Bad to the Bones(52)
“Knoxie, what’s—”
He was gone almost before I could finish the sentence.
“—wrong, why do you have a bandage?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KNOXIE
Knoxie felt bad as he showered down in the hangar.
He knew he shouldn’t feel bad. Keeping secrets from old ladies was club policy. It was a given, everyone did it, and it was usually for the benefit of the old ladies. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. And most of it was none of their f*cking business anyway.
But it had been painfully obvious how he’d torn himself from her just as she was probing his chest, her fingers like little sensors zeroing in on his wound. He could explain the bullet wound in his calf, but how to explain where someone had torn and gnawed at his pec? He couldn’t even explain that wound to his brothers.
Some things were just best left unsaid, but that didn’t stop Knoxie from dwelling on it. Nogales had gone pretty much tits up. After finding the address Rafael had texted him—a major trap house in the slummiest area of Nogales, which was saying a lot, with surveillance cameras pointed every which way—Knoxie had hunkered down to survey the house. But it became obvious pretty quick that the DEA also had eyes on the house. Knoxie thought he’d scoped out a blind spot in the cameras’ field of vision and parked his bike safely behind a cage.
He was feeling highly uncomfortable being on the fed’s radar like that. Even though he wasn’t approaching the trap house, it was obvious he was watching it. Just as he was about to make like a baby and head out, some major cluck burst from the house and headed straight toward him. It was obvious the tweaker had a pocket rocket stuffed in his filthy pants. Knoxie wasn’t about to create a scene in front of the fed’s undercover car, so he started up his engine and jammed on his brain bucket.
The cluck kept coming straight for him. Just as Knoxie pulled out from behind the cage, he passed the guy. The guy didn’t want to make a scene either—just wanted to let Knoxie know he knew Knoxie was there. He didn’t seem to recognize Knoxie, but they passed within eight feet of each other, the cluck narrowing his eyes so evilly they were slits. Knoxie could easily see from the unruly hair and lack of a dental plan that it was none other than Riker, former sergeant-at-arms for The Bare Bones. Only way more trashed, hardened, and with much less to lose now.
“Eat shit and die, esé,” Riker had seethed at him.
So the trip hadn’t been a total failure. He had to tell his brothers all the details of Nogales and the Bihari venture, leaving out, of course, many details about the exalted swami. He could leave in the part about being bound because it was a pretty good escape story. The dead daimyo and the swami with his head stuck inside a TV might eventually come up again anyway, so Knoxie told the story straight, with some omissions.
Nothing like that had happened to him in the Gulf. He’d been imprisoned a few times, but the torture had all been of a painful nature. Nothing weirdly sexual. Of course, the swami probably didn’t even realize he was torturing Knoxie. He thought he was perpetrating some of his usual therapy—with the added benefit of getting off on it, naturally. Now Knoxie knew firsthand how Bellamy must have felt to be laid open bare like that, wide open and helpless like a f*cking squirrel caught in a trap. The swami was the predatory bird, pecking away with his ravenous beak, and Knoxie felt no compunction whatsoever about what he’d done.
He hadn’t even stuck around to see if the swami was still alive. He imagined he’d of heard word by now if the guru had been put in the ground, and Ford said he’d verify on the down low with Maddy and her hospital connections whether there was any chatter. Nothing, so far. Knoxie exited the shower trailer feeling like a new man—a slightly molested and abused new man. But he felt like he could move ahead with Bellamy now, and of course his ego was hugely pumped that he’d been the first man to ever make her come.
Halfway up the inner stairs, his phone chimed. Rafael’s burner phone. Knoxie jogged back down and into the hangar to avoid any unwanted eavesdroppers.
Rafael was practically whispering in Spanish, so he was obviously still inside the Bihari walls. “There was some kind of altercation down at the guard shack after I left?”
“Yes. That loco ruler of yours took me at gunpoint, tied me up. I got away. What’s his status? He’s alive, I presume?”
“Yes, but he’s pretty f*cked up. Someone had to pick a whole sheet of glass out of his face. They think he might lose the other eye.”
Knoxie felt a momentary pang of sadness. Not at the loss of the pervert’s other eye, but that now the guru would be some kind of martyr to his devotees. “But the guard—”
“El guardia está muerto. I understand you had to get free, but you can’t just go around shooting these guys. Not until we’ve set up the operation. So far they still think I’m just their courier, their truck driver.”
“I know, I know. I didn’t really have a choice. There were two armed guys outside the shack, too.”
“It was a miracle you got out. Listen, you asked about a laboratory. I think I found one up in a side canyon. It looks like they might be manufacturing their own drugs, although it doesn’t look like any meth I’ve ever seen. I stole some vials I can give you. Maybe you can test them. There is a woman named Poona running the lab. Something called Operation Eggplant is going on.”