by Jessie Cooke
As she walked toward the restaurant, she had to wonder if it was a good idea for her to take a job in this neighborhood. It was a place she was overly familiar with, one where she’d spent a lot of her time on the streets. There was a group of homeless people that camped out nearby and Zoe had crashed with them on more than one occasion. There was a guy that ran a pawn shop in the neighborhood that bought whatever they brought him. Zoe herself had sold a good number of things she had “obtained” while she was homeless to him, and she’d bought drugs from a teenager affiliated with one of the street gangs on the corner, across the street from the restaurant. As far as she could remember, she’d never gone into the restaurant when she was high, but she couldn’t be sure. She supposed if they turned her down for the job on sight, that would be her first clue.
She was almost to the restaurant when she heard someone call out, “Hey, Golden Girl! Is that you?” She turned toward the sound of it and saw Charlie. Charlie was one of the homeless men that hung out in the little camp. He was a veteran and had PTSD. He didn’t use drugs and he liked to lecture the others on the evils of them, especially the younger ones. He called her “Golden Girl” because she gave him her old, dirty blanket, one cold night. He said anybody willing to give up anything on the street had to have a heart of gold.
Charlie’s drug of choice and main reason for being on the streets was alcohol. He was a binge drinker and he would drink anything with alcohol in it. He’d go for weeks sometimes as sober as a church mouse and then suddenly, he’d go on a crazy bender and drink until he was almost dead. He’d get picked up by police or an ambulance and they wouldn’t see him for a while. A few times Zoe thought he had died, but then she’d hear the familiar “Hey, Golden Girl,” and she’d know he was back.
“Hey, Charlie,” she said, glancing toward the restaurant. She was still a few buildings away, but as much as she liked Charlie, being seen with him wouldn’t make a good impression. He wore a ratty old army-issue coat with his name and a bunch of accommodation patches stitched onto it. It used to be green, she supposed, but the years and the streets had turned it an almost shit-brown color. His jeans were filthy and falling apart and his red and gray beard had crumbs in it. Sometimes he wore shoes and other times he walked around barefoot. That day he had on a pair of formerly white shoes that were almost as brown as his jacket. Charlie’s teeth were mostly gone too and what were left were brown and stained.
“Damn, Golden Girl, look at you. Did you fall into some money?”
“Nah,” she said and laughed. “I went home, back to my grandparents. I’m looking for a job.”
“Well, damn,” he said, scratching his beard. “Good for you. You give up the smack?”
“Yep. Clean for almost a month,” she told him, proudly.
“You going to meetings?”
“Nah, I kicked it on my own. I’ll be alright.”
Charlie shook his head. “You need support, girl. I’ve been doing really good myself. I haven’t touched a bottle in months and I’ve been going to meetings over at the Methodist church a few times a week. That’s where I’m headed now. You should go with me.”
“Maybe another time, Charlie. I have some things to take care of today.”
“Just remember, you won’t have anything to take care of if you lose it all to that little black bag you love the taste of so much. I ain’t lecturing, I’m speaking from experience. Just because our poisons are different, don’t mean the end result ain’t the same.”
“I agree with you,” she told Charlie, “and you’re probably right that I should go to a meeting or two.” She thought about the dream she’d had earlier and the guilt that had been eating her up since. She didn’t deal well with stress. It was what always made her go back to using once she had struggled to clean herself up. She’d never tried a twelve-step program. Maybe it was worth a shot. “Okay; there’s something I need to do first, though. How about if I meet you over there?”
“Alright, Golden Girl, I’ll hope to see you,” he said. Zoe watched him limp away, knowing he didn’t have any more faith in her word than her own grandfather did. Trust and respect were two things she’d never had in her life. She knew it was her own fault, and once again she resolved to change it. Smoothing down her new blouse, she headed for the restaurant once again.
8
“I applied for a job today,” Zoe told Charlie as they walked away from the Methodist church, after the meeting.
“That’s great! I hope you get it.”
“Thanks, Charlie. And thank you for talking me into going to the meeting today. I think I might go to another one soon.”
“I have to confess something to you, Golden Girl, I didn’t think you’d show up.”
She smiled. “You know what? I only showed up to prove to you that I would.”
He laughed. “Whatever gets you there, I guess. You catching the bus?”
“Yeah. Where are you staying these days?”
Charlie suddenly looked excited again. “I been staying with a few other guys at a house down at the end of Victory Boulevard.”
Victory Boulevard was part of a vacant subdivision just a few blocks from where they were. The city kept talking about restoring that whole area, but as of yet, they hadn’t had the funds. A lot of homeless people squatted in the houses along the vacant streets there, until the cops came along and ran them out. Zoe had avoided them, knowing that if the cops found her in one of them, it would get back to her papa.
“That’s good,” she said. “Just be careful. The cops do a sweep every month or so.”
“Yeah, but it’ll be good while it lasts. It beats the hell out of sleeping on concrete every night. This one has a fire pit and an old barbecue in the back yard that we can cook on, and the plumbing still works.”
“Wow, that’s good. Why does it have water still, I wonder?”
“I don’t know, but I ain’t looking a gift horse in the mouth. All we need now is electric and we’ll be set.”
