Confessions Of An Old Lady (9 page)

Chapter 16

The visitation was held on a Wednesday at St. Luke’s Catholic Church, the same place we had all been having a good time at the Jessamine Jamboree just a couple of weeks prior. A bunch of people showed up from town, since Melanie worked at the local diner.

The funeral was at Betts & West Funeral Home on Main Street. I wore a black skirt—the first skirt I had worn in years—a black lacy shirt, and strappy black heels I had trouble walking in. Sonny wore his nicest jeans and a black t-shirt since he, as well as most of the other members of the crew, would not dare put on a suit, even for a funeral.

Friends and family filled the benches in the gallery of the funeral home and there were so many people who showed up that some people had to stand around the perimeter of the room. A lady from the Catholic church sang a song about a man who dreamt he went to heaven. It was gut-wrenching to watch Leroy break down, his shoulders moving up and down, his white-bearded face buried in his hands. A few members of her family gave eulogy, including her mother, which was painful to listen to. Finally, the priest from St. Luke’s closed the service with a prayer for Melanie’s soul, leaving not one dry eye in the place.

Melanie was buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in the center of town, with a beautiful grey marble headstone that read:

“beloved daughter, sister, friend, wife.”

Immediately after the burial, we all headed to Leroy’s house. Everyone gathered in the barn and drank toasts to Melanie. I saw Leroy and Sonny talking, heads turned toward each other, nodding, so I walked up next to Sonny. To my surprise, they didn’t stop talking this time when I approached them.

“We’re going to get them, Pop,” Sonny said.

“I know, son, but like your girl here said, we’ve got to think this through…come up with a plan.”

I chimed in, “Plus, they’re probably expecting you to go chasing them down. You’d be walking into an ambush. No one would get out alive.”

“Listen to your old lady, son. She’s right. She’s smart, this one.” He pointed at me with one finger, the others curled around a bottle of beer.

Sonny put an arm around me and pulled me tight to him. “Yes, she sure is. What would you suggest, darlin’? How do we get back at them if we can’t get them on their own territory?”

I thought for a minute. Little did either of them know that I had the benefit of DEA agent training on my side when it came to planning any kind of coordinated assault.

“Pretend that you don’t suspect them. As hard as it would be, let some time go by. Then, invite their leader over for a sit-down. Say it’s to discuss your mutual interests in the importing business. That you want to work out some sort of deal where everyone gets their fair share. Then, when they least expect it, swoop down on them and take them all out at once.”

Although I was ostensibly giving Sonny and his father a better alternative for exacting revenge, I was really setting up an opportunity for the DEA to swoop in and catch both rival gangs with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. I thought about how happy Kingston would be with me when he not only arrested two dozen hardened criminals, but also managed to get a cache of weapons and drugs off the streets. This was everything I had been working for. Wasn’t it?

Sonny took a step backward and looked at me. “Damn, that’s a good plan. Where did you come up with that?”

Uh, oh
, I thought.
Did I say too much? Was I giving myself away by knowing so much about these types of things?
“Nowhere. It just seems like the best plan to catch them off-guard, make them feel comfortable and then turn on them.”

“I’m scared of you,” Leroy said, laughing now.

“You should be,” I said jokingly, but only I knew that I meant what I said. He should be scared of me, because nice as he seemed to be so far, one day soon I was going to bring his whole world crashing down on his head and he’d never know what hit him.

***

I went home that night and immediately called Renley.

“Renley. I think I’ve got something.”

“Agent Rockford. Do you think you could ever call me during the day or, say, before midnight?”

“Sorry. Bikers keep weird hours. But like I said, I think I’ve got something big. You’re going to want to hear this.”

“Go ahead. What is it?” He sighed into the phone.

“I’m sure you heard about Melanie Jackson, right? Well, Leroy and Sonny are planning some sort of revenge on the Monsters of Mayhem in Garrard County. That’s who they think killed Melanie.”

“They’re right. We picked up some chatter down the pipeline. The Monsters are pretty much bragging about it, especially their leader, Eddy Walters. He coordinated the whole thing, apparently. Although Leroy was the real target.”

I explained to Renley the plan that I had concocted to get revenge on the Monsters. I wasn’t sure they were going to take my advice, but I hadn’t heard of any other alternative plans.

“We could get both the Lords and the Monsters at the same time, if they go through with this sit-down. They’d be like fish in a barrel!”

“But we don’t have any evidence to go against them with yet. All you have is one statement by Sonny Jackson confirming they’re in the cocaine importing and distribution business. We need more than that. We need concrete evidence.”

“I’ll get it. I promise. He’s confiding in me more and more every day. I’ll get whatever we need to bring them down.”

“Keep up the good work, Rockford. Goodbye.”

