Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(8)
“What’re you doing here, man?”
Sax became still and quiet, gaining Funkhauser’s attention. “I heard there’s an issue at stake now.”
Funkhauser quieted, too. “Yeah. Tormenta cut up a sweetbutt. Leo doesn’t want to rock the boat with him, so he’s trying to put the whole incident in the rearview.”
“Yeah. And I don’t think that can happen. I’ve got nothing to lose by talking to him. He here?”
“Yeah, in his office. But I’m telling you, Sax. He won’t be f*cking swayed. He—we—needs Tormenta’s business.”
“And what business exactly might that be? Mexican hookers?”
Funkhauser looked perplexed. “Hookers? What do you mean? No, we’ve been moving Sinaloan White up to Salt Lake City. Huge market there, as you know.”
Doubting it was just heroin, Sax moved down the hallway to confront his brother. He nodded at a couple of sweetbutts he didn’t recognize. Right. Why would he recognize any after all this time? He heard Brenda Ridings was still there. He used to push up on her all the time, when he was bored. She was all right.
The office door was ajar. Sax steeled himself. Leo had become Prez like their dad before them through sheer force of will. The presidency should theoretically have gone to Sax, but Sax just didn’t have it in him to care that much. He’d been gone at school much of the time when Leo grabbed power, and didn’t much care. He returned armed with a useless PhD to become Veep. He respected the family business. He just wasn’t as gung-ho as Leo.
“Brother.”
Normally, it would’ve been funny the way Leo’s mouth opened like he was catching flies. He rolled slowly back in his chair away from his desk. Sax figured I might as well make use of my advantage of surprise, so he barreled right ahead.
“I heard there’s been some abuse of sweetbutts going on around here by none other than Tony Tormenta. Why are you in business with that f*ckwad, Leo? He’s nothing but a loose cannon. And after what happened to Panhead, shouldn’t we be keeping a low profile? You’re in the feds’ crosshairs, Leo. They’re watching you. Why associate with asshats who post piles of drugs on Facebook?”
Leo finally gathered himself. Pushing up from the chair, he waddled impudently up to Sax, like he was going to bump him with his beer belly. Wow, Leo had gone to seed. “Well, well. Isn’t it f*cking easy to tell us how to run our business when you only bother coming around every couple years?”
Harte stepped out from Sax’s shadow. “I asked him to talk to you, dad. You won’t f*cking listen to me because you think I’m a kid. But you respect Uncle Sax.”
Leo raised one eyebrow. “I do?” He looked Sax up and down with a critical eye. “Listen, Sax. You don’t know club business anymore. Why don’t you just take a step back and keep playing with your rocks? You’ve got some f*cking nerve coming in here and telling me how to run things.”
Sax said firmly, “All I know is when women start getting slashed to ribbons, it needs to be stopped.”
Leo nodded. “Oh, I agree. Who wouldn’t agree with that? Right, Harte?” Switching gears, he took the brotherly stance now, putting a hand on Sax’s bicep. “But you see, brother, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Tormenta holds the key to an important connection for us.”
“The Sinaloan White?”
Sax could tell by the way Leo looked sideways at Harte that it was not just the H. Leo practically broke out in a cold sweat, that’s how nervous it seemed to make him. “Yeah, right, the heroin. Makes a lot of Benjamins for this outfit, Sax. You can see where I’m coming from.” Leo practically elbowed him now. “Me and Lulu just bought a place in Lynwood with a view of the peaks. Dad always wanted to live up there, but never made it past University Heights.”
We. Leo loved to throw around the fact that he’d been married for decades, while Sax’s one brief union had ended in tragedy. “That’s great, Leo. But listen, I’m serious as a bag of Rottweilers. You can’t be exposing the club to that sort of bullshit. You might think sweetbutts are mindless, brainless robots here to pleasure us. But when they get riled, they can rise up, man.”
Leo chuckled. “The Rise of the Sweetbutts. Sounds like a great movie, Sax, but never gonna happen. They’re happy here! Where else can they get treated like this—free food, a roof over their head, a built-in family they go everywhere with? These chicks are from the streets. Their only other option is, well, selling themselves on a street corner. You’ve got to admit. None of them will win any IQ awards.”
Sax frowned. “I think you underestimate them, brother. Remember that sweetbutt Lorna who left us to get her master’s in psychology?”
Leo chuckled. “Oh, right. The soft sciences, as you would say. Don’t you still look down on that shit? So she became a shrink to analyze other sluts’ problems? Listen. Believe me when I say I’ve got things under control. Tormenta went back to his place in Prescott. He’s not about to start making a habit of cutting up whores. I’m sure it was a one-time deal. She bit his dick while giving him a blowjob. I’m sure my saintly son here didn’t tell you that part.”
Harte started huffing and puffing, but Sax broke in. “Listen, Leo. You exiled me, but I still have a stake in this club. Besides the fact that it’s in my blood, I still have voting rights, I still have all the rights of any hometown fully-patched member. And I’m here to register my f*cking skepticism of this Tormenta *. I’ve worked with him before, in case you forget. I once saw him take an axe and hack off the legs of two teenagers who stole about two large from a stash house. He’s a sadist, Leo, I mean in the true sense of the word, as in the Marquis deSade.”