Authors: Carmella Jones
Chapter 17: Razor
I was just about to let Kelly in on my own little secret. Okay, actually, it was a big secret, but whatever the case, when my phone rang, it put that on hold. It was Pepper and he was standing on my doorstep.
“I thought I’d call first,” he laughed.
“Hell, you just as well could have pushed the doorbell at this point,” I countered.
The doorbell rang. “It’s Pepper,” I told Kelly.
“I really need to talk to you alone,” Pepper said through the phone. “Not something she needs to hear.”
“Alright, go around back to the woodshop. I’ll meet you there as soon as I throw on some shorts.”
“Bad time?” he joked.
“Fuck you.” I disconnected the call and turned to Kelly. “Pepper needs to talk to me in private. You can grab a shower if you like, and then we can go get a bite when we get done. It shouldn’t be long. Pepper isn’t known for being verbose.”
“Did you just use the word ‘verbose’?” Kelly laughed.
“Hey, just cause I’m a Navy grunt and a biker doesn’t mean I’m an idiot.” I went to my dresser and pulled out a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” she called out and then ran toward me. The lip lock and the tongue action sent a quiver down my spine. She knew exactly how to do that.
“Jesus, Kel,” I said, pulling away. “You keep doing that and I won’t ever make it out to the woodshop.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“Yes.” I pushed her away and escaped before I got delayed any longer.
Pepper was waiting out in the woodshop when I got there. It wasn’t the first time we’d had a conversation out there. In fact, if the truth were known, I had a tendency to have more important conversations out there than I did anywhere else, especially when it came to SB business.
“I take it that you were otherwise occupied when I called?” he grinned.
“Smartass. What you got?”
“Some pretty serious shit has just gone down with the KOTR.”
“How serious?”
“Serious as in ‘they are nearly completely wiped the fuck out’ serious.”
“Whew.” I blew out a long breath and then considered what he said for several seconds. “So, what the hell happened?”
“What little bit I’ve been able to gather from the rumor mill, they tried to hit a LD distribution point.”
I’d been hearing about what sounded like a war taking place in the grey area, mostly in the KOTR sector of it. The Silent Brotherhood had kept their ears open and stepped up their vigilance a little bit, because it sounded like somebody was making a move, but there hadn’t been anyone straying into our territory, or any of the territories of our allied clubs. There was always a little bit of spillover, so the absence of it spoke volumes in and of itself. Someone was being very careful about not drawing us in. “Takeover gone bad?”
“That or the KOTR walked into a trap.”
“That your take?”
“I don’t really have a take yet.”
“So, what’s Boss say?” Boss is what we called Jeremy Brannegen, who was listed on our club role as the president and the guy who called the shots.
“He said that it doesn’t involve us at this point, so we need to just sit back and watch what happens. That’s what he told Shovelhead when he reported that the KOTR was asking us to come in on their side in the little war that’s been going on down there too. Shovelhead played it off as no big deal, which had me wondering.”
“You think that Shovelhead is playing both sides?”
“If he is, then there isn’t anyone left in the KOTR to play with.”
“So?” I could have speculated where Pepper was going with his thoughts, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“Since he knew about Kelly being with Sabre before, it makes me wonder.”
“She checks out, Pepper.” It irritated me a little bit that Pepper was suggesting that she might not be playing on the level.
“I didn’t say she didn’t. Of all of the people involved in this little fucked up world of ours, I am the least concerned about Kelly, but we’ve got to sit up and pay attention to what Shovelhead’s doing.”
“Yeah. We should have already been doing that.”
A long pause passed as each of us considered our own separate thoughts. I was pretty sure that if the Lost Disciples had stretched their boundaries a little too much and actually lured the KOTR into a trap, like Pepper had suggested, then I would have an op pretty soon. Though I never knew the reason for hitting whoever I was ordered to hit, I’d picked up some patterns. Maybe I was getting to a point where I was beginning to think about it too much. When I’d first started, I’d purposely kept myself in the dark and never tried to speculate.
