“So I heard.”
I shrugged. “Pussy, man.”
“Well, while you were buried in twat, I was securing our future.” He leaned back against the desk, took a drag on the cigar, then looked at it like he was some kind of connoisseur. Mad Dog was about as far away from a connoisseur of anything as you could get-except maybe *. He was an ugly man, nose misshapen from being broken too many times to count, his face wrinkled, the texture and color of leather as a result of riding for years. Looking at him made me think I needed to stop partying so much, maybe get some sleep.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I talked to Guillermo,” he said. “He wants to meet on Tuesday.”
“Do you think it’s a good idea, going to his house? I heard the guy’s fucking crazy.”
“You scared of some Mexican?”
“Fuck you. He's not even Mexican. He's Panamanian. Do you know basic geography?” I asked. “We’re not going to have any protection. Are we sure this guy doesn’t have some kind of beef with us?”
“We’re not going to go in without heat,” he said.
“He’ll have more than we have,” I said. “And what, you don’t think he’s going to search us, take our weapons?”
“He’s old school,” Mad Dog said. “He wants to meet at his place. If he wants to meet on the fucking moon, that’s where we’ll meet. You know what it would mean to the club. This guy is big time-warehouses all over the place, smuggling shit across the country. International even. He tells us he wants to get rid of the Furia MC, let us take over exclusive protection for him, and you don’t want to go to his house?”
“Right.” I had my misgivings about getting into bed with Guillermo. This guy had a reputation for being crazy. Of course, that wouldn’t bother Mad Dog one bit.
“Hey,” Mad Dog said. “Don’t worry so much. We get in with him, we provide all of his muscle. It means way more cash flow than we've got now." Mad Dog was actually a decent businessman, with a good sense of how the world worked and how to work people over. He wanted the club to be bigger; I was content being small time. Bigger would always mean more problems, more heat on us. “So, Tuesday, we’re on,” he said.
“Tuesday.”
“Now, let’s go out there and show these Mexicans how we party.” Mad Dog clasped a hand around my shoulder. “Unless you’re too tired from all that * you got up north.”
“Shit. He's Panamanian. And these guys are fucking Americans,” I said. “You need to get that straight before we meet with him.” I walked out with Mad Dog. The truth was, I was full of energy, just not the kind you needed to party in this place. I reached into the back pocket of my jeans, my hands feeling the paper, the note she’d left. I needed to get Dani's face out of my head.
Axe grabbed me as I walked out, dragging me to the bar and sliding a shot glass in front of me. “This is what you need.” I swallowed the liquid, feeling it burn the back of my throat on the way down.
“Hey, Prospect!” I yelled, and the kid turned to me from behind the bar. “Give me a bottle of Jack.” I leaned against the bar as I took a drag from the bottle and surveyed the landscape.
“Guillermo’s guys brought some sweet * with them tonight,” Axe said.
“Yeah, I saw a girl earlier. Looked young.”
“Yeah, she was with Mad Dog. Too young for my blood,” he said.
A woman sauntered up to me, blonde hair cascading down her shoulders, wearing a checkered top that barely covered her tits and a pair of leather chaps with nothing underneath. Beside me, Axe whistled. “Hey there,” she said. She put her hand on my shoulder, hip jutted out to the side, giving me a full view of her *.
“You supposed to be a cowgirl or something?” I took a drag on the bottle. It seemed rude not to offer it to her, although I didn’t exactly want to be swapping fluids with this woman. She had a nice body, but she looked like she had been around the block a time or two. Or twenty.
“Why don’t you see for yourself?” She traced her fingernail down my chest. “I’ll ride, you try to buck me off.”
Next to me, Axe hooted. I felt a stirring in my pants, and I guess I could have gone to the back with her, but honestly, I was fucked out right now.
“That’s a nice offer, darlin’, but I think Axe here might be in greater need,” I said. She pouted, but turned her attention quickly to him. I looked at the bottle. Half of this and I’d be good.
We rolled up to the gate on the bikes, Mad Dog, Tank and a couple of the other big guys. Gate wasn’t the right word. It was more like a compound, with tall thick walls on a huge Malibu estate. There were no neighbors directly on either side; I was guessing Guillermo had bought all of the plots around the house.
“We’re here.” Mad Dog spoke into the intercom, his voice a sing-song, and the gates swung open.