Bad to the Bones

by Layla Wolfe

  Rolling his eyes, Knoxie stepped behind me. Turning me to face the astounding beauty of the faraway mesas, he wrapped his arms around me. A shiver so strong it brought tears to my eyes traveled up and down my back. I twisted one hand around so I could touch the leather cuff around one of his wrists. His torso was like a warm granite slab. His breath feathered my ear, sending another wave of shivers down my neck, tightening my nipples against the flimsy cotton fabric of my nightgown.

  “We were just talking about you at the clubhouse. Why don’t you move to The Citadel for protection, Bellamy? You could work as a wrench, with your skills. You could just do the Harleys and let Speed concentrate on the construction equipment. How does that sound? You’d get an hourly salary, of course, just like Speed, comparable to a union job.”

  It actually sounded like a fucking dream come true. Obviously, I’d never been paid up at Bihari. I dared to squirm slightly against Knoxie. I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe some of my teenaged tactics were coming back to me. Maybe I was remembering that I could be attractive, that I could be a tease, that I actually had powers of seduction. I don’t know. It had been so long since I had been made to feel like a desirable lady. I was probably doing it all wrong. But I wanted to literally get a rise out of Knoxie. “That sounds perfect, Knoxie. I’d like that, I really would. I remember Speed from the old days. He used to chase me around up in the buttes, try to kiss me.”

  “Hmph. Did he?”

  “No way. He was my friend’s brother. That was too much like incest for me. I remember swimming at Madison’s house, and Speed pushing us off the roof and into the pool. You know how childish boys can be. They mature later than girls. He used to make some killer bongs out of carburetor parts, though. And he used to love to make up words. He wasn’t very literate—none of us were, aside from Maddy—but he was good verbally.”

  “Mm.” I know Knoxie was making a sound of agreement, but just that one tiny movement of air against my ear, and my pussy actually tingled. I couldn’t believe it. I was actually sexually attracted to Knoxie. Maybe it was because he was my savior. Nothing wrong with that. “He always says ‘gorklock.’ A gorklock is a cager on the highway who goes too slow and prevents you from passing.”

  I giggled. My laughter had my tits jiggling nearly against his forearm. He had a beautiful swirly biomechanical tattoo there, as though his arm had been slashed open to reveal an engine’s pistons, cogs and belts. It was achingly gorgeous, and I wanted one for myself. “He always rode around in his little putt-putt Suzuki with dings in the tank and fairing until Ford’s dad got him a decent Harley. He was one of the first guys I saw on a Harley. He gained a lot of respect for that.”

  “Mm.” Knoxie inhaled, as though breathing in my scent. His mouth was so close to my ear every sound vibrated my core. A trickle of itchy juice bloomed between my pussy lips. Without thinking, I slightly swayed my hips against him. It was then I realized with a delighted and terrifying shock, He’s got a hard-on. I was rubbing the globes of my ass against a stiff rod!

  He must have realized the same thing. Inhaling in shock, he abruptly broke the arm lock he had around my waist. He stepped back from me as I turned to face him. He was wiping his face with his palm as though to erase his previous expression.

  “Well, yeah,” he said seriously. “Have you thought about why you were booted from the compound? You now admit it was no accident, right?”

  I hadn’t meant to scare him away. But he was right. I was in no way ready for any sort of sexual relationship, with him or anyone. I had some deep-seated shit I needed to work through first. It would be stupid to immediately start boinking when that was the origin of my trauma to begin with, right? I sighed. “Yeah, I admit they did it on purpose. They knew what they were doing.” I hesitated, looking instead at the farthest layer of canyon sediment to be revealed by the sun’s rays. The top layer was a black basalt cap, I remembered, laid down eons ago by primeval seas and lava flows. We’d be a lot closer to Flagstaff right now, worn away by erosion, were it not for that lava cap.

  I was mentally rambling to avoid thinking of the answer to Knoxie’s question. Clearing my throat, I said, “My little sister turned up pregnant.” I shrugged. “I had the nerve to protest and, well…I guess they don’t deal so well with protestors.”

