A Leap in the Dark (Assassins of Youth MC Book 2) (2 page)

Dingo said, “Her name is Oaklyn Warrior. She’s Mahalia’s sister and the nurse who’s here to examine the boys.”

It was as though Levon hadn’t heard him. “We are
forced
to love each other because we’re all we’ve got. Your mistaken assumptions aren’t going to stop us from learning and growing. They’re just going to lead you astray and distort the questions you ask. Warped beliefs led sincere doctors to bleed millions of people to death. I’m sure you remember the four humors in your nurse’s studies.”

I sniffed. “Of course. Hippocrates believed certain illnesses were caused by an imbalance in body fluids—blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.”

Dingo chuckled. “Sounds like some superhero world. The Four Humors are coming to get you.”

No one else laughed. Levon tried to hypnotize me into submission with his intensely sharp eyes. “No one thought to look for disease in germs or water because the four fucking humors were in control of everything. Do you get me?”

I sneered. “You’re saying your house of ill repute is holy and sanctified because you men are like brothers. It’s a feeble and misguided argument to make, and you’re not swaying me. I’ll examine your men for venereal diseases and general health free of charge, as a courtesy to my sister. If they’d rather stay and sell their bodies to twisted old men, there’s nothing I can do to convince them.”

“They make good money,” said Levon, digging his hands deep into his jeans pockets. I was surprised there was room for his hands, that’s how tight the pants were. Left nothing to the imagination. “What sort of jobs do you offer down in Avalanche? Minimum wage? My men earn upward of ninety, one-twenty grand a year. Some of the best, myself included, make more than that.”

I sort of cringed a little at that, looking to Mahalia for support. I hadn’t been down to their little burg of Avalanche in southwest Utah yet, but it was highly unlikely they could offer anything as lucrative. Mahalia’s “old man” Gideon worked in a mine. Sure, he
owned
it, but he still toiled tirelessly.

Mahalia helped me out, lifting her chin with pride. “We do okay. We’re revitalizing the city from the ghost town Allred Chiles left behind. No one wanted to live close to the loonies, but now that Chiles is gone and we’re in charge, people are starting to move back. Real estate is doing a brisk business.”

Dingo added, “Sledgehammer opened up a butcher shop slash grocery store deli, and Yosemite Sam has a coffee shop. Maximus renovated the old barber shop. I’m the club’s IT man, floating from job to job.”

Levon snorted. “A barber shop? Oh, I can just see my men stampeding to get in on that opportunity at the ground level. And to move from their luxurious digs here on the mountain down to Hurricane—”

“Avalanche,” I practically spat.

“I can just see the rush now. Listen, I mean no disrespect—”

“None taken,” gushed Mahalia, back on Levon’s side.

“—but you can’t begin to offer my men a better life. And isn’t that the bottom line? Who’s offering a better life, a better future?”

“We launder money,” Dingo blurted.

Everyone looked at him with bulging eyes. Levon tilted his head thoughtfully. “Really? You launder ill-gotten gains through these businesses?”

“All the time!” bragged Dingo.

Now, I wasn’t up on the nature of my brother-in-law’s motorcycle club. I knew it was a “one percenter” outlaw club, and they had some illegal doings with the polygs inside the Cornucopia walls. The Assassins of Youth, they called themselves, as if joining was some kind of rite of initiation into a permanent macho adulthood. To me, it was plain old childish. I loved Gideon and his efforts to transform the town. I even liked the members Mahalia had shown me photos of, the aforementioned Maximus with his flowing silver hair and James Brolin looks. Dust Bunny had a geology degree from Stanford and was prospecting too in more ways than one, working out at the mine. Yosemite Sam and Sledgehammer looked as rough as their names implied, but I’d seen photos of Sledgehammer cooing and kissing his Leonberger dog, and even Yosemite Sam was intently into the details of making the perfect cappuccino.

In other words, they weren’t all bad to the bone as you’d expect from an outlaw motorcycle club. I could see my sister’s attraction to the macho lifestyle, although she would not wear her leather jacket with a “Property of Gideon Fortunati” patch. Not after what she’d been through, being kidnapped by the fundies, the fundamentalists out at Cornucopia who held her for five years, turning her into a deadened Morbot like the rest of them. She’d been their property, and she only escaped when they threatened to marry off her fifteen-year-old daughter Vonda to some creepazoid. I will be forever grateful to Gideon for helping her out of that mess.

