Tainted Rose (15 page)

He rode across the southern half of the island and crossed the rapids at Île d’Aloigny. The river was frozen solid. It would have been a perfect night for smuggling. The moon was bright enough to see by. He stopped on the bridge over the rapids and stared at the river of solid ice beneath him. He knew that beneath that thick layer of ice the river flowed on as it ever did, a strong, gushing current like a blood artery. It flowed over a thousand miles from the Atlantic to Lake Ontario. It was that same current that had taken Sonny Ernst. It was that same river that had brought the first French explorers into the Canadian interior in the sixteenth century. Just like him, they’d been gun traders and rum runners.

If the river had been flowing he would have scattered his father’s ashes right there. He had the urn in the back of his saddle and it would have been as good a place as any to do it. But something about the river being frozen put him off. There would have been no where for the ashes to flow. They would have sat on the ice like dirt till the spring thaw. That wasn’t what he wanted.

He rode on till he got to the rise overlooking Coteau-du-Lac, the town of his birth. Josh didn’t know much abut the town, he hadn’t lived there since childhood and he and his father had never had much call to go back and visit. His mother was buried in that town. He looked down at the lights of the town nestled in among the cedars. The trees grew on the slopes leading to the gulf. He knew instinctively that this was the place for his father’s ashes. There was a strong breeze coming down along the Saint Lawrence and it would take the ashes and bring them a long ways.

He took the urn from his bike and shook the contents out into the wind. The wind took the ashes, and it took Josh’s silent prayer too.

*

T
HEN HE GOT BACK ON
his bike. He rode through the night. He came into the city through Les Cèdres and Pointe-Claire. The Sioux Rangers clubhouse was in LaSalle and Josh went straight to it. It was almost dawn by the time he pulled into the heavily industrialized area along Rue Cordner where the Sioux Rangers had their clubhouse.

He got some suspicious looks from the guys at the door when he walked past them but there was some big party going on in the clubhouse and they must have assumed he was part of it because they didn’t try to stop him.

The clubhouse was full of people. The Sioux Rangers weren’t a big club, probably no more than twenty members, but it seemed as if all of them were there at the clubhouse that night. And their families were there too. The men were sitting along the bar, drinking and laughing. Out back, a band was playing heavy metal on a concrete pad lit up by christmas lights. The wives and girlfriends and children all seemed to be out there watching the band play. There must have been fifty people there, men and women and children.

No one paid him much attention. He was clearly just a kid. He wore his hair down to his shoulders back then too. He was good looking with a friendly face, brown eyes and a mischievous grin. He meant business that night but a lifetime’s worth of goodnatured laughter and humor still showed on his face. He didn’t look like trouble.

Behind the bar was a big flag with the Sioux Ranger club logo on it, an indian riding a bike. There was also a row of old jackets hanging under the flag with the same logo on the back and names arched across them on patches stretching from shoulder to shoulder. Josh assumed those were the jackets of fallen members. Most clubs worth their salt had their share of dead brothers, those who had died carrying out the work of the club, fighting its battles.

He went up to the bar and saw the prettiest little girl he’d ever seen in his life. She couldn’t have been much more than twelve or thirteen years old. She had beautiful long hair, porcelain white skin and eyes that seemed to see right through him. He looked at her for a few seconds before she disappeared back out to watch the band play. Josh wondered whose daughter she was.

“Can I help you,” a big guy behind the bar said in French.

When Josh answered him in English the bartender was surprised but said nothing of it.

“I’ll have a Labatt’s,” he said.

The bartender grabbed him a beer from below the counter.

“You know this is a private club?” the bartender said.

“Is it?”

“Yes it is, so after your done your drink you might want to leave quietly.”

Josh looked at him. The bartender wasn’t an unkind man. He was letting him know politely that he had to leave. It was better treatment than Josh could have expected at most MC clubhouses. Times were tough and people were constantly on guard. You couldn’t just walk into a clubhouse and order a beer.

