Through a Glass, Darkly (Assassins of Youth MC #1) (29 page)

At least I had a gavel, which I banged. “We’ve got a lot of area to cover today.” Men murmured in agreement, as we had so many times at Papa Ewey’s table. “The big agenda item today is the foundation of Mahalia’s new nonprofit corporation, Save the Child Brides.”

“Could it have a better acronym?” asked Dust Bunny. He was nominally a Prospect, but seeing as how he’d been around outlaw clubs for so many decades, we made an exception and let him sit in at chapel. We needed a quorum. “STCB doesn’t roll off the tongue.”

“What do you suggest, dumbass?” snarled Yosemite Sam. He was thrilled to be here, in at the ground level of a new charter. He just always snarled. He’d had a rough life. “We could call it Help Our Baby Brides, just so we could say HOBB.”

Sledgehammer sucked thoughtfully on his marijuana pipe stem. Since I’d quit smoking finally, with the help of a nicotine patch, I’d decreed no smoking at all, not in chapel, and not anywhere in the High Dive, which we’d bought and taken over for our clubhouse. It was still a working bar during non-chapel hours, and we’d kept on Skippy Cavanaugh. Most people hated him, but I reasoned he could come in handy with his Cornucopia connections. We couldn’t pretend Cornucopia didn’t still exist. We were operating in their backyard. And I had a feeling we’d be dealing with them again on many levels, for better or worse. “SOBB. Save Our Baby Brides.”

“Hey, that’s not bad, actually,” I said. All six of us nodded. I wondered if I should bang the gavel. I looked to Slushy McGill for advice. A former book cooker for a major Sonoran cartel, Slushy had been the Bare Bones’ lawyer for awhile now, guiding them to their current heights of financial viability. Since he was close to the founder of The Bent Zealots, he worked for them, too. Slushy knew about the rape of Zealot Ormond Tangier by Tim Breakiron. He’d smoothed the way for me when it came time for Papa Ewey to find out about Breakiron’s demise.

Sax had loaned Slushy to us for a couple of weeks as he’d set up our new bylaws. Slushy now gave me the minutest nod possible, so no one would see I wasn’t completely in charge and knowledgeable about all aspects of being club Prez.

I banged the gavel. “Decided. Mahalia’s new corporation is Save Our Baby Brides.”

“I’ll start with the letterhead,” said Slushy brightly. “I can see it all now. A girl in a wedding dress behind prison bars.”

“Well,” I said, “we might not want to get so graphic about it. We’ll be looking for donors, for benefactors. Don’t want to scare them off.”

“Why not?” said Slushy. “We’re calling a spade a spade here. People need to be grabbed by the balls, have their faces dunked in it.”

If Slushy put it that way, it did make sense. “Well, show me some rough drafts first. Dust Bunny, write all that down.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Dust Bunny still wasn’t used to being both Secretary and Treasurer for our new chapter. No one else wanted to be either. I knew Yosemite Sam had questionable reading skills, if any, so I’d made him Veep. Many was the time I’d seen him scanning the photos of a newspaper, back when we’d used them as blankets to sleep under in Salt Lake. And Sledgehammer, although a seasoned Marines combat vet like myself, well, I’d seen him reading a milk carton once, so I’d made him Sergeant-at-Arms. Dust Bunny, with his Stanford geology degree, was a much better fit for the other two positions. He was already training Dingo to take over the secretarial part of the job once Dingo became fully patched. “The big agenda item is using club funds to purchase the house on Little Wing Street. Everyone knows most of it’s your own money, Gideon, so I don’t foresee any big roadblock.”

I nodded. “Everyone in favor of the new safe house for Save Our Baby Brides.”

Everyone nodded and said aye, of course, except for Slushy, who wasn’t technically a member. Slushy brought up a new agenda item now.

“It’s these Pleasure of Women guys. Frankly, they seem like a bunch of airheaded whiners to me. Present company excepted.”

The white-haired silver fox, Maximus, nodded. “No offense taken. They’re good men, Slushy. What’s your beef?”

“Well, on several occasions they’ve approached me complaining that we’ve taken over ‘their’ clubhouse. Now, in the old days of the Bare Bones, this whining would’ve been taken care of at the end of a tire iron. I understand that things are more touchy-feely these days. But we still can’t let them run around sobbing into their beers. We need to show them there’s a new kid in town.”

