It’s in my office where I’m holed up as I attempt to get Bedlam’s business affairs in order. Since Belly died it all rests on my shoulders.
I hang up the phone after making sure this weekend’s gun shipment is still a go. Thankfully, it is. There’s a knock at the door. An unrelenting one. I open it to find Gabby standing on the other side, her fist raised in the air.
She lowers her arm, tucking it against her side. “Sorry, I just don’t have a lot of time.”
“Is everything okay? Is Tricks hurt?” I ask, my thoughts going right to the very worst reason she could be here.
“EJ’s fine. She wanted me to give you this,” she says. She holds out a folded note. “She wanted me to tell you that Marco is too busy planning something to be bothered with her. She says she’s close to getting the proof, but needs a little more time.”
“Do you know what kind of proof?” I ask.
Gabby frowns. “No, she didn’t tell me. We don’t get a lot of alone time anymore.”
“Thank you for this,” I say, holding up the folded note.
“No problem. I gotta run.” She takes a step back then stops.
“What?” I ask.
She smiles, sheepishly. “Raydo is waiting for me outside the gates. I’m not supposed to be on reservation lands at all, but he promised he wouldn’t tell Marco since he thinks I’m here to meet up with someone who owes me money for a con me and EJ ran a while back.”
“And?”
She sways on her feet. “I kinda promised that whatever I got I’d split with him.”
I reach for my wallet and take out all the cash inside. “Eight hundred good?”
She takes the bills and shoves them in her pocket. “Yes, perfect. Sorry, it’s the only thing I could come up to get him to bring me here.”
I sit back down in my chair. “Just keep bringing me word. It keeps me as sane as I’m capable right now.”
“I will. Thanks again.”
The second she’s out the door Sandy pokes his head in. “Grim, that chick’s HOT!” He looks in the direction of where Gabby had just left. “Was that Gabby? Man, you didn’t tell me Tricks’s friend looked like THAT.” He notices the paper in my hand. “She alright?”
“Yeah. She’s okay.” I rub my temples.
For now.
I unfold the note, knowing full well it would be another quote since a full-on letter would be too risky if she were caught with it. Plus, quotes are Trick’s favorite way to communicate or sum up a feeling or situation.
Life is a beautiful struggle.”
- Unknown
* * *
Ain’t that the fucking truth. The struggle part anyway. Life isn’t beautiful, or at least, it won’t be, not until Tricks comes home to me.
Seven
Sandy is pacing the living room when I get back to the house. He’s using all of his charm in an attempt to sweet-talk a girl into coming over.
Not wanting to stand witness to Sandy making an ass of himself, I head out the back sliders toward my room. I’m exhausted.
I’ve taken weapons inventory, checked in with the men who made the last mule run, and taken a call from Alby, Callum Egan’s right-hand man, to sort out the many details for this weekend’s gun shipment.
I’m lost in thoughts of Tricks and Bedlam business as I enter my room. So much so that I don’t realize I’m not alone until the toe of my sneaker hits something that feels very much like a foot.
I draw my gun and aim it into the dark. Reaching behind me, I feel the wall for the light switch and flick it on.
Sure enough, it is a foot.
Attached to that foot is a soldier of Los Muertos. Gil. Half of the duo whose asses got kicked at BB’s Bar by me and my brothers not too long ago.
Or at least...it was Gil.
All that remains of him now is his corpse, slumped over on my bed. Eyes staring lifelessly through the ceiling. One leg hangs off the side with his foot at an awkward angle on the floor.
There’s blood. So much blood. It’s everywhere, dripping down his neck and clothes, soaking into the surrounding blanket and mattress. It doesn’t take someone from one of those crime-scene shows to figure out the source of the blood. It’s obvious. There’s a handle of a knife sticking out from his head, the blade buried deep into the top of his skull.
I step closer and notice that it’s not just any knife. This one has an ivory handle and a name expertly carved onto the side.
My name.
Because it’s my fucking knife.
“What the holy fuck?” I whisper to no one.
The knife is a gift from Belly. He gave it to me the day I pledged into Bedlam. He’d carved my name into handle himself. It was usually in my bottom dresser drawer beneath a pile of socks, but somehow it found its way from its hiding spot into this gangbanger’s head.
As much as I’d like to be the person who’d put it there, I’m not.
My head swims with questions as I attempt to figure out why a soldier of Los Muertos is dead in my own fucking room. I lower my gun and tuck it into the back of my pants.
There is a commotion outside. An authoritative male voice shouts commands from the other side of the door. I don’t have to see him to know who’s shouting those commands.
“Shit,” I swear, bolting for the window. The door sails off the hinges. I’m only halfway out when I’m pulled back in by the gang task force and unceremoniously tossed to the floor.
I look up at a dozen or so familiar uniformed and armed men as they swarm around me with their massive military-grade guns aimed directly at me.
“Tristan Paine, you’re under arrest for…” The rest of the words are drowned out by the rustling of the men moving about the room. I’m lifted to my feet only to be kicked on the back of my legs and forced to my knees.
“Well, well, look at what we have here,” Lemming whistles, taking in the bloody scene.