I clicked the
end
button on my phone and was instantly hit with a strange feeling. For the first time since this whole thing started, I realized I wasn’t as excited as I used to be about bringing down Sonny and his dad. These were bad men who did bad things and I should be chomping at the bit to take them down. Instead, I felt nervous for Sonny and somewhat guilty about setting him up.
Why is that?
I wondered.
Am I starting to really care about his guy?
I brushed the thought off immediately. It was impossible for me to develop feelings for a guy like Sonny…wasn’t it?

***

The weeks following the funeral were miserable for everyone. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Leroy, who had lost his first wife to cancer and now his young bride, his second wife, had been gunned down in his own home while serving a wonderful meal for her unconventional family. Sonny wasn’t taking Melanie’s death very well, either. Even though Leroy and Melanie had only been married a few years and Melanie was the same age as Sonny, he had grown to care for her and was grieving for his poor father.

I did my best to be supportive but stay behind the scenes. I had only been part of the group for a couple of months, so I didn’t want to get in the way. I’d already stepped out on a limb with my suggested plan for revenge.

I hadn’t seen much of Sonny since the funeral. He and Leroy met behind closed doors with the other guys several times. I was not privy to the contents of those conversations, of course, and Sonny did not share any more information with me. But I knew they were planning something big. Retaliation against the Monsters. That was the thing about these crime families. It was always a never-ending circle of revenge for one wrong or another, committed against one crew by another crew. There would never be peace between these quarreling gangs.

***

It was early on a Saturday morning when I got a frantic call from Sonny. Spider had been picked up by the police in Lexington the day before, carrying a significant amount of cocaine. He’d been delivering a supply to their “distributor” in Lexington when he was pulled over for a broken taillight, of all things.

“That dumbass!” Sonny screamed into the phone. “Why would he be driving around with drugs in a car that had a broken taillight?”

“So is he in jail now?” I asked.

“Hell yeah, he’s in jail. They immediately arrested him. He’s looking at hard time and he’s just a young kid.”

“Don’t you guys have a lawyer you can call for him?” I asked.

“Yeah, but no lawyer’s going to be able to get him out of this mess. I think he had a couple pounds on him.”

“Oh, shit,” I said. I made a mental note to look into this at some point.

“Wanna go for a ride?” Sonny asked. “I have to clear my head.”

“Sure,” I told him. “Come on over.”

He was there within half an hour to pick me up and we drove around town for a little while, stopping once for gas along the way. Then we left town and started driving south on Highway 27. At first, I thought we might be going to Herrington Lake, which was right inside Garrard County, but he rolled past the lake.

“Where are we going?” I shouted to him, but my voice was drowned out by the sound of the motorcycle engine so he didn’t answer me.

As soon as we began to approach downtown Lancaster, I knew immediately where we were going. Well, sort of. I knew he was going to the Monsters of Mayhem’s hangout, but I didn’t know where that was. He turned off of the main road and then turned right and pulled the Harley to a stop behind a tall building. He pulled off his helmet.

“Sonny…what are we doing here?” I asked, with a hint of reprimand in my voice.

“I wanted to see the bastards that killed Melanie. There they are. There’s their hangout in that building over there.” He pointed down the street to a large garage of some sort that looked like a vehicle repair shop. I could barely see a couple of figures milling around, working on cars, wiping their hands on bandanas. They were wearing cuts, so I knew they were part of a motorcycle gang.

“That’s the one, right there.” He pointed, his finger shaking slightly.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“Their president. His name is Eddy Walters. He would have been the one to make the call to shoot up our house, probably intending to kill me or Dad, or both of us, preferably. Yep. He’s the one.”

From where I sat, I could only tell that the man he was pointing at looked a little older, like Leroy, but I couldn’t tell much more from that far away.

“Sonny, let’s go. You’ve showed him to me, now let’s leave before someone notices us here and you get us both killed.”

“Ah, they’re not going to do anything to me here. We’re out in the wide open with witnesses. But, yeah, let’s go. I just wanted to see the bastard who tried to kill me…who killed Melanie.”

“You’ll get your revenge, Sonny. But now’s not the time or the place.” I put my hand on his shoulder and gave a little squeeze.

Sonny turned over the ignition again and soon we were back out on the highway, heading back toward Nicholasville. The whole way home, I was thinking of ways I could get some solid evidence on these guys before their big sit-down, but I couldn’t come up with anything other than what I was already doing…playing the girlfriend role, batting my eyelashes, telling Sonny I loved him so he would trust me. Or at least, that’s the reason I kept giving myself.

We pulled up in front of my house and I hopped off the bike, but Sonny stayed on. I could tell he was in a mood and I wanted to loosen him up a bit, so I offered to do something we hadn’t done since we met. “Do you want to stay the night with me?” I asked.

