Strip Poker

by Nancy Bartholomew

  Raydean chuckled. “Honey, I could choke a horse with the medicine I got here. You want a cocktail or what?”

  “How about coffee and rolls?”

  I could hear the mental calculation going on across the street. “You want him dead or alive? I can put the boy in a coma or straight on to Jesus. Makes no nevermind to me. Gotta take into account an alien metabolism, but I figure I can bring it right close either whichever way you say.”

  “Alive and asleep and nowhere near dead.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, her tone clearly conveying her disappointment. “And I cain’t shoot him?”

  “No, not this time.”

  “Maybe later we can drive him out into the countryside and dump him. You know, see if he can find his way back.”

  “All right, that might work,” I answered. “But do you think you could brew up something?”

  “Already got it on the stove,” she said.

  I hung up and felt a little sorry for Thomas. I even went so far as to fix myself up a little extra and curl my hair as a diversionary tactic. We weren’t in Jersey anymore. We were on my home turf, and losing a bodyguard was one of my specialties.

  By the time Raydean arrived carrying a white carafe and a plate of sweet rolls, I was sitting in the kitchen with Thomas attempting to discuss political philosophy. It wasn’t going well. I was talking and Thomas merely staring, blinking if I said something particularly controversial. I was sandwiching some subliminal suggestions into the conversation every minute or two. Things like: “Gee, it sure is hot in here, isn’t it? The heat always makes me sleepy. You must really be wiped out, what with no sleep for over twenty-four hours.”

  Thomas wasn’t answering me.

  But once Raydean burst through the back door, Thomas was a goner.

  She bustled around like she was my mother, all the while talking about aliens and the destruction of the universe. Thomas, whose face I could now read like a book, watched her and blinked. At one point I caught his eye and whispered, “She’s completely insane. Don’t eat the sweet rolls, they’re terrible. Just drink the coffee and she’ll go away happy. Otherwise …” I let my eyes widen and I shook my head as if we didn’t even want to go there. “She’ll never leave.”

  Thomas blinked and began drinking the coffee she put in front of him. He kept his eyes on her at all times, watching her sudden jerky movements as if he expected her to suddenly pull a weapon and shoot him. The fact that she wore a slick yellow raincoat over her housedress and had Marlena the Shotgun tucked into a specially made holster that stuck out of the thin raincoat lining seemed to only increase his vigilance.

  “Look at this!” she commanded, while pouring more of the thick sludgy liquid into his cup. She set the carafe down in front of him and slowly pulled up the hem of her dress. Strapped to her white, wrinkled thigh was a small silver gun.

  “Cool, huh?” she said. She looked up at Thomas, her bird eyes twinkling with a maniacal gleam. “They sneak up on me and I shoot their little gonads off.”

  Thomas reached for his cup and downed the coffee. Thirty minutes later he was snoring with his head on the table. Raydean smiled and high-fived me.

  “I say we bury him out back when it gets dark,” she said. “Fertilize the property.”

  “He ain’t dead, Raydean.”

  Raydean nodded, grabbed a handful of his hair and pulled his head up, letting it fall back to the table with a loud thud.

  “He would be after we buried him,” she said, smiling.

  Twenty-three

  I pulled into a parking spot right in front of the Oyster Bar at eleven A.M. on the dot. The sun was glinting off the plate-glass window that showcased the interior of the tiny place, so it was impossible to see who or what was waiting for me as I stepped out of my Camaro. The row of chopped Harleys in various states of disrepair let me know I’d hit the right place at the correct time.

  I took my time locking the car, hiding behind my sunglasses as I tried in vain to scope the place. I figured inside they were doing the same thing. I was dressed for success, wearing black spandex capri pants, little spiky slides, and a leopard-skin tank top underneath my own black leather motorcycle jacket. My hair was piled up high, with some curls escaping for effect. My mace was wedged in the back waistband of my pants for easy access, and my sweet little Spyderco knife was deep in my right front jacket pocket.

