Tainted Rose

by Abby Weeks

  He went up to the bar and saw the prettiest little girl he’d ever seen in his life. She couldn’t have been much more than twelve or thirteen years old. She had beautiful long hair, porcelain white skin and eyes that seemed to see right through him. He looked at her for a few seconds before she disappeared back out to watch the band play. Josh wondered whose daughter she was.

  “Can I help you,” a big guy behind the bar said in French.

  When Josh answered him in English the bartender was surprised but said nothing of it.

  “I’ll have a Labatt’s,” he said.

  The bartender grabbed him a beer from below the counter.

  “You know this is a private club?” the bartender said.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes it is, so after your done your drink you might want to leave quietly.”

  Josh looked at him. The bartender wasn’t an unkind man. He was letting him know politely that he had to leave. It was better treatment than Josh could have expected at most MC clubhouses. Times were tough and people were constantly on guard. You couldn’t just walk into a clubhouse and order a beer.

  “I’ll finish this beer,” Josh said, “but I aint leaving when I’m done.”

  “What did you say?” the bartender said, looking at him like he’d just said the craziest thing in the world.

  “I said I aint leaving. I’ve got business with someone in this clubhouse and I aim to see it through.”

  “Oh you do?” the bartender said, almost laughing. “Kid, I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you but you come into a place like this and talk like that, you’re like to get your dick blown off.”

  Josh smiled at the bartender. He knew he meant what he said, but what choice did he have?

  “I know it, mister,” Josh said. “But I don’t exactly have a choice in this. I’ve got some business and I’ll see it done or I’ll die trying.”

  “Those are some big words for a kid.”

  The bartender liked Josh. He knew that, but it was a dangerous game he was playing. He couldn’t let him talk like that in a clubhouse for long before trouble brewed.

  By this time, a few of the other club members sitting at the bar were taking notice of Josh. A big guy with arms like tree trunks and a messy black beard spoke up.

  “We going to have some trouble, Patsy?”

  The bartender, Patsy, shrugged.

  “This kid says he’s got some business to take care of.”

  By now everyone in the bar was listening.

  “Is that a fact?” the big guy said.

  “Hey kid,” another guy said, “who do you think you are coming in here? This is a private club.”

  The bartender raised his hands in the air. “Hold on, hold on,” he said. “Let’s not get carried away. He aint caused any trouble yet.”

  “What’s your business, kid?” a blonde woman who was sitting on one of the members’ laps said.

  Josh looked at them all. The band had stopped playing and the people who’d been out back listening to it were coming back into the bar. Among them was the girl Josh had noticed earlier. She was just a child but her eyes were like the two most beautiful jewels he’d ever seen in all his life. He half wondered for a moment if she wasn’t an angel sent by his father.

  Along the bar was pretty much the full complement of the Sioux Rangers. They were one of the oldest and most respected MCs in Montreal. They weren’t as strong as they’d once been, newer, more violent clubs had come in and taken over a lot of their territory, but they had pride and Josh could see it in their faces. This wasn’t a club of down and outs, it wasn’t a club of common criminals, men who couldn’t find any other place in the world to take them. They weren’t drug addicts and wife-beaters and thugs. They were real men, real bikers.

  “I’m here to kill one of you,” Josh said to them.

  He kept his voice as level as he could. He didn’t want to flinch now. He didn’t want to look like a coward. He meant what he was saying and he was prepared to die for of it.

  An old man at the far end of the club got up from his stool and stood on the metal rung that lined the bottom of the bar. It made him taller than he would have otherwise been and put him in a position of authority. He had long gray hair that went down well past his shoulders and a matching, tobacco stained beard. Round-rimmed glasses with dark blue lenses covered his eyes. If it wasn’t for the tattoos he would have looked like a hippie from the sixties.

  “Why don’t you think carefully, son,” he said to Josh, “and then, if you still mean it, say it again.”

  Josh looked at him. He looked in the faces of all the Sioux Rangers along the bar, their wives and families behind them. He wondered which of them it was he meant to kill.

  “I aim to kill one of you men tonight,” Josh said again, “the only question is which one of you it’s going to be.”

  XIV

  TEN LONG YEARS HAD PASSED since the night Josh Carter walked into the Sioux Rangers clubhouse. Rose remembered the night. She remembered it better than any other night in her life. It was the night her father died.

  That one night had changed everything for her. Rose’s father, Jack Meadows, was the only family she had, him and the Rangers. By the time that night was over her father was dead and the Sioux Rangers had been decimated by a rival gang. It had been one of the bloodiest and most brutal criminal attacks in the history of Quebec. Not only gang members, but women and children had been purposefully targeted. It had been a massacre, and a massive government crackdown had followed.

  Rose never fully understood what had happened. She’d been twelve-years-old at the time and everything had happened so quickly that it was still a blur. But she remembered it. She remembered the night. She remembered Josh Carter.

  *

  JOSH LOOKED AT THE FACES staring at him. He’d just said he was going to kill one of the members of this club.

  One of the members, a younger guy about Josh’s age, laughed.

