by Zoey Parker
Over an hour of doo wop songs later, the Lincoln Town Car pulled off of Lake Shore Drive and into the Rogers Park neighborhood in northern Chicago. It pulled into a small parking lot next to a shabby-looking little bar with a row of motorcycles standing out front. There were bullet holes and scorched patches on the front of the building. Heavy metal music shrieked and roared from inside.
“This is the Nest,” Rafe told me.
“I probably could have guessed that,” I replied dryly.
We got out of the car and walked into the Devil's Nest. There were about a dozen men wearing vests with War Reaper patches on them. As they turned to look at us, most of their faces appeared to be full of contempt and scorn. At first I thought it was directed at me, but then I realized they were looking at Rafe. I felt a surge of pity for him. I didn't know much about bikers or their gangs, but I knew how much it must have hurt for him to be looked at that way by people who he'd considered his brothers.
One of the only Reapers who didn't look at Rafe that way was a younger member with acne scars and a wispy mustache. As he got up and walked over to us, I saw that the name on his patch was “Sperm.” I asked myself how he'd gotten that name, then decided I didn't really want to know after all.
“Hey Rafe,” Sperm said. He turned to me and added, “You must be Jewel. It's a pleasure to meet you.” He extended his hand awkwardly, and the gesture and the absurd formality of his tone almost made me want to laugh.
Instead I shook his hand. “It's a pleasure to meet you too.”
“No jokes about my mother today, huh, Sperm?” Rafe asked ruefully.
Sperm grinned, but his eyes looked pained. “Sure, I got a whole bunch of 'em. Just survive this mess so I can tell 'em to you, okay?”
Rafe nodded and reached for my hand, giving it a small squeeze.
“Here, we got the back room set up for you so you can wait this out,” Sperm told me, leading us to a door at the back of the bar. “TV's not in great shape, but I can go out an' grab a book or some magazines or somethin', if it'll make things easier for you. An' there's a cot back there if you want to get some sleep.”
Sperm opened the door to the room. It was clearly intended for storage, with cases of cheap beer stacked against one wall next to boxes of cleaning supplies. Several tables and chairs had been piled high to make room for the narrow cot, and I could see that the dust on the floor had been hastily swept into the corners. There was a back door marked “Fire Exit.”
“I, uh, know it's not much to look at,” Sperm said sheepishly, “but it's the best I could do on short notice. Sorry.”
“It's fine,” I said, trying to sound upbeat. “Thank you, um...Sperm.”
Sperm laughed. “I know. Stupid nickname, right? I usually forget until I hear a girl say it, ha.”
“We should probably get going,” Bard said to Rafe. “The sooner we do, the sooner we can put this fiasco behind us.”
“Right,” Rafe said, turning to me. “Just hang out here and try to relax, okay? I know how hard that's going to be, but trust me, this will all be over in a few hours.”
“Okay,” I said. I felt a crazy urge to tell Rafe that I loved him, but I couldn't. Not here, not in front of all these strange bikers. As badly as I wanted to, I knew it wasn't the right time or place and I was afraid he wouldn't be able to say it back, even if he felt it too. Instead I kissed him on the cheek and said, “Good luck. Oh, and take this. You might need it.” I handed the .22 back to him, figuring if a bar full of bikers couldn't keep me safe, the pistol probably wouldn't either.
Rafe nodded and walked toward the front door of the bar with Bard and Sperm. As he did, I saw Sperm reach into his pocket and pull out a handful of memory sticks, saying, “So when Boomer told me about the thing you grabbed from the Chayner brothers, I got an idea...”
Before I could hear what it was, the back room door swung shut behind them. The sound had the flat, terrible finality of a tomb being sealed, and I shivered.
I wished I would have told him what I’d realized in the car. The realization had been as quick as a lightning strike—I love him.
I'd wanted to tell Rafe that I loved him, regardless of how short and crazy our time had been together so far. Now I was afraid that I'd never have another chance.
I sat on the cot, wondering what to do next. It seemed like my only options were to either stare at the walls or try to sleep, and with my stomach feeling like a writhing nest of snakes from worrying about Rafe, I didn't think sleep would be a viable option.
I was tempted to open the door and see if I could find Sperm so I could take him up on his offer of something to read, but then I remembered the other Reapers sitting out there in the bar. I thought they might somehow blame me for Rafe's betrayal, or at least associate me with it, and I wasn't sure I could handle the thick atmosphere of disapproval from a room full of strangers. Better to just hunker down and wait for news, I decided.
After a few more minutes, the door to the back room opened. I looked up, hoping it would be Sperm with a magazine or two.
Instead, I gaped in shock and disbelief at the figure filling the frame of the door.
He was extremely tall, with skin that was even more scarred and ragged than Boomer's. His hair was long and dirty. He had a patch over one eye, and one of his arms was missing at the shoulder. He was limping slightly, and when I looked down, I saw that both of his feet were prosthetics fashioned from curved black metal. He had a deck of cards in his hand and a small blackboard under his remaining arm. He wore a denim vest with a Reaper patch like the others, and his name tag said “Growler.”
