had way too much shit weighing on my conscience already to just kill a brother and walk away.
“You know me, Tank. I wouldn’t steal from the club. Mad Dog’s the one who’s taking from the club. I’ve got evidence. He’s pinning it on me.”
Tank laughed. “Sure, the club President is the one who’s stealing, when you’re the one who was in the lock-up for it.” Crunch was the one with the numbers experience; the one who had access to all the money; and the one who’d been in the federal pen way back when for computer hacking and embezzlement. The guy was a fucking genius when it came to computers. It was a no brainer for the club to make the decision that Crunch was a traitor, when Mad Dog brought this shit to us.
“Fuck you guys. I did not do this. That motherfucker is setting me up,” Crunch protested, shaking his head, resigned to his fate. “You can kill me if you want, but you’re going to find out I’m right. I’m the one who found out Mad Dog’s been stealing from the club, from Benicio.”
"Can you see Mad Dog as some kind of money genius?"
Tank had a point. On the face of it, Mad Dog wasn't exactly a brain surgeon. He had business sense, sure, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten by as Club President for this long. But he wasn't the brightest.
Would he steal from the club? Yeah, I could see that. He was reckless, greedy, narcissistic. But steal from Benicio? He couldn't be that stupid. Mad Dog had done some underhanded things. Hell, I was his fucking right hand man - I'd done some fucking underhanded things. And he'd just tried to get the club to buy off on a plan to get us out from under Benicio. To get us aligned with a fucking Mexican cartel. Crazy Mexican motherfuckers. The club didn't buy off on it, but the vote was close.
In fact, I was the deciding vote.
No hard feelings, Mad Dog had said. I would be stupid to believe that. Coming out here to kill Crunch was a test of loyalty, I knew that much. I just wasn't sure how loyal I was to Mad Dog anymore.
I didn't understand the drive to get into bed with the Mexicans. Money wasn't bad for us right now, and at least Benicio wasn't insane.
Our Panamanian employer wasn't exactly someone you wanted to try to steal from, though. Just like his brother Guillermo, whom we'd provided protection for before, Benicio had a reputation for being ruthless if you crossed him.
Of course, Crunch didn't strike me as being particularly reckless.
Not like Mad Dog.
“You believe this shithead?” Tank asked, turning toward me. I kept my eyes on Crunch, although Tank was making me nervous. He was a hothead and I didn’t need to get shot.
“Quit waving that thing around,” I said.
“The evidence,” Crunch said. “It’s all online. I've got everything, the paper trail that shows it’s Mad Dog who’s been stealing from the club. April knows. He’ll kill her and MacKenzie. I was going to bring it to the club. I was just waiting until I had everything. I confronted him about it.”
"April and Mac will be fine," I said.
I shouldn't be making promises I couldn't keep, I thought. If Crunch had stolen from the club, April was about to be in a world of hurt. It wasn't going to be fine, not for her or MacKenzie.
If Crunch had stolen from the club.
Was I sure? Sure enough to take him out?
I knew Crunch. At least, I thought I did.
“Look,” Crunch said. “The bank statement- there's a copy in my pocket. Take it out. You’ll see I’m telling the truth. I’ve kept it on me since I confronted Mad Dog.”
“You believe this shit? This is pissing me off. I should shoot you right now,” Tank said. “I can’t fucking believe I vouched for you to get you into the club.”
“Get it out of his pocket,” I said, then when Tank just stared at me stupidly, “Do it. I’m not going to fucking shoot him if he’s telling the truth." I was loyal to a fault, but Mad Dog had more and more faults lately.
Tank reached in Crunch’s pocket, still talking. “Why the fuck would Mad Dog want to get out from under Benicio and set us up with the Mexicans if he’s taking money from Benicio? It makes no fucking sense.” He pulled out the paper and handed it to me.
I looked at the numbers, feeling tightness in my chest as I tried to make sense of it. “Jesus Christ. Over eight hundred grand.”
“What?” Tank asked. “Let me see that. Fucking A. Where did Mad Dog get that kind of cash?”
"Where'd you get the statement?" I asked.
Crunch looked at me like I was an idiot. "I'm a hacker," he said. "I can get anything. It’s not me. It’s Mad Dog. He’s the one stealing from the club. All the evidence - I've got it. I just need internet access and I can show you.”
“Shit, man,” Tank said. “You feel right about this? Taking him out this way?”
“I -” I didn’t have time to answer, as the rumbling of motorcycles outside interrupted us. “What the hell is that?"
Then everything went crazy. Automatic gunfire erupted from somewhere out front, and I saw Tank go down, right before a flash-bang grenade came rolling inside.
“Jesus, get down!” I yelled, taking cover behind a large metal canister that began spewing out a fog of something when it took a hit. I couldn’t see shit through the haze, but I felt Crunch beside me. “Tank!” I screamed.