  “Look at this kid,” he said. “Walks in here like he’s buying a donut at Tim Horton’s and announces he’s going to kill us all.”

  “You with the DRMC?” the old man said to him.

  Josh had heard of the DRMC but he certainly wasn’t with them.

  “I didn’t say I was going to kill all of you,” Josh said, “I said I was going to kill one of you. And I aint got a thing to do with the DRMC.”

  A man in the middle of the group stood up to speak.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “We all like a bit of tough talk every once in a while but last I checked I was still the president of this club, and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t take you outside and kick your ass, boy.”

  Josh looked at the man. He was the president of the Sioux Rangers. It was the first time he’d set eyes on Jack Meadows. He was a tall man, good-looking with thick brown hair brushed back over his head, just a little gray at the temples.

  “But I don’t get the feeling I’m going to need to kick your ass at all, am I?”

  Josh shook his head. “No sir,” he said.

  He didn’t know why he’d changed his tone. He didn’t know why he’d come in looking for blood and now he was speaking politely to the club like they were his friends. These were supposedly the men who’d killed his father. He felt a quiet anger deep in his chest but something told him these weren’t the men that he needed to be angry with.

  “Like I said, my name is Jack Meadows and I’m the president of the Sioux Rangers. If you’ve got a problem with one of our brothers, now is as good a time as any to voice it, kid. You won’t find a club this side of the border who’ll give you a fairer shake than that.”

  Josh looked at him. Something about Jack Meadows reminded him of his own father. They both had the same quiet, restrained dignity about them.

  “My name’s Josh Carter,” Josh said. “Someone in this club shot dead my father two weeks ago.”

  The bar had been quiet up till then but when he said those words the w
hole place went silent. The little girl Josh had seen earlier, the beautiful girl with the porcelain skin, ran up to Jack Meadows and pulled at his sleeve. He reached down and lifted her up onto his knee.

  “Not now, honey,” he said to her. “I’ve got some business with this young man.”

  Josh looked at him, he kept his eye steady and his breathing steadier. It was the first time he’d said out loud that his father had been killed. He felt tears welling up behind his eyes but he controlled them.

  Jack Meadows was nodding his head. He looked at the older man at the end of the bar and then at the bartender.

  “Shirley,” he said, “take Rose.”

  A woman took the child from his knee and brought her back out to the back where the band had been playing. “Come on, kids,” she said and the rest of the children who were in the bar went out after her.

  “We better talk about this in my office,” Meadows said.

  “I aint following you into an office,” Josh said. Something told him that he could trust Jack Meadows, that he could trust the rest of the men around that bar, but he didn’t want to be handled. He didn’t want them to tell him some big, complicated story or make him some offer that he would have to accept. He’d come to avenge his father and he still meant to do it.

  “Which one of you is the man that done it?” he said.

  “Relax, kid,” Patsy said from behind the bar. “He aint here.”

  *

  IT TOOK A FEW MINUTES for the Sioux Rangers to get Josh to calm down. He hadn’t drawn his gun but no one doubted he had one hidden under his coat. They all had guns in their belts too but it didn’t seem anyone had the heart to kill a kid Josh’s age, not one who’d come to avenge the death of his father.

  The members of the Sioux Rangers knew well what had happened to Josh’s father and they all regretted it. It should never have happened and it had been a sore point in their meetings for the past two weeks. If they hadn’t had more serious issues to deal with that month they might have handled it better. As it stood, they knew they’d done what they could and the knew it wasn’t nearly good enough.

  Inside the office was a poker table that looked like it had come from a casino. Jack Meadows sat at the head of it. On his right was the old man with the beard who’d spoken up earlier. Patsy and four other members of the Sioux Rangers were also seated at the table. Josh took the seat offered to him.

  “We know what happened to your father,” Jack Meadows said.

  “Then you know why I’ve come. I can’t let a man do that to my father and not do something about it.”

  “This has already been sorted out between us and your father’s club.”

  “I aint here on behalf of my father’s club,” Josh said.

  “You mean you’ve come alone?” the younger guy said. “That should be enough to get you killed right there.”

  Jack Meadows lifted his hand. “He aint going to get killed. He’s come here to do the right thing. Truth be told, Black Rodeo should have insisted something like this be done at the time.”

  “I aint here to talk about Black Rodeo. They can all go to hell as far as I’m concerned. I only care about justice being done for my father.”

  “Well that aint going to be as easy as you think,” the younger guy said.

  It was clear to Josh that the younger guy had something against him. The older guys, Patsy, Jack Meadows, the guy with the beard, they all seemed sympathetic to his position. The younger guy seemed hell bent on getting Josh into trouble.

  “You got something to say to me,” Josh said, addressing the younger guy, “we can go out front and talk it out.”

  That got to him. The younger guy got to his feet. He seemed more than ready to fight. That was fine with Josh. If he had to fight this asshole to find out what had happened to his father than so be it.

  But Jack Meadows stood up too and put his arm across the young guy’s chest. “Settle down, Flash.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Flash said. “He comes into my clubhouse and talks like that and I’ve got to put up with it.”

