Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (4 page)

Maybe I was becoming sappy, hanging around those polygs. All of Mr. Chiles’ talk about how he was sealed to his wives for all eternity, and all of that blather. But suddenly I wanted to make my name ring in the streets with this job. I’d be the best damned gun runner the club had ever seen. Papa Ewey would welcome me back with open arms and maybe even a promotion in the club.

And just maybe that woman Mahalia had gotten under my skin. Her eyes were so round, so haunted with something she’d seen. Or maybe just the horrendous life she had to live every day. Fuck, those women were subjugated. They were so defeated they folded their hands and bowed their heads when spoken to by a man. Plus, she had a balcony you could do Shakespeare from, under the severity of that old-fangled, prim red dress.

I’d actually gotten a bit hot and uncomfortable under the warmth of her gaze. Aside from the fact that Mr. Chiles was at least sixty years old—a man was allowed to do what he was able to get away with, after all—it was just downright gross thinking of him putting his hoary old wiener anywhere close to that creamy, café au lait skin. She was part Native American, maybe Navajo, with her high cheekbones and sad eyes.

I knew right off the bat I had a savior complex. Like little kids playing Superman, I wanted to sweep in with my cape and take Mahalia off to—where? Who the fuck was I kidding? I had a nice enough home in Bullhead City, being the manager of the quarry and all. But I was in love, or so I thought, with Chelsea, the old lady of Papa Ewey.

Yeah. You heard right. That’s probably why I was sent on this asinine run, come to think of it. A couple days before he’d ordered me out here, a Prospect had caught Chelsea and me grinding crotches up against the door of the woman’s room in our clubhouse. Hell, we were leaning against the fucking door! Why was the guy shoving and pushing, anyway? We sort of fell back against the toilet—me banging my head like a son of a bitch—and that fucking Prospect was all over it like boom on an A-bomb. The guy couldn’t wait to score his little fucking brownie points and sob to Papa Ewey and, well, the long and the short of it was, I wasn’t out bad, but I was at least exiled bad.

Papa Ewey took away my cell so I couldn’t keep in touch with Chelsea. I’d heard he’d beaten Chelsea pretty roundly, just like I heard Allred Lee Chiles beat his women, too. Maybe I was a sucker for a downtrodden woman. Maybe I liked to think of myself as a guardian angel. But I didn’t dare show my face in Bullhead until I’d made this exchange with Chiles a success.

Maybe I was transferring my protective feelings from Chelsea onto Mahalia. I’d been thinking about the stunning maid with the honey glow more and more often. I felt no shame. I’d already been caught macking on another guy’s woman. Might as well push up on two. I must have a penchant for it. Although of the two ladies, Mahalia was by far the most forbidden. And that was saying a lot.

Now I’d been leaving messages for Chelsea from Chiles’ burner, something that made me wonder if I wasn’t too dumb to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. I mean, I thought it was safe because only Chiles knew the number and he wouldn’t give a shit if I had a side bitch. Papa Ewey couldn’t track it. But Papa Ewey sure as shit could track incoming calls to Chelsea’s phone.

“I want you to stay embedded up there and wait for the guns to come to you.”

My jaw hung low. I had to make Papa Ewey repeat it because I was sure I’d heard wrong.

“I want you to wait for the iron to make its way to you. Should take two, three weeks. Our man Bagrat in San Diego said there was a slight glitch with the shipping manifest and they have to try again.”

I paced like a caged maniac in front of the hotel’s dumpster. I couldn’t protest too much after what I’d been caught doing in flagrante. I mean, we’d had most of our clothes on, but Chelsea’s unhooked bra was sort of twisted up around her neck, and, well, things hadn’t looked good for yours truly. “You’re fucking kidding. You’re sticking me here doing nothing for three weeks with the likes of Tim Breakiron?”

Predictably, Papa Ewey said, “Look, Fortunati. Beggars can’t be choosers. You’re lucky we didn’t burn off your backpack for what you fucking did. You’re going to need to earn your way back into this club.”

