Three Can Keep a Secret (21 page)

“I don’t mind—”

“At least call Willard,” Abe said to me. “Get some backup.”

“He’s driving your mother home,” I said. “Remember? And we’ll be fine. We’re going to a public place.”

“A strip joint,” Abe said hotly.

I stared at Abe, and he stared back. Finally, he turned his back to me. “So Lucy,” he said. “You want some help cleaning up?”

I punched Lenny lightly on the arm. “Give me five minutes to change. And you know what? I don’t even have to hitch a ride with you. I’ve got the perfect bike for a night like this.”

Lenny shook his head. But he agreed to wait.

Chapter Thirty-seven

Cloud Nine was hopping when we arrived. A good number of bikes were lined up alongside the bar, most of them representing more than half a year of my wages. It was easy to pick out Kristi’s ugly chopper and the few near it. I slid the Beast into a close spot, and it looked right at home with Kristi’s group.

“Sure you want to go in?” Lenny said.

I made a face. “Not exactly where I’d choose to spend a Saturday evening, but hopefully we’ll be out quickly. What about you?”

He picked at his riding gloves. “Gotta do it.”

We walked up the steps and pushed open the front door. Smoke wafted out, and I fought a coughing fit. Lenny paid our cover charge while I looked around the room. Kristi and her group weren’t anywhere we could see them, so we found an empty table and sat, trying not to be conspicuous.

Mercifully, there was a break between dancers, so I didn’t have to be subjected to some poor girl gyrating for tips. I spied a waitress coming toward us, and I put up a finger to request a Coke.

Several feet from our table the waitress stopped, looking over my shoulder. One glance at her face, and I knew we’d found what we came for.

“So, you finally came out of hiding?” someone said.

I whirled around, but Lenny didn’t move, his eyes fixed on some unseen vision. I guess even after twenty-some years you know your daughter’s voice. Kristi stood behind us with the bald guy and several other scuzzy types. Kristi looked just as attractive as when we’d first met outside the Barn.

“Ah, Kristi,” I said. “Lenny’s told me so much about you.”

“No shit? And what would he know? Seems to me the way the story goes is he abandoned me sixteen fucking years ago and hasn’t looked back.”

I remembered the photos I had found at Lenny’s house and knew she was wrong. Lenny had never forgotten her. I looked at him, but he’d gone back to staring into space.

“Why don’t you have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the other side of the table. “Let’s talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

I stood up slowly, wanting to be at her eye level. She took a small step forward, challenging me.

“So what do you want?” I asked. “You want Lenny to say he’s sorry for leaving you?”

She let out a bark that sounded kind of like laughter. “I’m not worried about losing him. What concerns me is what happened before he left. Before I was even born.” She poked Lenny in the back with a dirty boot. “Why don’t you just go on ahead and tell your friend here about that?”

Lenny still hadn’t turned around. He finally looked at me, his eyes sad and deep.

“This isn’t about my family,” he said quietly. “Not completely. Or even about Kristi…my daughter.”

I heard her snort. He jerked like he’d been slapped, then continued. “It’s about the Priests and the Serpents.”

“Your club,” I said. “And their club.” I looked to see if everyone in the gathered group had the tattoo, and I saw it on all of the arms that were visible.

“You know about the merger?” he said.

“Merger?”
one of the bikers spat. I glanced at the man, and the woman beside him put her hand on his arm.

“I know the Priests and the Serpents were having turf wars,” I said. “And the Priests took over after the explosion at the Serpents’ clubhouse.”

Lenny’s eyes shot toward me. “You know about the explosion?”

“The explosion that killed three people,” Kristi said.

“Three?” I said. “The article I read said only two.”

“It took the VP two days to die. What do you think about that,
Lenny?”
Kristi said. She put her boot on his back again and pushed hard enough it rocked the table. I clenched my fists. I knew I could take Kristi, but not without backup in this crowd.

Lenny mumbled something.

“I couldn’t hear you,” Kristi said. She grabbed a clump of Lenny’s hair and yanked his head back.

I lunged forward to grab Kristi’s arm, and she turned and punched me in the ribs. Shocked by the sudden pain, I kept my grip on her arm and took her down with me as I fell to the ground, breathless. Kristi got in another punch to my side before I could roll out of her reach.

Kristi pushed herself up and lunged toward me. Reflexively, I grabbed her ankles and flipped her to the ground. I jumped on her and pinned her down, ready to fight, but a sudden movement made me glance to the right. Baldy’s fist flew through the air toward me, and I ducked under it, narrowly missing the punch.

Lenny surged up, roaring, and I rolled away from Kristi and up onto my feet.

“Enough!” Lenny screamed. Then he quieted. “Enough.”

