Shadow: A Motorcycle Club Romance (War Reapers MC) Page 4

  The rows of motorcycles gleamed in front of the Nest, all resting on their kickstands at a uniform angle like a platoon of soldiers standing in formation, waiting for orders. Most of them were Harleys, with the occasional Indian thrown in for good measure. American-made bikes were a firm rule, one of the club's original bylaws, with one massive exception—the sleek, predatory 1954 Series D Vincent Black Shadow owned by Bard.

  Over the years, there had been dozens of fights, heists, and chases during which Bard had pushed the machine—as had his father before him, the previous president of the Reapers—and he'd survived every time without a scratch. The Vincent had almost become a sort of religious idol, a token of superstitious good fortune to the rest of the club. Whenever it wasn't running smoothly, the mood in the Nest become strained and morose, with the members discussing the bike in hushed tones like it was a deathly-ill relative until the repairs had been completed.

  A few bikes down from the Vincent was my beloved Lola. She was a fiercely-customized, late-model Harley Softail Panhead, candy-apple red with black highlights. She'd outrun the cops and carried me to safety more times than I could possibly count. I owed her my life, and most of the cash I was able to scrape together from scores went toward keeping her happy.

  As I ran my hand over the bike's handles lovingly, I heard a strange clanging, and realized that someone was ringing a bell nearby. I looked up, and saw a disheveled old man in a threadbare Santa suit standing close to the front door of the Nest, clanging the bell and hoarsely croaking “Merry Christmas.” A battered red bucket with “Donations” scrawled on it in black marker stood between his scuffed black galoshes.

  Shit. It is Christmas. Between chasing away nightmares of dissolving bodies and looking over my shoulder for Giovanni's guys, I completely forgot.

  I walked up to the Nest's main entrance, trying to avoid eye contact with the doddering Santa in the hope that he'd leave me alone. Instead, he laid a withered hand on my arm, blinking at me with cloudy, yellowed eyes. “Spare somethin' for the needy, son?”

  I pulled my arm away from him. “I don't do charity, dude. And I'm not your son.”

  He held up a quivering palm. “I didn't mean no offense, young fella! Only, it's Christmas, y'know? Plenty of folks doin' poorly these days, an' even just a buck or two could help 'em outta the hole they've found themselves in. You look like you've got a good heart, eh?”

  He was suddenly seized with a coughing fit and doubled over, the Santa hat falling off his head to reveal wisps of white hair growing haphazardly from his liver-spotted scalp. He composed himself, wheezing, and continued. “Just a couple quarters, even...koff...could really...hhhhenh...help out someone in need, hnnnnfff...”

  “Get it straight, man,” I replied. “You don't know a goddamn thing about my heart, except that it's got four chambers and it's in my fuckin' chest. No one ever did a thing to help my ass when I was 'in need.' Everything I ever got in life, I got with two hard fists and a harder fucking head, get me? So no, I ain't gonna put any quarters in your bucket. Instead, I'm gonna go inside and put those two fuckin' quarters in the goddamn jukebox, 'cause I worked like a bastard to earn 'em.”

  Santa looked deeply wounded, and for a moment, I was worried that I'd been too hard on him. He was just a harmless old guy trying to make a buck or two, even if he was getting on my nerves. “So that's it, then, young fella? Y'got nothin' else for me, 'cept a bunch of sass?”

  “Nope, I've got some free advice for you—go find somewhere else to ring your bell, fast. The guys inside ain't big on any kind of Christmas bullshit. If they hear you out here, they aren’t gonna be happy about it, and they won’t be afraid to let you know it. You oughta bounce.”

  Santa squinted up at the front of the Nest, scratching his head as he tried (and failed) to read the faded sign above the door. Finally, he gave up, turning back to me. “Jewish folks, then, are they? Some kinda Hanukkah party, is it?”

  I smirked. “Not hardly. War Reapers.”

