Then one day some bikers stopped in. They didn’t have the gas to get down to the Outlaw Saloon, so stopped in here. Nothing was happening and we weren’t making money no more so we hopped on. Been hanging on the back ever since.”
“I’m sorry about any pain I caused you underneath that bridge. I really had no choice, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. It was just shock for me. Rebel needed someone to take his drugs to Richmond, and bring the money back. Jessie’s crew was part of the Lowland Outlaws, and did that type of work. When Grover and Shawn wanted some girls for the trip instead of just cash, Rebel bought us from Rattler and then loaned us out for the ride. I don’t think Buck knows all that and didn’t want to get too involved. So when it was all over, he just took us back to Rebel.”
Kelton held opened the diner door for her, and saw Rachel was working alone. He hustled her to a booth as quick as he could so Azrael could get underneath before anyone took notice.
“I’m going to go to the girl’s room. Please get me a pop tart,” and she strode toward the back. Kelton guessed the pills were doing what they were supposed to do.
Rachel came over after filling a coffee cup three tables down.
“Still in town?” she asked sweetly. “Is St. Albans growing on you?”
“A new friend needed a little help,” he explained. “Is Doris resting?”
“She went up to South Hill to do some shopping. It’s not unusual. Let’s her get away a little before the weekend rush. Goes early so she can be back when the lunch rush starts. You want the breakfast platter again?”
“Please. Make it two. And something fruity sweet. Maybe waffles?”
“I can do pancakes,” she offered.
“Sounds good,” he nodded. “And we’d like a room too. We’ve been out all night.”
“I’ll grab a key too,” she said with an exaggerated flirty wink that he found embarrassing.
Baylee Ann took her time and Rachel was bringing out food before she returned. Kelton watched her closely, and could see that she wasn’t feeling very well. He observed her staring at the food, trying to resist because of knowing what would follow, but the famine of several days won out. It was a large meal, one that the likes of her was never going to clean the plate, but in the end she gave a good accounting of herself and it perked her up.
Rachel brought a room key with the check, and Kelton sent it back with his credit card.
“You just live from motel to motel?”
Kelton shook his head, “Usually I’m out on the ground somewhere like us in the park last night. Rooms are expensive and I have no income. But I think you need it and probably want to get cleaned up better than a clinic sponge-bath.”
She shrugged and said, “Okay,” with bright eyes.
Kelton left Rachel a nice tip when the ticket returned and they walked down to the motel room on the far end. It was pretty much the same as the others, except a framed watercolor print of a flowering gazebo survived in this one. Baylee Ann untied the arms of the hoodie as he was closing the door and then lifted off the T-shirt with her back to him just as he turned around. She had no bra and her skin showed an orange hue in places where the iodine hadn’t been wiped away. The low-cut jeans fit her curves rather well, and showed a strip of a barbed wire tattoo just above her backside. She looked at him over her shoulder.
“Changing your mind?” she asked.
His face went red momentarily and Azrael came up and sat in the heel position at his left side. She giggled at him as he tried to compose his thoughts.
“That, ah, wasn’t what I had,” he stammered, “in mind.”
“Suit yourself. You’re the man,” she shrugged as she let her jeans fall down. She wasn’t wearing any underwear either. The rape kit at the clinic had claimed that for evidence, too, he presumed. She strode into the tiny bathroom, and closed the door slightly. A moment later he heard the running water and imagined how refreshing its warmth would feel after a night on a park bench, but he didn’t go in.
He took off the pack, and then kneeled to remove the harness vest from Azrael. Since the sink was occupied he filled the bowl with water again from the CamelBak. It was nearly empty, but he’d refill soon. Then he sat and pulled off his boots and socks to wiggle free his toes, rolling back the cuffs of his pants so they wouldn’t drag. The warm running water continued to beckoned. His shirt felt restrictive, and he pulled it off. His T-shirt soon followed, and he felt perspiration evaporate. The warm moist bathroom air condensed to a wisp of cloud as it escaped into the cooler room in which he sat.
