Page 5 of It Takes a Thief

What the fuck had happened to my club? Roman, a former rock star and “Filthy Few” brother, was playing fucking frisbee? Wasn’t that something hippies did, maybe out by our vortices? For up there on Mescal Mesa, in the Citadel that was our HQ and old Army hangar, there were many spiritual vortices where hippies came to meditate. Followers of Shirley MacLaine and other even more airheaded goons thought the veils to other dimensions were thinner in certain spots, places where one could take giant leaps in their spiritual development. Fox would be the first to bitch about that, hippies invading his archery range, but he was busy going to a fucking flea market.

I, myself, had to go meet with some importers of Russian iron. Now that was the sort of thing an outlaw should be doing. Not watching lesbians on roller skates bash into each other. At least I could be confident that Sax, my brawniest brother who owned a gem and mineral shop in town, would be coming with me to meet the businessmen, not going to Trader Joe’s for Two Buck Chuck.

“We were thinking of camping this weekend up at Slide Rock,” said Duji.

“Oh, hell, I’m in,” said Faux Pas. “I got some new cots because last time Sapphire said her back hurt so bad she wouldn’t fuck me.”

I tried rolling my eyes at Sax, but he just held his hands out, palms up, as though saying “What?”

Finally Wolf got his laptop booted up and logged onto Facebook. That shut everyone up—sort of.

“Is that your profile picture?” asked Roman.

“All right, everybody be quiet!” shouted Wolf. “I’m trying to find it.”

But Roman guffawed. “A little pink cartoon girl with a bow in her hair?”

“Shut up!” yelled Wolf. Then he admitted, “Tracy made me put that. It’s her Candy Crush Saga icon. Okay, here it is! Jesus Criminey! I went postal when I saw this. But I figured I’d wait for church to bring it up, because I want you all to see it.”

Wolf held up the laptop first for me to see. He pointed at a sidebar with a bunch of news headlines marked by lightning bolts. “See? Arizona Man—”

I read aloud. “‘Arizona Man Dies in Meth Lab Explosion After Lighting Farts on Fire.’ So?”

“So?” Wolf clicked on the blue title, bringing up a website named thedesertreporter.com. “‘A meth lab proprietor died in an explosion after lighting his farts on fire last Thursday. A motorcycle gang member belonging to The Bare Bones MC in Pure and Easy was blown to kingdom come when, bored, he decided to light his farts—’”

The room exploded with expletives.

“What the fuck?”

“Who the fuck?”

“Who’s the fucker who posted that?”

“Whoever wrote that is fucking taking a bath with a toaster!”

“We don’t even have a meth lab in P&E!”

Most men stood, pounding the table with their fists.

“And look how many hits it has!” Wolf cried.

I looked. Thirty thousand something hits. Why had no one asked me about this yet? It mentioned us, our power base, by name. “Hey Ford, who’s the moron taking a match to his gassers?” Wouldn’t that be the first thing you’d mention when seeing a “gang” member of the Bare Bones MC in Pure and Easy? Well, the “news” item was only two days old. I could see why Wolf wanted to get everyone’s opinion on it.

I held out a shushing hand and asked Wolf, “Do you have any idea who this ‘desert reporter’ is?”

“Well, of course my first reaction was it’s the Cutlasses, getting revenge on us for stealing their guys.”

“Right, right,” a lot of guys murmured. The fucking Cutlasses had been quiet for a while after Lytton had smoked a few of them. They used to consider his Leaves of Grass plantation their backyard until he laid to rest their sergeant-at-arms and they weren’t heard from for a while, though their Prez Doug Zelov was still alive and kicking.

“Can you confirm that?”

He looked abashed. “Well, I wanted to get the go-ahead from you first to start reaching out. I saw that it looks like someone from Abilene, Texas, that’s all. Someone with better access could pinpoint it better.”

I said, “Someone…like Tobiah Weingarten?”

Everyone’s eyes fell on Wolf Glaser. I knew he’d be hemming and hawing, and it was amusing, like watching a comedian. Fact, lazy smiles were plastered to a lot of guys’ faces in anticipation of Wolf’s stammering.

“Well, no! I mean, can’t we get Santiago Slayer to figure it out? He’s good with that sort of shit. Why do we need Weingarten?”