The Need to Know (eBook)

11

Night Work

It was Tackle Box driving one of the club’s vans later that Friday night after the party on a country road with Bucket Head in the passenger seat. A body wrapped in black plastic and duct tape was in the back along with two five-gallon plastic containers of sulfuric acid and a tool bag.

“Keep the high beams on and slow down a little. Look for deer. You see any, slow the fuck down. They travel in herds. Don’t need to be hitting any of them fucking things tonight.”

Tackle Box nodded obediently, gripped the steering wheel tighter, and dared a glance at the speedometer. His foot unconsciously eased off the gas pedal. He struggled between concentrating on his driving and what had happened in the past hour.

He and the other prospect were cleaning up after the party. Bucket Head was the only guest remaining, and they assumed he would spend the night at his brother’s house. They commented to each other about how hammered he must be. All night long he was loud with slurred speech. Arguing, laughing, cursing, and now uncharacteristically helping them move folding chairs and tables into the barn repurposed for storage and vehicles.

The last time Tackle Box saw the other prospect alive was while doing a final pickup of trash under the glare of the floodlights mounted on the barn. He was carrying the other end of a table with Bucket Head. Absorbed in making sure that he got everything, Tackle Box failed to notice that neither had been seen for several minutes. The last thing he wanted was Club President’s wife climbing up his ass over a cigarette butt. She was the most intimidating woman he had ever met and was more afraid of her than most of the club members, including her husband.

A low, soft whistle broke his concentration. He looked over and saw Bucket Head standing by the one open barn door.

“You done yet?” Bucket Head called over softly.

“Yeah, think so,” Tackle Box whispered back as he gave the area one last look. He guessed Bucket Head was either tired or didn’t want to wake anyone in the house.

“Good, now get in here and help. We got some more trash to take care of.”

Tackle Box entered the dimly lit barn. At first he thought it was a shadow but then realized it was a sheet of black plastic laid out to the right side of the doorway. In the center was the other prospect with his head at an unnatural angle.

“Wha…” he started and stopped. His mind raced to process what he saw and what it meant. He looked over at Bucket Head, who gave him a familiar glare. He thought for a moment and then answered the unspoken question, “Club Rule Number Two, Need to Know.”

Bucket Head nodded with approval. “Hope for you yet, prospect. You good to do some driving tonight?”

“Club Rule Number Three. Be sober. Me and him working tonight for the party.”

“Good, cuz you and me are working a night shift. Some on-the-job training too.”

That was when Tackle Box realized that Bucket Head was stone sober and that tonight was just an act.

At Bucket Head’s direction, the body was stripped and the clothes, soiled with the wastes released by death, rolled up into a ball. The prospect’s wallet and folding knife were removed and pocketed in Bucket Head’s vest. The thick black plastic was folded over the body and secured with half a roll of duct tape.

As they wrapped, Bucket Head lectured.

“There ain’t gonna be any messages with this one. He’s gonna disappear. Don’t need gloves cuz anything we touch will disappear as well. Always use six mil plastic. Don’t need anything poking out or poking in. I got his phone, used his thumbprint and changed the code so I can open it. You and him are going to be texting over the next few days. But it will be me. You text each other all the time so we have to do it like nothing’s changed. We’ll go over that on the way back. Fucking cops have a way getting the texts as well as where’s the phone’s been. Gotta work that out as well. Fucking things can work for you as well as hang you. I’m thinking we toss it on the back of some truck heading south in a few days. We’ll burn the clothes and wallet. Gonna burn all this plastic and tape with ’em too.”

“Where we going to do that?”

“You’ll see. Now open the van. Back doors, not the side.”

One of the club’s black panel vans was parked behind the other barn door that was still closed. Wordlessly they loaded the prospect and his clothes into the back.

“See them two blue jugs back there against the wall? Get ’em and put ’em in the van. Need a bottle of that torch fluid on the shelf as well. Never use gasoline. Too easy to fuck up and burn your ass. I’ll get some tools.”