  When I finally looked back to Knoxie, he was slack-jawed with shock. I shrugged again and meandered down the railing, trailing my finger along the iron bar. As though I could care less. Really, I had made a big stink about it. I did not know that Shakti—or whoever else—was penetrating Ginny. She was a chosen one in name only. She lived at Wang Cho House with me, but I’d never witnessed her participating in any of that so-called therapy. She’d never told me about any chakra healing or what have you.

  I had imagined there was an unwritten hands-off policy regarding her. She’d been a mere tot when I’d dragged her up to Bihari. So yeah, I raised hell. Not only for that, but for what I feared they might do to her as a result of her pregnancy. But this was Knoxie I was talking to—the biker who had picked me up off that mesa, put me in his cage, and breathed life back into me. I had to come up with something from the depths of my soul—or at least from the tide pools of my brain. I heard myself saying, “I guess I got a bit violent about it because I was in shock.”

  Knoxie finally breathed. “Whew.” He looked at a spot past my shoulder, dazed. “That’s heavy, Bellamy. So as far as you know, she’s still up there, pregnant.”

  Ugh. Just the thought of it turned my stomach, and I realized I hadn’t eaten in a long-ass time. “Right.”

  He looked me in the eyes. “It’ll be all right. I’ll fix it, don’t worry.”

  I remembered what Maddy had said—to ask Knoxie if he’d gone up to Bihari. “Did you see her yesterday?”

  “No. But I know where she works—at some sort of composting facility. Do you know where that is?”

  I gave Knoxie the lowdown on the composting facility. They must have just reassigned her to that shit detail. Before that, she’d worked in the cafeteria serving food, not nearly as horrible of an assignment.

  Knoxie’s cell chimed then. Looking at it, he held a forefinger up to me to indicate he had to take it. He must have been talking to a higher-up in The Bare Bones, because he said, “What? Seriously? Yeah, I do remember seeing a cage with government plates broken down off Sycamore Creek on my way back down yesterday. Couple people surrounded by some of those paramilitary goons, those daimyo. Wasn’t exactly in the frame of mind to help, riding a stolen rice rocket. Yeah? Mm-hm. Right. Right. You’re fucking kidding me. Montana would be the logical person to get over to the hospital and interrogate them. I mean, ask them a few questions. Right now I’m at Ford’s house, so I can get Maddy on the case, too. Any luck on that Stuart Grillo business? Church at ten? Uh-huh. Right. I’ll be there polishing your hubcaps. Later.”

  I knew it was wrong to eavesdrop on club business, so all I said was, “Got to go?”

  “Yeah.” I was glad when he took me by the upper arms and shook me a little, as though scolding a kid. “I’ll be by later to get you settled at The Citadel. You’re my responsibility now.”

  “Okay…Flip.”

  He laughed completely at that, throwing his head back. It was nice to see his muscular, full throat bristling with six o’clock shadow stubble, as though he’d been too busy lately to shave. “How’d you know my—oh, never mind. You’re going to be the fucking death of me. So damned confusing and frustrating.” He flung one arm around my shoulders and steered me toward the sliding door.

  I didn’t like the way he treated me like a kid sister. I already knew I wanted to be so much more.

  CHAPTER TEN

  KNOXIE

  As a new Prospect, The Bare Bones didn’t allow Knoxie to attend church, held in a room off the old airplane hangar in the Citadel. What really tweaked him was that Ronald McDonald clown who had banged his wife, Kneecap, had become a fully patched member of The Bare Bones. That fucktard was allowe
d to waddle into the chapel, but not Knoxie, who had been a hang-around for decades. He had first inked Ford back when Ford was barely legal—although Ford had also worn the Filthy Few patch since age seventeen.

  Of course it had been an instant, unanimous vote that Knoxie be allowed to prospect for the club. His putting down that Presención driver had just been the icing on the cake, only now they had to add an additional “Filthy Few” patch onto his new cut. Knoxie felt at age forty, he was too old to be a Prospect, but he would never want them to alter the rules to suit him. It was decided that Lytton Driving Hawk would be his sponsor, Lytton having recently gone through the trial by fire of starting from scratch at Prospect level. Now one of Knoxie’s many duties was to make sure the oil in Lytton’s Softail was always changed, every inch free of dust. Knoxie was new blood, and he’d be forced to do everything from fetch beers and sodas to stand by the tent flaps of fully patched members during rallies.