“I suppose I ought to let you get back to Kelly,” he grinned. He started to leave the shop.
“Pepper, wait a sec,” I said. I had kept my secret for a very long time and I was at the point of trying to decide if I wanted to keep doing what I was doing. In some ways I did, and in others I didn’t. What I really wanted was someone who I could trust to bounce my thoughts off of. “I…” I couldn’t make the words come out.
“You’re thinking about getting out?” he interrupted. “Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know things that I hadn’t ought to know.”
“What do you know?”
“Nothing. I’m serious about that.”
“How do you know that I’m thinking about getting out?”
“Because if I had somebody like Kelly, I’d be thinking about it. Listen, I’m not going to speculate about what you’re into, but if I was you, I’d figure out a way to put an end to one or the other. You either get rid of her or you get out. You can’t drag her into your dark world. So, as my old man used to say, ‘shit or get off the pot,’ but don’t string her along while she carry on with your secret life. Capiche?”
I nodded.
“I threw that little bit of Italian in there just for you,” he laughed. “Now, get your ass back in there. I’m going home.” He nodded toward the house, opened the door and left me standing alone with my thoughts.
He was right, of course. Leading Kelly along while keeping my secret wasn’t right. I needed to make a choice. I just wasn’t sure if I was ready to make one yet. Before Pepper had interrupted me, I had planned on telling her, sort of a heat of the moment thing, but I was glad that I hadn’t. I needed more time to know if I was going one way or the other.
I was trying to come up with a different thing that I needed to tell her as I headed back into the house. I knew that she’d ask me and I’d have to come up with something good. I still didn’t have anything plausible when I opened the door and stepped into the den. I went straight to the kitchen to grab a couple of beers, noticing that she had already scooped up the clothing that we’d scattered in the front hall. No doubt, she had anticipated the possibility that Pepper might come in the house after our talk.
When I arrived in the kitchen, I saw a note stuck to my refrigerator door with a magnet, something I never did. I glanced at it with a mixture of regret and relief.
Had to head out. I got class early tomorrow. Call me, K.
Well, that took care of having to come up with a plausible answer.
Chapter 18: Razor
When I called to do my check-in the following morning, the voice on the phone said “seven,” before disconnecting. So, instead of stewing over the strange crap that had been stirring in my head all night while working on a piece out in the woodshop, I snatched up the keys to the Road King and headed out the door.
Drop seven was at a drive-through restaurant that had been closed and falling into disrepair for quite some time. I’d never known it to be open, and it looked like it had been a long time since it had been. I drove through the drive through, reached under the serving shelf that stuck out from the window, pulled away an envelope and rode on through. Like always, I stuffed the envelope into my leather jacket and went straight home.
The moment that I saw the op order, I knew that my speculations were right. The LD had gotten a little too big for their britches and the Godfather had another message to send. Hitting Julian “Gonzo” Gonzalez at Sabre’s house was going to be impossible. The first time, I had lucked out and hit right after a party, but the odds of the pulling that off again were well under one percent. I was good at what I did because I wasn’t stupid and didn’t take unnecessary risks. Watching him without being seen was going to be a challenge as well.
The intel that I had on Gonzo was that he was Sabre’s primary lieutenant. My guess was that he was the one who orchestrated the takeover of the KOTR. He was getting punished for his role and Sabre was being sent a final message. The Lost Disciples were on shaky ground.
Watching Gonzo while wearing the colors of the Silent Brotherhood and riding a hog was definitely out. After some deliberation, I came up with the persona that fit perfectly. With all of the crap that had been going down around the Lost Disciples, it seemed extremely likely to me that, if the FBI and/or DEA hadn’t become interested, they ought to have. For the time being, I was going to be one of those agents.
Getting the proper ID, just in case someone decided to ask questions, wasn’t that difficult. I knew the right guy to provide me with that. I considered the dark sedan, but decided that even an FBI agent would ditch that to do a discreet stakeout on a subject of interest. I also skipped the dark suit and dark glasses that would have been an instant tip off. I found an old Chevy Scottsdale pickup left over from the 1980s, put on jeans, a western shirt, boots, a ball cap with DeKalb Seed on it and opted for the amber-colored shooter glasses. It beat the hell out of my last disguise.