No response. I could barely make out his figure, lying motionless on the ground. I handed Crunch my second piece, as if our handguns were going to be any match against automatic weapons. There was another burst of gunfire, and then the unmistakable "whoompf" sound of a barrel of something igniting.
Crunch followed close to me as we ran for the nearest cover, a vehicle service pit in the floor. Tank’s body lay a few feet away, and I stopped, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. I bent down to drag him with us, but then I saw an explosion from the corner of my eye.
I left him behind.
All around us, the building crackled and burned, loud even over the din of the fire alarm.
“Fuck, man, we’re going to die in here,” Crunch said.
“Shut up. Get your bandanna around your face. The smoke is going to get you before anything else. We need to get to the back exit.”
“You mean, where whoever’s out there is waiting for us?”
“Better than being burned alive in here. But we need to go now.”
Then we climbed out of the pit and ran, chaos reigning down around us. Just like it had when I was in Ramadi. The adrenaline took over.
There was no way I’d survived Iraq just to die in a shithole warehouse.
When by some miracle we got out of the building, I yanked the handkerchief away from my mouth, sucking in deep breaths of air and choking on the smoke, my lungs aching. Crunch was doubled over, coughing. There was no sign of anyone back here, so whoever had been shooting at us sure weren’t professionals, or anyone with military experience. They fired on us, set the place ablaze, but didn’t bother to cover the back exit?
So they were novices or sloppy.
“Shit, man,” Crunch said, coughing. “We need to get out of here before the cops and the fire department show up.”
I nodded. We followed close to the side of the building, Crunch behind me, weapons drawn. I could feel the heat from the interior as the place burned, and silently prayed the whole place wouldn’t blow until after we got out of there. When I reached the front, I stood motionless, watching three guys ride off on bikes.
Three guys wearing Inferno Motorcycle Club patches.
“I fucking told you,” Crunch said.
I didn’t say anything until we were in the parking lot, away from the building. Then I screamed incoherently, the anger I felt toward the club coloring everything. “Fucking motherfucker shit!”
“We need to get out of here now,” Crunch said.
A few miles away, we stopped to call Crunch’s wife. I’d never seen Crunch so terrified as he was when he made the call to tell his wife to get out of town. I stood there while he gave her instructions, my mind turning over what had happened.
“Shit’s gone down,” he said. “Get the paperwork and your weapon from the safe, just like we planned. The bags are in the car, right? Good girl.” He paused. “Don’t take anything else. Leave the note on the kitchen counter. I’m staying with you until you’re on the road. Get out of town and call me. We’ll give you a place to meet us.” He hung out on the phone with her for a few minutes, then turned to me, exhaling loudly.
“She and MacKenzie are on their way.”
“They’re going to know something’s up when she and Mac are gone, Crunch,” I said. I was trying to work out what we were going to do next, but I was flying by the seat of my pants here.
Crunch shook his head. “She'll leave a note for me, saying she finally left me, that she went back to her mother's in Puerto Rico. Her mother will cover for her, and there’s no way the club is going there to verify it.”
“You thought this through,” I said. At least he had some semblance of a plan.
“I confronted Mad Dog about the discrepancies in the accounts a couple months ago. It was stupid, obviously. I know that now. But I was doing the books, and it was just a discrepancy- that's all it was. No big deal. I thought Benicio was ripping us off, at first. Mad Dog brushed it off, said he'd take care of it with Benicio. But then the vote with the cartel thing came up. My curiosity got the better of me."
"And you started poking around online," I said.
"Yeah," Crunch said. "The past couple weeks. I was getting together enough evidence. Figured to accuse the club President of something like that, it would have to be ironclad. I wanted to make sure it was."
"He accused you," I said. "Brought it to the officers for vote. Sent me here to make sure me and Tank took you out."
"I thought I was pretty safe after I let it go and backed off," Crunch said. "I made a plan with April, but still. I didn't really expect this, not now."
"All three of us were supposed to be finished off," I realized.
"We all dissented on the cartel thing," Crunch said.
Shit. I knew it was a big deal when I didn't vote with him on the cartel alliance, but pissed off enough to fucking kill me? Kill all three of us? It was crazy, even for Mad Dog. "Blaze didn't vote for it either."
"Yeah, but he's off traveling with the Old Lady," Crunch said.
Blaze was the Vice President of the MC, and had no qualms about disagreeing with Mad Dog, on the cartel deal or on anything else.
"Do we even know where they are?” I asked.
Blaze and I weren't exactly on speaking terms when he left. In fact, the last time I saw him had been at the club vote, when I'd voted against Mad Dog. Blaze had tried to talk to me, but I wasn't in the mood for talking, not at that point. Not after an all night bender. I'd known Mad Dog was going to bring it up for vote, and I'd gone all out. I was still shithoused at the vote. Blaze had followed me home. The last time I saw him was as he sped away as I threw a bottle at his bike, glass shattering on the ground.