  Worse, his fellow Prospect was Bobo Segrist, the guy who had been frying Knoxie’s potatoes and smoking his ribs for years now. It was rumored a guy named Mergatroyd wanted to patch over from the Flagstaff charter. Mergatroyd. These were the guys he’d be stuck hanging with, keeping an eye on their brothers’ bikes in a rough neighborhood while they dined inside, or cleaning the clubhouse.

  Mergatroyd. Jesus Roosevelt Christ.

  While his brothers attended church, Knoxie scoped out a suitable room for Bellamy. The Citadel was a former army hangar with two wings, one for club business and one for Illuminati Trucking business. The club business side was often filled with sweetbutts draping themselves here and there, and Knoxie found one he’d been friendly with in the past to help.

  “A new girl?” snapped Hilary, posing like Angelina Jolie with one booted foot stuck out. She must have been one size smaller than his daughter Sage, and he was glad he’d never fucked her. “We don’t need any new girls. We’re full up.”

  “She’s not a new Bone Licker,” said Knoxie, peering into a room made dark by a blanket being tacked over the window. “She’s under our protection.”

  “And you’re just a Prospect now? Who are you to tell me what to do?”

  “You’re here to obey any brother, Prospect or not.” Knoxie realized he sounded like Shakti with his honor and obey commands. He softened his hard stance, entering the room and tearing the heavy army blanket from the window. Diffuse sunlight washed through the room, revealing women’s tank tops, cutoff shorts, and the debris of a drug habit scattered throughout the room. “How’s about this room? This room’ll do fine.”

  A sly look came over Hilary’s foxy face. “This is Daisy’s room. I don’t like her anyway. She stole Wild Man from me. Yeah, let’s use this room for your whore.”

  “She’s not a whore.”

  Hilary helped Knoxie clear out the belongings of a girl who wasn’t even present to defend herself. Hilary got cleaning supplies from the kitchen and she wiped the windows so clean Knoxie swore he could see Indian hieroglyphics on the distant cliffs. Knoxie packed up all Daisy’s crap into a pillowcase and left it in the kitchen, tossing the used needles in the dumpster outside the hangar. Hilary swept and even mopped the floor, giving the room a pine scent, and Knoxie opened the window to air it out.

  “Thanks, Hilary.” He lifted his hand to the sweetbutt. “I’m going in search of a bed.”

  “Those are hard to find,” said the eyeliner queen. “We’re low on all kinds of furniture.”

  Knoxie set off down the central hall, peering into various rooms. It was like a fucking opium den in there, with all these screened-off little cubicles that smelled funny. As a hang-around, Knoxie had never been to The Citadel, and it was creepy to see a room stenciled in the mid-20th century as the “War Room” now used as a cave where the giant Aztec Tuzigoot could jam his craggy face between a sweetbutt’s thighs and worry her like a wolf at the kill.

  When Knoxie saw what couldn’t be unseen, he knew church was out, so he headed down into the hangar. Damn. He was used to raunchy scenarios, working on the Triple Exposure’s sound stage, but it was all for show. The second Mel shouted “Cut!” everyone lit their cigarettes and checked their texts. Knoxie was all for eating at the Y, but doing it with the door open where anyone walking by could just take a gander? Maybe he was rebelling against that warped swami’s idea of public seminars where anything went. He never wanted Bellamy to have her privacy invaded ever, ever again. The room he’d chosen for her could be locked from inside.

  In the stairwell, he ran into Lytton. “Brother, I’ve got to give you the lowdown,” said the pot farmer.

  Drawing Knoxie downstairs, they wandered over to where Speed was tinkering with an excavator. Speed could hear Lytton’s news. He’d just been at church, too, so was privy to everything. It rankled Knoxie that he wasn’t allowed to listen in on urgent business that directly affected himself. He’d better get used to it.