I was gulping from a pint of Jim Beam—one of the few thriving businesses in Avalanche was the liquor store, naturally—so maybe I was mouthier than normal. “What about Breakiron? What did he do, anyway, to get stuck on such a shit detail?”

“That’s none of your concern,” spat Papa. “Listen, I want you to suck it up to that whacked polyg.”

“Chiles?”

“Chiles. He’s a few sheep short of an orgy. Fucking guy had to break away from
another
fundamentalist sect twenty years ago because even
those
fundies didn’t agree with some of his shit.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?” I don’t know why I expected Papa Ewey to answer me. He hadn’t answered anything else. But he did.

“Like literally kidnapping women to make them his wives. Look at the math, man. Men and women are pretty much evenly distributed across the population, right? It’s simple demographics.”

“Demographics,” I echoed. All I could think of was “kidnapping.” Had Mahalia been kidnapped? Dragged kicking and screaming across the dust like a fiery Indian maiden? Beaten into submission like a conquered field hand? I barely heard Papa’s recounting of population densities.

“…so they had to resort to kidnapping women from outside the sect to make their fucking whacked quota. A man needs three wives to make it into heaven.”

Picturing Mahalia dragged to that flipped out polyg compound gave me the incentive to stay in the ghost town. Like I could do anything about it? Again. Savior complex. I had a vision of saving Chelsea from the degradation of Papa Ewey, and now I had some vague fantasy of riding off with Mahalia on the back of my fucking horse. “So why are we sucking up to him? Shouldn’t this deal be a one-off, and we leave it in our rearview?”

“Might not be a one-off if you play your cards right. Listen, Fortunati. I don’t like you personally and I don’t want you hanging around Chelsea or any other of our lambs for that matter. You ruin women, man. That last lamb you knocked up wound up slitting her wrists because you didn’t even take her to get an abortion.”

I shrugged and chugged. “All lambs should be on the Pill, man. Our lives shouldn’t be tossed ass end up because someone caught the baby flu.”

“Whatever. Fortunati, you’re just one bad seed. You make the women fucking cry. Maybe you should consider getting your own tubes tied because you’re just rotten to the core.”

I was pissed. Because I hadn’t had any long-term fender fluff and generally just used and tossed away the lambs—who didn’t?—he was telling me I was demon seed? What the fuck? “Hey, what the fuck, Papa? I genuinely
care
for Chelsea. If it wasn’t for you, I’d of made her my old lady. So don’t go running around classifying me as some head-twisting vomit-spewing possessed son of the Prince of Dark—”

“Listen,” snarled my Prez, “leave Chelsea out of this. I don’t want you saying her name ever again. That’s over. You should be glad I’m putting you in charge of this fundie pipeline, and not that rapist Breakiron.”

I knew better than to question who Breakiron had raped. “It’s all good,” I lied.

“I want you to strengthen our union because we’re gonna keep the iron flowing his way. This will be the first of many shipments. He’s a bottomless fucking pit of cash thanks to squeezing every employee and business he owns for like a quarter of their income. These whacked fundies are a gold mine, Fortunati. Literally, because I think he owns a gold mine nearby.”

So that was how we left it. I’d be stuck there for at least another three weeks, although the way Ewey made it sound, he had some longer-term goals in mind.

That’s how I came to be pacing, chugging, and looking at the red velvet cake of the eastern mesas when Allred Chiles called me on his burner. I was pissed, but actually things were looking up. Already, I was finagling in my brain to find a way to see Mahalia again. She’d done something to me—stuck deep in my craw and wouldn’t let go.

“Mr. Fortunati. I liked the way you stood up for yourself to that bruiser associate of yours.” I bristled. Was he calling Tim Breakiron more buffed and fit than me? I fucking worked out. Most days. Breakiron was just wider than me, like a fucking barn door. “I’ve been informed you might be available for the next few weeks for a specific job I have in mind. You mentioned you run a rock quarry.”

“Yes, sir.”
Good God in an evil world.
Now someone else was farming me out to the sticks for grunt work.