  “You don’t have to put up with shit,” Jack said. “Just sit down and shut the fuck up. The kid’s got a reason to be here and I respect that.”

  Josh looked around the table. All the older guys were nodding. They seemed to agree with that.

  Jack Meadows addressed him. “Okay, kid. I don’t have time to screw around with you. This is the score. The man that shot your pop was a brother of ours. He goes by the name of Rex Savage, or just Savage. He’s a thin guy, does a lot of smack. We’ve had more than our share of trouble with the guy and he never should have shot your father. There wasn’t no reason for it.”

  “So he’s already dead?” Josh said.

  Flash sighed. “What is it with this kid?”

  “He’s not dead,” Jack said. “We disbanded him. Stripped him of his patch.”

  “So where is he?” Josh said.

  The old guy with the beard laughed at that. “You sure mean business, don’t you kid?”

  “Any one ever shoot your father in cold blood?” Josh said.

  “Hey,” Jack said. “This here is Toothless. He’s the vice-president of this club and you speak to him with respect as long as you’re in this clubhouse.”

  “Unless you want to get fucked up,” Flash added.

  Toothless waved away the concerns. “As a matter of fact I did see my father killed. He was gunned down by police in Chicago a very long time ago. So I can sympathize with what you’re doing here.”

  Josh nodded. He wanted to ask Toothless if he ever got revenge on those police but he didn’t want to offend him. He looked at Jack Meadows.

  “Can you tell me where to find Rex Savage? If it’s all the same to the Sioux Rangers, I’d like to make him pay for what he done.”

  “I don’t think there’s anyone among us who would stand in your way on that count kid, I genuinely don’t.” He looked around the room. Everyone seemed to be in agreement, even Flash. “But that don’t mean it’s going to be as easy as just walking up to the man and giving him a taste of your lead.”

  “I never expected it to be easy,” Josh said.

  “I dare say you didn’t,” Jack Meadows said, “but it might be next to impossible to get to Rex Savage right now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because as soon as we took his patch, he went right over to the DRMC,” Flash said.

  “That’s right,” Toothless said, “and so, you may not be the only man in this room who has a mind to kill Rex Savage.”

  Josh knew all about the DRMC. They’d been fighting hard against the smaller clubs right across Quebec. He’d even heard that they were eradicating the entire families of those who opposed them, including women and children. They’d become notorious in a very short time.

  Down in New York most people thought the DRMC would be the only MC in Quebec in a few years. Black Rodeo was already trying to get into negotiations with them. They wanted to ditch the Rangers and start trading with the DRMC instead. A lot of guys back in New York had even thought that was the reason Josh’s father had been shot.

  “So you’re telling me it wasn’t this club that ordered the hit on my father?”

  “Why would we have ordered it?” Flash said.

  Josh looked at Meadows, “Because the Black Rodeo were thinking of switching allegiance from your club to the DRMC.”

  Jack Meadows let out a low whistling sound. He looked at Toothless. It was Patsy who spoke up first.

  “I can tell you, son. That aint the way it went down. If your father’s club didn’t want to do business with us anymore, that would be one thing. But that still wouldn’t make it our business to put a bullet in one of their members for no good reason. And besides, as far as we know, our deal with the Black Rodeo is still intact.”

  “For now,” Josh said.

  Toothless nodded. “All I can say is we definitely weren’t looking to start trouble with the Rodeo. We need them, especial
ly now.”

  “What do you mean, especially now?” Josh said.

  “Alright, that’s enough. That’s all we got for you, kid. We’re sorry one of our crew hit your father. If we had the chance to do things over, we’d do things differently. We wouldn’t have just kicked him out. He’d be dead. But that aint what we did, and now we’ve all got bigger problems to deal with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The DRMC,” Flash said, getting agitated. “We’ve got the DRMC to deal with. Rex Savage is over their speaking to their leadership right now. He’s telling them everything they ever wanted to know about us. How many we are. What kind of back up we have. What guns we have. What alliances.”

  “Are the DRMC planning to hit you next?” Josh said. After what he’d heard about the DRMC he knew that was no joke. When they picked a fight with a gang, they want all in. The usually tried to annihilate the rival gang in the first battle. That way they avoided having to fight a protracted war.

  “Between you and us,” Toothless said, “that’s the reason our entire club, and our families, are all at the clubhouse.”

  “Jesus,” Josh said.

  He wanted to say he was sorry but it wasn’t his place. If the DRMC had set their sights on the Sioux Rangers it was likely that all these men, and their families, would be fighting for their lives very soon. That’s what this party must have been, one last big blow out.

  “You’ll forgive us if we don’t want to spend the entire night in here talking,” Flash said, “but we’ve got our families to protect.”

  With that, Flash and most of the men sitting around the table got up. They went back out to the bar and Josh heard a loud cheer as they ordered a round of shots. A minute later the band started back up and the party got going again.

  He looked around the table. The three main players of the Sioux Rangers were still there, Jack Meadows, Toothless and Patsy.