  Again, Santa squinted, confused. He cupped an arthritic hand over his ear, leaning in closer. “Sorry, sonny, you'll have to speak up...my hearin' ain't what it was, y'know. 'Floor Sweepers,' was it? Some sort of union hall?”

  I bit back a laugh and turned my back to him, jerking a thumb at the patches on the back of my cut and enunciating. “War. Reapers.”

  His eyes bulged. By the time I'd turned back to face him, he was halfway down the street, running with incredible speed for a man his age. I laughed out loud then, my first real laugh since seeing Kong's dead body. When I saw that Santa had left his hat and bucket on the ground, I laughed even harder. Still chuckling, I picked up the hat and bucket and pushed open the door of the Nest.

  The old place was the same as it always had been, except that now it sported a few dozen extra bullet holes in the walls and a couple more blood stains settling sullenly into the wooden floorboards. We'd scrubbed and scrubbed on the night of the firefight, but blood stains are stubborn bastards. Past a certain point, you know that even with all the soap and water in the world, in the end, you're just grinding the horrid stuff deeper and deeper into the cheap wood of the floor.

  There were about two dozen fully-patched members there that night, plus another half-dozen prospects and a handful of girls who ran with the Reapers. The jukebox roared out death metal, and the club members were drinking, dancing, and arm-wrestling. Badly-dubbed kung fu flicks from the '70s were being shown on the small, grainy television above the bar.

  Growler tended bar. He was a huge and rough-hewn monster of a man with so many burns, stitch-scars, and skin grafts from fights and collisions that he looked like he'd staggered out of Frankenstein's lab. He'd originally been called Growler because he enjoyed craft beer, and favored the giant brown growler jugs it often came in. However, the name took on a more sinister meaning a few years later when his vocal cords were slashed during a fight with the Black Bayonets MC. Ever since then, he could only speak in a ragged growl—the voice sandpaper would have if it could talk. He always wore a distinctive piercing in his ear, crafted to resemble a hanging length of barbed wire.

  Bard sat in his usual chair in the corner. He was a mild-looking man in his early forties with horn-rimmed glasses and a receding hairline, reading the newspaper as he placidly sipped a rum and cola. If it weren't for his cut and the Reaper tattoos on his muscular arms, it would be easy to mistake him for a banker or accountant. Many other outlaws had made such a mistake and challenged him, seeing him as easy prey, but few of them had lived long enough to regret it.

  The first time I ever saw Bard in action, I'd been fully-patched for less than a week. He was making a pick-up from three roughneck brothers—the Graws—who ran a marijuana farm out on the back roads of Indiana, and I'd been brought along, presumably as his back-up. It was our first time dealing with them.

  Once we rolled up, the brothers sized up the bespectacled man on his pristine vintage bike and the fresh-faced kid at his side, and decided we were begging to be fucked with. They spit tobacco on our boots. They made NAMBLA jokes and guffawed. They demanded almost twice what they'd previously asked for, and presented us with loose bags of brown, seedy, stem-filled ditch weed instead of what they'd promised.

  When Bard politely pointed this out and asked them to honor their original agreement, they brandished baseball bats and hammers and demanded that we hand over all the money we'd brought and get the hell out of their sight.

  Before I could even think of stepping in to protect Bard, two of the Graws were on the ground with splintered wrists and shattered kneecaps, and Bard was already pummeling the third brother's jaw into gravel, all with his bare hands. In that moment, I realized that I wasn't there to protect Bard. He was there to protect me, and to show me how the Reapers handled their business.

  Most of all, that day, Bard taught me the most important lesson I ever learned. Looking tough, acting tough, dressing tough—none of that mattered. All that mattered was being tough. The rest would take care of itself.

  I've been willing to follow him through the gates of Hell ever since.

  Growler looked up, saw the Santa hat I was carrying, and pointed an angry finger like a gun. “Hey! Hey! Get that dumb-lookin' fuckin' thing outta here, right the fuck now!”

  I made a show of examining the hat thoughtfully, as though I couldn't understand his rage. “But gee, Growler! Surely, people have said that about you lots of times, and you're still here!”

