Sons of Anarchy: Bratva

8

The Sons rode into Birdland’s parking lot two by two, Joyce and Chibs in front, Jax and Opie in back. Harley engines roared the news of their arrival, and a handful of people in the lot glanced up and watched as they rolled by. Jax ignored them, just as he’d ignored their surroundings on the ride over. The day had seemed like an eternity, but now night had fallen and it was time for answers.

They parked their bikes in the corner of the lot, far from the exit but near a stretch of dirt that led out to the curb. If they needed to make a quick departure, they wouldn’t worry about pavement. One by one, they killed the engines and removed their helmets.

They started toward the entrance to Birdland, admiring the neon sign depicting a woman with wings. She had them covering her breasts one moment, and the next they were unfurled, revealing small hearts over her nipples. Classy joint, Jax thought, but he appreciated the oddness of it. Jazz music played from speakers outside the door as they approached.

Opie sidled up beside Jax. “You sure you don’t want me to ask the questions?”

Jax glanced at his dour expression, the concern in his eyes. “I’ve got it.”

“I’ve seen that look on you before, Jax,” Opie said quietly. “I’m just thinking you may not get answers if everyone you ask thinks you’re a heartbeat away from caving in their skulls.”

Jax shot him a look that silenced him. “Cover my back, Op.”

Opie nodded. He didn’t seem satisfied, but he wouldn’t push it any further.

Joyce led the way, opening the door and moving into a darkness broken by flashing colored lights. Jax and the others followed, taking in every detail, watching for exits and for trouble. The foyer had a bathroom door, an old pay phone, and a curtained-off section that could’ve been anything—a party room, a coat check, stairs leading to an attic. A single doorman sat on a stool beside a podium, a black bodybuilder with a shaved head and a thin goatee. A strong guy, but not a fighter. Jax could see it in the way he held himself, even the way he stood and fronted them as they approached. He was a man used to intimidating with his size. Maybe he’d been in his share of scuffles in this place, a fistfight now and again, but he wasn’t a boxer, a soldier, or a street fighter, and so Jax wasn’t worried about him until he saw the bulge of the gun sticking from his belt, underneath his shirt, and he reassessed. The gun was a threat, even if the doorman might not be.

“This is a nice place,” the doorman said. “Boss doesn’t like trouble.”

Chibs held out his hands, palms open. “No trouble here, brother.”

The doorman sized them up. “Twenty-dollar cover, right?” Joyce asked, handing over a pair of folded tens.

The doorman hesitated, studying Joyce in apparent disapproval, then took the bills. As the others passed him, he took their money without another word, but as they moved through an arched doorway flanked by two huge bouncers, Jax knew they’d been marked. The doorman would tell the bouncers to keep an eye on them. One of the bouncers, a vampire-pale white guy, looked like he worked out at the same gym as the doorman, but the other bouncer had cold eyes and stood with his back to the wall in a stance that said he was ready to hurt someone. Jarhead, Jax thought.

The music outside had been jazz, but inside it was whatever the girls onstage felt like dancing to. Right now, two girls were twirling topless around the same pole to AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” while a third marched up and down a smaller stage in the back. They all had glitter sparkling on their breasts, like they’d grown up doing little art projects at the kitchen table and this was all that remained of their girlhood imagination. The room was an L shape, and off to the left, on the leg of the L, was an area with four pool tables. There’d be rooms in the back for private dances. Waitresses in next to nothing wandered the floor selling alcohol Jell-O shots, and bartenders worked at inhuman speed behind the counters, slinging eight-dollar beers and twelve-buck whiskeys.

Then there were the birds.

Behind the bars, above the stages, even in the corners of the pool area, there were huge cages either hanging from the ceiling or standing on poles like those the strippers used. Inside the cages were parakeets, parrots, macaws… even a goddamn toucan, and in the lulls in music, Jax could hear the birds calling to each other.

Planning an escape, he thought, amused and horrified at the same time.

“Guy who owns this place must be a loon,” he said, moving up beside Joyce.

