Bad to the Bones(29)
“You can stay here,” Knoxie told Rafael, pocketing the truck keys so Rafael couldn’t bail. “No reason for you to get all up in my beef. But if anyone from the cartel asks, remember. I’m a member of the Cutlasses MC. The Cutlasses motorcycle club. Got it?”
“Cutlasses,” Rafael repeated in English.
“Right. I’m just not wearing my cut—my black leather vest—because I wanted to be incognito when I jacked your truck.”
“Jacked my truck,” Rafael echoed.
Rafael looked mystified, but Knoxie left it that way. They had two separate missions. Rafael was taking down the Presención cartel. That was fine with Knoxie. He didn’t think The Bare Bones did any business with Presención. If anything, it was those damned Baal’s Minions or the loathed Cutlasses who worked with that particular cartel. No loss if Knoxie inadvertently helped someone take down the Presencións, while also achieving his own mission.
Gingerly he took one of the peed-upon bricks of dope from the back of the truck. He should’ve had more foresight and left maybe one package pristine, but at least he was wearing gloves for the job. Choosing what looked like a service entrance, he went right on in, unimpeded. In what turned out to be the kitchen, a daimyo with his AK slung across his back was making a sandwich. Knoxie was used to the strange juxtaposition of criminally-inclined tattooed thugs doing everyday things, like eating ribs or trying to remember their PIN to their debit card. The only difference here was, this dude was dressed head to toe in purple, and he had that f*cking locket necklace that made the wearer look like a batshit Scientologist.
So Knoxie just nodded casually at the guy, and the guy nodded back. Knoxie kind of hefted the brick of dope. It must have been a common sight, guys transporting ginormous bricks of horse through the kitchen while you made a sandwich with whole wheat bread and alfalfa sprouts. It angered Knoxie even more that it was okay to do this. Especially when he found a common sort of great room with at least ten nubile attractive sweetbutts—that’s all he could call them, really—draped around in various lounging or yoga positions. They were sweetbutts, club whores, pass-arounds—women dedicated solely to the head case games of that twisted swami. Just imagining Bellamy dripping with lavender garments doing the Half Downward Dog on a shag rug pissed him off beyond comprehension.
“Hello, ladies,” he said, waving the dope around. “Personal delivery. Where can I find Shakti?” He didn’t know how else to address him other than “master,” and he’d rather have a Strawberry Qwik enema than do that.
One enlightened twat said, “The Blessed One is in the inner sanctuary doing his daily meditation. Can I take that in for you?”
“Thanks, but my boss told me this needs to be a personal delivery. There’s a message attached to it.” Knoxie didn’t want to show his hand until he found out certain information, though, so he asked the room at large, “Which one of you is Virginia?”
All ten women looked confused. That was when Knoxie realized that she wouldn’t be called Virginia anymore. So he clarified, “She’s the little sister of Asanga. Two sisters from Cottonwood down in the valley.”
That helped, and most of the women uttered “Ah!” But the news didn’t appear to be good. The Chosen One who had spoken before said, “She’s, ah, at her place of worship.”
Remembering that “place of worship” meant “job,” Knoxie laid on the charm. He knew that he had dimples in his cheeks when he smiled a certain way. “Where might that be? Our boss in Sinaloa wants me to tell her something.”
All the women looked at each other, no doubt suspecting something was up. Virginia’s sister had recently vanished, as far as they knew under a cloud of wrongdoing. Virginia was probably doing the same thing wrong, and no one wanted to be associated with it. One girl started to say, “Her new place of worship is down at the composting—”
But Knoxie didn’t have a chance even to fume with rage, for some overly serious guy with creases down his face so deep they looked like scars entered. He held his fists out as though they gripped bombs, silencing the women without even one word. Knoxie turned his wrath on the creased guy, sending swords of hatred out through his eyes.
“What’s going on?” asked the guy.
The helpful girl said, “Swami Bodhi. This man is here with a personal delivery for the Outlaw Prophet.”
That pissed off Knoxie even more. Everything these people said and did pissed him off. It just went so against the grain of everything he’d been taught to call a sick loser like Shakti an outlaw. Knoxie used his best cum factory game face to say, “Yes, a direct shipment from Sinaloa.”
Swami Bodhi softened a bit when he saw the dope. “That’s fine, but no one can interrupt him when he’s meditating.”
Something occurred to Knoxie. “Bodhi? Might you be the infamous Bodhisattva, the healing doctor?”
Of course this flattery got Knoxie everywhere. The guy stepped closer to Knoxie as though expecting to be worshipped. Knoxie saw that he fiddled with a prescription pill bottle in his hand. “Yes, that’s me. Why is this particular shipment so personal?”
Once he had the confirmation that this idiot had been raping Bellamy and was even fake “engaged” to her, Knoxie just lost it. He knew that to be a successful—and true—outlaw, one had to be able to maintain one’s cool in moments of stressful negotiation.