That gave Zoe a bad feeling. The only vacant house she ever stayed in that had water turned out to be a grow house. The basement had been filled with wall-to-wall marijuana plants and a generator to run the grow lights. The man that owned the plants showed up, waving a shotgun around one day. It had scared her to death. “Charlie, have you really checked the place out? I mean, maybe somebody is growing something there…”
“Nah,” he said, unconcerned. “They’d need electricity for that, or at least a generator. The water thing is probably a fluke, it probably got left on by accident.”
“Maybe, but if it has a basement or an attic, I’d check them.”
Charlie’s eyes widened at the thought. “I don’t do confined spaces.”
“What about your friends, the other people that stay there?”
“I don’t think any of them will be okay with going under the house or into a crawl space. It’ll be okay,” he said, thoughtfully. “We ain’t tearing the place up. We put some old furniture in there that was found and fixed it up real nice.”
Zoe sighed. Something was telling her that Charlie wasn’t safe there. She wasn’t sure she liked this newfound intuition of hers, but she said, “How about if I check it out for you?”
“You’d do that?” Charlie’s face brightened again.
“Sure. You took me to your meeting. I can do this for you.”
“Thanks, Golden Girl.” They walked together for about two blocks with Charlie doing most of the talking. He knew all the gossip on the streets and he filled her in as they walked. When they got to Victory Street, Charlie suddenly stopped in his tracks. “Son of a bitch, what do they want?”
Zoe followed his gaze to a large blue house at the end of the block. There was a pair of Harleys parked out front. “Do you know who they are?” she asked.
He shook his head but said, “Those are some really nice bikes for this neighborhood. The only one around here that rides bikes like that are the Defenders.”
Zoe knew who the Defenders
were, even before the night of the accident when she saw the dead man wearing their patch. She’d never had to personally deal with them and for that she counted herself lucky. The neighborhood was their territory and if you weren’t looking to join up with them, you were wise to keep your distance. They had a reputation as cold-blooded killers and even the street gangs that operated in the vicinity feared them. “Why would the Defenders be here?” Zoe was startled when Charlie took her arm and pulled her behind a giant sycamore tree in the front yard of the house they were standing in front of.
“They’re running us off,” he said, more to himself than to her, she thought. She looked back down at the house, where three men in varied states of dress were coming down off the porch with what looked like their belongings in tow. The men walked hurriedly through the gates of the yard and past the motorcycles. Zoe’s eyes went back to the empty, wide porch as a fourth man came out the door. That man was yelling at someone in the doorway that she couldn’t see. “Damned fool is going to get his head blown off,” Charlie said with a sigh. Just about that time, one big man, and then another, stepped out of the doorway. Zoe could only see them from behind, and they were both wearing vests with Defenders patches. The homeless man was backing down the steps, but still yelling at them. She couldn’t make out his words, but it was obvious that he was irate. Suddenly, one of the men took out a gun while the other turned in their direction with his eyes scanning the street. “Shit! They’re going to shoot the old fool. He doesn’t mean any harm; he’s touched in the head.”
Zoe hardly heard Charlie’s words. Her eyes were focused on the man watching the street. He was tall and had light brown hair that touched his shoulders. Zoe couldn’t make out his features from where she and Charlie were watching…but a tingling sensation rushed through her body as she looked at him. She shivered with the realization that she was looking at Levi, the object of desire in the erotic dreams she’d been having. What the hell is going on?
9
Levi couldn’t believe that his life had come down to this. He was kicking a bunch of old veterans out of a vacant house, so that his club could cook meth there to sell to the kids at the local high school. He thought about Krissy as he touched the tattoo on his neck and for the first time since she died, he hoped that she couldn’t see him from wherever she was. Making the first two leave had been cake. As soon as they saw Grant and Levi, they grabbed their pitiful belongings and made a beeline for the door. But the third guy came out of the back room and demanded to know what they were doing there. Grant repeated his spiel about the new owner wanting them out, and the old guy went off. He started yelling about how he’d fought for his country in Vietnam, and as Grant started tossing the belongings left on the floor toward the front door, Levi found himself thinking about his Pops. When they finally got the old guy herded out onto the porch, he got even more confrontational. Grant had taken out his gun and for a few seconds, Levi thought his friend was actually going to have to shoot the old guy.
He knew that he was taking the coward’s way out by watching the street and letting Grant deal with him, but after seeing the old furniture the men had set up in the house and realizing they were just a bunch of harmless old drunks with nobody but each other in the world, he just wasn’t sure he’d be able to shoot the guy if he had to. Luckily, the old man eventually wore himself out, dissolved into a coughing fit, and finally slung the old canvas bag he was carrying over his shoulder and left.
“Damn,” Grant said as he tucked the gun back into his waistband. “I thought that old fucker was going to make me shoot him.”
“Yeah, me too,” Levi said. He looked around at the dilapidated houses around them and then back at Grant. “You ever wonder what happened to our lives?”
Grant raised an eyebrow and said, “What do you mean?”
“I just mean that our time used to be spent doing more productive things. This is shit. You and I have both been in the club for over five years. Why is Cheney giving us a shit job like this?”
