White Wolves MC: A BWWM Interracial Romance (3 page)

“Fuck, Doug, he killed Winston…”

“Winston knew the risks. He was a good agent. He was ready for this. He knew the mission.”

A sob wracked my chest as I leaned against Doug, my tears staining his suit jacket and flowing onto the flak vest he wore beneath it.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said coolly, almost too coolly. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”

He led me to his car, a comfortable, used BMW that I knew Doug took impeccable care of.

We pulled out of the dockyard and got onto the highway, heading downtown—to headquarters. After all, I was still wearing something like three-thousand dollars worth of government equipment.

“I know this isn’t a good time, Mercedes, but I’ve got another assignment for you. One you’ll have to start right away.”

I rolled my puffy, tear-stained eyes at Doug.

“Is it to get some rest? Relax?”

“No. The opposite. I know you, Mercedes. I know you don’t work like that. You need work to mourn and that’s fine. So, I’ve got work for you.”

Thank god.

To be honest, that’s what I needed. What I wanted. The thing I had been dreading was the leave they would invariably give me—six weeks paid leave, a nice friendly counselor named Jennifer (she’d be tall and blonde, I knew it) and a whole bunch of flowers and candies when I got back to the office.

Gag me. I don’t have anyone to go to. Just a studio apartment full of ghosts.

“Are you familiar with the White Wolves MC?” Doug asked after a few minutes, seemingly mesmerized by the steady rhythm of the passing street lights.

“Not the biggest biker gang in Florida, but definitely the scariest,” I replied. “All former military, so they’re more disciplined than your usual bikers, and they’re all combat tested. Plus, you can probably bet on any given one of them having pretty severe PTSD, which makes them unpredictable… Though I guess that’s not politically correct.”

“You can be politically correct when you get out of this car,” Doug replied. “This is my personal car, so we’re talking just as friends. Colleagues, after work. Not government employees.”

And then, as if to underline that point, he took his hands off the steering wheel to fumble around with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Once he had lit up, he rolled down his window and tapped some ash out onto the highway as it sped by.

“They’re bat shit insane and they’re ambitious. We’ve kept an eye on them for the past five years but we’ve been so worried about the Cubans and the Haitians that we’ve let them expand unchecked. Now that Bolo’s out of the picture, they’re going to make a big play for territory and business. But we’ve got someone on the inside.”

“A mole?”

“Sure. He’s been giving us info for the last few months. A former addict who saw the light.”

“Doesn’t sound reliable.”

“You’d be surprised. He’s given us enough to lead to several arrests over the last few months. But we’ve been holding off.”

“Holding off why?”

My mind was fully engaged with this case now—it was enough to take my mind off Winston’s death—this was the perfect therapy. More work.

“Because we think we can make a big arrest with your help.”

“Fatman.”

“That’s right.”

I nodded gravely.

“All right. What do I have to do?”

“Go home. Relax. Take a shower. A counselor will call you in the morning but you don’t have to meet with her. Not if you don’t want to.”

“Good. Because I don’t want to.”

“I know,” Doug said with a grim smile. “I know.”

He pulled into the parking garage attached to the Miami federal building, flashed his badge to the night attendant, and then pulled into his personal space.

“Take a day or two to decompress and get some sleep. Then, I’ll give you a call and we’ll arrange a meeting.”

“A meeting with the mole?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s his name?”

“John MacKinnon. But he goes by Viper inside the club.”

“Viper…” I repeated slowly. The name, his real name, John MacKinnon—that sounded familiar.

“Just about all these biker types have pseudonyms,” Doug said with a shrug as we parked.

“Makes sense.”

He nodded.

“Listen, kiddo. Get yourself cleaned up. Get some rest. I have to assign you a counselor, but I can’t make you go to the sessions. I’ll call you in a day or two and we’ll set up a meeting with Viper.”

I knew he was being nice, giving me time to unwind and relax. To rest.

