Christopher Golden - Sons of Anarchy - Bratva

Jax shrugged. “As long as they pay their taxes, I guess.”

They had pulled their bikes around the side of the bar. Behind it was a small paved yard enclosed with a chain-link fence, and Jax spotted a restored Ford Mustang, an old white box truck with the bar’s name on the side, and four motorcycles. The eastern sky had continued to brighten, hinting at the approach of dawn and turning much of the sky a rich indigo. They walked toward the heavy old wooden door that, despite its appearance, was used by the charter as a side entrance to their clubhouse, which was in the rear of the building that housed the Tombstone Bar.

A loud clank echoed across the lot and the door dragged inward. A thin, hawk-nosed face peered out.

“Morning, Baghead,” Jax said.

Bag rubbed his eyes as he opened the door further, his suspicion giving way to irritation.

“‘Morning’? You see any goddamn sunshine out here?”

Jax kept back from the door, Opie and Chibs following his lead. They were all brothers here, but the charters had their own cultures, their own rules, and their own maniacs. Baghead had earned his name because he was a sociopath with no filter and no shame who’d pick up the homeliest woman in a bar, then make her wear a bag on her head while he fucked her.

“You sleeping light, or you supposed to be on guard?” Jax asked.

Bag stepped outside, putting away the gun he’d been hiding behind the door in case of trouble, and stretched tiredly. “Guard what? We’re just sleepin’ off what we finished drinking a couple of hours ago. I’m still fucking drunk.”

“When aren’t you?” Chibs muttered under his breath, so only Jax and Opie could hear.

For the first time, the real strangeness of their arrival seemed to hit Baghead, and he blinked, waking up a little.

“What’s this about, Jax? You don’t show up at asshole o’clock in the morning unless you got pressing business.”

Jax started toward the door, his patience wearing thin. He needed a piss and a place to put his head down for a few hours.

“Look, brother, we rode all night because we wanted to get here before the sun came up. I don’t want anyone knowing we’re here, not yet. I’m gonna need to have a talk with Rollie. He wants you and the other guys in that conversation, I’m okay with that, but I need to talk to him.”

“He ain’t here,” Bag said, as if they might go away.

Opie grumbled. “You’re not gonna turn your brothers away, are you, Bag? That what Rollie would want?”

The invocation of Rollie seemed to fully wake Baghead at last. “Nah, of course not, man, it’s just… it’s early.”

Rubbing at the corner of his eye with a knuckle, he stepped back to let them enter. Before Jax even crossed the threshold, he felt the weight of exhaustion descend on him, like he’d been holding it off until that moment. Opie and Chibs slung their packs off their shoulders and ambled inside, and Bag shut the door behind them.

“Bathroom’s up toward the bar if you need a piss,” Bag said, pointing past a huge metal door that must have been the beer cooler. Then he gestured the other direction, where another corridor branched off along the back of the building. “Jax, you know where the crash pad is. There’re two empty beds back there but plenty of pillows and shit, and there’s a sofa in the poolroom.”

“You’re not going back to sleep?” Opie asked him. “You said you haven’t even been down a couple of hours.”

Something was wrong with Baghead, but nothing that hadn’t been wrong with him for years. He twitched, glancing shyly away as if he was uneasy with anyone expressing concern about him. Sensitive guy for a sociopath, Jax thought.

“Nah, man,” Bag said. “I’m awake now. Sun’ll rise soon, and once I see the sun, I can’t even take a nap. I’ll clean up the bar. No worries, though. I’ll keep the clatter to a dull roar.”

He turned and walked past the cooler and the bathroom, headed for the bar, leaving them to their own devices. Now that they were inside and he’d assured himself they posed no threat, Bag apparently felt no inclination toward hospitality.

Jax headed along the back corridor toward the crash pad. They passed the poolroom, a small space with a sofa, a pool table, and a little bamboo tiki bar that looked like it had been stolen from the courtyard of some Vegas hotel. “I’ll take it,” Chibs said, tilting his head toward the poolroom. “Opie’s too tall, and we can’t have our VP on the couch.”

Jax gave him a nod of thanks and kept moving. The crash pad was actually two separate bedrooms with a third—a sort of TV room, from the look of it—between them. North Vegas was a tough crew. They’d thrown down with some savage clubs and come out on top, but there was something almost quaint about the setup, as if Rollie and his boys came from an earlier, more innocent era.

The bedroom on the left stank of stale beer and month-old vomit. He spotted a red-bearded monster in one bed, massive leg thrown over the side, sleeping like he’d been hurled onto the mattress by an angry god. Thor, Jax remembered, still doubtful that it was the big son of a bitch’s real name. There were two other beds in there, one of which was occupied by a little olive-skinned guy called Antonio. The empty one was messed up enough that he figured it had been where Bag had been sleeping before the sound of their snorting Harley engines had woken him.

The other room had only two beds, one empty and one occupied by a man named Joyce, who had a bull’s-eye of ugly burn scars where a member of the Iron Heart MC had held his face to a stovetop coil. Jax hadn’t intended to involve the charter—that would defeat the whole purpose of their coming down here incognito—but a sense of dread took up residence in his skull like a ghost in an old dark house. He forced himself to shake it off. “Get some rest,” he told Opie.

He went and dropped his bag beside the empty bed. Then he laid down and closed his eyes. Around the edges of the heavy blackout window shade, he could see the glint of predawn light.

Despite the long night’s ride, it was quite some time before Jax managed to sleep.

The nexttime Jax opened his eyes, the sun was burning around the edges of the blackout window shade and the temperature in the room had gone up twenty degrees. He felt grimy, as if he’d been sweating through the night and it had dried on him, stiffening his clothes. Stretching, he glanced over to see the other bed empty, and he wondered what Joyce had thought when he’d woken to see SAMCRO’s VP sleeping nearby.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and dragged his sneakers on. His wallet chain clinked quietly as he stood and swiped a hand across his tired eyes. With a groan, he shook himself, wet-dog style, and glanced around for a clock but didn’t find one.

The rest of the crib was abandoned, with no sign of Chibs, Opie, or any of the SAMNOV guys, so Jax returned the way he’d come in the early morning hours. The poolroom sofa was vacant as well, but Joyce stood by the table with a cue stick in one hand, studying the arrangement of the balls. After a moment, he realized that Jax was watching and glanced up.

“You snore,” Joyce said.

“We all have our faults,” Jax replied.

Joyce chuckled, his smile causing his burn scar to stretch grotesquely.

“What time is it?” Jax asked.

“Too early to be up and too late to go back to sleep.”

“Any chance you could be more specific?”

“Going on 10 a.m. Antonio called Rollie about an hour ago. I haven’t seen him yet, but I’d guess he’s out front already.”

Jax nodded. “That bacon I smell?”

“We got a grill in the little kitchen by the bar. Thor likes to cook breakfast.”