Now Mahalia was paying it forward by running the nonprofit Save Our Baby Brides. We were hoping to save some young men too, but from what Levon said, no one particularly wanted to be saved.

“That’s part of my job,” explained Dingo. “Insert, layer, and extract funds from various businesses in Avalanche and Bullhead City where the mother chapter is. Our lawyer Slushy taught me how to do it.” It was sort of adorable, the way the brown-skinned, seemingly innocent boy was proud of his money laundering expertise. After a young adulthood rooting through garbage cans and sleeping in an abandoned school, he had reason to be proud.

“Hm,” said Levon. “You got any martial arts studios down there? I’ve always wanted to open up a Krav Maga studio. Even better if I can launder Liberty Temple money through there.”

Mahalia balked at that. “Well, I’m not so sure there’d be a need for a martial—”

“That’d be so
cool
!” raved Dingo, executing a few poses that probably vaguely approximated some martial arts stances. Or at least ones they showed on
Star Trek.
“I know all kinds of guys from my computer school who’d want to attend that.”

Mahalia shrugged, indulgent of her Prospect. “Well. You men can discuss that in more detail. I don’t get involved with the business side of the club. Meanwhile, you said there are at least four men who’d like an exam, whether or not they want to come to Avalanche?”

Levon was just opening his mouth to answer when an abrasive, loud young man yelled from the sidelines, scaring all of us. “
Jonah!
Jonah Garff!” The kid with a rich, soft crewcut came bounding out from the living room area like a gymnast. This kid infused the area with a fresh energy, and boy, was he sprightly. He even had a sleeveless sports jersey on like some kind of springy cheerleader, he was that full of enthusiasm.

He took Dingo by the hands, his eyes shining as though he gazed on the Ghost of Christmas. “Jonah Garff! We were ordained deacons together!”

Boys aged twelve to fourteen were ordained deacons into the Aaronic Priesthood. Boys fourteen through sixteen were teachers, and if a boy inside Cornucopia was lucky enough to make it to a priesthood, well, he probably had it made for life. I wasn’t sure about the twisted vagaries of how they warped Mormonism inside those terrifying walls, but some of it seemed to approximate the regulations on the outside. Not that I was the most shining example. I was pretty much a non-practicing Saint.

“Indeed we were!” trilled Dingo, wringing his friend’s hands. “You vanished before I did.”

“And wound up here after a couple of filthy, frightening years on the streets!” cried the crewcut boy.

Dingo turned to us excitedly. “Guys, this is Deloy Pingree. Or do you have a different name?”

Some of the shine went out of Deloy’s eyes. “I’m still Deloy Pingree because I’m not ashamed of my family. They didn’t do this to me. Allred Chiles did.”

“But he’s gone now,” intoned Dingo with round eyes.

There. The cheer was back, and Deloy jumped up and down wringing Dingo’s hands. “Yes, yes! So I heard! What a wonderful day in the neighborhood it was when I heard that!”

Did my ears deceive me? Deloy Pingree equated the murder of a cult sect leader with a walk through Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood? Besides, since I knew Gideon Fortunati had something to do with that event, I wasn’t eager to talk about it.

“Deloy, I’m the nurse your boss called in for the exams. Would you like to start first?”

Deloy held a hand to his chest as though being informed he’d won a beauty pageant. He seemed so innocent, even more naïve and unsophisticated than Dingo. “Me? Your first? Why,
certainly
. I aim to please. Is that all right, Levon?”

Levon waved a dismissive hand. “Sure, sure. Go, go. You don’t have an appointment until seven tonight.”

It surprised me when Deloy rolled his eyes. “Oh, that Mr. Rice fellow. He’s the sort that every escort dreads.”

“Why’s that?” I dared to ask as we headed back toward the house.

Deloy wrinkled his nose. “Always wanting to, you know, ride the Hershey Highway. He always wants to make pound cake. Raw dogging it, too, without a rubber.”

Although the reality was horrifying, I had to giggle at Deloy’s terminology. He was old enough to do those things, but not old enough to speak of them without using metaphors. My heart went out to him. “Well, that’s why I’m here. If you’re doing things without rubbers, you need me.”

“Oh, I don’t
let
him ride bareback. No siree, Bob. That’s one of the house rules. Here, I think Levon set up a table in here.”

“In here” turned out to be the book-lined office I’d seen earlier. Someone had rolled out a massage table and covered it with a sheet and given me a clip-on draftsman’s lamp I could move around on an arm. It was okay. Most of the tests were blood or a swab from inside the penis, but I wanted to check for sores.