Joyce shrugged as if to say, of course he is. “On Sundays, he’ll only play jazz in here. The girls who want to keep him happy… they’ve learned how to dance to that stuff. You’d be surprised how many people show up for it, too. They do brunch.”

“It’s shit, though, right?” Opie said, raising his voice to be heard over the grind of AC/DC. “I’ve never eaten anything in a strip club that didn’t taste like ass.”

“Might be best we don’t talk about what you’ve eaten in strip clubs,” Chibs said aloud.

Opie gave a sheepish grin, and Jax laughed. Joyce seemed curious, but it was a story for another day. Jax glanced back toward the bouncers, saw their eyes tracking him and the others, and clapped Chibs on the back.

“End of the bar. Shit goes down, the jarhead’s yours.”

Chibs knew better than to look at the bouncers. He nodded and moved off immediately toward a waitress picking up drinks from the end of the bar. She had dark skin and bright red hair and was wearing a half-shirt and a skirt so short it displayed her pink panties in all their glory. Chibs said something to her, and she grinned. Jax had seen the soulless smile that hookers and strippers put on for the men who were paying their bills, and this wasn’t that. Something about Chibs just charmed them. Part of it was the accent, but Jax thought the scars did something to them as well—suggested the beginnings of a story that they finished in their own heads. Lost girls liked broken men. Jax had a taste for women like that, but today he kept his mind on the job at hand.

The bartender came over to make sure Chibs wasn’t troubling the waitress, glancing at the bouncers, but the girl touched Chibs on the arm and must have passed along his drink order, because when he turned toward the bar to set up camp there, nobody tried to move him along.

Jax didn’t know how many people Birdland drew on its busiest nights, but tonight’s crowd was substantial. Clusters of young guys in business suits were side by side with truckers and contractors and housepainters, not to mention the occasional freak. The freaks were the easiest to spot because they sat alone, usually at the rounded corners of the stage, and they doled out single dollar bills and nursed watered-down beers for hours. Jax had seen a particular brand of strip-club freak more than once, guys who would lean in when the girls came near, inhaling deeply, trying to catch a whiff of pussy that would carry them through their daydreams for months.

Joyce led them past the pool-table area and into the thick of the crowd around the stage. A waitress in a see-through plastic top brushed close against Jax, her smile like a mannequin’s, but he only scanned the faces ahead. Opie stuck close behind him, but Jax wasn’t expecting trouble unless they started it themselves.

The music switched over to “Crazy Train,” and the two girls on the main stage used side snaps to remove their panties. They did it in synch, facing each other and then air grinding so that their hips nearly touched. It was almost enough to coax a smile out of Jax. Not all the girls looked like they were having fun, but those two did.

Joyce changed direction slightly—moving like he owned the place—and Jax stayed with him. The rear stage was less populated than the one at the front of the club. A group of middle-class suburban types were along one side, probably a bachelor party, but on the other side, not far from the beaded curtain that led into the back room—and presumably to the back exit—there sat a trio of darkly clad men with rugged, stony Slavic faces. The stripper there, a Latina with enormous fake tits, crawled toward them on her hands and knees to retrieve the trio of twenty-dollar bills the three men had laid upon the stage. Two of the men wore wolfish grins, but the third had an expression Jax could almost have called a sneer. He watched the girl closely enough, but almost as if she disgusted him.

“Opie,” he said, nodding toward the beaded curtain at the back.

With a wary glance, Opie moved toward the curtain. He stopped ten feet away, near a high round table laden with abandoned glasses. A waitress would approach him quickly enough, and he would order a drink, but it was a strategic location from which he could observe the rear section of the bar. His attention would not be on his beer.

The Russians saw them coming. One of the wolves tapped the sneering man, who looked up to watch as Jax and Joyce approached. The second wolf stood and moved to block them, but Joyce didn’t slow. He sidled a bit, moving like a snake rising from a street charmer’s basket.

