TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (3 page)

“Oh, Pop,” I managed to
murmur, and then it all went black. The very last thing I remember was seeing
that blonde little witch on the screen, hearing the canned laughter, and
feeling like all that laughter was directed at me and my sad, sorry little
life.

Trigger

“You’re
gonna
see one hell of a show if this sorry fucker doesn’t come with the money,” Steel
said, taking a long drag on his cigarette before releasing the smoke in a
billowing cough. That cough sounded less good every damn day, but the old man
wouldn’t put the smokes down to save his life.

Shit, it was 2003, everyone
knew
that smoking was no good, but he
was an old man, and set in his ways. I’d found myself smoking more and more
those days, too. It just felt so
good
when
you were rolling so hard you couldn’t even feel your face…but I knew it was
just
gonna
kill me, and shit, Steel smelled so bad
from a lifetime of smoking that it was almost enough to turn me off altogether.
He stabbed out his cigarette and lit up a new one.

“What’s he
owe
,” I asked, bored to tears but needing to make
conversation. It was a quiet, lazy, summer day at one of our fronts, a topless
joint. It was just past 11, no one had showed up yet to clean up last night’s
filth and get the bar ready to open. Just me and Steel, waiting on a meeting
that was supposed to happen fifteen minutes earlier. A
real
easy deal, no funny business. Guy owed some money for some drugs he was
gonna
sell, was supposed to show up with it today.

“’Bout two grand,” Steel
said. I was slightly taken aback; for the Bleeding Deacons, two grand was damn
near pocket change. Steel could have wiped his ass with a grand and blown his
nose with the other. It seemed weird to me that he would make time to meet the
guy himself to collect the debt.

As though seeing my
confusion, Steel grinned at me, smoke leaking out the corners of his mouth and
nose.

“
Ain’t
much, but he’s a dumb Irish bastard, and I fuckin’ hate dumb Irish bastards,”
he said. If I’d felt safe doing so, I would have sighed or made a noise of
disgust.

Steel hated
a lot
of people. Irish, Italian,
Mexican, Black, Asian…I didn’t even know what his heritage was, but he sure as
hell didn’t have much patience for people who weren’t straight up WASPs. Then
again, he hated those New England WASP types, too. Talking to Steel was like
listening to some terrible never-ending spoken word poem of racial slurs. “I
wanna
watch the poor shit beg.”

“Right,” I answered, a safe
enough response.

“Stupid Micks, dumb as the
potatoes they eat, huh?” Steel cackled. “Stupid, nasty drunks, every one of ‘
em
.”

“Sure,” I said. There was a
pause as Steel seemed to consider some universal truth.

“Still, not as bad as the
damn wetbacks,” he said. “Coming around and
speakin
’
that damn mumbo jumbo. At least the dumb ass Paddies speak English. So drunk
half the time they can’t even do that, though!”

“Yeah,” I said. I was used
to this by now. I could almost predict which group he was going to go after
next. True to my prediction…

“And shit, I’d give the
fuckin’ spics a whole damn mansion to live in if it meant keeping the fuckin’
Haitians out of here! A colored is one thing, but them fuckers are just
weird
with their fuckin’
voo
-doo shit, burning down houses, fuckin’ chicken feet
everywhere…gives me the goddam creeps!”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” I said,
letting my mind drift off. I wondered if he knew I had some Irish in me. Some
Italian, too. Half and half, to be exact, with some renegade Polish thrown in
there, too. A little mutt, that’s me. It led to my good looks though, and I
won’t ever complain about that. It got me laid plenty, and what more did a
19-year-old kid with a penchant for bad news want?

I reached up and stroked my
chin, the slight stubble there a matter of some pride for me. My jaw, thin and
strong, wasn’t much for growing hair, so I made sure to always keep a five
o’clock shadow. With long hair that you could call copper and green eyes, I was
the spitting image of my brother.

Except
he’d
had a beard so good a Viking would envy it. And a nice, fluffy
mustache, to boot.

I wished more than anything
that I would grow up a little more and find out I could grow that, too. The
other thing my brother had that I didn’t was sheer mass. My brother took up
half the damn room when he walked into it. I was a little leaner.

I reckon I was just as
strong as he was at my age, but he sure as hell
looked
it, and I didn’t. Which sometimes put me at a funky
advantage, when big guys thought I’d be easy to knock out. I was small enough
to duck their big lugging punches, strong enough to deal a nice gut-buster on
the way up.

“…Dago bastards,
haha
! Get it! Ah, I crack myself up kid,” Steel said,
suddenly leaning over to punch my shoulder amicably. I’d missed whatever train
he’d been on, but I didn’t imagine it was very important. It rarely was. I
yawned. I was
hungover
as fuck, and to be perfectly
frank Steel was just getting on my nerves that day. Of course, I could never
tell him to be quiet or keep his thoughts to himself. He was the damn
President, and he’d taken me in like a damn son.

“Good one, boss,” I said, forcing
a smile. Dusty, murky sunlight filtered in through the painted-over windows.
Dust motes drifted in the rare shafts of light. It smelled like sex and booze
and cigarettes and pot and sadness and no hope and everything in the world
spoiling all at once, rotting away…

“Where is this cheap paddy
bastard,” Steel said, his mood changing swiftly, as it often seemed to. I
looked at my watch; it was half past eleven, and he was thirty minutes late.
Poor sap was digging himself in so deep, soon enough he wouldn’t be able to see
the top…

Just as I was about to make
a comment to that effect, the door swung open, letting in too-bright sunlight,
more dust flying upwards, caught on the draft and lit by the day. When I was a
kid, I’d thought that shit was beautiful. A large, swaying shape filled the
doorframe. I stood up straight; Steel remained seated. We were at one of the
tiny, rounded tables that made up half the bar, the other half occupied by a
stage with poles.