He sighed and muttered to himself, “Lightning won’t strike you dead.” He dropped the remainder of his cloths and went in.
She greeted him with, “Get the shampoo bottle on the counter by the sink.”
A large tattoo of an eagle with spreading wings covering her breasts looked a little distorted as she was beginning to sag. To him it was far from sexy, more akin to graffiti on a great work of art. Black hair peaked from under her arms and her stomach bulged from lots of fatty foods and little exercise. She’d lived a hard life, and even being young was struggling to keep those consequences at bay. Nonetheless, there was a confidence to her that was attractive.
He stepped over the tub wall and got wet. They lathered and they rinsed. Her stroking hands were stimulating, but inhibition kept him in check. After drying off they simply climbed into bed, and cuddled up into a spoon. It was both comforting, and awkward. Pleasant, yet incomplete. She was young, and female, and in his bed. It was nice, but his body didn’t respond to her presence. While she wasn’t what he wanted, he felt perfectly okay to share the mutual pleasant glow of being clean and warm. Sleep came easy to them.
CHAPTER—21
Shep stirred in his office at the Outlaw Saloon as a ray of light through the east facing window that looked over the parking lot found his face. His head throbbed like always this time of morning, complete with aching joints and a stiff back. Bambi still lay next to him, one breast exposed from under the sheet. Her breaths rumbled as her chest rose and fell, and he let her be as he stumbled over to the bathroom. Shep rubbed at his temples a few minutes, bent over the sink. Like most mornings he took a couple of aspirin and drank from cupped hands. He dressed in yesterday’s clothes, which were the same ones as the day before a few more times than even he wished to admit.
He opened the shudders to his inside perch and looked down over the restaurant floor. All was quiet and the lights were off. It was peaceful, but he could smell the stale beer odor that even Pine-Sol never quite stripped away. Sunlight through the front doors below were making long shadows and he could see just a glimpse of a figure here and there curled up asleep. After it closed for business in the small hours of the morning, his concrete saloon floor was like a castle’s great hall. Assorted henchmen, “Men at Bikes” with no place to go unless on a run, crashed here. And he was the king.
“Anyone seen Burt and Ripper?” he yelled out. He didn’t expect them to answer his question. They needed to be awake for that.
There were a few moans as people slowly stirred from his shattering of their tranquility. But it was earlier than they were usually roused, and Shep was patient with them. He reached to his desk for the knife, and used its pommel to pound the railing. It reverberated all over, being an open room with a hard floor.
“Wake up, useless shits. Who has seen Burt and Ripper? Has anyone seen Rebel?”
Shep banged the railing some more. The rattle was insistent, but he wasn’t angry. This was normal for his gang. Most had only been asleep for a couple of hours and were drunk and exhausted before they turned in. He’d save the rage for a time it would matter. Right now he was concerned. It was supposed to be just a couple of hours, drive out to the sheriff’s, recover some property and come back. Burt and Ripper would have wanted their turn. It would have provided them a sense of urgency. But they hadn’t come. Bambi was still with him when he woke. And that told him something was wrong.
He s
witched the knife to his other hand when one arm became tired from banging. Moans became more like groans and there was movement. Covering their ears wasn’t making it stop, so they did the only thing that would. They slinked off of booths under the old stall windows and out from under tables in the middle of the floor. Slowly they shuffled into an assembly below the balcony, looking up with tired greasy faces. Their eyes were bloodshot and even up here he could smell the bad breadth and the body odor.
“Has anyone seen Burt and Ripper since they left?” he asked a third time, in a more normal tone of voice.
Shep stopped the banging now that all were paying attention. He wanted information, not to torture them.
They turned and looked at each other, as if checking for their missing comrades, and then faced outward to check all the booths and tables. A couple of guys wandered to the kitchen doorway to the left of the tiny stage and peaked behind, only to look up at him and shake their heads.
