Digger didn’t quite hide his flinch before he responded, “I know he said you came sniffin’ around.”
“Yeah, you see,” Beck started, moving toward the table, “I’m in this club. I got brothers in this club. And somehow, we got messed up with some big deal asshole who promised us easy money. Now I know, my old lady fucked that shit for us. I also know Valenzuela let us swing. All his money. His hotshot attorneys. We still got boys sittin’ behind bars. Where was Valenzuela then, he was gonna take such good care of us? We’re partners? The big man promises he’ll see to our brothers, promises opportunities of payback and jobs that’ll make life sweet, then he disappears. When he comes back, though, we don’t fuckin’ exist.”
He paused, no one said dick, so he kept going.
“So I had a think about it. Thought on it a long time. How’d we get messed up with this big deal asshole who left us swinging? This club, good club but no experience, never done shit like that, how suddenly is he all good to come to us and offer us lots of cake for taking care of an important part of his business? How did we earn that nod?”
No one said anything.
Beck did.
“Out of the blue, Valenzuela comes to us? It didn’t jive. So, like I said, I had a long think about it because, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I wanted to know. Delivered my old lady for a beatdown. Got my face carved up after. We got a beef with Chaos. Brothers in the joint. Lost our charter. I wanted to know. I give a shit about my club. So I asked around. Wanna know what I found out?”
Pacino looked to Digger.
Digger’s mouth was working, and it wouldn’t have surprised Beck if he’d pissed his pants.
Beck took the last steps to stand at his place at the table and kept his eyes locked on Digger.
“Seen Chew Lannigan recently, brother?” he asked.
More shifting, it was even more hostile, and he knew Digger had everyone’s attention.
“What’s this shit?” Web growled.
“We weren’t called on by the great and fucked-up Benito Valenzuela because he saw promise in our club and wanted to cut us in on his empire,” Beck announced, still staring at Digger.
He turned his attention to Web.
“Digger ran with Chew Lannigan back in the day. They’re still tight. Chew has a beef with Chaos and he allied with Valenzuela to work that beef out. And to firm up his position with Valenzuela, offer him an army, he offered us up,” he told Web and looked again to Digger. “Am I right?”
You could actually see the wheels turning in the motherfucker’s eyes before he spat, “It was a good opportunity, until your gash fucked it all up.”
Beck slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “This club is about honesty! Brotherhood! Loyalty! You thought this was a good opportunity, why didn’t you share how we got that opportunity?”
“You’re tryin’ to put this shit on me when it’s your fucked-up cunt who put us where we are,” Digger sneered.
“I think I handled that situation, asshole,” Beck fired back. “I found that shit out. I told my club. I went and got her ass. I brought her to my brothers to be taught a lesson.” He tasted bile in his throat, but he had no choice but to keep going. “And it was me who landed the first blows.”
Christ, was he gonna be able to get through this shit without throwing up?
He had to try.
“Half the pigs in the DPD are after Lannigan. Chaos wants him. Valenzuela is panting for him. We’re vulnerable, we got a link to that crazy fuck we don’t even know about, and you don’t share he’s the reason why we’re caught up in this shit in the first place?”
“I couldn’t know your bitch was gonna give us up,” Digger returned.
“Well she did. And when shit happens you deal. But you can’t deal if you don’t have all the info. And now we got brothers bein’ pulled in by the cops because they want Lannigan’s ass in the joint before Chaos or Valenzuela tear him to shreds, and we’re even more vulnerable. No charter. No backup. No allies. No money. Not dick,” Beck shot back.
Pacino looked to Digger, confused, mostly because he hadn’t been pulled in about Lannigan.
He’d been pulled in about being a bogus alibi for a murder.
“Why they just bring in Digger and Pacino?” Rainman asked.
Beck threw an arm their way. “You gotta ask that?”
Spiderweb, Muzzle, Griller, Eightball, Spartan, Rainman, Hardcore, if he wasn’t done with this club, if they hadn’t put the hurt on Rosalie, called it, demanded it (though Pacino was the one behind that, rabid about pushing it through), he might stick with those brothers.
