BABY WITH THE SAVAGE

by Naomi West

  When the door opens and the men step in, it isn’t difficult to appear terrified. All my hard-earned calm drifts away. I hear myself sobbing and moaning and begging as they uncuff me from the pipe and drag me to my feet. They’re going to rape me. They’re going to destroy me. I kick out but they grab me and hold me firmly, five men in total, carrying me like a ragdoll through narrow hallways.

  They drag me through into a room I do not expect to find in this damp, dingy place. There’s a large, presidential-style desk in the middle with a comfy armchair sitting on one side. The walls are wallpapered and covered with art paintings: most scenes of valleys and rivers and forests. A red lamp lights the room from the corner, and the air smells faintly of orange peel. The only thing which ruins the effect is the metal chair on the other side of the desk, which the men take me to. They cuff my hands behind my back and my legs to each chair leg and then step away to the walls, watching silently.

  I suppose I have been this scared before, perhaps when Clint held a knife to my throat or held me over the staircase and screamed at me that he’d throw me down. But just because I’ve faced fear, it doesn’t lessen its effects. That’s the biggest fallacy I ever read or hear about people who have felt extreme terror. Maybe for some people it hardens them like blacksmith’s metals. But I know what this fear can lead to, and I’ll do anything to escape it.

  “What do you want from me?” I say, turning around and looking at the closest man.

  He stares at me blankly.

  I look to another. “What do you want?” I plead. “Tell me. Just tell me!” I fight back tears, fail, and then cry pitifully. I hate myself for weeping in front of these men. “Just tell me!”

  “You better stop talking,” a man behind me hisses.

  “Shut up!”

  “What?” the man snaps. “She’s getting on my nerves.”

  “Wait for the boss.”

  “Is he ever coming?”

  “What, you’re a big tough guy now? You’re going to badmouth the boss?”

  “I certainly hope not.” The man who enters looks completely out of place. The other men are gruff and rough-looking, the sort of men who hang around on street corners catcalling women. This man wears a dark red suit with a purple tie, holding a silver wolf-pommel cane, his shoes so shiny they reflect the light. His goatee is meticulously crafted and his bald head is slick, as if polished. And then he places an old-style gangster hat on his head, as blood-red as his suit. He’s around fifty years old. He reads my expression, and then laughs. “Yes, I understand, my dear. It’s a shock, isn’t it?”

  “I …” I close my mouth. I don’t know what to say.

  He laughs again, and then drops into the giant armchair. He folds his legs and taps his cane against the desk. Tap-tap-tap, a constant backdrop to our conversation. “You appear surprised,” he says. “You expected some big ape of a man with tattoos covering his eyes or some such thing.”

  “I didn’t know what to expect,” I say quietly. Surely I can reason with this man. He’s different from the others. He’s not an animal. Surely he won’t let these men hurt me. But then, he is here in this horrid place.

  “And now what do you think?” He waves a hand at himself. His fingernails are manicured. “Are you impressed?”

  “You don’t wear a patch,” I mutter.

  He grins. “Oh, but I do.” He shows me his cufflinks. Some ghost-type figure and the tiny words Chosen Wraiths are engraved into the metal. It hurts my eyes reading them. “I’m not a big fan of leather, you see.”

  I keep expecting one of the tough men behind me to leap forward and beat this man up and take his position. I can’t imagine them enjoying serving under this man. If they are anything what they seem like—ignorant, mean men—then surely they hate this flamboyant man. And yet they stand there, statue-still and statue-quiet, watching.

  “I’m afraid we can’t chat all day, dear,” he says. “My name is the Gentleman; that is how you will address me if you have need to use my name. Anyway,” and he waves a manicured hand, “I want to know about Dante. He’s been a pain in my side for a number of years now. Men like Dante never know how to respect their betters. They’re always reaching, you understand? Never content. I suppose I admire it. I didn’t get to where I am by staying still. But if he’s reaching for my position, what does he expect me to do? So tell me about him. Where does he hold his meetings? Who does he meet with? Does he have any secret safe houses we won’t know about? Well, come on.”

  “I …” My mouth is dry. I don’t know what to say. I know nothing about Dante’s business. I didn’t even know he was a part of any of this before today. I didn’t even know him before last night.

  “Well?” Suddenly the Gentleman leaps to his feet and walks around the desk, tapping his cane against the floor. He leans down close to me. This close, I can see that two of his back teeth are plated gold. “You are obviously curious why these men follow me. Look at them. Strong men, lethal men, powerful men. And they follow me? I can see the confusion in your eyes; I am very good at reading eyes, girl. I won’t tell you why except to say that these are the sort of men who wouldn’t follow a man who hasn’t done what they’ve done, or much worse. Do you understand?” He leans forward, bringing his face close to mine, his breath brushing against me. “I will shove this cane up your tight—” He cuts short, returning to his chair. But he doesn’t sit down, just stands near it. “The next time I question you, you better have some answers. Or you might discover that even the Gentleman isn’t always a gentleman.”