  Several of the other club members laughed, long since familiar with this routine. Growler and I gave each other shit all the time, but we both knew it was all in fun. I'd call him a moron and a caveman, and he'd call me a kid and a wiseass.

  Sure enough, Growler rolled his eyes. “Listen, baby-face...I know you're, like, two years old or whatever, an' you still believe in Santa Claus an' all that. You prob'ly even put milk an' cookies out for him last night. Fine. I'm fuckin' happy for you. But in here, we got laws, even if you ain't old enough to read 'em yet. An' those laws say no fuckin' Christmas crap in the Nest. Not now, not ever!”

  Bard chuckled dryly in the corner. “Inter arma enim silent leges, Growler,” he intoned quietly.

  “What, is that supposed to be fuckin' English?” Growler demanded. “Am I, havin' a fuckin' stroke over here, or what?”

  Bard cleared his throat, lowering his newspaper. “Latin. Cicero. 'In times of war, the law falls silent.'”

  “Oh. Yeah. War. Right. Fuck,” Growler grunted.

  “Eloquent as always,” Bard said, smiling. “It's been a rough week for all of us, Growler. The kid wants the hat, let him keep the hat. He's not hurting anyone.”

  Growler grumbled something under his breath about hurting someone.

  “Thanks, Bard,” I said, tossing the bucket over to him. “Here, got some gold an' frankincense in there for ya. Play your cards right, maybe you'll get a little myrrh, too.”

  “Hey, yer mother gave me a little myrrh last night!” Growler snickered.

  “What a coincidence—your mother gave me a lot of herpes last night,” I answered smartly, causing the other Reapers to laugh. Growler waved a hand at me in mock disgust and returned to polishing the cloudy shot glasses with a grimy rag.

  Bard shook the bucket next to his ear good-naturedly, hearing the meager handful of coins rattle inside. “Ahh, I can already picture the yacht this will buy, to say nothing of the mansion in Barbados. Truly, your largesse knows no bounds.”

  “Hey, you wanna stick your nose up at free money, that's fine by me. Let me just yank a couple of quarters out of it, so I can put on some of those Abba songs Growler likes so much.”

  “Eat me, fuck-rat,” Growler spat at me, provoking more laughter from the other guys.

  I considered another snappy answer, then pocketed it. The banter felt forced tonight. Nothing felt funny after what had happened to Kong. It was odd, in a way. Kong had been gone for three years, so it wasn't like we were used to seeing him around. But then again, there was a big difference between knowing one of our own was doing a temporary stretch upstate and knowing he'd never come back again. Before he'd gotten busted, we'd shared a lot of good times together. I'd even stood up as best man at his second wedding. Now, I couldn't think of him without being haunted by images of hacksawed limbs, plastic tubs, and acid. It sucked, it wasn't fair, and it hurt like hell.

  I looked at the Santa hat, considered trying it on for a laugh, but decided to toss it into the trash with the crumpled napkins and empty bottles instead. Growler's right. Fuck Christmas. I'm not in the mood. None of us are.

  “Any word on the Bonaccorsos?” I asked, settling onto a bar stool as Growler poured me a shot of whiskey. I drank it down immediately, and Growler gamely poured another. “They fuck with anyone else yet, or am I the only lucky one?”

  Bard raised his eyebrows and tossed the newspaper aside, joining me at the bar. “No, no one else has had any problems. What happened with you?”

  “Vole came by my place, tried to scare me. Nothin' I couldn't handle, but still.”

  “Well, that's...problematic, certainly,” Bard sighed. “Since we hadn't heard a peep out of them in the past couple of days, I was starting to hope they'd let this go, or at least give it a rest for the holidays. I mean, what with them being Catholics and all, I honestly didn't think that was too unrealistic an assumption. Wishful thinking, I suppose.”

  I swallowed my second shot of whiskey, and gestured for Growler to pour me another. “Ever hear of the Ten Commandments?”

