without a single tree to filter it, the sun shone mercilessly down. Maverick stared up at a sky almost white with glare and looked straight into that punishing star, until a ghost of it had been burned into his eyes.
Summer heat baked up from the cracked asphalt and turned the yard into an oven. He could almost feel the rubber soles of his slip-on sneakers melting as he stood there. Less than a minute since the metal door had clanged heavily shut behind him, he felt rills of sweat creeping through his short-shorn hair and down his neck.
The routine noise of perfunctory recreation rumbled around him, occasionally punctuated by the clang of weights dropping onto their stack. As the sun faded from his eyes, Maverick scanned the yard.
If someone set up a camera on a tripod and took a photograph every single day, it would be nearly impossible to distinguish one image from the next. Every single day, the same people took the same positions and did the same things. At the picnic table near the wall: the Indians. Against the far fence: the Mexicans, which meant anybody with Latin blood. The Dyson crew controlled the Blacks, who’d claimed the single patch of hard-pack dirt and the three round picnic tables on it. At the weights was White Pride. Few men straggled apart from any group. It was mortally dangerous to be unaligned.
The asphalt might have been hot enough to cook an egg, but the recreation yard at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary was no melting pot.
Maverick hated every single one of these fuckers.
For four years, he’d been living behind these fences, walls, and bars. Four years since he’d been outside without a gun aimed on him from a watchtower. In all that time, he’d never made a friend. Enemies, yes. But no friends. At first, that hadn’t been an active choice. He hadn’t been a loner on the outside, and he hadn’t intended to be one inside. He’d wanted to keep his head down and get through his time—with any luck, get time off for good behavior. But the guards had had other ideas for him.
So he had lots of enemies. Few who’d do more than glare at him, however. And no friends.
But he wasn’t unaligned.
He walked toward the weights. White Pride was not his thing, and the skinheads were just as bad as all t
he other assholes out here, if not worse, but he’d made room for himself by being a bad motherfucker, so he spent his rec time on the weights and his cell time doing push-ups and sit-ups. The Whites had control of the gym equipment.
Besides, the color of his skin put him here. They tolerated him without forcing their shitty Nazi ink on him because he’d agreed to fight for them. He tolerated them because their chief enemy was the Dyson crew.
And he hated Dyson more than anybody else. For the past year, he’d hated those sons of bitches with a heat so hot his stomach boiled. He owed them a mountain of payback, and someday, he would get it.
As he came up on the weights, Groddo, the skinhead leader, sat up on the bench, where he’d been pressing 200. The rest of his baldheaded minions stood with their arms crossed.
“Helm.” He gave Maverick a steely nod.
Maverick didn’t go by his road name in this place. He hadn’t gotten rung up in the line of duty, and it wasn’t a name that belonged in here. Inmates and guards alike used his surname. Or, in the case of the guards, his inmate number. And no one alive called him Richard or any derivation thereof.
“Groddo. I work in?”
Groddo stood up and waved a be my guest hand at the vacated bench. Maverick shifted the weight peg to 280 and stretched out on the bench. That was almost a hundred pounds over his own weight. He could do more, quite a bit more for a single press, but it wouldn’t do to show up Groddo more than he already was.
Maverick did his reps under the ample shadow of Groddo’s bulk. As he set the stack down between sets, Groddo rested his hand on the grip Maverick had released.
“Evans’ll serve up Carver. For a price.”
The backlight of the sun made the Nazi leader little more than a shadowy hulk hovering above him. Maverick squinted and said nothing, but he thought hard. Evans was one of the head guards. He was also the organizer of the side business the guards had set up—a business that had held Maverick enslaved since the first week of his sentence. A fighting ring, pitting inmates against each other to fight until they couldn’t fight anymore. No rounds, no time, no limits. They were forced to fight until one of them was unconscious or worse.
It was supposedly allowable to tap out, but anyone who did was made to regret it later.
Maverick had come to McAlester as a former professional boxer. Evans had practically been drooling when he’d gotten his hooks into him.
Over his four years locked away, Maverick had lost most of his hearing in one ear and most of his vision in one eye. He had a cheap bridge filling in the teeth that had been knocked out of his bottom jaw, and his hands looked like they’d been made out of random spare parts. He woke up every morning well before first count, so he could loosen himself up enough to walk.
But he’d won the lion’s share of his fights. He was big but not huge—a middleweight: six-three, one-eighty-five. The guards had put him in with bigger and bigger opponents, meaner and meaner bastards, not understanding that size and strength didn’t necessarily mean skill or stamina, and bile didn’t always mean power, and he’d taken most of them down. Since he’d stopped giving a shit whether he lived or died, the guards had stopped betting on the winner and started calling the damage Maverick would do.
His success in the ring was how he’d found a home with the Nazis. They’d wanted his strong arm and his reputation. He’d needed someone at his back.
Still thinking about Groddo’s news, Maverick began his second set. Last summer, shortly before his initial sentence was up, his club, the Brazen Bulls MC, had assigned him a job: a hit on one of Dyson’s lieutenants, who’d started a sentence at the prison. The job came from their Russian partner, Irina Volkov. She’d wanted the guy dead.
Maverick had been inside too long to be in the loop for most club business; he’d given Dane, their VP, his proxy before he’d gone in, and it was rare for anyone to ride down to McAlester to ask his opinion. With the exception of Gunner, it was rare for the Bulls to visit, period.
