Hard Rider

by Lydia Pax

  “A bloc? Like in voting?”

  “Yeah. We all go the same way. Someone wants something passed, all he has to do is turn one of us onto his side. It’s simpler. Everyone does it like this.”

  “So if you didn’t know about me…”

  Ace flexed his muscles. “We’d be upset.”

  There was a great commotion from outside. Ram recognized the sound—several bikes at once riding up. The guard from outside, Powderkeg, busted in with a panicked look on his face.

  “Black Flags,” he yelled. “Ten or twelve of them. Ace, Ram, you gotta come look. You’re gonna be pissed.”

  Chapter 21

  Ram was pissed.

  His bike was a Harley-Davidson, the same as any biker worth his weight. The engine was a Twin Cam 98, the entire hog from the frame to the engine remodeled year after year since he had learned to chop at the age of 16.

  When he’d bought the thing—with his own money, Howitzer wouldn’t allow anything else—it had been a cheap bike bought third-hand from a do-nothing lot in the middle of the drought-blasted wasteland between San Antonio and Marlowe. Over the years, Ram had transformed it into a biker-fighting, neckbreaking, cop-busting, fool-scaring machine. He loved the bike with all his heart and soul.

  Ace had found his bike a different way—coming from a different set of circumstances. He had been passed around juvenile halls for most of his teenage life and then when he was eighteen, was given a choice by a judge—join the military or go to jail.

  He landed in the marines for five years and served three years in the Middle-East. When he was out, he took job after job, saving up his cash until he had enough for a bike—and so he could join a motorcycle club like he’d wanted to ever since he’d partnered with young bikers in juvenile hall.

  Ace’s bike was part of his identity, and Ram knew it was, because his own bike was. Ram couldn’t imagine being parted from his ride anymore than he could his leg, his arm…

  Your old lady?

  He squashed that thought. He’d firmly told June to stay inside. There was ass-kicking to do, and she was a tough bird, but there were going to be knives, chains, guns, and god knew what else about to come out to play if the past was any indication.

  The Black Flags were lined up in front of Shovelhead’s with Beretta out in front. The big man was smiling, holding a large box with two other Black Flags on the other end.

  Ram’s whole body tensed with rage, seeing Beretta dare to get this close to their property.

  That the Flags were on his turf was bad enough—enough to make him want to rip them limb from limb. But Ram was under no uncertain orders from Howitzer to halt hostilities with the Flags or else he’d be out of the club for sure. He couldn’t act on his fury, not even with Beretta right there and mocking their territory. They already wanted him out for how violent he was lately; he couldn’t explode now.

  Worse was the knowledge that he’d have to try and defuse this situation. He’d have to try and be the responsible one—to show himself as a calm leader in times of crisis.

  But worst of all was his dead certainty as to what was inside that box that Beretta held.

  “Hey Wrecking Crew,” said Beretta. “You left your shitty bike with us a few nights back. We thought we’d do you a favor, return it. Sort of a peace offering.”

  He upended the box with the other two men—Beretta doing most of the work, clearly the strongest of the three—and a whole mess of parts clattered out onto the road. They were not re-usable; almost all of them were bent, melted, or broken.

  Any member of the Wrecking Crew—hell, any member of a motorcycle club period—was good with bikes. Rebuilding them from the ground up was practically an annual activity. But none of these pieces could be used again. Ace’s bike, Sinclair, was gone for good.

  “Goddammit.” Ram’s voice was barely audible over all the noise of the rattling destruction. “Goddammit.”

  The rest of the Wrecking Crew behind him surged forward—but Ram held up a hand.

  He was not looking at Howitzer, but all the same he could see him shaking his head, expecting Ram to lose his shit. Expecting Ram to unleash the rage and destroy a man or two. And he’d be wearing that same disappointed smile throughout all of it.

  Ace hissed and went for the gun in his pocket. Several of the Black Flags went for theirs as well, ready for his blow-up. Putting a hand on his friend, Ram tried to calm him.

  “Not here,” he said. “Not now.”