But the fact was, I hadn’t rested in three years. Not since Fred died. My mourning was ongoing, and I had been deferring it by working, working constantly, days and nights, weekends, barely sleeping, and when I wasn’t working on cases, I was working on my body: constant exercise, running marathons, training mixed-martial arts, lifting weights.

My parents were worried about me. Fred’s parents were worried about me. I couldn’t tell if Doug was worried about me, but probably, to him, I was just a good agent: a useful pawn in his game, a game he had been playing for nearly a decade, to annihilate the organized crime syndicates that control Southern Florida.

But now, I was being forced away from work for a few days. I knew what would greet me back at my apartment: ghosts. Specifically, Winston’s ghostly, pallid, blood-gushing face, telling me to arrest Bolo, telling me over and over again that we had to get him, asking me if I was locked and loaded, asking me if it was time yet. Saying, still, that we have to get Bolo.

We got him, buddy. We got him.

VIPER

About a mile off the highway, only to be found via picking your way through semi-industrial wastelands, dockyards, warehouses, and factories fallen into disuse, is the White Wolves MC Clubhouse.

It’s hard to find, and that’s how we like it. What’s more, once you’re there, it’s a little slice of paradise on earth.

Sure, it looks like a shack. Really, two shacks: one is the garage—that’s where all sorts of “work” happens, by which I mean one of two kinds: working on your ride, or working on your body. The two are basically one in the same for any good member of the White Wolves, because your bike should be an extension of your body. Most guys will knock out a few deadlift sets or squats in between fiddling with their rides.

Others take a more structured approach. I fall into that camp. I was strong when I got out of the service, and lean, but the months of immobility as a result of my injuries, plus the addiction, started to make me soft, skinny, but flabby. Once I joined the White Wolves, I tried to stem the tide of addiction by adopting the most rigorous of physical training schedules: an hour of hitting the heavy bag in the morning, every morning, with two hours of weight lifting in the evening four times a week, plus regular pick up basketball and football games with the guys.

Now, it was an addiction as much as the heroin had ever been. Maybe even more so, because I couldn’t have the blessed smack anymore. I kept hideously, absurdly detailed notebooks tracking every aspect of my progress, how much I was lifting, how I was feeling as I lifted, how strong I was getting. Focusing on that helped keep the desire for smack out of my mind, if only for a few hours a day.

So, there’s the workshop, and then the other shack is the clubhouse proper—where you go to lounge, to sleep, to eat, to drink, to fuck, to fight—though, an update to our charter last month specified that all fighting was to be done outside as much as possible, since we were tired of smashed TVs and broken glass littering the couches.

It’s like a fraternity house inside, but a fraternity house on steroids. A bar adorns the living room, with faded and jaded couches surrounding a coffee table, and a handful of pool tables in the corner. The bar is always well-stocked with whatever you’d like to drink—beer, run, tequila, whiskey, gin, vodka, even wine for the ladies, on the off chance you bring in a lady or (more likely) a hooker who doesn’t want straight whiskey.

Though, we by and large prefer our women to be the types who drink bourbon straight, no chaser.

Off of the living room is a staircase leading up to the second floor, with bedrooms, “offices” (really, just empty rooms, to be used for whatever), bathrooms, and a small kitchen. A few of the White Wolves live here full time, but most of us have other apartments, even other jobs. It’s only a few that can make a full time living as a biker.

It’s not much—but it’s home, or a home, of sorts.

I sat at the bar one Saturday afternoon after meeting with Doug. Some of the White Wolves stood around, shooting pool, while others were piled onto the couch, watching the FSU game. Upstairs, we could hear the tell-tale creek of a bed as someone got lucky, showing his old lady a good time.

“Making too much fucking noise up there…” Dog muttered from the other side of the bar. Jim “Dog” Tiller. He’s a scrawny shrimp of a bastard, with a ratty looking beard and goatee. A real mutt. He’s an ex-Navy man too and, as a Marine myself, you’d think we wouldn’t get along. But we were White Wolves now, and even though I made jibes about the Marines being the Men’s Department of the Navy, I would trust Dog with my life.

