Ride Steady(161)

Joker

THE NEXT MORNING, Joker was in Cherry’s office pouring a cup of coffee and about to nab a donut when his cell went.

He put the coffee down, pulled out his phone, and looked at the display.

Tack had texted.

Slade. ASAP. No weapons.

Joker clenched his teeth and left the coffee where it was. Cherry was there but in the garage talking to someone.

Which meant he didn’t have to delay getting on his bike by saying goodbye.

So he didn’t.

He headed off of Chaos and onto Broadway, knowing what Tack’s text meant.

Slade was the nightclub Knight Sebring owned.

Sebring had heard about Heidi.

And he was pissed.

Knight Sebring was loaded. On the surface of it, and Joker suspected some of that leaked into his skin, he was also total class.

But if you hurt a woman, he’d slit your throat, do it personally, and walk away forgetting you existed.

Contradictory to this, he had a stable of call girls.

He was not a pimp.

He was a protector.

Joker was no financial genius, but he knew Sebring made his money off that club. A lot of money. The man sold more drinks in a night than any other bar or restaurant in downtown Denver. And even if his cover charge was insane, night after night, the place was heaving.

He took a percentage off his girls, but Joker knew the men in his crew. They were skilled. They were cold. They believed in Sebring’s mission. And they were not available to Sebring 24/7 for them to provide crowd control and keep drugs out of his club (something else Sebring had zero tolerance for). They were available 24/7 to protect his girls.

His team was large, and paying them and providing what he did for his girls, client vetting and a serious smackdown if a guy didn’t treat one right, would be a hit. The man had to take a loss on his side business because Joker knew his percentage was dick.

Rumor had it Sebring did this because his mom had been a prostitute, and she’d been that because she’d been an addict. He’d lived that life with her from birth, and it had scarred him.

Joker got that. He’d entered the underground fight circuit because he’d taken so much physical abuse he had to let it out, and the way he did that had to be as violent as the way he took it.

As jacked as what Sebring did was, when he was a kid, he’d been unable to protect his mom. So now, he did what he had to do to work out the powerlessness that had to have carved itself into his soul.

Yeah, Joker definitely got that.

He parked outside Slade next to Tack, Hop, and Shy’s bikes. He then went to the door that would have a fifty foot long velvet rope leading up to it that night. He put his hand on the handle and opened it.

Slade was where men who put shit in their hair and women who spent eight hundred dollars on shoes went to hook up. So the only times Joker had been there were times like this. When it was empty, silent, cavernous, a huge shell of opulence that was creepy by daylight.

As he walked across the massive space, he saw Tack, Hop, and Shy heading his way.

They stopped in the middle.

“Knight heard about Heidi,” Joker started it.

Tack jerked up his chin. “Needless to say, this didn’t make him happy.”

“Do we want him in this?” Joker asked. “When it comes to shit like this, he has no off button and he doesn’t mind mess.”

“Considering Valenzuela’s involvement and the fact Knight keeps his ear to the ground, when he heard about Heidi, he didn’t go gonzo and tip Armageddon,” Tack told him. “Which would be why we’re here now. And why Mitch and Slim are up in Knight’s office with Hank Nightingale and Valenzuela’s on his way.”

That was a surprise.

“You’re shittin’ me,” Joker said.

“No,” Tack replied. “He’s got somethin’ to say and he wants a sit-down to say it. Whatever it is, Knight agreed not to cave his head in and instead act as mediator.”

“What he did to Heidi, we’re here, we sayin’ we’re not gonna cave his head in?” Joker asked and went on before any of them could answer. “And if that’s true, why?”

“Knight says he makes a convincing case he didn’t do it,” Tack said.

“Bullshit,” Joker bit out.

“You know Sebring’s no idiot,” Shy said quietly.

He did know that.

Fuck.

But if Valenzuela didn’t do it, who did?