A Leap in the Dark (The Assassins of Youth MC Book 2)(3)
Mahalia helped me out, lifting her chin with pride. “We do okay. We’re revitalizing the city from the ghost town Allred Chiles left behind. No one wanted to live close to the loonies, but now that Chiles is gone and we’re in charge, people are starting to move back. Real estate is doing a brisk business.”
Dingo added, “Sledgehammer opened up a butcher shop slash grocery store deli, and Yosemite Sam has a coffee shop. Maximus renovated the old barber shop. I’m the club’s IT man, floating from job to job.”
Levon snorted. “A barber shop? Oh, I can just see my men stampeding to get in on that opportunity at the ground level. And to move from their luxurious digs here on the mountain down to Hurricane—”
“Avalanche,” I practically spat.
“I can just see the rush now. Listen, I mean no disrespect—”
“None taken,” gushed Mahalia, back on Levon’s side.
“—but you can’t begin to offer my men a better life. And isn’t that the bottom line? Who’s offering a better life, a better future?”
“We launder money,” Dingo blurted.
Everyone looked at him with bulging eyes. Levon tilted his head thoughtfully. “Really? You launder ill-gotten gains through these businesses?”
“All the time!” bragged Dingo.
Now, I wasn’t up on the nature of my brother-in-law’s motorcycle club. I knew it was a “one percenter” outlaw club, and they had some illegal doings with the polygs inside the Cornucopia walls. The Assassins of Youth, they called themselves, as if joining was some kind of rite of initiation into a permanent macho adulthood. To me, it was plain old childish. I loved Gideon and his efforts to transform the town. I even liked the members Mahalia had shown me photos of, the aforementioned Maximus with his flowing silver hair and James Brolin looks. Dust Bunny had a geology degree from Stanford and was prospecting too in more ways than one, working out at the mine. Yosemite Sam and Sledgehammer looked as rough as their names implied, but I’d seen photos of Sledgehammer cooing and kissing his Leonberger dog, and even Yosemite Sam was intently into the details of making the perfect cappuccino.
In other words, they weren’t all bad to the bone as you’d expect from an outlaw motorcycle club. I could see my sister’s attraction to the macho lifestyle, although she would not wear her leather jacket with a “Property of Gideon Fortunati” patch. Not after what she’d been through, being kidnapped by the fundies, the fundamentalists out at Cornucopia who held her for five years, turning her into a deadened Morbot like the rest of them. She’d been their property, and she only escaped when they threatened to marry off her fifteen-year-old daughter Vonda to some creepazoid. I will be forever grateful to Gideon for helping her out of that mess.
Now Mahalia was paying it forward by running the nonprofit Save Our Baby Brides. We were hoping to save some young men too, but from what Levon said, no one particularly wanted to be saved.
“That’s part of my job,” explained Dingo. “Insert, layer, and extract funds from various businesses in Avalanche and Bullhead City where the mother chapter is. Our lawyer Slushy taught me how to do it.” It was sort of adorable, the way the brown-skinned, seemingly innocent boy was proud of his money laundering expertise. After a young adulthood rooting through garbage cans and sleeping in an abandoned school, he had reason to be proud.
“Hm,” said Levon. “You got any martial arts studios down there? I’ve always wanted to open up a Krav Maga studio. Even better if I can launder Liberty Temple money through there.”
Mahalia balked at that. “Well, I’m not so sure there’d be a need for a martial—”
“That’d be so cool!” raved Dingo, executing a few poses that probably vaguely approximated some martial arts stances. Or at least ones they showed on Star Trek. “I know all kinds of guys from my computer school who’d want to attend that.”
Mahalia shrugged, indulgent of her Prospect. “Well. You men can discuss that in more detail. I don’t get involved with the business side of the club. Meanwhile, you said there are at least four men who’d like an exam, whether or not they want to come to Avalanche?”
Levon was just opening his mouth to answer when an abrasive, loud young man yelled from the sidelines, scaring all of us. “Jonah! Jonah Garff!” The kid with a rich, soft crewcut came bounding out from the living room area like a gymnast. This kid infused the area with a fresh energy, and boy, was he sprightly. He even had a sleeveless sports jersey on like some kind of springy cheerleader, he was that full of enthusiasm.
He took Dingo by the hands, his eyes shining as though he gazed on the Ghost of Christmas. “Jonah Garff! We were ordained deacons together!”
Boys aged twelve to fourteen were ordained deacons into the Aaronic Priesthood. Boys fourteen through sixteen were teachers, and if a boy inside Cornucopia was lucky enough to make it to a priesthood, well, he probably had it made for life. I wasn’t sure about the twisted vagaries of how they warped Mormonism inside those terrifying walls, but some of it seemed to approximate the regulations on the outside. Not that I was the most shining example. I was pretty much a non-practicing Saint.
“Indeed we were!” trilled Dingo, wringing his friend’s hands. “You vanished before I did.”
“And wound up here after a couple of filthy, frightening years on the streets!” cried the crewcut boy.