Tainted Rose (20 page)

He walked up to the house as if he lived there, as if he belonged there, and stared at the front of it for a moment. No one was at any of the front windows. He went to the side of the house and along the narrow alleyway that separated it from the neighboring auto parts store. There weren’t any windows or doors along that side of the building and he hurried to the back where he saw a raised wooden porch. He waited at the corner for a minute, listening, watching for any sign of activity. There was none.

He knew nothing about the building and its inhabitants other than that Rex and his companion had entered it. He imagined that it was just the two of them in there but he knew that he couldn’t assume that. Everything he did had to be moderated by the fact that there could be more men in the building. If he could get in quietly that would be best.

He walked silently up the steps of the porch, keeping low, and crept to the door. It was a thin, wooden door. Josh was surprised they didn’t have something more secure. It was unlikely that this building belonged to the DRMC. It was probably just Rex’s place. He could easily have forced the door open but he would prefer not to give himself away if he could avoid it.

He tried the door handle. It was locked. He looked up at the walls. There was a window next to the door that he could reach without much effort. He used the rail of the deck and climbed up onto the window sill. He peered through the window. It led into what looked like an unused bedroom. He tried the window and it wasn’t locked. He slid it open enough to duck in under it and he landed as quietly as he could on the wooden floorboards of the bedroom.

He drew the handgun. It wasn’t much to look at, its wooden grip stained from heavy use, the mechanism worn and stiff. He cocked it. The clicking sound seemed loud enough to wake the dead.

He heard movement in the hallway outside the bedroom door. He crouched in a dark corner just as the door opened.

“Hey,” it was Rex’s companion, “who’s in here?”

“Don’t move,” Josh said from the darkness. “I got a bead on you, you son of a bitch. Don’t fucking move.”

The threat worked. Rex’s friend stood motionless, trying to see in the dark where Josh’s voice had come from.

Like an idiot Rex came right into the room next.

“What’s going on?” he said.

The companion said nothing.

“Rex Savage,” Josh said, “you move one inch, you’re a dead motherfucker.”

“What the hell?” Rex said.

Josh didn’t waste any time.

“Both of you, on the ground. Hands on your heads.”

He knew what they would have been expecting. They would be thinking that their deaths had found them, that they were about to be executed. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had decided to pick off a few bikers for some reason or other. He knew that was what they were thinking was coming, but Josh hadn’t decided yet if that was what was going to happen.

He had no beef with Rex’s companion. That poor son of a bitch was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He hadn’t seen Josh yet, hadn’t seen his face, and he didn’t know why Josh was there. If Josh could somehow get him out of the way he might not have to kill him.

He would have preferred not to. Killing wasn’t in Josh’s blood. If something had to be done, Josh could do it, but if it could be avoided that would be better.

“You?” he said to Rex’s companion. “What’s your name?”

“Drake. They call me Drake.”

“Well, Drake. I’ve got business with your friend here, Rex Savage.”

“Well I guess that’s between you and Rex, mister.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t have to be a part of it. I aint seen you.”

“You don’t mind that Rex might not live to see the end of it?”

There was a long pause while Drake mulled over the meaning of Josh’s words.

“I don’t mind at all,” he said at last.

Josh nodded. He’d thought as much. Rex Savage wasn’t the kind of guy to inspire a lot of loyalty.

“You filthy piece of scum,” Rex said.

Josh held his gun up to the moonlight so that they could see he meant business.

“So what am I going to do with you?” he said to Rex’s companion.

“You really mean it, mister?”

Drake must have felt like he’d just won the lottery. The usual thing for Josh to have done in that situation would be to kill Drake. Everyone in the room knew it.

“Like you said,” Josh said to him, “you aint seen me, you don’t know my business with Rex, and you don’t care about it.”

“That’s right,” Drake said. “I aint seen you. I don’t want to see you.”

“Is there some rope or something in this place?” Josh said.

“There are handcuffs right inside this closet.”

“You fucking worm,” Rex Savage said to Drake but Drake didn’t care. Josh was the one with the gun.

Josh went over to Rex and dug the barrel of the gun into the back of his neck. “Don’t you fucking move, Rex.”