“Randy, check outside for their bikes or Rebel’s truck. Mauler, look in the cans. If you got to barf, do it while you’re in there.”
The two shuffled off while the others began to become more alert. They sensed their patron was concerned, and began to rally their focus. Randy came back first, raised an arm to make sure Shep had seen him, and shook his head. Mauler stumbled back into view with vomit on his shirt a second later, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before shrugging his shoulders.
“Crew leaders, get up here. The rest of you get yourselves ready to ride,” he ordered as he turned back to his desk.
In the lower left drawer, he retrieved a county map under a pile of cell phones decorated in colored electrical tape and unfolded it upon the desk. Their knocks came a few seconds later and he bid them enter with a grunt. They quickly gathered around, and pulled on their riding gloves as they looked on.
“Here we are, and here is Sheriff’s Fouche’s house on Caisson Road,” he stabbed with his dirty broken fingernail while the four of them nodded. All of them knew the area really well. They’d grown up here, riding with no place to go.
He gave their riding purpose. They were the closest he had to lieutenants, although none of them could take over the business. But they could keep their half dozen crew members in line and that kept the business rolling, moving cash and drugs across the nation’s interstates. Shep supposed that made them more like sergeants than lieutenants, but he’d deserted during vehicular mechanic school just after basic so didn’t have a long career to go on.
“Rattler, check this derelict country store for Burt’s and Ripper’s bikes. They had planned to stash them there before going on their raid. Then,” he said tracing the roads with his finger, “ride these roads to the north to find our guys. We need to find them before Bucky the Pig.”
They all sniggered at his pet name for Deputy Garner, but Shep didn’t really hear as he paused to evaluate his hasty thinking. If the bikes were there, that meant they would have fled north or got nabbed at the scene. If there were no bikes, and they hadn’t come back here, well, so be it. They made their choice and he’d enjoy their turn with Bambi. He glanced over at her and saw she’d shifted on to her side, blanket draping off her narrow hips and showing her bare back and long gold hair. Since they weren’t here, the bikes would be there.
“Rattler, if you find the bikes stashed there, sit on them. Take a cover off one of yours like there’s been some mechanical trouble. I’ll send Beau with a trailer, and a tarp, for them when he opens his garage across the street. But that could be a couple of hours before he gets in. Everyone set for burners?”
They nodded their heads. Burners were disposable cell phones. Since they weren’t registered to any particular person’s banking information they were ideal for making calls without leaving a record that connected anyone. All types of places carried them these days, and Shep kept a file cabinet full in case the heat was on and he needed to do a mass reissue.
“Okay, find our boys then. Send a text if you learn anything or when its ten o’clock so I know you’re okay.”
Less than five minutes later he heard the engines starting, and watched the boys riding off in their respective crews while standing at his office window. Rattler’s was the smallest; Burt and Ripper belonged to him. When the last rider faded from sight, the overpass kept him from seeing the north bound on-ramp so it didn’t take long, he sat at his desk. He arranged the four burners in a line, one for each crew, stared at the map and waited. While he was arranging phones, he made sure a fifth one, with red electrical tape around it, had a full charge. Sure, he could have used just one phone to talk to each crew but this way made it harder to connect the activity. Burners were cheap compared to the cost of prison; prison cost you everything.
Bambi wandered into the washroom when she awoke, and he heard the sink running for quite some time. When she emerged, her dripping skin glowed from the scrubbing of the washcloth. He didn’t have a towel for her to use. If he had, it probably would have been dirty enough to defeat her purpose. But regardless, she looked good standing there naked in the door. He wished his body would readily respond again so soon, but he was no longer a young man and last night’s satisfaction had left nothing to be desired.
Shep watched her dress, rather than staring further at the unyielding map, into the only clothes she had. Then she came over and sat in one of the facing desk chairs. She sat up straight, arms in her lap like a lady. He leaned back and slouched, then let out a soft belch. His stomach felt acidic and irritated.