  “They’re on our fucking turf, Ram,” said Ace. “I’m fucking Sergeant-At-Arms and I say we fucking go at these fucks right now!”

  “That’ll be a total battle, Ace.”

  “Then we’re fucking going to battle. You with me or not?”

  Ram had to be with him. There was no other choice. His rage was already heavy and taking over his reasoning—there was no excuse for letting these pissant Black Flags shit all over their territory, their property and not kicking the shit out of them. They’d be pussies for the rest of their lives if they did.

  He turned with Ace and the two of them rushed directly at the center of the Black Flags. There were twelve of them in all to the Wrecking Crew’s nine.

  Ram tackled hard into Beretta, hitting his midsection. Beretta tried to shake him off, kneeing him in the face and dropping hard elbows on his back, but Ram held on and powered him into a Black Flag motorcycle. The machine clattered over and Ram tumbled forward, rolling into the concrete.

  When he got up, Beretta was already there, ready with a heavy punch and then headbutting Ram in the face. The flat surface of his forehead nailed right into Ram’s eye.

  All around them, the brawl erupted in earnest. A Black Flag was whipped over the head with a chain, breaking his nose. Erickson was double-teamed by two young brothers, delivering blow after blow into his midsection and bringing him to his knees. The prospect Nate leapt off a motorcycle onto the back of one tall Black Flag, wrapping his arms around the man’s neck and cutting off his air. He was whooping and cawing, clearly gleeful that he was in the fight at all.

  And Beretta and Ram circled and traded blows like generals on a battlefield.

  Beretta headbutted him again, this time landing in the meat of Ram’s shoulder. Ram fired back with a headbutt of his own, sending Beretta to a knee. He landed a punch on Beretta’s face and then another, another, forcing him down to the ground—but Beretta kept getting back up.

  I’m gonna give him a new scar to match the one on his other cheek. Son of a bitch doesn’t know when to quit.

  If it were anyone else, Ram might have been able to admire that.

  From behind him, the Wrecking Crew continued to push forward as one body, fists flying and breaths heaving. Blood littered across the concrete in hurried sprays as noses broke and teeth spilled out onto the asphalt.

  They were only able to go at it for a bit—maybe a little more than a couple of minutes—before the police arrived and the fight deflated entirely.

  Almost everyone was still standing; both gangs were tough. There was no clear winner—and that rankled Ram more than anything.

  Chapter 22

  The Black Flags and the Wrecking Crew were escorted away by the police, stuffed into paddy wagons and the backs of cop cars, though kept in separate vehicles so as not to instigate more fighting.

  It was strange how quick the cops had gotten there.

  June supposed someone had called the police. It was an impulse that she understood—watching the brawl from inside the bar, if it had gone much longer, she was certain she would have.

  The police still meant “good” to her, even with Ram’s evidence to the contrary, and even contrary to her own experience.

  That she hadn’t called them immediately was proof enough of her own growing corruption from being around Ram. There was, she was not scared to admit to herself, a kind of animal satisfaction she got from watching him in battle. Seeing him dominate the field, standing so tall and strong above all those others—he set her body
into a heavy confusion of arousal and fear.

  Her heart pumped fast just from looking at Ram anyway, thick cords of muscles, swirling ink artwork on his skin. To see him fighting made her heart pump faster—because of fear, yes, but because her pulse was grinding so hard to begin with, the fear was catching up with the rapidity of her growing arousal.

  The very definition of Trouble Man.

  June was left with her dad. They stood next to a chain link fence on the perimeter of the parking lot, and she watched him chew the air with his thick yellow-stained teeth.

  “You must be out of your goddamn mind,” he said. Sun-worn hands on his hips, wide beneath the heavy utility belt he wore. “Totally goddamn insane. I ought to have you committed, you know that? I can do it, too. As your father or as the Sheriff.”

  “And I’d contest it every step of the way and call in every law professor I know from Austin to fight you on it,” she said, her voice tired. “You’re not going to have me committed, Dad, and you know I’m not crazy. What do you want?”