  Make no mistake about it, I knew the odds of me successfully taking out a small cluster of bikers were about the same as me winning the lottery and receiving a proposal from Prince Charles, but a woman has to make the effort. I figured to take at least three of them down with me if the situation turned ugly.

  I stepped up to the front door, pushed it open and stood just inside, letting my eyes adjust. The place wouldn’t seat more than fifty at best, but I didn’t have to worry about finding my party. They were sitting at a back table, close to the bar, and not one other soul sat at any other table.

  I heard movement behind me and turned just in time to see a guy wearing a white apron and sporting an early-morning case of five-o’clock shadow. He was locking the door behind me and flipping the sign to read CLOSED. His arms looked like sledgehammers, and when he smiled, I could see he was missing a top front tooth.

  The table in the back looked like a display at a tattoo convention, or a before picture for Weight Watchers. Frankie, sporting a new clean-shaven witness-protection-program disguise, looked up at me from his seat against the back wall. He was pinned on either side by two huge men and he did not look happy. In fact, he looked frightened. Great, I thought, another mess.

  I started walking toward them, even before my brain could swing into action and figure out a plan A with a follow-up plan B. The deal is to look unafraid. Never let a big man see you sweat. In fact, never let any man see you sweat. Men are, in essence, like toddlers and dogs; they smell fear and they take advantage of it every time.

  So I’m standing extra tall and I’m scoping them out to see who is likely to be Dimitri, the big man. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out. Dimitri was the one who sat with his back to the wall and his eyes on the exit. He would be the first to spot trouble and the last to be openly attacked. He would be the one with the best shot at drawing a gun and blowing away half the people in his way before slipping out the kitchen exit. In a nutshell, Dimitri was the one who ensured his own safety, while at the same time commanding the attention of anyone walking into the bar.

  He was leaning back in a plain wooden chair, watching me approach. He had one of those blue-black faces, the kind where his beard growth was so thick it made his skin look an inky bluish color. His eyes were black holes and his eyebrows almost met in the middle when he frowned. His chin had an ugly scar right down the center that divided it into a deep cleft. He had more tattoos than the others, and I found myself staring at his left arm. A snake slithered across his upper arm, twisting around the length of his forearm and across the back of his hand. The head sat, with bared fangs, just above the space where his little finger should’ve been. It was missing and I guess the implication was supposed to be that the snake had bitten it off. I shivered and reminded myself not to shake hands.

  Dimitri pushed the sole chair out from the table with his black booted foot.

  “Have a seat,” he said, and his voice sounded like two slabs of concrete scraping against each other.

  “Thank you,” I said, and sat in the chair that would make me most vulnerable. I was across from Dimitri with my back to the exit and with two guys on either side of me who could’ve prevented me from leaving had I wanted to attempt such a foolish move.

  “Thanks for seeing me,” I said, smiling as if he was a friend of mine. Dimitri took it in and stared back at me without expression.

  “You can thank Frankie,” he said. “It was sort of a last request.”

  Frankie attempted a smile and failed. I’d never seen him look so frightened. In fact, I’d never seen him look frightened at all.

&
nbsp; “Last request?” I said, shooting my eyebrow up like I wasn’t sure I’d heard right.

  “Yeah,” Dimitri said, starting to smile softly, like a cat with a big secret. “He’s retiring from our organization. In fact, we’d pretty much written him off as lost to us when he turned up. Now we get to say the real good-bye.”

  I looked around the table and couldn’t read one face. Some of them looked at Frankie, working to make sure they made eye contact. Some of them were watching Dimitri. I couldn’t figure what was going on, but it didn’t look good for Frankie. Why had he gone to the trouble to hook me up if this was going to be the end result?

  “Whatever,” I said. “I guess he gave you the picture?”

  Dimitri nodded, but said nothing.

  “Okay, then. You know that I got no interest in what was going down with you people. All I want is information. I want to know what you saw. I want to know who shot that little pissant, because I know it wasn’t Vincent.”