His downtrodden face perked up a bit. “You serious?” You’ve never let me spend the night. Sure.”

He pulled the bike into the carport that was next to the back of the house and met me at the door. He followed me in through the front and down the hallway to the kitchen.

“Trish, this is a nice little place you’ve got here,” he said, looking all around him. “What’s in all those boxes?”

“Oh, you know…things that belonged to my dad that I need to get distributed to other family members…his sister and my cousins…books, clothes, things like that.”

“Trish,” he began. “Why don’t you just stay here in this house instead of selling it? I mean, it’s a real nice house.”

I put my arms around him as he leaned against the dark brown kitchen cabinets. “You just want me to stay here so I’m closer to you, don’t you?”

He kissed me smartly on the lips and said, “You got me. No, I don’t want you to move. I want you to stay here with me. We’ve got something great going on here and I don’t know what I would do if you moved…even if it is just to Lexington.”

“Awwww…” I said, kissing him back. “That’s sweet. I’ll think about it.”

That night, we slept in my bed for the first time. I laid there in the bed, Sonny lying on his stomach, arms tucked up under the pillow, lightly snoring, thinking how
normal
this felt while it was anything but.

Chapter 17

A couple more weeks went by and things started to return to normal. Or, as normal as things can be in a crime family. Spirits began to lift and people started hanging out again at The Hole, including Sonny and Leroy. We were there on Friday night when Jimmy came into the bar and approached Sonny.

“Spider’s getting out of jail,” he said with no preamble.

“What? How?” Sonny asked with a look of shock playing plainly on his face.

“Sounds like the lawyer we hired for him was worth the money we paid him. He got him off on a technicality. Something about the cop not having probable cause to search his car. He’s coming home tomorrow.

“That’s great!” I said, even though something wasn’t sitting right with me. I just didn’t know what. “I’m sure he’s ready to get out of there.”

“Yeah, it was his first time in jail, poor kid. When I went to visit him he was scared out of his wits…didn’t think he could do ten days, let alone ten years. He was scared to death of being ass-raped on a regular basis by some big dude named Butch. Can’t say I blame the poor kid.”

“You going to pick him up?” Sonny asked Jimmy.

“Yeah. Tomorrow at seven o’clock. I’ll bring him down here, let everyone buy him a round…get him good and drunk.”

I sat there listening to Sonny and Jimmy talk about the times they had spent in prison and the parties they had when they came back. They called them “spring parties,” because you got
sprung
from jail. I had not had a chance to look into Spider’s arrest like I meant to, but something about this sudden release didn’t feel right. I’d seen one too many witnesses turn state’s evidence against their group to avoid jail time and this is exactly what it smelled like to me. If Spider was working with the feds, who was it? Was it DEA? FBI? ATF? Surely if he was working with the DEA, Renley would have given me a heads-up.

I made up an excuse to get home early, so I could call Renley. As usual, Renley was frustrated that I called him so late.

“It’s the only time I can get away to call you,” I said.

“All right. What have you got?”

“Nothing new, but do you know anything about anyone from the crew being turned and working with the DEA?”

“No. We don’t have anyone on the inside except you. Why do you ask?”

“Because…this kid…this new kid in the crew got busted a couple weeks ago with a ton of cocaine and now all of a sudden he’s free on a technicality. Sounds fishy to me. Sounds like he’s turned state’s evidence.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Sure does sound that way, but no. We haven’t made any deals with anyone since you’ve gone in. It has to be another agency.”

“Can you find out? I mean, I need to know what I’m working with here. Another agency working to bring down the Lords should be coordinating with us, and if they’re not, they could screw up our whole investigation. We got in here first. It’s
our
investigation, damn it.”

“Well, it’s either ATF or FBI, one of the two. I don’t know that there’s much evidence of them running guns…have you seen anything since you’ve been there?”

“Not really. I mean, they have guns—plenty of them—but I’ve seen no evidence they’re running them, if that’s what you mean.”

“Must be the FBI, then,” Renley said.

“This is not good,” I lamented.

“No, it’s not. I’ll check with my contact at the FBI…see what I can find out. In the meantime, you just keep doing what you’re doing, but be wary of this kid. What’s his name, by the way?”

“They call him Spider, but I think his real name is Andrew Davis.”

“All right, I’ll look into it. Heard anything else about this sit-down with the Monsters?”

“No, not lately. I’ll bring it up with Sonny, see what he tells me.”

“Okay, goodnight, Agent Rockford”

“Goodnight, Renley. Oh, hey, tell Beauford I said hello.”

