The Filthy Few (Iron Disciples MC) (7 page)

I grab what’s
left of my bra and look for somewhere to stow it. Under the couch seems like a
fine place. My blouse goes there too. I fish out a new bra and top from my
Gucci bag and produce a mirror so I can fix my bed head; make that my sex head.
I have just managed to repair the damage from last night when Stacy returns
from the office. I crack open my laptop and get psyched for the day. The market
will open in twenty minutes.

I’m scanning
Reuters for pertinent news items when all hell breaks loose, and I don’t mean with
the stock market. I hear the door open and Cade’s surprised exclamation.

“What the
hell?”

Then there’s a
loud commotion followed by a single gunshot. I have never heard a gun go off
except on TV or in the theater. The sound is loud enough to shock and awe me
into stillness.

Abruptly Cade
and a truly ugly looking biker type stumble into my makeshift office (the
living room during market hours). The ugly man still has the gun in his hand
and is doing his level best to aim it at Cade. Cade has both of his hands on
the gun as well in an epic battle for control of the deadly weapon. Then in an
almost comically funny move, Stacy follows in after the combatants and is
hammering on the assailant’s bare head with her $500 heels. That’s definitely
gonna leave a mark.

The three
combatants spin round and round careening off of living room furniture, potted
plants and the wall. Then to everyone’s shock and awe the gun wielding biker
type staggers away from Cade with one half of a nine hundred dollar pair of
black Prada ankle boots attached to his head. A large silver handgun goes
skittering across the wooden floor right towards me and under the coffee table.
As I twist around to get into a position to reach under the table, a hot inky
spray of bright red blood splatters across my shirt and onto my neck. The shock
of seeing blood for the first time gives me pause; unfortunately it doesn’t
give anyone else pause and the battle rages on. With the gun out of the ugly
man’s hands Cade and Stacy seem to finally have the upper hand.

Cade easily
blocks the other man’s kick and Stacy just attaches herself to the man’s back
and is just pounding on the man’s ear with her clenched fist. Then, as suddenly
as it began, it all ends when Cade lands a lethal blow to the man’s exposed
throat. Both he and Stacy fall to the floor in a heap. Ethan steps back and
looks towards me who is still on the couch trying to get into position to
retrieve the fallen gun.

“Are you okay?”
He asks.

Strange how he
asks me first rather than Stacy who actually
was
in the battle.

“I’m fine,” I
tell him. “But shouldn’t you be asking your partner in crime there?”

“Oh I know
she’s fine.” He replies. “She’s a scrapper!”

“I’m guessing
this isn’t the first fight you’ve been in Stacy. Am I right?”

“When your
cousin is the president of a powerful biker club it kinda goes with the
territory.”

Stacy gets up
off the floor, wipes off imaginary dust and retrieves her fallen purse from the
hall. The pulls out her iPad and says to me.

“Looks like
it’s gonna be a good day. The Dow’s up 185 to just over 15,000, the NASDAQ is
at 4,675 and the S&P 500 just breached eighteen hundred!”

“Who the fuck
are you, and what have you done with Stacy Adams?” I ask. “You’re shoe is
sticking out of some bald guy’s head, your Donna Karan suit is beyond salvage
and your giving me updates on the market?”

“Money-”

“Never sleeps!”
We finish the mantra in unison.

How true it is.
If any of my clients were to call right now and I told them that someone just
tried to murder me I’d get the standard uninterested response; something like
this.

“Hmmm oh uh
wow. So how’s Pfizer holding up this morning?”

That’s it. Four
syllables would be all that is dedicated to my life and death problems, then
it’d be on to what’s going on with the stock market and how’s everybody’s money
doing? It’s okay though. This is what I signed up for. There’s no such thing as
loyalty when it comes to people and their money. You make them millions of
dollars over the years, but then one trade goes south and they’re crying foul
and moving their account to a different broker. If you’re lucky you don’t hear
from them in arbitration. That’s when whiny assholes try to make you
responsible for their stupidity. Sad thing is the arbitration judges almost always
side with the investor over the broker even if the investor was at fault.

Suddenly I
remember something. There’s a dead guy on the floor not fifteen feet from me.
Not my problem of course unless it interferes with my doing business here. I
decide to ask what’s to be done with the body but Cade is already on the phone
presumably making arrangements.

The rest of the
day goes as predicted; very good. Everything I touched today turns to gold
leaving me feeling like the female version of King Midas. I’m only vaguely
aware that three scary looking dudes came into the house a couple hours ago and
removed the body without saying a peep to any of us live folks. When the
closing bell for the stock market rang I actually thought I’d gotten away with
being witness to murder and with no adverse side effects. That is until this
very moment. The trembling begins in the tips of my fingers. It’s so slight
that I don’t at first notice it. But five minutes later my arms are shaking and
the rest of my body is vibrating in place. What the fuck is wrong with me?

I keep looking
on the floor where there were splatters of blood not three hours ago. There was
a dead body right next to that potted plant and under the coffee table…Oh my
god, there’s still the gun under the table. And there were shots fired in the
hall. I look across the room and I see a hole in the plaster wall where a
bullet entered. Oh fuck! Here comes my freak out!

Then suddenly Cade
is on the couch beside me and his arms are there protecting me. Well, protecting
my body. But whose gonna protect my brain?

