Big Dog (13 page)

Future kept giving him strange looks. She shook her head and laughed aloud a few times while she was putting the bar to rights for the night. Rather than walk outside and around in the dark, she led him through the tunnel and he was impressed. They’d no sooner entered the door in the cellar of the house than they could hear a loud booming sound reaching back to them from the way they’d come.

Big Dog shoved her through the door and followed her, before slamming it closed behind them. Future was freaking out and knew it, but she couldn’t help herself. “What was that? Dammit, what just happened?” They ran up the steps and looked out of the window in the back door. It looked like a bomb had gone off in the front of the building. She could only stare as he called 911 and gave them the particulars such as location and the name of the business. After assuring the dispatch that no one remained inside the burning business, he hung up the phone and gathered her into his arms, while they watched the building burn.

“The guys’ bikes are in there with mine. Shit, I loved that damn bike.” The two men came down the stairs at a fast clip and almost ran into the couple standing at the back door, watching the fire. As they all watched, a lone man came out of the shadows and got close to the fire before he fumbled with his pants and appeared to take a leak near the flames. His head snapped up as they all heard the sirens in the distance and melted back into the shadows. Within minutes they saw a bike and its rider slow down as it drove past the burning building.

Future stated what the rest of them already suspected. “Dorsey. That cowardly son-of-a-bitch.”

They were standing at the gate to her backyard when the police arrived, and firemen began trying to put the fire out. She walked over to the nearest cop and told him who she was. She told him that she’d just left the building, and everything appeared the same as any other night, “I locked it up and came home through the tunnel between the buildings. No one but the former owner and I know about the tunnel. It was a busy night and the employees had just left before I did. I should probably call them to make sure they find out about it from me, and not on the morning news.”

She noticed the back portion of the building wasn’t engulfed in flames yet and she grabbed the cop’s arm, “You need to tell them that there are three motorcycles in that back room. The gas tanks are full, and that’s where I store the cases of whisky and wine.”

The cop took off running toward the firemen and she stayed where she was. Big Dog came to her side and slid his arm around her as they watched the progress being made by the firemen on the flames. Every now and then they could hear a small explosion, and the fire would flare for a minute, and drop down again. The officer came back and Big Dog introduced himself as Hugh Dougherty, a good friend of Oracle’s.

The sun was shining in the early morning hours as the firemen began rolling their hoses and the police began rolling out the yellow caution tape. Future talked with the cop and asked if there would be any problem if she hired some people to remove the cases of booze from the back room the firemen had managed to save from harm. “I’m just worried some kids will come along and think its Christmas coming early. I don’t want to be responsible for any drunken teenagers wandering the streets of the city. The same thing for the bikes, we can bring them through the back gate and I can park them in my garage.” The cop thought both points were valid and accompanied them to the storage room to see for himself that she’d been speaking the truth.

He took a quick inventory of the cases of booze and copied the VIN numbers off the bikes before nodding his permission to move the things. After the crowd of cops and firemen left, Larry and Matthew rolled the bikes into her garage, parking them next to Big Dog’s hog.

The men shuttled the cases of whiskey and wine into the garage too. Her truck was now a driveway dweller, but that would be all right because once the men left, she would have more than enough room to park the small truck in the space left open.

Chapter Eleven

She was so tired that after she showered, she dropped her towel next to her bed and pulled back the covers, intending to sleep for the next four hours. Instead, she sat down and pulled a pillow into her lap, buried her face in the pillow, and cried her heart out.

*****

“Hey, Big D. I called a few people I know, well they are actually my brother’s best friends.” Larry was back to being intimidated, but Big D, as the smaller man tagged him, was in no mood for patience today.

“Larry, I don’t mind the tag, in fact I like it, but just spit it out. I don’t have time for your nerves right now.”