I was glad that I’d gone through the effort of the getting the ID, because during one stretch of surveillance, I was approached by a police officer who had been doing his due diligence. Once he had a look at my credentials and even called in the badge number to make sure that I was legit, he and every other officer who happened by would leave me alone. No doubt, however, they were curious as to who I was interested in. Cops are just like that. Even though I checked out, I still didn’t want to be seen too often, so I varied my times and the duration of my surveillance.
Gonzo’s movements were erratic at best, but even he had something of a habit. During a week of watching him, I was able to note that he always came home before dawn and slept until midday. In fact, I was pretty certain that he would be sacked out between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. Getting in, however, was going to be something of a challenge. He had a Rottweiler. The Rotty, who I decided to call “Jake,” wasn’t part of the contract and I hated taking out a dog for the shit that his owner did. There was little leeway when using a tranquilizing dose on a dog, so I hoped that I got his weight right, and that my left arm was accurate.
At about 4:00 a.m., I got to test both. I’d seen Gonzo come home a few minutes before and knew that he would be settled in and passed out soon, so I drove the Scottsdale down the alley behind Gonzo’s house, tossing a nice, juicy steak with a little treat inside toward the porch beside the back door. Then I continued down the alley and around the corner. I parked the Scottsdale several blocks away in the parking lot of a small grocery store and then walked back, turned into the alley and went to the back gate. I was about to find out if the steak had done its trick.
As I pushed the gate open, I waited for almost a minute. If Jake was still awake, he would certainly catch wind of me and come charging my way. He never came, so I walked quickly across the backyard toward the door. Jake hadn’t come because he was sacked out in his doghouse beside the back door. Crouching, I pulled out a lock-picking set. “Locks,” my old man used to say, “only keep out an honest man.” “…but not a SEAL,” I liked to add. I was opening the back door within a few seconds.
Once inside, I moved as I did in all of my ops. I studied my path, moved forward, studied it again and moved forward. The paths in Gonzo’s house were a little bit more challenging to follow because of the clutter, but I navigated my way through the kitchen, living room, down the hall and into the bedroom, where I could hear the sound of his heavy breathing.
I struck the same way that I always had, leaving Julio “Gonzo” Gonzalez lying in a growing pool of his own blood and with an ace of spades on his chest. I walked out the front door, down the street and continued walking, not bothering to return to the pickup in the grocery store parking lot. Instead, I continued walking until I was on the other side of the interstate and came to the garage of a SB brother, who we called Screwdriver. Screwdriver did a lot of the customizing work for the Silent Brotherhood and had agreed to install a new taillight bar on my bike in exchange for a jewelry box for his wife’s birthday.
At 6:30 a.m., I was drinking coffee in a small bakery across the street from Screwdriver’s shop, and waiting for him to come open the shop. I really wanted to be in the shower, but Screwdriver had the keys to my bike and had it locked up inside his garage. He showed up at 7:00 a.m. and I was finally on my way home.
After my cleansing ritual, I sat down in the den, turned on the TV and tried to get interested in Good Morning America. I’d never really been able to become a regular viewer of the show, but it was an attempt to try to put my mind on something other than what had been bothering me for several weeks.
When I’d been brought in as an assassin for the Godfather’s enforcer, I’d been given a code word for throwing in the towel. Those who did the sort of work that I did could only do it for a certain period of time. It was just human nature. There were only two ways out of it. If you screwed up on an op, someone would be along to take you out, so there wasn’t really any sense in worrying over that. If you chose to get out, you did so with the understanding that if you ever talked, you would be the next op for some other guy. To get out, all you had to do was say the word “uncle” at your regular check in call.
As the time for the call rolled around, I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I dialed the number, pressed send and waited.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I responded and disconnected the call.