A year passed while I caught my breath, and the Serpents helped Kristi up before settling back into a defensive stance.

A huge man with a spike through his nose came suddenly between Lenny and the group of Serpents. “Time to take it outside, folks. Don’t want no fighting in here.”

One look at his missing teeth and the bulge under his left arm was enough to convince even Kristi and her crew to vacate the premises. The guy watched as the Serpents filed past us, and as we followed. Only when the door banged shut behind us did he disappear.

We formed a ring in the parking lot, the lights creating more shadows than I liked. It was hard to tell how much people were moving without staring directly at them, and there was no way to keep an eye on all of them at once.

“I tried to stop the explosion,” Lenny finally said.

“Sure,” Kristi sneered. “You set off to kill the Serpents’ leaders and got a sudden attack of conscience when you got to the clubhouse.”

“No,” Lenny said. “We went to get the clubhouse only. We didn’t know anybody was going to be there.”

“Oh, come on.” She stepped sideways, her boot making a pebble crack like a gun shot. A sweat broke out on my scalp, but I tried not to show it. I had told Abe we’d be in a public place, but the parking lot was feeling way too private.

“We didn’t know,” Lenny said. “We thought everybody would be at the Reading Beer Bash, where our group was. The Serpents went every year. How were we to know there was a secret meeting of the officers? It’s not like we had a spy in the club.”

“So what stopped you?” Kristi asked. “Why didn’t you just blow it up like you planned? It’s not like the bikes would be outside. You don’t advertise your officers are at the clubhouse alone.”

“When we snuck around back we saw lights. We knew then that the place wasn’t empty. But we couldn’t convince him to let it go.”

“Him?” Kristi said.

I knew. “The Skull.”

Lenny nodded.

I continued. “And the third guy was Mal.”

“Sweetheart,” Kristi said nastily.

Three can keep a secret…

No wonder Mal had been so freaked when I found him the other night. He’d just been reminded that he knew who killed three men, and thought he was about to die for it.

“Mal and I told The Skull we wouldn’t do it. We’d gone to destroy the clubhouse, but that was it.” Lenny was silent for a moment. “We thought we’d convinced him.”

“But he went back,” I said.

Kristi’s nostrils flared. “You practically lit the fuse yourself.”

Lenny’s breath caught. “I should’ve known. I should’ve stopped him.”

Kristi’s face was a mask of rage. “You’ve known all these years and you didn’t tell anybody.”

“I couldn’t,” Lenny said. “The Skull said if I told anyone he’d kill you. Your mother. My family.”

Everyone stared at Lenny, and I realized I’d been right. “When The Skull was killed in that accident on Friday you figured you were free to talk.”

Lenny closed his eyes. “I was finally going to come clean. The danger to Kristi and Vonda was gone.”

Kristi’s face paled, and for a moment I was afraid she might keel over on the pavement. When she steadied herself she said, “You really didn’t have anything to do with it?”

Lenny shook his head, his eyes watery.

“Kind of makes you wish you hadn’t gone after him, doesn’t it?” I said. “Unless you’re still mad he left you and your mom?”

Her eyes flashed. “I should be pissed about that, shouldn’t I? Wouldn’t you be angry if your father left when you were four?”

I swallowed painfully. Kristi had no way to know I’d lost my father before I was even that old.

“But who cares about that, anyway?” Kristi said. “I had a better dad than Lenny ever could’ve been.” She gestured to the older couple. “Stan and Lorene took Mom and me in the day we got abandoned by this asshole.” She jerked her thumb at Lenny, who looked like he wanted to disappear. “They’d come over to the Priests with Mom when the Serpents were phased out. Mom trusted them.”

“But why go after Lenny now?” I said. “Haven’t you known for years who was suspected in the explosion?”

“I never knew. But when The Skull died on Saturday, Stan and Lorene decided it was time I understood why I don’t have a ‘real’ father anymore. All I knew before was that four years after the Priests took us over Lenny split. Didn’t even tell Mom where he was going.”

I glanced at Lenny, and he looked like he wanted to be any place but there.

“Why hadn’t your mother told you about the explosion?” I asked Kristi. “And why isn’t she here?”

Kristi stared at me. “Mom’s dead. Lung cancer got her almost ten years ago.”

Lenny made a strangled sound.

“But she hated Lenny,” Kristi said. “She thought he’d killed those guys. You’d think he would’ve at least told
her
what happened.”

Lenny exhaled forcefully. “It was too dangerous for you. Every day The Skull reminded me what would happen if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. Every time he saw you with me he’d make a line across his throat, or point his fingers like a gun. I finally realized I had to leave you to keep you safe.” Tears formed in his eyes, and I prayed he’d be able to keep it together in front of these folks.

