CROWS MC SET-TO LOAD

by Bloom, Cassandra

  Progress is progress, I thought to myself, and tried to keep quiet as I slipped across the room towards the filing cabinet.

  If I could just get that address and slip out before—

  “Jace?” Danny called, announcing my presence to everyone else and making me flinch.

  Three other pairs of eyes turned to face me.

  “Didn’t think ya were comin’ in today? Thought ya an’ Mia were headin’ out on a date, weren’t’cha?”

  I groaned and nodded, motioning towards the filing cabinet. “I was just here for my address book,” I confessed, pointing to the little black Moleskin set atop the four-tier cabinet. “I made a note of a place I wanted to take Mia to and—”

  “Care to weigh in on this rimjob debate?” Candy offered, seeming more entertained by the idea of my response than actually interested in the nature of it.

  “There’s very little else in this world I want to do less than weigh in on this rimjob debate, Candy,” I said outright and flat-out.

  “Ye’re right to want to duck out,” Danny offered, but was all the same reaching into the desk as he said it. “But, long as ye’re here, I was hoping ye’d be willin’ to take a gander at this?”

  He held out a rather thick-looking folder to me.

  I had to awkwardly maneuver between Candy and the hooker who was okay with lumping ass-licking in the same place as cock-sucking. Though I wasn’t about to say so, I thought that, while she was a real go-getter and an undeniably adventurous girl, her business savvy left a lot of room for improvement.

  “Long as I can ‘gander’ at it over dinner with Mia,” I said, tucking the bundle under my arm.

  “Ya can gander at it however ya like, so long’s as ya gander,” Danny said, seeming to lay on his Southern drawl a little heavier as he did.

  ****

  As promised, I gandered over the papers over dinner with Mia.

  Feeling a renewed sense of involvement with all this Crow-related, she was almost more interested in what it all had to say than I was.

  Okay, so she was a lot more interested than I was.

  “It’s really tough to read this when you’re kissing my neck, you know,” she chastised.

  I grinned, nodded, and kissed her neck again. “Yes, I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

  She giggled at this, tried to pull away—trying, in fact, to pretend she didn’t love it—only to have her giggles slip into laughs. Betrayed by her own response, she let herself fall against me and craned her neck to accept a few more kisses before turning her head to catch the next “attack” on her lips. We both moaned, satisfied by this turn of events, and explored its possibilities a bit further.

  Then the wine came.

  We parted—our eyes seeming to agree it was a temporary shift, at best—and, as the waiter shuffled off, embarrassed, we each took a sip. As we partook, our eyes, by no real fault or intrigue—solely, it seemed, by chance—fell upon the paperwork. I sighed, feeling a sense of entrapment by the authority of the printed pages, and I shuffled a bit through the stack, hoping that doing so would transfer the content into my brain through the skin of my palms by some new form of desperate osmosis.

  This did not happen.

  Instead, Mia’s free hand came down with a sudden-yet-not-harsh abruptness, stopping me on one of the pages, and she pointed to a line.

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  The page, what appeared to be a printout of an email, depicted a scene as it had been followed by one of Danny’s informants. This, however, was not what Mia was asking about.

  Her finger tapped specifically over a name:

  Papa Raven.

  “Him?” I asked, then, to clarify, I said aloud: “Papa Raven?”

  Mia nodded.

  Then, sighing, I set down my glass of wine and told her a story—the story of my father, his dream for the city, and a man who, long ago, had lied to his face, called himself a “partner”…

  And then taken everything, including my father’s life.

  “And that,” I finished with a sigh, “is how Papa Raven fractured the Crow Gang, started the Carrion Crew, and murdered my father in one single act.”

  A moment of silence passed then, Mia, saddened by my story, considering it and mulling it along with whatever it was that had motivated her to ask about him in the first place. Knowing she’d tell me her end soon enough, I read through the rest of the printed page.

  By the time Mia was ready to talk, I’d come to the conclusion that our work—both my work with the Crows and my work with ending the looming threat of the Carrion Crew against Mia—was far from done.

  Our entrees came soon after, and we teased at our plates for the first few minutes as we finished talking about Papa Raven and, in the long run, finished talking about business in general.

  We were, after all, on a date. We would go on to appreciate our meal, attend a double-feature—a horror movie for her and an action-comedy for me—and then, finally, we’d go back to my condo, with all its fancy new security add-ons, and have toe-curling, headboard-cracking sex. The hardest decision that we needed to concern ourselves with at that moment was which hole that sex would focus on, not matters of the Carrion Crew or Papa Raven.

  That was just crazy.

  PART 5

  Quoth the Raven…

  EPILOGUE

  ~PAPA RAVEN~

  Papa Raven sat at one corner of the triangular table. The other two corners were occupied by two other Carrion Crew “heads.” There were other heads to the Crew, yes, but only two of them were in attendance at that moment. With the three corners occupied, the three remaining sides, each long enough to comfortably occupy five chairs, found themselves occupied with fifteen of what the Carrion Crew heads considered to be their best men. Like the heads, these fifteen did not encapsulate the whole of what was considered to be their best men, it was just the fifteen that were presently in attendance. Of the fifteen, each Carrion head present had summoned five of their best to come to this gathering; each line of five sat to the left of the Carrion head that had invited them. Had the group been larger—had there been more Carrion heads present and, therefore, another group of five summoned on their behalf—the shape of the table would have been adjusted to accommodate for just that number.

