Sons of Anarchy: Bratva

10

Trinity heard the rumble of the Camaro’s engine and put aside the copy of The Great Gatsby she’d found under the counter in the motel’s lobby. Reading more classic literature had been on her to-do list for years, but she’d never been able to stick to it. Oleg had suggested Anna Karenina because he wanted her to read something Russian, but Trinity had always despised the very idea of classic novels about melodramatic rich girls struggling with love. Maybe she shouldn’t judge, but sappy shit like Pride and Prejudice made her want to puke.

Tugging her shoes on, she shut off the light and left the room. They’d cleaned up some, but walking around the abandoned hotel barefoot would have been stupid. There had been enough teenagers partying around the place that shards of broken beer bottles were more plentiful than spiders, and there were plenty of those.

She crossed the cracked parking lot. A door opened behind her, and she glanced back to see Pyotr emerge from his room. The young Russian had blue eyes so pale they were almost white. Oleg liked him, and Trinity was trying, but Pyotr barely spoke to her. Even now he only nodded and kept his stride steady, making no attempt to catch up and walk with her. She did the same, reaching the rear door of the lobby ahead of him. The main entrance and the lobby were dark except for the moonlight, but she only had to pass through and head down a side corridor to reach the motel’s conference room.

When she walked in, most of Oleg’s Bratva were already there. Cigarette smoke swirled and eddied in the room. Heavy blackout curtains covered the windows, and so they congregated there, out of sight of the road. Trinity could have waited out back for Oleg and Gavril—even now they would be parking the Camaro back there—but she wanted the others to see her as herself, and not just the ginger who followed Oleg around. Some of them already had accepted her, and others, she knew, never would.

“Trinity,” Ilia called as she stepped inside. “Have a drink with me!”

He raised a bottle of rum—his beloved—and shook the remnants of it around so it sloshed against the glass.

“I’m grateful, but no, thank you.” She smiled at him, and he seemed happy enough with that. She wondered how drunk he had to be before it pissed off the rest of them.

Kirill was in the small office adjoining the conference room. He had made the place his own and had maps of Las Vegas and the surrounding areas all over the floor, lines and circles drawn in red marker indicating areas they’d identified as likely haunts for Lagoshin and his men.

Voices came along the corridor, and then Gavril walked in, followed by Oleg. He smiled at her, and Trinity nodded to him, but he had more pressing matters on his mind than his girlfriend. Oleg knocked on the office door, and Kirill called that he’d be right out. A few moments later, they were all clustered even more tightly around the conference table.

“You found them,” Kirill said as he came out of the office. “I see it on your faces.”

Oleg nodded grimly. “We hit three or four of them. There were two I don’t think will be getting up again. One was Vasily. I didn’t see the face of the other.”

“Krupin?” Timur asked.

“He was hit in the shoulder. Probably not a killing wound,” Gavril replied.

Kirill frowned, studying them. Trinity noticed that they all seemed to be holding their breath.

“There is something you’re not saying,” Kirill observed.

Oleg and Gavril exchanged a glance, and then Oleg nodded slowly.

“Lagoshin was there,” he said. “I’m sorry, Kirill. We could have ended it tonight if we’d gotten him.”

Silence descended among them. The whole hotel seemed to tick and shift, as if she could hear it breathe.

Kirill said something in Russian. Trinity had listened to them talking enough that she understood a little, knew it translated roughly to “good job” or “you did well.”

“Lagoshin is down by two men, maybe more if the others who were shot are badly wounded,” Kirill went on, scanning the room. “I call it good fortune. Our friends are looking out for us.”

Ilia scoffed. “Friends.”

Kirill glared. “Don’t let the bottle speak for you, Ilia.”

“We have no friends or we would already know where to find Lagoshin and Krupin and the rest,” Ilia said, all of his drunken amiability turned to slurring scorn.

“You can’t blame them for being wary,” Oleg said, and from his tone, Trinity realized how much Ilia’s remarks unsettled him. “Our contacts are afraid. They want to help us, but if they do so openly and Lagoshin is the victor here—”

“Cowards!” Ilia snapped. He stood drunkenly and moved to the heavy drapes, peering out between them at the darkness. “They are cowards, and so are we, hiding here and striking from shadows. I say we talk to our ‘friends’ again, let them know they can’t stand by and wait to see who is still standing at the end. They must choose, and if they do not choose us, then we make them regret the choice.”

