Page 43 of A Handsome Devil

Now I was getting pissed. Standing, I shouted, “Murdering who? What the fuck are you talking about? We’re Pickett’s nephew and niece, checking on his bowel and memory problems! What the fuck do you have to be so defensive about?”

He practically spat. “Oh, and Ignatz Semmelweiss? He was a fucking Hungarian physician!”

Well, at least the peckerhead was educated. When two guards entered, Bridgewater demanded they rip my wallet from my back pocket and look at my driver’s license. Which of course showed a photo of one of the drug dealers we’d ripped off. Who happened to be black.

If Bridgewater hadn’t figured out who we were yet, he soon would. We could never return.

“Okay, okay!” I yelled, shaking off the guard’s hands and whipping my wallet from them. “We’re out of here!”

Guards hustled us out the front door so fast it was all a blur. They even tried to manhandle us down the front pathway, but we put a stop to that. In shaking off my guard, he fell onto his ass, and I blared,

“Get your fucking hands off me! We’re here to expose your drug-dealing, your medicating of Alzheimer’s patients, veterans dying from being fed poisoned pain pills!”

Erin had stomped on her guy’s leg. “You’re just mopping up all the money from government contracts and pocketing it yourselves! Do you hear us, people?” Since they didn’t let patients out front, the several people standing around must’ve been relatives. They all gaped at us open-mouthed.

So I pointed at them. “You’re not rich! We’re all caught in the common struggle to survive!” It struck me in a split second—I sounded like Alessio on my own rooftop. “This so-called ‘doctor’ Bridgewater can provide legal scrip for a drug to which your relatives become addicted. The patient becomes calm, won’t complain about a thing. They’re drugging them to death!”

Erin muttered, “We better get out of here,” but a couple of bystanders headed our way.

They weren’t just any old bystanders. The two men were hip, long-haired, leather-clad bikers. And I mean official real bikers with club patches, designating them members of The Bent Zealots MC. The shorter guy boasted a pierced eyebrow and an elaborate Asian sleeve, upper lip lifted in a snarl.

It was the other biker who got to me. Long, lush, shiny black curls below his shoulders, the Roman hawk nose I couldn’t stop licking on Alessio. His eyes flashed with intelligence, and he was the first to speak. The Dom.

“You guys. You’re talking about Dr. Bridgewater, right?”

The other guy said, “We’re investors here, been having our doubts lately. So we’re here to check on this joint in person.”

Erin took the shorter guy by the upper arm, moving us to a more remote stand of flowering bushes. “That’s what we’re doing,” she said. “But we’re not investors. I’m Erin D’Attire. We’re here to expose this gigantic scam that’s killing the elderly.”

I said, “They’re drugging them with street tranq and fentanyl. We just accidentally killed one of their suppliers while playing basketball.”

The handsome guy’s face lit up. He had amazing straight white teeth. “You’re the Undisputed Truth Club. You’re Truman.”

I’d never swelled with such pride. My eyes nearly burned with tears. “That’s us all right. And you guys are The Bent Zealots MC.”

He splayed his fingers on his chest. “Dr. Huntington Mountjoy. This is Dr. Thymus Moog. We invested in this place a couple years ago and figured we should take a look in person.”

I said, “Doctors in a motorcycle club?”

Hunt said, “A gay motorcycle club.”

I knew I’d met my match. “Look. Come back with us to our trailer park. We’ve got a podcaster on our side going viral. We can’t come back here, but you can.”

CHAPTER 18

Alessio

These new comrades were a trip.

Not only were Hunt and Thymus gay bikers—both were doctors. Thymus was a cardiologist in a hospital in their hometown, a little place called Rough and Ready. A midcentury hamlet near the Arizona side of Lake Havasu, it was the center for the Bent Zealots MC. Dr. Huntington Mountjoy, an astrophysicist, roared up to our trailer on a Dyna Wide Glide chopper with impressive ape hangers, long black curls bouncing in the wind.

“What a trip,” I actually said to Tru. We stood on our front porch to welcome them.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he replied.

Erin said, “Dr. Moog is a little strange, but that Hunt is smoking man candy. And married,” she added, just in case we had menage ideas.

Plenty of half-naked trailer park citizens came out to gape and gawk at the bikers. We welcomed the motorcycle club into our cramped living room, where most of us broke out beers and got settled onto chairs and memory foam divans.