  He paces from the room. The tapping of his cane echoes down the hallway.

  The men take off my handcuffs and carry me down the hallway again. I’m worried they’ll chain me to a different pipe—there are many exposed—but they cuff me to the same two pipes. The men are about to leave when one kneels down. It’s the one whose face I spit in.

  “Stupid slut,” he whispers, and then hocks and spits right into my eye.

  I just manage to close my eyes in time, but there’s nothing I can do but let it drip down my face.

  Once the door is shut, I lean across to the screw and grip it with my teeth.

  Chapter Eight

  Dante

  We ride down I-10, a convoy of bikes kicking up dust as we weave between the traffic. I never feel so focused as I do on the hunt. Lion rides beside me and Timmy on the other side. We’re going to war and I feel ready. I see Selena in front of me in the road, beckoning to me, naked, with her hair pooling around her. She’s waving at me with her fingers, pursing her lips, and then the image shifts and she’s fully-clothed and holding a baby in her arms. Strange, because I never wanted a baby. That was Markus’s thing, always going on about making a family and starting a life.

  I remember sitting in the bar with him one winter night when it was pitch-dark outside. He was sipping whisky and droplets clung to his beer. “I’d love to have a kid, and a wife, and a house, and—and all of that.” He smiled, and then shrugged. “Does that sound stupid?”

  “Yes, it does,” I said, grinning at him. “It’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. What’d’you want a kid for? You going to teach him how to handle a pistol?”

  “Maybe, or how to ride a bike.”

  “Motorized or human-powered?”

  “Either. What does that matter?”

  “Just had an image of you putting a toddler on a Harley is all.”

  We both laughed, and then Markus grew serious. “But really. Don’t you ever think about a normal life?”

  “And what does a normal life look like for men like us?” I asked.

  “Well …” He paused, considering. After a sip of whisky he said, “I reckon a normal life for us looks exactly the same as it does for everybody else. At least I don’t see why it shouldn’t. We’re men, aren’t we? Just like everybody else.”

  “Dad never wanted a normal life,” I say.

  “You were four when Dad died,” Markus replied. “How the fuck d’y
ou know what he wanted?”

  I bristled, and then nodded. “Fair enough. But from what you told me, he never wanted a normal life.”

  “He was an outlaw like us, it’s true. But whoever said that sons have to live as shadows of their fathers?”

  “I think the Bible has some words on that.”

  “So you’re religious now?” Markus shook his head, pouring another glass of whisky. “I’m not talking about what Dad wanted. I’m talking about what I want. I want a girl who isn’t just a bit of fun for a night. I want a son or a daughter I can protect and care for. I want a house I can call my own and a car and maybe even a normal job.”

  “You’re president of the Motor Saints. You’d really give that up?”

  “You’re not hearing me,” he said. He leaned across the table. Suddenly he looked as serious as cancer; his smile vanished. “This life isn’t the end of the world, Dante. It isn’t our fate. We don’t have to walk down this road for the rest of our lives just because we started down it when we were kids. There’s a whole world out there. There’s more to this life than running and gunning and whoring.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I don’t want to see it. No offense, big brother, but if you want to go skipping into the sunset to the land of daises and dreams then don’t let me stop you, but don’t expect me to come along for the ride. I’m happy with our lot. I happen to enjoy running and gunning and whoring.”

  “Well, I’m the older one so I know best.”

  “Fuck you, old man.” I punched him in the arm. “I’ll break your dentures over your balding head.”

  Markus self-consciously touched his hair. “Dammit, that better not be true.”

  I’m jolted from the memory as Lion pulls up beside me. He gestures at me to pull up to the side of the road. I follow him, reflecting. I haven’t thought about that conversation with Markus in ages. When I think of my big brother he’s always the wild man shooting and drinking. It’s all too easy to forget that he was going to leave the life and get married and betray me: betray me, because that’s how it felt at the time, the brother I’d always relied upon telling me to go fuck myself. I could let my mind drift to other memories, memories where I roar at him and call him wicked names. But I don’t let myself. I need to stay focused.

  Lion pulls off his helmet. “It’s just down there.” He points off into the dusty cacti-filled land. “About three miles. A straight shot, according to Slug.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Boss.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Am I okay?” I laugh gruffly. “We’re working. Since when does okay and not okay come into it?”

  “I’m just making sure.” Lion watches me too closely. It’s like he’s trying to hear words I ain’t saying. “This girl must mean a helluva lot to you. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  “You keep talking like you’re gonna sprout a pussy.” I rev my bike and ride toward the nearest cactus. “Get your head in the game.”

  Our convoy turns off I-10, kicking up yellow dust now instead of grey.