The room seemed to hold its breath. Trinity glanced at Pyotr, Sacha, and the others and realized that they agreed. This was why Oleg seemed so wary of Ilia’s words, because he knew the others felt the same.

“Throwin’ away through haste what might be gained through strategy is a fool’s gambit,” she said.

They all stared at her, and she felt more than ever like an intruder. Even Gavril curled his upper lip in disapproval of her interference. Only Oleg looked kindly upon her.

Kirill walked slowly to Ilia. Even drunk, he had the good sense to take a step back as his captain approached.

“It is my brother lying out there in a grave with no name,” Kirill said. “I want Lagoshin dead more than any of you, but I want to do it without burying anyone else in this desert. I agree that we must put more pressure on some of our friends to choose sides, but it must be done carefully and wisely… and soberly. In the morning, Ilia, we will speak of this again.”

Ilia looked terrified, but he raised his chin in a show of defiance and, in his own language, agreed.

Kirill turned from him. “Oleg, Gavril, come into the office.”

Oleg and Gavril followed him into the little side room with its maps and markers while the others began to disperse, realizing that nothing more would be happening until morning.

Ilia, who had been so welcoming to her before, paused to glare drunkenly at her. “If they find us before we find them, they will kill us all.”

Trinity nodded slowly. “They might. But if we rush into their gun sights without a plan, we die even faster.”

The drunken man flinched, sniffed at her logic, and marched out of the conference room. The trouble was that she agreed with him. He was drunk and foolish, yes, and she didn’t think they ought to do anything without preparing for the consequences, but the time had come to force the truth out of the Bratva’s local contacts, even if it meant pain. Even if it meant blood.

No more hiding in shadows.

The crowd at the Tombstone Bar was significantly more subdued than the usual suspects back at Birdland. Chibs stood by the bar and waited on Baghead, who’d slipped behind the oak counter and grabbed a bottle of whiskey. Hopper had been tending bar, pulling pints of local ale off the tap and setting them in front of patrons with the foam still spilling over the rims. Now he turned to glare at Baghead and mutter something sharp. Bag replied, and Chibs saw Hopper look up, search the bar, and settle on him, then nod. Bag may not have explained exactly what was going on in the back room, but he knew it wasn’t good.

Chibs and Joyce had let Jax and Opie ride in the lead, just in case one of them took a spill. Despite the blows to Jax’s head and Opie’s blood loss, they’d made it back to the Tombstone without any real difficulty and guided their bikes into the lot at the rear of the bar. Patrons leaving the last showing at Rollie’s little next-door movie theater stared at the snorting Harleys as they vanished behind the gate. Chibs hoped the darkness had hid the crimson soaking Opie’s shirt and the blood on Jax’s face.

“Got it,” Baghead said proudly as he emerged from behind the bar. He did a little two-step as if to celebrate his achievement, and Chibs wondered just how crazy the guy might be. With Tig and Happy, they had their own madmen back in Charming, but Bag seemed to walk a fine line between good-natured idiot and raving lunatic.

“Brilliant,” Chibs said as they fell into step together.

Bag handed him the bottle as they strode toward the back hallway, and Chibs nearly choked. Talisker single malt, twenty-five-year-old scotch. A rare beast, and surely one of the most expensive bottles of liquor behind the bar.

“This isn’t the sort of thing you give a man to take the edge off,” Chibs said.

Bag shrugged. “Honored guests, man. Jax is VP of the mother charter. You guys get the best. Rollie said so.”

Chibs thought Rollie might shit his pants when he saw how literally Bag had taken this instruction, but he stopped arguing about it. He was looking forward to a little taste of the fine stuff himself.

They went through the back of the building to the crash pad. In the poolroom, Joyce and Thor were playing a round of eight ball while Rollie used peroxide to clean the wound on Opie’s right side. Jax had already washed most of the blood off his face and lay on the sofa with a plastic bag full of ice against his head.

Chibs raised the bottle of Talisker. “If you need a painkiller, Jackie, this one’s a beauty.”

Opie extended a hand for the bottle. “Whatever it is, pass it over.”

Rollie glanced up from his handiwork and sighed. “Shit, man, that’s a three-hundred-dollar scotch.”

“Honored guests, that’s what you said,” Bag reminded him.

Chibs took a sip and handed the bottle to Opie, who slugged back several long gulps.

“Get it done,” he said.