All in all, he looked like something I'd have expected to see staggering across the screen in a horror movie, chased by angry villagers with torches and pitchforks.
“Um, hi,” I said uncertainly.
Growler nodded a greeting and gently closed the door behind him. Then he walked over to the cot and sat down at the other end of it. I felt myself instinctively flinch away from him, my back against the wall. I felt bad, but I couldn't help it. I'd honestly never seen someone so maimed and hideous-looking in my entire life.
Growler didn't seem particularly surprised or offended by my reaction. Instead he tossed the deck of cards on the cot, carefully removed a piece of chalk from his pocket, and scrawled on the blackboard. Satisfied, he turned the board around so I could read the words.
“Know any good card games?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Uhhh...well, I guess I know Rummy, and, um, Go Fish...”
Growler shook his shaggy head, erasing the words and writing new ones to show me.
“Games where you don't have to talk?”
“Oh,” I said meekly. “Right.”
This is going to be the longest few hours of my life, I thought.
Chapter 34
Rafe
Sperm told me his plan with the memory sticks, and it sounded like it was worth a try.
Before I could head for the door, Sperm grabbed my shoulder. “Hey, uh, if you're gonna ride out to face Jester and his guys, you should probably grab a shirt first, not to mention a new pair of pants. Unless your plan is to get them to laugh themselves to death when they see those fuckin' khakis.”
Shit, I thought. I left my other clothes under the seat of the fucking Saab, which is still parked in front of the farmhouse. And Jewel's stuff is there too, which will probably make her pretty upset, since she said the clothes were a gift from her folks.
Sperm hopped behind the bar, rummaged around for a moment, and came up with a black t-shirt, a huge pair of jeans, and a belt. “You might need to cinch that belt pretty tight,” Sperm said. “Remember Orca? He used to keep this stuff behind the bar for when he got too drunk and puked all over his clothes.”
I remembered Orca, the 400-pound former VP of the Reapers. He had indeed been known to regularly drink entire cases of beer in a single night before passing out on the floor in a pool of his own piss and vomit. I'd heard that he'd died of a heart at
tack a year after I'd been sent to Potawatomi. I'd been pretty sad about it, but then again, there were definitely worse ways to check out when you were in our line of work.
Hell, I thought, I might just be on my way to finding one of them today.
I pulled the clothes on, ignoring the sullen stares from the other Reapers. The jeans were large enough to fit me and three other guys, and I ran out of holes in the belt. I flipped an awl out of my Swiss Army knife and punched a few more holes, then finished dressing and tucked both of the handguns into my waistband.
I'd left the AK-47 in the Saab too, which was a boneheaded play. I knew the reason I'd probably been so fuzzy-headed and forgetful was the residual damage from the concussion, which made me even more uneasy about facing Jester head-on. I was doing my best to hide it, but I was still having occasional dizzy spells.
Still, it wasn't like the AK would have been very practical to have with me on this trip. Hunkering down with it next to the highway was one thing, but waving it around down at Belmont Harbor was a good way to get the cops' attention. So I'd have to rely on the two pistols and hope they'd be enough if it came down to a firefight.
I walked out of the bar, seeing Rosie standing at the end of the line of bikes out front. Sperm, Boomer, and Bard walked out with me.
“I gotta go,” Boomer said. “I'm already late for my gig. Good luck.”
“Thanks for going to get her, and for taking care of her,” I said to Boomer as I straddled Rosie and strapped my helmet on. “I know it's more than I deserve, and I appreciate it. I'll do everything I can to end this quick.”
“Well, you won't be doing it alone,” Sperm said, mounting another bike and putting on his own helmet as Bard did likewise. I remembered that Bard used to ride a gorgeous Vincent Black Shadow, and I almost asked him what happened to it, but I figured this wasn't the time.
“Listen, guys, I'm grateful for the help,” I began, “but...”
“We're not doing this for your gratitude,” Bard said, starting up his bike. “We're doing it so we can make sure it's done, and done properly. I wouldn't even be bringing Sperm, except that he's the MC's Treasurer which means right now, he's the closest thing I've got to another ranking officer in the Reapers.”
Sperm glanced away for a moment, embarrassed.
“If this thing had gone the way it was supposed to go,” Bard continued, “no one wearing a Reaper patch would have been within a mile of it. But since we're involved now whether we want to be or not, I figure the sitting president of the MC should be present at this transaction to lend it weight and credibility. And unless you're in the mood to lose several of your front teeth over the next minute or so, concussion be damned, I suggest you shut up and ride.”
Bard revved his bike and rode south with Sperm right behind him. I gunned my engine and followed, hoping I could still fix this and find some way to get back on Bard's good side. I'd spent most of my life without a father, but Bard was the closest thing I'd had, and his disapproval felt like a knife in my heart.
Something else was bothering me, too. When Jewel had asked why we didn't hand the file over to the other Mafia families so they could handle it themselves, I had told the truth about my reasons. But it hadn't been the whole truth.