  Dimitri’s eyebrows thickened. “I don’t give a fuck who did it. It wasn’t us, that’s all you got to know.”

  All right, I’m thinking here that Dimitri is certifiable. What, I’m supposed to believe him because he says so? His guys didn’t kill Denny because they say so? Right.

  “Frankie says you got a member of your team who saw the shooter. Is that right?”

  That’s when the entire table seemed to stiffen and become uncomfortable. Dimitri looked at me, his eyes boring into mine.

  “That would be true,” he said.

  “Okay.” I looked around the table. “Which one of you saw Denny’s killer?”

  Dimitri didn’t even look at them. His eyes remained fixed on me, as if he were absolutely confident that not one of them would speak. And they didn’t.

  “Well, now,” Dimitri said, “that’s unfortunate. You see, Tinky is no longer with our organization.”

  I guess I lost it here. I looked at Dimitri and before I could stop it, my mouth was in gear and my brain had fallen into a shocked stupor.

  “Organization? No longer with your organization? What is this shit? You’re bikers. You don’t have an organization. You have a gang. You rob and murder people. There’s no organization. No 401 (k). No dental plans and vacation days. What is this shit? Now where is Tinky and how can I talk to him?”

  Frankie slowly lowered his head, shading his eyes with his hand and looking as if it were all over now. That’s when the connection hit me and I began to realize where Tinky was, or, at least, where he had been—in Dennis the Whiner’s garage. Nailor had told me his nickname, but I’d temporarily forgotten.

  Dimitri leaned in toward the center of the table and rested his elbows on the slick wooden surface.

  “What I mean by ‘no longer with us’ is this: He is literally no longer with us. Tinky didn’t retire or get fired. He got his ass shot while paying his last respects to a punk-ass wanna-be and gathering some information we thought we needed to have. He can’t talk with you now on account of he’s laid out down in Port St. Joe, awaiting burial.”

  I sighed. “Then why am I here? Why didn’t you just call and tell me this over the phone?”

  Dimitri smiled. “Because now we have a problem.” He leaned back and looked from me to Frankie. “You see, Frankie here fucked up and he knows it. He told you that we robbed your club. Now whether that matters to you or not is no concern of mine. The problem at hand is now you can identify us to the police. That,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “is unfortunate.”

  I leaned back against my chair, stretched my legs out in front of me, and jammed my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket. I felt the canister of mace press against my back and curled my fingers around the knife in my right pocket.

  “I’m sure Frankie came to you thinking he had a professional relationship and that he was helping you out. So this is how you reward his loyalty? You don’t keep the information to yourself, and instead you run to the police. You not only betray me and my people, but you fuck your friend Frankie here.”

  Dimitri stared at me. I looked at the others around the table. My act wasn’t selling, so I worked it harder.

  “Frankie didn’t have to come to any of us with a plan, but he did. I suppose he thought you’d be smart enough to take the chance to throw the heat off your group.” I shrugged. “Oh, well, I guess he was wrong. You see, somebody else could take the entire fall, but youse guys have overlooked your opportunity.”

  Dimitri’s eyebrows twitched slightly. He was listening.

  “You could’ve set up the real killer, made it look like he hired people to fake a robbery, or actually do the robbery. It could’ve been golden. Now you’re right, you do have a problem, but me and Frankie ain’t it.”

  Dimitri started to smile. “Maybe I have another opportunity,” he said. “Maybe you hired the gunmen to rob the place. After all, who better than an insider? Who better to make it look like the boss did the job and you’re just a bystander?”

  Dimitri leaned forward. “Maybe the payoff went wrong. Maybe Frankie didn’t like that his team didn’t get no money and you haven’t paid him off yet. Maybe you and him go out to the landfill and somebody gets shot. Maybe two somebodies get shot, only one body is never recovered.” His smile broadened. “Maybe my opportunities are endless. And maybe you thought all bikers are stupid. Your downfall,” he said, “is stereotyping people.”