  “What do—” he laughed, amazed at her gall. “What do I want? What do I want? Well, let’s see.” He started ticking off on his fingers. “I want a daughter who speaks to me in the evenings instead of taking her meals in her bedroom. I’m paying for your goddamn meals, you might wanna remember. I want a daughter who minds her mother and father’s wishes. I want a daughter who is willing to date nice, good people in this town. I want a daughter who’s not disappeared for a full damn four years because she thinks she’s too good for a place like Marlowe—”

  At that, June had to start laughing.

  He was enraged. “What the hell is so goddamn funny?”

  “You think that’s why I left? You thought I left because I thought I was too good for Marlowe?” She shook her head. “Look, Marlowe isn’t the best place in the world, which you know, but it’s fine by me. I don’t mind it. It’s home. But the fact is, you could have raised me in any town on earth—you could have raised me in Paris, yes, the one in France, where I have always wanted to go? And it still wouldn’t have been good enough to keep me around with you in it.”

  Her father’s eyes were deep and blue, and just for a moment, she saw a deep sadness in them. But almost as soon as she saw that, it was replaced by anger, flashing and terrible. Zeus on his mountaintop, thunderbolt in hand.

  “You’re gonna leave that man, that goddamn punk, or there’ll be hell to pay. You understand me? You do whatever it is you want. Say whatever you need. But if you don’t leave him soon, I’m gonna treat you like I do any associate of a criminal. Is that clear?”

  “Is it clear to me that you’re using your authority as a law enforcement official to threaten a civilian innocent of any wrongdoing because she knows someone suspected of bad things? Yes, Dad, thanks. That’s very clear.”

  He had more to say, obviously, but he swallowed it and returned to his car, banging his door behind him. The tires squealed as he shot off down the street.

  Chapter 23

  Ram had been to the local lock-up before, lots of times. It was close to impossible to stay out of jail as an outlaw biker in a small city, and Marlowe was no different in this regard.

  With little fanfare, the cops processed each biker and tossed him into one of their two large holding cells, keeping the Black Flags and the Wrecking Crew separate. The cell was not much taller than Ram, so much so that he felt like hunching over all the time to avoid scraping his head. It was a wide rectangle, benches installed into its three walls, with flickering fluorescent lighting overhead wrapped inside a steel cage. In the past, those jailed had broken the lights open and tried to cut guards or each other with the casing and shattered bulbs.

  He sat down in a corner of the cell, brooding. They wouldn’t be in jail long—Cattleprod stayed out of the brawl, as always, and he was no doubt gathering funds that moment to raise their bail. It would only be a matter of hours.

  But that didn’t make jail any nicer of a place. The Wrecking Crew weren’t the only people in there that afternoon; already a bevy of drunks had begun to populate the small enclosed area. And it didn’t make the nasty glances Howitzer kept throwing at him make him feel any better.

  Ram watched a cop walk by with his keys out, and in a few moments, there was a small commotion from the other cell. He watched, somewhat incredulously, as the Black Flags began to file out.

  Many of them knocked on the Wrecking Crew’s cell bars, name-calling and swearing. He expected the same from Beretta, but all he saw was a troubled, sulking man with his face contorted in some angry confusion.

  Ram would be pretty angry and confused too if someone had just beat him to dizziness like he had done to Beretta.

  “Motherfucker,” he said, mostly to himself. And then, louder, “Motherfucker. Motherfucker! I’m gonna get you, shithead! You fucking wait!”

  Beretta spared a glance back at him just for a moment and then carried on his way.

  It felt good to have said something at the time, but now Ram felt foolish. It was easy to talk a big game behind bars, and everyone knew it. It didn’t matter that Ram knew he could back it up; words not filled with the volume of action lost all momentum, all mass.

  “Now, you see?” said Howitzer, approaching him. “That kind of shit is what I’m talking about. You don’t know how to control your goddamn temper.”