“Can you undress completely? I’m sorry I don’t have any gowns.” Out of my medical bag I took my tray, gloves, swabs, syringes.

“That’s okay,” Deloy said good-naturedly, stripping off his sports jersey. “I’m used to being naked. It’s the nature of the beast around here.”

I asked, “Do you like…working for Mr. Rockwell?”

To my surprise, he shrugged. I expected the enthusiastic kid to rave about Levon. “It’s all right. It’s a living, as they say. Before I was led by Lucifer to turn traitor to the priesthood, I actually dreamed of becoming a dentist. Don’t laugh!”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I know that no one inside Cornucopia could become a dentist because they choose your path for you. And most likely I would’ve gone into construction in one of Chiles’ concerns. If I was lucky I’d become a foreman. Or maybe help run the book binding business. But nothing like be a dentist.”

“Does Mr. Rockwell know your wishes?” I looked around at some titles of books on the walls. I frowned. Dostoevsky, Chaucer, Henry Miller, and even Anais Nin were a few of the literary titles I perused. What the…? Levon Rockwell was a man of letters? I also saw volumes by Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and Jean-Paul Sartre. This man got around, intellectually. I tried not to be impressed because I loathed him so much. I started by taking bloods from the naked boy.

“I suppose he does. But how could I ever get the time off to attend dental school, what with having to work so many hours here?”

“And why not? I worked part-time while attending nursing school. Pretty much everyone does, unless you were born into money. Mr. Rockwell would be an ass and a bastard if he didn’t let you fulfill your goals. You just might have to work a few extra hours a week. I’ll tell you what. Go talk to my sister, Mahalia. She’s interested in saving some Lost Boys and bringing them down into her fold. I’ll bet you she can find some honest, upstanding part-time work for you while you go to dental school. I believe there’s one in St. George, which is just a hop skip and a jump from Avalanche.”

“Really?” Deloy perked up. Then just as quickly, he slumped. “I wouldn’t want to let Levon down. He literally pulled me up by my bootstraps when I was getting high off cough syrup I stole from CVS. Miss Warrior, I was lying in a gutter, just a bag of bones and piss. I wondered why I didn’t die at birth, why I caused problems for everyone, like they all told me. I was a worse mass murderer than Hitler. What in the world was I thinking when I tried to challenge God?”

“What got you kicked out of Cornucopia?”

Deloy fell silent. I’d done all the bloods and now it was time to get the penis swab. It sat in its little nest of hair, small and curled like a snail. I saw no sores. “You’re a medical person. I can tell you. I was found…making out.”

I snorted. “Oh, God forbid. You know, you’re better off without those people, Deloy.”

“I know that. I was kissing another boy.”

I paused, his penis between my gloved fingers, swab in the other hand. “Oh. Well, all the less reason to miss any of those twisted individuals. But you shouldn’t give Levon all the credit. You raised yourself up by your own bootstraps. And you
can
attend dental school. Down in Avalanche, we work with young people. We help make it possible for them.”

“Oh, you live down there too with your sister and Jonah?”

At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Oh. No, I don’t. I live in Provo where I work in a surgeon’s office. But I told my sister I’d go down to give her other—ah, men some physicals. I’m on vacation.” Actually, I’d had a real bang ’em up fight with my boyfriend Giovanni. I loved him passionately, but I couldn’t get him to stop partying late into the midnight hours. We fought and fought over the same thing, when he’d drag his sorry high ass home at six AM just as I was getting ready for work. Then I’d be upset at work all day. Someone recently asked me if Giovanni was cheating. I actually had no idea—I blamed everything on his meth addiction. Meth was making him stay out all night without calling me.

I said, “Maybe you could take a vacation from Liberty Temple too. You make good money. Surely you’ve got enough saved up.”

“Oh, sure, I could,” Deloy said cheerily. “Could I ride down with you?”

“Of course!” The idea of having the happy boy in my car was actually a nice one. He was only ten years younger than me, but I’d always wanted a kid, a boy.

So I examined a few more Lost Boys, none of whom wanted to leave the comfort of Levon Rockwell’s savior’s arms at the moment. I was just packing all the samples up when Levon himself came into his study, arms crossed defensively. He’d managed to put on a shirt, but it was such thin T-shirt material that his nipples stood out sharply. I tried to look at my bag.