“Painter, you want to share what you told me about your time inside?” Pic asked, apparently reading my mind. I nodded, pausing to consider before I spoke.
“Well, you all know we had allied club brothers with us,” I said. “A few Longnecks, Bay Brotherhood, and one guy with the Nighthawk Raiders. Longnecks are shit, sorry to say. Couldn’t trust ’em inside, and now that I’ve visited one of their chapters I’d say that runs true for the whole fuckin’ club. The Brotherhood seemed solid but they’re having a rough time holding their own. The Nighthawks guy was interesting . . .”
Puck and I shared a quick glance as I paused, trying to think of the best way to explain Pipes, our jailhouse contact.
“Puck, you want to jump in here?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Pipes was on his own and we bonded up pretty fast, given the history between our clubs. He was in for a weapons charge, too. But here’s the interesting part—we all know they’ve been bringing in product through the Canadian border for a while, right? Well get this . . . According to Pipes, their pipeline’s choking out on the Canada side.”
Picnic and Boonie weren’t surprised by this, but Hunter obviously was. Interesting—Pic hadn’t briefed him ahead of time. Guess the Hayes family wasn’t one big happy. Not a huge surprise—I had all kinds of reasons for disliking the guy, but they were nothing compared to Pic’s. So far as I could tell, Christ himself wouldn’t be good enough for Reese Hayes’s daughters, at least not in his eyes.
Rance, the president of the Reapers’ chapter in Bellingham, stepped up. He already knew what Puck and I had to say, of course. We’d told Pic and Boonie all about it, and I knew Reese had been in touch with Rance afterward, seeing as his chapter was the closest to Hallies Falls, where the Nighthawks were located. Now I was curious to hear his take on the situation.
“We’ve heard rumors,” he said. “I’ve suspected something was up for a while now. They’ve been short on their payments, product has gone missing, that kind of thing. They blamed it on some local cops gone bad—cost of doing business—but it never rang true. Now we’ve got a better idea of what’s going on. Tell ’em the rest, Painter.”
“So, there’s a new player up in British Columbia,” I continued. “They call themselves a club, but Pipes says they’re just a bunch of tweakers who bought themselves bikes and threw on some patches—not a real brotherhood at all. Kinda like that shit that went down in Quebec, you know? Now they’re fighting with the Nighthawk Raiders for control of the cross-border traffic. He’s worried the whole club will go down, lose their patches entirely.”
“Why didn’t they come to us themselves?” Hunter asked, frowning. “Seems like the kind of thing you’d want to discuss direct, but we haven’t heard jack shit from them.”
“Pipes thinks their president—Marsh—has thrown in with the BC guys,” I explained. “Not only is he bringing in new brothers who are loyal to him, he’s cutting the older brothers out of the loop. They haven’t been voting on shit, and no officer elections, either. Pipes says he tried to call Marsh out. Got his ass kicked and then they sacrificed him on a run. He isn’t talking to the cops, but he’s reaching out to us for help. Desperate for it. Knows that if the club falls, he’ll lose his protection inside.”
“Bad situation,” Boonie murmured. “Thoughts, anyone?”