Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC Book 5) (4 page)

Sax asked, “Have you seen any Chinamen coming and going at The Drawing Board?”

“None, and none at any business meetings. I’m not saying we should go in with all guns blazing accusing Leo of human trafficking. I just know it’s something Panhead never would’ve stood for. Birdseye is all right. I only know him from runs around the Painted Desert, the Two Guns run, the Four Corners run, fish fries. You know the Tucson clubhouse was blown up by those fucking ricemen, so Birdseye transferred up here. Several other people went to the P and E chapter, to the Citadel. We got their Prospect, Sock Monkey.”

Sax nodded knowingly. He still talked quite often to a couple of guys, to Woodstock, to Funkhauser. They were all brothers from the short pants days. “I think it’s pretty damned fishy what happened to Panhead. You say it was a bum beef?”

Harte held up a forefinger at the bartender to indicate that he wanted another. This was odd as hell. True, Sax hadn’t seen him often since he’d gone nomad. But Harte had never had more than one, maybe two beers. “It was completely strange, Sax. It came out of left field. Panhead was just moving some iron from one location to the next. Nothing unusual at all. It was obvious it was a major sting. Sock Monkey was the only one there, riding point on his scoot while Panhead drove the chase vehicle. Sock Monkey blazed through the barricades, so they only got Panhead. Sock Monkey’s the only way we even know what happened. Once Panhead was arrested, no one would let us talk to him or see him.
No one’s seen him
, Sax. He was indicted and sentenced all within a few months. He’s in maximum security in Tucson.”

“That’s fucking weird. And no one else has been nailed? Panhead’s held his mud?” Sax doubted Panhead would sing like a canary, but one never knew in situations like this.

“As far as anyone knows, no one else. But everyone’s on fucking edge, man. We’re in the middle of a heat wave, Sax, and we don’t need nozzles like Tormenta drawing attention to us.”

“I see what you fucking mean. I couldn’t agree more, but Harte, I don’t have any power anymore. I know you seem to think Leo somehow respects me, but I have no control over him. He booted me from the club.”

“Yeah, but…didn’t you
want
to go nomad? That’s what Dad always tells me. That you preferred the lifestyle, the nomadic travelling around, that it fit in perfectly with your rock-selling, your geology or whatever it is you do.”

It stung that Harte didn’t even really have a grasp on what Sax did for a living. Sax had a PhD from the University of Michigan, so he was actually
Dr.
Saxonberg, if you wanted to get all technical. He needed to at least show Harte that he could go toe to toe with that bastard Leo. “I wouldn’t say I wanted it, Harte. Leo sort of pushed me in that direction. I never would’ve gone if Leo hadn’t wanted to get rid of me.” He could at confess that much.

Harte looked reflective. “Yeah, didn’t you vanish right after I accidentally knocked up that girl?”

Sax was glad Harte remembered. Harte had been only fifteen, and Sax had been kind of proud of him, in a weird way. He had lectured the hell out of him, but deep down he’d had that “that’s my boy” feeling of pride. Harte’s sperm just could not be stopped. “Yes, exactly. He thought we had different…parenting styles.”

Harte frowned. “He kicked you ‘out good’ because you had a different parenting style? That sounds just like my fucking dad. He thinks he’s the dad of the century and, well, sometimes he’s not. Will you at least talk to him? Tell him what you know about Tormenta. Convince him that guy’s bad news.”

Sax agreed just to please the boy.

It was strange as hell, entering the premises of The Drawing Board again. Between the guns and drugs, The Bare Bones MC must’ve made enough money to afford a better clubhouse, like the P and E chapter’s Citadel, an old airplane hangar on an airfield.

Sax walked in first as though entering an old west saloon. Men on barstools turned to peer at him, but he didn’t recognize any of them.
Well, this is fucking disconcerting
.
I don’t recognize a soul.
Harte was behind him and he wore his Bare Bones cut, so no one questioned him. Finally, at the first pool table, Funkhauser dropped his pool cue and his jaw when he got a load of Sax. They thug hugged, and Funkhauser asked the expected question.

“What’re you doing here, man?”

Sax became still and quiet, gaining Funkhauser’s attention. “I heard there’s an issue at stake now.”

Funkhauser quieted, too. “Yeah. Tormenta cut up a sweetbutt. Leo doesn’t want to rock the boat with him, so he’s trying to put the whole incident in the rearview.”