“Let’s give it a bit for the scotch to work its magic,” Chibs said.

Opie took another swig, this one not as deep. “Just do it. We can’t waste time.”

“You’re going out again tonight?” Joyce asked, clearly surprised.

Baghead sniffed.“You deaf or stupid? Opie already took a bullet. If the Russians are getting close to an all-out street war, Jax’s sister is gonna be right in the middle of it. We’ve gotta get her out before that happens.”

“Not ‘we,’ Bag,” Rollie said. “I don’t want you near any part of it.”

“Yeah, yeah. I can’t keep my cool. I’ll only make it worse,” Bag replied, waving his prez’s words away as if they were irritating houseflies.

Chibs wondered how long Clay would have put up with the guy. A wild card could be useful, but a loose cannon was always a danger to the club. He hadn’t yet decided which one Baghead might be.

“Stitch him up, Chibs,” Jax said from the sofa.

Rollie stepped out of the way to let Chibs work. It wasn’t the first time a member had been stitched up in this room, and Chibs figured it wouldn’t be the last. Fortunately, that meant Rollie had everything he needed to sew up Opie’s wound. “Turn,” he said.

Opie shifted sideways to present the wound, and it pouted open a little. Chibs has treated his share of wounds as a medic in the British Army, and taken care of more than a few for his brothers in SAMCRO, but the scotch could only do so much. When he started stitching up the wound, Opie grimaced.

“So,” Opie said, taking another pull from the Talisker bottle. “How we gonna take these pricks down?”

Jax sat up slowly, and took the ice pack from his head, steadying himself. Chibs had thought he’d cleaned up more, but now he saw the blood in Jax’s beard and the swelling on his face and jaw. At the church, he hadn’t been close enough to see how bad Lagoshin had beaten Jax. Now his hands twitched with the desire to throttle the big Russian.

“I’m not worried about taking them all down,” Jax said. “They’re already trying to kill each other, so all we need to do is get out of the way. We get Trinity, make sure Lagoshin goes down, and we’re done here.”

Opie grunted, teeth grinding as Chibs sewed.

“From what Lagoshin told you, the only lead we’ve got is the murder of this Oscar Temple,” Chibs said.

Jax nodded painfully. “Which is why we talk to a cop.”

Rollie glanced over at him. “How hard did that Russian hit you?”

Jax stared at him. “I know you have someone on the local PD who’d be willing to give up information at the right price.”

Thor sank the seven ball in a corner pocket and glanced up. “There’s Izzo.”

Joyce snickered. “Izzo, man, you can’t trust that guy. He’d sell his mother for a line of blow.”

“We don’t want his mother,” Jax said. “But he does sound like a man we can do business with.”

They met up with the cop in the parking lot of a defunct home-improvement store just south of Nellis Air Force Base. Jax put his bike up on its stand as the echoes of its engine died on the wind. He sat astride it for a few seconds as the throbbing pain in his chest and head subsided.

After a moment, he dismounted and forced himself to stand up straight.

“You all right?” Opie asked, coming toward him.

Jax cocked an eyebrow at him. Opie’s features were pale and drawn from the blood he’d lost, but he seemed remarkably well for a guy who’d been kissed by a bullet a few hours earlier.

Chibs killed his Harley’s engine and climbed off just as Thor circled round to them. He had led them here and then taken a quick ride around the building to be sure they would be alone. Jax had always liked Thor Westergaard. With his imposing size, he seemed an unlikely candidate for chef, but he conducted himself with a calm, methodical style that belied the motorcycle-club lifestyle. Now Jax could see that Thor brought the same Zen aura out into the real world. They’d never been under fire together, but Jax had a feeling that Zen calm would carry over.

“Where’s your cop friend?” Opie asked.

“Izzo’s not a friend,” Thor said. “But he has his uses.”

They heard tires on pavement and the low murmur of an engine. Headlights illuminated the corner of the abandoned home-improvement warehouse… and then went out. The car came around the building slowly, almost crawling, and Jax and the others stood away from their bikes a little, making sure that the moonlight would be enough to allow Izzo to see them.

The car’s headlights flickered, letting them know the driver had seen them. It neither slowed nor sped up, only rolled toward them until, at last, it puttered to a halt. In the darkness behind the windshield, Jax could see the burning tip of a cigarette. The orange glow flared a moment as the smoker inhaled.