  I’m getting angry now, ready to go to war. Sometimes I get this feeling like I want to kill everybody around me, like I want to fly into a rage so blinding that when I wake up my face will be coated in blood and I’ll wander for days through a field of corpses. Sometimes I get so damn angry that I wish I could just go to war someplace and die riddled with bullets. But usually I can hold back that anger with my better instinct. Markus showed me how a man can channel his anger instead of letting it use him. But now, as I picture Selena alone and scared, the rage is impossible to contain. I’m going to kill every single Chosen Wraith. All of them—dead. And if there are any survivors, I’ll hunt them down and kill them too.

  But when the warehouse rises out of the mist on the horizon, the killer instinct inside me dies. We’ve been tricked. I curse myself. We’ve been fucking tricked! I pull to a stop and hold up my arm, causing the entire convoy to stop behind me. We’re atop a small hill looking down at the warehouse. Cops surround it, setting up tape and walking around on their phones or walkie talkies. I feel a pulsing in my head. Rage is bad enough, but there’s nothing worse than impotent rage. I climb from my bike and pace up and down, glancing at the warehouse every so often.

  “Boss,” Lion says.

  “You’ve got a girl, haven’t you, my friend?” I ask. I know I sound half-mad, but I can’t stop.

  “I’m married, boss. You were my best man.”

  “I remember. Of course I remember! If Brose was playing with your wife like he’s playing with my girl, what would you do?”

  “Kill him,” Lion says. “And we’re going to kill him.”

  “But he’s not in there.” I point to the warehouse. Cops everywhere, but no bikers in cuffs, nobody speaking on a megaphone telling them to come out, no gunfire. Nothing.

  “No,” Lion agrees.

  “Then what now?” I ask.

  “We have to find where they really are.”

  “They could be anywhere!” I snap. “Brose has played me for a fuckin’ fool. Do you know he made me call him sir? I said he put me on loudspeaker. That was when. Made me call him sir right in front of all his boys. Disrespected me.”

  “Brose is a fucking monster. You’ll get no arguments from me.”

  “All right. Let’s back up some so these cops don’t see us.”

  “Boss.”

  Lion leads the men away from the hill back the way we came. I’m about to follow when my cell rings. It’s Selena.

  “Brose,” I say, answering.

  “There’s no point trying to hide now,” he says, tittering. “They’ve seen you.”

  “But they’re not chasing us.”

  “I haven’t ordered them to chase you. Would you like me to?”

  “You’re a coward hiding behind the cops. It’s fuckin’ pathetic.”

  “Oh, yes, bravery. As I recall, your sweet big brother cared greatly about being brave, didn’t he? Do you remember how brave he was, the big strong man Markus? Do you remember how much everybody respected him? Nothing could hurt Markus. He was untouchable. Strange, isn’t it, how one so brave can be felled by one so cowardly?”

  “Just tell me where she is,” I say, hands shaking, lips trembling, everything aching with the urge to fight. “Just tell me where the fuck she is!”

  “You were supposed to come with all your cash and guns. Not tooled up and ready for war. What sort of businessman are you? I believe we had a deal. I’m sorely tempted to take out my frustration on your little angel. Maybe I’ll show her how a real man makes love.”

  “If you touch her …”

  “I know, I know.” He sighs. “You’re so predictable sometimes, Dante. I expect more from you. I really do.”

  “Just tell me where the fuck she is!” I roar.

  “You’re a passionate man,” Brose says. “I can appreciate that. But I must warn you that passion may lead you to ruin if you’re not careful. Do you remember Kirk? I’m sure you do. He was my man and got a little too passionate one night, spoke out of line, you understand. You know what happened to him.”

  I know: he cut him into pieces and fed him to wild dogs.

  “How do I get her back?” I say, feeling defeated. And yet … it’s crazy, but a plan is formulating.

  “That’s more like it,” Brose says. “That’s what I like to hear! I want you to bring five-hundred thousand dollars and two duffle bags—no, make that five—five duffle bags of guns and ammo to the location I’ll text to your phone. You’ll laugh when you see it. It’s almost identical to the warehouse you’re looking at now, except ten miles in the opposite direction.”

  “I need to speak to Selena,” I say. “Or we’re not doing this.”

  “You and this girl … Do you really think I’ve only been watching your apartment since last night? I’ve had men posted on it for weeks, and not once have they seen you with a lady friend. And now—poof—you’ve fallen
head over boots for this lady. Anybody would think you were going soft.”

  “Just let me speak to her,” I say. “I’m not agreeing to shit without that.”

  He sighs, and then says, “Fine, wait.”

  A couple of minutes pass and then Selena is breathing heavily down the phone. “Dante?” Her voice is tight and full of fear. But there’s strength in there, too.

  “I’m sorry,” I say right away. “This is all my fault.”

  “No,” she says.