“I’ll finish this beer,” Josh said, “but I aint leaving when I’m done.”

“What did you say?” the bartender said, looking at him like he’d just said the craziest thing in the world.

“I said I aint leaving. I’ve got business with someone in this clubhouse and I aim to see it through.”

“Oh you do?” the bartender said, almost laughing. “Kid, I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you but you come into a place like this and talk like that, you’re like to get your dick blown off.”

Josh smiled at the bartender. He knew he meant what he said, but what choice did he have?

“I know it, mister,” Josh said. “But I don’t exactly have a choice in this. I’ve got some business and I’ll see it done or I’ll die trying.”

“Those are some big words for a kid.”

The bartender liked Josh. He knew that, but it was a dangerous game he was playing. He couldn’t let him talk like that in a clubhouse for long before trouble brewed.

By this time, a few of the other club members sitting at the bar were taking notice of Josh. A big guy with arms like tree trunks and a messy black beard spoke up.

“We going to have some trouble, Patsy?”

The bartender, Patsy, shrugged.

“This kid says he’s got some business to take care of.”

By now everyone in the bar was listening.

“Is that a fact?” the big guy said.

“Hey kid,” another guy said, “who do you think you are coming in here? This is a private club.”

The bartender raised his hands in the air. “Hold on, hold on,” he said. “Let’s not get carried away. He aint caused any trouble yet.”

“What’s your business, kid?” a blonde woman who was sitting on one of the members’ laps said.

Josh looked at them all. The band had stopped playing and the people who’d been out back listening to it were coming back into the bar. Among them was the girl Josh had noticed earlier. She was just a child but her eyes were like the two most beautiful jewels he’d ever seen in all his life. He half wondered for a moment if she wasn’t an angel sent by his father.

Along the bar was pretty much the full complement of the Sioux Rangers. They were one of the oldest and most respected MCs in Montreal. They weren’t as strong as they’d once been, newer, more violent clubs had come in and taken over a lot of their territory, but they had pride and Josh could see it in their faces. This wasn’t a club of down and outs, it wasn’t a club of common criminals, men who couldn’t find any other place in the world to take them. They weren’t drug addicts and wife-beaters and thugs. They were real men, real bikers.

“I’m here to kill one of you,” Josh said to them.

He kept his voice as level as he could. He didn’t want to flinch now. He didn’t want to look like a coward. He meant what he was saying and he was prepared to die for of it.

An old man at the far end of the club got up from his stool and stood on the metal rung that lined the bottom of the bar. It made him taller than he would have otherwise been and put him in a position of authority. He had long gray hair that went down well past his shoulders and a matching, tobacco stained beard. Round-rimmed glasses with dark blue lenses covered his eyes. If it wasn’t for the tattoos he would have looked like a hippie from the sixties.

“Why don’t you think carefully, son,” he said to Josh, “and then, if you still mean it, say it again.”

Josh looked at him. He looked in the faces of all the Sioux Rangers along the bar, their wives and families behind them. He wondered which of them it was he meant to kill.

“I aim to kill one of you men tonight,” Josh said again, “the only question is which one of you it’s going to be.”

XIV

T
EN LONG YEARS HAD PASSED
since the night Josh Carter walked into the Sioux Rangers clubhouse. Rose remembered the night. She remembered it better than any other night in her life. It was the night her father died.

That one night had changed everything for her. Rose’s father, Jack Meadows, was the only family she had, him and the Rangers. By the time that night was over her father was dead and the Sioux Rangers had been decimated by a rival gang. It had been one of the bloodiest and most brutal criminal attacks in the history of Quebec. Not only gang members, but women and children had been purposefully targeted. It had been a massacre, and a massive government crackdown had followed.

Rose never fully understood what had happened. She’d been twelve-years-old at the time and everything had happened so quickly that it was still a blur. But she remembered it. She remembered the night. She remembered Josh Carter.

*

J
OSH LOOKED AT THE FACES
staring at him. He’d just said he was going to kill one of the members of this club.