I felt a flush of shame just thinking about it, about how our friendship had spiraled. About how I had spiraled down. Fuck him, though - he was the one who had been so detached from the club the past year. If he'd have been more involved, none of this shit would be going down. Tank would still be alive.
Tank was dead because of Blaze's lack of involvement. So screw guilt. Blaze was the one who should feel guilty.
"Blaze and Dani made a big deal about keeping it a secret," Crunch said. That was a good thing. Otherwise, they would probably be dead.
I stood there, while Crunch dialed Blaze. "His phone is off. I'll keep trying the cell. And I'll track down where they are. If they haven't taken any precautions to lie low, it shouldn't take me that long."
"What we need to do is hole up somewhere and wait for April and Mac."
Inferno Motorcycle Club
Los Angeles, California
“Shut the door behind you,” Mad Dog said. The three men stood just inside the back room, Mad Dog’s office area. Office was a loose term for what it was. It was a small room in the back of the clubhouse, a converted empty warehouse in an area of town that consisted of industrial buildings with dubious reputations.
“It went good, Boss,” Mud said. Mud was an imposing man, a solid block of muscle, his bald head covered in tattoos.
“Everything went down as planned, then.”
“Yeah, Prez,” Mud said. “You don’t have to worry about anything. Like we said on the phone, it was done. Burned that bitch to the ground.”
“Did you actually see the three of them go down?” Mad Dog asked.
“No,” Tink said, looking at Mud then back at Mad Dog. “We had to get the hell out of there before the fire department showed up. But you don’t have to worry about it, Boss. We sprayed the place with gunfire before the whole thing went up in flames. There was no movement, nothing. No way anyone walked out of there.”
Mad Dog grunted. “You better be fucking certain about that.”
“A hundred percent sure, boss,” Tink said. He shifted his wiry frame uncomfortably under Mad Dog’s intent gaze. Tink had the twitchiness of someone who was indulging in too much meth, but Mad Dog ignored it.
“That’s for fucking sure,” Mad Dog said. “All right. We’re going to need some new non-dissenting voters on the cartel deal. I know I don’t have to make sure you keep this shit under wraps. We don’t need any bad blood in the club, not when another re-vote will have to go down.”
“You got it, Boss,” said Fats. Standing up and adjusting his girth, he added, “We’re backing you a hundred percent.”
“That’s good to hear,” Mad Dog said. "We're done. Mud, hang back for a minute."
He waited until the others were gone before he spoke. "You've got my back, Mud," he said. "I'll see you put up for sergeant-at-arms.”
“That going to go over all right?” Mud asked. “I haven't been patched in as long as some of the other brothers.”
“They’ll have to fucking deal with it,” Mad Dog said. “I need someone I can trust. Someone who’s proved himself to me. The other brothers havent fucking proved shit to me. I need loyalty.”
"And fucking get Tink under control," he said. "If he isn't fucking tweaking right now, he's coming down off something. Get him clean or we take him out. He needs to be reliable."
“Roger, Boss,” Mud said. "We'll clean him up."
“There’s about to be some good changes happening here. Once we get out from under Benicio and get ourselves attached to the cartel, I’ve got a sweet side deal with them that you’re a part of now. There’s going to be plenty of money for us, more than we’re getting now.”
“You going to have a problem with the Veep, Boss?” Mud asked.
“Don’t worry about Blaze,” Mad Dog said. “He’s away right now, and I’ve got an idea for how to deal with him. He’ll be out of the picture soon enough.”
“Fuckin’ A, Prez,” Mud said.
“Fuckin’ A, right,” Mad Dog said. “This is going to be a new era for the MC.”
June
I sat on the front porch, shifting uncomfortably in the chair I'd pulled outside from the kitchen table, and made a mental note to get rocking chairs out here on the porch. I'd check in town tomorrow. I was on a loose timeline for starting the bed and breakfast, which really meant that when I decided I was done with my time off and finished with the repairs on the house, I'd hang out a shingle.
I needed time off anyhow. Going straight from the Navy into a civilian position in Chicago hadn't exactly left me any time to decompress. But it couldn't be helped; the offer was too good to pass up. The pay was insane, and it was a prestigious hospital. One of my former Navy supervisors, now a surgeon at the hospital in Chicago, had hand-picked me for the job - and would be my boss. We'd always gotten along well, so I figured having him in my corner would make the transition to civilian life a breeze.
Turns out, we'd gotten along too well.
Never get romantically involved with your boss.
It
was a good life lesson.
It made things uncomfortable, when I ended it. But that's not why I left Chicago. And it didn't explain why I'd had the panic attacks there, a few months in. The job had started out great, what my therapist had referred to as a “honeymoon period". Then everything started spiraling out of control.