“Rebel has my friend Baylee Ann chained up down in a pit,” she said.
He wasn’t particularly taken aback. He’d seen and heard a lot of things in the underbelly microcosm of society in which he lived. But what intrigued him, was why she thought he would care. Shep nodded to encourage her to continue.
“If Rebel is taken, then whoever frees her will own her,” she said looking at his eyes and choosing her words. “Just thought you might want to know of an opportunity depending upon how this goes.”
“I’d rather have my men back. We’re a little short after Jessie.”
“She’ll give you a way to pay new men. And me. All you got to do is go over to Rebel’s garage.”
He shrugged. He had plenty of money to pay men, but money didn’t buy loyalty. And once given, it was theirs and that made them less hungry for more for a while. Especially in the amounts he had to pay them if using money alone. But sex, anything goes sex with no danger of being caught soliciting, was a powerful incentive that kept them coming back because they couldn’t take it with them. And after a day or two, mother nature told them they needed more. That required a steady supply of fresh women, fresh to his boys anyway, to be able to pull off. He knew Baylee Ann. He’d had Baylee Ann. She wasn’t bad, but perhaps she and Bambi were both too well known around these parts to be worth much anymore. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t trade them for two similar girls from the next organization in the chain, or the next pack that rode through carrying their own recreation. Definitely worth considering depending upon how things worked out. But for now, he concentrated on the most important, effective way to build loyalty of all. Proving to everyone, that no matter how low you were in the gang, everyone would go out looking for you if you didn’t come back. That was the real reason for the whole operation.
He gave her a soft smile, “Do you want something to eat?”
Bambi nodded quickly.
“Candi will be in soon downstairs. She’s a squat redheaded lady, about fifty, who applies her makeup with a trowel. Tell her I sent you and she’ll make you some breakfast. Then come back to me up here. Okay?”
Bambi nodded, and headed out the door to the spiraling stairs.
The first phone beeped a quarter hour later with a text, “Found the sleds.”
Rattler being cute. The bikes were there. Why weren’t their riders? He texted back for them to sit, and called Beau across the street. They were lucky Beau was in at his garage early. Shep explained what
he wanted and sent him on his way.
Then he put his face into his hands and rubbed. Okay, if there’s no Rebel, Shep decided, he would go get Baylee Ann. Would be a waste for her to die there. Keeping his face in his hands, he put his elbows on the table. Then he caught himself nodding off, but decided not to fight it. There was nothing to do but wait.
The next series of texts concerned State Police vehicles with “Crime Scene” lettered on the front fenders. They seemed to be showing up in a steady stream. Rattler had noted three. There was no telling if others had shown before his men had arrived. There were no texts of “Oink!” which indicated Deputy Garner or the Sheriff. He liked keeping tabs on them as a matter of course. Rattler also mentioned an orange barricade erected at the end of Caisson Road that read “Closed to Through Traffic.” It seemed things hadn’t gone as a quiet little theft after all. A major investigation was mounting.
Next was word that Beau and the trailer had arrived. He’d asked Beau to use the tarp so they wouldn’t be seen removing two bikes. Two bikes breaking down at the same time would look suspicious. And loitering close to a crime scene was a really lousy place to look suspicious. Shep breathed a sigh of relief with the text that Beau had departed without incident.
And then it was quiet again. The shudders were open, and he heard Candi come in. Bambi accosted her right away. The poor thing was clearly starving. Shep rose and stood on the balcony. Candi heard his footsteps, and looked up. He gave her a thumbs up, a nod, and a wink to add his legitimacy to Bambi’s request. Then he turned back to the business at hand.
The smell of the eggs and bacon wafted up to his office and he rose again from the desk.
Shep yelled down, “Candi! Make me some of that, please.”
“You want this one, Shep?”
“No, that’s Bambi’s. I’ll wait. And please bring it up.”
K-9 Outlaw: A Kelton Jager Adventure Book 1 Page 18