Muzzle, Eightball, Hardcore and Griller were decent-looking, built guys Beck’s age or a little older. They had brains in their heads, but they used them mostly to find ways to get laid. If he’d been asked before all this started to go down, he’d have said all four of them, as well as Beck, just wanted someone to ride with, drink beer with, raise some hell with and have wingmen to find pussy with.
Rainman and Spartan were in their forties, Web in his fifties, softer, but even mostly clueless, wannabe outlaws who were that basically because they didn’t live large by any stretch of the imagination and they wanted to give more to their families but had zero opportunities to do that, they were still solid.
Pacino was a weasel, weak of body and mind, and that was written all over him, but it got verified any time he talked.
Digger was just a deviant.
So Beck didn’t have to explain further.
“You in with Chew Lannigan?” Web asked Digger.
“Don’t eat his shit,” Digger answered Web. “He knows we all think he’s a dumbfuck pussywhip for gettin’ us fucked over.”
“I don’t think that,” Hardcore said. “Rosalie was cherry. I’d be a dumbfuck I was dippin’ my wick into that regular.”
Beck’s torso swung back, and it did in shock not jealousy Core would want a go at Rosalie. She was gorgeous. Any man with a dick would.
Just what he said.
“And it was you, Pacino, pushed we fuck her up, which got us all arrested, that bein’ after we all got our asses kicked by Chaos and Throttle got his face carved up,” Muzzle, standing next to Beck, noted. “She was informing to fucking Chaos. We all knew, we touched her, they’d move in. It was insanity we beat her down.”
“You voted for that,” Pacino snapped.
“Yeah, because I was tweaked and thinkin’ with my balls, that bein’ folks deciding I didn’t have any if we didn’t make a statement,” Muzzle returned. “Havin’ some time to ponder this shit, that brother Hound actually got started with his knife, and didn’t limit his good time with Throttle’s face, I wouldn’t have any balls at all, so maybe it’s time to think with somethin’ else.”
“I’m not Throttle,” Beck declared.
“What?” Eightball asked on his other side.
Beck turned to him. “I’m not fuckin’ Throttle. I’m Beck.”
He put his hand to his belt, undid the snap on his own knife, yanked it out and everyone went alert.
But he just took it to the edge of the patch that had the name Throttle on it, which was stitched over his heart, and shoved it through enough he could toss his knife on the table in front of him and tear off the second patch he’d torn off his cut in the last two months.
He threw it on the table.
“I’m Beck,” he stated. “Throttle is dead. This club is dead.” He looked to Web. “This becomes about brotherhood and loyalty and respect and goddamned fucking honesty, I’m still in. We’re Resurrection. And to be brought back from the dead, we gotta carve out the weak links, and I want those two fucks gone.” He pointed across the table at Digger and Pacino. “We don’t get saved, it’s me that’s gone.”
“Resurrection,” Griller muttered, “Kickass.”
“True that,” Rainman agreed in his own mutter.
Jesus.
Web held Beck’s gaze before he looked to Digger.
“Digger, answer. Valenzuela call us because Lannigan came to you to offer us up?”
“I wasn’t called in by the cops to talk about Chew,” Digger returned.
Total lie.
It was written all over him.
They wanted a murderer.
But they got up in his shit about Chew.
“Then what’d the cops call you about, brother? ’Cause we ain’t done dick in months, Valenzuela forgot we existed, so there’s nothin’ to haul you in about,” Web pushed.
“You called your president,” Spartan added when Digger didn’t chime in, “tellin’ him we gotta deal with Thro . . .” he glanced at Beck then back at Digger, “Beck ’cause he was runnin’ his mouth to the cops. Seems to me, he was just askin’ questions to your drunk-ass, waste-of-space bud, Pickle. You and Pacino still got pulled in. What’d the cops talk to you about?”
Beck wondered why they didn’t ask that question before they called an emergency meeting and got their knives out.
But at least they were asking it now.
Digger looked to Beck, the table, and his attention stayed there.