“Down, boy,” Joyce said, one hand raised as he spoke loud enough for the Russians to hear over the pounding music. “It’s Yurik, right?”

The grizzled Russian nodded. “I know you?”

“Naw, man, but we have friends in common. Lizzie Broski, you know her? She pointed you out at a party one night. That’s how I recognized you.”

Yurik looked confused. When his mouth opened, Jax saw yellow teeth and a bit of sweat on his lips. The guy’s pupils were pinpricks in his glassy eyes. He was high on something, and suddenly this seemed like it might have been a terrible idea.

“What you want?” Yurik asked.

Which was when the sneering man rose up behind Yurik, put a hand on his shoulder, and physically moved him aside. He stared a moment at Jax, then turned to Joyce. His sneer had deepened.

“Go away, you idiots. Don’t you know you don’t interrupt a man when there are naked girls around?”

Jax smiled.

The sneer died on the man’s face. “Did I say something funny?”

Jax stepped in close to the sneering man, almost but not quite crowding him. He opened both hands to show he held no weapons and stared right into the Russian’s eyes, knowing he could match the bastard cold stare for cold stare.

“I’m real sorry we interrupted your pussy gazing. It’s pretty clear you’re a serious man, and I’m not going to waste your time. I’m looking for a guy named Oleg Voloshin, and I heard you guys might be able to tell me where to find him.”

The sneering man blinked in surprise, studying Jax more closely.

Yurik said something in Russian, guttural and full of arrogant condescension. The name Voloshin appeared in the midst of a host of other words that sounded like made-up spy language to Jax. But he’d heard that one.

Thanks, Yurik, Jax thought. Now he knew which side these pricks were on.

“What you want with Oleg?” the sneering man asked.

Jax glanced at Joyce as if trying to decide whether or not to confide in these Bratva goons, but he didn’t need Joyce’s reassurance.

“Nothing he’ll enjoy,” he said.

The three Russians stood together a moment, looking like nothing so much as a trio of black crows on a telephone wire, the uniformity of their black coats and shirts and pants almost laughable, if not for the guns they surely carried and a history of murder.

“I am Iov,” the sneering man said, moving closer, so that he and Jax were intimately, uncomfortably near. “What if I told you Oleg is my brother?”

The music throbbed and the lights flashed. Glasses clinked and men whistled and howled for the new batch of strippers as they began to remove their tops, revealing first one breast and then the other, playing coy. They were the worst actresses in the world.

“Iov, my name’s Jack Ashby,” Jax lied. “If Oleg’s your brother, then you and me—we’ve got a problem. The prick has my sister.”

The Russian cocked his head dubiously. “Oleg kidnapped your sister?”

Jax shook his head. “Nah. She took off with him. Left home. But from everything Oleg said before they left, I know there’s some serious shit going on with you and your people and I want to get my sister back before she ends up in a ditch with a bullet in the back of her head. I want to get her out of this, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure she gets home safely.”

Iov scratched at a spot under his left eye, thinking.

“You want us to help you find your sister? To tell you where to find Oleg?”

“He’s not your brother, is he?” Joyce asked, looking a little squirrely. A sheen of sweat had formed on his forehead.

“I can pay,” Jax said.

Iov’s eyes sparkled. “I work for a man who would also like to find Oleg. Right now, we don’t know where he is, but maybe my employer will want to meet you. Maybe you can help him, and he can help you.”

He sent Yurik to make a call, and the thug headed toward the men’s room, where the thumping music wouldn’t prevent him from hearing voices on the other end of the line. Los Lonely Boys’ “Crazy Dream” came on the sound system, and the girl on the rear stage dropped down and began pumping her lace-covered crotch at the bachelor-party guys. All the while, she stared longingly at Iov—the Russians tipped way better than suburban dads. She caught Jax watching her and scowled at him, pissed that he’d drawn her best customers away.

A waitress floated their way, a lithe brunette who looked closer to fifteen than twenty, which had to be an illusion given the law. Her purple eye shadow had sparkles in it that changed color with the shifting lights in the club. She wore a little tartan skirt that must have sparked a thousand Catholic-schoolgirl fantasies, and she made a beeline toward Joyce. Her eyes lit up like she knew him.

