I take a deep breath and swallow my spit. I’m not much of a public speaker. “Here’s the situation. The Raiders vandalized the Patonquin site and The White Van. We went after them, shook the trees, but they’d gone to ground. We torched their clubhouse and Rab Daugherty’s tattoo parlor.”
“That was a public service. Their clubhouse was a rat-infested shit heap.” Cue interjects. Pig Iron raises a beer in agreement.
Growing up, Heavy, Charge, and I used to hunt rats out back of this place by the junk heaps, but I guess we’ve got a short memory.
“Then the Raiders attacked Fay-Lee and Roosevelt,” I continue.
“And Story,” Nickel snarls.
The way we hear it, it was more that Story attacked the Raiders, but I’ll allow it.
“And Story. For that, they paid in blood.” I cross myself. Mom was a good Polish Catholic before she broke bad and took up with Dad. She raised us in the church, and Grandma kept dragging us there after Mom bailed.
“Not all of them paid.” Nickel stares me down. “The skinny guy with a tattoo. He’s in the wind.”
“True. So, that’s a good dozen or so men we can’t find, and we’ve burned down all their assets and hidey holes. We’re fighting an insurgency.”
“I did that once. It sucked.” Dizzy leans back and sniffs. He did two tours in Iraq. He was a jarhead. Hard to imagine now with his 80s’s rocker ‘fro and mountain man beard.
“Knocker Johnson is not going to quit. And he’s not smoking his own product like the Daughertys.”
“Motherfuckin’ blown job.” Eighty slaps his palms on the table. “Been plaguing us for too damn long. I say we call chaos on Knocker Johnson, the Daughertys, and any asshole in a Raiders cut. Put an end to this bullshit once and for all.” There it is. The stupid idea.
“Amen,” Grinder adds. “Goddamn blown job.”
In this club, everything traces back to the blown job. It went down back when we were young. Heavy’s dad Slip was president. His mom Linda had just had Hobs, and she was having a hard time. Turned out to be cancer, but we didn’t know it then.
Slip was up in the rotation to make a run into New York. Linda asked him to stay home. Stones agreed to take the load. Brought his kid Knocker along for the ride. To us kids, Knocker was a legend. Eighteen and neck-deep in pussy with a green mohawk, a Willie G. special with a blacked-out engine, and full sleeves.
They got busted by the state police a few miles from the county line. Under the cartons of cigarettes? Five crates of Kalashnikovs. Stones and Knocker both went away on twenty-year bids. Stones died on the inside.
Stones’ older sons, Dutchy and Inch, blacked out their Steel Bones ink and founded the Rebel Raiders with the Daughertys.
When Hobs was fourteen, Dutchy brained him with a baseball bat, fixed it so Hobs can’t read or remember how to get places. We put Dutchy in the ground. Then Inch attacked Crista Holt. Scrap killed him with his bare hands. We’ve been the Hatfields and McCoys for most of our lives.
Steel Bones Construction billed over eight hundred million dollars last year, and we’re still mired in this backwoods bullshit.
It’s past time we put it behind us. Especially now that some of us are starting our own families. We want better than we had comin’ up. For the men like Pig Iron and now Dizzy—the men whose women have been hurt—peace ain’t an acceptable objective.
While I been recollecting, the conversation has been continuing without me.
“We can call chaos, but that does no good if we can’t find their asses,” Wall points out. Wall’s got two little ones at home now and another on the way. He’s got good reason to vote our way.
I steer the conversation back to where we want to go. “When we beat the bushes, we spread ourselves too thin. And we can’t drop a dozen bodies. The Feds would have a field day.” In all honesty, I think we could pull it off, but it’s not the plan.
“So what are you proposing?” Grinder has lost his patience down at the end, and he’s directing the question to Heavy. “Cue and Big George won’t agree to nothin’ that’ll blow back on the businesses. Pig and Dizzy want blood. And Bullet probably wants to lure the fuckers out with some kind of box-and-stick trap with pussy in it.”
Bullet shakes himself from whatever he’s daydreaming about. “Hey. Huh? What?” Then he snickers. “Yeah. That’s a good idea.”
I look to Heavy, and he gives me the nod.
“We throw everything we have into finding Rab Daugherty. We grease every palm. Stake out every known hangout. We throw every man and every resource we have at hunting his ass down. Nickel, can you bring in Frisco?”
Nickel has a side hustle bounty hunting for a guy in Pyle. Could come in handy.
Nickel nods. “There a finder’s fee?”
“Twenty thousand. Cash.”
Nickel takes out his phone and starts texting. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rab shows up hogtied in our parking lot within the hour. Frisco is a motivated man.
At the far end of the table, Dizzy’s getting restless. His sole concern has got to be destroying the club who dared lay hands on his old lady.
“Why Rab?” Dizzy asks. “Justice needs to be eye-for-an-eye. Rab’s an armchair general. We start taking out their foot soldiers, they’ll scatter.”
Dizzy wants to go after the skinny guy who touched Fay-Lee. Skinny’s time will come, but he’s a pawn.
“You forget. Rebel Raiders were once Steel Bones.” Heavy joins the debate, his great rumbling voice silencing the side chatter and fussing, as it always does. “They ain’t cowards. They believe we’ve instigated a war, and they’re on the side of righteousness.”
“Rab’s the VP.” I tag back in. “He’ll know where Knocker is. Or at least how to contact him. And Rab’s lost his source of income. He’s gonna be making moves. He’s our best bet. Besides, he’s an asshole. Outside of the Raiders, he’s not a liked man.”
“This what you want, prez?” Dizzy looks past me to Heavy.
“It is.”
Dizzy pauses a long moment. This is it. Dizzy’s gonna tip this one way or the other. He’s the generation that bridges the old timers and our crew, patched in under Slip, but still riding hard. He commands the respect of all. If he nixes it, the plan dies.
Finally, he sighs and says, “Aye.”
“Seconded.” Grinder elbows Boots who’s dozed off again.
“Aye?” Boots sputters, looking to Grinder who gives him the nod.
“This is gonna take all our muscle away from the businesses. You say you don’t want us spread thin. That’s what this plan will do.” Cue’s scrubbing his bald head.
“Until we find Rab, Smoke and Steel will stand in for us.”
Wall has already called his people in our support club in Shady Gap. They’ll cover security until the job is done.
I look to Cue, see if he has anything else, but he’s satisfied.
“Vote?”
Heavy inclines his shaggy head.
A chorus of ayes fill the room. That went easier than I’d anticipated. “Get your marching orders from me at 06:00 in the commons. Come packing, and come ready to ride.”