  A square for four heads and twenty best.

  An octagon for eight heads and forty best.

  And so on and so forth.

  Papa Raven was meticulous in that way. He was also not above sharing roles—“head,” in this case—and he took no steps to set himself above any other. Whether it was three corners, four corners, eight, ten, or ten-thousand—and he most certainly aspired to see the day when the Carrion Crew could boast ten-thousand heads, preferably with each one overseeing well over five “best”—he had no interest in crude displays of power or authority.

  However…

  However!

  However, as the Carrion Crew—all of the Carrion Crew—were his, as he was in essence the founder, the CEO… hell, the fucking father of the Carrion Crew, it was his right to assume some sense of superiority.

  Even if he chose not to boast one.

  It was simply in their place to know.

  And, should there be a Crew member who did not know, or one who forgot themselves and should think themselves bold enough to challenge, it was not much of a challenge to handle such things.

  No more than clipping a young bird’s wings, Papa Raven imagined.

  And so, though his chair was no different and his corner was no more angled or widened than any other corner of the table, there was no challenge when he addressed the triangle and its eighteen occupants.

  His voice was low, kept rigidly monotonous, and a poetic mind might travel far enough as a listener to wonder if he intentionally spoke in iambic pentameter. This was not how he typically spoke—nobody could truly say how Papa Raven spoke; his tone, his rhythms, and even his vocabulary seemed to change as randomly and as quickly as the path o
f a flock of birds; just like a pack of birds, too, was the bizarre grace and beauty that it took regardless of all elements—but this, like everything else, was just how he was.

  He referred to them as “gentlemen,” but there was a hint of playfulness here; as if he were sampling a joke that none found funny. And if he’d been insulted by that fact—if truly he had been aiming for humor and that aim had been misfired—every soul at that triangle, head and best alike, would undoubtedly fall into a forced and panicked scream of laughter.

  As would the group were they only half that number.

  As would the group were they only half that yet again.

  And so on and so forth.

  None laughed when Papa Raven addressed them as “gentlemen,” but, having not been aiming for humor, he spoke on without pause, unoffended and, therefore, unprovoked.

  He asked for numbers.

  Firstly, the number of dead Carrions in the attack on the cul-de-sac that they had acquired. Papa Raven had liked this cul-de-sac, had boasted one of the houses as his own, even, and had been forced to sacrifice both a lovely piece of business property as well as a personal home when it was attacked.

  One of the best men, this one summoned by the head seated to Papa Raven’s right, cleared his throat and stood. He announced that seventy-three members of the Carrion Crew had died. He went on to explain that, of those seventy-three, only sixty-one were actually dead; that, of the eight remaining, four were wounded badly enough to no longer serve a purpose, two were beyond repair and no longer worth the cost of keeping them alive, and another two had decided to flee from both the cul-de-sac, the city in general, and, by extension, the Carrion Crew.

  Papa Raven ordered that the eight still living be sent off with the other sixty-one. Then he asked how many Crows—the vile sons-of-whores!—were killed during their attack.

  The same man, still standing, said the number seemed to be roughly in the twenties. He explained that it was hard to say, as many of the wounded were escorted away when the attack was over; if any but those left behind had perished after the fact there was no way of knowing.

  Frowning at this, Papa Raven produced a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine jutting from its polished handle like an angry phallus aiming to fuck its way straight into Hell. Before any, the standing best especially, could react to this motion, the trigger was pulled and a bullet was delivered into his head.

  The body of this man, who’d only done as he was asked and delivered the news of numbers, fell dead; sprawled and leaving a growing pool of blood roughly in the center of one of the triangular table’s sides.

  Papa Raven, seeming no more flustered by this turn of events than if he’d simply rubbed an itch from his nose, set the semi-automatic pistol with its extended magazine in front of him, letting the barrel aim lazily back—a bored and yawning, gunmetal mouth—back towards the now-dead best man.

  Nobody at the table spoke, but all of them had the same thought:

  That extended magazine offered the semi-automatic seventeen shots. Assuming that Papa Raven would not soon turn the gun on himself—and he most assuredly would not—there was easily one bullet waiting for each and every one of them should he see fit to deliver them.

  As this thought passed, each of the remaining sixteen souls shared another thought, this one far less technical but much more disconcerting. Moreover, it was just one, simple, and even beloved word:

  “Carrion.”

  Next, Papa Raven asked another question of numbers. This one regarding the total loss that the Crow’s attack represented.

  Another of the Carrion Crew’s best, occupying the side beside Papa Raven to his right, stood. This one, in a clear attempt to soften the news—even go so far as to make it sound upbeat; a not-so-bad tone carrying the entire delivery—even wore a smile as he spoke.