Deep down, I knew that I was doing this because I needed to end Jester myself. I needed my payback if I was ever going to be able to give things a chance with Jewel. Otherwise, I'd be starting off with that hole inside myself, wondering if I'd ever be whole enough to know who I really was with her.
I could only make sense to myself if I finished this my way. I could only know peace if I watched the light go out of Jester's eyes and knew that I'd sent him to hell myself.
We rode down to Belmont Harbor, the wide cement cove just off the upscale neighborhood of East Lakeview. This was where the wealthier people in Chicago kept their boats docked during the warmer months. The sunlight sparkled on the deep blue waters of Lake Michigan and families walked down the docks together, loading coolers full of snacks and drinks onto their boats so they could take them out to watch the fireworks later.
We parked our bikes a short distance from the harbor and started to stroll down the docks. A few people shot us weird looks since our biker clothes made us look a little out of place, but most of them were too busy laughing and playing around in their boats to notice us.
“So what are we looking for, exactly?” Sperm asked. “It's not like they'll be flying a flag with their stupid symbol on it.”
“I wouldn't be too sure about that,” Bard said, pointing.
We looked at what Bard was pointing at, and saw it was a huge white yacht with tinted windows. The flag it was flying had a medusa head in the center of three bent legs, and three stalks of wheat. The name on the hull was The Pride of Palermo.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I said. “It couldn't be this easy, could it? If the feds know they've got a yacht out here and it's this goddamn obvious, why haven't they come and arrested them by now?”
“Maybe the feds don't have enough hard evidence on them,” Bard answered. “Maybe they do, but they've been paid off. Maybe the Thorns are just hiding in plain sight. No way to know for sure.”
“Well, now what are we supposed to do? Just walk up to the boat, knock, and ask for Jester?”
Bard thought for a moment, smirked, and shrugged. “I can't think of a better plan than that, unless you feel like it'd be best to just spray the boat with bullets, lob a grenade or two in there, and run off. That might ruin a few bystanders' holiday plans, though. So let's approach them nice and slow, like we're the neighborhood Welcome Wagon.”
Bard started walking toward the yacht. Sperm and I exchanged an are-you-kidding-me look, then rushed to follow him. “Be ready for anything,” Sperm muttered to me, reaching behind his waist to brush his fingertips against the handle of his pistol.
We marched over to the gangway connecting the boat to the dock just as a fat, sweaty middle-aged man in cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt walked up it. He was carrying two canvas folding chairs under his arm and hauling a styrofoam cooler by its plastic handle. He had close-cropped graying hair and dark skin.
“Yo, Giuseppe!” the man called up to the boat. “I got three more chairs in the van. You wanna send the boys down to gimme a hand with 'em or what?”
“Hey there!” Bard called out to him cheerfully. “You need a hand getting those up to the boat?”
The man looked at Bard and smiled. “Hey, yeah, that'd be great! Thanks, man.” He turned and bellowed up to the boat again. “Never mind, Giuseppe! You go ahead an' keep sittin' on yer ass, you fat friggin'...” He trailed off, shaking his head.
Bard looked at us and jerked his head toward the man. I stepped forward and grabbed the cooler while Boomer took one of the chairs. Bard took the other and we carried them up to the top of the gangway.
“Thanks a bunch, fellas, I really appreciate it,” the man said, digging into the pocket of his cargo shorts. “Here, lemme give youse a little somethin' for yer trouble...”
“No need,” Bard said, holding up a hand. “We're just happy to help. You guys heading out to look at the fireworks?”
“Yeah, me an' the boys have been lookin' forward to this fer weeks,” the man replied exuberantly. “We been workin' real hard, so now it's time to reward ourselves. A little grillin', a little Uncle Sam, maybe even a little bit o' this if they behave themselves.” He reached into the cooler and rummaged under the ice, producing two bottles of beer. “Can I tempt ya? We got plenty.”
“No, thank you,” Bard said. “Very nice of you to offer, though.”
He mopped his sweaty brow with his short sleeve, then extended his big, meaty palm to Bard. “Well hey, happy Fourth, huh? Name's Antonio. Pleased to meetcha.”
“The pleasure's all ours,” Bard replied, shaking his hand. “My name's Bard, and this is Rafe and Sid.” I stifled a laugh. It wasn't like Bard could introduce him as “Sperm,” after all.
“With
them vests an' patches yer wearin', I guess youse guys are bikers, huh?” Antonio asked. “I always heard you fellas was supposed to be real patriotic types. Are you here collectin' donations for cancer research or Toys For Tots, somethin' like that?”
“That's a very good guess, Antonio, but no,” Bard answered. His tone was still light and breezy. Meanwhile, the gentle rocking motion of the boat under me was making my head spin again. I took a deep breath and prayed I'd be able to shoot straight if it came to that.
“Actually,” Bard continued, “we were looking for your yacht. It's a real beauty, by the way.”
“Thanks,” Antonio answered. His smile stayed in place, but his eyes darkened with suspicion. “Lookin' for my yacht, huh? An' why is that? You lookin' to buy it or somethin'?”
“No, but we heard that Jester might be inside,” Bard said evenly, “and we were hoping to have a word with him, if possible.”