“What a hero,” Kristi said, sneering. “Giving up everything to save the girl he thought was his daughter.”

Lenny’s eyes snapped to her.

“What do you mean?” I said. “The girl he
thought
was his daughter?”

She looked at Lenny, her eyes reflecting steel in the artificial light. “My mom wouldn’t have had a baby with a
Priest
. She joined with Lenny as soon as the Serpents were swallowed up because she knew she was already pregnant. She didn’t want the Priests taking her baby away because it had been fathered by a Serpent.”

Lenny turned a harsh red and then paled so abruptly I was afraid he was going to faint. I could see a question in his eyes, but knew he wouldn’t be able to ask it. So I did.

“And your real father?”

She stared at me. “My
real
father died when Lenny’s pal The Skull blew up the clubhouse. He was the Serpents’ vice president.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Lenny sank down onto the bumper of a truck, never taking his eyes from Kristi’s face. His face went through a startling series of expressions. The one he was left with was not surprisingly a mixture of betrayal and horror.

The silence of the Serpents was heavy and loud. I was afraid to breathe for fear I might trigger something and let loose the arsenal of hatred seething under their tattered clothes. Turns out I didn’t need to.

Kristi’s adopted father, Stan, broke the silence.

“I think he needs to learn a little lesson,” he said.

“For what?” I said. “Trying to protect Kristi all these years?”

“You heard him. He could’ve stopped the explosion if he’d been smart enough. Besides, I’ve been waiting for this a long time.” He reached into his pocket and came out with a knife, its blade about four inches long.

Skinny Ass followed suit, taking out his own weapon. I remembered his hand snaking into his vest at the Barn when Queenie had him cornered, and now I knew what he’d been going for.

The whole group moved of one accord toward Lenny. Lenny stood motionless, seemingly resigned to what was coming.

I wasn’t.

“So which one of those blades sliced Bart?” I asked.

Half a dozen heads snapped toward me, including Lenny’s. His face hardened when his brain caught up enough to put it together that these guys really were the ones who’d attacked Bart.

“Was it Stan’s knife or Baldy’s?” I asked.

“It was Raymond’s,” Kristi snapped.

I snickered.
“
Raymond?”

Raymond turned the knife toward me and angled it so it would catch some light.

“Probably still has some of his blood on it,” he said. “Want a taste?”

Adrenaline rushed through my veins and I would’ve gone for his throat if Lenny hadn’t gotten there first, his two hundred plus pounds carrying them both backward, tumbling over a truck hood and onto the dirt. Lenny emitted a horrendous noise, and Raymond slashed at the air with his knife, handicapped by Lenny’s huge body pinning down his arms. Raymond was just as likely to be crushed as Lenny was to get the sharp end of the knife, and I watched for an opening to step on Raymond’s hand like I had Big Trey’s way back at the pig roast.

The Serpents stood frozen, except for Kristi, who shrieked at Raymond to kill the bastard, and Stan, who was looking for a chance to bury his blade in Lenny’s back. I was getting ready to launch myself at Stan when a couple of police cars barreled into the parking lot, spilling cops in riot gear. Never had I been so happy to see a gun barrel pointed my way.

The cops screamed at everybody to stay where they were, which wasn’t hard since Lenny and Raymond were the only ones moving. Raymond’s blade was turning toward the ground when the cops got close enough to put guns to the guys’ heads, and then the knife hung there, ready to be used in a split second of chance.

“Blades on the ground,” one cop said, his voice shaky. “Everybody else stay still.” Raymond lay face up, and the cop above him stared into his eyes while another had Lenny and Stan under his watch. Raymond hesitated, snarling, but when he saw the officer wasn’t about to back down he mustered up enough brain power to know a knife was no match for a service revolver. With a disgusted grunt he dropped the knife onto the dirt.

By this time more cops had hustled over, the parking lot filling up just as it had at our HOG picnic, and I breathed much easier. They soon figured out Raymond and Stan were the only ones with weapons, so with two cops to a sleazeball they got them handcuffed and pulled them away from the group.

A small crowd had come outside the bar to see what was so exciting it needed police, and more cops arrived and asked the on-lookers to please step back. The guy with the spike through his nose caught my eye across the parking lot and nodded. I wondered if he was the one who’d made the call.

Stan and Raymond were several steps away when Stan stopped abruptly and turned to look at Lenny. Lenny straightened and stared right back at him, some silent communication passing between them that excluded everyone else. I don’t know for sure what it was about, but I have to assume it concerned the pathetic girl they both thought of as a daughter. Stan eventually leaned toward Lenny, spat on the ground, and let the cops take him away. Raymond gave Lenny a stare, but it was nothing compared to Stan’s venom.