“Yeah. And I don’t think that can happen. I’ve got nothing to lose by talking to him. He here?”

“Yeah, in his office. But I’m telling you, Sax. He won’t be fucking swayed. He—we—needs Tormenta’s business.”

“And what business exactly might that be? Mexican hookers?”

Funkhauser looked perplexed. “Hookers? What do you mean? No, we’ve been moving Sinaloan White up to Salt Lake City. Huge market there, as you know.”

Doubting it was just heroin, Sax moved down the hallway to confront his brother. He nodded at a couple of sweetbutts he didn’t recognize. Right. Why
would
he recognize any after all this time? He heard Brenda Ridings was still there. He used to push up on her all the time, when he was bored. She was all right.

The office door was ajar. Sax steeled himself. Leo had become Prez like their dad before them through sheer force of will. The presidency should theoretically have gone to Sax, but Sax just didn’t have it in him to care that much. He’d been gone at school much of the time when Leo grabbed power, and didn’t much care. He returned armed with a useless PhD to become Veep. He respected the family business. He just wasn’t as gung-ho as Leo.

“Brother.”

Normally, it would’ve been funny the way Leo’s mouth opened like he was catching flies. He rolled slowly back in his chair away from his desk. Sax figured
I might as well make use of my advantage of surprise
, so he barreled right ahead.

“I heard there’s been some abuse of sweetbutts going on around here by none other than Tony Tormenta. Why are you in business with that fuckwad, Leo? He’s nothing but a loose cannon. And after what happened to Panhead, shouldn’t we be keeping a low profile? You’re in the feds’ crosshairs, Leo. They’re watching you. Why associate with asshats who post piles of drugs on Facebook?”

Leo finally gathered himself. Pushing up from the chair, he waddled impudently up to Sax, like he was going to bump him with his beer belly. Wow, Leo had gone to seed. “Well, well. Isn’t it fucking easy to tell us how to run our business when you only bother coming around every couple years?”

Harte stepped out from Sax’s shadow. “I asked him to talk to you, dad. You won’t fucking listen to me because you think I’m a kid. But you respect Uncle Sax.”

Leo raised one eyebrow. “I
do
?” He looked Sax up and down with a critical eye. “Listen, Sax. You don’t know club business anymore. Why don’t you just take a step back and keep playing with your rocks? You’ve got some fucking nerve coming in here and telling me how to run things.”

Sax said firmly, “All I know is when women start getting slashed to ribbons, it needs to be stopped.”

Leo nodded. “Oh, I agree. Who wouldn’t agree with that? Right, Harte?” Switching gears, he took the brotherly stance now, putting a hand on Sax’s bicep. “But you see,
brother
, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Tormenta holds the key to an important connection for us.”

“The Sinaloan White?”

Sax could tell by the way Leo looked sideways at Harte that it was
not
just the H. Leo practically broke out in a cold sweat, that’s how nervous it seemed to make him. “Yeah, right, the heroin. Makes a lot of Benjamins for this outfit, Sax. You can see where I’m coming from.” Leo practically elbowed him now. “Me and Lulu just bought a place in Lynwood with a view of the peaks. Dad always wanted to live up there, but never made it past University Heights.”

We
. Leo loved to throw around the fact that he’d been married for decades, while Sax’s one brief union had ended in tragedy. “That’s great, Leo. But listen, I’m serious as a bag of Rottweilers. You can’t be exposing the club to that sort of bullshit. You might think sweetbutts are mindless, brainless robots here to pleasure us. But when they get riled, they can rise up, man.”

Leo chuckled. “The Rise of the Sweetbutts. Sounds like a great movie, Sax, but never gonna happen. They’re
happy
here! Where else can they get treated like this—free food, a roof over their head, a built-in family they go everywhere with? These chicks are from the streets. Their only other option is, well, selling themselves on a street corner. You’ve got to admit. None of them will win any IQ awards.”

Sax frowned. “I think you underestimate them,
brother
. Remember that sweetbutt Lorna who left us to get her master’s in psychology?”

Leo chuckled. “Oh, right. The
soft
sciences, as you would say. Don’t you still look down on that shit? So she became a shrink to analyze other sluts’ problems? Listen. Believe me when I say I’ve got things under control. Tormenta went back to his place in Prescott. He’s not about to start making a habit of cutting up whores. I’m sure it was a one-time deal. She bit his dick while giving him a blowjob. I’m sure my saintly son here didn’t tell you
that
part.”

