Page 14 of Hawk

“Old Grim’s around,” I tell him.

“Why ain’t he Prez then?”

“Club business.”

He barks out a laugh. “Club business?”

I nod, not wanting to tip my hand too much.

“Come on now, Hawk,” he says, a trace of that old Hammerhead coming to life. “Agreement I made was with Old Grim. And if Old Grim ain’t in charge no more, I might be thinking about renegotiating the terms of this deal.”

I raise an eyebrow. I don’t know what the hell he’s playing at. With the sorry state of this club, he’s in no state to push back on us, especially since the Kings are only growing by the day.

“Cut the shit, Hammerhead. Right now we’re talking about the shipments. You said you’d make good on them. You haven’t.”

“I will. We’re still just trying to recover from our losses, man. We just need a little more time. That’s all,” he insists.

“How much time?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “We’ve got some prospects patching in and we’re bringing in some guys from Tucson to pitch in in the meantime.”

“Do I know these guys from Tucson?”

“You might,” he offers. “Sharp’s guys.”

I nod, making a mental note to double-check that later. Sharp is a money launderer down in Tucson. We’ve worked with him in the past, but he’s not exactly the closest of our allies. Sharp is damn good at what he does and has enough connections to get you anything you need for the right price, but his associations are… murky, at best. If Hammerhead’s getting in bed with Sharp, that could mean he’s even worse off than I thought.

I regard him skeptically. “So it’s good?”

“I’m tellin’ you, it’s all good down here.”

I take a drag off my cigarette, never taking my eyes off him. He’s nervous. Twitchy. Shifting in his seat and avoiding my eyes.

“What’s going on with you personally, man?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

I sigh. “You look like a crackhead looking for a fix,” I snap. “Are you using?”

He shrugs. “A little bit. Yeah, I smoke a little weed.”

“Weed doesn’t make you twitchy like this,” I counter. “What are you on?”

“I’m drinkin’ a little more than normal. I admit that,” he finally relents. “But I’m only smoking weed. That’s it, man.”

I know he’s lying to me and it’s starting to piss me off. None of us are angels. We’ve all smoked some weed. Some of us have done a little coke in our past. Some guys did worse. But as far as the Kings go, the club rules prohibit the use of anything harder than weed. We can smoke, we can deal, and we can even distribute the harder stuff if the Prez authorizes the transaction, but that’s it. If we’re caught with a needle in our arm or snorting something in the clubhouse, that’s cause for punishment up to and including being stripped of our patch and run out of the club.

It’s that serious and that rule has been in force for a long time. And we demand the same of clubs we do business with. We can’t expect every club to run as clean and tight as us, but there are some basic standards of behavior we expect from our allies. Part of that is for self-preservation. We don’t want to be dragged down in someone else’s bullshit just for our association with them. When we’re bankrolling clubs like the Howlers, we expect them to follow our rules.

Hammerhead is quite obviously not doing that. Which is a problem for him and an even bigger problem for us. If we can’t rely on the Howlers to keep our supply and distribution lines open down here, we lose revenue. And there’s nothing that makes me unhappier than to lose revenue. That’s part of my job as the new VP. If I can’t keep the taps open and the money flowing, that looks bad for me. And I don’t like looking bad in front of my club. Especially if it’s because of a junkie not doing his job.

“Listen, I know what somebody who’s smoking weed looks like,” I say slowly. “And I know what somebody on something else looks like. So, you might as well tell me what you’re on, man. Come clean with me and maybe we can work this out.”

“I’m tellin’ you, Hawk. I’m good,” he replies. “I’m straight, man.”

I sigh and shake my head. “You really going to stick with that story?”

“It ain’t a story, man. It’s the truth.”

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