Low Sided by A.J. Downey (best detective novels of all time txt) 📕

“Talk about it more tonight?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” she said.

I watched her work for a while before I had to git to make it to church on time. As I sat there, I realized, I couldn’t wait to take her on some adventures on the bike. Just her and me… and I wasn’t talking to Black Diamond Bakery or anything as pedestrian as that. I wanted to take my earthy fire maiden witch girl places like the lavender fields in the summertime, and out to the beaches on the coast. I wanted to get her out of the city and make love to her under the stars high in the mountains.

I wanted to go places with her, show her things that she’d probably only dreamed of. Introduce her to things and places, people like us – free spirited and the like.

I wanted to grow old with her, watch her hair turn white, give her a house with a garden for her to tend like she’d told me she wanted in her twilight years, where she could make things and sell things at a little roadside stand.

I got up, left the twenty pinned under my empty glass on her bar, and she waved at me from where she was taking a food order and blew me a kiss. I caught it with a wink and tucked it inside my jacket and cut near my heart and left.

The ride to the club was short, but with sufficient enough wind to carry most of my troubled emotions away. The little anxieties of just how I was going to manage to pull a bunch of shit off. I felt like I had a weight on my shoulders balancing more than a few things like a house of cards, but then Mav met my gaze off the back porch and gave a nod and the rest of those little worries and penny ante shit just fell away.

I didn’t have to do shit on my own. I wasn’t locked up anymore. I was free, and I had the love of a good woman and my club to help me. I needed to remember that. I needed to let some of that shit go.

I went up the back step and Mav blew out a fragrant cloud of green smoke and held out the spliff to me. I took it and filled my lungs, holding it and nodded, handing it back.

“You good?” he asked, and I nodded, holding it some more. Finally, I blew it out in an explosive exhale, my tight shoulders starting to relax some.

“I’m good, man.”

“How’s Raven?” he asked, and I nodded.

“She’s good, too.”

“Fen talk to you?” he asked.

“He did.”

“Thoughts?”

“I’m on board, just tell me what you need.”

“Landlord’s name and number to start with,” he said.

I nodded. “I got you,” I declared.

“Good deal.”

I went in the back door and into the chapel which smelled strongly of disinfecting cleaners and under that, still the coppery tang of Tic’s blood. At least to me. Maybe it was my imagination, but there was really no telling.

I went around the table and took my place.

“Dude, Mace, you give up your phone?” Sauley asked from the doorway.

“Oh, shit. I’m losing my mind,” I declared and pulled it from my pocket and tossed it across the table to him. He caught it one-handed.

“No big deal this time,” Mav said, edging in around Sauley and going to the head of the table. “Nothing’s started, yet.”

“Thanks, man. Good looking out,” I called to Sauley, and he nodded and went around collecting the other brother’s phones.

When everyone had arrived, Mav shut the door to the chapel, and called shit to order.

“So, this is what happened…” Glassjaw filled us all in.

Seems that a local gang of white supremacist tweaker fucks were getting some big ideas about moving out of Des Moines and into Rat City just sort of skipping Normandy Park all together in their march north. Tic was out back when a few of them slow rolled it on by, talking shit and one of them jumped out the back of their fuckin’ pickup, opened up a knife, and went to gut our boy, stabbing low and going for his junk. Tic’s version of events was he twisted and raised a leg and the dude got him in the hip. I think that metal cage he wore to get off or whatever the hell it did for him might have had something to do with deflecting the blow, but fuck if I was going to say any of that shit out loud.

Tic-Tac’s extra circulars were Tic-Tac’s business and nobody else’s.

At any rate, these fuckin’ tweakers had done fucked up by pulling such a ballsy move. It wasn’t going to end pretty for them, but we had to play our cards right. Doing something big and flamboyant wasn’t our way. That’s how the cops got involved and not to put too fine a point on it – fuck the police.

“I know we want some heads on some fuckin’ pikes, gentlemen,” Maverick said. “Nobody wants that shit more than me, but like I always keep telling you – order of operations, boys. Order of operations.”

“How we playing this, then?” Dump Truck asked. “Gonna let ‘em think they scored a blow? Let ‘em think we’re scared?” He grinned, and it was fairly savage, but it didn’t have shit on the smile plastered on Fenris’ face. Fen looked like he was a kid in a fuckin’ candy store.

“You’ve got the right of it,” Maverick declared. “And don’t you worry, Fen. I’ll be letting you off your leash, eventually.”

“Reconnaissance then?” Cipher asked.

“You got a toe in that world based on how you came up,” Maverick said and there wasn’t any reproach to his tone, just a matter of fact.

“Unfortunately,” Cipher said nodding, and he sucked his teeth distastefully. “I’ll put out some feelers.”

“I know you and your bro ain’t close and I hate for you to put yourself out,” Maverick said, and he