“’Bout time,
you
stupid fuck,” I said, wanting to impress Steel. He was
an old, dirty, racist, hateful, violent bastard…but having him on my side was a
damn good thing.

“
S’ry
,
so –
s’ry
, she
wa’nt
– hic
– she…”

“You’re drunk already,
ain’t
ya
?” I said, genuinely
disgusted by the wafting smell of whiskey as the man stumbled forward. As the
door swung shut, I could see him better, and he
was
just the kind of Irish-American that Steel probably imagined
when he thought of such men. Big, red-faced, red-haired, damn near slobbering
with drink. To my shock and alarm, I realized there was someone trailing behind
him.

“Who the fuck is that?” I
demanded, moving forward to block Steel. I couldn’t see, my eyes still
re-adjusting to the dimness of the bar after the sudden flood of light, but the
shape looked rather short, rather slight, rather…safe. Still, you never could
tell. But then I saw our fine drunken friend was holding a rope, and that rope
was…yeah, it was attached, somehow to the person who hid behind him,
intentionally moving with his swaying motions, as though to keep himself from
view.

“Who. The fuck. Is that,” I
said again, thought my instinct told me we didn’t actually need to fear whoever
it was. There was an aura of just…sadness, vulnerability, which penetrated the
still-hidden person. But it didn’t mean that we didn’t have any right to know
who it was. Behind me, Steel coughed.

“I’d like to have a look
myself, Trigger, if you don’t mind,” Steel said, his impatience showing.
Hesitant, I stepped to the side, exposing my boss. My hand fingered the cold
handle of my gun in my holster. I had a switchblade in my pocket, too.

Now, the hulking man stood
swaying just a few feet from us, and with a solid yank on the rope he held, the
figure darted momentarily into view, only to disappear again behind him. I
could see, now, it was a girl. I could also hear it was a girl from the yelp
she gave out when he yanked on the rope. And, as we all stood there, Steel and
I trying to figure out what the hell this guy was doing, I could hear what she
was saying.

And goddam, if it wasn’t the
saddest damn thing I’d ever heard in my life.

“Please, Pop, Daddy, please,
just…I don’t…I feel sick…
please, Pop,
”
the voice mewled from behind his back. Somehow, that voice sounded vaguely
familiar. My eyes fell onto the man’s red face, saw it wasn’t just twisted with
drunkenness; there was a torturous sadness, a sickness, a palpable regret in
his scowl, tears in his eyes…

“What’ve we got here,
McMaddon
?” Steel said, his voice cutting through the murky,
dim heat of the room like his namesake.

“I…I
ain’t
got
y’r
money,” the man slurred, straightening
himself out. He was trying to look stoic, I could tell, but he couldn’t keep a
tear from falling from his eye. I craned my neck, trying to get a look at the
girl. Maybe she was some sort of half-wit, or something, and he couldn’t leave
her at home? Maybe she was blind or something, so he needed to bring her around
on a leash? I couldn’t see her too well from where I stood, she was huddled
against him, a shivering frame. All I could see was the shine of what light
there was against golden hair.

“You…
ain’t
….got
….my…money,” Steel said, each word rolling out of his
smoky mouth like a perfect ball of spite. “Well, then, what
do
you have,
McMaddon
?
A big
ol
’ pair of balls for me to cut off and feed to
my dogs? A kidney? A whole bunch of apologies?
What
did you come here for, if you were just going to disappoint
me? Well…I guess, you sure did save me the trouble of having to come find you
and slit your throat in your bed.”

“Please…I
ain’t
…I got…I got her,” the man said, gulping loud. He
yanked again on the rope. The girl yelped again. “She good. She…she’ll do what
– hic – she’ll do it.”

“You got a girl?” Steel
said, rocking his chair back on two legs and propping his legs up on the table.
My stomach sank. There was no way…I was having a hard time believing that this
guy thought we’d take a
girl
in place
of money. Like a human being could just be traded like that. We weren’t in the goddam
West Indies. This was Brooklyn, New York, in the United States of America. That
shit didn’t happen. And what a sick bastard this guy must be to think…

“What
kinda
girl?” Steel asked, and my neck nearly snapped as I spun my head to look at
him. The way he’d said that…well, it almost sounded like he was interested. But
he couldn’t possibly be. No way. Our hookers came to us willingly. He was a lot
of things, but he wasn’t a human trafficker. Was he…?

No, he’s just playing with the guy,
I told myself with false
confidence.
He’s
gonna
rip the guy a new one.

“
M’girl
,”
the man said, another fat, oily tear running down his face. I
coulda
slapped that tear right off his cheek. “She good.
She – hic – cook, clean, pot pie, she…
she’ssa
goo’
girl. She’s
wor
’ more than the money. She’s
wor
’ lot
mo
’ – hic!”

This drunk bastard. My hands
turned to fists. Blood pulsed through me like a raging river. I was getting so
angry I thought I might go blind. This was her
father,
from the looks of it.

A man who wanted to sell his
own damn daughter…

Well, that was no man at
all, was it?

“Is that so,
McMaddon
? Don’t see how any blood of
yours
could be worth enough to pay for a drink at happy hour, but
let’s see her, anyway.”

I shot Steel another
look
. He glanced up at me, his eyes unreadable.
Jesus, please let him just be stringing this
fuck along, I’ll be happy to be the one to shoot the bastard,
I thought. Up
to then, I’d never actually put a guy down before. I’d aided and abetted, for
sure, but as for actually being the one to end a life…I’d been spared that
gnarly honor thus far. Strange, considering my nickname. But if this was
gonna
be the first time I did it, I’d be happy as a pig in
shit.