  This time, when Papa Raven pulled the trigger—his aim, as always, never faltering—it passed through the speaker’s still-grinning mouth, the passing bullet smashing five of his front teeth to dust, before punching through the back of his skull. Unlike the first to die, the force of the bullet knocked this informant straight back, toppling over his chair as he went, and leaving his legs sprawled up in the air like a piece of roadkill.

  Not seeming satisfied by this death on its own, Papa Raven pulled the trigger on the man seated directly to the right of this man.

  The aura of the room took on a heavy, loaded sense; it was not totally unlike the sort of tension that might hang over a table saturated with gamblers. Were the odds in such a place that all would walk away a “winner,” all would have been happy to take that turn. However, as this was hardly ever the case, gamblers were prone to find themselves in silent, biased trials with one another—wishing bad luck on others because they knew them, or because they did not know them, or because they felt that some prior string of good or bad luck should be a deciding factor.

  Not a single one thought of trying to run, however.

  To fold your cards and abandon the table altogether was to forfeit the game entirely.

  At that moment, unprovoked still, Papa Raven retrieved the semi-automatic yet again and put two rounds in the chest of the Carrion head seated to his right.

  A bittersweet duality of thoughts cycled in that instant.

  The bitter: if a Carrion head could be shot down with no reason other than one possibly existing in Papa Raven’s mind, then nobody at that table was truly safe.

  The sweet: that he’d sacrificed two bullets in the brutal act meant that at least one of the remaining souls seated at the triangle would be leaving with their life.

  Again, a silent sense of forced competition cycled.

  And while there were a fair number of learned men seated about still, fear and tension had shaved away much of their wits. Had any of them retained a shred of this, however, they might have realized that this cycle—the thoughts, and, furthermore, all of the thoughts being had in that moment—were a product of Papa Raven and his manipulations.

  Like the late, waste-of-space Malcolm Chobavich, a man that Papa Raven had seen particular promise in tormenting further, Papa Raven was a master at manipulating others; even moreso, in fact.

  Unlike the late, waste-of-space Malcolm Chobavich, however, Papa Raven was a man of action, not words.

  Looking directly at the only other Carrion head, Papa Raven asked, quite calmly and painfully outright, if the whore-Mia still lived

  The Carrion head, seeming to realize what had just happened, didn’t bother to stand as he confessed that, yes, she did.

  Two more bullets stole the life of the only other Carrion head.

  Then, just like that, Papa Raven, the sole remaining Carrion head in the room, sat before twelve of the best men the Carrion Crew had.

  He paused in his questions then. He spread his arms. He said that he felt like a great bird; that a great bird is large and, as such, demands large wings to fly.

  He pulled the gun and—BA-BANG!—fired two more shots. The shots seemed impossibly fast to lend to any sort of accuracy, but two of the best men seated at the side across from him fell dead at almost the same instant.

  He said, again, that he felt like a great bird, but that now his wingspan was smaller.

  Another two shots; another two dead.

  And smaller.

  Papa Raven set down his semi-automatic, and then he slapped both of his palms down against the table. His palms clapped loudly on the wood on either side of the point he sat before.

  The men seated around him, strangely, seemed more startled by this than the gunshots.

  Papa Raven roared, his tone and rhythm changing like the shifting of a flock of birds, and demanded to know why he was being forced to fly a great bird like the Carrion Crew on what felt like such tiny wings.

  He named names. Among those names were T-Built; these were the names of those who’s jobs were necessary and yet left unfulfilled.

  He named names. Among those names were Mia Chobavish; these were t
he names of assets who’d been allowed to slip from the great talons of the Carrion Crew.

  He named names. Among those names were Jason Presley; these were the names of enemies who, for whatever reason, had been allowed to remain alive and well.

  Then he fired three shots. Another three bodies fell dead.

  This time somebody did try to run. A fourth shot was fired; a fourth body fell dead.

  Papa Raven sighed and turned away from the table; turned his back to the shaken survivors. He’d looked sad before he turned, and several thought that this must have been why he turned. He’d looked tired before he turned, and another thought that this must have been why he turned. They were all right, but they were all also wrong. Papa Raven lifted the gun, aiming its barrel up towards the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. He emptied the extended magazine. Then he held the soulless gun behind his back so that the survivors could see it and celebrate what it represented to them. And while they celebrated this, they felt a great fear for what it could mean for them, as well.

  Had their survival been of total and reckless circumstance? Were their still-beating hearts—their still-thinking brains—solely the product of randomness and chance? And, if so, what value could they ever again place on their lives, lives that were now no more happenstance than which specks of dust came to clog a vent and which managed to slip through undetected?

  Or had they been chosen by some chaotic process? Could Papa Raven’s seemingly random gunning process have been, in the end, a calculated process?

  These questions might have been answered, but the learned men were far from fit to dwell on such things to any true substance.

  But, as it was known, Papa Raven was a master manipulator, and he was a man of action.

  The answers were there for those who had mind enough to calculate them.

  Still with his back to the survivors, Papa Raven told them that change was coming. He told them that he expected greater things—that he expected greater numbers, greater profits, greater turnouts, greater sales; that he demanded greater sex and far, far greater death.