I place my hands on the back of my head. My gun is ripped from my waistband. My knife, the one that isn’t planted in Gil’s head, is taken from the sheath underneath my pant leg.
Agent Lemming wears a victorious smile. He’s so damn elated I think he’s gonna come in his pleated fucking pants. “I told you we’d get you, motherfucker.”
“You ain’t got shit,” I hiss as I’m cuffed and pulled back up to my feet by two men caging me in.
Lemming points to the body on my bed. “I beg to differ.”
I clench my teeth as they push me toward the door. “The body was here when I got home,” I grate.
“Well, then you’re innocent and free to go,” he teases. “But seriously, I’ve heard that one before. Very unoriginal. You might want to try being more imaginative next time.”
“This is bullshit, and you know it,” I say, trying to yank free of the cuffs.
“Is it?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. He walks over to Gil’s corpse and looks him over. He points at the knife. “Okay, then, if you’re innocent, can you explain what a knife with your name carved into the handle is doing lodged into his fucking skull?”
“You know, I was just asking myself the same fucking thing.” I don’t have time for this bullshit.
“Okay, then can you, at least, tell me who killed him if it wasn’t you?”
“I was working on gathering clues before you interrupted with your untimely visit.” Sarcasm drips from my every word.
“Untimely? I don’t know about that. Seems to me like I arrived just in time,” Lemming remarks as we stand face to face. Man-to-man.
Lawless-to-law.
I smirk. “Maybe the poor guy had a splitting headache and aspirin wasn’t quite doing the trick.”
Agent Lemming opens his mouth to reply, but I interrupt. “Also, fuck you, I want my lawyer.”
Lemming leans over getting right up in my face. “Lawyer up all you want. It ain’t gonna save you now, Grim.” He pulls a cigar from inside of his bullet proof vest and chews off the end, spitting it at my feet. “No one can save you now
.”
I’m pushed out the door and through the grass toward an awaiting van. I glance back at Lemming. “You wanna fucking bet?”
The doors slam shut, and the engine starts. To my surprise, I’m not alone. Marci, Haze, and Sandy are seated on the benches lining both sides the van. Their Bedlam rings aren’t the only jewelry that matches mine. They each have the same pair of shiny new bracelets tethering them to a bar running down the center of the van.
Marci lifts up her wrists but the cuffs restrict her movement. She’s forced to place them back on her lap. “You okay, baby?” she asks, more concerned about me than herself. Typical Marci.
“You’re cuffed in the back of a task force van and you want to make sure I’m okay?” My rage grows into a blinding redness. It’s one thing for me or my brothers to be in cuff’s, but not Marci.
I look to my brothers. “What the fuck is going on?”
“They barged in while I was on the phone,” Sandy starts. “They said they had a warrant, then started turning the place over. Breaking shit and throwing stuff around. Those cock-suckers smashed my fucking Playstation.”
Haze chimes in. “Somehow, they came up with a shitload of H from each of our rooms.”
Marci leans forward. “I’m guessing they found the same in yours?”
The van takes off, jostling us around.
I shake my head and clench my jaw. “Not exactly.”
Eight
Agent Lemming strolls into the microscopic holding room in the sheriff’s station with a puffed-out chest, a shit-eating grin on his face and a fat file in his hand. He slaps the file onto the cold metal table, like a wrestler who’s just won the championship.
“I told you we’d bring you in. And here you are.” His smugness makes me want to slit his fucking throat.
“I want my lawyer.”
“She’s been called,” he assures me. “She’s still a couple hours away in Coral Pines, but that doesn’t mean we can’t chat before she gets here.”
“Lawyer,” I say again, sitting as far back in the chair as the cuffs will allow.
Lemming taps the file. “This shit in here is on the record. Our chat? Off the record.” He braces himself on the back of the chair. “It’s better we talk man to man. Nothing you say will bring additional charges or incriminate you for the ones you’re facing. I’m not recording you. I’m not trying to coerce you into anything. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this and clean up this shitty town. Lord knows that someone needs to help the people of Lacking. The ones who aren’t gang-bangers and who deserve a safe place to live.”
I find it hard to believe he won’t use what I say against me. That’s not how this game is played. “Why Agent Lemming, I didn’t know you were a superhero. I didn’t quite get a good look at your cape the last time we met,” I remark. “Is it tucked under your shirt or does it attach with velcro?”
Lemming ignores my remarks and gets down to business. He unbuttons his collar. “Tell me about the H we found in your house, Grim. We’ll start there.”
I scratch the stubble on my jaw with my thumbnail. “Let me guess, someone called in an anonymous tip? Is that why you came bursting through my door when Belly’s body was barely cold?” I lean back with a smug smile of my own. “You law men ain’t got no respect for the dead?”
“Do you?”
“Sometimes, more than the living.”
Lemming shrugs. “Did we get a tip? Maybe. Maybe, not. It doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that we found enough H in every bedroom of your house to slap a trafficking charge on each person who lives in it, as well as a murder-one charge for the dead gang banger we found in your room with…” He smiles and mixes around my words from earlier. “The headache he’ll never recover from.”