Grant shook his head and said, “Unfortunately, once we lost the gun deal because the Invaders pulled out and decided not to let us move them through their territory, I don’t think there was much left except for the shit jobs. It’s almost like we’re starting from scratch.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can do this shit,” Levi said, walking toward his bike. Grant followed him and as Levi slid on the back of the bike he said, “I think I’m going to go to Nashville tomorrow and talk to Stone.”
Grant got on his bike and slid on his gloves. “Things are tense right now all over the place. Losing that deal with us was a big blow to the Invaders too. I’m not sure inviting trouble by switching from one struggling club to the other is your best bet right now, Levi.”
“Something has to give.”
“Why all of a sudden?” Grant asked. “Before…” Grant hesitated and Levi said:
“The accident?”
“Yeah. Before the accident, your dad was making a lot of noise about the meth lab, but you didn’t seem bothered by it. Why is this all coming up now?”
Levi shook his head. He honestly didn’t know how to put it in words. “Maybe I was too preoccupied with my own life before, to notice how shitty things had gotten. The night Spider went ballistic and Cheney sent me after him was the first night I realized just how much what we were doing affected other people. I mean, Spider was an asshole from day one, but you should have seen him on this stuff we’re cooking. He was…sub-human, and we’re pushing this stuff to kids. Doesn’t that bother you at all?”
“I don’t think about who buys it, or what it does to them. I mean, it’s not like we’re forcing anyone to take it. It’s supply and demand, like tobacco or alcohol. If someone buys the product and uses it to ruin their life or someone else’s, are we really responsible for that?”
Levi had heard that argument before. It was the one Cheney had given his father the first time his dad went off about them selling meth. Levi remembered actually sitting there nodding as Cheney recited the words that day. He’d thought that his father was overreacting. But Levi had never seen first-hand what it could do to people, until the day he killed Spider. He was still reeling from that when his dad and Krissy died…and now he was beginning to have suspicions that the “accident” wasn’t an accident at all. He felt like he was racing toward his breaking point but he didn’t know how to get off the tracks.
When Grant and Levi got back to the clubhouse, Grant went to tell Cheney that the job was done, while Levi went back out to the shop to see what kind of progress Mickey had made on the bike. He found the mechanic at his worktable with pieces of his dad’s bike’s brakes spread out before him. “Hey, Mick, how’s it going?”
Mickey picked up a shop towel and wiped off his greasy hands before reaching for his pack of cigarettes. As he stuck one between his teeth and lit it he said, “There’s just no way for me to tell if the brakes were working or not, Levi. The report you gave me from the cops shows the trajectory and the point of impact and skid marks. That’s how they came to the conclusion that your dad’s bike didn’t stop, or even slow down before he hit that car. The car must not have seen him coming either because he didn’t brake until the last second. The report says he was traveling at least double the speed limit, based on the trajectory of the impact, so stepping on his brakes when he did probably only made things worse. I’m sorry, Levi, but looking at these crushed-up parts is just giving me a headache. It’s not telling me anything.”
Levi reached over and picked up a black rubber piece of tubing and held it between his fingers. “Is this part of the brake line?”
Mickey nodded. “Yeah. All the lines were twisted up and pulled loose. Some of them were burned and melted to the exhaust. That’s all that was really salvageable.”
Levi held up the thin tubing and looked at it. There weren’t any visible breaks or holes in it, and he knew it was a fantasy to believe the one salvageable piece would give him some kind of proof t
hat his dad’s brakes had been tampered with. He sighed and Mickey went on to say, “I can save a lot of the chrome, but the gas tank was demolished. I’m sorry, kid.”
“It’s okay, Mick, I’m not sure what I planned on doing with any of it anyways.”
Mickey smiled. “I kind of had an idea while I was working. I know this job was more about figuring out the accident, and I’m sorry I can’t do that for you. But as I was pulling the bike apart I started thinking about how good some of this would look on your bike. We could straighten the handlebars, and the pipes on one side were hardly scratched at all…I know it’s a small consolation, but it might help you get past your grief to know a part of the old man was riding with you.”
Levi smiled. He liked that idea. “Yeah, Mick, that sounds great. Thank you.”
Mickey put a hand on his shoulder and said, “No problem, kid. I loved your old man. He will be sorely missed.”
Levi nodded and thanked the mechanic again before leaving the shop. He planned to get on his bike and go back to his apartment, but his phone rang before he made it to the bike. He looked at it and saw that it was Cheney. Cursing, he put the phone to his ear.
“Hey, Cheney, did Grant find you?”
“Yeah, good job. I have another one for you.”
“So I’m guessing my leave is over.”
“I’m sorry, Levi, but you know club business has to come first.”
He tried not to sigh out loud as he asked, “What’s the job?”
“I need you and Grant to take a shift sitting on that house. I don’t want any problems while the cooks are working. No vagrants or nosy neighborhood watch assholes, and most especially no cops. I got a contractor friend of the clubs to get us a permit that says we’re renovating the house. That’ll explain the electricity and water…but you know how the cops in that neighborhood are. The nosy bastards might just show up.”
“And if they do, we do what?”