“Hey, Harry. Give a girl a taste?” the waitress asked. “You’ve always got the good stuff.”

Joyce gave her a dark look. “Now ain’t the time.”

Jax bristled. He didn’t much care if Joyce was using drugs to buy favors from strippers, but if he was selling in clubs, that was the kind of small-time shit that could get the whole charter jammed up. It was something for Rollie to take care of—and Jax would bring it to his attention—but right now the girl was just a distraction.

Jax saw Opie signal him and looked toward the front of the bar to see what had gotten Opie’s attention. One of the bouncers—the bodybuilder, not the jarhead—stood beside the main stage watching Jax and Joyce talk to the Russians.

“Maybe next time, honey,” the waitress said, before she turned to the rest of them. “What’ll you have, boys?”

“Go away, girl,” Iov rumbled.

She glanced at Jax. “You look like a whiskey man.”

Iov grew angry. “Are you blind or stupid? We want a drink, we find you. Now fuck off.”

She looked him up and down with the belittling disdain only a beautiful young woman could muster.

“I can’t decide if you’ve had too much to drink or not enough,” she said, and then she turned to Joyce, moving close enough to give him a whiff of the perfume that had already filled Jax’s nostrils. “I’m dancing in about half an hour, honey. I hope you’ll stick around for my show. Trust me, you won’t be—”

Iov shoved her. The girl’s arms pinwheeled, flinging away the trayful of Jell-O shots. For a heartbeat, the music stopped—just between songs—and Jax could hear the little cry of surprise as she staggered backward and fell on her ass, tartan skirt flipping up to reveal the tiny patch of pink lace between her legs.

Joyce tried to wade in. “Hang on, man, there’s no need for that.”

“Stay out of it,” Jax told him, shoving him backward.

Iov barely glanced at them, but he wasn’t stupid. The Russian had to have noticed Joyce’s obedience, recognized that Jax was the one in charge. His eyes narrowed, but Jax wasn’t sure if it was with appreciation or suspicion.

Yurik came out of the bathroom but stopped with his phone in his hand and a stupid look on his face. The girl had risen to one knee and was glancing around at the splotches of Jell-O and little paper cups strewn around her, cursing like a lunatic in the drunk tank. Opie started to leave his position in the back corner, but Jax gestured for him to stay put, thinking he could salvage the whole thing…

The bouncer who’d been watching marched toward them, looking confident in his strength and his purpose. Anger rushed like fire through Jax’s veins—any other day, this bodybuilder wouldn’t have been an issue, but he needed to finish his conversation, and time had just run out. One of the bartenders emerged from behind the bar, and a couple of customers—good old boys with noble intentions—had started shuffling as though they might also step in.

The girl came surging to her feet and spit in Iov’s face.

He backhanded her, the slap so loud that the stripper on the little rear stage stopped dancing to stare, and so did the bachelor-party guys. Jax swore under his breath and went to intervene, but the bouncer beat him to it. The muscle head slid between Jax and Joyce, brushed by the waitress, ducked a punch from Iov, and grabbed the Russian’s arm, twisting it behind his back in one smooth move.

The third Russian, who’d been lingering the whole time, kidney punched the bouncer, and the poor bastard roared in pain and went down on one knee, releasing his grip on Iov. Jax almost felt bad for the guy—the way he’d subdued Iov, he’d been better at his job than Jax had expected—but when shit turned ugly, you had to know how to read the situation if you wanted to keep your head from getting caved in.

Slapping the girl had done it.

The bartender punched Joyce just for standing there. The noble civilians waded in, but by then all hesitation had passed. Jax stepped inside the reach of the first guy and leaned into his swing, punching the man in the gut so hard he heard the burble of vomit about to spew from the hero’s mouth. He stepped out of the way, saw the guy fighting the urge to puke, and nailed him in the temple with enough force that he dropped straight down.