“Then stop fucking listening,” I muttered, sipping at my whiskey. I shouldn’t be drinking but damned if I cared. I knew where I had to steer the conversation and I wasn’t looking forward to it, but here it went.

“When I bring my newest bitch around, you’d best not listen,” I growled, continuing the train of the conversation. “If you do, so help me god, I will break a fifth over your stupid skull.”

“Man, Viper, when you gonna’ bring this new girl?” Manuel demanded from the couch. Having gone to FSU once upon a time, Manuel Lopez was loath to miss a Seminoles game. Nonetheless, it didn’t stop him from interrogating me about my hypothetical new squeeze.

“When she’s good and fucking ready and I’m sure that you jokers aren’t going to scare her off,” I snapped.

“How’d you meet that bitch again?” Dog asked, sniffing at a bottle of mostly empty tequila. He was a cheap asshole and he insisted that we finish our bottles of booze before opening new ones. Yeah. One of those. He was going through his weekend ritual of finishing off any almost-empty bottles, and he defined almost empty as being less than one-third full—so by this point, he was already pretty far gone.

“A club,” I replied immediately. “I’ve got that gig working security for the Zombie Hut.”

This was true. I had been working on and off at the Zombie Hut, a horror-theme tiki bar that catered to slobbish tourists just off of South Beach, for the past six months. I bounced for them, but the job could hardly be called security. It was some of the easiest money I had ever made. Hardly anyone started trouble and if they did, one quick look at me was enough for them to calm their shit down. Once in a while, some drunken frat boy would start throwing punches, but a quick joint lock was all I needed to drive him toward the door, and then out onto the hard pavement outside.

“Is she some sort of hot little college girl? Are you afraid we’re gonna’ offend her politically correct sensibilities?” Dog asked, through a series of burps. The awkwardness with which he pronounced those last few words hinted at the fact that he didn’t really know what they meant.

“Nah, I’m not a cradle-robber like you,” I muttered. “Or Fatman.”

As if on cue, we heard the tell-tale lumbering footsteps of the leader of the White Wolves, a physically massive former Green Beret that we all called Fatman. His gasps guided him down the stairs as he staggered into the living room.

One look at him was all you needed to know that he wasn’t well—not by a long shot. He worked up a sweat just going up and down the stairs and he found himself panting if he just walked across the room without his cane.

Oh, and did I mention that he weighed about three-hundred and seventy-five pounds on a good day? At well over six-and-a-half feet tall, he carries it well, but it was hard not to be disgusted by his girth, all heavily tattooed with crosses, Viking runes, celtic knots, swastikas, tribal designs, and Japanese koi. He looked a bit like a more intimidating, more terrifying, more real version of Jabba the Hut, but with the threatening gravitas of a heavy metal rock star.

“Viper, what in the fuck are you talking about?” he barked at me, his plump lips rippling into a scowl. “I ain’t no cradle robber.”

Soft footsteps followed behind Fatman. A girl, deathly pale as wilted lilies, with washed out blonde hair almost turned gray, looked at us with wide, confused eyes. She was clad only in one of Fatman’s t-shirts, a sweat-stained monstrosity that looked more like a circus tent on her.

“Tell ‘em, Misty. Tell them how old you are.”

Misty flushed as she stole behind the bar, grabbing a bottle of rum and draining a fifth of it into her pale lips.

“Tell ‘em, Misty.”

She gasped, licking her rum-soaked lips.

“Jesus fucking Christ, don’t act as retarded as you look. Tell these fuckers how old you are.”

Misty’s booze-and-sex addled eyes regarded us without any sort of understanding or caring.

“Old enough,” she said softly, her voice like wine glasses shattering on pillows.