Lenny made a half-motion toward Kristi, but stopped when she bucked backward into Lorene, Stan’s wife.

“Kristi—”

“Save it, old man. Ain’t nothing you can say that will change anything.”

“But—”

She shook her head, not looking at him. His eyes went dead, and he slowly sank back down to the bumper, despair present in the sagging of his shoulders. This sad spectacle of a huge man with tears running down his face should’ve softened the heart of even the hardest female, but Kristi looked at him with something approaching revulsion, and her lip turned up in a sneer.

“You’re pathetic,” she spat, using the word I had so recently pinned to her.

He turned his head away.

“Pathetic and a disgrace to bikers. Go home to your fancy shop and your faggot partner.”

“Then—”

“We’re through. I never want to see or hear about you ever again. As far as I’m concerned, you never even existed.”

He raised his head to gaze at her, like he was drinking her in, never wanting to forget her. I could see in his eyes that no matter what had happened during the past week, no matter how vengeful or disgusting she was, no matter that she hated him with passion and had almost killed his best friend, he still thought of her as his daughter. Finally, he wiped his face and got to his feet.

“Good-bye, Kristi,” he said gently.

She spun on her heel and walked away.

***

Several minutes later the crowd had dispersed, headed back inside to their booze and naked women.

Lenny remained on the truck’s bumper, pale and shaken, not saying a word. I stood beside him, trying to ignore my throbbing ribs. I scanned the people going by to make sure none of the Serpents were coming back to finish what they’d started, and after fifteen minutes of it, I’d had enough.

“Okay, Len, let’s go.”

I had to say it twice to get it to register, and he finally swiveled his head toward me.

“There’s nothing else for us here,” I said. “Come on.”

Lenny was still in a daze. I nudged him with my knee.

“Len?”

Finally, he moved. But it was to look at the ground, not get up.

“Go on home,” he said. “I might as well stay here, where I belong.”

“What?”

“You heard what they said. I basically killed three people by letting The Skull go back to the clubhouse. I abandoned my dau—the girl I
thought
was my daughter, along with her mother. It’s a good thing I’m not really her father. Dads come from a lot better line than folks like me.”

“Give me a break, Lenny.”

He looked at me with big, watery eyes, like a newborn calf. “Just go on. I’m not worth worrying about. Look at me. I’m just what Kristi said—pathetic. Look around you. This is what I am. I’m dirty, smelly, and violent. I fit in here. No one runs at the sight of me, keeping between me and their kids. No one sees me and assumes I’m going to steal their purse. Or their car. I should be around my own kind.”

Every inch of my being wanted to slug him, but from somewhere deep inside me some strange, foreign thing forced itself to the surface. Maternal instinct suddenly reared its unfamiliar head. I knelt in front of my friend.

“Lenny, those stupid moms at the ice cream place were afraid of me, too. And of the nose-ring girl who dipped our ice cream. Think about who those women are. They seclude themselves in their new developments with their two point five kids and brush their hair at five-thirty every afternoon to make sure they’re ready for hubby to get home from the office and take over. They wouldn’t know a friendly outsider if it bit them on their liposuctioned asses.”

He looked over my head and I grabbed his hands.

“Lenny, I don’t give a damn what ‘society’ says. Think about who you are. You’re a good man. All your neighbors say so. Your customers say so. Bart says so. You don’t produce drugs. You don’t sell porn. Just because you wear black and ride a Harley doesn’t mean you’re an outlaw. Remember what one-percenter means? It means
one percent
. You’re part of the ninety-nine now. You decided that twenty years ago.”

I felt like I was talking across miles, even though I sat inches from his face. I reached up and grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at me for my final plea.

“Why would a woman like Lucy give a rat’s ass about you if you’re such a slime? Why would she trust you with her daughter?”

I finally saw a flicker of life in his eyes, and gradually the fog seemed to clear. I let go of his face and he didn’t look away.

“Does she really care about me?” he asked.

“Oh, Lenny, you big dummy. Can’t you see she’s nuts about you? And her world—her Mennonite world—that’s where you belong. Violence isn’t your way. You proved that years ago when you walked away from it all.” I smiled at him. “I told Willard the truth the night at your house. You’re nothing but a big teddy bear.”

He was showing a glimmer of a grin when a couple came barging out the bar’s door. Laughing loudly and hanging onto each other for support, the girl’s boot caught under my butt, sending her sprawling, her bottle of beer spilling all over my back and Lenny’s jeans. The guy went crashing down with her, his beer splashing onto her face and saturating the front of her shirt. After a moment of stunned silence, they looked at each other and started on a new fit of giggles. It didn’t take more than five seconds before they were pulling each other’s clothes off.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Lenny said.