Harte started huffing and puffing, but Sax broke in. “Listen, Leo. You exiled me, but I still have a stake in this club. Besides the fact that it’s in my blood, I still have voting rights, I still have all the rights of any hometown fully-patched member. And I’m here to register my fucking skepticism of this Tormenta asshole. I’ve worked with him before, in case you forget. I once saw him take an axe and hack off the legs of two teenagers who stole about two large from a stash house. He’s a
sadist
, Leo, I mean in the true sense of the word, as in the Marquis deSade.”

Leo chuckled, pleased with himself. “Oh, not like
your
sort of sadism. There’s a fine line between hacking off someone’s leg and whipping their ass.”

Anger tightened Sax’s jaw. “Well, yes,” he said thinly. He wasn’t here to educate his moronic brother in the details of the BDSM world. He was just sorry that the idiot knew about his involvement to begin with. Years ago, Sax had run into some associate of theirs at The Racquet Club, Flagstaff’s most notorious bondage club. Despite the fact that the guy was trussed in a latex harness while standing in a jail cell cage, he had not been able to resist blaring the news about Sax’s cock ring. “There’s a huge, vast difference. I’m telling you. Tormenta is trouble for the club, and you’d be smart to distance yourself. Now I’m going to go check on my house.”

Turning on his boot heel, Sax marched out of Leo’s office with dignity. He hadn’t gotten what he’d come for. He’d let down Harte. Leo was determined to continue to do business with the sadistic Tormenta, and what could Sax really do about it other than register his displeasure?

“Hey, Zane.” Leo called out to Sax using his real name. Leo had always been irked that they shared the last name of Saxonberg, but only Sax was called Sax. “Why don’t you stick to your little rocks and your nerdly world of rock collecting? Leave the big boy business to the big boys. Me and my son can handle it.”

My son
.
Little rocks.
It was all calculated to push Sax’s buttons, so he didn’t let on that it did. He just marched back down the hallway, biting his tongue. Would Harte follow him in support?

No. Harte stayed with Leo, arguing, until someone slammed the office door.

“Sax!” yelled Funkhauser. “Stay for a beer! Let’s get caught up.”

“Another time,” Sax yelled back. He was fucking weary of bullshit. He just wanted to get back to his house in Kachina Village, an A-frame ski cabin nestled in the pines off the highway heading into Pure and Easy. He had a numbskull house sitter living there, an old friend who had cleaned out his entire wine cellar of good cabernets over the years. Lila was nice enough, an old friend of the family, but it was time to kick her out for a couple of weeks.

Sax wanted to recharge his batteries. He’d go into town to the Racquet Club, hopefully not seeing that Assassin of Youth patch holder who liked to be caged and admired in latex. Sax personally thought latex was the worst fabric, another of the things that gave the world of BDSM a bad name. He was a down-to-earth, low protocol sort of Sir who didn’t stand on ceremony. There were so many different styles, choices, and levels of involvement in that world. Sax preferred to fly under the radar rather than fly his colors for the world to see. He had a couple of tats that displayed old bomber girls of the forties bound in attractive, eye-popping ways, and that was about it.

Sax consoled himself that Leo was two years younger than him but looked older with his sedentary lifestyle full of beer and getting on his scoot even to ride to the corner liquor store.
That asshole is running this club into the ground.

He’d just straddled his Softail and was reaching for his helmet when a woman emerged from around the corner of the building. She didn’t have that sweetbutt aura about her. Her long naturally curly hair was tied behind her neck efficiently, as though to indicate a sensible personality. When she lifted her face to Sax, her azure eyes seemed to speak to him, and he paused with his brain bucket in his hands.

She looked like a sweet Irish lass, as though she brought a wave of fresh outdoor breeze with her. She wasn’t dressed like a sweetbutt, either. She wore a sensible plaid short-sleeved shirt, as though about to go camping, and khaki shorts completed the practical ensemble.

But the thing that plumped Sax’s cock was the collar around her neck. For a young woman in her twenties who dressed like a camp counselor, the idea that she was bound to a Dom turned Sax on immensely. His prick lengthened down the leg of his 501 jeans, expanding up against the edge of his black leather chaps. Did she pretend to be an innocent camper when her Dom handcuffed her in suspension cuffs and dangled her from the ceiling?