Larry took that as a direct order. “I called Jerome and Eduardo. I figured if anyone can find a rat like Dorsey, well, it takes a thief to catch a thief, you know?” Seeing the look on Big D’s face, he hurried with his news. “Eduardo said that an old guy on a big bike was seen by some of their friends when he came looking for some C-4, and a quarter pound of weed. He paid in gold chains, like real gold I mean. And this morning, this old guy, he was seen heading out of town, going west.”

His information earned him a pat on the back and a “good job.” It made him feel good.

Freakshow was methodically tossing a dagger at a small square of wood he’d found in the garage. Larry left him alone, no way did he want to further piss off the man with the pointy knife, so he took his ass to bed, knowing they’d be riding in a few short hours.

Big Dog was on the phone talking to Butch. “I want that motherfucker, he was seen traveling west, so he might be heading back to the crib, and he might have more C-4, we don’t know how much he bought. Get the kids out of there, take them to the farm. They can camp out for the weekend. We’ll be leaving here as soon as I get a couple of hours of sleep.”

He took a quick shower and found Future lying on her side with a pillow in her arms and trails of dried tears on her cheeks. He pulled the pillow from her arms and rolled her over to cuddle her close. The tears disturbed him more than they should. She was stronger than any woman he’d met, but if she was going to cry, he guessed she had a good reason. Knowing they’d been so close to blowing up in that building put a lot of things in perspective for him. For now, he needed to rest.

*****

Matthew Douglas signed the note he left at the house before he left.

Couldn’t sleep, going to follow up on a few things and will meet you at the crib
.

Everything was packed in his saddlebags and he left the house locked up. There were a few places he wanted to check before heading to the club; one of them happened to be an hour’s ride from there. His mind was now calm, it was surprising how he could find serenity during chaos, but it worked for him, and that’s what mattered after all was said and done.

The woman that answered the door to his knock was older than he remembered her to be, her hair was an unnatural shade of light brown for a woman in her sixties, and she stared at him as if seeing a ghost. “Matthew? Is that really you?” She reached out her hand to his cheek and cradled his jaw in her open palm. It had been twelve years since he’d walked out of the door, and never looked back before today.

She pulled his arm to lead him into the house that he’d grown up in. Other than new paint, and a few newer pieces of furniture, nothing had changed in the place since he was here last. He sat in the kitchen and she fluttered around the room until she got the coffee and heated the apple muffins with cream cheese icing laces drizzled over the top. He hadn’t said anything and waited for her to sit on a chair.

After the preliminaries and having her tell him that his father, who had, in fact, been a stepfather, had died from a heart attack five years ago. She was now a widow, and was thinking about a move to Florida or Texas. “So what brings you to my door, son? I have been writing letters for years trying to get you to come visit me, but my letters come back to me. Paul told me to stop bothering, that you were too bitter and refused to consider that I might want to reconnect with my son. I tried to only send cards and food gift certificates, and I still have half of them in the drawer I keep your letters in. Each time one would be returned, it hurt. Thank you for coming today”

Over the next three hours, he learned that Paul was living here with his mother. He had been living with her for the past two months or so. “He lost his job, and needed a place to stay until he could find regular work.”

Paul was his father’s stepbrother. Paul had “done his brother a favor” by fathering a child with the brother’s wife when the brother hadn’t been up to the challenge. That made sense now, the man he’d always thought was his father, was actually his stepfather, and Paul Dorsey was his biological father.

After the last blow up that had ended with his father giving him a week to get out of his house, and overhearing his father telling his mother how worthless her son was. He’d almost missed the truth when the man said that Paul had fathered rotten fruit, and he was sick of the pansy assed little fucker taking up space and eating the food he provided. “Let Paul provide for his bastard.”

Mathew had packed a small duffel with two changes of clothes, rolled his duster and the few valuables he owned, and left on his Triumph Trident 750—he still owned that bike. It took five years for him to find a home with the Bastards. He remembered the hell he’d gone through to get to that point and hoped that he never had a kid that ended up like he did, until he found the group. Now he knew he wanted a couple of kids in the future. He still had time enough to pick a decent woman who was ready for a relationship.

