James Baldwin - Stained Glass

I bound up my new injury, got properly dressed, and slumped out into the clubhouse. Zane was in bed, and there was no one in the garage except me and Binah. My suitcases and bags were there, lined up in a row and waiting to be sorted, except there was nowhere to sort them to . I was still homeless, technically, though I now had money. Cash, bank cards – assuming my accounts weren’t wiped clean – credit cards, which had almost certainly been abused. I could probably still afford a hotel, and plane tickets, for that matter, but duty plucked at me like needy fingers. The video had affected me in a way I hadn’t thought possible. The dirty business of coke and racketeering was one thing. Everyone that was in that scene were adults who knew exactly what they were getting into. But children? Little girls? These people had never been my brothers.

My breathing was labored as I slumped to the floor and determinedly sorted through the Occult texts rescued from my study. I lingered over the Red Book for a few bittersweet minutes, calming myself with the illustrations while I thought over the decoding process. I’d start with the simplest English Bible gematria first. On the off-chance that the sigils were drawn by a Charles Manson-wannabe, their default language was going to be English. Bible code was based on numerology, so I got a notebook, sketched the sigils from memory, and got to work.

Theories on what had happened to the murdered couple gathered slowly over the course of the day, as I buried my anger and pain, researched code patterns and tried my hand at breaking a few of them. The problem with gematria was that it required significant context and deduction to translate the numbers correctly. The number 557 had multiple possible translations, and depending on whether you did it in Hebrew or English, it could mean anything from ‘Christ the Lord’ to ‘Detroit Lions’. It was the reason that Bible code conspiracy existed – confirmation bias was a real danger in this line of study.

Binah meandered up to me at some point and climbed into my lap to sleep. I was dozing when she startled upright, growling, just as the lock turned in the door to the outside. I looked up, bleary eyed, as Jenner entered.

“Hey Rex.” Jenner was back in her trademark black jeans and spiked leather jacket, a pair of articulated leather gloves hanging from her belt. She was tense, and she looked tired. “You look like shit. John, Michael and Ayashe want to talk.”

“When?” I set my book aside.

“Now,” Jenner said. “It’ll take us about twenty-thirty minutes to get to the museum. Ayashe works just north of Manhattan. John and Tally both work at the Indian Museum. We’ll go together, and you’ll ride with Zane.”

My joints were throbbing, my skin aching with fatigue. I shut the book with a sigh. “It’s only been two nights since you hired me on. I took a bullet in the gut during the raid last night, my cat needs her abscesses lanced, and I am in no way ready to report any progress.”

“Too bad,” she said. “There’s too much that needs explaining, Rex. No one’s happy to know that our kids were kidnapped by your friends in the mob.”

“They were never my friends.” I stuffed Nicolai’s folder into my shirt and got to my feet, fighting the twinges in my back and torso the growing ache from the still-raw incision across my stomach. “And we don’t know if they kidnapped them. Even if they did, they might have been hired by someone else. Contract work is a big deal.”

“Well, consider this your chance to demo your theories.” Jenner jerked her head towards the door. “C’mon. Mason and Zane are waiting.”

It wasn’t raining today, but the sky was low and sullen. Zane was standing beside his rumbling motorcycle, warming the engine as he fastened his helmet and pulled his gloves on. His black jacket was plated over the shoulders and down the arms like samurai armor. His helmet was barely bigger than a dog-bowl, worn with a black skull-face mask that covered nose and mouth. The bike was an enormous matte-black beast of a machine; the decal on the side read Big Cat Crew .

“Hey Rex.” He glanced at my stomach, nose working, but he didn’t say anything as I drew up. Instead, he handed me a heavy jacket not dissimilar to his own, but without patches. It felt like something that wouldn’t have been out of place on a medieval battlefield. There were metal plates welded into the shoulders, and armor in the elbows and forearms. “Time to pop your chopper cherry.”

“Come now. You’ve managed not to be crass for the entire three days I’ve known you.” I glared at him as I pulled the jacket it on and zipped it up, then accepted the full-face helmet that Zane offered me. The jacket was a good fit, but the helmet was tight and claustrophobic. I lifted the visor and left it there.

“Then please, Mister Rex, excuse my impropriety.” He arched both eyebrows, but he was smiling.

“Impropriety?” I sniffed. “You must have one of those word-a-day calendars. That’s how you feign an education.”

“My dad’s a university professor, if you absolutely have to know.”

“Let me guess: Pickup Truckology at the University of Detroit?” I changed my gloves for the gauntlets he passed over.

He rolled his eyes. “Dean of Economics at George Fox University, asshole.”

I paused for a moment, arms crossed. “Explain to me again how you ended up in a biker gang?”

“No.” He patted the rear seat. “Butt goes here, feet go on the pegs and don’t come off. You’re gonna have to hold on to me. Lean with the bike when I turn, don’t scream in my ear, and we’ll be good.”

Just as I was about follow his lead and settle on the rear seat, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and twisted to look back at the clubhouse. It was Binah, trotting out of the formerly closed door towards us. I tapped Zane’s shoulder and pointed. He rolled off the throttle a little and looked across, as perplexed as I was.

The little cat, back to normal after the insufferable trauma of her bath, broke into a limping trot as I attempted to extract myself from the bike. I wasn’t even halfway off when she jumped up onto the front of my trousers and clawed herself into position on my shoulder.

“How’d she get out here?” Zane called back over the din. “We shut the frigging door.”

“Where there’s a way, there’s a Siamese who is too clever for her own good.” I sat back down, unzipped the jacket, and tried to silently communicate my intent as I bundled her into the front of it. To my surprise, she didn’t complain. Her unheard treble purr shuddered against my ribs, silenced by the growl of Mason’s motorcycle as he roared past us.

Zane shook his head and slung himself onto the saddle with the casual ease of an experienced rider, while I used the pegs to perch uncertainly on the rear seat. It put me crotch to tailbone with this relative stranger, who leaned back comfortably as he righted the bike and revved the throttle. The machine stirred like a rolling storm underneath us, rumbling with a deep throated growl. The sound was blue and sweet on the deep notes, red and sharp-tasting on the high. I kept my hands off the vibrating surface at first, but as Zane righted the bike and kicked off the stand, I risked touching the seat. The deep bass purr of the machine traveled through my fingers and straight to my teeth, deep enough to be pleasurable instead of painful.

“All set, Rex?” Zane had to practically shout back to me.

“I think so.” Gingerly, I transferred my hands from the seat to his waist. It felt somewhat perverse to be touching him while sitting on the rumbling motorcycle.

Jenner’s bike snarled and popped as she turned and pulled up beside us. Her getup was no less intimidating than Zane’s, and her brilliant red and black bike was only slightly smaller. “Come on, ladies. Time to get moving.”