They’d gotten deep with the Russians since he’d been inside, so he didn’t understand the whys and wherefores of the hit. But he was a Bull, and he’d been given a job. He’d done it, knowing full well what he’d risked. He hadn’t seen another choice. The club was all he had left, and loyal was the only way he knew to be.
Madame Volkov was a powerful old broad, though, with a lot of influence. She’d set the whole thing up, and it had, briefly, looked like he’d get away clear. Then the Dysons had flexed their own muscle, and he’d gone down for the hit. Volkov had intervened at the last minute to pull him back from a harsh new sentence. He’d ended up with another year added on, and four months in solitary while they’d hashed all that shit out.
And he’d been served up on a platter for some personal retaliation.
Evans had served him up, locking the Dyson crew’s inside leader, Clement Carver, and four associates, into his cell in the hole with him. The worst hour of his entire life. Whatever happened in the rest of his life, no matter how long he lived, that would always be the worst hour of his entire life.
He hadn’t yet retaliated for two reasons: First, he trusted no one, and he couldn’t do it on his own. Second, he’d come out of the hole utterly broken, body and spirit. He still fought for the guards, and for the skinheads, but he didn’t know if he had it in him to fight for himself.
And now, months later, Evans was offering him payback on Carver. For a price.
“What’s his angle?” he finally asked Groddo.
“Gotta be a show. In the yard.”
Maverick laughed. Here he was, close to the end of his sentence again, and, again, somebody wanted him to wad that up and toss it in the toilet. Going for Carver in the yard meant no escape from new charges unless the guards decided to let him slide. And why would they willingly give up their favorite gladiator—especially when another charge would get him doing hard time and dancing for them for the rest of his fucking life?
Violence in the yard also made the way for the guards to have themselves a party on the prisoners. He’d probably face retaliation for that as well.
Win-win for the guards, lose-lose for him.
Evans loved his social experiments. He was probably figuring that he’d create an existential dilemma for Maverick—get his revenge on for all that Carver had done to him in the hole and fuck up his release, or pussy out, let Carver slide, hope to be free soon, and spend the rest of his life knowing that he’d let Carver get away with it.
But Maverick didn’t give a fuck anymore if he was released, or if he lived or died. Hope was for pussies and fools. And he wanted Carver.
“Yeah, set it up.”
~oOo~
It went down two days later, with virtually no warning for anyone. The guards released the inmates into the yard so that Carver and his people were last out. That was unusual, and Maverick took note. Carver was the first man of his crew out, and that was unusual as well. His habit was to follow his personal bodyguard. The hairs on Maverick’s neck stood up, and he walked to the middle of the yard.
As soon as Carver cleared the door, it slammed shut, and a guard moved before it. Carver spun around, and there was a short scuffle between him and the guard. He was stranded in the yard without backup, and there was no question at all that the curtain had gone up.
Clement Carver was in his mid-forties or so, a bit more than ten years older than Maverick. He was comparatively short and slight, but he was no joke. Maverick had learned that the hard way. Five on one had been hopeless odds in any case, but it had been Carver who’d laid the worst kinds of hurt on Maverick in that hour.
Not knowing how Evans had arranged this event, Maverick hadn’t put together much of a plan. But he’d been fantasizing about payback for months, so he didn’t need a plan. He charged at Carver as soon as the man turned around, and he tackled him to the ground.
He got in a flurry of blows before a white-hot pain sank into his arm, and Maverick wrenched himself back and away. Carver was holdin
g a fucking shank—the guard must have slipped it to him.
Goddamn Evans, playing his games, must have set that up.
Carver jumped to his feet, brandishing the sharpened toothbrush. He grinned. “Oh, biker boy. I’m gonna make you pay for this. I’m gonna make you pay all night long. Longer than that. Not like last time. This time, I’m gonna put a collar on you and make you my bitch.”
A thick ring of silent inmates had formed, creating an arena of sorts in which he and Carver faced each other. Maverick grinned back and shook his head. “Not when I’m done, shithead. When I’m done, you won’t be making anybody do shit.”
Blood washed down his arm, but he didn’t give a fuck. He would be dead when this was over, or Carver would be. Didn’t matter which. He charged again, feinting at the last second and grabbing the hand that held the makeshift knife. He spun and twisted Carver’s arm behind his back, wrenching it until it broke. The ensuing crack filled the air like a firecracker. Maverick’s hands, holding Carver’s arm, felt the break happen. The shank fell to the asphalt, and Maverick let him go, twisting his arm again for good measure, feeling the bones shift loosely in their meat casing. Carver reeled back.
He hadn’t yelled, though, or even grunted, as his arm had snapped.
It was a common downfall with powerful men: They began to believe that the power which had accrued to them because of their associations and their attitude meant true, essential strength. Maverick could imagine the feeling that had likely suffused Carver as he’d realized that a fight was going down, and as the guard had slipped him the shank: a first surge of surprise and worry, and then a rush of adrenaline, fueling a giddy sense of power. And then he’d held a weapon and thought that piece of plastic was all the odds in his own hand.
Maverick kicked the shank away; that was not how he wanted to finish this fight. Carver jumped at him, swinging with his weaker but intact arm, and Maverick deflected it easily, returning a hard jab and connecting with Carver’s throat. He followed it with a high kick—he’d picked up a mix of fighting skills in prison, and in the underground fights before that—and connected with his chest. Carver went down, choking and gasping, and Maverick dropped on him, getting him almost at once into a chokehold. Out in the world, he’d have been looking for a submission. In an organized prison fight, he’d have been trying to put him out. Here on the yard, in full view of the guards, he meant to fucking kill the bastard.
Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3) Page 1