Then he went to the closet and opened it. There wasn’t just handcuffs in there but all sorts of bondage equipment. It looked like Rex had a BDSM fetish.

“What is all this?” Josh said.

He looked at the equipment more closely. There were handcuffs, chains, restraints for the mouth and face. There were leather suits that covered the body and face. There were also torture implements, whips, all sorts of kinky shit.

“It aint mine,” Drake said.

“It’s his?”

“It is.”

“I should have guessed,” Josh said. “Hey, Savage. Yeah, you, you got a little fetish for this shit?”

“Fuck you,” Savage said.

Josh pointed the gun at him. Rex looked up from the ground into the gun barrel.

“No,” Josh said, “fuck you.”

He took the cuffs and secured Drake to the copper drain pipe. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. Then he checked Drake’s pockets and took his gun and phone from him. It was dark in the room but Josh pulled his jacket collar up in front of his face so that Drake wouldn’t be able to recognize him if they ever met again in the future.

“Do I need to gag you?” Josh said to Drake as he fastened his hands behind his back.

“No, sir.”

Josh grabbed Rex by the collar and dragged him to his feet. He kept the handgun pressed hard against his back.

“You, come with me. One move and you’re dead.”

Josh patted Rex down. He wasn’t armed. He brought him out into the hallway and shut the door. He didn’t want Drake overhearing the conversation. He could still kill Drake if he had to but he thought it wouldn’t be necessary. He hoped it wouldn’t.

The next room was the living room and Josh sat Rex on a ratty old sofa and stood looking down at him, the gun out in front of him.

“You recognize me?” he said to Rex.

Rex looked up at him and then looked away.

“Hey, I asked you a question. Do you recognize me?”

“Do you know what the DRMC is going to do to you when they find you?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about the DRMC. If they knew who I was they’d have killed me ten years ago.”

Rex nodded at that. “You’re from one of the old gangs, then. I’m surprised you lasted this long.”

“You know which gang I’m from?”

“I don’t know. I don’t give a fuck,” Rex said. “All I know is that if you’re hoping to get back at the DRMC, you’ve started at the wrong place. I don’t hold any weight around their clubhouse.”

“But you’re a member?”

“I suppose I am, but they don’t have a lot of love for me.”

“You know why that is?”

“Who the fuck are you, kid?”

“They hold no love for you because they can’t trust you.”

“They can trust me. I’ve ridden with them for ten years now. They can trust me.”

“And how long did you ride with the Sioux Rangers before you sold them out?”

“What do you know about the Sioux Rangers?”

Josh took off his jacket and showed Rex the inside of the lining. There, sewed into the lining, was the Sioux Ranger patch, and the name Renegade.

“What are you doing with that?”

“It’s mine.”

Rex gave out a long laugh.

“You want to be me, boy?”

“No I don’t want to fucking be you.”

“Well how come you’re wearing my old jacket then?”

Josh looked at him. He couldn’t believe it.

“You’re Renegade?”

“I was,” Rex said. “Before they disowned me.”

Josh’s mind jumped back ten years to the morning Jack Meadows had given him the jacket. Out of all the jackets hanging over the bar he’d given him that one, the one that belonged to the man who’d killed his father. He didn’t understand it. He didn’t think it was a trick that Meadows had been playing. It was more a sense of irony, a statement on Jack Meadows’ view of the universe, of fate and destiny.

“Well, it’s mine now,” Josh said.

“What do you have to do with the Sioux Rangers?”

“I’m the last surviving member.”

“You aint a member of the Rangers. I rode with them right up until the end and I never saw you before in my life.”

“You might not have seen me, but I saw you, and you’re wrong. I was sworn into the Rangers on Bloody Sunday.”

Rex laughed at that. “You must be the unluckiest biker ever to have ridden. You were sworn into the Rangers the day they were decimated?”

“Yes, I was.”

“And I suppose you’re here to get retribution for the club?”

“I think that would be appropriate, wouldn’t you? The last Ranger, here to take out the man who betrayed the club.”

Rex nodded at him. The man’s eyes looked tired and watery. He wasn’t well. That much was clear. He probably had cancer or something. Now that Josh looked at him he could see that Rex Savage didn’t have that much time left anyway.

