Page 14 of Thick

I hadn’t spoken to anyone in the MC about my legal situation. One unwritten rule in the club was that if anyone was incarcerated, the first contact always came from the person imprisoned, not from the other members.

This prevented prosecution and police from attaching any of the club members to a crime, and made applying the RICO act – a law that extends prison sentences to anyone involved in an ongoing criminal organization – more difficult. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, or OMGs, were high on the federal government’s list of organizations to prosecute.

I was sure the prospect I was with at the time of my arrest had made the MC aware of my arrest. To keep everything a surprise, I hadn’t contacted anyone regarding my release. I thought an unannounced visit to the clubhouse would be more interesting.

When I turned the corner, the shop’s open door came into view. I was surprised to see nearly half a dozen members gathered inside. Crip, the club’s president, was sitting on the work bench drinking a beer. At his side, Pee Bee, the Sergeant-at-Arms, stood.

Eyes widened as I rolled to a stop alongside Crip’s old-school hardtail Harley. Cholo, the club’s enforcer, hopped off his bike and turned to face me.

Smokey, a newer member of the club, but a man who had more character and heart than many of the original members, stood talking to P-Nut, the club’s skittish practical joker.

As soon as they realized who I was, their mouths fell open.

“What’s shakin’, motherfucker?” Pee Bee asked. “Looks like you lost some weight.”

“Maybe a pound or two,” I said. “Hell, all I’ve been doing is working out. Not much else to do in there besides that.”

I flipped the engine off and draped my arms over the handlebars. After scanning the group of men, I let out a dramatic sigh. “What’s with all the somber faces? Thought your pricks would be glad to see me.”

“Grab Meat a cold one, Smoke,” P-Nut said. “Man just did a couple of months in club fed, and he needs a drink.”

Smokey grabbed a beer from the fridge and handed it to me. “How long you been out?”

“Long as it took me to ride here,” I said. “Maybe an hour and a half. I’m guessing Tank told you what happened?”

P-Nut alternated glances between Crip and me a few times, and then fixed his gaze on Crip. “You telling him, or Am I?”

“Telling me what?” I asked.

He looked at me, and then shifted his eyes to Crip. “Well?”

“I’ll tell him.” Crip slid off the edge of the workbench. After tugging at the bottom of his kutte, he took a long drink of beer and then sauntered the twenty feet to where I was parked. “This could be a really long story, but I’ll give you the short version.”

P-Nut paced back and forth behind him. Puffing on his cigarette as he made laps along the length of the workbench, he seemed anxious. With him it was hard to tell if there was a real concern, because he was always nervous about something.

The rest of the fellas faced me with their arms crossed over their chests.

During what I would expect to be a joyous occasion, it seemed everyone was nervous and subdued. I looked at each of the men. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were preparing to tell me about some horrific catastrophe that happened while I was away.

“Jesus.” I glanced at each of the men. “What’s going on?”

“Your prospect was an undercover ATF agent, and he set you up on that gun charge,” Crip said. “The men fighting in the bar were ATF agents, too. The whole thing was a set up. They knew you were a felon, and Tank was trying to get a gun in your hand, so they could arrest you for it. They thought it would--”

The words hit me like a punch in the gut. I hopped off the bike and stepped in front of him. To suggest that I was mentoring a dirty cop made me no better than the piece of shit I was mentoring.

“Hold on a fucking minute,” I retorted. “Tank’s the cousin of One-eyed Bob. He served this country as a Marine, and I’ve known him since he was ten fucking years old. He ain’t no cop. I don’t know who you’ve been--”

Crip raised his hands and turned his palms to face me. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything, Meat. I’ve talked to One-eyed Bob, and he had no idea either. The kid got back from Iraq and went to the ATF’s training center before he even came home. He was deep undercover. Hell, his family didn’t even know he was a cop. This information isn’t opinion, it’s fact.”

I had a difficult time believing that a kid I’d known for fifteen years was willing to set me up on a crime. “Are you sure he was a cop? Shit, Crip. That kid--”

P-Nut stepped between us, waving his arms frantically as he spoke. “Soon as I figured out he was an ATF agent, I kidnapped the prick. Locked him in a metal storage container outside of Temecula for a couple of months. I tortured that fucker every night. Finally, he gave it up. Told me everything. So, I made a deal with the motherfucker. He testified that the gun wasn’t yours and that he lied under oath. In trade for his testimony, you got set free, and I quit torturing that asshole.”

P-Nut was crazier than hell, and hearing that he’d kidnapped a suspected cop didn’t shock me at all. The thought of him being locked in a metal storage container in the fucking desert made my time in prison seem luxurious.

I looked at him in disbelief. “You kept him in a metal box in the middle of the fucking desert?”

“Edge,” he said. “On the edge of the desert. You know, by it, not in it.”