  He was looking at the others like there was a prearranged ending to our meeting, giving them the nonverbal cue that our fun was about to turn deadly. I gripped the knife, drew my legs back and prepared to react if they came for me. It was stupid. Me against them.

  “Okay,” Dimitri said, pushing back from the table and starting to stand. “I think I have other places to be and things to do.” He looked down at me. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I would’ve liked to have seen you dance.” He looked at Frankie and his eyes darkened. He didn’t say a word to him. He didn’t have to say anything.

  None of us saw the hit coming. One moment Dimitri was talking and the next his right shoulder was exploding in a burst of red and bone. It happened before the others could go for their guns. It came from nowhere and continued, a spray of bullets peppering the wall above our heads.

  I hit the floor, scooting for security under the table.

  “Don’t move,” a deep voice said. “I can kill every one of you.”

  I froze. Then I heard something that disturbed me far more than anything else.

  “Chief,” Raydean said, “just let me get his other shoulder for you, even it up.” I peaked out from under the table. Raydean and Moose Lavotini stood side by side, only Moose was looking irritated and Raydean was looking smug. Moose had a big black gun trained on the bikers, and while he was frowning, he wasn’t directly looking at Raydean.

  “I thought you were going to stay in the car,” he said. “I thought those were the conditions.”

  Raydean shrugged. “Desperate times call for desperate doin’s,” she answered. “Besides, Marlena here heard the shooting and just couldn’t resist the fun.”

  There was a huge explosion as Raydean fired her gun into the wall above Dimitri’s head. He screamed and slid further down, an angry trail of blood covering the wall behind him.

  I slowly crawled out from under the table. Raydean was shoving Marlena back into the inside pocket of her yellow slicker and breaking into a broad grin at the sight of me standing before her.

  She reached into one pocket and brought out a round box of snuff. She opened the lid, reached inside, and looked up to see me frowning.

  “Raydean! What are you doing? You know that’s bad for you!”

  She smiled and showed me the inside of the little box. “Watermelon bubblegum,” she said. “It’s a turrible habit to break. I got me off the hard stuff, but this bubblegum’ll slam you into the DTs if’n you try and cut it cold turkey.”

  Two men stepped up to join Moose, their guns drawn and trained on the crew of frightened bikers.


  Moose slowly lowered his gun and turned to look at me. “I thought we had an agreement,” he said.

  “You had an agreement,” I corrected. “I was along for the ride, remember? You weren’t offering any terms or options. You were pretty much sliding the contract over and telling me to sign. You left me with a babysitter, remember?”

  I looked at the bikers, all of them aching to kill us.

  “You think I couldn’t have handled this?” I asked. “I could’ve handled this. What do you think this does for my self-esteem, you stepping in here like this? It says you have no confidence in me. I could have to go back into therapy for this kind of shit.”

  Moose was looking at me like I had two heads, and then he laughed.

  “You’re fuckin’ nuts, you know that?” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I looked back at Frankie. “Can I bring my friend?” I asked.

  Moose looked like maybe he didn’t understand, but when Frankie started to stand, he nodded. “The more the merrier.” He looked at Dimitri, now unconscious from pain and blood loss. He made sure he made eye contact with each of the others, and then he spoke.

  “It’s like this,” he said, his voice pleasant and neutral. “My organization is extensive and powerful. I believe all of you can remember a certain, shall we say, transgression that occurred in Fort Lauderdale last year after the Daytona Rally? That was me, my people. Don’t make me repeat that lesson here. There are fewer of you. You don’t have the manpower or the firepower to be more than a blip on our radar screen, so be forewarned. If you make life anything other than exceedingly pleasant for any of my friends”–and here he gestured to the three of us–“I will demolish you.”

  Moose paused for a moment, waiting to see if his words were sinking in. Apparently satisfied, he continued.

  “Think about Fort Lauderdale. Look up the pictures from the local news coverage if you need a refresher, and then think of your own situation. Do you really want that kind of hell unleashed on your club?”