“You’re sick, aren’t you?” Josh said.

“What’s it to you?”

“Nothing I suppose.”

“You think it means less to kill a sick man?”

“I think it means the same.”

“You ever killed a man like this before?” Rex said. “At close range?”

“I’ve done it,” Josh said.

Rex looked at him. His beady little eyes showed nothing, there was no emotion in them, no fear, just the defeated, helpless eyes of an addict who was ready to meet his Maker.

“What are you waiting for?” Rex said.

“I aint told you the whole story yet?”

Rex sighed. “There’s more?”

“There’s always more, old man.”

“Then out with it.”

Josh found the man so wretched, so repulsive, that he had to fight back the urge to shoot him right then and there.

“You ever been to Akwesasne, New York?”

“Akwesasne?”

“The indian reservation on the border.”

“Akwesasne. I remember that place. A two-bit dump, full of lowlife, alcoholic half-breeds.”

*

B
ANG!

*

T
HE SOUND OF A GUNSHOT
rang out through the room. The noise was deafening. It was an old gun but it packed a punch. It even shocked Josh, and he’d pulled the trigger. The sulfurous smell of the smoke reminded him of a match being lit.

Rex writhed in pain in his seat. The bullet had gone into his thigh and the blood was spilling out like a leak, soaking his pants.

“You remember the Rodeo? Black Rodeo? My father rode with them.”

“You’re the fucking kid. I knew it.” Rex held his leg and breathed in through his teeth in pain. “I always fucking knew it would be one of the kids who came back to get me.”

“That why you wanted to go after them?”

Rex looked up at him. “No fucking way. You’re the waiter from Dieu du Ciel.”

“Yes I am, and I heard what you pulled with Jack Meadows’ daughter.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Lets just say I’d like to get her out of whatever cesspit you’ve thrown her into.”

“Well good luck finding her.”

“I’ll find her. I’ll ride up and down the northern routes and stop in all the bars run by DRMC if I have to. They’re not hard to find, and I swear to god I’ll know that girl when I find her.”

“Oh, you’ll know her when you find her, will you?”

“Yes I will.”

“Well,” Rex said, “I don’t suppose it will make much of a difference to me now, but I’ve got to hand it to you kid.”

“What do you mean?”

“It took you ten years, but you finally found the man that done in your father.”

Josh eyed Rex wearily.

“A lot of sons would have done less.”

Josh nodded. “It took me longer than it should have.”

“The important thing is that you got me in the end, kid. I always knew one of the kids of the men I killed would come for me. That’s why I wanted to go after them. But you know what scared me even more?”

Josh wasn’t in much of a mood to hear the dying words of Rex Savage but he let the man talk.

“What was that?”

“I was more afraid that none of them would ever come. I was afraid that out of all the men I betrayed and double-crossed in this world, and it’s been many, that not a single son of any of them would step up and try to avenge his father. What would that say about the world?”

Josh nodded. He cocked the hammer of the gun. “You ready to die, old man?”

Rex held up his hand. “I’m ready,” he said. “I’ve been ready a long time, son. But listen to one last thing before you pull that trigger.”

“Talk fast, Rex.”

“The girl, the Meadows girl, she’s in the very last DRMC bar. Across the border, past Val-d’Or and Malartic and Rouyn-Noranda, over the border into Ontario, the very last bar run by the DRMC, the VP of the Val-d’Or chapter runs it, that’s where you’ll find Jack Meadows’ girl.”

Josh looked at Rex. He wondered what it was that made the man share that information with him. Now that his end had come, had he become sentimental? That seemed like a lot to believe.

“That’s from me to you, the one kid who stepped up and avenged his father. The last bar, the VP’s an dirtbag by the name of Serge Gauthier. Now pull that trigger, boy.”

Josh didn’t waste any more time. He let his finger get heavy on the trigger and a second bang shook through the room.

Rex Savage was dead. The one thing that had been giving Joss Carter’s life a purpose for the last ten years, the need to avenge his father, was finished. The question was whether he would be able to find a new purpose for his life now that it was done.