Rod (11 page)

“Where did you learn to play like that?” I
ask.

“Practice throughout the years.
 
No bullshit, practice makes perfect.
 
You?”

“I grew up in bars like this and I guess
I’m just a quick study.”

“More?” He asks.

“Oh yes, definitely,” I flirt.

Chapter Six

Trish Fitzgerald

Rodney bends over the pool table to take
his shot and I focus my eyes squarely on his nice, plump butt.
 
With a few drinks in my system, I’m bold
enough to take a chance.
 
I reach down
and pinch his butt through those jeans.
 
He’s sexy.

He jumps and quickly turns around with a
smooth grin on his face.

“Someone is asking for it.”

“Oh you have no idea,” I tell him, my face
reddening immediately.

I put my force into the next shot,
forcefully sending the three ball into the corner pocket.

“You’re a total shark,” he surmises.

“Captain Obvious rears his ugly head
again,” I snap with a sly grin.

After five games of pool, I am as sober as
a judge.
 

“You’re good,” he says.

“Better than you, apparently,” I say
mockingly.
 
Naturally, I reign supreme
with a score of three-to-two against Rodney.

“Better luck next time,” I say, walking
away.

“You’re leaving?” he says, following
closely behind me.

“How else am I going to get home?” I ask
flatly.

“What am I going to do here all by
myself?” he asks, trying to inject sympathy into the conversation.
 

“Apparently you should just practice until
it makes your game perfect,” I tease.
 

He throws some quarters in the table and
racks the balls.
 
I feel silly for
suggesting he practice, considering that the last game was so close.
 
Even sillier is the notion that he is taking
my advice.

“Catch you later,” he says playing the
game by himself.

“Later,” I tell him.
 

I walk outside to my pink Harley and hop
on.
 
In a roar, I peel out of the parking
lot and to the open road.
 
The wind
catches my jacket and tickles my back.
 
It’s a little chilly at higher speeds, but I don’t want to take the
scenic route home.
 
I shouldn’t be out
gallivanting while the entire county keeps busy looking for my poor missing
sister Sasha.
 
Guilt sweeps over me.

Fifteen minutes pass and I’m in our
driveway.
 
Looking up at Sasha’s room, I
see the dark space and feel intense worry for her.
 
She could be anywhere.

I walk into the house, stashing my jacket
in the closet.
 
My mother barely
acknowledges my presence, but given our previous conversation, I don’t stress
myself over it too much.

Walking upstairs, I’m stopped by my
father.

“Trish,” he says in his monotone voice.

“Yeah?” I say looking down at him from the
stairway.
 

“When I told you to leave the club, I did
it to protect you.”

I nod, leaving his sentence hanging in the
air.
 
I know my father loves me, but at
this point I feel completely useless in the grand scheme of things.
 
I want to help, but no one can appreciate
that.
 

I wish I had Jasmine’s home number; she
listens to me.
 
I mean that she actually
listens with the intent to comprehend my words instead of being like my mother
and listening with the intent to respond.

Resuming my route upstairs, I open my door
but close it tightly when I get inside.
 
I rack my brain thinking of Sasha and where she could be.
 
I fall over on my bed, feeling the weight of
my eyelids.
 
I’m tired.
 
I can’t think clearly when I need rest.

My body molds the bed underneath me and I
pull the blankets snugly around me.
 
Warmth engulfs me, rendering me dead to the world.

I wake up to the sound of my alarm clock
and can’t for the life of me figure out why I didn’t shut that stupid thing off
before bed.
 
I slam the thing until
it’s
quiet and I lay there and fixate on thoughts of my baby
sister.
 
She could be anywhere, the cops
are useless and my father hell-bent on keeping me out of things.

I pull myself to an upright position and
ponder doing things on my own.
 
Dad will
be furious, but I decide that I can no longer sit on the sidelines waiting for
something to come from the cops or the club.
 
I know my sister better than anyone and I need to help.
 

Feeling the cold water from the shower
breathing life into my body, I devise a plan that I will enact and will also
keep me safe by my father’s standards.
 
The water rains down upon me and I have
a eureka
moment.
 
What if it was an inside job?

My father had his closest friends in the
motorcycle club and started it years ago.
 
Year after year, he and the founding members voted in prospect after
prospect.
 
Some of the guys are an
illusion of sorts.
 
Everyone has
skeletons in their closets and I could be the one to uncover them.

I run warm water over my body to rinse the
soap and
self doubt
down the drain.
 
With my ambition anew, I dry myself off with
purpose.
 

I know now what I need to do.
 
I dress myself, run a brush through this mop
and push forward.
 
I need to find my
father and get this thing rolling.

I march through the house, seeking him
out.
 
The blaring of the television tells
me ahead of time that my mother is currently occupying the couch.
 
I open the door and see that I’m right.
 