One day he was in the game room at the club, and saw someone vaguely familiar. When he heard the name Paul, he paid attention, even if there were thousands of men named Paul in the world. That night, he waited until most of the guys were asleep, and slipped around to the man’s bike and found the proof he needed. The hog was registered to Paul Dorsey, his biological father.

The day Future had to testify in front of him and the other five men drove the knowledge into him that the fucker needed to die. He hated the thought of being forced to tell anyone the man was related to him, so he was going to take care of the fucker once and for all if he could find him. That was why he’d come to his mother’s door. She had choices during her years of marriage to the abusive bastard. She could have taken him and left her husband. She could have refused to allow her husband’s stepbrother to fuck her in the first place. She could have let Mathew beat the bastards head in the night he broke her cheekbone and sprained her ankle when she went down. She chose to stay, and he freely admitted that he loved his mother, but he felt zero respect for her life choices.

Now it appeared that Paul left sometime last evening to take a job in California. He didn’t say when he was coming back, but she figured it wouldn’t be long before he sent for the boxes of his things that were sitting in the spare bedroom. “There’s only three of them, and they’re not very large, but he said they were important to him, and would I make sure they were kept safe.”

He agreed to stay the night and she decided to go to the store for something special to cook for dinner. He told her he needed a nap if that was all right with her, and she smiled in motherly concern. “Well, I will take my time at the store so you can have a nice sleep.”

As soon as she cleared the driveway, he slit the tape on the boxes and discovered how important the contents actually were. The first box solved the mystery of the way Dorsey had paid the gangbangers in gold. There was thousands of dollars worth of gold and platinum jewelry in the box. Some of the rings held stones, but all of the stuff was real, even the men’s watches that sold in the store for two to five grand each.

Matthew took the box and upended it into a doubled plastic grocery bag, and placed the bag in the bottom of his saddlebag. He re-taped the empty box, and moved on to the next one. It contained notebooks filled with information on several of the Bastards and a few newer ones on the hierarchy of Lucifer’s Breed. He didn’t have time to go through them all, so they went into the saddlebags too. The third box was a bit larger than the first two had been, and when he opened the box, what he found creeped him out.

In the folds of shirts and jeans, were small boxes of teeth. There were only four of them, and a box containing dryer sheets and blackened fingertips. Matthew knew he’d found Paul Dorsey’s trophy stash. He went to his mother’s laundry room and grabbed a few dryer sheets and dampened them, before going through the box again, wiping his fingerprints from every surface that he’d touched. He re-taped the box, making certain his prints were not on the sticky side of the tape, and gave the entire box the same treatment that he gave the contents. No way did he want his prints on something like this. Nor did he want to leave it in his mother’s home.

He took a quick two hour nap, and woke to the scent of something that made his stomach rumble. Going out to the kitchen, he found her taking a pan of lasagna out of the oven. She must have remembered that her lasagna was his favorite meal while he lived at home. Since he’d left, he avoided the stuff from anywhere else. It was his way of remembering something good from his childhood. The same thing with her Chicken Noodle soup; on a cold day, or when anyone caught a cold, she made soup. He had many people and places tempt him into trying the soups, but it wasn’t his mother’s, so he refused to touch it.
I guess I’m more fucked up than I realized
.

He watched the nighttime game shows with her and after the ten o’clock news they went to bed. At one in the morning, he tied the box into a trash bag and carried it down the alleyway from his mother’s house. When he was three blocks from her place, he picked out a trashcan that was already half filled, and tossed the bag into it.

It occurred to him the letters his mother claimed to have in a drawer might have addresses to find the bastard on them. He planned while he waited for morning light, making a mental note to call ahead and give Butch the addresses to check out. He hated the idea of Dorsey getting what was coming to him by someone else’s hands, but dead was dead, and he wouldn’t harm anyone else with his cowardice and greed.