Yosemite Sam harrumphed. “A new
club
in town, more like.”

Slushy explained patiently. “It’s a saying, Yosemite. Means there’s a whole new game. A whole new ball of wax.”

“A whole new ballgame,” said Sledge.

Slushy nodded. “A whole new level.”

“A whole new you,” added Dust Bunny.

Everyone looked at him, frowning.

“Anyway,” said Slushy, “I was thinking. Maybe these crybabies wouldn’t blubber so heavily if we helped them open their own clubhouse. We can’t have them playing pool in here flying their babyish colors. It’s frankly mortifying having guys around with patches saying ‘My bike is my psychiatrist’ and ‘You are about to earn your “I Just Got My Ass Kicked” patch.’”

“Yeah,” snorted Yosemite Sam. “One guy’s patch said ‘If you can read this, the bitch fell off.’”

Everyone actually laughed at that one, but Slushy’s point was made. We needed to get the Lazzat Un Nisa riding club members off our turf.

Slushy said, “I’ve already paid off the only realtor in town as a sort of retainer, so we can call on her anytime we need. She’s kind of a one-stop shop for all our needs, which brings me to you, Sledgehammer.”

Sledge looked around blankly. “Me?”

“I take it you guys will continue funneling iron through Cornucopia once the heat dies down.”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Rumor has it new guy in charge is named Verlan Turley.” Verlan Turley was the headman for the moment, anyway. There was a big power struggle going on with various high up muckety-mucks vying for control, each one probably as bad as the next. The new boss was the same as the old boss, as far as I was concerned, but I had to do business with them.

Yosemite Sam made a lip fart. “Verlan Turley.”

“Hey,” said Sledgehammer. “Get used to the names.”

I continued, “I’ve reached out to him tentatively to set up an initial meeting. I want to let him know the fact that Allred Chiles went to ‘spirit prison’ isn’t going to stand between meaningful and beneficial relations between Cornucopia and our club.”

“‘Spirit prison’?” asked Slushy.

I let Sledgehammer explain. It was good for my men to start learning the ins and outs of Cornucopia’s lingo. Especially if they were going to be pushing up on some of the refugee women I imagined would be streaming out of there in the coming months and years. Already Sledge had developed a sort of paternal relationship with Kimball. The fact that they were the same age led me to think it would soon be more than that, once Kimball traded her sensible black shoes for biker boots.

Sledgehammer spread his hands. “After you die, there are two places to go—paradise or spirit prison. See, you actually imprison yourself in this afterlife hell by being disobedient to the gospel while you lived. I like it. It takes away the idea there’s a vengeful God sitting up there on his throne, casting thunderbolts and decrees down on us. Spirit prison is only a temporary abode, though. Chiles will have the chance to repent.”

I snorted. “I doubt he will. He’s too full of himself.” Then I realized I was speaking as though Chiles was eavesdropping from his special prison, and I hurried to move on. I was neither a believer nor a non-believer at that point. I liked some of it and rejected some of it, as I did most religions I’d heard of. “Anyway, Slushy, your answer is yes, we’ll keep trading iron and using the fundies to funnel other things, once we establish those connections again. What were you saying about Sledgehammer?”

“Well,” said Slushy, “you mentioned that in Bullhead, you were a butcher. We’ll need to launder the gun or drug money. We can insert it down in Bullhead into one of Papa Ewey’s businesses. I can layer it through my offshore channels, and have it come out at the other end in your new butcher shop.”

Dust Bunny giggled. “Come out the other end.”

“New butcher shop?” queried Sledgehammer.

“Right,” said Slushy. “I aim to revitalize the downtown area. This way you guys are seen as saviors of the local citizenry, knights in shining chrome riding in to save Avalanche from becoming a ghost town.”

I said, “Several citizens have already approached me, telling me how glad they are we’re here.”

Slushy nodded. “There are oodles of opportunities downtown, and I think if Sledgehammer opens a butcher shop that might also sell groceries, you’ve got a new legit business that also benefits the community.”

Sledgehammer nodded. “Sounds good to me. I’ve talked to several ranchers. We can advertise grass-fed beef, that sort of thing.”