  Lytton said, “That Stuart Grillo dude whose name you found all over that Safeway truck? Rang a bell with me, too, but you know I grew up on the res, and then on my farm up Mormon Mountain. So I didn’t know these guys that well, but Ford instantly knew who it was. Turns out he used to be a Boner. You might recall him as Cropper Illuminati’s right-hand man, his sergeant-at-arms. Riker.”

  Knoxie was stunned. Of course he knew Riker. That perverted guy was so greasy that he slid into every girl’s pants, and so dirty that he looked like he’d emerged from an oil slick. He was a good enough guy, always willing to go to bat for the club, and loyal to a fault. The club was Riker’s life, which was why it was strange when he’d just vanished a couple years ago. It was around the same time Cropper’s body had turned up riddled with bullets in the desert near Nogales, somewhere off 82 in the Coronado National Forest. Word on the street was that Ford, Cropper’s son, had shredded his old man. But since Riker had vanished like a yellow wuss, it was rumored maybe he’d taken the old President down first.

  “No shit. That’s his birth name?”

  “Exactly. Ford remembered ‘cause he had to hang onto Riker’s driver’s license at one rally to prevent a DUI.”

  Knoxie chuckled. “Only one rally?” Riker was notorious for his ability to consume large amounts of booze and drugs and still stand. At one rally, he’d jumped on the hoods of a row of cages and tried to pull a tow truck by its cable. He was always staggering around oblivious that he was still wearing nipple clamps or with a urethral sound sticking from his cut pocket. The worst was the time he’d wandered around wearing a locked chastity harness. Yes, locked. And of course Riker had no clue where the key was. Whoever was the Prospect at that time had a hell of a chore. “So Riker’s still alive and kicking and in cahoots with the Presencións.”

  “Yeah. Delivering cheese heroin to your kooky buddies.”

  “And fuck knows how many other high schoolers.”

  “Exactly. We need to send you on a little voyage of discovery down to the border, Knoxie. You said it appeared Riker did the Nogales to Phoenix run with the Safeway truck. We presume he’s got some kind of crib in Nogales.”

  “You want me to take him out?” Knoxie’s heart sank. Not so much at the idea of taking Riker out, but that he’d miss getting Bellamy set up in her new digs.

  “Well, lay low for now, just get some intel and come back. If Riker’s out there going cowboy, operating beyond the limits of any acceptable human conduct, we need to terminate it.”

  “Or it could just be some guy with the same name.”

  “Or it could just be some guy with the same name,” Lytton agreed.

  “You do know the Bihari whackos can just get heroin elsewhere. The Marins, the Ochoas, the fucking Joneses.”

  “Ochoas will never sell to them, not after Ford politely asks them not to. Just find out the chain of command down there. Slushy’s got some connections at the border, some lawyer guy named Bloodgood who owes us a favor.”

  Knoxie remembered something. He stroked his stubbled chin, thinking. “Bellamy said the heroin wa
s coming from Riker’s Island.” It all made sense now.

  Lytton nodded briskly. “There you have it. Riker is out bad as far as we’re concerned, so he should at least have his ink removed, ‘cause I’m sure he’s not flying his colors. Just do your best to track him down. You’re good at that. You and Ford.”

  Knoxie cheered up. “Ford’s coming with me?”

  “Nah. He can’t risk that. I’m sending you down with Ziggy.”

  Knoxie understood. He was the best bet, being a new Prospect who could move around under the radar. “And what about that judge and Pure and Easy councilman in the hospital?” Lytton had interrupted Knoxie’s enjoyable break with Bellamy earlier that morning to tell him that a councilman’s car had broken down on the access road to Bihari yesterday. A few Bihari loonies had stopped to offer “help”, giving them some water to drink while they waited for their mechanic to arrive, presumably Bellamy’s replacement. Later that night, their wives had blazed them to the emergency room, and that was the last anyone heard. And that heads would most likely roll.

  “Mann Montana went by to visit Judge Harmon and Councilman Rizzoli early this morning. Turns out it was salmonella poisoning, obviously from the water they drank. Harmon wants to bring first degree assault charges against the loop-de-loops, but what kind of fucking proof do they have? The loonies just poured them water from their own bottles.”

  “Why would they want to poison a judge and councilman? Does anyone ever die from salmonella poisoning?”