“I have a very lucrative gold and silver mine just outside of Avalanche. Beautiful, rich veins, about twenty-four ounces per ton. Lava rock too, such as you’re familiar with, but I’ve heard rumblings there might be iron, platinum, and tungsten. It’s a twenty-acre parcel with three full-time employees filling the trucks. I’ve had to send the manager elsewhere. Now, those ten men are unruly union men. Men of the Church of Good Fortune, but unruly nevertheless.” Chiles chuckled condescendingly. “Sort of like yourself, now that I think on it. Anyway, Fortunati. Seeing as how you’re going to be around twiddling your thumbs for a while. Feel like getting paid to oversee these roustabouts?”

I jumped right in headfirst, as was my habit. “Sounds intriguing. What about my associate, Breakiron?”

Understandably, Chiles was skeptical. “Does he have quarry experience, anything to do with geology?”

“No. He drives a truck for me in Bullhead, but he also hauls for other companies.”

“I really have no need of truck drivers. I’m stuck with these union assholes. I can pay you a competitive wage. Beats what you’re doing meanwhile. Think you can do it, Fortunati?”

“I’m in.”

I really was. My earlier excitement at seeing potential mining operations came to the fore now. In a desolate wasteland, as alone as a man could possibly be, I was stuck with a twatwaffle like Tim Breakiron. I needed others around me. I was a family man deep down, contrary to what Ewey had said about me breaking hearts. I sort of envied Mahalia with her built-in family. That’s what I had had with my club. A patched member was never alone. Now I was. Running the mining op would give me something to do while I waited for the Russian ladies to arrive.

GIDEON

M
y bottle was
empty, so I chucked it in the dumpster with a loud, dull thud and headed for my room to get my room key. I’d seen a bar named the High Dive up on Crosstown Street. I could easily walk to it. I thought I’d knock back a few more, maybe meet some locals. I’d seen a few hippies walking around, and some rough types like me. Bikers, hunters, ranchers. Avalanche seemed to have been a thriving community twenty years ago when Allred Lee Chiles moved in with his congregation, building temples, schools, and weird houses to fit lots of women. Somehow he’d either sucked all the life out of the town, or scared everyone off.

But I rummaged around a few seconds too long, and Breakiron was all over me.

“Going to check out that bar? Yeah, sounds good. I’m bored out of my skull. Read every last boob magazine at that liquor store. Hey, I saw some Morbots inside the gate giving me the eye.”

“Oh yeah?” I asked tiredly. I was starting work tomorrow, but I didn’t want to tell Breakiron. Who needed the extra drama? “I’ll bet they’ve never seen the likes of you. Move. I need to lock the door.”

“Do you know what that whackjob’s sermon is going to be next Sunday? I saw it on a flier. ‘I Know Who Has TV!’ You fucking heard right, man. He’s going to point fingers and list some scorecard he keeps on who the fuck’s got a satellite dish.”

“Truly and utterly whacked,” I agreed. I did agree. Who wouldn’t? A man’s right to watch football and boob movies was one of his unalienable rights.

“It’s like having the Taliban right down the street. You were in Afghanistan, weren’t you?”

“Yup.”

“You must hate the Taliban.”

“Sure do. They killed some friends of mine.”

I didn’t want to think about that. I didn’t see the Church of Good Fortune quite on the same level as the Taliban, yet. I nodded at the disheveled, dusty kid who cowered behind an old phone booth. He was rooting through a plastic bag of some garbage or other, and his dark chestnut eyes dilated when he realized he’d been caught. He wore one of those nylon windbreakers in brightly colored blocks that were popular about twenty years ago—like this town.

“Hey, who was that lady following you down the street? Inside the gates, I mean.”

Abruptly I stopped thinking about the starving kid. “Lady?”

“Yeah. She was dressed different from the rest, if you can call a thousand gunnysack dresses different. Hers was red.”

Mahalia!
I stopped walking. “What the fuck, Breakiron? You mean when we got there and were fighting?”

“No, later. I rode away, but parked behind some cray-cray bookmaking business—”

I frowned. “They gamble?”

“No, I mean serious bookmaking, like, churning out books to read. Only, they were all religious.”