  Bard nodded indulgently. “I seem to recall hearing something about them in passing, yes.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, in the past year, Giovanni's stolen about twelve million dollars' worth of shit, he's lied on the witness stand in two different trials, he's fucked around on his wife with three different girlfriends, and he killed his own father by putting a bomb in his car. On a Sunday.

  Oh, and last time I saw him, I'm, like, 99% sure I heard him take the Lord's name in vain, but he was speaking Italian, so I'm not as sure about that one. Still, that's nine of the Commandments right there, and for all I know, the fat fucking bastard has a golden calf stashed in his closet somewhere. So I wouldn't go betting the farm on Big G's Catholicism.”

  Bard nodded, conceding my point. “So, how did you leave it with Vole, then?”

  “On terms he'd understand. I pointed out that this whole goddamn thing had been a misunderstanding—and a stupid one, at that—and told him that if Giovanni doesn't start anything, there won't be anything.”

  “Do you think it worked? Will they leave us alone?”

  I shrugged, exhaled, and shook my head. “Probably not. Even if Vole delivers the message properly, which I doubt he will, Giovanni still can't afford to look weak in front of his soldiers after two of them croaked. That'll have the rest of them wondering how cheaply he values their lives, too, and he can't let that happen.”

  Bard eyed me with an almost paternal approval. “I've never asked, Nic. Do you play chess?”

  I snorted derisively. “Nah. I wouldn't be any good at it. I'm not smart like that.”

  “You'd be better at it than you think, I'll bet,” he replied evenly. “So, where does that leave us, then?”

  I thought it over for a long moment. “Well, staying here probably isn't too smart, right? They know where we are. They can send six carloads of guys with machine guns and wipe out anyone inside, or just bomb it straight to hell.”

  “But they won't, because Giovanni would never give that order.”

  I barked out a harsh laugh. “Oh? Why is that? Are you banking on his Catholicism again? Did the Vatican issue an edict this week about not blowing up bars full of bikers?”

  Bard smiled. “Well, that would be awfully nice of them, not to mention oddly specific, but no. Think about it, Nic. The Nest is the one place he knows we'll be, most of the time. He shoots it up, he blows it up, and sure, he's liable to take out at least a third of us at any given time. The problem is, he knows that after that, the rest of us will scatter, go to ground, and he doesn't know where. It's not like most of us have family members we're close to, or any real connections he could use to trace us. Giovanni knows there'd be nothing left for him to do but wait for our next move without knowing where it'll come from or what it'll look like, and hope it won't be too bloody. He's too smart for that, and too big on neatness and preparation to be comfortable with it.”

  Before he could continue, a Reaper named Sperm—a shaggy, hippie-looking kid in his early twenties, who wore a beaded headband and a wisp of a mustache—stumbled in, clearly shitfaced. He was wearing a green elf hat with pointy plastic ears attached, and had pointy-toed elf shoes stretched over his boots.

  “I wanna be a dentist!” he shrieked triumphantly, and then puked on the floor.

  “Fucking hell. Am I the only who gives a goddamn about the rules anymore?” Growler roared. He gestured to two prospects. “You an' you! Take that maggot out the door, before I chuck 'im out the window!”

  The prospects stepped around Sperm, lifting him by his arms and carrying him out as he slurred, “Show me your teeth!”

  Bard grimaced at the interruption, took another sip of his rum and cola, and continued. “And consider this, too—most of Giovanni's business involves maintaining his relationships with cops, judges, and the State's Attorney, to name a few. Maybe they can sweep a few quiet murders under the rug, but a whole building getting shot apart or blown up, even in Rogers Park, will attract too much attention. It'll look sloppy, it'll get headlines, it'll be one more glaring example of 'crime run amok in the Windy City,' and it'll make sure all of his political connections run for the hills. No, Giovanni will keep the Nest right where it is, so he can keep an eye on us when he needs to. And when he does strike, it'll be precise. Surgical.”