  His father stood over him, all harsh moods and crossed arms. His forearm had a long tattoo of a gravestone with Ram’s mother’s name on it; next to it was another tombstone with Madeline’s name. He and his father had never had much of a relationship, but what was there seemed to fall apart quickly after Madeline died.

  They were more brothers in the Crew than they were father and son, and everyone knew it.

  “I didn’t see you stopping the fight.”

  “My men go to war, I gotta fight,” said Howitzer. “But you were on the front. Not because I didn’t want to be there, neither. I was on my way up—but you let Ace go. You let the fight happen.”

  “He’s the Sergeant-At-Arms,” said Ram. “What do you want me to do, show him up in front of everyone?”

  “If it means we don’t get thrown in jail? If it means that, in the middle of a war, we’re not throwing away money to bail ourselves out? Wars cost money, Ram. And they cost men. What if one of our guys was carrying something hot? What if one of our guys gets tossed away for years? What happens to the war then?” He kicked the bench underneath Ram. “Jesus Christ. Like we don’t have enough brothers put in the pen already! The cops are crawling all over our asses, looking for any reason to put us away for good. Half the evidence they’ve found looks planted, not that anybody can prove a goddamn thing, but it doesn’t stop them. And you’re going around hoping for a brawl in broad daylight.”

  “If a brother’s carrying something hot, it’s his own responsibility. I didn’t put anything in their pockets.”

  “But you did start this war, Ram. And your actions have consequences.”

  Ram wished he could go somewhere else without walking past his father. But he was in the corner of a jail cell, and it was hard to get much more cornered than that.

  “Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck that. Not everything gets to be my fault just because I’ve got the balls to do what you want. Actions do have consequences and I’m willing to settle them, but you keep on and on like any consequence is a bad thing bar none.”

  Ram was stood up now, taller than his father. The rest of the men around them began to clear out, giving them room. The two had fought before and in nicer places than this. One advantage to a jail cell was that there wasn’t much around to break when two big men like Ram and Howitzer went at it.

  “Here’s something with some fucking consequences,” said Howitzer. “That broad you’re pretending is your old lady—yeah, I fucking said it—she’s the daughter of the fucking sheriff. What the fuck are you thinking with that? Did you try to make the worst choice possible?”

  Ram stood up mostly as posturing
. But now he was getting pissed off. “You leave June the hell out of this, old man. You don’t want to go down that road.”

  “I’ll go down any damn road I want. I’ve already been down them all twice.”

  “Including the kind that makes you a fucking turncoat coward, huh?”

  Ram was running out of ammunition and he could feel it, but he had to empty his clip. If he didn’t, he’d be holding onto this shit forever.

  “The fuck are you talking about?”

  “You wanted Mikhail to make a fucking deal with the Flags. With the Flags. With Beretta? Fuck you.”

  “Come on,” said Howitzer, throwing up his hands. “We were just sending out feelers, kid. A bad peace is better than the best war out there. You can’t judge—”

  “I can and I will. Fuck you. After what Beretta did, you’re teaming up with him? On his side now? Fuck you.”

  Howitzer’s face shifted with understanding.

  “I see.” He stepped away from Ram several paces. “You still haven’t let that go. Of course you haven’t.” He put a hand to his face, shaking his head. “I get it now. Goddamn that I didn’t see it before. Of course you haven’t. Goddamn.”

  “Why the hell would I let it go? He killed my sister. He killed your daughter. What the hell is wrong with you that you’d make a deal with him?”

  “Ram, you gotta listen to me, and you gotta do it right now.” Howitzer put a hand on his shoulder. His eyes were softer than Ram had seen in a long time. “Madeline—god rest her soul—got on the bad luck end of one too many doses of smack. It could have happened to anyone. I offered her my help and she didn’t want it. I offered my help to Beretta and he didn’t want it, not while she was still using.”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “I’m saying you think that he dragged her down with him. And maybe he introduced her to the stuff, sure. But her choices after that were her own. It’s not a fucking…it’s not some vortex, do you understand? Not when two addicts are living together. It’s a see-saw, and they couldn’t find the balance.”