Just as I was about to ask Baffle to take the shroom problem, his phone rang. “Someone just robbed the V-KOA.”
“Couldn’t have been a local, they all know better.”
“Might be related to the MDMC,” Baffle suggested.
“Shit. You and Knuckles go handle the V-KOA. Call for Smooth if you need an extra body. I’ll handle this shit.” I turned and followed Dime to the office where we had a hidden entrance, in addition to the cave system that ran just behind our clubhouse. It ran nearly the length of our property and we long ago closed off any possible points of entry from lands beyond ours, just in case.
“Wait!” I turned to see Knuckles at the door to the office.
“What’s up?”
“What about Sammy?”
“Fuck,” I hissed. “I’ll get Kingston on her until I’m done here.”
“You sure about that?”
“Why the fuck wouldn’t I be?”
“Pretty sure the prospect is closer to her age than you are.”
“Fuck off!” I yelled at him as I dialed our youngest prospect. “Need you to follow my girl around today.”
“Melissa?”
“Fuck no. That’s Hawk’s mom, not my girl. Need you to follow Samantha Morton. She lives and works over on the land behind Morton Motors.”
“Where we take the bikes to get them serviced?”
“That’s it. Sammy works at the campground back there, and she lives at the end of the road that swings around to property.”
“Okay, but what do you want me to do?”
“If she leaves the property, follow her. Keep tabs, don’t let her know you’re there, and for fuck’s sake if she spots you, you better tell her you’re my prospect before she shoots you.”
“Why would she shoot me?”
“She won’t so long as you don’t get caught tailing her.” I chuckled as I heard the kid audibly swallow. “Don’t worry kid, just keep her safe and call immediately if you see any bikers not affiliated with our club approach her.”
“Okay, Prez. I’m on it.”
“Good.” I hung up on the kid and followed Dime down into our cavern, shroom grow house.
It didn’t take long to see what the emergency was with the mushrooms. There was an entire section of them that had a weird webbing on the caps. “What the hell is this? We have spiders down here?”
“No, I don’t know what it is but look over here. It seems like it started here in the back of this section. Not only does it have the webbing but the caps are full of dark spots, and they appear to be dying off.”
“Son of a bitch. If this is some kind of disease or virus, we have to worry about the rest of the crop,” I said. I turned to look at just how close and closed in the rest of the crops were. “We need someone who knows what the hell they’re doing down here and then we need them to train several brothers.”
Dime nodded his head as he continued down the row of raised beds. “Losing Twitch fucked us with this stuff.”
Twitch had been our mushroom expert. He was the whole reason we added the shroom business to our club. He knew what the fuck he was doing and after two years of careful cultivation on his part, we finally had a crop that net us a huge chunk of profit. We saw our profits soar over the next four years and had huge contracts with sellers across four states. That meant we couldn’t afford to lose a single mushroom, never mind the entire section that seemed to be infected. If whatever happened to the section spread to the rest of the mushrooms throughout the cave, we were fucked.
“We need to find someone who can handle this shit.”
“Well, it’s not like we can take out an ad for a fucking mushroom farmer. That might tip off the fucking cops.”
“For now, I want you to get whoever you need to down here to help seal off this section from the rest. Let’s hope whatever this is can be contained and that it hasn’t already spread down the line too far. Set it up like this section is in a clean room. Plastic walls, whatever the fuck you have to do to minimize the spread. Let’s get it done.”
