I got into the spirit of things. “‘Ass, Gas, or Grass. Nobody Rides for Free.’”
“You got it. We kicked them out, good-naturedly of course. We found space for them in this rundown Elks Lodge no one was using. The only Elks still left were about six guys in their seventies.”
“That’s a shame. I hate to see shit like that go downhill.”
“Well, listen to this. Since the Lazzat Un Nisa Society took over the Elks Lodge, a bunch more Elks have come out of the woodwork, you know, in the spirit of brotherhood. A bunch of new recruits too. So now the hall’s rocking pretty much all the time. Some younger guys might like what your studio’s offering, too.”
I nodded. The enthusiasm was welling inside me, gaining strength by the minute. There wasn’t one bad aspect to my martial arts studio idea. Well, one. The expected opposition of the mayor, Ladell Pratt. I hadn’t planned on taking Gideon into my confidence. This was my battle to fight. But suddenly I found myself asking, “What do you know about this Ladell Pratt asshole? You mentioned he gave you grief.”
I could tell by Gideon’s energetic lip fart what his feelings were. “All the time, brother. He’s been fighting us every step of the way because we’re not a bunch of fundy Morbots. He wants to keep ‘his’ town pure and free of any filthy, degenerate element, such as bikers. What’s especially gotten up his butt is Mahalia setting up SOBB in his town. So far only a couple of sister-wives have had the balls to escape Cornucopia, but there are rumblings of a lot more.”
“And the more businesses we set up,” I said, ever the entrepreneur, “the more jobs for these sister-wives. Or women. We’ll just call them women.”
“‘Women’ it is.” Gideon came toward me tentatively. It was obvious he was about to ask me a question. “Levon. I consider you a brother in arms. You’ve saved dozens of Lost Boys from certain death—”
I scoffed. “Your sister-in-law doesn’t seem to think I’m so noble.”
“—and my old lady loves you for it. Now you’ve given our club a new Prospect—well, if he makes it through the year-long prospectship is another thing entirely—”
“Wait a minute. Is Deloy joining your MC? That part was for real?”
Gideon shrugged. “If he makes it. Certain guys just aren’t cut out for the life. Certain guys say they’re willing, for instance”—Gideon looked from side to side, but the realtor had been out front the whole time yammering on her cell—“to shoot a guy. Then when it comes down to it, they can’t. Or they lose their shit completely, go off their nut in the face of danger. We need calm, cool, collected guys for obvious reasons. Down in Bullhead City, we had a Prospect who was about as useful as a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest. We did a raid on a Mexican trap house—they’d stolen a bunch of our drugs and guns. Instead, we busted in on a weird sexual bondage scene.”
I harrumphed. “Nothing weird about that.”
“No, not normally. But my feeling was that the women tied up were literally there without their consent.”
“No safe words.”
“Not a one. And the guy doing the flogging was wearing a latex corset that was four sizes too small. Well, this Prospect suddenly became a Twilight Zone tour guide. He went all kinds of apeshit, shooting up the entire room with his M-16. Those poor beaners looked like Swiss cheese. You could literally see daylight through them.”
“Not good. You need people who can keep their cool.”
“Yeah. Needless to say, that guy never earned his top rocker. Do you have any indication of how Deloy is under pressure?”
Again I harrumphed. “He works for me. Need I say more?”
Gideon chuckled. “True. I figured that. He’s had to keep his cool under lots of demands, things that might change from minute to minute. But never any…actual violence.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. I pat down every client who enters for drugs and weapons, and I’m the only one who goes out on house calls. But sometimes guys smuggle things through in their cavities. Deloy got a guy once who had a urethral sounding already shoved up his wang and he wanted Deloy to suck on it. When he did, though, the guy cropped his bare ass so heavily he drew blood, and Deloy wound up choking on the sound that popped out of his urethra. Uncool. Deloy had to stand his ground and tell the guy he was out of there. Guy didn’t want to go.”
“How’d he eventually get rid of him?”