One of the members, a younger guy about Josh’s age, laughed.

“Look at this kid,” he said. “Walks in here like he’s buying a donut at Tim Horton’s and announces he’s going to kill us all.”

“You with the DRMC?” the old man said to him.

Josh had heard of the DRMC but he certainly wasn’t with them.

“I didn’t say I was going to kill all of you,” Josh said, “I said I was going to kill one of you. And I aint got a thing to do with the DRMC.”

A man in the middle of the group stood up to speak.

“Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “We all like a bit of tough talk every once in a while but last I checked I was still the president of this club, and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t take you outside and kick your ass, boy.”

Josh looked at the man. He was the president of the Sioux Rangers. It was the first time he’d set eyes on Jack Meadows. He was a tall man, good-looking with thick brown hair brushed back over his head, just a little gray at the temples.

“But I don’t get the feeling I’m going to need to kick your ass at all, am I?”

Josh shook his head. “No sir,” he said.

He didn’t know why he’d changed his tone. He didn’t know why he’d come in looking for blood and now he was speaking politely to the club like they were his friends. These were supposedly the men who’d killed his father. He felt a quiet anger deep in his chest but something told him these weren’t the men that he needed to be angry with.

“Like I said, my name is Jack Meadows and I’m the president of the Sioux Rangers. If you’ve got a problem with one of our brothers, now is as good a time as any to voice it, kid. You won’t find a club this side of the border who’ll give you a fairer shake than that.”

Josh looked at him. Something about Jack Meadows reminded him of his own father. They both had the same quiet, restrained dignity about them.

“My name’s Josh Carter,” Josh said. “Someone in this club shot dead my father two weeks ago.”

The bar had been quiet up till then but when he said those words the whole place went silent. The little girl Josh had seen earlier, the beautiful girl with the porcelain skin, ran up to Jack Meadows and pulled at his sleeve. He reached down and lifted her up onto his knee.

“Not now, honey,” he said to her. “I’ve got some business with this young man.”

Josh looked at him, he kept his eye steady and his breathing steadier. It was the first time he’d said out loud that his father had been killed. He felt tears welling up behind his eyes but he controlled them.

Jack Meadows was nodding his head. He looked at the older man at the end of the bar and then at the bartender.

“Shirley,” he said, “take Rose.”

A woman took the child from his knee and brought her back out to the back where the band had been playing. “Come on, kids,” she said and the rest of the children who were in the bar went out after her.

“We better talk about this in my office,” Meadows said.

“I aint following you into an office,” Josh said. Something told him that he could trust Jack Meadows, that he could trust the rest of the men around that bar, but he didn’t want to be handled. He didn’t want them to tell him some big, complicated story or make him some offer that he would have to accept. He’d come to avenge his father and he still meant to do it.

“Which one of you is the man that done it?” he said.

“Relax, kid,” Patsy said from behind the bar. “He aint here.”

*

I
T TOOK A FEW MINUTES
for the Sioux Rangers to get Josh to calm down. He hadn’t drawn his gun but no one doubted he had one hidden under his coat. They all had guns in their belts too but it didn’t seem anyone had the heart to kill a kid Josh’s age, not one who’d come to avenge the death of his father.

The members of the Sioux Rangers knew well what had happened to Josh’s father and they all regretted it. It should never have happened and it had been a sore point in their meetings for the past two weeks. If they hadn’t had more serious issues to deal with that month they might have handled it better. As it stood, they knew they’d done what they could and the knew it wasn’t nearly good enough.

Inside the office was a poker table that looked like it had come from a casino. Jack Meadows sat at the head of it. On his right was the old man with the beard who’d spoken up earlier. Patsy and four other members of the Sioux Rangers were also seated at the table. Josh took the seat offered to him.

“We know what happened to your father,” Jack Meadows said.

“Then you know why I’ve come. I can’t let a man do that to my father and not do something about it.”

“This has already been sorted out between us and your father’s club.”