***

The next night, everyone gathered at The Hole, waiting for Spider and Jimmy to show up. When they finally arrived around nine o’clock, cheers went up from the tables and the bar.

Sonny walked up to Spider as he entered through the front door. “This is the second party we’ve thrown for you, newbie!”

“Yeah, sorry about this one, Sonny. I swear, I didn’t know the taillight was out and—”

“Ah, that’s enough about that,” Sonny quieted him. “It’s not your fault. You’re just one lucky son-of-a-bitch to dodge at least a dime on a technicality. I wish I’d been that lucky!”

“Well, I don’t feel lucky,” he said. “I hated it in there. It was awful.”

“County jail ain’t shit compared to the state pen,” Sonny said.

“Or federal prison,” Leroy chimed in as he approached the group and slapped Spider on the back.

The men all stood around laughing with Spider, which left me alone at the bar until Amanda sat down in the stool next to me.

“Hey, Amanda,” I said.

“Hi, Trish. What do you think about Spider getting out of jail like that? Pretty awesome, huh?”

“Yeah. I heard Jimmy yesterday talking about his time in state prison. Were you with him then?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Jimmy and I have been together for ten years and still no ring.” She held up her hand and wiggled her empty ring finger. “He did three years not long after we started dating for assault…broke a guy’s arm with a baseball bat. Lucky he didn’t kill the bastard.”

“Who was he?” I asked.

“He was my ex-husband. Came around one day trying to get me to go back to him. Jimmy warned him not to come around anymore, but the next day, here came Buster, knocking on my front door. Jimmy grabbed a baseball bat and went to town on him, broke his arm…shattered it, actually. That’s why he got three years. Felony assault with a deadly weapon.”

“What was it like, having to wait for him?” I asked, pretending I was concerned about Sonny going to prison and leaving me behind.

“Oh, I see…you’re worried about it happening to you and Sonny.”

I nodded my head.

“Oh, darlin’…if it happens, if he gets arrested, you just gotta wait it out. The club would be here for you, supporting you…especially if you got kids with the man. The club’s really good about taking care of its own.”

I nodded my head again and feigned interest in Amanda’s long story about
every single thing
that happened while Jimmy was away.

Finally, Sonny returned and we finished off the evening with a couple more beers and then headed back to “my place.”

***

As we both lay there panting in my bed, legs intertwined, I pulled back so I could see Sonny’s face. “Sonny…don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that Spider got out on such a little technicality?”

“What do you mean by
suspicious
?” He looked down at me.

“It’s just that he was carrying more than two pounds of cocaine. I can’t believe the DA would just drop the charges like that. It’s just a little strange…that’s all I’m saying.”

Sonny seemed to ponder my suspicions for a brief moment before he said, “From what I heard, the DA realized the search would have been thrown out at trial, since the cops didn’t have probable cause to search his car. At least, that’s what our lawyer told us. The lawyer wouldn’t lie, would he?” We both laughed when Sonny realized his inadvertent joke. “Okay, okay, so lawyers always lie, but you know what I mean. He wouldn’t lie to us. We’ve had him on retainer for many years. He’s helped us all out at one point or another.”

“You’re probably right,” I told him. “It just seemed a little unbelievable to me, but I guess stranger things have happened.”

“But if you are right and Spider and the lawyer are lying about the technicality thing, why would they do that? Why would they lie?”

I looked at him with an “are you seriously asking me that” look on my face. “Sonny…there’s only one reason in the world that anyone would lie about something like that.” As soon as I said it, I realized I had just jeopardized Spider’s life. I hadn’t meant to do that. I was only trying to strengthen Sonny’s confidence in me by acting like I was looking out for him and the club. But there was no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Sonny turned his head on the pillow and looked up at the ceiling, his head resting on his bent arm. After pondering this for several moments, he said, “Spider wouldn’t do anything to hurt the club. He’s worked his ass off for the past year, just to be patched in and be a part of this club. No way is he ratting us out.”

But the look on Sonny’s face betrayed his disbelief in his own words. I could see the wheels spinning in his mind and knew immediately I had possibly definitely put Spider’s life in danger. Whether he ratted on the club or not, Spider didn’t deserve to be hurt—or worse. Renley had told me earlier that day that he had looked into the situation and said that, although it did seem highly suspicious to him, everything seemed to be above board. None of his friends in the other departments owned up to a deal with Spider. If he had flipped on the club and turned state’s evidence, it was done without the knowledge or blessing of the DEA.

I felt a knot start to tighten in my stomach. What was Sonny going to do about his doubts? The doubts I had planted in his head. Hopefully, he would look into the situation and find there was nothing nefarious going on. If not, had I just sentenced young Spider to death? Would Sonny go that far? Deep down, I knew the answer to that question. Yes. Yes, he would.