Bad to the Bones(69)
“You’d tell me, now, wouldn’t you,” said Knoxie, “if our brothers were planning some initiation ceremony for me?”
“I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you,” said Speed, “but I hope they don’t have anything in store for you like they did for me. That was brutal.”
Speed never mentioned his ordeal by fire. All Knoxie knew about it was that he’d eaten some magical mushrooms while alone on a vision quest out in the desert, and he’d run into some Furries having a team cream in their little fun fur costumes. That part alone would’ve been hilarious, but the mythological story went on to involve that hit in the Coronado National Forest where Ford and Lytton’s pop Cropper had been shredded.
So no, Knoxie had never asked about it. Until now. “Really? What happened?”
They had just passed behind a huge speaker stack, walking through a cloud of pot smoke. Knoxie hadn’t been smoking it the past several months. It was a demotivating factor. He could detect the skunky scent of Dr. Driving Hawk’s Eminence Front strain. Living in Lytton’s spare cottage on his Mormon Mountain property, Knoxie whiffed that scent often. Speed had to shout to be heard over the twanging of the band, and he looked around furtively.
“It was the event that started everything on a downhill trajectory for Maddy,” Speed said mysteriously. He didn’t seem to want to add anything, but finally the urge to blurt got the better of him. “Everything went balls up when I freaked out and wound up laying down my ride over by Last Chance Canyon.”
Knoxie took a stab in the dark. “That’s the scene of some pretty intense vortices. According to the herbal essences, anyway.”
“Exactly. I thought I was being sucked into a vortex. Sort of understandable with a couple guys who look like H.R. Pufnstuf following you in a cage. Anyway, the moral of the story is basically, the club’s not going to pull any more stunts like that on Prospects. They’ll probably just make you pass a raw egg back and forth from your mouth to Bobo Segrist’s, or eat an omelet made out of vomit.”
Knoxie’s stomach clenched reflexively. He had to tell himself he’d seen much worse. But Speed went on.
“Or give you the extreme piercing, the ‘Chainus.’ Or make you perform fellatio on a baboon.”
“I’ll take the egg,” said Knoxie. “Sounds less time-consuming.”
“The point of the story is, we’ve dialed back the crazy, especially since Cropper was—since Cropper died. In fact…” Speed looked from side to side like a cartoon spy. His voice was almost inaudible over the booming bass that vibrated the ground beneath Knoxie’s boots. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d just give you your full colors and be done with it. You’ve done so much for the club.”
Knoxie nodded. He knew he’d done a lot for the club. Each time he hit another Presención cartel member he pledged his loyalty to the club. But the Sinaloans had started to fight back. August, who ran The Bare Bones’ downtown pot dispensary, had almost been ambushed in the bathroom of a weed convention in Phoenix. He escaped by the skin of his teeth, leaving behind a pound of organic, long-flowering sativa. And Duji had been waylaid in the parking lot of a Pottery Barn. Luckily he was armed, but he’d had to explain to security guards why he’d been shooting off a Glock in a mall. His wife Dominique was even more pissed because she’d dropped and broken a lot of pottery, or whatever they sold in those places, Knoxie didn’t know.
“Hey, Speed!” Some brothers from the Flagstaff charter approached. A painfully handsome guy Knoxie knew as Dayton Navarro asked Speed some questions about the shoes on his bike’s cam chains, so Knoxie wandered off. His eyes glazed over at that wrench’s talk, and Bellamy knew it.
He saw Faux Pas doing tequila shots with some guys from Bullhead City. Gollywow, done up in his R&B threads—a purple glittery suit with wide lapels and a bouffant hairdo covered with a hairnet—was ogling a pass-around who turned out to have a Property Of patch on, so Knoxie made a sharp right in the direction of the hangar. It was almost time to empty the garbage bags from the bins around there.
Ford stuck out an arm and stopped Knoxie. “Come on, man. I’ve got something to give you.”
They wound their way through the crowd until they reached Ford’s IED building. NO SMOKING had been stenciled on the bricks sometime in the twentieth century. EXPLOSIVES. It was fitting that Ford still used it for that purpose.
When Knoxie saw Lytton waiting inside with folded arms, he became wary. Why would the President and his second be pulling him aside during a big party? Lytton was holding a few pieces of paper stapled together, some form with blanks filled in.
Ford started out. “We didn’t want to do this during chapel because it seemed more personal.” Lytton nodded in agreement. It was eerie how similar the two men looked, although they had different Native American mothers. “We just want to thank you on a personal level, not a club level, for all you’ve done for us. You were instrumental in getting those kooks run out of town. I’m sure the Attorney General never would’ve succeeded in getting Bihari declared an illegal city if it weren’t for all your efforts at the beginning. You were there with Lytton on that mesa when you first picked up those busloads of alkies—among others.”
Knoxie had to grin at the oblique mention of Bellamy. This meeting was something fun, not something f*cked. “It was mostly thanks to my CI’s help that I was able to infiltrate that loony bin.”