The driver’s door opened. The dome light inside the car did not go on—the man was used to meetings in dark places where he didn’t want to draw attention. He left the car running as he climbed out, studied them as he took another drag on his cigarette, then reached back inside to shut it off, apparently deciding that if they were going to ambush him they would’ve done so already. Jax made a mental mark against his intelligence level, but they didn’t need a genius, just an informant.

“If it ain’t the mighty Thor,” the cop drawled, cigarette hand dangling at his side. “And friends. Which one of you is Iron Man?”

“You missed your calling, Detective,” Thor replied. “I’m sure there’s a spot for you on stage at Caesars.”

Izzo offered a pained smile, waiting. Thin and jittery, he needed a haircut and a shave. Thor and Rollie had explained that he was a detective with the Las Vegas vice squad and that he dipped into the product of his arrests more often than not—hookers, drugs. He wasn’t the sort of cop who wanted to be a kingpin, just a guy who couldn’t control his taste for the forbidden.

“Mike Izzo, meet some friends of mine,” Thor said at last.

“No colors on you boys,” Izzo said, gesturing with his cigarette toward their clothes. “No gang affiliation?”

“Sons of Anarchy isn’t a gang, Detective,” Thor said.

“I know, I know, it’s a ‘motorcycle club,’ but these guys ride motorcycles, too.”

Jax gave a shrug—small, but enough to make his body remind him of Lagoshin’s fists.

“We’re not the joining type,” he said.

“They’re friends of mine,” Thor said, as if that explained it all. “My friend here is searching for a missing family member and thinks some of her associates might be connected to the murder of Oscar Temple.”

Izzo cocked his head, eyes narrowing. He smoked and exhaled through his nose.

“You’ve got interesting friends,” he drawled, but he nodded. “Trouble is, I don’t know shit. Homicide’s not my beat.”

Jax stiffened. Had they wasted their time with this cokehead?

“You sing this song every time, Mike,” Thor said. “We both know you’ve always got your ears open, hoping to hear something you can sell or trade.”

Izzo flicked ash off his cigarette. From the way his nostrils flared, he hadn’t liked Thor’s observation much.

“Maybe that’s true,” he said, “but this is fresh. Happened yesterday.”

Jax glanced at the others. Chibs looked pissed, turned and spat onto the cracked pavement. Opie seemed to have been drifting, barely listening, maybe because of the blood loss, but suddenly he perked up.

“Who found the bodies?” he asked in his familiar low rumble.

Izzo stared at him. “You boys don’t look too good,” he said, turning to study Jax. “And you look like you got your ass handed to you. What are you really after?”

“We told you the truth, man,” Jax said, hands up. “We’re not bringing trouble. We’re trying to get my sister out of it.”

Izzo nodded knowingly. Vice detective in Las Vegas, he’d seen more than his share of sisters in trouble.

“Wish I could help,” he said. “Not least because I could use the scratch Thor and his boys would pay for information. But the investigation is just ramping up. I can give Rollie a call at the Tombstone if they turn up anything. What I can tell you is that Oscar Temple’s in the gun business—sponsors the big gun show out there in Summerlin—and homicide figures it was a side deal gone wrong.”

Chibs glanced at Jax. “Illegal guns?”

Izzo scratched at his stubbled chin and took a drag on his cigarette. “I know, right? People breaking the law. Can you imagine?”

Jax cocked his head to one side, trying to figure the cop out. “You never answered my friend’s question.”

“Sorry, right,” Izzo replied, waving toward Opie with his cigarette. “One of the dealers from the gun show, an old friend of Temple’s, went up to the house to have coffee or something after he’d packed up. Found the bodies.”

“This gun dealer, does he have a name?” Thor asked.

“He’s an old dude. Older, anyway,” Izzo said. “Irish guy, I think. Last name is Carney.”

Thor stiffened. “John Carney?”

Izzo dropped his cigarette, crushing it under his shoe. “You know the guy?”

“Heard of him,” Thor admitted.

Jax watched Izzo’s eyes and realized the detective was thinking precisely what he’d been thinking—that if Thor knew the old man’s name, maybe John Carney hadn’t gone up to Oscar Temple’s house for coffee at all.

“I’ll keep you posted if I hear anything,” Izzo said, digging out his keys as he returned to his car. He paused just inside the open door. “You make sure you do the same. I could use a little career boost.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Thor told him.

None of them believed it, not even Izzo.