He pauses and taps his fingers on the table. “Unless... you want to confess to the murder one charge now so the rest of your so-called family can do their time for the H without facing the possibility of life in a cold, hard cell or death by lethal injection?”
My shoulders shake with silent, unbelieving laughter. “I didn’t kill him, and neither did my family. No one in Bedlam did. This ain’t on us. It was a setup. An obvious one. We’re not that stupid.”
“Everyone trips up now and again,” Lemming replies.
“We don’t.”
“Then, it was a mere coincidence that someone decided to off a high-ranking member of a rival gang in your bedroom with your knife?” he asks, like he already knows the answer. He scrapes the chair across the floor, then takes the seat across from me. “Although, it was a little surprising. Didn’t think you were the kind of guy who’d bring your work home with you, Grim.”
I lean forward. “I’m not.”
“Yet, the scene we found in your room says otherwise.”
I shake my head. “We can do this all day. It’s not going to get us anywhere.”
I go to rub my hands over my head, but the cuffs bite into my wrists. I’m growing more and more frustrated as he speaks. I let out an angry roar and pull on them again. It takes me a moment to calm myself and address Lemming once again. This time with something I rarely have to use in my line of work: reason. I lift my eyes to meet his.
“You don’t think it’s a little strange that an anonymous tip was called into the task force informing you of a fuck-load of H in my house? You’ve spent a lot of time in Lacking, and you ain’t stupid. H isn’t our game, Lemming, and you know it. It never has been.”
He raises his eyebrows. “But killing people is.” It’s a statement, not a question. “That’s why they call you, Grim, isn’t it? The living, walking, talking Grim Reaper of the Bedlam Brotherhood?”
He reaches inside his jacket and produces a pack of smokes. He places a lighter on top and slides them across the table. I pull one from the pack, with my movements restricted I have to lean down to place it between my lips and light it. I take a deep drag but, the nicotine does nothing to calm my racing pulse.
I glare at Lemming. I meant it when I told him he’s not stupid. I know he’s not. I’m just hoping those smarts will lead him to the obvious conclusion that this entire fucking thing, the H, the body, wasn’t Bedlams doing.
“Nah, I think it’s just because of the hood.” I point over my shoulder to where my hood rests against my back. “Not the same as a cape, but it works for me.”
Lemming manages to smile and wags his finger at me. “That’s a good one. But jokes won’t get you out of this one, Grim. You’re in too deep. I know that you yourself are not stupid. But, I also know you’re not like the other bangers out there. You’re more controlled. Calculated. You care about Marci, Sandy, and Haze. It’s because you care that I know you’re not going to allow them to go down for something you did.”
He’s got me there. I would never let them go down. Period. But, I didn’t do shit, and neither did they. So, I’ve got to exhaust all the other options before I start confessing to the few sins I didn’t commit.
“I tell you what,” Lemming starts with a slap of his palm on the table. “Point me in a direction. Give me the name of another person or organization, and I promise you that I will look. Give me a road to go down, and I’ll go. But, I can also promise, if that direction leads back to you, you’re going down, and you’re going down hard. With your priors?” He sways his head from side to side and looks to the ceiling while he silently does the math, using his fingers before dropping his hands back to the table. He lets out a loud, slow whistle. “You’ll be lucky to get life. If you plead guilty, that is. If not, you’re looking at death row.”
I roll my eyes. “You can threaten me all you want. I ain’t no fucking rat if that’s what you’re looking for. But, if you really want to find out who is responsible, I’d be looking at who actually traffics H in Lacking. Cause it ain’t us.”
“Los Muertos? Why would they go through all the trouble to plant valuable heroin in your house? Or kill one of their own men in your room?” He folds his fingers together on the tab
le and taps his thumbs against the back of his hands. “Unless Marco has something against you? But it has to be a pretty big something for him to blow all that cash the H would’ve brought in just to set you up and have you put you away.”
Marco wants to start a war, but by putting me away, he isn’t starting anything. He’s getting me out of the way. There’s only one reason he’d do that.
Tricks.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Marco is behind this, which means that if he does know about me and her, then Tricks is in serious danger. The last member of Los Muertos who turned on Marco was beheaded, his head stuck on a spike on top of the over pass for all to see like medieval times.
My lungs burn with rage. My heart is about to burst through my chest and punch this motherfucker in the face for keeping me here.
If I tell Lemming about Tricks being the possible reason for the setup and the task force goes poking around with their questions, it would only put her in more danger. There’s a small possibility that Marco might not know, but he will for sure if I go and make it public record. I can’t take the risk. I won’t.
I press my nails into the cold metal of the table. My teeth clenched so tight they feel as if they’re about to crack, much like the rest of me. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Hypothetically, let’s say Marco did do this. I thought there was a truce in place? That you all wanted peace?”
Marco only wants blood.
“Nothing but peace, love, and happiness in Lacking,” I answer.
Lemming laughs. He folds his hands together. “So then, if there is peace, what was the shooting at the park all about? Or, would you consider that a peaceful drive-by?”
Possession Page 3