Moving through the house, I am determined to
seek out this rat, if there is one at all.
 

I formulate my argument in my head as I
make my way to dad’s office.
 
He’s going
to absolutely hate the idea that I suspect someone from the club, but he has to
admit it’s an avenue that he hasn’t thought of.
 

I knock on his door and patiently wait for
his response.

“Yeah?” he growls.
 

“Got a minute, pop?” I ask.

“Yeah, come on in.”

I walk inside and sit down in front of his
desk.
 
He’s busy looking over some of the
books for the club.
 

He stares me squarely in the face and
says, “If this is about your sister, for the last time, forget it.”

“I have a new approach,” I pose.

He looks up at me as if to placate me
unwillingly.

“Is that right?”

He puts his pen down on the desk and I
realize that I have his full attention.

“Yes.
 
Well, I was
thinkin
’, and I know you may hate
the thought, but what if it was an inside job?”

“Get the hell
outta
here,” he commands me.
 
He isn’t
joking.
 
I squirm by resolve to stay put
and have him hear me out entirely.

“No, listen.
 
I know that you love the brothers and sisters
of the club, and I’m not saying that I’ll find anything.
 
But it’s definitely worth a shot to question
them all and see if anyone really knows anything.”

“Remember when I first came in to tell
everyone that Sasha was missing?” he asks plainly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I gave everyone the opportunity to
come forward and tell me what they know.”

“Well, maybe they’re scared of you.”

He looks like he’s considering that idea,
but teeters back and forth.

“Fuck that, these guys know better than to
mess with my family.”

“Yeah, but what if one of them got tangled
up in something and couldn’t find their way out of it?”

He considers it.

“Would this mean that you’ll stay out of
the rest of the investigation?” he poses.

“Of course, I’d be busy questioning the
club members one by one.
 
It would leave
little time for much else.”

“I’ll make the announcement tomorrow, and
if you find anything, I want to be the first to know.
 
I mean it, Trish.”

“You got it,” I tell him.
 

Rodney was right about practice making
perfect.
 
I can stand up to my father and
make him see reason and there doesn’t have to be this giant production about
it.
 
Maybe I’m not this useless girl
after all.
  

I rise from my chair and close his office
door behind me.
 
I relish in the idea
that I could convince my father to let me help in some small way.
 

I walk up the stairs and to my room and
fire up the laptop.
 
In my mind I already
have a list of questions that I can ask the club’s members.
 
I open up Microsoft Word and begin
typing.
 
Not only that, but I make a note
to run each and every member through various searches to see if they’re hiding
anything.

I type every question imaginable into the
document, beginning with the officers and moving to the prospects and even the
hang-arounds.
 
No one will be left
unquestioned with the exception of my father.
 

The next night at the Lair, dad springs
into action.
 
He’s placating me and
trying to keep me out of the way, but he doesn’t realize that this is exactly
what I want.
 

“Alright, everyone.
 
I know this may seem like a step that we
don’t need to take,” he looks around the room and at me assuredly.

“But I’m going to have Trish talk to each
and every one of you.”

One voice calls out from the back,
interjecting, “But didn’t we already do this?
 
We talked to the cops.”

“Fuck the cops,” my dad says angrily.
 
“The cops
ain’t
doing shit for us and I hate to do this, but I want everyone to cooperate.”

There are questions on everyone’s faces
and some look angry.
 
There’s a muffled
roar of bitterness in the air.

Dad looks to everyone and says, “And if
anyone has a problem with this, come and see me now.”

Boris
Cardov
steps forward and wobbles on over to my father.
 
I overhear him saying, “How long have we known each other, man?”

“Years,” dad tells him.
 

Boris shakes his head and walks away in
disbelief.

Dad motions for me to come closer.

“Get that fucker first,” he commands me.

Does he finally realize that I have value
to this club?

“You got it,” I tell him.

I feel a rush of relief overtake me.
 

I setup my laptop at the far table at the
end of the bar.
 
Jasmine saunters over in
her pinup glory and asks, “You need a drink, honey?”

“Yeah, that would be great,” I tell
her.
 
I wonder to myself exactly what the
members of the club might be hiding.
 
I
already have a list of people I suspect of having nothing but good intentions
toward the group.
 
Another list is more
pressing and that includes the people I suspect of being shady in some manner.

I take a swig of the beer that Jasmine has
brought over and fire up the laptop.
 
With Word open, I set my sights squarely on Boris.
 
He’s up first.
 

“Boris
Cardov
,”
I yell over the mass of club members.

I look over to where he is and can tell
that he’s not amused to be first on the chopping block.
 

“Man, fuck this,” he says as he makes his
way over to my table.
 
Clearly he is not
happy.

He grabs the chair in front of the table
and makes a big show of slamming it down on the floor so that he can sit backwards.
 

“This is all so fucking stupid,” he says.