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He held out his hand, and Duncan took the thing he offered: the Righteous Fist flash.
Duncan looked down at it. His hand shook a little, so he clenched his fist around that strip of embroidered cloth. “Thanks, Prez.”
Sitting shirtless in a vinyl recliner in Little Jon’s front room while Digger sewed him up, Dad gave Duncan a look that was equal parts proud and sympathetic. He understood that Duncan had had no ambition for this ‘honor,’ and he also understood that he had done what needed doing, without hesitation, nonetheless.
Duncan now understood that about himself as well.
The whole crew was back, and the job was done. The Nameless were no more. On their side, Arlo was their only loss, and Dad and Duncan were the only wounded. Digger had stuck three stitches in Duncan’s cheek, and he was working on about a dozen in Dad’s chest. Dad was also getting a transfusion; Digger, it turned out, was a nurse at a local hospital and had ready access to pretty much any medical supplies they might need. Including O-negative blood.
The other squads had gone off without a hitch, except for Eight and Jay’s squad, and Fitz and Sam’s—and, as a result, Dad and Duncan’s. Justin Graham and Brad Stevenson had simply not been where they were supposed to be, because, apparently, Bruce Lopez had called them over to help him with his boat. The squads hadn’t been able to communicate the trouble because they were in the hills, and they wouldn’t have known where they were anyway, so Dad, Duncan, and Arlo were caught flat-footed.
But they got it done, and Duncan had singlehandedly dismembered four bodies and bagged them up like trash, hauled them to Arlo’s truck, cleaned up the scene, and gotten his father to the truck, all without any notice from the neighbors. It had helped that it was dusk by the time he was moving around outside.
When they were finally able to get hold of Eight and report the situation, Eight, Jay, Fitz, and Sam come to Samoa to collect all the bikes and ride off like they were the dead men on their way out on a run.
Now Billy, Dean, Chris, Sam, and Monty were burying the bodies in the forest. Each one had been interred in an old oil barrel, covered in lye, and sealed up. The Nameless had a field just like the Bulls had in Tulsa, but far more bodies had been buried in these hills over the years.
Duncan had done a lot of disgusting shit as a prospect, cleaning up after the patches had handled some messy business. He had a strong stomach, and he understood his family, so that work had been unpleasant but not existentially upsetting. But this, disposing of bodies he’d made, while he was still working through a new understanding of just how far his club—his family—would go to get what it wanted, had put his head in an existential rock tumbler. He was exhausted and vaguely ill.
He slipped the new flash into his pocket and went looking for a drink.
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~oOo~
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“Since the plan is to let the Nameless’s clubhouse look like it’s shuttered for a while,” Eight told the group the next day, “Little Jon’s place here will be the Eureka charter clubhouse until the timing is right to hang the Bull on the building. The story we’ve got is good, so let’s keep it straight and solid.”
“Can we go over that story again?” Billy asked.
Little Jon sighed with extreme rhetoric. “Listen up good, kid. The Nameless bailed on Eureka. That’s the story. You know it makes sense, people’ve been wanting us out for a long while, and we’re broke as shit.”
“Don’t say ‘us,’ Jon,” Cooper said quietly.
“I gotta say ‘us’ for a while, Coop. And remember, those men we killed, they were my brothers. For decades, some of ‘em. They weren’t good men, sure, but none of us are. And I loved some of ‘em for most of my life. Believe me when I say what we’re doing ain’t easy for me, but I did it, and I’m in. I’m a Bull now, but until we can hang the sign up, it does no good for any of us for me to forget I was Nameless.”
Cooper stared hard at him, glanced at Eight, looked back at Jon, and finally nodded. “Just keep your allegiance straight.”
“I know where my loyalty lies, and you should, too. I just buried my family in my damn yard to prove it.”
“Okay, okay,” Eight said, obviously impatient. “Let’s get back on track here. Caleb?”
Caleb stood, went to a table in the corner of the room, and brought a cardboard box back. He set it on Little Jon’s dining-room table in front of Eight and Cooper.
They both stood, and Eight opened the box. “As president of the mother charter of the Brazen Bulls Motorcycle Club, I officially welcome Little Jon Androuet, William Graves, Dean Barker, and Douglas “Digger” Daniels to our new Northern California charter.”
As the men crowded into the room applauded and offered or accepted congratulations, Eight and Cooper dealt out five Bulls patches, and five bottom rockers that read NorCal. One of each was for Arlo. His body had not yet been buried, so that he could be put to rest as a member of the club he’d died for. Arlo had no people, and the Nameless had few MC friends, so they would bury him here, but with respect.
Eight also handed Little Jon a Righteous Fist flash; he’d been the one to kill his squad’s target.
Eight withdrew flashes for the various officer positions from the box as well. Those, he handed to Fitz.
“Fitz, Jazz, and Geno are staying around to help get the charter rolling,” Eight said. “The plan is they’ll stay until the clubhouse is claimed—and by then, y’all should have figured out the officers for this charter. Until then, Fitz is acting president, Jazz VP, and Geno SAA.”
Cooper added, “They got no intention of staying here, so the first order of business is figuring out recruitment and structure. And charm patrol—the Bulls need better relations with the civilians here than the Nameless had. We need the town to think of this as an improvement, and we need law on our side—or at least out of our way. The reason we make bank is because we stay out of civilians’ way, and we get law to clear a path for us to work. ”
Dean laughed. “That’s a tall order. People fuckin’ hate the Nameless around here. Contempt or fear, for most folks. Or both. And the cops? They are not friendly.”