“That’s right,” Fatman roared, a triumphant note sounding in his voice like trumpets. “That’s fucking right. Old enough. I’ve taught this little bitch well.”

Misty closed her eyes and seemed to drift back upstairs, practically asleep. I felt bad for her, but not bad enough to break her out of this life. At least… Not yet.

Fact was, as much as I found myself completely disgusted by Fatman, I respected the bastard. He had taken me in when I was a mess, given me an opportunity to prove myself. All I had back then was a bike—a heavily customized chopper that I had worked on during every single period of leave I was given while in the service, putting most of my paycheck into improving that beast of a machine—and a revolver, my dad’s old Colt Python that he had carried for twenty-five years as a member of the Miami Police Department (ironically).

I barely had any cash to my name, nowhere to live, no future. But Fatman saw something in me. He let me, an addict, deal for him, and when he was sure that I wasn’t going to rat, he let me stay at the clubhouse while I looked for an apartment. He even put himself down as my employer on the application, since he owns a small empire of hot dog stands along South Beach—that’s how we launder our money, and also one of the hot spots of dealing to kids looking for a good time at the beach.

But that wasn’t going to stop me from burying Fatman if I got a chance. The things that had given me a thrill about this life back when I was getting high every chance I got—the drugs, the women, the fast bikes and sweet slow booze, the feeling of my fist, gripping a roll of quarters, cracking into some motherfucker’s skull in a filthy, down and out barroom brawl—those things didn’t do it for me anymore.

They left me cold.

It was time to go. I could either go… Or I could die.

Because… Did I mention that once you’re a White Wolf, you’re a White Wolf for life? It’s either stay in the gang, or die. No compromise.

I don’t want to stay. And dying doesn’t sound too bad, but I can’t help but feel like it’s not my style.

So I’m going to live. And I’m going to send all of these sons of bitches into the furnace in my stead.

“Viper, you son of a cunt, come with me. I’ve got something to show you.”

“I’m busy, you fat fuck,” I grunted, inclining my head at my glass of whiskey.

“Jesus Christ, you cocksucker, it’s too fucking hot for that Scottish swill. We drink rum down here, boy! Now get your ass out into the backyard—I’ve got a new toy and for once, she don’t have no pussy.”

“Did you finally make up with your parish priest for all the times he stuck his fingers up your butt when you were in first grade?” I muttered as I followed Fatman out into the field behind the clubhouse.

Once upon a time, there was an ice cream factory on this land, and there are still a few old, derelict factory buildings left, with their walls falling in, windows all smashed, and dead grass adorning their pathways. Most of this space we use for riding, for fighting, or fucking if you can’t find an empty room—a not uncommon phenomenon on Friday and Saturday nights.

Once outside, I found Fatman dragging a huge, black package, bound in a leather case.

“Did you take up the cello? Finally fulfilling your dreams of playing at Carnegie Hall?” I asked Fatman, a pit of dread rising in my belly. I didn’t want to see what this thing was.

I had a bad fucking feeling about this. It was as long as a fishing rod but by the way the package clattered to the ground when Fatman dropped it in front of me, it weighed at least a hundred times what a rod and reel should weigh.

Besides. Fatman isn’t the fishing type.

More the hunting type.

He unzipped the case and I had to bite my tongue to keep from cursing. I knew exactly what it was. They had issued them to us in Afghanistan.

A Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle. Scope. Ten round magazine. The kind of gun that can practically disintegrate a man with one shot, shattering skeletons and vaporizing whatever was left. But that’s overkill. We used them for long range missions, where the fifty’s power would stand up over several kilometers. Or for taking out jeeps and trucks. Or…

“Helicopter killer. You heard about Bolo, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. I had. I knew Bolo—a son of a bitch, just as bad as Fatman, but Haitian, focused more on the housing projects. We ran different parts of the city, different parts of the county—Bolo’s guys didn’t cross us much and I think we all preferred it that way.