“I take it
you’ve never seen a dead person before?” He asks.

I shake my
head. “My mom…she…she died on her b-birthday when I-I was 13. I found her in
bed. I had a try of food. I-I made breakfast and…and s-she was d-dead.”

“Oh shit, I am
so sorry Morgan. This must have re-traumatized you. I get so used to…to this
life and I forget how it affects others when our two worlds collide. I’m not a
bad person Morgan. You just have to get to know me, that’s all.”

“I bet that’s
what all killers say.”

“I’ve known a
lot of killers in my lifetime and believe me, many of them, had you asked would
have acknowledged they were not good guys at all.”

“But not you?”
I reply. “You’re different from the other killers? Well I’m sure I won’t be
spending that much time with you! As charming as you might be, I don’t think I
want to get to know a killer.”

“Wow…even one
who saved your life?”

“My life
wouldn’t have needed saving had you been a normal person.” I retort back.

“And if
you
had been a normal person and looked both ways before stepping out into traffic
I wouldn’t be stuck here with you watching while you’re turning your
millionaire clients into billionaire clients.”

“Jealous much?”

“I don’t think
I’ve seen anything to get jealous of yet. I’m not who you think I am Morgan.
I’m not a killer; at least not in the traditional sense of the word. I have
killed but only when necessary and not because I take any pleasure in taking
another’s life. That guy there who I just killed, he’s got a mom somewhere who
no doubt loves him. He’s probably got a dad who wants to be proud of his son
but I have just taken it all away. I robbed his family of what he could have
been and it’s a heavy burden to bear.”

“Yeah,
whatever…”

“You’re so judgmental.
You sit there with your millions insulated from the real world. You look down
on people like me but I’m exactly the guy you want with you when your fancy
Mercedes breaks down and your cell phone dies. I’m the guy who’ll keep the
wolves at bay. You need me Morgan, but I don’t need you.”

It’s amazing
how easy it is for us to go from civil conversation to libelous, contentious,
slanderous talk.

“For starters,
my Mercedes wouldn’t break down. But say someone ran a red light, struck my car
and fled the scene leaving me by myself in a totaled car and I still wouldn’t
need you. My car would automatically transmit my current location and alert the
police and medical rescue without me even needing to tell them I was in an
accident. My millions that you so clearly disdain makes you obsolete! “

“You don’t like
violence and the people who participate in it, yet it’s your millions that’s causing
most of the conflict between motorcycle clubs. You and your co-workers spend
millions of dollars on cocaine and marijuana which my rivals supply you. In
turn they take the profits and buy illegal arms to use against me.”

Abruptly he
gets up from his recliner and kneels down by the coffee table. After a couple
seconds he stands up with a gun in his hand. He does something and the magazine
falls out in his hand. Then he does something else and a bullet pops out from
the top of the gun. He catches it mid-air and puts it in the magazine. He
studies the gun carefully before talking again.

“This is a
CZ-75 from the Czech Republic. It’s in perfect condition and has had the serial
numbers filed off.”

He shows me.

“Is this
supposed to mean something to me?” I ask.

“The Hoarde
motorcycle club deals in small arms from that area of the world. While you
could purchase this gun at the store for about $400, your average street thug
would end up paying about a grand for this gun in this kind of shape. The
Hoarde buys up to 60 guns at a time and they double their money on just about
every sale. The guns are financed by drugs which are financed by people like
you who are making people wealthy enough to buy the drugs.”

“Wow, blame me
for the problems of the world, how original. I thought you were smarter than
that.”

“Alright,
that’s it!” Stacy shouts. “You guys are nuts. It’s obvious to me you’re into
each other so just shut up admit it already and then you’ll fight a lot less
I’m sure.”

We both look at
her in surprise. She’s not one to react like that.

“We’re not into
each other,” I say, as my face heats up. I must be beet red right about now but
she has the good grace to not point it out in front of me or Cade.

She walks over
to the couch where I’m camped out. Then she reaches out and pulls something
from between the cushions and holds it up for all to see. It’s a condom
wrapper. Shit!

“I suppose this
just got here by itself this morning?” She asks triumphantly.

“You know
there’s such a thing as being too fucking smart for your own good Stacy.”

“Yeah,” she
replies. “I passed that benchmark when I was in the third grade.”

That’s probably
true. The woman is smart as hell. Rumor has it that her IQ is nearing 200. She
got one of the highest recorded scores on the LSAT in the last two decades yet
she chose to go into finance. Fortunately Cade is on the phone now and walking
into the kitchen so he probably didn’t hear Stacy’s remarks.

“Alright
Sherlock Holmes, we did the nasty, so fucking what?”

Her face
actually lights up. Who’d have thought she’d be such a gossip monger.

“He’s hella
hot!” She says. “Tell me this isn’t just a shag and not something more
significant! He may be an outlaw biker, but he is still my cousin and we grew
up together. I actually care about him.”

“Just a fucking
shag, Stacy so keep your pants on. He’s a fucking criminal biker! I can’t be
associated with people like that.”

“When did you
get morals?” She asks. “You’ve never balked at working with white collar
criminals before so why not a freaking hot blue collar criminal? This is not
the time to suddenly develop a conscious Morgan.”