Tackle Box went to one of the blue containers and grabbed the handle to lift it.

“Fuck,” he cursed. “Fucking shit’s heavy.”

“Fucking pussy,” Bucket Head muttered as he walked back and picked up a container in each hand and loaded them in the van. Each was over seventy pounds. He knew Tackle Box would struggle with just one but wanted to show off his physical prowess and humiliate him at the same time. “You need to get to the gym.”

“Have been,” Tackle Box replied defensively. Since becoming a prospect, he had been going to the gym the club owned and added twenty pounds of muscle.

“Training with anyone?”

“Naw, just doing what this website says.”

“Fuck that shit, start going with Turd Man. He’ll get you straight. Now get that torch fluid. Think you can handle that?”

Tackle Box nodded and retrieved the bottle of amber fluid. Turd Man, he reflected. The club vice-president that Bucket Head grudgingly deferred to. The one who had wrapped his arm around his neck and immobilized his head as the metal was ripped from his face and ears four years ago. Not even his own thighs were as thick as those arms.

One of the things Tackle Box learned early was that the bigger, stronger, and fiercest members had the more demeaning names. Bucket Head, Turd Man, and Club President’s former name were cases in point. Club Rule Number Five was one of the founding members’ idea that once you became the club president, your club name became Club President. An incentive that if you didn’t like your name, the only way to change it was to claw your way to the top.

The names were usually earned from incidences while prospects. Only full members could call each by their club names. If a prospect needed to talk to a member, he had to address him by the initials.

Tackle Box’s ripped and scarred face was now part of the club’s lore like everyone else’s. He had heard Turd Man’s story, and it made him feel a little better about how he earned his.

After the van was loaded, Bucket Head directed Tackle Box to get in the driver’s seat. “I got the door. Pull out, I’ll close up.”

The van started immediately into a soft rumble and rolled out of the barn and stopped. Both barn doors were closed and Bucket Head got in the passenger seat. The van’s right-side suspension bowed to his weight.

“Go slow around front and stop at your car. We’ll leave your phone and his in your car so it looks like you two never left. You two came together, right?”

Tackle Box nodded.

“Good, mine’s already on my bike. We don’t need big brother knowing where we been. Hang a left at the end of the driveway.”

It was five minutes after the deer warning that Bucket Head spoke.

“How was Gus today?”

“Good, started on that new bag of food like you wanted.”

“He like it?”

“Must’ve. Damn near choked on it slamming it down. Still don’t like me much.”

“The day he licks your hand is the day you get to bury him,” Bucket Head promised with contempt.

Tackle Box suppressed a smile at the thought. He rented a room in the house two doors down on the other side of the street from Bucket Head. Feeding Gus and picking up his shit was one of his prospect duties. He hated the dog fiercely, almost as much as he hated his owner.

“We’re coming up to a stop sign, hang a right,” Bucket Head ordered. He silently counted phone poles after the turn. At the seventh one, he said, “Slow down. See that mailbox and driveway on the right? Turn in there. Kill the headlights. Leave the parking lights on.”

There had only been two other mailboxes since the turn, and they were on the left. Tackle Box had no clue where he was on a dark road, on a dark night. Driving in the country after sunset always unnerved him. Driving a van with a body and a sociopathic murderer blew on the embers of paranoia as they crawled up the gravel driveway through the woods.

Bucket Head looked over at his scarred handiwork breaking out in a sheen of sweat in the glow of the dashboard.

“Chill prospect, yer legacy. Don’t need the Beast coming out of his grave over you.”

“Yessir” was all that Tackle Box could think of for a reply and accepted the lie that his grandfather might have anything to do with his survival.

“You know what this means tonight, don’t ya?”

Tackle Box suspected but didn’t say. It was one of those moments he learned to be quiet and let his tutor talk.

“You’re almost there, prospect. Biker boot camp is almost over.”

Tackle Box nodded with a weak smile. The embers died down a little. He wasn’t there yet, and he knew that not fucking up tonight would go a long way...