Page 70 of Making His Bones

Gray

“Stand straight, Tiago. Feet square to the wall.”

I realized the kid might not know what “squared” meant, so I pointed at the other shooters in the lane—at the moment, Emma Flantz, the BFF of Maddy, the ganjier August, Roman, Pippa’s sister Sally Decker, Baron Funkhauser, Maddy’s brother Speed, and Santiago Slayer. No one was allowed to shoot who had been drinking.

Tiago nodded, and got an arrow in the black ring. Not bad for a stick bow. He grinned at me. “I could have used this when the ICE cops were chasing me.”

That wasn’t what I’d expected Tiago to say. I patted him on the shoulder. “Now, now,” I said feebly.

Galileo peeked around the corner. His eyebrows were raised so high he looked like Milhouse from The Simpsons. I got the picture and left the range in the hands of Sock Monkey. The last thing I heard was Slayer saying,

“I need a bigger bow. This looks like a little kid’s bow. I need one more like Robin Hood. Or his enemy.”

“This is our biggest bow,” said Sock Monkey.

Slayer said, “I want a bow like that biker on Walking Dead. That is more befitting a man of my stature.”

Behind Galileo, in the front counter part of The Hip Quiver, an enormous brouhaha was in progress. Maybe sixty people were crammed into the store area swilling beer, toking pot, and trying to talk louder than the next guy. Slushy had locked his office, but brothers spilled into the alleyway behind the shop where we grilled fish. Someone had set a wireless Bluetooth speaker blasting Alice in Chains on top of a display of plastic veins and feather fletchings. It was only four in the afternoon, but I was waiting for someone to break out a beer bong. It was my store, but I’d have to put up with it.

We were a family, and we were celebrating.

We were celebrating several things, chief among them being the success of Tobiah’s hactivists in taking down more than ten thousand kiddie porn websites belonging to SpyDie. Anyone visiting the websites was greeted by the message, “Hello, Independence Hosting, you have been hacked.”

Tobiah and Galileo stole the Independence Hosting databases, logged keystrokes, and defaced the porn sites being hosted. Of course, they demanded ransom for the data, but only after leaking some of it to a kiddie porn watchdog site. If this wasn’t enough, our hacktivists posted a message telling users that all their data including private keys had been copied and doxxed online. “We have zero tolerance for child porn.” I made Tobiah write that.

Of course, once DeFreeze was no longer in the back pocket of the Pitchforks, he took our hint and busted the op behind the Vinyl Resting Place. Bud Pitchfork, locked in the back of the fish truck, had tried calling DeFreeze, but because DeFreeze was out at the mobile home park tsk-tsking at Narcissa’s body with a can of bug spray jammed down her throat, Pitchfork only got some newbie. The newbie came out to the distillery, all right, but based upon some anonymous tip from the kid Pitchfork had been humping in the trailer, he arrested Bud for child pornography. In the Vinyl Resting Place raid more teenagers were saved from a painful life of degradation. Slushy had found them a lawyer, but it was anyone’s guess what would happen, since they were illegals. Some religious groups had come forth to say they’d take them under their wing. Lytton had bought the land and the distillery to employ kids at fair wages to make the grain alcohol needed for CBD oil.

“Look who I have here,” said Galileo. Actually, he shouted. He had to shout to be heard above the hubbub behind him. He put his hands on Janet’s shoulders and pushed her forward, as though encouraging a kid to make a speech. “Elektra texted her.”

Janet frowned and tried to shoo Galileo’s hands away. “Yes,” she said. Her face cleared as she looked at me. “The judge imposed the death penalty on Kneecap.”

Elektra had testified in Kneecap’s trial about the certainty of her DNA studies. She’d been on the stand in the Chicago courtroom for three days, flying back this morning to attend our hactivist’s party. “I’m exhausted to the bone,” she’d told me on the phone earlier.

I took Janet’s cell from her to see what Elektra had typed. Defendant’s guilt in this case was established at the level of absolute certainty.

I looked around the room. No doubt Elektra hadn’t texted the decision to me, knowing my ambivalence on the matter. Truth was, I believed if Kneecap had done the crime—which I knew he had—then he should do the time. I barely knew him. I didn’t have a strong blood brother’s oath bonding with him, like I did with Ford, Knoxie, Tuzigoot, Duji, Gollywow, Faux Pas.

I didn’t know who to show the judge’s decision to. I decided Ford, as Prez, would be the best option. Total transparency when the club was concerned. Everyone had welcomed Elektra lately, some with more skepticism than others. Especially since the squirrel suit episode, which was going down in the legendary annals of the club the more glittery spins Santiago Slayer put on it, they had warmed to my love.

Ford was playing bartender, standing behind the glass case counter and shaking some kind of martini in a silver-plated container. Kneecap would be rolling over in his prison cell to know his brothers were partying as he walked to the gallows, but this was the sometimes seemingly heartless way of the highway. A do-rag with fabric of skulls was tied around Ford’s lush, black hair, and I swear he was the handsomest guy I’d ever seen. He was the one who should’ve been on the silver screen, not me.

Ford was saying, “And Gollywow was so plastered that when he got into the Small World ride, he completely missed the seat. And the kid running the ride goes, ‘Those aren’t reclining seats, you know.’”

The howls of laughter completely washed out the protests of poor Russ Gollywow. “Did not!” he shouted. “The car was already moving down the tracks by the time I tried to sit down. It was wobbling all over the place!”

“And so were you!” giggled Maddy.

Gollywow waved them away with disgust. I tried tugging the sleeve of Ford’s white T-shirt. You weren’t really supposed to touch the Prez, but it was a mob scene in there. Without missing a flash in his smile, he said, “Yes, Gray?” He poured three martinis from the shaker and they were instantly grabbed up.

I showed him the phone. “This is from Elektra. Judge’s final decision.”

A wave of understanding came over his face. He whipped off his do-rag in order to run his fingers through his glossy hair. “Well, that’s fucking it, then. You know, we have to get with the times. Sometimes brothers do bad things.” I knew Ford had murdered his own father in the Sonoran Desert down south, but that was neither here nor there. Cropper deserved murdering, from every vile, smelly, perverted thing I remembered about him.

I nodded. “I hope it’s not going to be a problem that I’ve got a fiancée who assists law enforcement agencies in bringing people to justice.”

“Fiancée?” Ford gaped, completely ignoring the “bringing people to justice” part.

“Fiancée?” Maddy gaped.