Slushy shaped his hand into a gun and aimed it at Sledgehammer. “Exactly. You can sell premium juice and offer reusable shopping bags. Have a deli with a place to eat out front.” It was obvious Slushy had put more thought into this than either I or Sledgehammer had. “There’s a place with hardwood floors I have in mind just up the street at the corner of Crosstown and Watchtower. We need to gentrify, take this ramshackle place back from the fundies. I was even thinking of starting up a local farmer’s market, but I don’t think we have enough people yet.” He shuffled some papers. “Yosemite Sam, what did you do in Bullhead?”

Yosemite Sam jutted out his lower jaw. “I ran a smoke shop.”

“Okay, that’s no good for the family atmosphere we want to portray, especially since Gideon here just quit. How’s about a coffee shop? That could go in conjunction with Sledgehammer’s deli, in the same block.”

Yosemite shot, “I thought fundies don’t drink coffee.”

“These ones do,” I said. “They do a lot of things regular fundies don’t. Mahalia is sort of going back to her mainstream church roots, but she’s sure as hell going to keep drinking coffee. I think the coffee shop sounds great. All in favor?”

Although it was Yosemite Sam’s livelihood at stake here, it was a club matter. Everything in town would be a club matter from now on in. We were literally rebuilding Avalanche from the ground up, infusing the town with our money, ill-gotten though it may have been. It was voted that Yosemite Sam would run a coffee shop, and Maximus, who’d retired from his soils engineering job, would reopen the musty, crumbling barber shop complete with barber shop pole out front. Dust Bunny and I would of course run the mine. Dingo would continue to be our IT guy. He’d work closely with Slushy on banking operations.

One last agenda item remained. I said, “According to Dingo there’s supposed to be an encampment of his Lost Boys up in Bountiful. Once Dingo’s patched in, I aim to take a ride up there, see if any want to join up. We need more manpower if we aim to turn this town around.”

Of course that was agreed to, and I was finally able to adjourn the meeting. Once out in the bar area, I headed for Dingo, giving Skippy a break tending bar. But Mahalia waylaid me, an urgent look on her face.

She took my lapels in her hands, the only person on earth who dared touch my colors—my “Prez” patch. Her years-long ordeal with Chiles was wearing off, and she bloomed with sensuous curves. She was experimenting, too, with fashion, many tips coming from Vonda. As a result, some of her experimental choices were distinctly teenaged, like her current flirty cheerleader’s skirt paired with a short-sleeved sweats decorated with puffy knit balls. Well. She was learning. It was all an improvement over the nun’s clothes of Cornucopia. “Gideon. I can’t wait any longer. I need you
now
.”

Whatever Mahalia meant by “need,” I was there to serve. We’d even cleaned out a back store room to serve as a sort of hotel room for members who didn’t have a place to live yet. Yosemite Sam was living there now until we could repair a two-bedroom cottage he’d bought near my house. He wouldn’t mind if we found comfort there.

She practically dragged me to the little room. The window looked out on the spires and mesas of Zion, the cinnamon and caramel layers of sandstone formed by eons of erosion. Not a bad little view for a tiny cramped bachelor’s pad.

Slamming the door, Mahalia pressed me to the wall. “You were gone when I woke up. Vonda said you all came here for a meeting.”

“Chapel,” I gasped, taking her tiny chin in my palm. “We approved your safe house. Only, the name’s changed. Sledgehammer came up with Save Our Baby—”

Mahalia shut me up with a kiss.

She’d been like this lately, and it was fine with me. Being liberated from her prison camp seemed to enliven her, give her freedom to act like a modern woman.

I was glad to believe in her ideas about life after—and before—death. How could something immortal just suddenly begin in time with our birth? I liked the idea I’d be reunited with her in our blissful afterlife. It wasn’t a static, bland reality in that realm, but an ever-changing, vibrant place where we’d keep learning and growing.

And I’d be with her. Forever.

MAHALIA

I was an
insatiable libertine. I was still having nightmares of Allred Chiles’ last moments. What could have happened versus what did happen. If things had gone slightly different at any given moment, my sleeping brain spun that out into frightful tales of violence and mayhem. I wasn’t used to seeing blood spurt so freely, and I’d just witnessed two men being shot to death.