When Jax looked up, Opie had the bartender from behind, crushing his larynx, and Joyce had started to pound on the second Good Samaritan. People were shouting, and the stripper on the stage had stood up and was screaming, covering herself like Eve after her first bite of the apple.

Jax grabbed Joyce’s shoulder, blocked the guy’s instinctive retaliation, and then spun around. “Opie! We’re going!”

Opie gave the bartender a shove and started moving. Jax glanced over at the Russians, who’d started kicking the fallen bouncer and took over after Opie abandoned the bartender. He knew they should stay, knew that no matter the consequences these assholes were his best chance to find Trinity, but jail would mean going back to Stockton. As it was, he wasn’t supposed to be out of the state of California. Jail would also likely mean they’d figure out who he was, and he couldn’t have that.

In a place like this, the management wasn’t likely to bother calling the cops for a bar fight—not with the backroom blow jobs and front-room drug deals likely happening on the premises—but he couldn’t chance it.

Ablaze with fury, he shoved his way through the bar with Opie and Joyce in tow. Several times guys tried to get in the way before seeing the rage on Jax’s features and changing their minds. Chibs had stayed by the bar, where Jax had left him. He saw them coming and drained the last of his beer, dropped some money on the bar, and smiled at the same waitress he’d charmed when they’d come in. She tucked a piece of paper into his hand that might have been her number, and he stroked his goatee like he was one of the Three Musketeers.

“Glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Jax snapped.

Chibs didn’t have time to reply. The doorman had taken over for the jarhead bouncer, who moved to block their path.

Jax threw his hands up. “The trouble’s back there, brother, and we don’t want any of it. Step aside, and you won’t see us again.”

The jarhead flared his nostrils and for a second, Jax thought he would put up a fight. Then he moved to let them pass.

“Don’t come back,” he said. “The Russian pricks have connections. I throw them out twice a month, no choice in the matter. But you guys ain’t Russian.”

Joyce started to say something, but Jax shoved him forward, into the foyer, and then all four of them were pushing out through the front door and into the parking lot. They were awash with piss-yellow light from the lampposts, and Jax kept moving until they were in the darkness beyond that sickly illumination, not far from where they’d parked their bikes.

“What happened back there?” Chibs asked.

“One of the girls was a little too eager,” Joyce said. “Got on the Russians’ nerves.”

“You didn’t help,” Opie said. “You could’ve gotten rid of her before it blew up like that.”

An eighteen-wheeler blew by on the main road, kicking up wind and grit. Joyce turned to glare at Opie like he’d just insulted his mother.

“I just did you a favor, asshole.” The coiled burn marks on his face had a pearlescent hue, catching the light from the parking lot. When he grimaced, one side of his mouth did not move as freely, thanks to those burns.

“You let it fall apart,” Opie said.

“All right!” Jax barked. “We’ll figure out another angle. Let’s just—”

Chibs tapped him on the back. “Jackie.”

Jax turned and saw Yurik emerging from Birdland. The Russian glanced around, looking jaundiced in that yellow glow. Jazz still played on the outdoor speakers, a jubilant tune that seemed almost absurd as theme music to this hardcore Bratva leg breaker. Yurik spotted them and started over.

“Careful,” Joyce said.

“He’s alone,” Jax muttered. “If this was trouble, you think he’d put himself out here like this? You guys keep back.”

Jax strode back across the lot—back through that piss-yellow light, awash in too-happy jazz—and met the Russian halfway. Yurik had a split lip and a bloody nose and his left eye had started to swell, and Jax wondered if it had been the bartender who’d managed it or if one of the noble bystanders had gotten in a lucky punch.

“There’s a Russian Orthodox church on E Street, right across from the park. Ninety minutes, you be on the steps of the church.”

“You can help me find my sister?”

Yurik dragged a hand across his nose, leaving a bloody streak on his arm. “Ninety minutes. Maybe you help us find Oleg. Maybe we let you take your sister away before she gets hurt.”